A TRIXPOSÉ
(An Exposé by Trixie the Cat)
Brothers and Sisters of The Shakespeare Code,
Last Saturday, Your Cat was in Brighton……
……..an English, South Coast, seaside resort, renowned for its artistic young men……
She was accompanied by The Code’s Senior Fellow, Janet St.John-Austen……
………on TOP SECRET Code business…….
However, this did not stop us taking time off to hear a recital of swoony French music…….
……..given by the renowned virtuoso, chocolatier and Priest, Simon Hobbs….
……..on the organ of St. Paul’s Church, Brighton……
……..a church so high it sells Holy Water by the bottle…….
……..and, though Anglican, was blessed by His Holiness, Pope John Paul II…….
After the recital, we lunched with Fr. Hobbs at Brown’s, in the heady Lanes of Brighton……
One of Simon’s HIGHLY CULTIVATED guests suddenly dropped a bombshell…..
Trixie, have you read today’s article in The Guardian? [10th August]
It’s got a piece about Shakespeare’s Dark Lady.
It even decodes Willobie his Avisa……
Brothers and Sisters of The Code, it was as though the DELICIOUS sea bass I was eating….
……..had risen from my plate and slapped me across the face!
As you all well know, I stated, on the 4th August:
Tom and I and all the Code Agents are hot-footing it down to Dorset for field work on our AMAZING new project…….
WILLOBIE HIS AVISA DECODED!!!
Our findings will STAGGER the world of Shakespearean scholarship……
This was such an extraordinary coincidence that, for a moment, I had doubts…..
Could our dishy, new agent, the mysterious ‘Tom X’……
…… be a DOUBLE agent?
Could he have leaked Code secrets to The Guardian?
One glance at the article, which I kindled up, proved Tom to be entirely innocent……
(Sorry Tom! I’ll make it up to you….)
But the wretched Guardian Newspaper was………
ENTIRELY GUILTY!!!
They had printed two and a half thousand words of tosh…..
What’s new?
…….I hear Brothers and Sisters of The Code cry aloud.
Hold your judgement till Your Cat reveals all!
Saul Frampton, the writer of the article, makes the following astonishing claims:
1. That John Florio……..
….. published the Sonnets of Shakespeare and wrote A Lover’s Complaint as an attack on him…..
2. That Florio wrote Willobie his Avisa as an attack on Henry Wriothesley, the third Earl of Southampton…….
……..in 1594………
……. after leaving Southampton’s service…
3. That Avis Danyell, born 8th February, 1556, in Great Bedwyn, Wiltshire, was…….
(a) the model for Avisa in Willobie his Avisa and……
(b) the Dark Lady of the Sonnets……..
……..the dark-skinned, raven-browed, wiry-haired, coquettish mistress of both Shakespeare and Southampton.
This is Shakespeare ‘scholarship’ on a level with Titchfield’s own hilarious Ken Groves…….
See: TITCHFIELD KEN’S BEEN AT IT AGAIN!
…….who, parroting the ideas of the fine, true, local historian, George Watts……
……claims that Shakespeare’s Sonnets were published by William Harvey……..
……the third husband of Wriothesley’s mother……
……the Second Countess of Southampton!!!
(The idea was, in fact, first put forward in 1922 by Charlotte Stopes, mother of Marie.)
We know FOR CERTAIN that the Sonnets were NOT published by John Florio……
Nor were they published by William Harvey…..
THEY WERE PUBLISHED BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE HIMSELF!!!
The playwright and pamphleteer, Thomas Heywood…..
……writing in his An Apology for Actors in 1612…….
……clearly states that Shakespeare published his poems…..
……in his own name
…….so that he could……
…….do himself right
WHEN WILL PEOPLE ABANDON THE LUDICROUS IDEA THAT SHAKEPEARE’S SONNETS WERE STOLEN?
AND THEN PUBLISHED AGAINST HIS WISHES?
A Lover’s Complaint (which concludes the volume of The Sonnets) CANNOT be an attack on Shakespeare…….
‘The seducer’ of ‘the young woman’ in the poem is young, aristocratic and handsome…….
His browny locks did hang in crooked curls
And every light occasion of the wind
Upon his lips their silken parcels hurls…..
ONE GLANCE at the First Folio engraving……..
…….will show that ‘the seducer’ CANNOT be the balding, aging Shakespeare……
He is much more likely to be the follicly-rich, psychotic Henry Wriothesley……..
Frampton is WRONG when he states that Florio had broken with Southampton by 1594……..
…… and had then written an attack on him in Willobie his Avisa…..
Willobie was registered on 3 September, 1594……..
But Florio was still working for Southampton……….
……..ON 12th OCTOBER OF THE SAME YEAR!!!
He was travelling on the Southampton-Itchen ferry with Humphrey Drewell – Southampton’s barber – when they found Lawrence Grose, the sheriff of Southampton, on board with them.
Grose had helped raise the hue and cry about the Danvers brothers, Hooray-Henry friends of the Earl of Southampton……
…….who had killed a family enemy…….
…….and whom Southampton was sheltering at his notoriously louche Whitely Lodge in Titchfield….
[The great George Watts has described Whitely Lodge as the Southampton family’s ‘knocking-shop’. It is why the loose-living, DARK-SKINNED Rosaline in Love’s Labour’s Lost…………..
………is described as a……..
WHITELY wanton
………It was implied that the character was staying at the Southampton Lodge……]
Florio and Drewell……
threatened to cast him, the said Grose, overboard and said they would teach him to meddle with his fellows with many other threatening words….
Is it conceivable that Florio would have published an anonymous attack on his master, Southampton, five weeks earlier?
Four years later (in 1598) Florio even dedicated his Dictionary to Southampton (amongst others) stating that he had been in Southampton’s…..
…… pay and patronage for some years……
Frampton’s last claim, that Avis Danyell……
…………born 8th February, 1556, in Great Bedwyn, Wiltshire………
………..is the model for Avisa in Willobie his Avisa……..
……….and indeed the Dark Lady of the Sonnets herself……….
………..is perhaps the most risible.
The chaste, gorgeous, but penniless, Avisa, is meant to be 20 years old……
AVIS DANYELL, IN 1594, WOULD HAVE BEEN PUSHING FORTY!!!
It is HIGHLY UNLIKELY that she was the mistress of Shakespeare and Southampton……
SHE WAS EIGHT YEARS OLDER THAN SHAKESPEARE AND SEVENTEEN YEARS OLDER THAN SOUTHAMPTON!!!
And, as a native of Tudor Wiltshire, it is HIGHLY UNLIKELY that she had a……
……complexion…..
……that was….
…black [Sonnet 132]
Frampton is free to write what he likes…….
……… as the Agents of The Code are free to write what THEY like……
But The Code takes issue with Paul Laity, the Literary Editor of The Guardian…..
…….who not only published this article…….
…….but also commends it as a…….
……marvellous piece of detective work……
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/aug/10/search-shakespeares-dark-lady-florio
The Code takes EVEN MORE issue with The Guardian newspaper itself….
……..which has published a HUGE article about Shakespeare……
……..but has closed ALL discussion about it on its virtual pages…….
……..and has allowed NO DISCUSSION OF IT AT ALL on its newsprint pages……
This is precisely the sort of Fascism against which The Guardian has historically fought……..
In the old days………
……….when Code Chief Agent, Stewart Trotter, was a boy reporter……..
………writing anonymous reviews for the Times Literary Supplement……..
………heads would have rolled because of this…..
But not any more, it seems…..
LE GUARDIAN…
J’ACCUSE!!!
‘Bye, now……
The Shakespeare Code 