The Shakespeare Code

 

It’s best to read ‘On Tour’ Part Sixteen first.

1592. Harry’s affair with Amelia has made Shakespeare come to terms with how much he is in love with him. Shakespeare had wanted to keep the friendship a Platonic one because of Harry’s mother, the Second Countess of Southampton.

She wanted her son to marry Elizabeth de Vere – the granddaughter of Lord Burghley, Harry’s guardian. But in the following Sonnet, Shakespeare admits and celebrates his love for his ‘Lovey Boy’.

 

48. (18)

Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And Summer’s lease hath all too short a date:

Shakespeare in this Sonnet is rejecting poetry itself – or, rather, conventional poetry. Other poets will compare their loves to ‘a summer’s day’ – but Harry is ‘more lovely and more temperate’ (‘moderate’) than that. In England even in May harsh winds can shakes the buds of the flowers and summer is so quickly over – like a short lease on a property.

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm’d,

And every fair from fair some-time declines,

By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimm’d:

Sometimes the sun is too hot and often it is covered with clouds – and everything beautiful on a summer’s day will at some point lose its beauty – either by chance events or simply the unaided workings of nature.

[Note: Shakespeare does not put a comma between ‘changing course’ and ‘untrimm’d’. It is nature that is ‘untrimm’d’ – as in trimming sails to make a boat travel faster.]

But thy eternal Summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,

Nor shall death brag thou wandr’st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:

But Harry will not be subject to this change – he will not fade as the summer flowers fade, nor will he lose his beauty. Nor will he even die. His summer will be eternal because Shakespeare is writing about him in verse.

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

This poem will survive as long as men are still alive to recite it or read it – and this will give you eternal life.

Shakespeare had hinted that he had this sort of power in the Birthday Sonnets – when he suggests that his verse was capable of making Harry immortal. But he quickly withdrew this idea. Now he relishes it – and makes the same claim to immortal fame that his hero, Ovid, did.

Shakespeare was now ‘out’ in his love for Harry – and that gave him great confidence and joy.

Now a barter between Shakespeare and Harry begins: Harry has the wealth and the money – but Shakespeare has the talent.

He can make Harry live for ever – which indeed he accomplished. We are still reading about someone who otherwise would be long forgotten.

1593

ROMAN HOLIDAY

Shakespeare was back at Titchfield for the start of the year – but not for long.

In March he was to travel with Harry Southampton and Thomas Nashe to the Low Countries, Spain and Italy.

PREPARATIONS FOR TRAVEL….

The Earl of Essex became a member of Elizabeth’s Privy Council on 25^th February, 1593……

…….this meant he had control of passports. Also, he wanted to build up a huge spy network in Europe so he would be first with the news at Court – and this would give him power over Lord Burghley….

Actors were often used as spies – and Christopher Marlowe had worked for the English Government in the Low Countries.

Shakespeare has many quotes in his plays from John Florio’s language manuals – so it was clear he was trying to learn Italian.

Harry spoke Italian like a native…

THE OVIDIAN SONNETS

Rome was of overwhelming significance to Shakespeare – not only because it was where the Pope lived, but because it was the homeland of Ovid.

Ovid was one of the easiest Latin writers for an Englishman to read – and there were translations by Arthur Golding – and Marlowe himself….

Francis Meres was later to write in his Palladis Tamia…

As the soul of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras: so the sweet witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare….

The influence of Ovid – particularly Ovid’s obsession with the workings of time – is clear in the sonnets Shakespeare wrote inspired by the trip to Rome…

49. (19) To Harry.

This sonnet is a re-working of Ovid’s famous ‘Tempus edax rerum’ – ‘Time is the eater of things…’

Devouring time blunt thou the Lion’s paws,

And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;

Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce Tiger’s jaws,

And burn the long-liv’d Phoenix in her blood;

Shakespeare encourages Time to blunt the claws of the lion, make the whole earth devour its creatures, pull out the teeth of the tiger and burn the immortal Phoenix bird in her own blood.

This is stanza is full of code. ‘Blunt’ is a reference to Charles Blount – later 8th Baron Mountjoy….

He was Penelope Rich’s lover and a close friend of Harry. He played Longaville in Love’s Labour’s Lost.

The ‘lion’ is a coded reference to Queen Elizabeth. She saw her father Henry VIII as a lion….

…..and herself as his whelp.

In her tomb at Westminster Abbey she is guarded by four lions at her head….

…and at her feet…..

 

The Phoenix is also a coded reference to Elizabeth. She saw herself as a Phoenix, pecking at her own breast to give hr blood to nourish her offspring – the English people.

Here is a detail of the Phoenix doing just this from one of her dresses.

Shakespeare and Harry were both ardent Roman Catholics who wanted Elizabeth either dis-empowered or dead.

Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet’st,

And do whate’er thou wilt, swift-footed time,

To the wide world and all her fading sweets:

Make Spring happy and Autumn sad as you fly away – and, speedy Time, do what you like to the whole world and its temporary beauties.

But I forbid thee one most heinous crime:

O carve not with thy hours my love’s fair brow,

Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen;

Him in thy course untainted do allow

For beauty’s pattern to succeeding men.

But there’s one thing Shakespeare forbids Time to do: stamp lines on Harry’s forehead or paint wrinkles there. Time must not taint Harry’s good looks, so he can be a pattern of beauty to all the men who succeed him.

Yet do thy worst old Time despite thy wrong,

My love shall in my verse ever live young.

Shakespeare changes tack completely in the final couplet. He challenges Time to do his worst.

Shakespeare’s verse is so powerful Harry will stay young for ever.

The way the last line is written means that the stress is on the second syllable of ‘ever’ – isolating ‘ver’ – Latin for ‘Spring’.

50. (59)

The Elizabethans and the Jacobeans often viewed time as cyclical: that’s why historical plays were such a threat to Queen Elizabeth – they were talking about things that were happening ‘now’.

If there be nothing new, but that which is

Hath been before, how are our brains beguil’d,

Which labouring for invention bear amiss

The second burthen of a former child?

Shakespeare argues that if there is nothing new under the sun and everything in existence now has been in existence before, why are we so stupid as to bring to birth, badly, something that has lived at a previous time?

Oh that record could with a back-ward look,

Even of five hundred courses of the Sun,

Show me your image in some antique book,

Since mind at first in character was done,

That I might see what the old world could say,

To this composed wonder of your frame;

Whether we are mended, or wh’ere better they,

Or whether revolution be the same.

Shakespeare longs for the ability to look way back in time so see if Harry has ben described in an old book, written language had just been invented. Then he would be able to see how ancient writers described the proto-Harry, and whether they wrote better, or worse or in the same way that he does.

Oh sure I am the wits of former days

To subjects worse have given admiring praise.

Shakespeare suggests that the ancient writers have lavished praise on people (1) less beautiful than Harry or (2) worse behaved.

But ‘worse’ implies ‘even worse’ and so is a joke at Harry’s expense. Shakespeare’s relationship with Harry is now so strong that he can afford some banter.

To read ‘Titchfield, Early 1593’, Part 18, click: HERE