The Shakespeare Code

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  (It’s best to read Parts ONE, TWO and THREE first)

THE HISTORY BOOKS HAVE GOT IT WRONG!!!

Actresses were performing in London much earlier than people realise….

In 1611, Thomas Coryat…..

…… published his Coryat’s Crudities……

……his account of his travels walking through Europe.

His description of Venice is fascinating:

I was at one of their playhouses where I saw a Comedy acted. The house is very beggarly and base in comparison of our stately Playhouses in England: neither can their actors compare with us for apparel, shows and music. Here I observed certain things that I never saw before. For I saw women act, a thing that I never saw before, though I have heard that it hath been sometimes used in London, and they performed it with as good a grace, action, gesture and whatsoever convenient for a player, as ever I saw any masculine Actor.

So – in Shakespeare’s lifetime – actresses could be found in London as well as Europe.

Also, in the reign of King James, the position of women at the Court was very different from the time of Queen Elizabeth…..

Elizabeth could not bear competition from pretty, witty women.

She wanted to be the centre of interest for her courtiers – so banned any rivals.

These banished women…….

…..like Mary Browne, the Countess of Southampton……

 

…….at Titchfield…..

….and Mary Herbert, the Countess of Pembroke….

…..at Wilton…..

 ……formed their own rival courts on their country estates……

The Countess of Pembroke was Protestant and the Countess of Southampton Roman Catholic…….

……but they were united in one thing….

 THEIR HATRED OF QUEEN ELIZABETH!!!

….Mary Herbert because of the Queen’s political castration of her brother, Sir Philip Sidney…

……and her contempt for his Code of Chivalry….

….and Mary Browne because of the Queen’s treatment of her fellow Catholics and friends…

….one of whom, Swithun Wells….

 

…..now Saint Swithun…..

…..Elizabeth had hanged outside Mary Browne’s London home in December, 1591….

…..only months before Love’s Labour’s Lost was performed.

Wilton was only thirty miles away from Titchfield – and the women shared ‘human resources’….

Poets like William Shakespeare…..

 

…..and scholars like John Florio….

It is The Code’s belief that the two Mary’s mounted productions – both independently and jointly – which could rival the entertainments Queen Elizabeth staged at Court…..

…..entertainments which were often coded satires on Elizabeth’s character, actions and thought.

Mary Browne was a widow and so independent….

…..and though Mary Herbert’s acting company……

Pembroke’s Men

…..functioned under the name of her husband, Henry Herbert, Second Earl of Pembroke….

…..Pembroke himself was too ill in the 1590’s to take any active role…

So Mary Herbert was, in practice, independent as well.

We also know from the will of Simon Jewel, an actor, that the Countess of Pembroke acted as a hands-on, financial patron.

On 19th August, 1592, Jewel signed his Last Will and Testament which stated :

…..my share of such money as shall be given by my lady Pembroke or her means I will shall be distributed and paid towards my burial and other charges by Mr. Scott and the said Mr. Smithe.

William Shakespeare dedicated his Venus and Adonis and Lucrece to Henry Wriothesley, Third Earl of Southampton: but when these narrative poems were first published (1593 and 1594) Southampton had not come of age…..

….and his mother, notoriously, kept a tight hold on the family purse-strings…..

So it was Mary Browne who acted as Shakespeare’s financial patron…..

……who commissioned Shakespeare’s first seventeen sonnets…..

(See: The Birthday Sonnets.)

……and, indeed, Love’s Labour’s Lost itself.

But when King James came to the throne…….

…..his wife, Anne of Denmark….

….wanted to CELEBRATE the talent and beauty of aristocratic women…..

 ….especially, it was rumoured, those who were Roman Catholic….

….or had Papist sympathies. 

So she invited them to act in Court Masques…..

…..and commissioned Ben Jonson…….

…..to produce The Masque of Blackness…….

…..with elaborate designs by Inigo Jones….

 ……in which women……

……the Queen included……

……played and danced the parts of dark-skinned nymphs.

The masque was performed on Twelfth Night in 1605 and the cast included Queen Anne herself, the Countess of Bedford, Lady Herbert, the Countess of Derby, the Countess of Suffolk, Lady Bevill, Lady Effingham, Lady Elizabeth Howard, Lady Susan Vere, Lady Mary Wroth, Lady Walsingham…..

……and, most important for us, the beautiful Lady Penelope Rich……

…… who played the part of Ocyte….

[Penelope had almost been converted to Roman Catholicism in 1594 by the Jesuit Priest John Gerard – but had been persuaded not to go over to Rome by her lover, Charles Blount…..

….. by then 8th Baron Mountjoy….

……who in youth had himself been ‘addicted to’ the Old Faith]

Even before the reign of James, women acted in private…..

…..and sometimes not so private……

…..entertainments. 

