A TRIX-FLASH

Brothers and Sisters of The Shakespeare Code,

Your Cat was slinking her way through FASHIONABLE West London………

…… to buy some smoked haddock for the boys back at Code Headquarters……

…….(my kedgeree is to DIE for)….

…….when who should she bump into but……..

…the HUGE STAR….

…..and Shakespeare Code Fellow……

 

MAGGIE OLLERENSHAW, F.S.C.

She gave the SECRET CODE SALUTE………

…… whereby Fellows of The Code acknowledge each other……

And then said……

How’s tricks, Trix?

Your Cat told her of her latest coup……

…….uncovering the TRUE IDENTITY of the Willobe his Avisa author…….

See: The ‘Willobie’ Author Revealed.

No mean Elizabethan herself, Maggie listened with INTENSE interest….

Then Your Cat asked Maggie what SHE was up to…..

AND YOUR CAT WAS BLOWN AWAY BY THE NEWS!!!

MAGGIE IS TO REPRISE HER WORLD-FAMOUS RÔLE AS…..

‘WAVY MAVIS’…..

……in the CELEBRATED sit-com…

 ….OPEN ALL HOURS….

But then a thought struck Your Cat……

…….like thunder….

How can that be, Maggie? Sir Ronald – as he should have been – no longer walks among us…….

Maggie smiled her famous, gnomic smile…..

The show will be set in modern times, Trixie…..

Arkwright, the store owner, has died……

……and left the store to his nephew, Granville……

……played by Sir David Jason, who is still very much among us.

There will be a photograph of Arkwright in the shop, which Granville talks to…..

….. and we watch Granville become more and more like his uncle.

So the SPIRIT of Ronnie Barker will be there….

Just right for Christmas…..

Your Cat, unable to contain herself, leapt in….

And screened WORLDWIDE…

And made into a series….

Magggie smiled her gnomic smile again…..

And put her finger to her lips..

Bye now, Trix. Be good….

…..she said……

…..and was off…….

….. into the heady hubbub which is Maida Vale….

And it’s…..

‘Bye now…..

…. to you,

Brothers and Sisters of The Code…

…..from Trixie the Cat….

…..and YOU be good as well!

If you would like to read Trixie the Cat’s NOW CLASSIC interview with Maggie Ollerenshaw, F.S.C. please click: HERE!

 

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….by TRIXIE THE CAT…

(It’s best to read Parts One, Two, Three and Four first.)

Brothers and Sisters of The Shakespeare Code…….

……PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING DOCUMENT……

…..WHICH IS CONTEMPORANEOUS WITH THE WILLOBIE AUTHOR….

 …..WITH THE UTMOST CARE…..

To all the constant Ladies and Gentlewomen of England that fear God…

Pardon me, (sweet Ladies) if at this point, I deprive you of a just apology in defence of your constant chastities, deserved of many of you and long sithence promised by my self, to some of you: many men in these days (whose tongues are tipped with poison) are too ready and over willing to speak and write to your disgrace, evil disposed men , who forgetting they were born of women, nourished of women, and if it were not by the means of women, would be quite extinguished out of the world, and a final end of them all, do like Vipers deface the wombs wherein they were bred, only to give way and utterance to their want of discretion and goodness. They have tempted even the patience of God himself, who gave power to wise and virtuous women, to bring down their pride and arrogancy, as was cruel Caesarus by the discreet counsel of noble Deborah, Judge and prophetess of Israel: and resolution of Jaell, wife of Heber the Kenite.

Let the four moral virtues be in order set down. Prudence, Fortitude, Temperance, Justice and let the holy scriptures be searched from the beginning to the end and let all the ancient histories, both ecclesiastical and profane be thoroughly examined and there will be found women enough, that in the performance of all these virtues, have matched, if not over-matched, men of every age. For temperance, how say you to the wife of one Pelgius of Laodicea which being young herself and married to a young and lusty man, was yet notwithstanding contented willingly to forbear carnal pleasure her whole life. For fortitude and temperance both, I find that in Antioch, there was a noble woman with her two daughters, rather than they would be deflowered, cast themselves all willingly into a great river and so drowned themselves. Many other examples I could allege of divers faithful and virtuous women, who have in all ages, not only been Confessors, but also endured most cruel martyrdom for their faith in Jesus Christ. All which is sufficient to enforce all good Christians and honourable minded men to speak reverently of your sex, and especially of all virtuous and good women.

This document……..

…….written by a man…….

……. but addressed……

….. ‘to all the constant Ladies and Gentlewomen of England’…..

…….argues, with utter clarity….

…….the moral superiority of the female sex to the male……..

….and draws on many examples……

………from scripture and history……..

………to make its point…..

It is an extraordinary position for a man of this period to take….

…..or any man……

…..of any age……

…..to take…….

…..including our own…..

IN FACT IT IS FAR TOO EXTRAORDINARY!!!

Let’s look at the document again…..

…….divided up…..

To all the constant Ladies and Gentlewomen of England that fear God…

Pardon me, (sweet Ladies) if at this point, I deprive you of a just apology in defence of your constant chastities, deserved of many of you and long sithence promised by my self, to some of you: many men in these days (whose tongues are tipped with poison) are too ready and over willing to speak and write to your disgrace….

…..evil disposed men , who forgetting they were born of women, nourished of women, and if it were not by the means of women, would be quite extinguished out of the world, and a final end of them all, do like Vipers deface the wombs wherein they were bred, only to give way and utterance to their want of discretion and goodness….

They have tempted even the patience of God himself, who gave power to wise and virtuous women, to bring down their pride and arrogancy…

…as was cruel Caesarus by the discreet counsel of noble Deborah, Judge and prophetess of Israel: and resolution of Jaell, wife of Heber the Kenite…..

…Let the four moral virtues be in order set down. Prudence, Fortitude, Temperance, Justice and let the holy scriptures be searched from the beginning to the end and let all the ancient histories, both ecclesiastical and profane be thoroughly examined and there will be found women enough, that in the performance of all these virtues, have matched, if not over-matched, men of every age…..

For temperance, how say you to the wife of one Pelgius of Laodicea which being young herself and married to a young and lusty man, was yet notwithstanding contented willingly to forbear carnal pleasure her whole life…

For fortitude and temperance both, I find that in Antioch, there was a noble woman with her two daughters, rather than they would be deflowered, cast themselves all willingly into a great river and so drowned themselves

Many other examples I could allege of divers faithful and virtuous women, who have in all ages, not only been Confessors, but also endured most cruel martyrdom for their faith in Jesus Christ. All which is sufficient to enforce all good Christians and honourable minded men to speak reverently of your sex, and especially of all virtuous and good women.

Though the style and subject matter of all the passsages are IDENTICAL…..

…….this ‘document’ is, in fact….

 A COMPILATION OF TWO DIFFERENT WORKS!!!

The section in red is taken from…..

Willobie his Avisa…….

……. the section in black…..

……..(with ONE CHANGE ONLY of ‘our’ to your’)……

……..is taken from…..

….. Salve Deus Rex Judeorum……..

…….published in 1611……

……BY AEMILIA LANYER…..

…..whose maiden name was….

AEMILIA BASSANO.

‘Henrie Willobie’

…the supposed Willobie author……

….was, in fact……

a Woman…

‘Bye, now……

© Stewart Trotter, October, 2013.

For further evidence of Trixie the Cat’s Theory, please click: HERE.

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(It’s best to read Parts One, Two and Three first.)

DECODING THE LANGUAGE OF WILLOBIE HIS AVISA….

The FIRST EVER reference in print to William Shakespeare…..

……..comes in Willobie his Avisa!!!

The Willobie author………

…….arguing that the beautiful, chaste Avisa is as faithful to her husband in ‘modern’ England………

…… as Lucrece was to Collatine in Ancient Rome…….

…..writes:

Yet Tarquin pluckt his [Collatine’s] glistering grape [his wife]

And Shake-speare, paints poor Lucrece rape….

This was a highly-topical reference……

Shakespeare’s long, narrative poem, The Rape of Lucrece……

 ……had been entered on 9th May, 1594 at Stationer’s Hall………..

……just FOUR MONTHS before Willobie itself was entered on 3rd September, 1594…

But the late, great Estuary Intellectual and Bletchley Codebreaker, Eric Sams……..

…….has pointed out that Willobie also has many echoes of Shakespeare’s WRITING….

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Oberon says to Puck……

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,

Where oxlipsand the noddingviolet grows,

Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,

With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine

‘H.W.’ in Willobie….

…….codename for Henry Wriothesley…..

…….says to Avisa…..

I saw your gardens passing fine

With pleasant flowers lately deckt

With cowslip and with eglantine

When woeful woodbine lies reject…..

Clearly the Willobie author knew A Midsummer Night’s Dream backwards…

But the play had only recently been staged……

…..to celebrate the wedding of Henry Wriothesley’s mother, Mary, Second Countess of Southampton…….

