The Shakespeare Code

…by Trixie the Cat!!!

 

Brothers and Sisters of The Shakespeare Code….

The last two Sonnets in William Shakespeare’s 1609 Sonnet Sequence…..

…….Sonnets 153 and 154…….

…….have long puzzled scholars….

Here they are…..

SONNET 153

Cupid laid by his brand, and fell asleep:

A maid of Dian’s this advantage found,

And his love-kindling fire did quickly steep

In a cold valley-fountain of that ground;

[Cupid put down the fire-brand that he used to inflame men’s passions and fell asleep. One of the hand-maidens of the chaste Goddess Diana took advantage of the situation: she seized the flaming brand and plunged it into a cold fountain]

Which borrow’d from this holy fire of love

A dateless lively heat, still to endure,

And grew a seething bath, which yet men prove

Against strange maladies a sovereign cure.

[But the sacred flame heated the water instead. The water, hot to this very day, is a bubbling bath which proves beneficial to men with strange illnesses]

But at my mistress’ eye Love’s brand new-fired,

The boy for trial needs would touch my breast;

I, sick withal, the help of bath desired,

And thither hied, a sad distemper’d guest,    

But found no cure: the bath for my help lies    

Where Cupid got new fire; my mistress’ eyes.

[But my mistress’s eyes sparked Cupid’s brand into life: it caught fire again. Cupid, wanting to experiment on me, touched my breast with it. This caused me to fall love-sick. I needed the ‘help of bath’ and went there, an unlucky and diseased guest. But I found no cure: the only remedy for me lies in the same place where Cupid got new fire for his brand: my mistress’s eyes.]

Sonnet 154 begins with the same story…..

SONNET 154

The little love-God lying once asleep

Laid by his side his heart-inflaming brand,

Whilst many nymphs that vow’d chaste life to keep

Came tripping by; but in her maiden hand

The fairest votary took up that fire

Which many legions of true hearts had warm’d;

And so the general of hot desire

Was sleeping by a virgin hand disarm’d.

But the Sonnet has a different conclusion:

This brand she quenched in a cool well by,

Which from Love’s fire took heat perpetual,

Growing a bath and healthful remedy

For men diseased; but I, my mistress’ thrall,    

Came there for cure, and this by that I prove,    

Love’s fire heats water, water cools not love.

[I, the slave of my mistress, came to the well for a cure: but I found that though fire can heat water, water cannot cool down love]

•

As scholars have been quick to point out, these Sonnets are re-workings of a Greek epigram by a sixth century writer called Marianus Scholasticus…..

(Ben Jonson, it seems, had a copy.)

Readers of the Sonnets have taken the ‘disease’ of love to be venereal disease as well as love-sickness….

….and from this some have assumed that Shakespeare ended up…

….a man diseased….

(One writer has even written a whole play on this theme – The Herb Garden…)

But Your Cat believes there are coded clues in these sonnets which show that they…

…..ARE NOT AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL AT ALL!!!

Let Your Cat explain……

•

There are few more beautiful cities in the world than Bath Spa in Somerset….

Its thermal waters……

…….which gush, heated from the ground…..

…..have been famous for their healing qualities since Pagan times…

Then it was thought that the Celtic Goddess Sulis had miraculously heated the waters….

….but when the Romans built their temple and baths….

….Sulis became Minerva….

 

When the Romans left Britain, the Baths fell into disrepair….

Early Christians were hostile to bathing….

St. Augustine only permitted it once a month….

…and the Benedictines forbade it to all except the young, the sick and guests….

But in the Middle Ages, the use of the Bath waters as ‘holy wells’ was encouraged by the physician John Tours – who was also the Bishop of Bath and Wells….

At the reformation, King Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell closed the baths down….

They didn’t want England to be associated with Papist ‘magic’.

But the wells later became centres for English recusant Catholics….

They would travel to spas to plot against the Protestant Queen Elizabeth.

When these recusants started to travel abroad……

…… to Spa in the Spanish Netherlands……

……they represented a real threat to Queen Elizabeth….

They might ally with the Spanish and invade England.