As we have seen, the servant of Thomas Wriothesley, First Earl of Southampton….

….wrote to his master in 1538……

…..in the reign of King Henry VIII….

…… that Wriothesley’s wife, Countess Jane….

….also handleth the country gentlemen, the farmers and their wives to your great worship and every night is as merry as can be with Christmas plays and masques with Anthony Gedge and other of your servants…

Also, when Queen Elizabeth visited Mary Browne’s father, Anthony Browne, Lord Montague….

 

……at Cowdray in 1591 on one of her progresses, Lady Montague…..

…..as it were weeping in her [Elizabeth’s] bosom…

……exclaimed, in a well-scripted response…….

…Oh happy time! Oh joyful day!

The next day, when Elizabeth was about to shoot rounded-up deer at point blank range, a….

 ….nymph…

…..handed her a crossbow and sang….

….a sweet song…..

Even more extraordinary was the Elvetham Progress later in the year given by Edward Seymour, First Lord Hertford….

Her Majesty was no sooner ready, and at her gallery window looking into the garden, but there began three cornets to play certain fantastic dances, at the measure whereof the Fairy Queen came into the garden, dancing with her maids about her. She brought with her a garland, made in the form of an imperial crown; [which] within the sight of Her Majesty she fixed upon a silver staff, and, sticking the staff into the ground, spake as followeth:

I that abide in places underground,

Aureola, the Queen of Fairy land,

That every night in rings of painted flowers

Turn round and carol out Elisa’s name:

Hearing that Nereus and the Sylvan Gods

Have lately welcomed your Imperial grace,

Opened the earth with this enchanting wand,

To do my duty to your Majesty,

And humbly to salute you with this chaplet,

Given me by Auberon the Fairy King.

Bright shining Phoebe [Elizabeth] that in human shape

Hid’st heaven’s perfection, vouchsafe t’accept it:

And I Aureola, beloved in heaven,

(For amorous stars fall nightly in my lap)

Will cause the heavens enlarge thy golden days

And cut them short that envy at thy praise….

Clearly we are only a breath away from A Midsummer Night’s Dream……

…..indeed, this section of the Progress Entertainment could well have been written by Shakespeare himself.

 If Aureola could be played by a woman in private performance, why not Titania?

And if Titania, why not the women in Love’s Labour’s Lost?

IT IS THE SHAKESPERARE CODE’S BELIEF THAT….

…..LADY PENELOPE RICH…..

….PLAYED THE PRINCESS OF FRANCE…

…IN THE ORIGINAL PRODUCTION!!!

As we have seen in PART TWO of this series, Shakespeare, like many other writers, played on Penelope’s married name……

…..Rich…..

…in his Sonnets.

The Shakespeare Code is of the belief that……

…..SHAKESPEARE PLAYED ON PENELOPE RICH’S NAME IN LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST AS WELL!!!

The Princess of France opens the last scene of the play with the statement….

Sweet hearts we shall be rich ere we depart…

….and the reason she shall be rich before she leaves Navarre is…….

 ……BECAUSE SHE IS BEING PLAYED BY LADY PENELOPE!!!

The word ‘Rich’ – in all its forms – is used another SEVEN TIMES in the final scene of the play.

 MOTH

All hail, the richest beauties on the earth!–

BOYET

Beauties no richer than rich taffeta.

(1, 2 and 3)

BEROWNE

We number nothing that we spend for you:

Our duty is so rich, so infinite,

That we may do it still without accompt.

(4)

BEROWNE

……….. your capacity

Is of that nature that to your huge store

Wise things seem foolish and rich things but poor.

ROSALINE

This proves you wise and rich, for in my eye,–

(5 and 6)

PRINCESS

Prepare, I say. I thank you, gracious lords,

For all your fair endeavors; and entreat,

Out of a new-sad soul, that you vouchsafe

In your rich wisdom to excuse or hide

The liberal opposition of our spirits,

If over-boldly we have borne ourselves

(7)

The King of Navarre – played by the Earl of Southampton……

(See:PART THREE)

– refers to Penelope Rich’s stunning red hair, which looks like the sun in the sky……

And beauty’s crest becomes the heavens well….

 And Berowne makes a reference to Penelope’s hair when he says that…..

….red, that would avoid dispraise,

Paints itself black, to imitate her [Rosaline’s] brow…..

Queen Elizabeth also had red hair…..

……and the character of the Princess of France in the play was….

……VERY SIMILAR INDEED….

 …….to the character of Queen Elizabeth…..

PLEASE READ: The Princess of France IS Queen Elizabeth!

 P.S.

Those who wish to read…..

THE MAKING OF A KING

 …..Stewart Trotter’s thrilling adaptation of The Famous Victories of Henry V and Shakespeare and Nashe’s Henry IV Parts One and Two and Henry V…

PLEASE CLICK: HERE!