The Shakespeare Code

It’s best to read ‘Attempted Seduction’ Part Nine first.

1591. The Royal Progress.

Queen Elizabeth visited Titchfield and Cowdray in the autumn of 1591 as part of her progress. In her retinue was the Bassano family – dark-skinned Sephardic musicians. These included the mixed-race Amelia. She was the beautiful young mistress of old Lord Hundson – a cousin of the Queen.

 

Elizabeth shot deer from standings at both Cowdray and Titchfield and this became one of the central events in the ‘romantic satire’ Love’s Labour’s Lost which Mary Southampton commissioned from Shakespeare in another attempt to turn son Harry straight.

Amelia stayed on at Titchfield after the Progress as the Plague was raging in London – and she had set her cap at young Lord Harry.

Shakespeare fell in love with her and cast her in the play as the dark-skinned wanton, Rosalind.

He cast himself as her lover, Lord Berowne – a play on Mary Southampton’s family name, Browne.

[1592: Shakespeare – in collaboration – writes Sir Thomas More, Edmund Ironside, Arden of Faversham, Love’s Labour’s Lost]

1592 AMATEUR THEATRICS

Love’s Labour’s Lost was given a private performance in the grounds of Place House in Titchfield by a cast of aristocratic amateurs – including women – and Shakespeare’s professional colleagues at Whitsun (14^th May) 1592.

The aristocrats included Penelope Rich…..

….famous for her blonde hair and black eyes…

….hair which is mentioned in the play as being like ‘the heavens’.

….who played the Princess of France….

She had been the muse of Sir Philip Sidney in his sonnet sequence – Astrophil and Stella – and he had played upon her name ‘Rich’. Shakespeare does the same in the play – and then in his own Sonnets.

Shakespeare even lifted the form of the ‘Shakespearean Sonnet’ form from Sir Philip in his Arcadia.

Penelope’s sister, Dorothy,was also cast as Maria in the play….

She had acted with her sister at Wilton.

Katharine was played by Frances Devereux, the Earl of Essex’s wife who had originally been married to Sir Philip Sidney. Frances, like Katherine in the play, had a sister who died.

Unfortunately the text of Love’s Labour’s Lost is corrupt at times, so we cannot tell which female character dresses in white. But Frances Devereux was often painted in white……

…..and white was the colour of her husband, Robert Devereux, the 2nd Earl of Essex and great friend of Harry Southampton…

These three women were inseparable – and Antonio Perez – a gay Spaniard who was part of the 2nd Earl of Essex’s entourage – called them:

Three sisters and goddesses.

Penelope Rich’s lover, Charles Blount [pronounced ‘Blunt’]…..later Baron Mountjoy…

 

……played Lord Longaville…..

Fynes Morrison – a contemporary – said he was ‘of stature tall’ – and as well as ‘long’ in the name, the character is described by Maria as ‘tall’.

Morrison also said that Blount:

chose to be drawn with a trowel in his hand and this motto: Ad raedificandam antiquam domum – to build the Ancient House. For this noble and ancient Barony was decayed.

This imagery of re-building a house is used earlier in Sonnets 11 [Old 10] and 14 [Old 13] as an image for Harry having a son – and so ‘re-building’ his body.

Blount was a close friend of Southampton and Shakespeare was referring to this painting in his Sonnets.

He uses the word ‘Blunt’ in the play to describe Longaville….

..and the word ‘Blunt’ in the Sonnets.

Roger Manners, 5^th Earl of Rutland, Southampton’s friend, played Dumaine.

Dumaine quotes the word ‘manner’ of  himself in the play and as we shall see, Shakespeare uses ‘manners’ as a coded reference to to the Earl of Rutland in the Sonnets.

Dumaine is the youngest of the wooers – so much so that he doesn’t yet have a beard. In 1592, the Earl of Rutland was sixteen.

Harry himself ……

….played Ferdinando, King of Navarre…..

….a tribute to Ferdinando, Lord Strange, with whose company Shakespeare had begun his acting career and who was a friend of the Southamptons….

…..and Henri, King of Navarre, with whom the Earl of Essex had just fought the Siege of Rouen.

