The Shakespeare Code

It’s best to read ‘The Rival Poet (III) Part 29 first.

1594. Titchfield.

91. (82)

I grant thou wert not married to my Muse,

And therefore mayst without attaint ore-look

The dedicated words which writers use

Of their fair subject, blessing every book.

Shakespeare admits that Harry was not married to Shakespeare’s Muse and so without condemnation can read the Dedications other writers use about their handsome subject – Harry – whose presence blesses any book he is mentioned in.

Thou art as fair in knowledge as in hew,

Finding thy worth a limit past my praise,

And therefore art inforc’d to seek anew,

Some fresher stamp of the time bettering days.

You, Harry, are as beautiful in knowledge as you are in looks and consider your worth far greater than the praise my verse bestows upon it…..

‘Hew’ = anagram for ‘Henry Wriothesley, Earl,’ and is spelt and used that that way also in Sonnets 19.(20) – when it is printed  Hews = Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. ‘Hew’ – as opposed to ‘hue’ also appears in Sonnets 60. (140), 62. (98), 145. (67) and twice in The Lover’s Complaint where the psychotic seducer is indentified with Harry.

Shakespeare says that Harry has no choice but to seek a new, printed book representing the ‘time-bettering days’ = (1) days in which everything, including writing, is improving (2) time-serving days, when everyone is on the make, including Chapman.

And do so love; yet when they have devis’d

What strained touches Rhetorick can lend,

Thou, truly fair, wert truly sympathiz’d,

In true plain words, by thy true telling friend.

Shakespeare encourages Harry to read books other poets have dedicated to him: but Harry will find their language strained and artificial compared to Shakespeare, who empathises with Harry completely and uses natural, truthful language to describe Harry’s natural, truthful beauty.

And their gross painting might be better us’d

Where cheeks need blood: in thee it is abus’d.

Shakespeare compares Chapman’s praise of Harry to putting make-up on Harry’s cheeks – an insult to Harry’s full-blooded complexion.

It is also another oblique attack on Chapman, who wrote sycophantic verse praising Queen Elizabeth, whose cheeks, by this stage, were so sunken she stuffed them with cloth.

Shakespeare here is following the teachings of Robert Crowley, the Rector of St. Giles, Cripplegate…..

…..who took the young Shakespeare under his wing and taught him to despise artifice in dress and make-up and artifice in language.

92. (83)

I never saw that you did painting need,

And therefore to your fair no painting set;

I found (or thought I found) you did exceed

That barren tender of a Poet’s debt.

Shakespeare claims that he never thought that Harry’s beauty needed artificial improvement – in verse or make-up – and so never ‘painted’ him in words or colours.

Shakespeare thought Harry was a cut above paying a poet to praise him with hollow, bought words.

And therefore have I slept in your report,

That you, your self being extant, well might show

How far a modern quill doth come too short,

Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow.

That’s why, Shakespeare says, he hasn’t been writing about Harry of late (having been busy with Lucrece) so that Harry, still being alive, can show how much his ‘worth’ – moral and physical –  exceeds all modern descriptions of it – worth that is still in the process of developing.

This silence for my sin you did impute,

Which shall be most my glory being dumb;

For I impair not beauty being mute,

When others would give life, and bring a tomb.

So what Harry interprets as sinful (Shakespeare’s silence) Shakespeare himself thinks of as his glory: at least by staying quiet, he hasn’t marred Harry’s beauty the way Chapman has – who kills Harry off with bad writing.

There lives more life in one of your fair eyes,

Than both your Poets can in praise devise.

Shakespeare says there is more vitality in one of Harry’s eyes than both Chapman and Shakespeare, working in collaboration, could capture.

‘Eye’ also can = ‘testicle’. Both poets were having an affair with Harry.

For ‘eye’=’testicle’ see especially Sonnet 8. (7)

93. (84)

Who is it that says most, which can say more,

Then this rich praise, that you alone, are you,

In whose confine immured is the store

Which should example where your equal grew.

Shakespeare asks who can say more than ‘Harry is Harry’ – which is hugely rich praise in itself.

Nature is locked up in you – nature which ought to be producing your equal but cannot. You are unique.

Lean penury within that Pen doth dwell,

That to his subject lends not some small glory;

But he that writes of you, if he can tell

That you are you, so dignifies his story.

A writer is utterly mean who does not give a glory of some sort to you: but if a writer can express that ‘you are you’ that alone makes his verse worth while.

Let him but copy what in you is writ,

Not making worse what nature made so clear,

And such a counter-part shall fame his wit,

Making his style admired every where.

If a writer can simply copy what occurs in you naturally – not marring the clear lines that nature has set down – his intelligence and talent  will become world-famous and his writing style praised wherever he goes.

You to your beauteous blessings add a curse,

Being fond on praise, which makes your praises worse.

