The Shakespeare Code

Brothers and Sisters of The Shakespeare Code….

Our Chief Agent, Stewart Trotter…

…..recently played King Lear for….

The Titchfield Shakespeare Festival Theatre.

Your Cat is in the process of interviewing him…….

…… about what it’s like to play the King………

(For Part One of the Interview, click: HERE and for Part Two, click: HERE)

Your Cat asked him the question:

 ‘Where does the evil in ‘King Lear’ come from?’

He paused for what seemed an age…..

…. then replied….

Let’s go for a walk, Trixie the Cat!

And so we did: Stewart grabbed a couple of books from the floor of The Code…….

…..why do men ALWAYS leave books on the floor?….

…..and we walked into heady Maida Vale….

…..the highly-desirable……..

…..leaf-strewn……

…..celebrity-rich…..

……district of West London.

STEWART

You’ve been writing well,  Trixie……

…..and The Code Rehabilitation Programme is certainly working for you….

Let me take you as a reward to your favourite caff!

Your Cat……

……taking her lead from Her Majesty the Queen…..

……PURRED with pleasure…..

She knew EXACTLY where Stewart meant….

……the world famous…….

……canal-straddling…..

…….haunt of the international Bohemian set…..

…..the NOTORIOUS Café Laville…..

Your Cat has said that Maida Vale is celebrity-rich….

…..but that day The Vale outdid itself!!!

Guess who we saw walking in the street…..

…..as though she was just like everyone else?

Shakespeare Code Fellow….

….and SUPERSTAR IN HER OWN RIGHT…

MAGGIE OLLERENSHAW, F.S.C.

 …..celebrated……

…..as the world well knows……

…..for her wonderful portrayal of Wavy Mavis….

……in the CLASSIC B.B.C. T.V.  sitcom…..

……OPEN ALL HOURS….

…..a NEW PILOT of which was screened last Christmas……

Modest as ever, Maggie asked Stewart how King Lear went in Titchfield….

…….THEN BROKE THE SENSATIONAL NEWS…..

MAGGIE

Open All Hours is to be REVIVED…….

FOR A WHOLE NEW SERIES!!!

Please be my guests at the recording…..

 Before we could reply a B.B.C. stretch-limo screeched to a halt by Maggie’s side…..

…..and a leather-clad chauffeur in shades leapt out…..

…..and opened one of its many doors…..

CHAUFFEUR

Sorry to trouble you, Miss Ollerenshaw…..

The BBC’s gagging for an in-depth interview….

MAGGIE (pointing to Your Cat)

But I’ve already given an in-depth interview to Trixie…….

It’s been read the world over…..

CHAUFFEUR

That’s the problem…..

The Beeb says everyone knows it by heart…..

Everyone, that is, who lives in the……..

……. ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY TWO COUNTRIES…

……. which make up The Shakespeare Code!!!

STEWART

Monsieur le Chauffeur, you exaggerate..

……It’s only one hundred and ninety one…..

CHAUFFEUR

Haven’t you heard?

…..Benin has just joined! 

The Beeb are besides themselves with jealousy…

 TRIXIE

Benin? Where the bronzes come from?

CHAUFFEUR

No less than that, Trixie the Cat.

At this point Maggie stooped to give Your Cat a loving, sisterly kiss…

MAGGIE

You are a victim of your own success, dear Trixie……

But I’ll NEVER give another interview as profound as the one I gave to you…..

You delved to the bottom of my heart…..

And with that Maggie was off……

…..whisked away by the leathered chauffeur……

….. like the great star that she is….

[If you would like to read Your Cat’s LIFE-CHANGING interview with Maggie, then click: HERE! ]

Stewart and I continued on our way to Café Laville….

…..where we were IMMEDIATELY spotted…….

….. and led to prestigious canal-side seats…….

…..by the lovely Marco…….

……the new waiter friend of Tom ‘X”s…..

We both settled down to complementary froth-coffs as Your Cat got out her pad……

…..and continued her Interview with The Code’s Chief Agent…..

TRIXIE

So, Stewart, what IS the source of the evil in King Lear?

STEWART

This is the question Lear himself asks in the play…….

…… when sheltering in Gloucester’s outhouse in the storm…..

Then let them anatomise Regan, see what breeds about her heart. Is there any cause in nature that make these hard hearts?

But there is no reply to his question……..

As I said in my Grosvenor Chapel talk…..

(SEE: The Background to ‘King Lear’ )

…..King Lear is a play that asks QUESTIONS rather than gives ANSWERS….

In the last scene alone…….

…… the characters onstage ask a total of THIRTY QUESTIONS….

TRIXIE

Does that mean we’ll never know where the evil comes from?

STEWART

Well, I think I know…..

…..but I’d like to approach it bit by bit…….

Don’t want to shock you, Trixie!

TRIXIE

You CANNOT shock Your Cat…..

Please proceed!

STEWART

I argued in my talk  that Shakespeare’s portraits of Goneril and Regan……

 …..are a Roman Catholic’s attack on Protestant Queen Elizabeth….

Shakespeare is satirising Elizabeth’s lust for power….

….her dominance over men….

….her elevation of minions….

….her rampant sexuality…..

….and her delight in cruelty and torture.

Elizabeth had died a few years before the play was written….

…..and so could be attacked with impunity…..

And remember, King James VI and I……

…..who had come to the English throne in her place…..