……to Sir Thomas Heneage…..

(There are even references in A Midsummer Night’s Dream itself to the appalling summer weather of 1594……)

NO PRINTED VERSION OF A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM EXISTED WHEN WILLOBIE HIS AVISA WAS PUBLISHED…..

SO THE WILLOBIE AUTHOR MUST HAVE ATTENDED AN EARLY PERFORMANCE OF THE PLAY….

….WHICH, THE CODE BELIEVES, WAS A PRIVATE EVENT….

…..STAGED IN THE HALL AND GROUNDS OF COPPED HALL IN ESSEX…..

……AS A PRO-AM PRODUCTION….

…..WITH ARISTOCRATS PLAYING SOME OF THE PARTS…..

……INCLUDING WOMEN…..

…….AND PROFESSIONAL PERFORMERS PLAYING THE OTHER PARTS…..

…..ALSO INCLUDING WOMEN!…..

See: A MISUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM DECODED. 

And see especially, The Progresses of Queen Elizabeth…… 

……..which shows how aristocratic women would join in the entertainments, performed in the Halls and Grounds of their private estates, for the visiting Queen….

The Willobie author also makes an astonishing SEVEN direct references to the title LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST…..

(1) They find their vice by virtue crost.

Their foolish words, and labour lost.

(2) Thy love (sweet heart) shall not be lost,

How dear a price so ever it cost.

(3) Assure your self your labour’s lost.

(4) The labour’s lost that you indure.

To gorged Hawk, to cast the lure.

(5)The greater frost, the greater flame,

So frames it with my love or lost

That fiercely fries amidst the frost.

(6) If other hope you do retain,

Your labour’s lost your hope is vain.

(7) But his labour is imagined here to be lost.

The Willobie author also draws on the erotic imagery of the hunt in Love’s Labour’s Lost……

……in which the Princess of France – and her ladies-in-waiting – are out hunting for deer…….

……in the same sadistic way they are out hunting for men…..

The Princess of France, bow in hand, says…….

Now mercy goes to kill

And shooting well is then accounted ill….

I for praise alone now seek to spill

The poor deer’s blood that my heart means no ill……

To an Elizabethan, the spilling of the deer’s blood……

…….and its death…….

…….would also suggest love-making and orgasm…..

In A Winter’s Tale, the jealous Leontes…..

…….describing the imagined love-making of his wife, Hermione, with his childhood friend, Polixenes, says:

But to be paddling palms and pinching fingers,

As now they are, and making practised smiles,

As in a looking-glass, and then to sigh, as ’twere

The mort o’ th’ deer….

‘H.W.’ in Willobie also draws on the image of the wounded deer………

…….covered in blood………

…….when he describes his own sexual arousal by Avisa…..

Like wounded deer whose tender sides are bathed in blood,

From deadly wound, by fatal hand & forked shaft

So bleeds my pierced heart, for so you think it good,

With cruelty to kill that which you got by craft….

To complicate the issue even more, Queen Elizabeth……

………..as the ‘Chief Man’ at a deer hunt…….

………..would have castrated the dead stag…….

 ……to obtain his delicious and highly prized….

…….coddes….

(Sigmund Freud would have had a field day…..)

THE SHAKESPEARE CODE BELIEVES THAT THE FIRST PERFORMANCE OF LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST WAS ALSO A PRIVATE EVENT……

…..STAGED IN THE GROUNDS OF PLACE HOUSE IN TITCHFIELD AT WHITSUN IN 1592….

[Read Stewart Trotter’s Love’s Labour’s Found (2002)]

…….and see: Shakespeare in Titchfield.

The Willobie author also refers to other plays by Shakespeare……..

Richard III, in which the hunchbacked……

…..and in Lord Olivier’s performance, nasally-challenged, King….

……asks the audience…….

Was ever woman in this humour wooed?

Was ever woman in this humour won?

And Edmund Ironside……

……(which The Code believes was partly by Shakespeare)…..

…….contains the phrase…..

…….like a woman to be won with words……

 ‘W.S.’ in Willobie…

…….code for William Shakespeare……..

…… says to ‘H.W.’…..

She [Avisa] is no saint, she is no nun,

I think in time she may be won……

‘W.S.’ also says to ‘H.W.’….

The smothered flame, too closely pent,

Burns more extreme for want of vent….

…..which, as Sams points out, is very similar to Gunthranus’s line from Edmund Ironside:

Yet can she [Queen Emma] not conceal affection so

But that it breaketh forth like hidden fire……

EDMUND IRONSIDE……….

………..WITH ITS ANACHRONISTIC INTRODUCTION OF A CHIVALROUS EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON IN THE REIGN OF KING CANUTE………

………..ITS SCENES SET IN THE TOWN OF SOUTHAMPTON……..

………..(WITH THE WALLS OF SOUTHAMPTON CASTLE FORMING A BACKDROP TO THE PLAY)…….

…………WAS, THE CODE BELIEVES, WRITTEN FOR PRIVATE PERFORMANCE FOR AND BY THE SOUTHAMPTON FAMILY c. 1592…

In Edward III (c. 1593) a play which The Code also believes is part-written by Shakespeare, the King says:

The lion scorns to touch the yielding prey…….

…..and ‘H.W.’ in Willobie says:

The raging lion never rends

The yielding prey……

In Edward III, Warwick also warns his daughter, the Countess of Salisbury…..

……who, though she is married, is being wooed by the King……

……who is himself married…..

Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds….

In Willobie ‘The Nobleman’…….

……another of Avisa’s unsuccessful suitors….

…. says…..

Unhappy lily loves a weed

That gives no scent that gives no glee…..

But…..

Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds….

……is also, of course, the conclusion to Shakespeare’s Sonnet 94……

…….which begins…..

They that have power to hurt and will do none…..

Sonnet 94 deals with the abuse of power…..

Shakespeare warns Henry Wriothesley NOT to use his status to seduce lower class young men……

He is the lily and they are the weeds…..

And if the lily meets with…..

……..base infection…..

……it smells…….

…. far worse…..

……than a weed would do….

This is EXACTLY the theme of Edward III …….

…….where the King attempts to seduce the Countess of Salisbury using his status……

And it is EXACTLY the theme of Willobie his Avisa….

……..where a corrupt old Nobleman attempts to groom the barely pubescent Avisa….

Criticising his behaviour, Avisa speaks of his ……

…..base affection….

…..which is an echo the Sonnet phrase….

…..base infection…..

The Willobie author, clearly, was not only intimately acquainted with Shakespeare’s unpublished plays….

……..HE WAS INTIMATELY ACQUAINTED WITH SHAKESPEARE’S UNPUBLISHED SONNETS…….

…..AND SHAKESPEARE’S MIND….

He must have been one of the…..

…..private friends….

…..among whom, Francis Mere said……..

…….. (four years later in 1598)……..

……… that Shakespeare circulated his….

…..suagr’d sonnets…..

……SO WHO WAS HE?

TO FIND OUT, CLICK: HERE!

TRIXIE THE CAT HAS THE ANSWER!

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It’s best to read Parts ONE  and TWO first.

A TOM’n’TRIX SPECIAL

Brothers and Sisters of The Shakespeare Code…..

On the way down to Sherborne….

……Your Cat, Trixie…..

……and the mysterious Tom ‘X’…

…….stopped off at Titchfield………

…….. where we saw a BRILLIANT performance of Richard III ….

…….given by the great Kevin Fraser’s Titchfield Shakespeare Festival Company….

www.titchfieldfestivaltheatre.com

…….in the beautiful Old Barn……

……with a STUNNING  central performance……..

….. by a SMOULDERING new young actor called Rick Oakley…..

Of this performance, Ed Howson wrote in the Daily Echo…..

As the “bottled spider”, Rick Oakley’s clearly deranged Richard dominated the stage, leering, gibbering and lolloping as he disposed of all who stood between him and the crown, his closecropped blonde hair and speech impediment always giving him an air of dangerous unpredictability….

Believe Your Cat, here is a star in the making….

We spent a night in the hugely characterful ‘The Bugle’……..

……where Tom’s bed broke into pieces…..

The Landlady’s only question was……

Was it in Room 1?

……as though Room 1 was to blame…..

We made our way by the slow train to Sherborne……

Tom had left his beloved Harley-Davidson……

…… back in romantic West London…..

He didn’t want to frighten the horses with the roar of his machine…..

And he didn’t want to frighten himself by driving down country lanes…

We passed the Sherborne Old Castle in the train……

……then alighted at Sherborne itself….

What a beautiful, beautiful town……

Your Cat would have been happy to have just slunk round its history-soaked streets….

But both of us were on….

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE

……..to find the beautiful Avisa’s…….

……..crystal well……

……..in the IMMEDIATE vicinity of ‘The George’ tavern.

See: ‘Willobie his Avisa Decoded: Part Two. Topography.

