The Shakespeare Code

It’s best to read ‘Shakespeare in Rome’ Part 20 first.

SUMMER 1593. Stratford-upon-Avon.

It was time for Shakespeare to visit his family at Stratford, his wife Anne, his daughter Susanna and his twins, Judith and Hamnet. According to John Aubrey, he did this every summer…

But his mind was on Harry….

OBSESSION WITH HARRY

61. (97)

How like a Winter hath my absence been

From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!

What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen?

What old December’s bareness every where?

Shakespeare’s absence from Harry is like Winter – Harry is like the most pleasant part of the year. Shakespeare has felt cold, the days have been dark and the natural world is stripped of its colour.

And yet this time remov’d was summer’s time,

The teeming Autumn big with rich increase,

Bearing the wanton burthen of the prime,

Like widowed wombs after their Lords’ decease.

However, in reality it was the summer time – and the abundant autumn – full of the fruits of the spring- was like a pregnant widow with her womb swollen with the offspring of her dead husband.

‘Rich with big increase’ is a reference to Lady Penelope Rich….

….the sister of the Earl of Essex who played the Princess of France in Love’s Labour’s Lost. She was constantly pregnant and gave birth to eleven children.

Sir Philip Sidney played on her name in his sonnet sequence, Astrophil and Stella……

…..and Shakespeare also played on her name in Love’s Labour’s Lost.

(See: Penelope Rich plays the Princess of France.)

Yet this abundant issue seem’d to me

But hope of Orphans, and un-fathered fruit;

For Summer and his pleasures wait on thee,

And thou away, the very birds are mute.

But the abundant produce of the spring seems to resemble the hopelessness of an orphan without his or her father – or infertile fruit because the Summer is a servant of Harry – and when Harry is away even the birds stop singing.

Or, if they sing, ’tis with so dull a cheer,

That leaves look pale, dreading the Winter’s near.

And even if they do sing, it is with total lack of joy as if they are dreading the approach of winter.

62. (98)

From you have I been absent in the spring,

When proud pied April (dress’d in all his trim)

Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,

That heavy Saturn laught and leapt with him.

Shakespeare says he has been away from Harry in the Spring – multi-coloured and all dressed up in his best – has put a spirit of youth into everybody so that even the dour Lord Burghley – Harry’s guardian – laughed and leapt about.

‘Old Saturnus’ was Harry’s nick-name for Lord Burghley.

Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell

Of different flowers in odour and in hew,

Could make me any summer’s story tell,

Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew.

But neither birdsong or the odours or varied looks of the flowers could make me write comedies or make me pluck them – sticking out from the earth like erections.

Shakespeare again spells ‘hue’ as ‘hew’ = Henry Wriothesley, Earl. See Sonnet 19. (20)

Nor did I wonder at the Lillies white,

Nor praise the deep vermilion in the Rose,

They were but sweet, but figures of delight:

Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.

I didn’t enjoy the whiteness of the lily or the deep red of the rose – they were like paintings of you, not the real thing.

Yet seem’d it Winter still, and you away,

As with your shadow I with these did play.

Even the flowers and birdsong are simply ‘shadows’ – phantom copies – of Harry.

63. (99)

The forward violet thus did I chide:

‘Sweet thief whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells

If not from my love’s breath, the purple pride,

Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells?

In my love’s veins thou hast too grossly dy’d,.’

The violet is ‘forward’ because (1) it flowers early in the year and (2) it has stolen Harry’s breath and blood. Harry’s breath gives the violet its odour and Harry’s blood gives it its purple colour. This is in contrast to Sonnet 25. (130) in which Shakespeare describes Amelia’s breath as ‘reeking’. There is also a reference to Harry’s aristocratic ‘blue blood’.

The opening to this Sonnet has five lines rather than the usual four.

The Lily I condemned for thy hand,

And buds of marjoram had stol’n thy hair,

The Roses fearfully on thorns did stand,

One blushing shame, an other white despair:

The lily has stolen its whiteness from Harry’s hand and marjoram has stolen its cascading shape from Harry’s hair. Red roses are blushing for shame at having stolen their beauty from Harry – and the white roses are white from fear having perpetrated the theft.

Wild marjoram

 

A third, nor red nor white, had stol’n of both,

And to his robb’ry had annext thy breath,

But for his theft in pride of all his growth

A vengeful canker eat him up to death.

Another rose of variegated colour – red and white – had stolen both colours from Harry and added his breath as well. But at the very peak of its growth a disease sentences it to death for the theft and executes it.

More flowers I noted, yet I none could see,

But sweet, or colour, it had stol’n from thee.

Every flower that Shakespeare sees around Stratford has stolen its colour and odour from Harry.

64. (113)

Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind,

And that which governs me to go about,

Doth part his function, and is partly blind,

Seems seeing, but effectually is out:

Shakespeare, in this Sonnet, is like Hamlet who sees his dead father in his ‘mind’s eye’. Shakespeare is so obsessed with Harry that his eyes are only partly working – and sometimes not working at all. There is also an erotic connation of ‘eye’=’penis’ – as in Sonnet 8. (7) Shakespeare is thinking erotic thoughts about Harry.

For it no form delivers to the heart

Of bird, of flow’r, or shape which it doth latch;

Of his quick objects hath the mind no part,

Nor his own vision holds what it doth catch:

For although the eye sees things – birds and flowers, his eye does not report them as they are to Shakespeare’s understanding.

For if it see the rud’st or gentlest sight,

The most sweet-favour or deformed’st creature,

The mountain, or the sea, the day, or night,

The Crow, or Dove, it shapes them to your feature.

Shakespeare says that everything he sees – beautiful or ugly, living or not living – becomes an image of Harry.

Incapable of more, replete with you,

My most true mind thus maketh mine untrue.

Shakespeare is incapable of taking anything in because his mind is so full of Harry. Harry is Shakespeare’s ‘true mind’ – a faithful and intelligent young man – but he makes Shakespeare’s own mind ‘untrue’ because all he can think of is Harry.

64. (114)

Or whether doth my mind being crown’d with you

Drink up the monarch’s plague, this flattery?

Or whether shall I say mine eye saith true,

And that your love taught it this Alchemy,

Shakespeare asks whether his mind is being flattered by his eye or whether what it sees is the truth – reality transformed by alchemy into the shape of Harry. Alchemy turned base matter into gold.

To make of monsters, and things indigest,

Such cherubins as your sweet self resemble,

Creating every bad a perfect best

As fast as objects to his beams assemble:

The alchemy transforms horrible, hideous things into angels like Harry – and these bad things transform themselves into beautiful things as Shakespeare looks at them.

Oh ’tis the first, ’tis flatt’ry in my seeing,

And my great mind most kingly drinks it up;

Mine eye well knows what with his gust is ‘greeing,

And to his palate doth prepare the cup.

Shakespeare decides that it is the first idea – that his eye flatters his mind – not that it sees things as they really – just as kings are flattered by their followers. Shakespeare knows exactly what will be agreeable to his mind in the way a flatterer knows the taste of the monarch as he prepares a cup for him to drink.

If it be poison’d, ’tis the lesser sin,

That mine eye loves it and doth first begin.

If the drink is poisoned, at least Shakespeare will try it first before he gives it to the king – Shakespeare’s eye will be poisoned before his mind is. His mind will retain its integrity.

To read ‘Venus and Adonis’, Part 22, click: HERE