The Shakespeare Code

It’s best to read ‘Whistle-stop Tour of Europe’   Part Nineteen first.

1593. In Rome.  The City of Marble. Harry Southampton, William Shakespeare and Thomas Nashe are on a whistle-stop tour of Europe.

57. (55)

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments

Of Princes shall out-live this powerful rime,

But you shall shine more bright in these contents

Than unswept stone, besmear’d with sluttish time.

Caesar Augustus famously found Rome brick but left it marble. Shakespeare asserts his verse will allow Harry to last longer than Rome’s marble or its gilt tombs of by-gone rulers now neglected and subject to the ravages of time.

When wasteful war shall Statues over-turn,

And broils root out the work of masonry,

Nor Mars his sword, nor war’s quick fire shall burn:

The living record of your memory.

Although warfare can destroy statues and buildings, neither Mars with his sword or fires produced by conflict will be able to destroy my vivid description of you as you lived.

‘Gainst death, and all-oblivious enmity

Shall you pace forth, your praise shall still find room,

Even in the eyes of all posterity

That wear this world out to the ending doom.

In the face of death and hostility – which cares for nobody and ensures that all things will be forgotten – you will walk out of my verse so people, in times to come, will still praise you until the world ends on the Day of Judgement.

So till the judgment that your self arise,

You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.

So till you yourself rise from your tomb on the Day of Judgement you will live in this poem – and in the eyes of the people in love who will read it.

‘Self’ can also mean ‘penis’ – [see Sonnet 2. (1)] so there is another coded reference to Harry’s erections. ‘Eyes’ can also mean genitals – [see Sonnet 8. (7)] so Shakespeare is implying that Harry will come to life in other people’s love-making.

58. (81)

Or I shall live your Epitaph to make,

Or you survive when I in earth am rotten,

From hence your memory death cannot take,

Although in me each part will be forgotten.

Whether I outlive you, and write the epitaph on your tomb, or if you outlive me, while my body rots in the grave, either way Death will not be able to make people forget you, even though every aspect of my own being will be forgotten.

Your name from hence immortal life shall have,

Though I (once gone) to all the world must die;

The earth can yield me but a common grave,

When you intombed in men’s eyes shall lie.

From this time forward, Shakespeare asserts, your name, Harry, will live for ever, even though when I myself die will die to the rest of the world. I will be buried as a commoner while you will be buried in the eyes of men.

Your monument shall be my gentle verse,

Which eyes not yet created shall ore-read;

And tongues to be, your being shall rehearse,

When all the breathers of this world are dead:

Shakespeare says that his verse which people who are not yet born will read, will be Harry’s monument: and tongues, which don’t at the moment exist will give life to your being by reciting my verse about you.

By describing his verse as ‘gentle’ Shakespeare also claims aristocratic status.

You still shall live (such virtue hath my Pen)

Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.

Shakespeare says that his verse is so powerful it will bring Harry back to life in the mouths of men when they read aloud his verse. Their breath will breathe life into Harry.

The irony is, of course, that Shakespeare was to have a monument at Stratford-upon-Avon….

 

….while the only physical monument to Harry is as a twenty-one year old kneeling in prayer at the side of the Southampton family tomb at Titchfield.

59. (122)

Shakespeare gave Harry a blank book to write down his thoughts when they set off for Europe. See Sonnet 53. (77)

Harry filled the book and gave it back to Shakespeare…

Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain

Full character’d with lasting memory,

Which shall above that idle rank remain,

Beyond all date even to eternity:

Shakespeare claims that everything Harry wrote in his book filled with blank pages, Shakespeare has committed to memory. These ideas – which are far superior to Shakespeare’s own – will last for ever.

Or at the least, so long as brain and heart

Have faculty by nature to subsist

Till each to raz’d oblivion yield his part

Of thee, thy record never can be miss’d:

Well if not for ever, then as long as Shakespeare remains alive. Till the moment when death will erase all thoughts from Shakespeare’s mind, Shakespeare will never forget Harry’s ideas.

That poor retention could not so much hold,

Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score;

Therefore to give them from me was I bold,

To trust those tables that receive thee more.