So the Protestant Establishment re-invented the ‘holy wells’ at Bath…..

For them they represented a ‘scientific’ cure for diseases….

….and the Queen visited Bath herself in 1574 with her Privy Council…..

It seems she didn’t take the waters herself….

…and disapproved of ‘bucketing’…..

….i. e., throwing buckets of water over patients. 

She regarded it as demeaning for noblemen to be drenched by underlings….

But her favourite, Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester…..

…..patronised Bath….

Henry Percy, the Wizard Earl of Northumberland….

    

…..was there twice in 1590……

….. and in 1591 stayed there for a month with a retinue of twenty-five….

…..which included his great friend, Sir Walter Raleigh…..

Raleigh was given Sherborne Castle the following year as a gift from Elizabeth….

……..and this was only a few hours ride from Bath…

Raleigh constantly visited the place, even though he was ambivalent about the efficacy of the waters…..

After his 1593 visit with Northumberland he wrote:

I am the worse for the Bath, not the better

But we know for certain he was there in 1596, 1597, 1601…….

….. and in 1602 he visited the town with Northumberland.

It is Your Cat’s belief that……..

….THE REFERENCES TO ‘BATH’ IN THE SONNETS ARE REFERENCES TO THE TOWN OF BATH!!!

Let’s look at Sonnet 153 again….

Cupid laid by his brand, and fell asleep:

A maid of Dian’s this advantage found,

And his love-kindling fire did quickly steep

In a cold valley-fountain of that ground;

Which borrow’d from this holy fire of love

A dateless lively heat, still to endure,

And grew a seething bath, which yet men prove

Against strange maladies a sovereign cure.

But at my mistress’ eye Love’s brand new-fired,

The boy for trial needs would touch my breast;

I, sick withal, the help of bath desired,

And thither hied, a sad distemper’d guest,    

But found no cure: the bath for my help lies    

Where Cupid got new fire; my mistress’ eyes.

The origins of Bath’s thermal waters had long been a matter of speculation…..

…so these Sonnets offer another, mythical origin….. 

The waters of Bath were thought by the Elizabethans said to cure eighty-nine different diseases….

…..hence the phrase….

….the help of bath..…

…which really means….

…..the help of Bath…..

And Sonnet 154….

The little Love-god lying once asleep

Laid by his side his heart-inflaming brand,

Whilst many nymphs that vow’d chaste life to keep

Came tripping by; but in her maiden hand

The fairest votary took up that fire

Which many legions of true hearts had warm’d;

And so the general of hot desire

Was sleeping by a virgin hand disarm’d.

This brand she quenched in a cool well by,

Which from Love’s fire took heat perpetual,

Growing a bath and healthful remedy

For men diseased; but I, my mistress’ thrall,    

Came there for cure, and this by that I prove,    

Love’s fire heats water, water cools not love.

•

 So does this mean that Shakespeare was in Bath?

We know that his acting company would sometimes tour there as a diversion for people taking the waters…

(Three or even four weeks stay were recommended by Doctors – who often owned the property their patients stayed in.)

But, no.  The speaker in the Sonnets is not Shakespeare…..

…..and the clue who it is is in the concluding line to Sonnet 154….

…Love’s fire heats water, water cools not love….

THE SPEAKER IS SIR WALTER RALEIGH!!!

‘Water’ was often taken to be a coded reference to Sir Walter….

In October, 1582, for example, Sir Thomas Heneage…….

….. emerged from a clump of trees to confront Queen Elizabeth , holding a letter, a jewelled bodkin and a bucket. The letter, he explained, came from Sir Christopher Hatton……

…..craving her love. The bodkin symbolised the dagger Hatton would use to kill himself if the Queen did not return his affection: the bucket represented ‘Water/Walter’ .

The Queen was paying more attention to Sir Walter Raleigh than her own…

…faithful sheep…

The Queen, replying that she would…

…cherish Hatton in a meadow bounded by high banks so sure as no water nor floods should ever overthrow them…

….gave Heneage a dove to show….

…there should be no more destruction by water…..

Elizabeth would also often mock Raleigh’s thick, Devonshire accent by saying….

I thirst for Warter….

