The Shakespeare Code

It’s best to read ‘Love and Rellion’ Part 38 first.

Queen Elizabeth died on 24th March, 1603.

Robert Carey, the late Lord Hunsdon’s youngest son, had informed King James VI of Scotland that Elizabeth’s death was imminent – and told him not to leave Edinburgh. When Elizabeth died, Lady Scrope, Carey’s sister,dropped a sapphire ring down to him from Elizabeth’s window – and he galloped through the night with the news – falling off his horse and gashing his head in the process.

When James VI of Scotland also became James I of England, everything turned round.

Because both the Earl of Essex and Harry had rebelled against Elizabeth to ensure that James succeeded to the throne, they now were treated as heroes – even though Essex was dead.

Shakespeare, on hearing the news of the Queen’s death, galloped down from Scotland and visited Harry in the Tower where he was still imprisoned for treason and waiting for the King’s Pardon.

Harry, along with many others, including Shakespeare, thought that he would become the King’s English lover – and so commissioned a ‘wooing portrait’ to send to the new King.

This portrait was a rushed job – between the 24th March and the beginning of April – and did its best to flatter the sitter.

His head is uncovered because (1) He is in the ‘presence’ of James (2) His hair is down on his shoulders as this was an act of bridal submission, just as in his wife’s bridal painting.

Harry is extending his left hand to the King – again in an act of bridal submission. It is in a sling, to show that he has not yet fully recovered from his illnesses in the Tower – and there are red beads on his wrist, a ‘cure’ at the time for rheumatism.

Harry had suffered from ‘the quatern ague’ in the Tower and ‘swelling in his legs and other parts’. The Lieutenant of the Tower had moved Harry to more salubrious rooms in the Tower – but had thought that Harry would die.

Harry’s coat of arms on his Bible shows that the painting was executed after his title was restored to him by Parliament on 26th March – and the date of the painting is April 1603. The exact date is not painted in, but was intended to be the date of his release from the Tower by James. The painting also has the exact date of his incarceration – 8th February, 1600.

For more details about the painting, please see: The Earl of Southampton and Trixie the Cat.

Shakespeare wrote two Sonnets to accompany the portrait – and they are addressed directly to his friend, King James. They were written in great speed at the end of March/beginning of April, 1603.

146. (67)

Ah wherefore with infection should he live

And with his presence grace impiety,

That sin by him advantage should achieve

And lace itself with his society?

Why should Harry still be locked up in the Tower of London, living with ‘infection’ = (1) The literal infection of the Tower with its vermin. (That’s one of the reasons why Harry has a cat!) (2) The moral infection of being imprisoned with criminals. (3) The infection of his own illness – his arm is still in a sling.

And why should he give the grace of his being to sinful fellow convicts and allow them to hobnob with him as equals?

The ‘lace’ image ties in with the bows, representing the flag of Scotland, that are laced into Harry’s gloves…

Why should false painting imitate his cheek

And steal dead seeming of his living hew?

Why should poor beauty indirectly seek

Roses of shadow, since his Rose is true?

Why should this artificial representation of Harry try to imitate the rosiness of his cheek and deaden the vibrant life of his ‘hew’. [‘Hew’ = (1) ‘Hue’ (2) Acrostic for ‘Henry Wriothesley Earl’. This ‘hew’ coded reference is also employed in Sonnets 60. (104) 62. (98) and 91. (82). In Sonnet 19. (20) it is written Hews and is code for ‘Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton’.

Why should beauty seek out artificial roses in a painting while Harry’s ‘Rose’ is a genuine living one.

‘Rose’ = (1) The rose colour in Harry’s cheek….

…..(2) A reference to the way the Wriothesleys spelt and pronounced their name – ‘Ryosely’.

Shakespeare calls Harry ‘my Rose’ in Sonnet 121. (109)

Why should he live, now nature bankrupt is,

Beggar’d of blood to blush through lively veins?

For she hath no exchequer now but his,

And priv’d of many, lives upon his gains.

Shakespeare claims that Nature’s blood has been stolen away from her and no longer pumps through the veins of the living….