As the Willobie author writes…..

At west side [of Sherborne] springs a crystal well:

And there doth this chaste Avisa dwell.

We mounted the hill that leads to Sherborne’s oldest pub…..

……..and found the town’s conduit…….

…….which had once supplied water to the whole of Sherborne……..

Could this be the…..

 …….crystal well…..

…….the Willobie author writes about?

…….the well that each of Avisa’s suitors….

…….tries……?

As the hill grew steeper and steeper…….

……. and ‘The George’ proved to be further and further away from the Conduit……

……..Your Cat and her Tom HAD to admit it was unlikely they had found ‘the crystal well’…..

They found ‘The George’ though…..

And a warm welcome from its Landlord and Lady……

…….Brian and Jacqui……

Tom ordered a pint of bitter…….

……and Your Cat was served with a saucer of delicious, Dorset cream….

Before our adventure, Tom had been sleuthing round the run down…….

………if EXORBITANTLY priced…….

……. London Library……

…….and discovered in the TOPOGRAPHY section……..

……..in the building’s dank and dingy basement……

…….a book that suggested there might have been a ‘New Well’ near ‘The George’……

Leaving his pint BARELY TOUCHED……..

…… Tom rushed off……

…..while Your Cat chatted to hosts Brian and Jacqui…….

……and discovered something EXTRAORDINARY……

Tom returned, hot and sweaty…….

…….in semi-triumph……

He hadn’t found a well, no…..

Not as such….

But he HAD found a ‘Newell Cottage’……

 

It was, he admitted, a few hundred yards away……

……..but it was just possible that…….

…….Newell……

…….was originally……

…….New Well……

Your Cat replied….

That’s pushing it a bit, Tom…..

…..even by Shakespeare Code standards.

Besides, our Landlord has something to show you…..

Brian was about to give Tom the shock of his life……

Come round the back

……he said…..

And took Tom out of the pub……

………..left through the arched passageway……

………..to the back yard……

……to the old Coaching House…..

He pointed to a brick structure, surrounded by dustbins and motor-bikes….

If that isn’t a well, then what is it?

…..he asked….

Brian was clearly right……

Like the Fairy Stories of old…..

………in the UNLIKELIEST of places…..

……..and looking NOTHING like the way he had expected it to look….

TOM HAD FOUND HIS CRYSTAL WELL!!!

We were  so excited by the discovery we IMMEDIATELY phoned the Chief Agent, Stewart Trotter…….

………who was as delighted as we were….

You know

….he said…..

……this reminds me of an incident in the summer of 1999……

…….when my great friend, the distinguished actor Mike Burnside…..

…….and I went down to Titchfield……

…….and called on a villager……..

We told him that his cottage……….

…… had been mentioned by William Shakespeare in Love’s Labour’s Lost!!!

Don Armado in the play…….

…….a satirical portrait of Sir Walter Raleigh…..

…….says to Holofernes…….

…….a satirical portrtait of John Florio……….

Do you not educate youth at the

charge-house on the top of the mountain?

You should have seen the look on the rustic’s face!

He invited us in…….

And showed us the remains of a secure room in an upstairs room……

It was the ‘charge-house’ itself!

Earlier in the year (on 15th February to be exact) the cottager had dismissed Shakespeare’s whole association with Titchfield as……

…..a completely uncorroborated but pleasant legend….

Now ‘Titchfield Ken’ gives guided Shakespeare tours……

I wrote about this incident in 2002 in Love’s Labour’s Found…..

But enough of this bucolic reminiscence…..

We’ve all got work to do…….

If Avisa was the ‘creation’ of Four Graces……..

…….as the Willobie author asserts….

……how could her ‘Sire’ be Sir Walter Raleigh?……..

….. and how could she be living in a pub?…..

Was she real?

Or was she…..

……fained…?

We’ve cracked the Topography Code of Willobie his Avisa…..

……now we have to……

CRACK THE LANGUAGE CODE….

SO, BACK TO WEST LONDON,

TRIX’n’TOM,

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!!!

NOTE:

The Shakespeare Code would like to thank

BRIAN AND JACQUI

Landlord and Landlady of ‘The George’

http://www.thegeorgesherborne.co.uk/

……without whose kindness, curiosity and concern……

…… The Crystal Well might have lain undiscovered through all eternity…..

NOW READ PART FOUR: Echoes of Shakespeare in ‘Willobie his Avisa.’

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 It’s best to read ‘Willobie his Avisa’ Decoded: Part One first.

Satire in 1594 was a dangerous game.

In 1579 Queen Elizabeth had ordered pamphleteer John Stubbs’s right hand to be chopped off……

….. for….

……seditious libel……

(The Queen had to be persuaded not to execute him)

But in the same way that serial killers are said to purposely leave clues to their identity, so does the Willobie author….

…….through coded topography……

…….and coded language…….

(1) Coded Topography

The Willobie author writes how the Four Graces, Venus, Pallas, Diana and Juno  meet…..

At Wester side of Albion’s isle

Where Austin pitcht his monkish tent

Where shepherds sing, where muses smile

…..in order to create Avisa……

The location for this miraculous birth is, as many have convincingly argued, a coded description of Cerne Abbas in Dorset…..

‘Austin’ – St. Augustine – founded a monastery there…….

……and legend has it that the Saint struck the earth with his staff…….

……and water gushed forth…..

This became a holy well…..

…..worshipped for its magical properties to this day…..

People leave wishes, wrapped in tiny scrolls of paper, hanging on the bushes….

……….and women who wish to become pregnant drink the waters…….

……….and girls, who want to find a husband, pray to St. Catherine, then  twirl three times before the well’s ‘Catherine Wheel’…..

The waters are said to cure eye-strain….

……mothers, to ensure the health of their babies, dip them into the well when the first rays of the sun touch the waters……

……and if you look into the well on Easter Day, you will see reflected over your shoulder all those who will die in the coming year.

This is how the well appeared in 1790……

…..and probably looked in 1594. The well had been part of a chapel dedicated to St. Catherine which had been demolished in Henry VIII’s time.

In the 1596 sequel to Willobie his Avisa, the Willobie author not only associates the Four Graces with Cerne Abbas: he associates them with the well itself.

He writes:

In sea-bred soil, on Tempe downs,

Whose silver spring from Neptune’s Well

With mirth salutes the neighbour towns

A hot contention lately fell:

Twice two sweet Graces, urge the strife,

Of two which was the constant wife…..

‘St. Augustine’s Well’ was originally called ‘The Silver Well’…..

Before Augustine arrived in England, St. Edwold, a Mercian King, had a vision of the well…..

……..and gave a shepherd silver pennies to show him where it was….

To this day, eels and little fish mysteriously appear in its waters……

Hence the Willobie author’s description of it as…..

Neptune’s well…..

When the Graces create Avisa, Venus gives her….

….a luring eye…

Pallas gives her…..

….a reaching head…

And Diana gives her

….feature brave….

……saying…..

Avisa shall she called be,

The chief attendant still on me….

But when Juno sees Avisa’s beauty, she becomes worried that her husband, Jove, will pursue her…..

……as he has pursued many other beautiful women and nymphs….

……in many different forms…..

So Juno refuses to give Avisa wealth.

But to make up for this, Diana gives her….

A face an eye that should entice

A smile that should deceive the wise…..

And seeming oft as though she would

Yet fardest off when that she should…..

The Willobie author then shifts the scene away from the well at Cerne Abbas:

Not far from thence there lies a vale,

A rosie vale in pleasant plain;

The nymphs frequent this happy dale,

Old Helicon revives again;

Here muses sing, here satyrs play,

Here mirth resounds both night and day.

In 1924, G.B. Harrison convincingly identified this topography as that of Sherborne, twelve miles away from Cerne Abbas…..

As you approach Sherborne from Cerne Abbas, it does indeed lie in a vale……

The Willobie author continues……

At East of this a castle stands

By ancient shepherds built of old

And lately was in shepherd’s hands,

Though now by brothers bought and sold…

The….

….ancient shepherds……

….  were Bishops with their crooks…….

….who originally built the Castle in the 12th Century…..

…..and it was…..

lately…in shepherds’ hands…

i.e. still owned by the Church………….

…….till Sir Walter Raleigh came along….

According to Sir John Harington…..

……as he [Raleigh] was riding post between Plymouth and the Court, as many times he did upon no small employment, this castle [Sherborne] being right in the way , he cast such an eye upon it as Achab did upon Naboth’s vineyard; and once, above the rest, being talking of it, of the commodiousness of the place, of the strength of the seat, and how easily it might be got from the bishoprick; suddenly over and over came his horse, that his face, which was then thought a very good face, ploughed up the earth where he fell….

Sir Walter Raleigh fell so in love with Sherborne Castle, he bribed Queen Elizabeth with money and a precious ring…….

