The Shakespeare Code

THE SHAKESPEARE CODE PROUDLY PRESENTS A THREE-PART SERIES…

…. DEMONSTRATING THAT THE CHARACTER OF THE PRINCESS OF FRANCE IN ‘LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST ‘

…….IS BASED ON QUEEN ELIZABETH…..

THE SERIES WILL CULMINATE IN A TOTALLY NEW DECODING OF THE PRINCESS’S ‘MERCY GOES TO KILL’ SPEECH….

…AND WILL REVEAL IT COULD ONLY HAVE BEEN FULLY UNDERSTOOD BY ROMAN CATHOLICS!!!

PART ONE

The Shakespeare Code believes….

(A) ….that the original AUDIENCE of Love’s Labour’s Lost was composed largely of aristocrats…

(B) ….that the original CAST was composed largely of aristocrats….

(C) ….that the play was first performed in the grounds of Place House….

…..the stately home of Mary Browne, 2nd Countess of Southampton….

…..at Whitsun, 1592…

(E. A Honigmann…….

……the distinguished Shakespearean scholar, agrees with a 1592 date)

See Love’s Labour’s Lost Revisited: the Background

Love’s Labour’s Lost: The Original Cast

Love’s Labour’s Lost: Aristocratic Actors

Love’s Labour’s Lost: Penelope Rich plays the Princess

So, the odds are…..

…… ALMOST EVERYONE….

…. involved in the first Love’s Labour’s Lost production would have had personal contact with Queen Elizabeth…..

…..and ALMOST EVERYONE…….

….would have seen, at a glance, the similarities between the character of the Princess of France….

……and QUEEN ELIZABETH HERSELF!!!

The ‘1598’ Quarto Version of the play…..

……has the direction….

….Enter the Princesse of Fraunce, with three attending Ladies and three Lordes….

….but when the Princess first speaks, her speech-heading is…..

Queene…

She reverts to being a

Princ.

…..for the rest of the scene…..

But whenever she speaks again in the play, she is a Quee…

Jaquenetta the wench, Holofernes the pedant and King Ferdinand of Navarre all refer to her as a ‘queen’ in their speeches.

In the unconscious of both William Shakespeare and the compositor….

THE PRINCESS OF FRANCE WAS QUEEN ELIZABETH HERSELF!!!

THESE POSTS WILL TABULATE THE SIMILARITIES….

(1) THE PRINCESS OF FRANCE…….

…..with all her entourage, both female and male, arrives at the Court of the King of Navarre…..

….. on what is both a social visit and a diplomatic mission…..

About surrender up of Aquitaine

To her decrepit, sick and bedrid father….

The Princess is in a man’s world…..

The King has made a vow to study for three years with his male friends…..

….and has banned all women from his court….

But the Princess takes total charge of the situation:

Tell him, the daughter of the King of France,

On serious business, craving quick dispatch,

Importunes personal conference with his grace:

Haste, signify so much; while we attend,

Like humble-visage suitors his high will.

….and more than  holds her own in political debate with the King of Navarre…

You do the king my father too much wrong

And wrong the reputation of your name,

In so unseeming to confess receipt

Of that which hath so faithfully been paid.

QUEEN ELIZABETH…..

…like the Princess….

….. had arrived, with all her entourage, at Place House in Titchfield….

…..ONLY EIGHT MONTHS BEFORE THE PRODUCTION OF THE PLAY THERE!!!

Though spun as social events, Elizabeth’s visits were always highly political as well…..

The Southampton family would be forced to leave their house so the Privy Council could meet there…..

….and the house itself searched for signs of Roman Catholic…

…massing….

Top of the Titchfield agenda would have been the matter of the marriage of Mary Southampton’s son, Henry Wriothesely, 3rd Earl of Southampton.

Lord Burghley…….

……the Third Earl’s guardian…..

…..wanted Harry to marry his grand-daughter…..

….Lady Elizabeth de Vere….

….but at the time Harry wasn’t interested in girls.

Letters to Burghley show that both Countess Mary…..

….. and her father, Anthony Browne, First Viscount Montague….

…..were on Burghley’s side….

(They faced a gigantic £5,000 fine if Harry didn’t marry Elizabeth)

Mary had even commissioned Shakespeare to write 17 Sonnets for her son’s seventeenth birthday which lauded the joys of married love…..