This is a reference to the beheading of the Earl of Essex two years earlier…

……Harry is now the only source of blood and bankrupt Dame Nature has to live on his supplies since Queen Elizabeth had deprived her of so many lives by executing her subjects……

[‘priv’d’ is a change from the Quarto’s ‘proud’ – a change suggested by John Kerrigan]

In the painting, Harry is wearing black to suggest mourning for Essex and the dark ring he is wearing could be a memorial ring for Essex.  Also a pane in the window of Harry’s room is smashed, suggesting Essex’s life cut short.

O him she stores, to show what wealth she had

In days long since, before these last so bad.

Nature keeps Harry in store to show the world how many handsome young aristocrats she had before Elizabeth killed them.

In Shakespeare’s mind, the last days of the Old Queen’s reign were bad indeed.

A dislike – hatred even – of Elizabeth runs through the Sonnets.

147. (68)

This is a companion piece to the sonnet above. Shakespeare evokes a simpler former age before the artifices of make-up and wigs (made up of the hair of the dead) became the rage.

Thus is his cheek the map of days out-worn

When beauty liv’d and died as flowers do now;

Before these bastard signs of fair were born,

Or durst inhabit on a living brow;

Harry reminds us of how natural beauty used to be – like a flower that lived and died. Before wigs – the ‘bastard signs of fair’ – came into existence – and put dead hair on living heads. Harry’s flowing locks in the paining are clearly his own.

The ‘bastard’ signs = (1) Wigs have no true lineage – they are like children born out of wedlock (2) Wigs were favoured by Queen Elizabeth – and Catholics regarded her as a ‘bastard’ because they did not recognise Henry VIII’s divorce of Katherine of Aragon…..

…… nor his marriage to Anne Boleyn.

A number of hard-line Catholics thought that Anne was in fact the King’s illegitimate daughter.

Before the golden tresses of the dead,

The right of sepulchres, were shorn away,

To live a second life on second head

Ere beauty’s dead fleece made another gay;

Harry’s natural beauty reminds Shakespeare of the time before golden locks, instead of being left, rightly, on a corpse, were cut away to be made into wigs – making people happy although they were wearing a dead person’s hair.

This was very much the teaching of Shakespeare’s ‘mentor’ – Robert Crowley – the balladeer and Rector of St. Giles, Cripplegate.

In him those holy antique hours are seen,

Without all ornament, itself and true,

Making no summer of an other’s greene,

Robbing no old to dress his beauty new;

In Harry Shakespeare is reminded of what the past used to be like, without any artifice – ‘holy’ ‘itself and true’ because England was still a Roman Catholic Country. Harry would never plunder a corpse to make its ‘springtime’ (‘greene’) adorn his summer – or rob people who are ‘old’ to make his own beauty ‘new’ again.

As Queen Elizabeth had done with her many red wigs.

And him as for a map doth Nature store,

To show false Art what beauty was of yore.

Nature treats Harry as a guide to what the world was like before the reign of Elizabeth – when England was still a Roman Catholic country.

By repeating the ‘map’ idea of Harry in the final couplet, Shakespeare shows signs of haste in completing the Sonnet.

On 5^th April, 1603, King James responds to the painting and the Sonnets by writing to the Privy Council about Southampton:

Although we are now resolved, as well in regard of the great and honest affection borne unto us by the Earl of Southampton as in respect of his good parts enabling him for the service of us, and the state, to extend our grace and favour towards him….we have thought meet to give you notice of our pleasure….which is only this : Because the place is unwholesome and dolorous to him to whose body and mind we would give present comfort, intending unto him much further grace and favour, we have written to the Lieutenant of the Tower to deliver him out of prison presently to go to any such place as he shall choose in or near our city of London, there to carry himself in such quiet and honest form as we know he will think meet in his own discretion, until the body of our state, now assembled, shall come unto us, at which time we are pleased he shall also come to our presence, for that as it is on us that his only hope dependeth, so we will reserve those works of further favours until the time he be-holdeth our own eyes, whereof as we know the comfort will be great unto him so it will be contentment to us to have opportunity to declare our estimation of him…

The painting and the Sonnets had certainly had the required effect on the King.