In return she snatched the Castle away from the Church and gave it to her favourite, on a ninety-nine year lease, as a ‘gift’….

Sir Walter and his brother, Carew, attempted to modernise the castle, but failed…….

Instead they built a new one…….

The Willobie author continues:

Along this plain there lies a down,

Where shepherds feed their frisking flock

Her sire, [Avisa’s] the Maior of the town,

A lovely shout of ancient stock….

In some modern editions, ‘maior’ is changed to ‘mayor’………..

…….but there was no mayor of Sherborne at this period.

‘Maior’ can, however, suggest the ‘major’ person of the town………….

…….and in 1594 this would have been the ‘lovely’ Sir Walter…….

……who even Harington admits had…..

……a very fine face…..

Raleigh’s family, though poor, were certainly….

……..of ancient stock…..

(Queen Elizabeth surrounded herself with impoverished gentry who needed her money)

Shout….

……..(from 1464 to 1842 at least) could mean……

…… a flat-bottomed boat……

……and mariners (in 1395) were referred to as…..

 shoutmen

‘Shout’ could well be a poetic abbreviation for ‘shoutman’

…….and Sir Walter,

…….The Shepherd of the Ocean…….

……..was certainly a famous mariner……

He also had strong links with Cerne Abbas.

He famously bought his ‘buskins’ there – his soft leather shoes – from a family called Hodges……

 

 

……..which survived as a family firm long enough to supply Princess Victoria with her first pair of grown up leather shoes….

Raleigh was also ‘examined’ for blasphemy on 21st March, 1594, in Cerne Abbas………

……..along with his brother Carew, and his mathematician, Thomas Haryot.

To this day the locals talk of the hospitality afforded him by a Cerne Abbas family……

…….and there is still a house in this row associated with him…….

The Willobie author continues his description of Sherborne with:

At west side springs a crystal well

There doth this chaste Avisa dwell……

And there she dwells in public eye

Shut up from none that list to see;

She answers all that list to try,

Both high and low of each degree:

But few that come but feel her dart,

And try her well ere they depart….

Later on in the poem, the love-sick ‘H.W.’ says:

See’st yonder house, where hangs the badge

Of England’s saint, when captains cry

Victorious land, to conquering rage,

Lo, there my hopeless help [Avisa] doth lye:

And there that friendly foe doth dwell,

That makes my heart thus rage and swell….

The…..

….. house……

…..is a pub…….

…..that is why Avisa…..

…..dwells in public eye…

…..and….

The badge…..

……..is a pub sign…..

……England’s saint….

……..is St. George….

The Willobie author is describing the George Tavern in Sherborne…….

…..which, as you can see, is still standing……..

…..up quite a steep hill from the town centre….

….. and serving excellent beer to this day…..

See: http://www.thegeorgesherborne.co.uk/

and http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restaurant_Review-g186265-d3387978-Reviews-The_George-Sherborne_Dorset_England.html

Many commentators have suggested that ‘The George’ is the tavern quoted in Willobie…..

There is even a sign outside the pub to that effect, even if it does say that Willobie his Avisa is a…..

……poem, attributed to Sir Walter Raleigh, written in 1593…

But what of the……

……..crystal well……..

……where Avisa dwells?

It cannot be the well in Cerne Abbas,

…..as Harrison suggested…..

So where is it?

The Shakespeare Code sent Trixie the Cat and Tom ‘X’ to find out……

TO FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM, CLICK: HERE!

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Willobie his Avisa –  or the True Picture of a modest maid and a chaste and constant wife

………was entered on the Stationer’s Register on 3rd September, 1594….

The frontispiece claims it is….

In Hexameter verse. The like argument whereof was never heretofore published. Read the preface to the reader before you enter farther…

And then quotes from Proverbs 12.4:

A virtuous woman is the crown of her husband but she that maketh him ashamed is as corruption in his bones.

Willobie his Avisa claims to be a poem left in his study by one Henry Willobie……

a young man and a scholar of very good hope, being desirous to see the fashions of other countries for a time, [who] departed voluntarily to her Majesty’s service…..

The poem was discovered by his friend, Hadrian Dorrell, to whom Henrie had entrusted a key to his study…….

Dorrell was so taken with the poem……

…….and its praise of the chaste Avisa……

…….that he decided to publish it….

…….as a moral example to all women……

(and, indeed, as a moral example to all men. Henry Willobie shows them to be either ruthless, desperate or pathetic in their attempts to seduce the ‘constant’ wife, Avisa.)

Brothers and Sisters of The Shakespeare Code will immediately recognise this formula…….

Two years earlier, Thomas Nashe……..

…….claimed to have found the manuscript of Groats-worth of Wit……

…….in Robert Greene’s study after he died.

Everyone knew that it was Nashe who had written it.

He wanted a cover so he could attack other people……

………especially William Shakespeare……

……… whom he famously describes as an……

………upstart crow.

See: Greene’s ‘Groats-worth of Wit’ decoded.

‘Henry Willobie’ was a pen name….

…..but to complicate matters, there really WAS a REAL Henrie Willobie……

……….an Oxford undergraduate…….

……….who matriculated from St John’s College, Oxford, in December 1591 at the age of sixteen…..

There is no evidence that he ever left England on Queen Elizabeth’s service……

……….and, indeed, seems to have graduated as a Bachelor of Arts from Exeter College, Oxford, in 1595……

……….the year after Willobie was published….

By the 1596 edition, though, Henry Willobie is described as……

now of late gone to God

i.e. dead…..

And his…….

poetical fiction…..penned……at least for thirty and five years since [ago]

 The Willobie author chose ‘Henrie Willobie’ as his pen name for one reason only:

…….the initials, ‘H.W’……

For the niche audience Willobie his Avisa was aimed at,  ‘H.W.’ could suggest one person only…..

….. Henry Wriothesley, the Third Earl of Southampton……

……who, in Willobie his Avisa, falls hopelessly in love with Avisa……

……egged on by his……

familiar friend, W.S.

…….described as an…..

……old player…..

……in a…..

……loving comedy……

To hide his tracks the Willobie author invents other, more generalised, suitors of Avisa…..

……..lusty Cavalieros, Captains  or Cutters…….

……a Frenchman (‘D.B’) and an ‘Englishman or German’ under the name of ‘Didimus Harco’……

He also portrays ‘Dorrell’ as the puzzled editor of the poem who doesn’t know if Avisa is a real person or not……

……or who ‘H.W.’ could possibly be…….

At one point ‘Dorrell’  even states that ‘H.W.’ was an Italian and a Spaniard AT THE SAME TIME!

He describes ‘H.W.’ as…….

…..Italo-Hispalensis…..

……and ‘H.W.’ himself says:

A thousand features I have seen,

For travellers change, & choice shall see

In France and Flanders and in Spain…….

– a coded reference to the secret trip Southampton, Shakespeare took to the Continent in 1593, the year before…..

See:‘Shakespeare in Italy.’

Also see the work of Prof. Roger Prior who, using completely different criteria, argues that Shakespeare was in Venice in EXACTLY THE SAME YEAR!

•

Willobie his Avisa went through six editions, was constantly banned and was still being printed in 1635……

………MORE THAN FORTY YEARS AFTER IT WAS FIRST WRITTEN!

So who REALLY wrote Willobie his Avisa?

– and what was his motive?

Dr. Saul Frampton……

.

…….of the University of Westminster…….

……in a long piece in the Guardian newspaper on 10th August this year (2013) put forward John Florio as the author…..

…..but Trixie the Cat has ENTIRELY REFUTED this theory…..

See:Le Guardian – J’accuse!

The late historian Christopher Hill, followed by many others, put forward Matthew Roydon as a candidate…..

……but he was part of the homosexual Christopher Marlowe circle…….

……and his elegy to the dead soldier- hero, Sir Philip Sidney………

……is tantamount to a posthumous love poem:

Half of this heart, this sprite and will,

Died in the breast of Astrophil [Sidney]…….

To hear him speak and sweetly smile

You were in paradise a while….

Roydon would NEVER have disparaged men in favour of women the way the Willobie Author does……

…..and according to Thomas Kyd’s 1593 letter to Sir John Puckering……

[Marlowe] would persuade with men of quality to go unto the King of Scots whether I hear Roydon is gone….

So the odds are Roydon wasn’t even in England in 1594!

One Dr. Creighton, in 1904, put forward the most preposterous theory of all……..

…….that the Earl of Southampton wrote Willobie his Avisa HIMSELF……

BUT IF HE DIDN’T, WHO DID?

PLEASE READ ON!

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ANOTHER TRIXIE FIRST!!!

Henry Wrothesley, SECOND Earl of Southampton……..

…….was if anything, even GAYER than his son the Third Earl!!!

He accused his wife, Mary, 2nd Countess of Southampton……

…….of adultery with……

….a common person…….