Sonnets she could show to the Queen herself….

….to prove her loyalty….

(See: Trixie the Cat’s Guide to the Birthday Sonnets.)

This was a particularly important thing to do as Mary had been reported to the Privy Council for harbouring Catholic Priests in her London home.

(2) THE PRINCESS OF FRANCE…..

 ……is flattered by her sycophantic courtier, Boyet….

 

….who says to the Princess….

Be now as prodigal of all dear grace

As Nature was in making graces dear

When she did starve the general world beside

And prodigally gave them all to you.

The Princess claims not to like flattery……

Good Lord Boyet, my beauty, though but mean

Needs not the painted flourish of your praise….

But when the Forester says to her….

Hereby upon the edge of yonder coppice,

A stand where you may make the fairest shoot….

….she transforms it into a personal compliment….

….and replies….

I thank my beauty, I am fair that shoot

And thereupon thou speak’st the fairest shoot…

When the Forester sticks to his guns…..

Pardon me madam for I meant not so…..

……the Princess takes her revenge….

……by FORCING a compliment out of him!

Yes, madam, fair…..

The Princess is FURIOUS when Costard, the clown, tells her she is plumper than her ladies-in-waiting….

An your waist, mistress, was as slender as my wit,

One o’these maids’ girdles for your waist should be fit….

She is also AMBIVALENT about her ladies-in-waiting themselves…..

She enjoys their company and their wit….

Well bandied both, a set of wit well played….

But needs to call the shots….

Good wits will be jangling but gentles, agree

This war of wits were better used on Navarre and his bookemen…

Here ’tis abused…..

She needs to outshine and mock her ladies…..

God bless my ladies! Are they all in love,

That every one her own hath garnished

With such bedecking ornaments of praise?

And hates it when she learns Berowne has sent a love-letter to the dark-skinned Rosaline….

She tries to humiliate Rosaline by getting Boyet to read it aloud to the group….

(But the plan misfires as the letters have been swapped)

Elizabeth’s lady-in-waiting, Maria, is forced to wear plain white…..

…. so that the Princess will dazzle all the more in her colours…

QUEEN ELIZABETH…….

……like the Princess…….

……CLAIMED to dislike flattery…..

…..and once walked out of a fulsome masque, stating……

If I had known that so much was to be said about me I would not have been here……

But all her life she’d had strings of favourites…..

….. and courtiers whose full-time job it was to praise her beauty.

At the time of Love’s Labour’s Lost she was almost sixty….

…….but she had a lover half her age…..

…….her Master of Horse, Robert Devereux, Second Earl of Essex……

…….who, The Code argues, was at the first performance of Love’s Labour’s Lost at Titchfield……

…….watching his sister Penelope Rich…….

…….play the rôle of the Princess….

(See: Penelope Rich plays the Princess of France.)

Six months earlier Essex had been at the siege of Rouen….….

….fighting alongside the ‘real’ King of Navarre, Henri……..

To celebrate Elizabeth’s Accession Date (17th November) Essex challenged the Mayor of Rouen to a joust to decide which of their mistresses was the more beautiful…..

The Mayor had bluntly replied:

……as to the beauty of their mistresses it was scarcely worth his while to put himself to much trouble about that…..

But Essex, writing from Dieppe, flattered the aging Queen…..

…..who was very much his meal-ticket.

He described her…

….perfections…..

…and declared that when he returned from war….

…..the two windows of your privy chamber shall be the poles of my sphere, where, as long as your majesty will please to have me, I am fixed and unmovable. When your Majesty thinks that heaven too good for me, I will not fall like a star, but be consumed like a vapour by the same sun that drew me up to such a height…..

Elizabeth’s godson, Sir John Harington…….

…..observed…..

No-one who waited in Queen Elizabeth’s court, and observed anything, but could tell that it pleased her much to be thought and told that she looked young……

Queen Elizabeth had seven Ladies of the Bedchamber, six maids of honour, and four chamberers…..

…..all SEVENTEEN of whom would appear with her when she appeared in public.

She enjoyed this young female companionship in what was basically the man’s world of the court…..

(All older intelligent, attractive women – like the Countess of Pembroke…..

