The Shakespeare Code

It’s best to read ‘Hard to Get’, Part Thirteen first.

1592. Shakespeare continues his unsuccessful wooing of Amelia, with a mixture of insult, flattery and threat.

34. (149)

Canst thou O cruel, say I love thee not,

When I against my self with thee partake?

Do I not think on thee, when I forgot

Am of my self, all tyrant for thy sake?

Amelia has told Shakespeare that he does not love her – so Shakespeare is arguing that he does. He loves her so much he will take HER side against HIS. He argues that he thinks about Amelia even when Amelia isn’t thinking about him – and will attack himself to please her.

Who hateth thee that I do call my friend?

On whom frown’st thou that I do fawn upon?

Nay if thou lour’st on me do I not spend

Revenge upon my self with present moan?

No-one who hates Amelia is a friend of Shakespeare. And no-one whom Amelia hates gets Shakespeare’s devotion. And if Amelia scowls at Shakespeare, he ‘spends’ revenge upon himself which makes him moan. ‘Spend’ = ‘semen’ Shakespeare is saying that if he is getting no attention from Amelia, he must masturbate. Shakespeare has already used ‘spend’ as an image of masturbation in the Birthday Sonnets.

What merit do I in my self respect,

That is so proud thy service to despise,

When all my best doth worship thy defect,

Commanded by the motion of thine eyes.

What special qualities do I have that would make me too proud to be your slave? (‘pride’ also = ‘sexual arousal’.) All my best qualities worship your faults – commanded to do so by the movement of your eyes (‘eyes’ also = genitals – Amelia’s activity as a courtesan.)

But love, hate on, for now I know thy mind:

Those that can see, thou lov’st, and I am blind.

Shakespeare gives in and tells Amelia to go on hating him. Amelia only loves those who do not love her. Like Harry.

35. (139)

Amelia admits to Shakespeare she is in love with young Harry Southampton.

Shakespeare complains that she constantly turns her eyes away from him.

[When Amelia later wrote the satire Willobie his Avisa, she has her ‘avatar’, Avisa, constantly turns her eyes away from her suitors.]

O call not me to justify the wrong

That thy unkindness lays upon my heart;

Wound me not with thine eye but with thy tongue:

Use power with power, and slay me not by Art.

Shakespeare changes tack and asks Amelia NOT to expect him to justify her unkindness to himself. He asks her not to hurt him by the way she looks at him, but by speaking to him instead. He wants a straightforward confrontation with her – not an artful one.

Tell me thou lov’st else-where; but in my sight,

Dear heart, forbear to glance thine eye aside:

What need’st thou wound with cunning when thy might

Is more than my ore-prest defence can bide?

Shakespeare says that Amelia can tell him she loves Harry – but when they are together, Shakespeare asks her not to look away from him. She has no need to damage him with ploys as he has already been destroyed by her beauty like an invading army.

Let me excuse thee: ah my love well knows

Her pretty looks have been mine enemies,

And therefore from my face she turns my foes,

That they else-where might dart their injuries:

Shakespeare decides to invent an excuse for her cruelty. Amelia knows that her looks are Shakespeare’s enemies – so she pities Shakespeare and turns the hostile force of her eyes on others.

Yet do not so, but since I am near slain,

Kill me out-right with looks, and rid my pain.

But Shakespeare changes his mind – and urges her to turn her eyes on him and kill him since he is nearly dead. This would rid him of his pain.

‘Kill’ to the Elizabethans also meant orgasm. One way to put Shakespeare out of his misery is to sleep with him.

36. (140)

Be wise as thou art cruel, do not press

My tongue-tied patience with too much disdain:

Lest sorrow lend me words and words express,

The manner of my pity wanting pain.

Shakespeare tells Amelia that her wisdom ought to match the extremity of her cruelty. He warns her not to treat him too contemptuously – otherwise he might put into words his bad treatment from her for others to read.

If I might teach thee wit, better it were,

Though not to love, yet love to tell me so,

As testy sick– men when their deaths be near,

No news but health from their Physicians know.

Shakespeare offers to be her schoolmaster to teach her to act intelligently. Even if she doesn’t love him, she should tell him she does – just as doctors give bad-tempered patients who are dying a positive prognosis.

For if I should despair I should grow mad,

And in my madness might speak ill of thee;

Now this ill wresting world is grown so bad,

Mad slanderers by mad ears believed be.

