The Shakespeare Code

It’s best to read ‘The Bath Sonnets’ Part Ten  first.

1591/2 AMELIA BASANNO: THE DARK LADY OF THE SONNETS

The part of the dark-skinned Rosaline in Love’s Labour’s Lost was played in private performance in Titchfield by the beautiful, dark-skinned Amelia Basanno who had been part of Queen Elizabeth’s entourage.

Rosaline’s ‘blackness’ – as well as her coquettishness – is a big feature in the play.

Berowne/Shakespeare falls in love with her looks…..

At first sight

..as his intimate friend Christopher Marlowe…….

……..had taught him to do in his poem Hero and Leander….

Whoever loved who loved not at first sight.

Shakespeare quotes this line in As You Like It.

But the other lords – who have also fallen for the other women in the Princess of France’s entourage ‘at first sight’ – take blackness to be a sign of ugliness.

Shakespeare – in falling in love with a black woman – is even more daring in his sexual tastes than gay Kit Marlowe!

In Hero and Leander Kit also wrote:

So lovely fair was Hero, Venus’ nun,

As Nature wept, thinking she was undone,

Because she took more from her than she left,

And of such wondrous beauty her bereft.

Therefore, in sign her treasure suffered wrack,

Since Hero’s time hath half the world been black.

Marlowe is saying that Hero stole so much beauty from Nature that half the world was left ugly and black…

Aristocratic Elizabethan women thought that a suntan was ugly and wore face masks when they rode on horseback. Only women who worked for a living had brown skins.

But for Shakespeare – as Berowne in the play….

BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL!

FERDINAND (to Berowne)

By heaven, thy love is black as ebony.

BEROWNE

Is ebony like her? O wood divine!
A wife of such wood were felicity.
O, who can give an oath? where is a book?
That I may swear beauty doth beauty lack,
If that she learn not of her eye to look:
No face is fair that is not full so black.

FERDINAND

O paradox! Black is the badge of hell,
The hue of dungeons and the school of night;
And beauty’s crest becomes the heavens well.

BEROWNE

Devils soonest tempt, resembling spirits of light.

Berowne goes on to argue that Rosaline’s brows are black because they are in mourning for the fact that make-up, hair-colouring and wigs now give women a false attraction:

O, if in black my lady’s brows be deck’d,
It mourns that painting and usurping hair
Should ravish doters with a false aspect;
And therefore is she born to make black fair.

Berowne even argues that she has made black so fashionable that even a natural, ruddy complexion looks false and women paint their brows black to look like Rosaline:

Her favour turns the fashion of the days,
For native blood is counted painting now;
And therefore red, that would avoid dispraise,
Paints itself black, to imitate her brow.

DUMAIN

To look like her are chimney-sweepers black.

LONGAVILLE

And since her time are colliers counted bright.

FERDINAND

And Ethiopes of their sweet complexion crack.

DUMAIN

Dark needs no candles now, for dark is light.

BEROWNE

Your mistresses dare never come in rain,
For fear their colours should be wash’d away.

FERDINAND

‘Twere good, yours did; for, sir, to tell you plain,
I’ll find a fairer face not wash’d to-day.

BEROWNE

I’ll prove her fair, or talk till doomsday here.

FERDINAND

No devil will fright thee then so much as she.

DUMAIN

I never knew man hold vile stuff so dear.

LONGAVILLE

Look, here’s thy love: my foot and her face see.

Berowne’s ideas also follow the argument of Robert Crowley – the Rector of St. Giles, Cripplegate – who had a huge influence on Shakespeare.

Sir Thomas Lucy, who had harassed Shakespeare and his family at Stratford-upon-Avon because they were Catholics – worshipped at St. Giles when he was in London.

Shakespeare had sought him out as a protector when he fled to London – and Crowley had taken the eighteen year old under his wing.

Crowley hated all artifice in life – in language and in fashion. Crowley – a radical balladeer as well as a priest – hated elaborate clothes, make-up, wigs and hair-colouring in women

Let thine apparel be honest;

Be not decked past thy degree

Neither let thou thine head be dressed

Otherwise than beseemeth thee.

Let thine hair bear the same colour

That nature gave it to endure;

Lay it not out as doeth a whore

That would men’s fanatasies allure.

Paint not thy face in any wise

But make thy manners for to shine

And thou shalt please all such men’s eyes

As do to Godliness incline.

Also, by attacking make-up and wigs, Shakespeare is launching an indirect attack on Queen Elizabeth – who wore a bright red wig and made up her face with egg-white, white lead, borax and alum.

