The Shakespeare Code

It’s best to read ‘The Gay Wooing Portrait’ Part 39 first.

CORONATION OF KING JAMES

James was crowned the King of England (as well as Scotland) on 25^th July 1603. A plague was raging, the rain gushed down, high winds blew down the few ornamentations and the King was reluctant to appear in public.

As a member of the King’s Men, Shakespeare was a Groom of the Chamber. This meant he wore red livery and, on one occasion at least, served with his company at the King’s Table.

Shakespeare held the canopy over the King in his procession to the Abbey – and with his theatre company helped construct pasteboard obelisks (which were known as ‘pyramids’) to line the route.

A trio of Sonnets, addressed to Time.

150. (123)

No! Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change:

Thy pyramids built up with newer might

To me are nothing novel, nothing strange,

They are but dressings of a former sight;

Shakespeare says that with a new King everything has changed – but he won’t change in his love for Harry. The pasteboard obelisks, dedicated to Time, are built up with a different sort of ingenuity from the original ones of stone – but they are nothing strange to him. He has seen obelisks before in his journey to Rome with Harry in 1593 – especially the one newly erected in front of St. Peter’s – the last sight St. Peter was said to have seen before he was crucified.

Our dates are brief and therefore we admire

What thou dost foist upon us that is old,

And rather make them born to our desire,

Than think that we before have heard them told.

Because we are only alive for a short time, we admire things that Time foists on us – supposedly from the past – and think we have invented them ourselves, rather than copied them from experience.

Thy registers and thee I both defy,

Not wond’ring at the present, nor the past,

For thy records, and what we see doth lie,

Made more or less by thy continual haste:

Time, I defy you and all of your manifestations and will not be taken in either by your present or your past – for all historical records and what we see around us are lies – things are increased or decrease by you at random because you are always in a rush.

This I do vow and this shall ever be:

I will be true despite thy scythe and thee.

I make this eternal vow. I will be faithful to Harry, despite Father Time’s scythe – which cuts all things down – and his grim nature. nature.

151. (125)

The Venetian Ambassador described how the King arrived under a canopy supported by four rods with silver bells hanging from them, borne by men in the King’s red livery.

Were’t aught to me I bore the canopy,

With my extern the outward honouring,

Or laid great bases for eternity,

Which proves more short than waste or ruining?

Do I care that I had the honour of holding the canopy over King James – the external part of me honouring the outward appearance of things? Or set up what were meant to be obelisks representing eternity but which blew away in the wind?

Have I not seen dwellers on form and favour

Lose all, and more, by paying too much rent

For compound sweet, forgoing simple savour,

Pitiful thrivers in their gazing spent.

Have I not seen your friend, the Earl of Essex, who lived on outward appearances – seeming to be in love with Queen Elizabeth – lose everything – including his head – by paying too much ‘rent’ to the Queen.

‘Rent’ is a reference (1) To the farm on sweet wines which the Queen gave to Essex for his livelihood, and then took away after his return from the Irish Campaign (2) The semen he expended on being the Queen’s lover.

People like Essex were ‘successful’ – but all the same to be pitied – destroyed by their ‘gazing’.

‘Gazing’ refers to the moment when Essex burst into the Queen’s bedroom on his return from Ireland before she had put on her wig and make-up.

Still from Benjamin Britten’s opera ‘Gloriana’.

No, let me be obsequious in thy heart,

And take thou my oblation, poor but free,

Which is not mixt with seconds, knows no art,

But mutual render, only me for thee.

No, I have no wish to be a favourite of King James as Essex was to Elizabeth. Let me honour you in my heart and take my offering of verse – of poor quality but free from any political flattery – which is not mixed up with inferior things and is not artful and insincere – but we give love to each other mutually – I give you myself and you give me yourself.

‘Obsequious’ is reminiscent of ‘obsequy’ – a prayer used in the funeral service. This is an echo of Shakespeare’s love poem to Harry, The Phoenix and the Turtle – ‘Keep the obsequy so strict.’ – and the mention of ‘obsequious tears which Shakespeare sheds for dead gay lovers in Sonnet  70. (31)

Favourites of Kings and Queens are ‘obsequious’ in another way. They creep around in order to stay in favour.

‘Oblation’ = ‘offering or gift’ and is used in the Book of Common Prayer referring to Christ:

who made there,
by his one oblation
of himself once offered,
a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice,
oblation and satisfaction
for the sins of the whole world

Shakespeare often employs religious imagery in describing his love for Harry.

‘Mutual’ is also reminiscent of The Phoenix and the Turtle: ‘Phoenix [Harry] and the Turtle [Dove = Shakespeare] fled/In a mutual flame from thence.’

Hence, thou suborn’d Informer, a true soul

When most impeacht, stands least in thy control.

Go away Time – you false witness – who the more you try to control a loyal lover by aging him, the more free he will be.

153. (124)

If my dear love were but the child of state

It might for fortune’s bastard be unfather’d,

As subject to time’s love, or to time’s hate,

Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gather’d.

If my love for you, Harry, was the product of circumstance it might be disavowed if those circumstances changed – vulnerable to the caprices of Time – regarded as worthless or lovely – but subject, in either case, to the destruction of death.

No, it was builded far from accident;

It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls

Under the blow of thralled discontent,

Whereto th’ inviting time our fashion calls:

My love for you was created far away from circumstance: it cannot be hurt by the tyrant with false smiles or damaged by imprisonment as your two years in the Tower demonstrates – when there is every temptation to change with the times and the fashions.

It fears not policy that Heretic,

Which works on leases of short number’d hours,

But all alone stands hugely politic,

That it nor grows with heat, nor drowns with show’rs.

My love for you, Harry, isn’t afraid of short-lived political expediency but stands huge and wise, just like the holy obelisk in Rome: it is an eternal thing which doesn’t increase with flattery (‘heat’) or diminish with discouragement (‘showers’)

To this I witness call the fools of time,

Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime.

To bear witness, Harry, I call on the ‘fools of time’ whose goodness is the reason for their death and whose one crime is to be alive.’

The ‘fools of time’ are the Roman Catholic martyrs, slaughtered by Queen Elizabeth – especially Ernest Gennings – hanged drawn and quartered on 10th December, 1591,outside the London home of the Southampton family in Holborn.

He was made to wear a jester’s outfit as he was paraded through the streets.

To read ‘Shakespeare’s Poison Pen Letter’, Part 41, click here: HERE