The Shakespeare Code

It’s best to read ‘The Order of the Garter’ Part 25 first.

78. (94)

They that have pow’r to hurt, and will do none,

That do not do the thing, they most do show,

Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,

Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow:

Shakespeare here is using ‘hurt’ in the way Geoffrey Chaucer uses it in The Knight’s Tale – to arouse people sexually.

‘But I was hurt right now thurgh-out myn ye/Into my hert’ and ‘And with that sight hir beautee hurte him so.’

We know that Shakespeare was familiar with The Knight’s Tale because he based his collaboration with John Fletcher – The Two Noble Kinsmen – on the tale…..

…..also Jane, First Countess of Southampton….

Jane, First Countess of Southampton. Photo by Ross Underwood.

…..possessed a copy of the Complete Works of Chaucer, so it would have been in the Southampton family library

So ‘They that have power to hurt and will do none’ means ‘those will the ability to raise sexual attraction in others and who do not exploit the situation….’

Harry was attractive and in Sonnet 19.20 Shakespeare describes how he ‘Steals men’s eyes and women’s souls amazeth’.

‘That do not do the thing they most do show’ is a reference to elaborate men’s codpieces which Queen Elizabeth, who feminised her men, was trying to stamp out……

….despite the fact that her father Henry VIII was a great exponent…..

‘Thing’, as usual, can = ‘penis’. So Shakespeare is praising handsome, well-endowed men who display their manhood with pride but do not chase after other men’s penes.

By ‘moving others’ means arousing others – but staying unaroused themselves and not subject to temptation.

They rightly do inherit heaven’s graces,

And husband nature’s riches from expense;

They are the Lords and owners of their faces,

Others, but stewards of their excellence.

These chaste men, though they do not win the favours of other men, win favours from heaven instead (‘graces’).

‘Husbanding nature’s riches from expense’ – means ‘conserving their seminal fluid’. Shakespeare has used the image of ‘spending money’ as seminal emission in the Birthday Sonnets 5.(4) and in Sonnet 43.(129)

‘Face’ here can = ‘genitals’ as in 4.(3), 37.(147), 71.(33). So Shakespeare is saying that chaste men own their genitals, but promiscuous men are more like servants of their genitals – their ‘excellence’.

The summer’s flow’r is to the summer sweet,

Though to itself it only live and die;

But if that flow’r with base infection meet,

The basest weed out-braves his dignity:

The summer flower that lives and dies without contact with anything else – i.e., the young man who masturbates in private – is sweet in the sun’s eyes: but if that flower meets with ‘base infection’ – both venereal disease caught from lower class men AND their moral depravity – then weeds – lower ranking men – will be superior.

Harry as an aristocrat, has further to fall than lower class men.

‘Dies’ = ‘orgasm’ as in 4.(3) and 8.(7)

Harry as an aristocrat, has further to fall than lower class men.

For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;

Lilies that fester, smell far worse than weeds.

‘Thing’ = ‘penis’. Shakespeare is talking about a penis that has become ravaged with VD. He observes the truth that rotting lilies have a worse smell than weeds have.

Harry as an aristocrat, has further to fall than lower class men.

The lily was also a symbol of chastity associated in the Roman Catholic mind with the Virgin Mary.

Shakespeare often fuses his gay love with Roman Catholicism. See Sonnet 70. 31, ‘dear religious love’.

This Sonnet is crucial to an understanding of Shakespeare’s relationship with Harry. He knows that Harry’s gay association with lower class men will injure him politically – as indeed proved the case when his affair with a Captain on the Irish campaign became common knowledge.

But does Shakespeare, in his heart, want Harry to be ‘cold’ and like a ‘stone’? This would never happen anyway – Harry was warm-blooded and impetuous.

Also, compared to the aristocratic Harry, Shakespeare himself is ‘common’. But as he mixes with aristocrats, he half thinks he is one – a delusion compounded with his play acting where he plays ‘Lord Berowne’ to Harry’s ‘King of Navarre.’

Shakespeare, as we shall see, was to be savagely awakened.

Shakespeare seems to be offering Harry political advice – but in reality he wants to keep Harry for himself alone.

To read ‘The Rival Poet George Chapman’, Part 27, click: HERE