……seized their young son, Henry (‘Harry’)……

……surrounded himself with……

……..a whole troupe of at least a hundred well-mounted gentlemen and yeomen…..tall goodly fellows that kept a constant pace…..

……and, in the bitter words of his estranged Countess….

……..made his manservant his wife…..

When he died in 1581, he left £1,000 (£500,000 in modern money) for two new tombs in St. Peter’s Church, Titchfield….

……..one for his mother and father, the iron-willed Jane, First Countess of Southampton…….

….and Thomas Wriothesley, First Earl of Southampton, Baron of Titchfield….

…….and one, solitary, tomb for himself…..

He wanted it to be a perpetual reminder of his wife’s infidelity….

Mary was having none of it……

Pulling aristocratic strings, she over-turned his will……..

 ……..which even gave guardianship of young Harry to his manservant, Dymock…….

……..and proceeded, for the next thirteen years, to ignore his dying request for the two tombs…..

However, Harry was to come of age on 6th October, 1594. 

He had never got on with his mother………

 …….his father had taught him to despise ALL women………..

……. so in all likelihood, when he gained control of the family finances, he would carry out his father’s wishes….

So Mary got in first…..

In May, 1594, she commissioned………

………. for a fee of £300 as opposed to £1,000 her husband had left……

……….ONE tomb from Garret Johnson……

………..a Flemish refugee who had come to England in 1567……

……….. and who’s son was later to sculpt William Shakespeare’s memorial bust in Stratford-upon-Avon…..

The Southampton tomb was to show Countess Jane lying, in prayer, at the top……

…….an instruction that must have stuck in Mary’s throat.

(Jane had bitterly opposed Mary’s marriage to her son…..

But she would have bitterly opposed ANY marriage to him)

To Jane’s right would lie Thomas Wriothesley, the First Earl of Southampton……

…….and to her left, somewhat incestuously, her son himself…..

(Was this Mary’s revenge? She even got her name and history into the inscription at the back of the tomb!)

The Second Earl is depicted in armour, though he never fought a battle in his life…..

……save his battle for Roman Catholicism……

Like his mother, he remained an unrepentant Papist to the end of his days……

On the side of the tomb, his son, the 3rd Earl,is depicted, opposite his sister, Mary, both kneeling in prayer…….

UNTIL THIS MOMENT IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN ASSUMED THAT HARRY IS DEPICTED IN BOYHOOD…….

……PRAYING FOR THE SOUL OF HIS NEWLY DEPARTED FATHER……

Your Cat is ashamed to say that she had been following all the other scholarly sheep…..

BUT IN ST. PETER’S CHURCH SHE HAD THE LUCK OF THE DEVIL!!!

She was preparing to give one of her famous talks about the Southampton tomb to a HUGE CROWD of Shakespeare pilgrims……..

…… who were making their excited way along the road from London to Titchfield…..

…….when who should suddenly appear in St. Peter’s but her great friend…..

…….the fabulous actress, escapologist, church-watcher and professional tour guide……

…….FIONA LUKAS……

Your Cat seized the moment…..

Fiona, could I give my talk about the Southampton tomb to you? And could you give me some feedback?

With a smile, and with her trademark generosity, the lovely Fiona replied…..

Of course, Trixie, of course….

So I held forth, with Fiona slipping in RED HOT TOUR GUIDE TIPS…..

But when I said that the tomb depicted Southampton in boyhood…..

…….Fiona suddenly cried out……

Hold your horses, Trixie the Cat!  Look again! That’s not a boy. That’s a young man…..

Your Cat did indeed look again……

And the scales fell from her eyes……

Fiona, as ever, was right!

This was not a depiction of the Third Earl when his father died at the age of eight…..

It was a depiction of the Third Earl when the tomb was commissioned at the age of 21!

(We can also see, from her combined crest, that sister Mary, kneeling opposite Harry, is depicted as a married woman, not a child. She married Thomas Lord Arundell, First Baron Wardour in the 1580’s – and had produced a son and heir for him c. 1586)

We do not know whether the likenesses of Jane on the tomb…..

 or her son the Second Earl………

…….are accurate as there are NO OTHER IMAGES TO COMPARE THEM WITH!

(Here’s a full-face photo I took of the Second Earl………….

……by leaping up in to the air!)

However, there ARE two other portraits of Thomas Wriothesley, First Earl…..

One is by Hans Holbein…..

……and the other by an unknown artist, already copied above…….

Here is the ‘Tomb Thomas’ from above……

……another Trixie leap!

To Your Cat, the drooping lips, arched brows and thrusting beard and chin of the tomb……

…..are IDENTICAL to those of the portraits……

Now, we also have portraits of Thomas’s grandson, Harry Southampton, Third Earl……

Here is one by Nicholas Hilliard…..

 

And here is a later one of Harry in armour……

But Tudor portraits sometimes look washed out and flat…..

(Queen Elizabeth didn’t want her wrinkles recorded with too much accuracy…..)

So the tomb gives us the chance to see Harry in 3D…….

………at the age of twenty one…….

………when he was engaged in a full-blown love affair with William Shakespeare…..

No serious scholar now doubts that Shakespeare wrote…….

 Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day…..

…….to the beautiful young man of the Sonnets…..

……and most scholars………

…….apart from dinosaur homophobes……..

…….now take the young man to be Henry Wriothesley, Third Earl of Southampton…..

(Please see the Post that the great Stephen Fry tweeted……‘Just how gay was the Third Earl of Southampton’)

So what did Harry REALLY look like as a young man?

What face did Shakespeare see………

……..across the sheets…..

……..when he awoke in the Titchfield dawn?

Your Cat has been able…..

……by squeezing herself tight against the side of the tomb……..

……to take a photo of Harry that no human could ever produce……..

……A LIKENESS THAT HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN BEFORE…….

Brothers and Sisters of The Shakespeare Code…..

I give you Shakespeare’s young lover……

…….Henry Wriothesley, Third Earl of Southampton and Baron of Titchfield……

Schliemann gazed upon the face of Agamemnon……

Your Cat has gazed upon the face of Shakespeare’s…..

….lovely boy….

‘Bye now…..and thanks again, Fiona….

 

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Being the True Account of the Life of William Shakespeare, performed by Mr. William Beeston, Gent., and his Troop of Alchemical Spirits, at Posbrook Farm, Titchfield, Hampshire, in the Year of Our Lord, 1623.

TO READ EPISODE ONE , PLEASE CLICK:  HERE

TO READ EPISODE TWO, PLEASE CLICK: HERE

TO READ EPISODE THREE, PLEASE CLICK: HERE.

TO READ EPISODE FOUR, PLEASE CLICK: HERE.

TO READ EPISODE FIVE, PLEASE CLICK: HERE.

TO READ EPISODE SIX, PLEASE CLICK: HERE.

TO READ EPISODE SEVEN, PLEASE CLICK: HERE

TO READ EPISODE EIGHT, PLEASE CLICK: HERE.

TO READ EPISODE NINE, PLEASE CLICK: HERE..

TO READ MORE ABOUT SHAKESPEARE THE PLAY PLEASE CLICK: HERE.

BEESTON

(Entering from behind the screen) Jennet kept true. She had a son called Will and whenever Shakespeare visited Oxford, he would cover his face with a hundred kisses.

And though he had lost his first son, Will still had his daughter. (BEESTON opens First Folio)

SUSANNA

(Bursting onto the stage, dressed as the Goddess Flora with flowers in her hair and a trug of dried flowers)

(She addresses the audience…)

Here’s flowers for you….

(Lights up on audience. SUSANNA gives flowers to them)

….and you….and you…

(Then she turns her attention to the younger women in the audience)

…and you and you….

That wear upon your virgin-branches yet

Your maidenheads, growing…

(Then she suddenly sees DR. JOHN HALL – a handsome young, man dressed in black, sitting in the audience. She gives him some flowers.)

Now my fair’st friend

I would I had some flowers of the spring, that might

Become your time of day…

(SUSANNA suddenly becomes embarrassed and turns away. She sees her father SHAKESPEARE who has entered earlier and has stood watching SUSANNA with joy and pride. SUSANNA spots him, runs to him and kneels before him)

O look upon me sir,

And hold your hand in benediction o’er me…..

(SHAKESPEARE makes the sign of the cross over his daughter, then kneels to her and kisses her)

(laughing) Oh sir! You must not kneel!

(SUSANNA raises SHAKESPEARE to his feet and gives him flowers)

Here’s flowers for you, father.

Hot lavender, mints, savoury, marjoram,

The marigold that goes to bed with th’ sun

And with him rises, weeping: these are flowers of middle summer…

(Kneeling as to deity) O Proserpina,

For flowers now that (frighted) thou let’st fall

From Dis’s wagon! Daffodils……

That come before the swallow dares, and take

The winds of March with beauty; violets, (dim,

But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes

Or Cytherea’s breath)…..

……..pale primroses,

That die unmarried, ere they can behold

Bright Phoebus in his strength…..

