The Shakespeare Code

 (It’s best to read Part One first)

As promised in the last Post, Trixie the Cat…..

……who is working night and day on…

‘Queen Elizabeth, the Earl of Essex and the Ring’

…….has agreed to do a guest spot on ‘The Background to King Lear‘ Trilogy…….

She will now give a potted summary of the changes William Shakespeare made to the original King Leir story and play…..

Take it away, Trix…

•

Hi, Brothers and Sisters of The Shakespeare Code!!!

Fasten your seatbelts!

We’re in for a bumpy ride!

The Earl of Gloucester has two sons.

One, Edgar, is legitimate……

…..the other is a bastard, Edmund…..

Edmund wants Edgar’s inheritance, so persuades Gloucester that Edgar is plotting to kill him.

Edgar is proclaimed a traitor and has to flee into the countryside and disguise himself as mad Tom.

Poor Tom’s a-cold!

Lear has a faithful follower, Kent, whom he banishes, but who returns in disguise as the blunt old soldier, Caius.

If but as well I other accents borrow

That can my speech defuse, my good intent

May carry through itself to that full issue

For which I razed my likeness.

Goneril and Regan throw Lear out into the storm, accompanied by his Fool and Kent…..

Blow winds and crack your ….

Lear starts to go mad and the trio encounter Mad Tom.

An extraordinary scene ensues in which one character is pretending to be mad, one is genuinely going mad, one makes a living out of madness and one is in rustic disguise.

It doesn’t get more complicated than that!

Cornwall and Regan discover that Gloucester is aiding the old King……

…..so tear out his eyes as a punishment.

Out, vile jelly!

One of Cornwall’s servants, shocked by what is happening, kills his master.

Regan throws Gloucester out of his own house ordering him to….

…..smell his way to Dover.

The lustful widow Regan is now free to pursue Gloucester’s dishy bastard son, Edmund. Goneril fancies Edmund as well and ends up in deadly rivalry with her sister.

Goneril’s husband, the Duke of Albany, finally sees the truth about his wife.…

O Goneril, you are not worth the dust which the rude wind

Blows in your face….

But it is too late! Cordelia has set sail from France to save her father with the French army. Gloucester decides to kill himself…..

…. and his son, Edgar, still disguised as Mad Tom, leads his father to the edge of a cliff.

Except it isn’t the edge of a cliff. It’s flat ground.

Edgar wants his father to think that when he jumps, he has been saved by a miracle.

Lear, now completely mad, enters fantastically dressed in flowers….

…. but…

Every inch a king!

He and Gloucester meet and Lear rails against the ills of society.

Cordelia sedates Lear with herbs and, in one of the most touching scenes in all drama, father and daughter are reconciled.

BUT…

Cordelia’s forces are overcome in battle, Edgar kills his brother Edmund, Goneril poisons Regan then stabs herself, Cordelia is hanged in prison and Lear enters with Cordelia dead in his arms…..

He then dies himself.

And Kent isn’t feeling too well either….

‘Bye, now….

•

Thanks, Trix.

And now back to me.

•

What is going on? 

How could such a light and optimistic play turn into such a dark and strange one?

To try to understand, we must look at what had happened to Shakespeare….

……and what had happened to England……

…….after the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots.

First, the Spanish tried to conquer the English…..

The battle that ensued was nothing short of a holy war.

Queen Elizabeth……

…..wrote a special prayer to be read in churches twice every week…..

O let Thine enemies know that Thou hast received England, which they most of all for thy Gospel’s sake do malign, into thy protection. Set a wall about it, O Lord, and evermore mightily defend it. Let it be a comfort to the afflicted, a help to the oppressed, and a defence to Thy Church and people prosecuted abroad. O give good and prosperous success to all those that fight this battle against the enemies of thy Gospel.

And King Philip II of Spain….

…..according to Gregorio Leti…

……caused to be placed in all the vessels of the Armada, a quantity of relics of saints, of crosses, of crucifixes and images which he had blessed by the Nuncio on behalf of the Pope. Each vessel was like a church; mass was said every morning and vespers with music every evening.

The Protestant winds blew and the Spanish ships were scattered.

This was great if you were an English Protestant.

But what if you were an English Catholic?

How would it look to you?

How, in fact, would it look to William Shakespeare……..

…….whose parents were Catholic……..

……..whose patrons, the Southampton family, were Catholic……..

…..and who, according to Richard Davies, the Dean of Lichfield, writing in 1690…..

Died a Papist

Would you still believe in a Catholic God?

After the Armada victory, Elizabeth persecuted Catholics even more violently than before. Catholicism had to go underground……

……..Jesuit priests arrived with bogus identities and codenames……

…….and masses were held, often at night, in conditions of the utmost secrecy.

Shakespeare joined the Southampton household at this time as a ‘fac totum’……

See Shakespeare the Movie.

……and was commissioned by the Countess of Southampton……..

…….to write seventeen sonnets for her son’s seventeenth birthday. Their aim was to persuade her son…..

……the gay, wayward, Third Earl of Southampton…….

…….to get married and have an heir.

[See: Just how gay was the Third Earl of Southampton? This Post has received nearly 10,ooo Views]

The problem was the young man was more interested in Shakespeare than he was in fatherhood . And Shakespeare, finally, reciprocated. He wrote…..

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

….. to Southampton and the two began an affair that was to last into the reign of King James.

Shakespeare witnessed, at first hand, the agony Queen Elizabeth caused the Southamptons.

In 1591 she executed Swithin Wells……..

……an old family friend, outside Southampton House in London.

Her psychotic hangman, Richard Topcliffe, went on to hang, draw and quarter Shakespeare’s own cousin, the Jesuit mystic, Robert Southwell.

