The Shakespeare Code

It’s best to read ‘Falling in Love and Ovid’ Part Seventeen first.

Early 1593. Titchfield. Before Shakespeare and Harry’s trip to Italy.

51. (106)

When in the Chronicle of wasted time

I see descriptions of the fairest wights,

And beauty making beautiful old rime,

In praise of Ladies dead, and lovely Knights;

Shakespeare – looking into books from the distant, long dead past – reads descriptions of attractive people: their beauty inspires poets to make their poems beautiful, praising dead damsels and handsome knights….

Then in the blazon of sweet beauty’s best,

Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,

I see their antique Pen would have express’t

Even such a beauty as you master now.

Then, dazzled by the features of the most beautiful of people – feet, lips, eyes and brows – these writers from olden times were writing about a beauty that Harry embodies in our own time.

So all their praises are but prophecies

Of this our time, all you prefiguring;

And for they look’d but with divining eyes,

They had not skill enough your worth to sing:

So their praise of contemporary beauties was in fact prophetic – prefiguring Harry. And although these writers could see into the future, they did have the skill to praise your value sufficiently.

[Renaissance writers often  said that Christ was pre-figured in Pagan writings. So Shakespeare is starting to draw on religious imagery to describe his love for Harry.]

For we which now behold these present days,

Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.

‘As for us’, Shakespeare says, ‘we have the eyes to wonder at your beauty but not the skill to capture it.’

52. (60)

Another re-working of Ovid – from his Metamorphoses…

Shakespeare refers to the ambiguous nature of Time – it both gives and takes away. The idea of a battle between Old Father Time (with his scythe and hour glass) and Dame Nature later comes to a terrifying climax.

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,

So do our minutes hasten to their end,

Each changing place with that which goes before,

In sequent toil all forwards do contend.

In the same way that waves journey towards beaches and cease being waves, so do minutes destroy themselves, changing places with the minute before in an onward rush.

Nativity once in the main of light,

Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown’d,

Crooked eclipses ‘gainst his glory fight,

And time that gave doth now his gift confound.

A baby born into a world of light crawls to adulthood: but the moment he achieves it, fate conspires against him and Time that gave him life takes it away.

Time doth transfix  the flourish set on youth,

And delves the parallels in beauty’s brow,

Feeds on the rarities of nature’s truth,

And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow.

Father Time stabs the confident glory of youth, carves lines in the face of the most beautiful person and devours the most choice and rare people. Every single thing in creation is cut down by Time’s scythe.

And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand

Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.

However, Shakespeare hopes that there will be future times – and that his verse, praising Harry’s beauty and truth will survive despite the cruel actions of Time.

Many Elizabethans, including the Queen herself, thought that the times were so bad the end of the world must be coming. It was not for them a ‘Golden Age.’

53. (77)

Shakespeare, as Harry’s ‘tutor’, gives him a book with blank pages to record his thoughts on his journey to Europe. In the book they will have a life of their own…Shakespeare is offering Harry another way to fight mortality.

Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear,

Thy dial how thy precious minutes waste,

These vacant leaves thy mind’s imprint will bear,

And of this book, this learning mayst thou taste:

Your mirror, Harry, will show you how you are aging – your sundial how the valuable minutes are wasting away and the blank leaves of this book I giving to you will demonstrate this truth this:

The wrinkles which thy glass will truly show

Of mouthed graves will give thee memory;

Thou by thy dial’s shady stealth mayst know

Time’s thievish progress to eternity.

The wrinkles that appear in your face will remind you that a yawning grave awaits you, and the sundial’s shadow – as it slowly moves round the dial during the day – will teach you that Time steals all and leads on to oblivion.

Look what thy memory cannot contain

Commit to these waste blanks, and thou shalt find

Those children nurst, deliver’d from thy brain,

To take a new acquaintance of thy mind.

Shakespeare urges Harry to commit all those things he cannot remember to the book he is giving him like children he is nursing: they will acquire a new life.

These offices, so oft as thou wilt look,

Shall profit thee, and much inrich thy book.

These thoughts will be like church services which will do you good and make the book valuable.

As we shall see, Harry takes Shakespeare’s advice, fills the book with his thought and gives it to Shakespeare. Shakespeare then loses it!

These notebooks were also called tables – and Prince Hamlet possesses one.

Anthony May

My tables, meet it is I set it down. That one may smile and smile and be a villain.

To read ‘Whistle-stop Tour of Europe’, Part 19, click: HERE