The Shakespeare Code

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It’s best to read ‘Lilies that Fester’ Part 26 first.

1594. Stratford and Titchfield.

Shakespeare writes Lucrece based on the Titian painting he has seen in Philip II’s collection in Madrid in 1593.

He even has the same green counterpane and scarlet trousers in his poem.

This is the ‘graver labour’ he promised in his Dedication to Harry of Venus and Adonis – and again is based on a story from Ovid’s Metamorphoses which he knew from Golding’s translation – though he did have, according to Ben Jonson, ‘small latin’.

This was Shakespeare’s bid to become a great poet like Ovid……

….and to be immortal as he was.

The poem, written partly in the ‘seclusion’ of Stratford needed all this concentration.  This was to have serious dangers in his relationship with Harry who was ‘fond on praise’.

Shakespeare’s ‘absence’ both physical and emotional was exploited by another rival poet – George Chapman….

…whom Shakespeare had satirised as the sycophantic, effeminate Boyet in Love’s Labour’s Lost who flatters the Princess of France…

Now Chapman was flattering Harry – and Harry asks Shakespeare why he no longer flatters him the way he used to…

Sonnet 79 is Shakespeare’s excuse…

79. (23)

As an unperfect actor on the stage,

Who with his fear is put beside his part,

Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,

Whose strength’s abundance weakens his own heart;

Just like an incompetent actor who in a fit of stage-fright forgets his lines – or an over-excited penis that malfunctions in the act of love-making…..

So I for fear of trust, forget to say,

The perfect ceremony of love’s rite,

And in mine own love’s strength seem to decay,

Ore-charg’d with burthen of mine own love’s might:

So I, not trusting myself, neglect to tell you how much I love you and seem to love you the less when in fact I love you all the more – and that love inhibits me.

O let my books be then the eloquence

And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,

Who plead for love, and look for recompense,

More than that tongue that more hath more expresst.

Shakespeare is asking Harry to take the books he has written for him – Venus and Adonis and now Lucrece – as tokens of his love that he wants ‘recompensed’ – ‘returned’ by Harry and indeed ‘subsidised’ by Harry who will shortly come into his inheritance.

In the Dedication to Lucrece Shakespeare describes the poem as a ‘pamphlet’ – a small book.

My works show more love to you than Chapman does who simply tells you how much he loves you…

O learn to read what silent love hath writ;

To hear with eyes belongs to love’s fine wit.

Shakespeare asks Harry to interpret the Lucrece poem as a love poem to him…..

In deed, he declares his love openly in the Dedication……

THE love I dedicate to your lordship is without end; whereof this pamphlet, without beginning, is but a superfluous moiety. The warrant I have of your honourable disposition, not the worth of my untutored lines, makes it assured of acceptance. What I have done is yours; what I have to do is yours; being part in all I have, devoted yours. Were my worth greater, my duty would show greater; meantime, as it is, it is bound to your lordship, to whom I wish long life, still lengthened with all happiness.

Your lordship’s in all duty,
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

But this excuse was not good enough for Harry – he wants poems directly ABOUT him – not oblique assertions of love about somebody else!

80. (100)

Where art thou Muse that thou forget’st so long

To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?

Spend’st thou thy fury on some worthless song,

Dark’ning thy power to lend base subjects light?

Shakespeare addresses his ‘Muse’ – his poetic invention –  as though it is something different to himself – and dismisses The Rape of Lucrece as  ‘a worthless song’ because it is not about Harry. His Muse has been too busy writing about ‘a base subject’ – a rape of a woman by a man – when she should have been writing about what makes her strong – Harry himself.

Shakespeare uses the word ‘base’ 11 times in Lucrece.

For example…..

‘So shall these slaves be king, and thou their slave;
Thou nobly base, they basely dignified;
Thou their fair life, and they thy fouler grave:
Thou loathed in their shame, they in thy pride:
The lesser thing should not the greater hide;
The cedar stoops not to the base shrub’s foot,
But low shrubs wither at the cedar’s root’.

So Harry would have no doubts about the poem Shakespeare was alluding to.

Return forgetful Muse, and straight redeem

In gentle numbers time so idly spent,

Sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem,

And gives thy pen both skill and argument.

Shakespeare rebukes his Muse for wasting time on the subject of Lucrece when she should have been writing to Harry – someone who appreciates her ‘voice’ and who inspires her.