Topcliffe even wrote a letter to Elizabeth, describing in detail the tortures he intended for Southwell, for the Queen’s…..

….pleasure….

Southwell, he wrote, should be manacled at the wrists…

……his feet standing upon the ground and his hands but as high as he can reach against the wall. It will be as though he were dancing a trick or a figure at trenchmore.

Topcliffe also boasted how he would fondle Queen Elizabeth’s body, telling her that she had….

…..the softest belly of any womankind….

…..to which Elizabeth, allegedly, replied….

Be not these the arms, legs and body of King Henry?

And when Topcliffe affirmed they were…..

…..Elizabeth gave him a present of….

….a white linen hose wrought with white silk….

But Elizabeth’s sado-masochism was not confined to torturers….

She was also having an affair with Southampton’s friend, the impoverished Earl of Essex…….

……..a man literally half her age. Everything had turned into a gigantic game of who would dominate whom.

To excite the aging Queen, Essex writes….

….if my horse could run as fast as my thoughts do fly, I would as often make mine eyes rich in beholding the treasure of my love, as my desires do triumph when I see myself in a strong imagination to conquer your resisting will….

In 1596, though, real life intruded on Shakespeare…

His son, Hamnet, died, aged 11.

Shakespeare threw himself into work, gambling, drinking, sex and violence…….

He was even bound over by a London magistrate to keep the peace.

We know, from Sonnet 37, he turned the Earl of Southampton into his surrogate son….

As a decrepit father takes delight

To see his active child do deeds of youth,

So I, made lame by fortune’s dearest spite,

Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth…

Shakespeare, in fact, did everything except what he should have done…..

……mourn with his family back at Stratford-upon-Avon.

Hamnet had a twin sister, Judith, and an older sister, Susanna.

And, of course, a mother, Anne….

•

Queen Elizabeth became too much, even for Essex….

She refused to name her successor…….

….so Essex rebelled against her to secure the throne for King James VI of Scotland…….

…….Mary Queen of Scots’ son.

Initially Shakespeare was in favour of this rebellion as he believed it would lead to religious freedom for Catholics: but when Essex failed so spectacularly in his campaign against the rebels in Ireland, Shakespeare realised all was lost.

He tried to give Essex coded messages through his plays……

………particularly Julius Caesar…….

………that the rebellion was doomed…..

But Essex wasn’t listening. He went ahead.

And Elizabeth played the ultimate sado-masochistic game.

She chopped off his head.

Southampton was sentenced to death and sent to the Tower.

He was reprieved…..

…..but Shakespeare believed he would never see his lover again.

The rebels had performed Shakespeare’s Richard II on the eve of the rebellion……

….. and Elizabeth knew she was the target of the satire.

She said to the old scholar, William Lambarde…

I am Richard II. Know ye not that?

Shakespeare, who hated Elizabeth just as much as she hated him, considered suicide….

In Sonnet 66, he launches a scathing attack on the sort of society that Elizabeth…..

…..who at this stage walked with a stick…

…..had created….

He loathes its disparities in wealth, its frivolity, its Godlessness, its apostasy, its perversion, its censorship and its tyranny…

Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,

As to behold desert a beggar born,

And needy nothing trimmed in jollity,

And purest faith unhappily forsworn,

And gilded honor shamefully misplaced,

And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,

And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,

And strength by limping sway disablèd,

And art made tongue-tied by authority,

And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill,

And simple truth miscalled simplicity,

And captive good attending captain ill.

Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,

Save that to die, I leave my love alone…

Alone in the Tower of London…

But suddenly Elizabeth died……

…..James became king of England and everything turned round.

The Earl of Southampton…….

……. became a hero rather than a traitor……..

……. and was released from the Tower.

Everyone thought he would become James’s new favourite…

But James preferred much younger men.

Blocked from the centre of power, Southampton became bitterly homophobic.

His affair with Shakespeare had survived his marriage to Elizabeth Vernon……

……and the birth of two daughters.

But in 1605, Southampton finally had a son.

Shakespeare, the actor, had to go.

Shakespeare’s response was to send Southampton the infamous Sonnet 126…..

…….a poem of pure, distilled poison.

It begins positively by stating that Southampton has conquered Old Father Time….

…..and even holds Time’s hour glass and sickle in his own hands.

Southampton has become even more fortunate and  more good-looking with the passing of the years.

He has, miraculously….

……by waning grown…

But as Southampton’s baby son……

……whom Shakespeare’s calls his….

…sweet self….

…grows…..

……..Southampton neglects his lover, Shakespeare, leaving him….

…..withering…..

Shakespeare, though, warns Southampton…..

…….termed, ironically, his…

…lovely boy….

….that he is simply a pawn in the battle between Dame Nature and Father Time.

Nature may be keeping her….

…minion….

….her toyboy Southampton….

…..preternaturally young. But in the end she will have to pay back her debt to Father Time……

…..and she will do it by…..

….. rendering….

……Southampton.

‘Rendering’ here has two meanings…

It means giving Southampton over to the ravages of time….

….but it also means breaking down Southampton’s body….

….as you ‘render’ a lump of meat for it’s fat….

Sonnet 126

O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power

Dost hold Time’s fickle glass, his sickle, hour;

Who hast by waning grown, and therein show’st

Thy lover’s withering as thy sweet self grow’st;

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.

Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure;

She may detain, but not still keep, her treasure:

Her audit, though delay’d, answer’d must be,

And her quietus is to render thee.

The sonnet – which at twelve lines isn’t a sonnet at all – concludes with two pairs of empty brackets….

….the empty, gaping, grave that, Shakespeare hopes, awaits Southampton.

Shakespeare’s real son had died. Now he wants his surrogate son dead as well.

It was in this murderous, bloody frame of mind that Shakespeare wrote King Lear….

CLICK HERE FOR PART THREE!!!