 

The tiny, beardless Nashe played the part of Moth, ‘the well-educated infant’ in the show who is pageboy to the tight-fisted Spaniard, Don Armado….

– a satire on Sir Walter Raleigh….

……who was the enemy of Southampton and Essex.

Armado, though a Spaniard, breaks into broad Devonshire in the course of the play.

[Note: The version of Love’s Labour’s Lost that has come down to us is a re-write for Elizabeth’s Court in 1599. Raleigh was back in favour then – so the Braggart is turned into a satire on Perez whom Elizabeth despised.]

THE ‘BATH’ SONNETS

20. (153) 21. (154)

These two sonnets, the final sonnets in the original published order, are not autobiographical at all. They were intended for the character of Armado .

When he falls in love with the wench, Jaquenetta, he declares:

Assist me, some extemporal god of rhyme,
for I am sure I shall turn sonnet. Devise, wit;
write, pen; for I am for whole volumes in folio!

During the preparation for the production, word came that Raleigh had impregnated Bess Throckmorton – so the plot had to be changed. (Originally Armado was going to catch venereal disease from Jaquenetta and be rejected by her.)

These are two variations on the sonnet Armado never delivered….

It describes the origins of the famous thermal waters of Bath…..

…….a favourite haunt of Raleigh and his crony the ‘Wizard Earl’ – Henry Percy, Ninth Earl of Northumberland……

Northumberland was in Bath in June and October, 1590 – and for three weeks in April, 1591, with a retinue of 25, including Raleigh….

Bath was famous for its cure of venereal disease and was only hours away from Raleigh’s home, Sherborne.

To this day, the waters rise up already heated by geothermal means. To the Celts and Romans this was a phenomenon of mystery – and involved the intervention of a God or Goddess…

Sulis to the Celts……..

….and Minerva to the Romans.

 

Shakespeare – in the character of Armado – offers his own explanation.

20. (153)

Cupid laid by his brand and fell a sleep:

A maid of Dyan’s this advantage found,

And his love-kindling fire did quickly steep

In a cold valley-fountain of that ground:

Cupid, putting down his fire-brand which causes people to fall in love, fell asleep – and a nymph in attendance to Diana – Goddess of the chase and chastity – found it and plunged it into a cold fountain.

Which borrow’d from this holy fire of love,

A dateless lively heat still to indure,

And grew a seething bath which yet men prove

Against strange maladies a sovereign cure:

The waters took on seething heat from this holy fire which lasts till this day as a cure for exotic illnesses (1) Love (2) Venereal disease.

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 at my mistress’s (1) eyes (2) pudenda, the dowsed brand sprung to life again – and to try out its potency Cupid plunged it into my breast and it made me (1) Sick with love (2) Sick with venereal disease.

I needed to go to Bath for its waters (1) To relieve the heat of my love (2) To find a cure for my venereal disease.

But found no cure; the bath for my help lies,

Where Cupid got new fire: my mistress’ eye.

But the waters of Bath did not provide relief. The relief to my love-sickness can only be found at its source – my mistress’s (1) Eye. (2) Pudend.

21. (154)

The little Love-God lying once a sleep,

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.

A repeat of the above story – except a troop of nymphs dedicated to chaste life troop by – the most beautiful of which picks up the torch which had caused many to fall in love. So the all-powerful Love God, Cupid, was dis-empowered by a virgin.

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 diseas’d; but I my Mistress’ thrall,

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

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

The nymph cools the brand in a well that again takes on an eternal heat which cures men (1) Of their love (2) Of their disease. But I was so under the power and control of my mistress that I found that the fire of love can heat water but water cannot cool the ardour of love.

‘Love’s fire heats water’ is a direct did at Sir Walter Raleigh. With his West Country accent, he pronounced ‘Walter’ as ‘Water’ – causing Queen Elizabeth to say:

I thirst for Water’.

When the sonnets were published in 1609, Raleigh was out of favour with King James and imprisoned in the Tower. He was again a safe target for Shakespeare to attack.to attack.

To read ‘Enter the Dark Lady’, Part Eleven, click: