The Shakespeare Code

It’s best to read ‘The Washed Out Coronation’  Part 40 first.

Harry did NOT become the favourite of King James. He had aged in the Tower – and the King preferred younger men.

Even at the Coronation itself, the Venetian Ambassador reported how the young Earl of Pembroke’s had kissed the King full on his lips. The Ambassador had made a mistake, though, it was Pembroke’s nineteen year old brother, Philip who had done this – but the Earl was vying with him for James’s favour as well.

Harry, pushed from the centre of power – and not trusted by the Secretary of State Robert Cecil…..

 …….started to become bitterly homophobic.

There is a two year Sonnet silence from Shakespeare…….

……then matters come to a head on St. David’s Day, 4^th March, 1605…….

Elizabeth Vernon finally produces a son for Harry who was christened in the Chapel at Greenwich on 24th March. King James was in attendance as the boy’s Godfather.

Shakespeare, it seems, was not.

As we know from his Sonnets (and some of his plays) Shakespeare was terrified of rejection by Harry.

Now it happened. Harry wanted his son to be a brave, masculine soldier….

So his father’s gay past had to be denied….

And Shakespeare, the player, had to go.

Shakespeare responded by writing Harry the most poisonous poem of all time…..

153. (126) . Shortly after March 1605…

O thou my lovely Boy who in thy power

Dost hold time’s fickle glass, his sickle’s hour:

Who hast by waning grown, and therein show’st

Thy lover’s withering, as thy sweet self grow’st;

My ‘lovely boy’ who seems to have complete control of Father Time’s capricious hour-glass and his ‘sickle’s hour’ – the hour of death when his scythe cut’s life away – who has performed the miracle of growing bigger by diminishing (‘waning’ like the Moon).

i.e., he has produced a son, the way Shakespeare urged him to do in Sonnet 11. (12) where he uses the same ‘waning’ imagery.

‘As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou grow’st

In one of thine, from that which thou departests.

And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestow’st

Thou may call thine, when thou from youth convertest’

Who by doing this has caused his lover (i.e., me) to wilt while his baby boy grows…..

‘Self’ can mean child – as it does in Sonnet 10. (11)

‘Make thee another self for love of me

That beauty may still live in thine and thee’.

And Shakespeare also uses the phrase ‘sweet self’ to mean Harry’s baby in Sonnet 4. (5):

‘For having traffic with thyself alone’ (i.e. by masturbating and not having sexual intercourse)

‘Thou of thyself they sweet self dost deceive’. (i.e. you deprive yourself the joy of having a sweet baby boy).

The printing of Sonnet 153. (126) Contains an error in the second line:

Cambridge Editors have amended this line to:

‘Dost hold time’s fickle glass, his sickle hour’.

While an Oxford Editor amends it to:

‘Dost hold time’s fickle glass, his fickle hour’.

It is much more likely that the comma after ‘sickle’ – which makes no sense – was actually intended to be an apostrophe followed by ‘s’ – hence The Shakespeare Code’s emendation to ‘sickle’s hour’ – the hour of the sickle, the hour of death.

If Nature (sovereign mistress over wrack)

As thou goest onwards still will pluck thee back,

She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill

May time disgrace, and wretched minuit kill.

If Dame Nature – who is the supreme controlling mistress of decay – keeps you forcibly young as you age – by preserving your ‘loveliness’ and giving you a son – her motive for doing this is to humiliate Father Time and kill the grim midnight hour.

This is reminiscent of Venus holding back Adonis from the boar-hunt in Venus and Adonis……

Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure;

She may detain, but not still keep her treasure!

Her Audit (though delayed) answer’d must be,

And her Quietus is to render thee.

But be frightened of your mistress – you plaything of her lust – just as Essex had been Queen Elizabeth’s! She can hold on to her goods – but can’t keep them. Her Final Demands from Father Time must be honoured – and her settlement of the bill is to ‘render’ you = (1) Give you back (2) Break you down in the ground, like rotten meat.

This Sonnet is NOT a Sonnet. It is only ten lines long – and where there should be a clinching couplet Shakespeare has put two pairs of brackets.

See above.

He is destroying his relationship with Harry and destroying the form of the Sonnet at the same time.

The brackets look like the yawning grave waiting for Harry – beautiful as he might look now.

So, having promised Harry eternal life through his poetry, Shakespeare now promises him death and decay.

He wants his lover dead.

When Shakespeare described Harry two years earlier as a ‘sweet boy’ in Sonnet 149. (108) he truly meant it….

Now ‘lovely boy’ is intended by Shakespeare to be sarcastic and contemptuous…..

His rage – and despair – was to continue for the next four years.

To read ‘The Lover’s Complaint (I), Part 42, click: HERE