The Shakespeare Code

It’s best to read ‘The Rival Poet (I) Part 27 first.

1594. Titchfield.

83. (103)

Alack what poverty my Muse brings forth,

That having such a scope to show her pride,

The argument all bare is of more worth

Then when it hath my added praise beside.

Shakespeare admits his Muse is totally inadequate given what its subject is – Harry. Just this theme itself – with no embellishement – is worth more than Shakespeare can add to it.

Oh blame me not if I no more can write!

Look in your glass and there appears a face

That over-goes my blunt invention quite,

Dulling my lines, and doing me disgrace.

But don’t blame me, Shakespeare argues, if I cannot write about you any more. Look in a mirror and there is a face – (1) a literal face and (2)  Harry’s genitals – which cannot be described with my dull talent – which makes my lines of verse boring and brings me disgrace.

Sonnets in which ‘face’ can = ‘genitals’ see Sonnets 4.(3), 32. (130), 33.(137), 37. (147).

Were it not sinful, then, striving to mend,

To mar the subject that before was well?

For to no other pass my verses tend

Then of your graces and your gifts to tell.

Isn’t it wrong to try to improve a subject that was fine in the first place – and in so doing spoil it? My verse has no other purpose than to praise your moral and physical beauty.

And more, much more, than in my verse can sit

Your own glass shows you, when you look in it.

And your mirror will praise you much, much more, when you gaze at it, than my verse ever can.

Shakespeare often uses ‘blunt’ in his Sonnets and Complaint six times. ‘Blunt’ can have a literal meaning – but it can also suggest (1) an un-erect penis that is not ‘sharpened’ like an erect one (2) Charles Blount (pronounced ‘Blunt’ who in 1594 was made 6th Baron Mountjoy.

Charles Blount was part of the Essex/Southampton entourage. He was the lover of Penelope Rich – the sister of the Earl of Essex. Shakespeare plays on Blount’s name in Love’s Labour’s Lost….

See: ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost Revisited. 3. Aristocratic Actors.’

Shakespeare also plays with the words ‘rich’ and ‘manners’ in the Sonnets – after Penelope Rich and Roger Manners, 5th Earl of Rutland – who is also mentioned in Love’s Labour’s Lost.’

Shakespeare is clearly starting to be irritated by Harry’s insistence that all his poetry should be devoted to himself! He has not welcomed Shakespeare’s move into new territory with Lucrece.

The end couplet really has a sting to it:

And more, much more, than in my verse can sit

Your own glass shows you, when you look in it.

What Shakespeare is implying is that Harry, when he looks into a mirror, admires himself in a way that Shakespeare cannot possibly equal.

But Shakespeare needs Harry and loves him. He relies on the fact that Harry, intellectually, is a beat or two behind…..

84. (105)

Let not my love be call’d Idolat’ry,

Nor my beloved as an Idol show,

Since all alike my songs and praises be,

To one, of one, still such, and ever so.

Queen Elizabeth’s conversion of England from Roman Catholicism to Calvinist Protestantism was firmly established by 1594. Anyone found to possess a statue of the Virgin Mary……

…..or items for ‘massing’, would be thrown into jail. If they were a priest their fate would be far worse…

The Southampton family at Titchfield had a private chapel where the old Latin Mass would have been celebrated in secret – while in public they would have attended St. Peter’s Church where the ‘new’ English Communion Service would have been held.

In 1594 Mary Southampton commissioned the tomb for the Southampton family there…..

Shakespeare and Harry clung on to the Old Faith – and Shakespeare incorporated its imagery into their gay love. Sonnet 70. (31) talks about Shakespeare’s ‘dear religious love’.

In this Sonnet, Shakespeare says his worship of Harry might well be mistaken for the ‘idolatry’ – and Harry himself taken for a religious ‘idol’ – especially as his praise for Harry is ‘all alike’ – ‘To one, of one, still such and ever so.’ This echoes the phrasing of the Book of Common Prayer, describing the Holy Trinity – ‘the Three-in-One’: ‘Such as the father is, such is the son and such is the Holy Ghost.’

It also echoes the Southampton family motto: ‘Ung part tout’ – ‘One for All’ or ‘All is one’ – which is also used in Sonnets 9. (8), 26.(135), 40.(133), 47.(42), 70.(31).

Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,

Still constant in a wondrous excellence;

Therefore my verse to constancy confin’d,

One thing expressing, leaves out difference.

Shakespeare’s love for Harry is natural and faithful – both now and in the future – so it’s no surprise that his verse, like his love, all has a similar theme, expressing ‘one thing’ – (1) Harry and (2) Harry’s penis.