…..wouldn’t have minded a bit…..

Elizabeth had chopped off his mother’s head…..

During rehearsals at Titchfield, I found another coded reference to the dead Queen…..

Lear refers to his…..

…..pelican daughters….

The mother pelican was thought to peck at her own breast to feed her young with her own blood…..

This had been an old symbol of Jesus Christ…….

….. who had given his blood for his church…..

Dante, for example, calls Christ…..

Nostro pelicano…

Elizabeth, as well as appropriating the Catholic Church in England for herself……

…..had also appropriated the symbol of the pelican.

Nicholas Hilliard painted a miniature of her……

…..with a pelican pendant round her neck…….

…..and she also possessed a pelican cup…..

Elizabeth was implying she was giving her own life-blood…..

……both to the Church of England….

……and to her subjects.

But in the satire of the play, Shakespeare reverses the image…..

Goneril and Regan are the pelican DAUGHTERS…..

…..who drink the blood of their parent….

So, by association, Elizabeth becomes a pelican daughter as well….

……who drank dry the symbolic blood of the Catholic Church…..

…..and the literal blood of the English Catholic martyrs….

Edward Arden…….

…….Shakespeare’s own relative on his mother’s side………

…….had been hanged drawn and quartered in 1583…..

…….and St. Swithin Wells…….

…..an intimate friend of Shakespeare’s patrons, the Southampton family….

….had been hanged near Southampton House in London in 1591…..

But satire is primarily a ‘cool’, intellectual medium……

….and this play is ‘hot’ and passionate…..

There ARE satirical elements in it……

But the play is not primarily a satire….

TRIXIE

So where does this heat in the play come from?

Stewart paused for a moment, removed some of the coff-froth from his Lear-beard and said….

STEWART

Well, Shakespeare does toy with the idea of planetary influences....

TRIXIE

You mean astrology?

STEWART

Yes, but he called it….

…..astronomy…..

He never used the word….

…..astrology…..

Science and Art had not yet split asunder…..

He examines the idea……

……that the planets govern our actions and emotions….

…… in other plays like The Winter’s Tale…….

……..where Hermione…….

…..the victim of her husband Leontes’ mad, jealous fits…..

…..says, in way of explanation….

There’s some ill planet reigns….

And remember, Trixie, the Elizabethans and Jacobeans were much more comfortable with Astrology than we are…..

Queen Elizabeth had consulted her magus, John Dee…..

…..on the most auspicious date for her Coronation…..

And even the historian, William Camden……

…….speculated that Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester……

……. and Queen Elizabeth……..

…….. had such an intimate relationship because their birth dates were the same.

In Lear the Bastard, Edmund…..

…..denigrates astrology……

At this point Stewart started flicking through the copy of ‘Lear’ that he had brought with him….

STEWART

Ah! Here it is….

Edmund says….

This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we a re sick in fortune, often the surfeits of our own behaviour, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon and stars; as if we were villains on necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves thieves and treachers by spherical predominance….

….etc., etc,….

….but he then goes on to say……

My father compounded with my mother under the dragon’s tail. and my nativity was in Ursa Major; so that it follows that I am rough and lecherous. Fut! I should have been that I am had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardising…

…..So, despite himself, Edmund VALIDATES ASTROLOGY!!!

Astrology certainly provides a good REASON for the fact that Cordelia…….

….. can be so different from her older sisters….

As Kent says…..

It is the stars, the stars above us govern our conditions,

Else one self mate and make could not beget,

Such different issues…

Astrology also explains why such catastrophe should hit two seperate households at once….

But my gut feeling is that for Shakespeare astrology was a bit of a theatrical device…….

He used it to explain away implausible events and behaviour….

Stewart then began to leaf through his well-thumbed copy of Shakespeare’s Sonnets….

STEWART

It’s true that in Sonnet 15 Shakespeare talks about…..

…..the stars….

…commenting…

…..on life with their ….

….secret influence….

But in Sonnet 14 he states that he never consults them…..

……all he needs to consult are two eyes of the Earl of Southampton……

……to know that truth and beauty will always be bound together…..

…..AS LONG AS SOUTHAMPTON PRODUCES A SON!!!!

And in Sonnet 107 he points out that astrologers got the fate of the Earl of Southampton…….

…… COMPLETELY WRONG!!!…..

They prophesied that he would die in the Tower of London…..

…..after he had been imprisoned for rebelling against Queen Elizabeth…..

….and….

….supposed…..

….that he was…

…..forfeit to a confined doom….

 

But as Brothers and Sisters of The Code well know……

……Harry Southampton was freed from imprisonment when James came to the throne…..

……and became the hero of the hour because he had fought for the succession of King James…

As a consequence…..

…..the sad augurs now mock their own presage…..

My own belief is that Shakespeare ultimately sides with Cassius when says in Julius Caesar…..

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars

But in ourselves….

TRIXIE

So where DOES the evil in the play come from?

Out with it, Boss!!! Your Cat can take it….

Stewart paused for a moment…….

….then looked Your Cat straight in the eye….

STEWART

From the heart of William Shakespeare himself….

(This Interview will continue as soon as we’ve managed to revive Trixie the Cat)

TRIXIE HAS NOW RECOVERED!!!

Click the above for the Final Part of Stewart’s interview: ‘Goneril is Pregnant.’