Shakespeare argues  that a notebook could not hold as much information as Shakespeare’s own brain: nor does he need a ‘forget-me-not’ to remember Harry’s love. It was because of this that Shakespeare gave Harry’s book away putting more trust in the tables of Shakespeare’s own brain.

To keep an adjunct to remember thee

Were to import forgetfulness in me.

If Shakespeare had kept the book as a memento, it would imply that Shakespeare needs such a thing to keep Harry in mind.

So, Shakespeare has given Harry a book, Harry has filled it with his thoughts and returned it to him. Shakespeare has given it away (or lost it!) But instead of admitting error, Shakespeare goes into attack mode.  If he had kept the book it would imply that he needs it to remember Harry.

This Shakespeare in ‘Falstaff Mode’ – defending his actions in a preposterous way!

April, 1593

Shakespeare Harry and Southampton return to England with Antonio Perez on 18^th April, 1593 in time for Easter.

Perez, a gay Spanish spy and double-dealer, former secretary to Philip II of Spain and model for Don Armado in the court revival of Love’s Labour’s Lost c. 1598, joins the Earl of Essex’s entourage.

(By 1598 Perez was out of favour with Queen Elizabeth and Sir Walter Raleigh, the original model for Armado, was in. So re-writes took place.)

 

Shakespeare immediately gets his publisher, Richard Field, to enter Venus and Adonis on the Stationer’s Register.

Shakespeare returns a changed man. Before 1593 not a single play had been set in Italy: now sixteen of them were to be based on Italian books – some of them – like the Titus Andronicus chapbook – only available in Rome…

Ten of the plays – over a quarter of the canon – were to be set in Italy or have scenes in Italy – and the works contain over 800 references to Italy.

Shakespeare turned The Taming of A Shrew into The Taming of a Shrew – and changed its setting from ancient Athens to ‘modern day’ Italy….

He turned the whole whistle-stop journey into the frantic movements of time and place in Two Gentlemen of Verona…

Shakespeare was to mention Rome over 400 times in his plays….

It was his spiritual home – both as an artist and as a Roman Catholic.

APRIL 1593.

60. (104)

Shakespeare was now back in his other spiritual home, Titchfield, and this sonnet celebrates the third anniversary of the day Shakespeare first met Harry in April 1590.

We learn from this sonnet that fell in love with Harry the first time he saw him, when first his ‘eye’ he ‘eyed’….

…..echoing Marlowe’s statement, which would appear again in As You Like It:

Whoever loved who loved not at first sight

Shakespeare at first controlled his passion – out of respect both for Harry and his mother.

To me fair friend you never can be old,

For as you were when first your eye I eyde,

Such seems your beauty still: three Winters cold

Have from the forests shook three summers’ pride,

Three beauteous springs to yellow Autumn turn’d,

In process of the seasons have I seen

Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn’d,

Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.

Shakespeare again claims that Harry will never be old because he looks exactly the same now as when Shakespeare first saw him three years ago.

‘When first your eye I eyde’ means (1) When our eyes met (2) When I saw your penis – and my own responded. ‘Eye’ can mean the genital area. See Sonnet 8. (7)

Three winters have passed since this meeting – robbing the summer leaves from the trees – and three springs have turned from green to yellow. The beautiful April scent of flowers has been burnt in the hot June sun – but Harry, unlike the plant world, has stayed green.

Ah yet doth beauty like a Dial hand,

Steal from his figure, and no pace perceiv’d,

So your sweet hew, which me thinks still doth stand,

Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceiv’d;

And yet beauty slowly ebbs away, like the dial hand of a clock, so slowly it cannot be seen. So Harry’s beauty which Shakespeare perceives as permanent is in reality changing and Shakespeare vision is faulty.

Shakespeare spells ‘hue’ as ‘hew’ – another play on Harry’s title, ‘Henry Wriothesley, Earl’ – as in Sonnet 19.20

For fear of which, hear this thou age unbred,

Ere you were born was beauty’s summer dead.

In anticipation of this truth Shakespeare addresses the ‘age unbred’ – which means (1) people not yet conceived and (2) the uncouth age that will follow this one as the race degenerates having known the perfection of Harry.

‘Ere you were born was beauty’s summer dead’ = (1) The perfection of beauty has been and gone and (2) Harry himself will one day die.

To read ‘Obsession with Harry’ Part 21, click: HERE