The Shakespeare Code

It’s best to read ‘Venus and Adonis’ Part 22 first.

1593. Stratford-upon-Avon.

At the end of May, 1593, Christopher Marlowe was killed in a drunken, gay brawl in Deptford….

He was born at the end of February, 1564 while Shakespeare was born at the end of April in the same year. Both their fathers worked with leather, Kit’s as a cobbler and Shakespeare’s as a glover.

When Shakespeare had fled to London in his late teens to escape Catholic persecution, he had shacked up with Thomas Kyd – who was also a friend of Marlowe’s. Kyd and Marlowe were later to share lodgings.

Marlowe’s line: ‘Whoever loved who loved not at first sight’ profoundly influenced Shakespeare’s art and work. And Marlowe himself brought out Shakespeare’s gay side.

The following two Sonnets reveal that Shakespeare and Marlowe had been lovers – and that Shakespeare had been involved in promiscuous gay life before he became part of the Southampton family entourage at Titchfield.

Shakespeare, still at Stratford and away from Harry, is reflecting on Marlowe’s death which has upset him deeply.

69. (30)

When to the Sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,

And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:

Shakespeare compares the thoughts he has to a court session as he summons up the past like a witness at a trial. He regrets that the things he sought he no longer has and that things he held dear have now vanished.

‘Things’ can = ‘penises’. So ‘many a thing I sought’ is Shakepeare’s acknowledgement of his own promiscuous gay past before he met Harry.

Then can I drown an eye (un-us’d to flow)

For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,

And weep a fresh love’s long since cancell’d woe,

And moan th’expense of many a vanisht sight.

Shakespeare admits that it is not his habit to weep, but he does so, remembering his dear friends who are now dead – like Kit Marlowe – and reliving the painful memories of affairs he thought he had long got over.

Then can I grieve at grievances fore-gone,

And heavily from woe to woe tell ore

The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,

Which I new pay as if not paid before.

Sadness from the past comes flooding back to Shakespeare and he relives the agonies of love afresh as though he had not experienced them before.

(The ‘oh”oh’ ‘or’ ‘or’ ‘oh”or’ sounds in this stanza sound like Shakespeare groaning at loss….)

But if the while I think on thee (dear friend)

All losses are restor’d, and sorrows end.

But just the thought of Harry dispels all this sadness and lost.

70. (31)

Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts,

Which I, by lacking, have supposed dead,

And there reigns Love, and all Love’s loving parts,

And all those friends which I thought buried.

Your breast, Harry, is made all the more valuable for being filled with the hearts of lovers – like Kit Marlowe – who I thought were either literally dead – or at lest dead to me.  Love reigns supreme there – and everything that comes along with love – both romance and sexual activity – and all the people I thought I would see no more or think about no more.

How many a holy and obsequious tear

Hath dear religious love stol’n from mine eye,

As interest of the dead, which now appear

But things remov’d that hidden in thee lie.

Shakespeare has grieved for his lovers as in a religious rite – gay love for Shakespeare is holy – but now realises that his lovers are not dead at all but get a second life with Harry – they are simply ‘things removed’ that now all live in Harry.

The ‘tears’ that are shed by Shakespeare’s ‘eye’ is also gay banter. The ‘eye’ can represent the genital area and the ‘tear’ seminal emission. And ‘thing’, of course can = ‘penis’.

Thou art the grave where buried love doth live,

Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone,

Who all their parts of me to thee did give,

That due of many now is thine alone.

Shakespeare argues, paradoxically, that Harry is the grave where not only his literally dead lover, Kit, is reborn, but all his many former lovers as well. Lovers who once gave Shakespeare their minds and bodies now take them away from Shakespeare to give to Southampton. This means that Shakespeare – who has led a promiscuous life before meeting Harry – is now completely faithful to him because all Shakespeare’s lovers are contained in Harry himself.

Their images I lov’d, I view in thee,

And thou (all they) hast all the all of me.

The men I loved before I now see in you and you – representing all of them – possess me completely – spiritually, emotionally and physically.

There is a suggestion here that Shakespeare can act as a passive sexual partner to Harry. ‘All’ can = ‘awl’ – a tool to piece wood and leather that can represent the penis. Harry, when he plays a dominant role, becomes an ‘awl’ to Shakespeare.

Shakespeare puns on ‘all’ and ‘awl’ in Julius Caesar:

Truly, sir, all that I live by is with the awl: I
meddle with no tradesman’s matters, nor women’s
matters, but with awl. I am, indeed, sir, a surgeon
to old shoes; when they are in great danger, I
recover them. As proper men as ever trod upon
neat’s leather have gone upon my handiwork

There is also a play on the Southampton family motto: ‘Une par tout’ – ‘One for all’ or ‘one becomes all’ – as Harry, though one person, becomes all of Harry’s former lovers.

But this ‘honeymoon’ period in Shakespeare’s affair with Harry was about to end…..

To read ‘Harry’s Infidelity’, Part 24, click: HERE