Rise resty Muse, my love’s sweet face survey,

If time have any wrinkle graven there:

If any, be a Satire to decay,

And make time’s spoils despised every where.

Shakespeare tells his lazy Muse to get out of bed and look at Harry’s face to see if any wrinkles have appeared on huis face – and, if so, to attack decay by satirising it so that everyone will despise the ravages of Time.

Give my love fame faster then time wastes life,

So thou prevent’st his scythe and crooked knife.

Shakespeare again offers Harry the prospect of fame by writing about him – and this fame will come faster than time can age Harry – and will be a way of conquering death.

Shakespeare is having a sly dig at Harry’s vanity in this Sonnet – uses irony when he is talking about the worthlessness of his poem compared to his Sonnets about Harry. It is also a back-handed compliment when he says that people will despise Harry’s decay when Shakespeare’s Muse satirises it…..they would despise it anyway!

81. (101)

O truant Muse what shall be thy amends,

For thy neglect of truth in beauty dy’d?

Both truth and beauty on my love depends:

So dost thou too, and therein dignified.

Shakespeare continues to rebuke his Muse and asks what reparation it will make for neglecting truth permanently coloured with beauty – for both truth and beauty are dependent on Harry as is Shakespeare’s Muse and gets her dignity from Harry.

Make answer Muse, wilt thou not haply say:

‘Truth needs no colour, with his colour fixt,

Beauty no pencil, beauty’s truth to lay:

But best is best, if never intermixt.’

Shakespeare expects the response of his Muse to be the assertion that truth does not need the colour of verse when it already has the permanent colouring of Harry himself and beauty needs no paintbrush to praise it – in fact, it is better if it’s left alone because it is so perfect.

Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb?

Excuse not silence so, for’t lies in thee,

To make him much out-live a gilded tomb,

And to be prais’d of ages yet to be.

Shakespeare questions this response: just because Harry needs no praise, that is no reason to withhold it from him. Shakespeare’s Muse has the power to make his memory last longer than the gilded tombs both men have seen in Rome – and to be praised by future generations not yet born.

Then do thy office Muse, I teach thee how,

To make him seem long hence, as he shows now.

Shakespeare tells his Muse to do her duty – and he will show her how to do it – to make him seem to live in future times the way he lives now.

82. (102)

My love is strengthen’d though more weak in seeming;

I love not less, though less the show appear.

That love is merchandiz’d, whose rich esteeming,

The owner’s tongue doth publish every where.

Shakespeare argues that although his love for Harry might appear more weak it is actually stronger. He claims that by writing openly about his love for Harry, Chapman is cheapening his emotion by treating it as a commodity the way a merchant would.

Shakespeare here is playing on Chapman’s name. Chapman=Merchant.

Shakespeare makes this equation even more directly in Love’s Labour’s Lost.

When Boyet grossly flatters the Princess of France – in the same way that Chapman flattered Queen Elizabeth in his Hymnus in Cynthiam – she replies:

‘Good Lord Boyet, my beauty though but mean

Needs not the painted flourish of your praise.

Beauty is bought by judgement of the eye

Not uttered by base sale of chapmen’s tongues.’

Our love was new, and then but in the spring,

When I was wont to greet it with my lays,

As Philomel in summer’s front doth sing,

And stops her pipe in growth of riper days.

Shakespeare here recalls the time of his first meeting with Harry – the spring of 1590 – four years earlier when he started to write verses to him. At that time, their love was in its Springtime – and Shakespeare ‘sang’ to Harry in the way that the nightingale sings in the spring and early summer – but stops at the end of July.

‘Philomel’ = ‘Philomela’ – a woman who, according to Ovid was raped by her sister’s husband, Tereus and is transformed into a nightingale.

Philomela was very much on Shakespeare’s mind because he compares Lucrece’s plight to hers…….

Not that the summer is less pleasant now

Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night,

But that wild music burthens every bough,

And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.

Shakespeare is quick to add that his love for Harry is still as powerful as it was before when he wrote his poems – as beautiful and sad as the voice of the nightingale that entrances the night – but now wild birdsong can be heard on every tree branch – the birds weighing down the branches (‘burden’) as they sing their songs (‘burden’). And because there are so many birds now singing – in the way Chapman does, birdsong – verse – loses its value.

Therefore like her, I some-time hold my tongue,

Because I would not dull you with my song.

Shakespeare, like the nightingale that stops singing in August, stops writing verse to Harry for fear of boring him.

To read ‘The Rival Poet (II), Part 28, click: HERE