Fair, kind, and true, is all my argument,

Fair, kind, and true, varying to other words,

And in this change is my invention spent.

Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.

Shakespeare writes constantly about Harry’s three great qualities – his fairness, his kindness and his truth – and by describing ‘Three themes in one’ again compares Harry to the Holy Trinity.

Fair, kind, and true, have often liv’d alone,

Which three till now, never kept seat in one.

Shakespeare said that you could find one person who was handsome, one that gentle and one that was faithful – but till the birth of Harry, all three qualities never existed in one individual.

Again, the Southampton family motto – ‘Ung Par Tout’ – ‘All in One’ is evoked.

Shakespeare, in this Sonnet, risks blasphemy in the eyes of the Protestants (and possibly the Catholics!) so it would have to be kept secret – shown, if at all, only to Shakespeare and Harry’s ‘private friends’.

Thus, the lack of variation in the theme of Shakespeare’s Sonnets is converted by Shakespeare into a proof of his love for Harry…..

85. (76)

Why is my verse so barren of new pride?

So far from variation or quick change?

Why with the time do I not glance aside

To new-found methods, and to compounds strange?

Shakespeare gives more reasons to justify the ‘monotony’ of his verse. It is ‘barren’ like an infertile woman and lacking ‘pride’ – the sexual force that produces erections. He asks why he doesn’t adopt the new fashions – as in herbalism, where herbalists, instead of prescribing one herb for a complaint, had started to prescribe several herbs (‘compounds’).

Why write I still all one, ever the same,

And keep invention in a noted weed,

That every word doth almost tell my name,

Showing their birth, and where they did proceed?

Echoing ‘Ung par tout’ – ‘all one’ – Shakespeare says he confines his verse to one form for which he is well-known, the Sonnet form (derived from Sir Philip Sidney) – in the way a man will be known for the clothes he wears – ‘noted weed’.

Shakespeare’s verse is an aspect of Shakespeare the man – and his style is known to everyone.

O know sweet love, I always write of you,

And you and love are still my argument:

So all my best is dressing old words new,

Spending again what is already spent:

Shakespeare says that his verse is always about Harry – and Shakespeare’s love for him. So Shakespeare task is to find new forms for old words – like dressing them up in new clothes – and producing new verse daily – in the way he continues to ejaculate when he has already ejaculated before.

‘Spend’ can = ‘ejaculate’.  See Sonnets 5. (4), 10.(9), 34. (149)

For as the Sun is daily new and old,

So is my love still telling what is told.

Shakespeare compares his production of love verse for Harry to the natural daily process of the sun rising and setting – which can also have a sexual suggestion to Shakespeare.

See Sonnet 8. (7)

86. (21)

So is it not with me as with that Muse,

Stirr’d by a painted beauty to his verse,

Who heaven itself for ornament doth use,

And every fair with his fair doth rehearse,

The ‘Muse’ here changes sex from female to male and becomes George Chapman!

Shakespeare says he is not like Chapman who has been inspired by a miniature of Harry to write his flattering verse.

Chapman uses heaven, a holy place, for its decorative vale – ‘ornament’ – and uses everything beautiful in the world to compare with ‘his fair’ Harry.

Chapman, in Shakespeare’s eyes, is now audaciously claiming Harry as his own.

Making a couplement of proud compare

With Sun and Moon, with earth and sea’s rich gems:

With April’s first born flowers and all things rare,

That heaven’s air in this huge rondure hems.

Chapman compare Harry grandiosely with the sun and the moon, the gems in the earth and the sea, the first flowers of spring and everything precious ‘that heaven’s air in this huge rondure hems’ – meaning (1) that this huge rondure hem in heaven’s air or (2) that heaven’s air hems in this huge rondure’.

Shakespeare here is parodying Chapman’s inflated, ambiguous language.

O let me true in love but truly write,

And then believe me: my love is as fair

As any mother’s child, though not so bright

As those gold candles fixt in heaven’s air:

Shakespeare says because his love for Harry is sincere, so is the language in which he writes to him. He claims that Harry is as beautiful as any person ever born to any mother – but not as ‘bright as those gold candles fixt in heaven’s air’ i.e., in simple language, stars. Shakespeare here is attacking the artificiality of Chapman’s language – and so questioning its sincerity.

Let them say more that like of hear-say well,

I will not praise that purpose not to sell.

Shakespeare urges Chapman to continue, if he wants, with second-hand ideas: Shakespeare will not praise Harry the way Chapman does, like a merchant talking up the goods he wants to sell.

Here Shakespeare, with ‘purpose not to sell’, plays again on Chapman’s name = merchant. See Sonnet 82. (102).

To read ‘The Rival Poet (III), Part 29, click: HERE