Shakespeare uses all these ideas in his Sonnets to Amelia. For him there is no division between art and life. Sonnet 22 was probably sent to Amelia by a messenger – or left for her to ‘find’ – in the way the Lords in Love’s Labour’s Lost send their sonnets to their mistresses

22. (127)

In the old age black was not counted fair,

Or if it were it bore not beauty’s name:

But now is black beauty’s successive heir

And Beauty slander’d with a bastard shame:

In previous times a black colouring was not considered attractive – and even if it was, it wasn’t described as beautiful. But now black is seen as their natural heir to beauty – and beauty does not inherit the title because it is a bastard. Shakespeare goes on to explain this statement.

For since each hand hath put on Nature’s power,

Fairing the foul with Art’s false borrow’d face,

Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower

But is profan’d, if not lives in disgrace.

Women have taken over from Nature – making ugly features seem attractive with make-up. So what was considered beautiful before – a white skin and red lips – has been desecrated and profaned by artificiality.

Therefore my Mistress’ eyes are Raven black,

Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem,

At such who, not born fair, no beauty lack,

Sland’ring Creation with a false esteem.

Amelia’s eyes are black like a raven’s wing because they are in mourning at the behaviour of unattractive women who make themselves attractive with make-up and so betray nature by making men fancy them.

Yet so they mourn, becoming of their woe,

That every tongue says beauty should look so.

But Amelia’s eyes look so attractive in mourning that everyone agrees that BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL!!!

23. (132)

This sonnet was sent to Amelia – or read aloud to her. It addresses Amelia directly.

Clearly Shakespeare’s first wooing sonnet to Amelia has failed completely.  She treats him with contempt as she’s after young Harry.

Thine eyes I love, and they as pitying me,

Knowing thy heart torment me with disdain,

Have put on black, and loving mourners be,

Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain.

Shakespeare says he loves Amelia’s eyes who have dressed in black mourning because they pity Shakespeare, though her heart despises him.

And truly not the morning Sun of Heaven

Better becomes the grey cheeks of th’ East,

Nor that full Star that ushers in the Even

Doth half that glory to the sober West

As those two morning eyes become thy face:

Shakespeare plays on ‘mourning’ and ‘morning’. For him neither the morning sun, which brightens up the dull, dawn clouds or the evening star which adds glory to the staid light in the west at sunset are as beautiful as Amelia’s two black eyes seen in the morning.

O let it then as well beseem thy heart

To mourn for me since mourning doth thee grace,

And suit thy pity like in every part.

Shakespeare asks Amelia’s heart to pity him as her eyes do because mourning becomes her and every part of Amelia should pity Shakespeare equally.

Then will I swear beauty herself is black,

And all they foul that thy complexion lack.

If Amelia does so, Shakespeare promises he will declare that BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL – and all those women without black skins ugly.

24. (128)

Amelia was a musician and singer – and played the clavichord.

Her whole family were the Queen’s Musicians – first brought over to England from Venice through the good offices of Thomas Wriothesley, 1st Earl of Southampton….

Photo by Ross Underwood.

……during the reign of Henry VIII.

In addition, Amelia had been brought up by aristocratic women when her mother had died – so her skills would have been developed.

How oft when thou my music, music play’st,

Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds

With thy sweet fingers when thou gently swayst

The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,

Do I envy those Jacks that nimble leap

To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,

Whilst my poor lips which should that harvest reap,

At the wood’s boldness by thee blushing stand.

Shakespeare says that Amelia herself is like a piece of music and when she plays the clavichord itself and coaxes the wires into a harmony that tricks and engages Shakespeare’s ears in a delightful way, he envies the keys of the instrument which seem to jump up to kiss her hands while his lips, that should be kissing Amelia’s hands instead, are embarrassed by their sexy boldness.

To be so tickled, they would change their state

And situation with those dancing chips,

Ore whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait,

Making dead wood more blest than living lips.

If Shakespeare’s lips could be touched and fondled in the same way, he would willing turn them into keys which, though they are ‘dead wood’ are more blessed by Amelia as her fingers walk over them than Shakespeare’s living lips.

Since saucy Jacks so happy are in this,

Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.

Since the impertinent keys of the clavichord are happy enough with the situation, she should give her fingers to them to kiss and her lips to Shakespeare.

Lips would also suggest Amelia’s labia. Labia, after all, is Latin for ‘lips’.

To read ‘Love in a Time of Plague’ Part Twelve, click: HERE