…..bold oxlips……

…….and/The crown imperial…….

….lilies of all kinds…

(To SHAKESPEARE) O these I lack

To make you garlands of….

(Returning to HALL)… and my sweet friend,

To strew him o’er and o’er!

JOHN HALL

What? Like a corpse!

SUSANNA

No, like a bank for love to lie and play on:

Not like a corpse; or if, not be buried

But quick and in my arms….

(SUSANNA is again overcome by embarrassment. She rushes back to SHAKESPEARE on the stage)

Methinks I play as I have seen them do

In Whitsun pastorals: sure this robe of mine

Does change my disposition…

JOHN HALL

(Following SUSANNA onto the stage…)

What you do,

Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet,

I’d have you do it ever: when you sing,

I’d have you buy and sell so, so give alms,

Pray so, and, for the ord’ring your affairs,

To sing them too: when you do dance, I wish you

A wave o’ the sea, that you might ever do

Nothing but that, move still, still so,

And own no other function….

(To SUSANNA) Trust me, Susanna. I’m a Doctor! (He looks to SHAKESPEARE and bows.)

Sir….

( SHAKESPEARE smiles and bows back. They exit)

BEESTON

Susanna married Dr. Hall and soon became pregnant. Will had been a dreadful father, but he planned to be a brilliant grandfather. He moved to Stratford-upon-Avon and bade farewell to his London public in the figure of the magician, Prospero….

(BEESTON exits behind screen. SHAKESPEARE enters from trapdoor in a robe and staff identical to BEESTON’S)

SHAKESPEARE/PROSPERO

Our revels now are ended.

These our actors, as I foretold you,

Were all spirits, and have melted into air, thin air…..

BEESTON

(Enters from behind screen in identical robe and staff)

Now wherever can Cousin Will have got that idea….? (Exits behind screen again)

(SHAKESPEARE/PROSPERO breaks his staff and flings off his robe)

SHAKESPEARE/PROSPERO

Now my charms are all o’erthrown

And what strength I have’s mine own

Which is most faint: now ‘tis true

I must be here confined by you,

Lest you release me from my bands

With the help of your good hands:

Gentle breath of yours my sails

Must fill, or else my project fails,

Which was to please. Now I want

Spirits to enforce, Art to enchant;

And my ending is despair

Unless I be relieved by prayer,

Which pierces so that it assaults

Mercy itself, and frees all faults.

(He kneels to the audience)

As you from crimes would pardon’d be,

Let your indulgence set me free…

(SHAKESPEARE/PROSPERO exits. BEESTON enters from behind the screen)

BEESTON

Two years later, Will was back in London. Retirement wasn’t for him. His huge house in Stratford was more like a hotel than a home – filled with in-laws, outlaws and guests of the Stratford council. He didn’t get on with his wife, the locals kept trying to tap him for money and people were rioting about the enclosures. So it was back to London, more plays and more collaboration.

But then the Globe burnt down….

(Eyes heaven-wards) Someone, he thought, was trying to tell him something. So he returned home and did what any man of sense would have done. He got slaughtered in The Bear in Bridge Street every Saturday night….

(The entire COMPANY OF SPIRITS enter with SHAKESPEARE, now looking as fat as he did at the beginning of the Interlude…….

The SPIRITS laugh and pat SHAKESPEARE on the back and shout ‘Happy Birthday’)

MARTIN (who sits next to his wife, Jane)

(When the laughter subsides) Do you remember, Will, the challenge from ‘tipsy Bidford’? (Roars) Word had got round you were a ‘superior eminence in the profession of drinking’ so the Bidford Topers invited us all down for a contest…But when we arrived they were all plying their unholy trade at Evesham Fair. Only the Sippers were left. ‘We’ll take you Sippers on’ you said…and ended up comatose under the crabtree….(Roars) They call it ‘Will’s Canopy’ to this day…(More laughter)

SHAKESPEARE

Martin, I’d like to propose a toast to your wife. To Jane….

ALL

To Jane! (All drink)

MARTIN

(Mystified) Why did you propose a toast to her?

SHAKESPEARE

Because she has all the qualifications of a toast: she’s dry and brown!

(Roars)

THOMAS COMBE (with a whispy beard)

My brother John, God rest his soul, (crosses himself as the others in the tavern do) once gave you a challenge, Will. ‘Write my epitaph’ he said, ‘Here! Now! In The Bear! I want to know what you’ll say about me when I’ve gone!’(Laughter) A pottle pot if you can remember it!

SHAKESPEARE

(Instantly remembering it)

Ten in the hundred (mimes counting money) he lies here ingraved

‘Tis a hundred to ten his soul is not saved (Laughter)

If any man asks who lies in this tomb,

Oh ho! Quoth the Devil, ’tis my John-a-Combe! (Roars)

THOMAS (giving SHAKESPEARE a pottle pot)

Now do me, Will – for another pottle pot!

SHAKESPEARE

What can I possibly say about the tight-fisted bastard who’s enclosed all the common land in Stratford-upon-Avon?

(Laughter. SHAKESPEARE drinks and thinks…

Thin in beard and thick in purse,

Never man beloved worse.

He went to the grave with many a curse…

(Drinks and thinks) The Devil and he had both one nurse…..(ROARS)

(COMBE sets up another pottle pot – not sure if he’s pleased or not)

Don’t worry, Tom. (Kisses him on the head) I love you, even if no-one else does. I’ve left you my sword….

JANE

You made a wicked ballad extempore when you was a boy, Will. Bet you can’t remember it now!

SHAKESPEARE

Bet you I can! (Takes sip)

JANE

Bet you can’t sing it!

SHAKESPEARE

Bet you I can! (Takes sip)

JANE

Bet you can’t dance it!

SHAKESPEARE

Bet you I can!

(Drains off his pottle pot – to the cheers of the crowd. He then sings and dances…)

SHAKESPEARE

A Parliament member, a justice of peace,

At home a poor scarecrow in London an ass,

If Lucy is lousy as some volke miscall it

Sing Lousy Lucy whatever befall it…..

(CHORUS repeat and join in the dance…)

A Parliament member, a justice of peace,

At home a poor scarecrow in London an ass,

If Lucy is lousy as some volke miscall it

Sing Lousy Lucy whatever befall it…..

SHAKESPEARE

He thinks himself great, yet an ass in his state,

We allow by his ears but with asses to mate….

 CHORUS rpt

If Lucy is lousy as some volke miscall it

Sing Lousy Lucy whatever befall it…..

SHAKESPEARE

To the sessions he went and did sorely complain…..

(SHAKESPEARE suddenly stops, clutches his heart and falls to the ground. JANE screams)

THOMAS

Fetch Doctor Hall!

(EXIT ALL)

BEESTON

Dr. Hall took Will back to his surgery and examined him. There was no hope….

(Lights up on SHAKESPEARE lying on a couch. SUSANNA is kneeling by him, holding his hand and singing, unaccompanied)

When that I was and a little tiny boy,

With a heigh ho, the wind and the rain,

A foolish thing was but a toy

And the rain it raineth every day….

But when I came to man’s estate….

With a heigh (rpt.)

‘Gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gate….

And the rain (rpt.)

When I came, alas, to wive…..

With a heigh (rpt.)

By swaggering could I never strive….

And the rain (rpt.)

But when I came unto my beds….

With a heigh (rpt.)

With toss-pots still had drunken heads…

And the rain (rpt.)

A great while ago the world begun

With a heigh ho, the wind and the rain,

But that’s all one, our play is done

And we’ll strive to please you every day….

BEESTON

And so Will slipped quietly away. But to return to the questions I posed at the beginning this Interlude – ‘Did Will conquer death?’ Well, let’s see what his old rival Ben Jonson says about him. (Opening First Folio) Some people say Ben was at Will’s Birthday Bash, but everyone was too pissed to remember….

Ah, here it is….

(mumble, mumble…then reads)

Thou art alive still, while thy book doth live

And we have wits to read and praise to give…

He was not of an age but for all time….

I’ll go along with that. But did Will lead a religious life? As a man of Science, I’m happy to say the answer must be a resounding ‘no’…..

(BEESTON’S den erupts. Ghostly noises as windows flap, doors fly open, paintings fall from the walls and the bookshelves collapse. To a flash of lightning and screams, the corpse of SHAKESPEARE suddenly sits bolt up-right. Complete silence…then)

SHAKESPEARE

Hang on a moment, Apis Lapis. The show ain’t over till the fat poet sings…..As a Roman Catholic, I demand the Last Rites!

SUSANNA

(Overcome with joy and defiantly crossing herself) Father, the Last Rites shall be yours! (Cheers from the SPIRITS offstage)

BEESTON

The lunatics have taken over the asylum…..

(SUSANNA defiantly claps her hands. Triumphant liturgical trumpets as THE CHURCH OF ROME enters in procession through the audience, including, if the budget allows, the POPE, in Triple Crown, carried on his sedia gestatoria…..

……SHAKESPEARE, in clouds of incense, receives the communion and is anointed. He then lies back, peacefully, on his bed and dies. The SPIRITS, gathered round his bed-side, turn, in question, to BEESTON)

THE SPIRITS

Well?

BEESTON

(Unable to beat them, he joins them…)

Our poet did, in the nick of time, lead a religious life. And entered the Kingdom of Heaven.

For what sort of God would ever shut his doors on Our Cousin Will…

All turn to look at the body of SHAKESPEARE which clearly has a smile on its face. BEESTON, with some relief, bangs his staff on the floor.

And, with a quaint device, the production vanishes…

THE END

© Stewart Trotter August, 2012

CHARACTERS (in order of appearance)

William Beeston, Boy (voice off-stage), Older Shakespeare, Calvin, Princess Elizabeth, Angel, John Shakespeare, Young Shakespeare, Two Henchmen, Aristocrat (played by BEESTON), Anne Hathaway, Clients in the Bear Tavern, Christopher Marlowe, Handsome Young Man, Thomas Nashe, Robert Greene, Rev. Robert Crowley (Played by BEESTON), Midlands Gentleman, Mary, Second Countess of Southampton, Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton (known as ‘Harry Southampton), Emilia Bassano, Attendants 1 and 2, Romeo, Earl of Essex, Soldier, Spirits 1-4, John de Critz (played by BEESTON) Thomas Thorpe, John Davenant, Jennet Davenant, Launce, Susanna, Dr. John Hall, Prospero (played by SHAKESPEARE) Martin, Jane, Thomas Combe, Spirits as Clients in Bear Tavern, Spirits as The Church of Rome.

QUOTATIONS FROM SHAKESPEARE

As well as William Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Venus and Adonis, Lucrece and The Phoenix and the Turtle, OUR COUSIN WILL quotes from: The First Folio, Henry IV Parts One and Two, Love’s Labour’s Lost, All’s Well that Ends Well, The Taming of the Shrew, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest.

The lyrics to Lucy is Lousy are attributed, by tradition, to Shakespeare – as is much of the conversation – and verse-making – in the second Bear Tavern scene.

Shakespeare’s heavy drinking is also a local Warwickshire tradition.

PERFORMING RIGHTS

‘Our Cousin Will’ which, as well as being performed at Titchfield, has been professionally work-shopped in London by Jane Howell. Performing rights, world-wide are now available. Please leave a contact address below if your company would like to perform this play. S.T.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT……….

WILLOBIE HIS AVISA DECODED!!!

 

 

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Being the True Account of the Life of William Shakespeare, performed by Mr. William Beeston, Gent., and his Troop of Alchemical Spirits, at Posbrook Farm, Titchfield, Hampshire, in the Year of Our Lord, 1623.

TO READ EPISODE ONE , PLEASE CLICK:  HERE

TO READ EPISODE TWO, PLEASE CLICK: HERE

TO READ EPISODE THREE, PLEASE CLICK: HERE.

TO READ EPISODE FOUR, PLEASE CLICK: HERE.

TO READ EPISODE FIVE, PLEASE CLICK: HERE.

TO READ EPISODE SIX, PLEASE CLICK: HERE.

TO READ EPISODE SEVEN, PLEASE CLICK: HERE

TO READ EPISODE EIGHT, PLEASE CLICK: HERE.

TO READ MORE ABOUT SHAKESPEARE THE PLAY PLEASE CLICK: HERE.

BEESTON

Later that year, I was down here at Posbrook, reading those very Sonnets, in this very chair, when, late at night, there came a knock at the door…..

(BEESTON gets up from the table and exist. Off)

Look who the cat’s brought in! Come on in. Get yourself warm.

(SHAKESPEARE enters with BEESTON. He is wrapped in a cloak. BEESTON places SHAKESPEARE near the alchemical furnace)

BEESTON

We never thought we’d see you here again….

SHAKESPEARE

I never thought I’d be here.

BEESTON

Cheese? Cider? Molly’s a bit past it now….

SHAKESPEARE

No thanks, Will. I can’t stay long. (Stands and sees the volume of Sonnets on BEESTON’s table) I see you’re reading it….

 BEESTON

Reading it! Everyone’s reading it! Trixie the Cat’s reading it….

SHAKESPEARE

And Harry?

BEESTON

It’s his copy….

SHAKESPEARE

He used to mark the lines he liked best…..

(SHAKESPEARE snatches it up and looks through to see if there are any markings…There are none. He looks at BEESTON)

BEESTON

The spine cracked when I opened it….(A knife to SHAKESPEARE’S heart) Well, he’d read most of them before. And little James is taking up a lot of his time…(Another knife)

SHAKESPEARE

You think I’m a bastard, don’t you?

BEESTON

Yes.

SHAKESPEARE

And I should never have published them….

BEESTON

No. They are the most sublime things I’ve ever read. Sublime, but toxic….

SHAKESPEARE

He deserved it….

 BEESTON

Toxic for you. (SHAKESPEARE looks startled. BEESTON picks up the volume and looks through, quoting) ‘As a decrepit father takes delight’, ‘Like a deceived husband’, ‘Being your slave’….Will, you were none of these things. You were Will Shakespeare and he was Harry Southampton. Once you had something to give each other. Now you don’t…

SHAKESPEARE

(Rising to go) He took everything….

BEESTON

He gave you £1,000 pounds! (SHAKESPEARE looks shocked). Everyone knows, Will. Everyone. Without him, you’d never have written a single Sonnet….Look, I’m a fat old fart. But I do know this. Yesterday’s happiness is an old, worn out glove….(Both men smile) Get a new one, Will. Get a new one. Now I can’t give you a Sonnet to take with you on your journey – but I can give you a nice lump of cheese.

(BEESTON cuts a piece of cheese from a block. As he does so, SHAKESPEARE looks at BEESTON’s alchemical furnace)

SHAKESPEARE

Still wasting your time on this?

BEESTON

(Full of enthusiasm) I tell you, Will, it really works. (BEESTON leaves the cheese and rushes behind the screen to put on his robe) Let me summon up my spirits for you…

(BEESTON emerges in full regalia)

SHAKESPEARE

(Looking BEESTON up and down with a professional’s contempt) I’d rather leave it to my imagination, thanks…

BEESTON

(Taking off his robes and putting them on his table) Will. You really take the cheese. (Pause) So take the cheese!

(BEESTON gives SHAKESPEARE the lump of cheese)

SHAKESPEARE

(As he goes, he blesses BEESTON, making the sign of the cross) Bless you, Apis Lapis….

BEESTON

You’re still a Papist?

SHAKESPEARE

Of course.

BEESTON

Why?

SHAKESPEARE

Think what a monster I’d be I’d be if I wasn’t. (SHAKESPEARE exits)

BEESTON

(Picking up the Sonnets. Music)

Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds

Nor bends with the remover to remove…’

(BEESTON walks behind screen – then re-emerges without his alchemical regalia)

BEESTON

John Davenant (DAVENANT enters) was a wine-merchant who ran the Crown Tavern in Oxford.

He was a grave, sophisticated man who spoke several languages and who liked plays and playwrights. He had a beautiful, witty wife, called Jennet (enter JENNET) whom he loved (DAVENANT kisses JENNET) and who loved him. (JENNET kisses him back)

On his way to Stratford, Will used to stay at the Crown. His plays were often performed in Oxford and one night he went with John and his wife to see a comedy….

(SHAKESPEARE enters and sits between DAVENANT and JENNET. ACTOR playing LAUNCE enters with a dog)

 (During LAUNCE’S speech, JENNET laughs away and SHAKESPEARE is clearly pleased – but he begins to notice with alarm that DAVENANT isn’t laughing. He’s not even smiling)

LAUNCE (with dog)

I think that Crab my dog be the sourest natured dog that lives. My mother weeping, my father wailing, my sister crying, our maid howling, Trixie the cat wringing her hands and all our house in a great perplexity, yet did not this cruel-hearted cur shed one tear. He is a stone. A very pebble stone and has no more pity in him than a dog. A Jew would have wept to see our parting. (SHAKESPEARE looks nervously at DAVENANT – still no laughter) Why my grandma, having no eyes, look you wept herself blind at my parting. Nay, I’ll show you the manner of it…This shoe is my father. No this left shoe is my father, nay that cannot be so either. Yes it is, So it is. It hath the worser sole….( Exit LAUNCE. Applause. Lights up.)

DAVENANT

Jennet, could you leave us a moment….

(JENNET bobs to her husband and leaves the two men – an awkward pause)

SHAKESPEARE

John. Can I make a confession? (Silence) I didn’t write all that crap about Crab the dog. Tom Nashe did…. (More silence)….

He’s dead now….He’s the one who was anti-semitic, not me….I created Shylock, remember…

DAVENANT

Can I make a confession?

SHAKESPEARE

Of course.

DAVENANT

I thought it was funny. I just never laugh…..Never have done. Never will….(Silence) Trouble is, I like being with funny people. That’s why I run a tavern. I get them drunk so they don’t notice I’m not laughing…. (Silence) Can I make another confession? Jennet and I can’t have children…

SHAKESPEARE

Sorry to hear that…I had wondered…

DAVENANT

But the doctor says she could have children with someone else….Your son’s dead. Would you like another?

SHAKESPEARE

Of course I would but…(It gradually dawns on SHAKESPEARE what DAVENANT means)

DAVENANT

I love your plays. I’d love my son to have just a smidgeon of your talent. I’d call him ‘Will’ so everyone would know….

SHAKESPEARE

But what about Jennet?

DAVENANT

She’s in agreement. She adores you, Will. Like me.

SHAKESPEARE

But how would you feel about….

DAVENANT

(He pauses) Some loves run very deep… (Calling) Jennet….(JENNET appears, shyly) Jennet, it’s a done deal.

(JENNET approaches SHAKESPEARE and kisses him gently on the cheek. DAVENANT shakes him by the hand)

DAVENANT

Cousin Will….

(DAVENANT exits. JENNET kisses SHAKESPEARE more passionately then whispers something in SHAKESPEARE’S ear)

BEESTON

Jennet swore she would only sleep with Will and her husband…but she was a beautiful woman, desperate for a child, in a city full of handsome young undergraduates. Would she be content with occasional visits from Will?

(JENNET withdraws)

SHAKESPEARE

(Looking after her, then crossing to a couch and starting to undress)

When my love swears that she is made of truth

I do believe her, though I know she lies,

That she might think me untutor’d youth,

Unlearned in the world’s false subtlelties.

(Takes out a hand mirror and combs what’s left of his hair)

Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young

Although she knows my days are past the best,

Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue….

On both sides thus is simple truth suppress’d.

But wherefore says she not she is unjust?

And wherefore say not I that I am old?

(Puts his hand-mirror away)

Oh, love’s best habit is in seeming trust

And age, in love, love’s not to have years told…

(JENNET re-appears in a slip. SHAKESPEARE motions to her to join him on the couch)

Therefore I lie with her, and she with me

And in our faults, by lies, we flattered be…..

(The two kiss and start to make love. Slow exit to music, via trapdoor)

TO READ THE CONCLUDING EPISODE TEN, PLEASE CLICK: HERE.

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Being the True Account of the Life of William Shakespeare, performed by Mr. William Beeston, Gent., and his Troop of Alchemical Spirits, at Posbrook Farm, Titchfield, Hampshire, in the Year of Our Lord, 1623.

TO READ EPISODE ONE , PLEASE CLICK:  HERE

TO READ EPISODE TWO, PLEASE CLICK: HERE

TO READ EPISODE THREE, PLEASE CLICK: HERE.

TO READ EPISODE FOUR, PLEASE CLICK: HERE.

TO READ EPISODE FIVE, PLEASE CLICK: HERE.

TO READ EPISODE SIX, PLEASE CLICK: HERE.

TO READ EPISODE SEVEN, PLEASE CLICK: HERE

TO READ MORE ABOUT SHAKESPEARE THE PLAY PLEASE CLICK: HERE.

(BEESTON opens the First Folio. HARRY enters)

HARRY

(speaking out front, as if to SHAKESPEARE) I know thee not old man. Fall to thy prayers:

How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!

I have long dreamed of such a kind of man,

So surfeit-swell’d, so old and so prophane:

But, being awake, I do despise my dream.

Make less thy body (hence) and more thy grace,

Leave gourmandising: know the grave doth gape

For thee thrice wider than for other men.

Reply not to me with a fool-borne jest.

Presume not that I am the thing I was,

For heaven doth know (so shall the world perceive)

That I have turn’d away my former self,

So will I those that kept me company.

(HARRY exits)

BEESTON

Now Will had lost two sons and his unexpressed grief came flooding back. From a decade before….

(SHAKESPEARE enters, dressed in black again, holding his dead, eleven year old son, HAMNET, in his arms)

SHAKESPEARE

Howl, howl, howl, howl. O you are men of stones!

Had I your tongues and eyes I’d use them so

That heaven’s vault should crack! He’s gone for ever…

I know when one is dead and when one lives…

He’s dead as earth…..No, no, no life….

Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life

And thou no breath at all? Thou’lt come no more,

Never, never, never, never, never….

(SHAKESPEARE, if possible, hurls the body of his son into the air. It disappears. Otherwise he takes it off stage)

BEESTON

Grief hardened into sexual disgust…

SHAKESPEARE

Th’expence of spirit in a waste of shame

Is lust in action; and till action, lust

(Spirits – of indeterminate sex – enter and make violent love to one another, acting pout the words of the Sonnet)

Is perjur’d, murd’rous, bloody, full of blame,

Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;

Enjoy’d no sooner but despised straight;

Past reason hunted, and no sooner had,

Past reason hated as a swallowed bait,

On purpose laid to make the taker mad;

Mad in pursuit, and in possession so,

Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;

A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;

(The Spirits wail and vanish)

Before a joy proposed, behind a dream…..

He’s mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a whore’s oath or a boy’s love….

BEESTON

(Putting the painting of HARRY in drag onto the easel)

Disgust hardened into hatred. Will had promised Harry the certainty of immortality. Now he promises him the certainty of death…

SHAKESPEARE

(Staring at the painting of HARRY) O thou my (bitterly sarcastic) lovely boy who in thy power

Dost hold Time’s fickle glass his sickle hour,

Who hast by waning grown…..

(HARRY walks across the stage with his new-born baby son in his arms)

…..and therein show’st

Thy lover withering….

(SHAKESPEARE points to baby)

 …..as thy sweet self grow’st…..

(HARRY fondles the baby – then exits)

If nature, sovereign mistress over wrack,

As thou goest onwards still will pluck thee back,

She keeps thee to this purpose that her skill

May time disgrace, and wretched minutes kill.

(SHAKESPEARE takes the painting of HARRY in his hands) Yet fear her, o thou minion of her pleasure:

She may detain, but not still keep her treasure!

Her audit, though delayed, answered must be,

And her quietus is to render thee….

(SHAKESPEARE smashes the painting to pieces and exits…)

BEESTON

Hate hardened into revenge….

(THOMAS THORPE, a printer, enters and sits at a table, proof-reading and correcting.  Enter SHAKESPEARE with 154 separate sheets of paper which he plonks down)

SHAKESPEARE

Tom, I want you to publish these.

TOM

(Continuing to proof-read and correct) Are you selling by the pound?

SHAKESPEARE

One hundred and fifty four sonnets…

TOM

Not for me, Will.  Sonnets don’t sell. People don’t like them….

SHAKESPEARE

But they’re by ME!

TOM

(Tom becomes interested and stops correcting) And you’ll put your name to them?

SHAKESPEARE

I’ll be proud to….

TOM

(looking them over with a quick, practised eye) Some of these are a bit hot.  You’ll be changing the ‘he’s’ to ‘she’s’….?

SHAKESPEARE

No…

TOM

Narrows the market….

SHAKESPEARE

Not in Southwark it doesn’t…. I’ll pay for publication myself!

TOM

And what about libel?  I don’t want Southampton’s thugs smashing up my press…

SHAKESPEARE

I won’t dedicate the book to the Earl of Southampton….

TOM

Well that’s a relief….

SHAKESPEARE

No. I’ll dedicate it to Mr. Henry Wriothesley – remind him of his time in the Tower…

TOM

Are you insane?

SHAKESPEARE

Well, Mr. H. W. then….

TOM

(Sarcastically) Impenetrable code….

SHAKESPEARE

Look Tom, I want everyone to know it’s him….

TOM

How about Mr. W. H.….?

SHAKESPEARE

Would you publish if I agree?

TOM

(Looking at the Sonnets and realising they are masterpieces) I will, Will, I will…

SHAKESPEARE

(SHAKESPEARE rises to go. Then remembers) Oh there’s another poem I’d like to go at the end – A Lover’s Complaint…

(SHAKESPEARE hands TOM another manuscript)

TOM

(Suspicious) What’s this one about?

SHAKESPEARE

Relax, Tom. It’s about a woman….She is seduced by a vain, psychotic, lover who abandons her….

TOM

Spare me tragedy, Will.  We can’t give tragedy away….

SHAKESPEARE

But by the end she realises that her experience was wonderful… that, despite her suffering, she’d go through the whole affair again…

TOM

In other words, Will Shakespeare in drag…(Thinks about it – then sees a great marketing opportunity)  King James will LOVE it! He’ll buy the whole run!

(Smiles and shakes SHAKESPEARE’S hand. Both exit)

TO READ EPISODE NINE, PLEASE CLICK: HERE.

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