But Harry – in the midst of his advantages – is cursed. He loves being praised – and so inspires rubbish verse like Chapman’s.

94. (85)

My tongue-tied Muse in manners holds her still,

While comments of your praise, richly compil’d,

Reserve their Character with golden quill,

And precious phrase by all the Muses fil’d.

Out of good ‘manners’ my inarticulate Muse remains inactive while Chapman praises you with a rich vocabulary and golden style of writing, refined by all the other nine Muses.

‘Manners’ is a coded reference to  Roger Manners, Fifth Earl of Rutland…..

…..and ‘richly’ to Lady Penelope Rich…….

Both these aristocrats performed in the original production of Love’s labour’s Lost at Titchfield in 1592.

See: Aristocratic Actors

Also: Penelope Rich plays the Princess of France.

I think good thoughts whilst other write good words,

And like unlettered clerk still cry ‘Amen’

To every Hymn that able spirit affords,

In polisht form of well refined pen.

Shakespeare claims that he thinks good thoughts while ‘spirit’ Chapman writes articulate verse and, like an illiterate cleric, Shakespeare cries ‘Amen’  at the end of every polished and refined hymn to Harry which Chapman composes.

‘Hymn’ is a reference to the sycophantic poem Chapman wrote  in praise of Queen Elizabeth, Hymnus in Cynthiam, which was published in 1594.

Hearing you prais’d, I say ‘Tis so, tis true’,

And to the most of praise add some-thing more;

But that is in my thought, whose love to you

(Though words come hind-most) holds his rank before;

Shakespeare listens to Chapman’s praise and affirms it – but adds something more: his thoughts of love for Harry – which is greater than any words can be.

Then others, for the breath of words respect,

Me for my dumb thoughts, speaking in effect.

Shakespeare says that Harry should respect Chapman for his ‘breath of words’ (words that are just breath) but he should also respect Shakespeare for his loving thoughts which are not expressed in words but in actions.

95. (86)

Was it the proud full sail of his great verse,

Bound for the prize of (all too precious) you,

That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse,

Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew?

Shakespeare asks whether he was intimidated by the thought that Chapman’s ‘great’ verse was heading towards Harry – and this is what made his ideas – ripe and ready to be converted into verse – die within his brain, converting what gave them birth – his brain – into their tomb.

‘The proud full sail of his great verse’ suggests, also, Chapman’s sexual excitement at ‘wooing’ Harry. (‘Proud’ can = ‘erect’).

Shakespeare is suggesting Chapman is approaching Harry as a sexual predator and that Harry is his ‘prize’.

Also, ‘sail’=’sale’ – another play on Chapman as Merchant.

Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write,

Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead?

No, neither he, nor his compeers by night

Giving him aid, my verse astonished.

Shakespeare asks if it was the ‘spirit’ of Chapman – taught to write by spirits of the dead, like Homer, that Chapman summons up – that had killed him. But he rejects the idea – also that it was Chapman’s ‘compeers by night giving him aid’ that stifled Shakespeare’s writing.

The ‘compeers by night’ were the loose collection of free-thinkers – Matthew Roydon, the mathematician, Ferdinando Lord Strange…

…the ‘Wizard Earl’, 9th Earl of Northumberland…….

…..and George Carey (later 2nd Lord Hunsdon)….

…..all dedicatees of Chapman’s The Shadow of Night – and sent up by Shakespeare as ‘the school of night’ in Love’s Labour’s Lost.

‘School’ has an additional association with gambling (‘bank and school’ ) and the men loved to gamble late into the night.

‘Compeers’ = ‘Chapman’s equals’. But some were literal Peers as well!

‘Aid’ also means the material aid the men gave Chapman – whose inheritance as youngest son had been £100 and two silver spoons.

He, nor that affable familiar ghost

Which nightly gulls him with intelligence,

As victors of my silence cannot boast,

I was not sick of any fear from thence.

Neither Chapman nor that friendly, genial ghost who comes to Chapman each night and bamboozles him with his ‘intelligence’ are not the reason for Shakespeare’s poetic silence: neither Chapman nor the ghost scared him.

The ghost is of Christopher Marlowe…..

…….Shakespeare’s friend and lover who had died the year before. The ‘intelligence’ is (1) Marlowe’s own native wit and (2) a reference to the spying activities Marlowe had undertaken for the State in the Lowlands – rather in the way that Shakespeare and Harry had spied for the Earl of Essex in Europe in 1593.

Marlowe had died the year before (1593) before completing his poem Hero and Leander. Chapman claimed that Marlowe came to him to dictate the second half of the poem which was published four years later in 1598.

But when your countenance fill’d up his line,

Then lackt I matter, that infeebl’d mine.

Shakespeare says it was the beauty of Harry’s face that Chapman described – not the verse itself – that caused Shakespeare to lose poetic heart.

To read ‘Shakespeare’s Walk Out’, Part 31, click: HERE