9th April, 1603. King James’s letter arrives and Harry is released from the Tower. Shakespeare has a pair of Sonnets ready to celebrate the event.

148. (107) 1603

Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul

Of the wide world, dreaming on things to come,

Can yet the lease of my true love control,

Suppos’d as forfeit to a confin’d doom.

Neither my own anxieties nor the predictions of everybody about the future can stop the release from the Tower of my lover – who everyone thought would die in prison.

The mortal Moon hath her eclipse indur’d,

And the sad Augurs mock their own presage;

Incertainties now crown them-selves assur’d,

And peace proclaims Olives of endless age.

Queen Elizabeth – whom Sir Walter Raleigh compared to Cynthia, the Moon-Goddess – has proved to be a human being after all – has died – and those who predicted strife and civil war at her death have been proved wrong. Anxieties have given way to confidence and the peace that greeted the accession of King James promise peace for all time.

Now with the drops of this most balmy time,

My love looks fresh and death to me subscribes,

Since spite of him I’ll live in this poor rime,

While he insults ore dull and speechless tribes;

The accession of James has been like a healing balm both to England and to Harry and to Shakespeare himself. Harry, who has been sick in the Tower, now looks young and well and death now bows down to me since I will live in this verse while death conquers whole swathes of people who have no culture.

And thou in this shalt find thy monument,

When tyrants’ crests and tombs of brass are spent.

And this poem, Harry, will be your monument – when the crests and brass tombs of tyrants like Elizabeth will be in ruins.

‘Crests’ is a coded dig at Elizabeth. She once described her self as ‘cloven and not crested.’ Here Shakespeare gives her a crest and turns her into a man – a rumour about Elizabeth that had circulated for years.

But even her honorary penis will crumble into dust.

149. (108)

What’s in the brain that Ink may character,

Which hath not figur’d to thee my true spirit?

What’s new to speak, what now to register,

That may express my love, or thy dear merit?

What thought can I have and translate into verse that I haven’t used before to reveal my inmost feelings about you, Harry. What new statement can I make to you? What now should I write that can express my love for you or your valuable worth?

Nothing sweet boy, but yet like prayers divine

I must each day say ore the very same,

Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,

Even as when first I hallowed thy fair name.

There isn’t anything, ‘sweet boy’ but I must repeat the same thing, the way we say our prayers each day.

I don’t regard any old ‘thing’ as old, you are mine and I am yours even when I honoured your name the way I honour God in the Lord’s Prayer – ‘Hallowed be thy name’.

Shakespeare calls Harry ‘sweet boy’ – even though in 1603 he was thirty. Harry still seems a ‘sweet boy’ to Shakespeare – the sixteen year old boy he first clapped eyes on in 1590 – even though he has aged in the Tower.

The ‘old thing’ is Shakespeare’s usual play on ‘thing’ = ‘penis’. Because the two men are one ‘Ung par tout’ – even Shakespeare’s ‘old penis will seem new, because Southampton is the younger man with the younger penis. Shakespeare was pushing forty when he wrote this Sonnet.

Shakespeare often uses religious language and imagery to express his love for Harry.

So that eternal love in love’s fresh case,

Weighs not the dust and injury of age;

Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place,

But makes antiquity for aye his page:

Because Shakespeare’s love for Harry will last to eternity it will always seem fresh and new and is impervious to the ageing process. Nor does eternal love take notice of inevitable wrinkles but turns Old Father Time into an obedient page-boy, attending on it.

Finding the first conceit of love there bred,

Where time and outward form would show it dead.

Eternal love makes me look at you and your body in the same way it did when you were young – though if I took regard notice the aging process and what you look like on the outside now – these first rapturous feelings would have died.

Shakespeare is acknowledging the loss of looks that Harry has suffered locked up in the Tower.

To read ‘The Washed Out Coronation’, Part 40, click: HERE