So why is Sir Walter Raleigh the speaker of these two sonnets?

It is because he is being satirised by Shakespeare……

….. in the character of Don Armado in Love’s Labour’s Lost….

Or rather the character of the Braggart…..

(as he is often referred to in the play…..)

•

The version of Love’s Labour’s Lost that has come down to us is  an…..

…augmented and corrected……

one that was performed at the Court of Elizabeth at the Christmas of either 1587 or 1588….

 

The original production, The Shakespeare Code believes, was a private one performed in the grounds of Titchfield at Whitsun in 1592……

The play was a ‘romance-satire’, commissioned by Countess Mary Southampton to persuade her son, Henry Wriothesley, the Third Earl……

……to fall in love and marry….

The satire was directed at the Earl of Southampton’s enemies……..

….(who were also the enemies of his great friend, Robert Devereux, Second Earl of Essex…..)

…..and chief among them was Sir Walter Raleigh……

…..who, when the play was first produced, was out of favour with Queen Elizabeth…….

(He was wooing Bess Throckmorton……

……one of Elizabeth’s Ladies-in-Waiting……

……without the permission of the Queen!

He’d even started to write love poetry to her….)

But in 1587 he had been allowed back into the court after a five years’ banishment….

It is Your Cat’s belief that the Braggart became a Spaniard in the revival of the play to disguise the fact it was originally an attack on Raleigh!

And the Spaniard character was based on the flamboyant homosexual…..

…..called Antonio Perez……

….whom Elizabeth loathed.

But even though the Braggart had become had become Spanish, he still, at times, speaks in broad Devonian!

He greets Holofernes with….

…Chirrah….

…instead of….

….Sirrah….

And, like Raleigh, is hard-up….

(Raleigh’s family was noble but impoverished)

Like Raleigh, Armado is also….

damnable proud.

Raleigh, like Armado the Spaniard, wore black clothes…..

Armado, in the course of the play, falls in love with the country wench, Jaquenetta…….

……just as Raleigh fell in love with Bess Throckmorton…..

…..but Jacquenetta rejects him…..

….and Armado resolves to win her love by writing her sonnets….

Assist me some extemporal God of rhyme, for I am sure I shall turn sonnet….

The original plan, Your Cat believes, was for Jacquenetta to continue to reject Armado….

…..who then resolves to go to Bath to avail himself of the waters miraculous properties…….

…..to cure himself of love…

But finds, like Raleigh himself, the waters to be inefficacious…..

Your Cat believes that Sonnets 153 and 154 are sketches for the Sonnet Armado never delivers….

BECAUSE SHAKESPEARE CHANGES THE STORY IN MID-WAY THROUGH!!!

Jacquenetta – far from rejecting Armado – becomes impregnated by him……

….and overnight becomes…..

…two months gone…..

But why did Shakespeare change the plot in this highly unlikely way?

Because news came during rehearsal…..

……THAT BESS THROCKMORTON WAS PREGNANT!!!

Queen Elizabeth was so furious that she clapped Raleigh into the Tower of London…..

…..where he spent the whole of August, 1592.

The pregnancy was too much of a gift for Shakespeare to pass up…….

…..even if it did make nonsense of the plot…..

…..so these sketches for the Braggart’s sonnets were no longer needed…..

But perfectly good enough to include in Shakespeare’s 1609 collection….

…….where they herald the way to A Lover’s Complaint……..

…another satirical attack, but this time against Southampton, whom Shakespeare had fallen out with in a big way……

See: ‘Trixie the Cat’s Guide to the Birthday Sonnet’.

There is also, of course, another delicious irony if we take the two sonnets to be ‘performance art’.

The Braggart believes himself to be love-sick…..

…..and hoped Bath would cure him of his disease…..

But the audience, hearing …..

strange maladies

…and…

sad, distempered guest

and

healthful remedy for men diseased

….would automatically think he was talking of……

The Malady of France……

‘Bye, now….

(Trixie the Cat would like to acknowledge her indebtedness to Phyllis Hembry whose ‘The English Spa 1560-1815 A Social History’ she has drawn on for this Post.)