….or Leicester’s wife, Lettice Knollys….

….had been banished from it.)

But Elizabeth wanted to be the centre of attention……

….and she wanted to be in control…..

Harington remarked:

I could relate many pleasant tales of her Majesty outwitting the wittiest ones; for few knew how to aim their shaft against her cunning.

Like the Princess of France, she often dressed her ladies-in-waiting in white (and black) so she would stand out the more.

Once Lady Howard, who was much smaller than the Queen, had a colourful border sewn onto her dress…..

…so Elizabeth seized the dress and wore it……

…..claiming it was too SHORT for her….

…..and too GRAND for Lady Howard.

She hated it if any of her courtiers made love to her ladies-in-waiting…..

….WITHOUT HER KNOWLEGE AND CONSENT…

…..and often abused the women, both verbally and physically.

She would scream at them and hit them…..

….and on one occasion actually broke a lady-in-waiting’s finger…..

3. THE PRINCESS OF FRANCE……

…. constantly belittles men.

She mocks their attempts at wit…

Such short-lived wits do wither as they grow…..

…..and mocks their sex drive…..

…..which, she believes, completely overpowers their reason….

Why, will [the penis] shall break it [the vow of chastity]; will and nothing else.

A  man with an erect penis is an object of mockery to the Princess….

She talks about the King of Navarre’s…..

….high will…..

….and accuses him of having a…….

….mounting mind……

Boyet even entertains the Princess with a coded description of the erection the King experiences when he first claps eyes on her….

[Note: For the Elizabethans, all the features of ‘the face’ could apply equally to the genital area. So

…eye(s)..

…could imply the testicles/penis….]

Why, all his behaviours did make their retire

To the court of his eye [penis], peeping thorough desire:

His heart, like an agate, with your print impress’d,

Proud [erect] with his form, in his eye pride [sexual desire] express’d:

As the Princess predicts, their craving for sex causes the men to forswear their vows of chastity….

….and when the Princess and her ladies discover that the men plan to woo them disguised as Russians…..

…..the ladies mask themselves and change favours…

…..SIMPLY TO HUMILIATE THEM!!!

The Princess says:

There’s no such sport as sport by sport o’erthrown,

To make theirs ours and ours none but our own:

So shall we stay, mocking intended game,

And they, well mock’d, depart away with shame.

At one point Berowne is worried that the Princess intends to castrate him.

He says to her:

Our states are forfeit. Seek not to undo us….

‘Undoing’ was a technical term in hunting……..

….when the ‘Chief Man’ cut off the……

…..coddes……

…..the testicles of the slaughtered deer…….

…..a delicacy at table.

QUEEN ELIZABETH…..

…like the Princess of France….

……constantly humiliated men and undermined their masculinity…..

In the early days of her reign, her relationship with her lover, Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester……

…….had been a struggle for mastery…..

She had famously said to him…..

…..I will have here but one mistress and no master….

…..and in 1586, when Leicester was made Governor General of the Netherlands without Elizabeth’s permission, she had said to her Council:

…..I will let the upstart know how easily the hand which has exalted him can beat him down to the dust.

Leicester had died in 1588…..

…..but Elizabeth had perpetuated this sado-masochistic form of love-affair with Essex…..

…..who once wrote to her….

Madam, The delights of this place cannot make me unmindful of one in whose sweet company I have joyed as much as the happiest man doth in his highest contentment; and 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 seem to myself in a strong imagination to conquer your resisting will.

For a long time Elizabeth had refused to grant Essex’s greatest desire……

…….to win fame and glory by fighting the Catholic League in Europe….

He had to kneel in front of her for TWO HOURS before she would agree…..

…..and then she emasculated the highly sexed Essex….

….(whose wife and mistress had both produced baby boys for him in 1591)….

 ….by insisting that he kept well away from any fighting.

And Elizabeth went one further than the Princes of France.

As ‘Chief Man’ of the hunt, she would regularly….

……..CASTRATE THE DEER SHE HAD SHOT!!!

And here she is, knife ALMOST in hand……

 

•••

TO READ PART TWO…..

…….WHICH DEALS WITH THE QUEEN’S CALVINISM AND HER DEER HUNTING……

CLICK: HERE!