Note: It’s best to read Shakespeare in Titchfield – A Summary of the evidence first.
Edmund Spenser….
……..who, according to John Aubrey, was…
a little man [who] wore short hair, little band and cuffs
….had worked as a Civil Servant in Ireland from 1582…
….but in October, 1589, travelled back to England…..
….with the completed manuscript of his epic romance, The Fairie Queene….
Early the following year he read parts of his poem to Queen Elizabeth….
…..the real Fairy Queen…
…..who was so pleased with it she broke the habit of a life-time….
She ACTUALLY PAID Spenser a pension of £50 per annum…
The poet Samuel Woodford, who lived in Hampshire near Alton, told Aubrey that…
Mr. Spenser lived sometime in these parts, in this delicate sweet air; where he enjoyed his muse, and wrote [a] good part of his verses.
We KNOW FOR CERTAIN that Spenser spent the Summer of 1590 in Alton, Hampshire….
We also KNOW FOR CERTAIN that, fresh from Cambridge, Henry Wriothesley, the Third Earl of Southampton, spent the Summer of 1590 with his mother, Countess Mary, in Titchfield, Hampshire…
And The Shakespeare Code BELIEVES FOR CERTAIN that William Shakespeare was employed as ‘fac totum’ by the Southampton family in the Summer of 1590 at Titchfield, Hampshire….
ALTON AND TITCHFIELD ARE ONLY TWENTY FIVE MILES APART!!!
On 29th December, 1590, Spenser registered a volume of poems called The Tears of the Muses….
…..and published them the following year….
….dedicated to Lady Strange….
…..the wife of Ferdinando, Lord Strange…
…..who had given his patronage to Shakespeare’s touring company in the late 1580’s…
The Lady Strange’s maiden name was Alice Spencer…
She was one of the Spencers of Althorp….
….just like the late Princess Diana….
Edmund Spenser was related to this family…
Of which, I, meanest, boast myself to be…
….and refers in his Dedication to…
some private bands of affinity [blood ties] which it hath pleased your ladyship to acknowledge…’
In Teares of the Muses one of the poems is entitled Thalia…
….the Muse of Comedy….
She laments the fact that she is no longer ‘Queen’ of the stage…
…..’Sorrow’ now resides there, ‘ugly barbarism’, ‘brutish ignorance’ and ‘rudeness foul’ to ‘entertain….the vulgar’…
Unhurtful sport, delight and laughter deck’t in seemly sort
………have been….
…..banished
…along with
seasoned wit and goodly pleasance…
By which man’s life in his likest image
Was limned [painted] forth….
In these degraded times….
sweet wits…are now despised and made a laughing game….
What had happened?
●
The Puritans in England had begun a pamphlet war against the Anglican Church….
……especially against its Bishops…
And the Bishops had retaliated by employing ‘spin doctors’…..
……University ‘wits’ like Robert Greene and Thomas Nashe……
……to attack the Puritans…
….. and to use all the scurrilous and obscene means at their disposal.
Shakespeare, who had been touring the Midlands under Lord Strange’s patronage…
……in ‘naturalistic’ romances ….
……was suddenly redundant….
And he, the man, whom Nature self had mad
To mock herself, and Truth to imitate,
With kindly counter under mimic shade,
Our pleasant Willy, ah! is dead of late:
With whom all joy and jolly merriment
Is also deaded, and in dolour drent.
It takes no Sherlock Holmes to deduce that ‘pleasant Willy’ is William Shakespeare….
…..though some scholars have suggested John Lyly….
……who is no more a ‘Willy’ than Trixie the Cat….
Shakespeare himself, in Sonnet 136, says:
My name is Will….
And Thomas Heywood writes:
Mellifluous Shakespeare, whose enchanting quill
Commanded mirth or passion, was but Will…
‘Pleasant Willy’ was not literally ‘dead’…..
…he was simply ‘dead to the London stage’….
Spenser continues:
Instead thereof [instead of Shakespeare] scoffing scurrility,
And scornful folly with contempt is crept,
Rolling in rhymes of shameless ribaldry
Without regard, or due decorum kept,
Each idle wit at will presumes to make
And doth the learneds’ task upon him take…
‘The learneds’ task’ is the task set by the ‘learned’ Bishops of the Church of England to rubbish the Puritans
……..which unemployed, hungry, graduates were happy to take up…
Spenser continues:
But that same gentle spirit, from whose pen
Large streams of honey and sweet nectar flow….
The ‘gentle spirit’ is Shakespeare…..
Ben Jonson……
……..described Shakespeare as…..
….gentle….
Frances Meeres wrote about…
Mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare…
And Richard Barnfield wrote about his….
Honey-flowing vein….
Spenser, highlighting the humble beginnings of the University Wits themselves…
….both Greene and Nashe had to work their way through college…
….continues…
[Shakespeare] Scorning the boldness of such base-born men,
Which dare their follies forth so rashly throw;
Doth rather choose to sit in idle cell,
Than so himself to mockery to sell…
What is the ‘idle cell’ Shakespeare chooses to sit in?
It is the firm belief of The Shakespeare Code that in 1590 Shakespeare joined the Southampton family entourage…
As Thomas Kyd had joined Lord Strange’s….
And Christopher Marlowe, Bess of Hardwick’s…
On 6th October, 1590, the Third Earl of Southampton turned 17….
And Shakespeare wrote 17 Sonnets, at the request of his mother, to try to get him interested in girls…
Actor/Impresario William Beeston…..
…..whose actor father, Christopher, The Code believes, was brought up in Titchfield….
…..told Aubrey that Shakespeare….
in his younger years had been a schoolmaster in the country…
A ‘schoolhouse’ stands in Titchfield to this day…
It is small, but could not be described as a cell…
There are, however, remnants of a SECURE ROOM in the property…
The schoolhouse is on the road and could well have doubled, as many schools did, as a toll-house…
And as a toll-house, would have a lock-up room for valuables, drunks, lunatics and vagrants…
Shakespeare himself clinches the matter…
John Florio…..
…..the scholar, lexicographer and translator of Montaigne….
…..was part of the Southampton family entourage….
According to a tradition that goes back to Bishop Warburton in the eighteenth century…..
……Shakespeare lampooned Florio in the figure of the pedant, Holofernes…
In the play, Don Armado, the braggart Spaniard, asks him:
Do you not educate youth at the Charg-house on the top of the Mountaine….
[Original spelling]
‘Mountaine’, The Code believes, is a play on ‘Montaigne’…
And the ‘Charge-house’ is the secure room in the school….
Or, as Spenser would have it, the
idle cell
…….in which the young Shakespeare himself….
educated youth….
But why did Spenser mention Shakespeare at all to Lady Strange?
That question will be answered in The Shakespeare Code’s next mind-bending Post:
William Shakespeare’s Destruction of Thomas Kyd!!!
Note: If you are interested in this, you might like:
Shakespeare in Titchfield: A Summary of the Evidence
or Shakespeare was a Schoolmaster in the Country: Titchfield.
For an overview of Shakespeare’s life, see: Shakespeare, Love and Religion. The Grosvenor Chapel talks.
The Shakespeare Code 