The Shakespeare Code

It’s best to read ‘A Lover’s Complaint (V), Part 46  first.

1609

The Young Woman, at the end of A Lover’s Complaint, finally admits that, though her lover was a monster of vanity, deceit and selfishness, his compromised charms…

…Would yet again betray the fore-betrayed

And new pervert a reconciled maid.

‘Fore-betrayed’ = ‘one who has been betrayed before’ i.e. the Young Woman herself. ‘Reconciled’ = (1) ‘restored to happiness, accepting’ and (2) ‘restored to the Roman Catholic faith’.

It is clear that Harry’s rejection of Shakespeare – on the birth of his son, James –  had led Shakespeare, like the Young Woman in the poem, to despair and nihilism.

This culminated in the writing of his bleak, Godless, masterpiece, King Lear’.

Shakespeare, in the play, was finally forced to confront the death of his son Hamnet in 1597…..

…… and the ‘death’ of his surrogate son, Harry, in 1605……

See: ‘Shakespeare’s Poison Pen Letter’. Part 41

But four years had passed since the baptism of baby James and the publication of the Sonnets. In preparing the poems for the printers, Shakespeare must have re-lived the circumstances of their composition. He wants his revenge on the now homophobic Harry – and also on Aemelia Basanno, whose satire on Shakespeare had been republished in a fifth edition as late as 1606.

But it is clear Shakespeare, like the Young Woman, was coming to terms with the past.

In A Lover’s Complaint, Shakespeare turns his love experiences into a drama in order to examine himself. The Young Woman  is the younger Shakespeare holding a dialogue with himself in the shape of the Older Man. The Young Woman’s conclusion – that she would go through it all again – is a ringing endorsement of the worth of life which Shakespeare must have shared.

The Young Woman is also ‘reconciled’ as Shakespeare, as we shall see from Sonnet 154. (146), is ‘reconciled’: he has returned to his earlier spirituality and he has returned to his Roman Catholic faith. His daughter, Susanna, though she married a Puritan Doctor in 1607, remained a practising Roman Catholic.

There is a corrupt second line to the Sonnet – it doesn’t scan – and some editors have taken it upon themselves to re-write it! The Shakespeare Code leaves it as it is…..

Shakespeare addresses his own soul in this Sonnet. – and is a continuation of the self-examination we find in A Lover’s Complaint.

Shakespeare argues that his soul is the centre of his being – but that the soul has allowed his ‘servant’ – Shakespeare’s body –  to take the control. Shakespeare is urging his soul to get back into the driving seat and take command of his physical desires.

Poor soul the centre of my sinful earth,

My sinful earth these rebel power powers that thee array

Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,

Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?

‘Poor soul’ = (1) ‘a soul which is to be pitied’ and (2) ‘a soul which has been impoverished’.

Shakespeare is saying that his soul is aiding and abetting the enemies of his spirituality that ‘array’ him.

‘Array’ = (1) ‘attack’ and (2) ‘robe’.

Shakespeare presents his body as his ‘sinful earth’. The ‘rebel powers’-  his physical appetites – persuade his soul to dress Shakespeare’s body in fine clothes and give him food and drink in excess. As Shakespeare has got fatter, his soul has got thinner.

Shakespeare is behaving like someone who, by painting the walls of his house in a garish, expensive way, wants to give the appearance of being rich while he is, in fact, drooping with hunger and want inside.

Why so large cost having so short a lease,

Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?

Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,

Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body’s end?

Shakespeare asks himself why he is spending so much money on a decaying old house that he only has a short lease on. Who stands to gain from the exercise? The worms that will eat his body? Is this the only purpose in life the body has?

Then soul live thou upon thy servant’s loss,

And let that pine to aggravate thy store;

Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross:

Within be fed, without be rich no more:

Shakespeare urges his soul to be nurtured by the things that he will deny his body. By losing physical weight, Shakespeare will be adding spiritual weight to his soul. Shakespeare can convert the hours he has wasted on earthly matters to spiritual ones – and so find favour with God. He will be spiritually nurtured if he drops his obsession with clothes, food, wine and sex.

‘Buy terms divine’ is a fascinating phrase. Shakespeare, as a Catholic, believes he can negotiate with Heaven and can actually ‘buy’ his way in – as Catholic Indulgences did in the Middle Ages. There is a suggestion, here, that Shakespeare gave money to the Catholic Church and supported the network of Recusants.

[The Anglicans at this time were followers of John Calvin….

……who believed that everything had been pre-determined by God and nothing about a man’s destiny could be changed].

So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men,

And death once dead, there’s no more dying then.

Shakespeare will thus turn the tables on Death – which ‘feeds on men’  (destroys them) and instead feed on Death by becoming an immortal spirit that can never die.

There are many stories of Shakespeare’s heavy drinking back at Stratford-upon-Avon – and his Monument there certainly looks ‘robust enough.

But there can be no doubt that Shakespeare ends his sublime sequence of poems with a fervent return to the Old Faith.

And now, like Prospero, every third thought would be his grave….

© Stewart Trotter 1st January, 2019.

To read ‘The Dedication to the Sonnets Decoded’ click: HERE

♦

A  Happy New Year to All the Shakespeare Code Followers –

…and especially our new Brothers and Sisters from China!

From Trixie the Cat!

‘Bye now….