Shakespeare warns Amelia that her treatment of him might drive him mad and, in his madness, malign her. The world is so corrupt that insane libellers are often believed by insane listeners.

That I may not be so, nor thou belied,

Bear thine eyes straight, though thy proud heart go wide.

To stop him from going mad – and stop him from spreading lies about Amelia, Shakespeare asks her to look at him, even if her thoughts are with other men.

A dark element enters the relationship here. Shakespeare is threatening to use all his skills as a writer to denigrate Amelia – as Amelia was later to do by writing a satire attacking Shakespeare and Harry (amongst others) – Willobie his Avisa.

37. (143)

The love triangle between Amelia, Harry and Shakespeare develops at Titchfield.

Lo as a careful huswife runs to catch,

One of her feathered creatures broke away,

Sets down her babe and makes all swift dispatch

In pursuit of the thing she would have stay:

Shakespeare compares Amelia to a housewife who is chasing after one of her chickens who has run away (Harry) and puts down her young child (Shakespeare) so she can run after it.

By describing the chicken as a ‘feathered creature’ she is also referring to Harry’s love of feathers on his helmet.

Whilst her neglected child holds her in chase,

Cries to catch her whose busy care is bent

To follow that which flies before her face,

Not prizing her poor infant’s discontent:

The toddler, Shakespeare, runs after her but all her (Amelia’s) attention is on the chicken (Harry) which wants to get away from her – so she doesn’t take any notice of her infant’s distress.

So runst thou after that which flies from thee,

Whilst I, thy babe, chase thee a far behind,

But if thou catch thy hope turn back to me

And play the mother’s part, kiss me, be kind.

It is now a full love triangle: Amelia is running after Harry, who wants to get away from her, while Shakespeare runs after Amelia who leaves him way behind. But Shakespeare offers a bargain. If Amelia manages to capture Harry will she then give attention back to Shakespeare and kiss him and make much of him the way a mother does to a baby.

So will I pray that thou mayst have thy Will,

If thou turn back and my loud crying still.

In doing so, Amelia will ‘have her Will’: she will have William Shakespeare – but also be able to express her own wish to make love to Harry. She will be able to stop Will from crying and revealing all his pain to the world.

38. (134) To Amelia.

Shakespeare – assuming that Harry – like the fleeing chicken – has no interest in Amelia – asks him, selfishly, to plead his love-suit to her on his behalf. Harry does so – and Amelia takes the opportunity to seduce him.

[Shakespeare was later to use this situation as a plot-line in Twlefth Night. Orsino sends his ‘page-boy’ Caesario to plead his love-cause to Olivia – but Olivia falls in love with the messenger.]

So now I have confest that he is thine,

And I my self am mortgag’d to thy will,

My self I’ll forfeit, so that other mine,

Thou wilt restore to be my comfort still:

Shakespeare has to admit that Harry has become the lover of Amelia and so is tied by bounds to Amelia’s ‘will’: (1) Power (2) Pudend. Shakespeare will give up all claims on Amelia, though, if Amelia will return Harry – his platonic love – to be his consolation.

But thou wilt not, nor he will not be free,

For thou art covetous, and he is kind;

He learn’d but surety-like to write for me,

Under that bond that him as fast doth bind.

But you won’t return Harry to me and he won’t be able to escape your clutches: for you really want him and he is both kindly and full of natural feelings. It was as though he went to a bank to act as surety for me on a loan, but found himself up to his neck in debt.

The statute of thy beauty thou wilt take,

Thou usurer, that putt’st forth all to use,

And sue a friend, came debtor for my sake,

So him I lose through my unkind abuse.

Amelia will act with all the power of her beauty. Shakespeare compares her to a money lender, mean in herself but who lends everything she has  i.e. gives sexual favours to all. She has put Harry massively in her debt when he came to her to fix a loan for Shakespeare. Shakespeare has lost his friend as the result of abusing him – making him the go between for himself and Amelia.

Him have I lost, thou hast both him and me;

He pays the whole, and yet am I not free.

Shakespeare admits that has lost the friendship with Harry – but Amelia has both men in thrall. Harry pays everything to Amelia – with ‘whole’ also suggesting ‘hole’ = pudenda. But even Shakespeare is not free: he is (1) Still in bondage to Amelia (2) Comes at a price. A hint at Shakespeare’s revenge.

To read ‘Love Madness’, Part 15, click: HERE