The Shakespeare Code

Brothers and Sisters of The Shakespeare Code…….

This the second of the streamed interval talks the Code gave…….

……. in conjunction with…

It covers ‘The Winter’s Tale’ and touches on William Shakespeare’s other Last Plays……

…….his final reflections on life.

To do this adequately, we must first study his life itself……

Stewart Trotter has constructed this from his study – and chronological re-ordering – of Shakespeare’s Sonnets…

‘The Winter’s Tale’

Simon Forman……

………the Elizabethan/Jacobean Astrologer who counted William Shakespeare’s Dark Lady amongst his clients, and who predicted the exact day of his own death – saw ‘The Winter’s Tale’ at the Globe on 15th May, 1611. His account in his journal is the first mention we have of the play.

Shakespeare was 47 at the time and living more in Stratford-upon-Avon than London. He was editing his plays for publication and, according to local gossip, drinking so heavily he would sometimes pass out.

He was also writing what turned out to be his last plays – and processing all that had happened to him in his life.

And Titchfield had given him a lot to process…..

We believe the Roman Catholic Shakespeare joined the Roman Catholic Southampton family in 1590 as ‘fac totum’ to Mary, the widowed Second Countess of Southampton….

…….teaching at the local grammar school and tutoring Mary’s teenage son, Harry.

Lord Burghley – Harry’s guardian……

……soon replaced Shakespeare with John Florio….

…….a language teacher and scholar – but also, according to Frances Yates, a Protestant spy.

Mary countered by commissioning Shakespeare to write seventeen sonnets for her son’s seventeenth birthday, urging him to take an interest in women….

Instead, gay Harry took an interest in Shakespeare…..

But Shakespeare was married with a wife, Anne, and three children (Susanna and the twins Hamnet and Judith) in Stratford.

As a teenager, he had wooed his older wife with ballads……

……but had later been forced to flee to London after stealing deer from Sir Thomas Lucy…

……and writing a libellous poem about him which he hung on the gates of his park.

A Catholic network sheltered Shakespeare in Westminster, where he worked as a lawyer’s clerk. In the evening he collaborated on plays with Thomas Kyd – early versions of ‘Hamlet’, ‘King Lear’, ‘Henry V’ and ‘The Taming of the Shrew’.

Shakespeare then toured the Midlands with Lord Strange’s company…..

……supplying them with Biblical and Morality plays.

But when the company returned London, Shakespeare quarrelled violently with the Mayor and was flung into the City’s Counter Prison.

Once more the Catholic network saved him – with the Titchfield appointment.

Shakespeare had been introduced to London gay life by Christopher Marlowe…..

……..exactly the same age and background as Shakespeare, but with all then arrogant advantage of a Cambridge degree.

Shakespeare determined – out of loyalty to Mary Southampton, to keep his love for her son Harry chaste.

Harry, however, had other ideas…..

Shakespeare continued to write sonnets, but now they were for his own purposes, as messages, letters, recitations and sometimes private reflections.

It is from these we can reconstruct the events of his life up to 1609 – the date of their publication, two years before’The Winter’s Tale’.

The Dark Lady – Aemelia Basanno – musician and young mistress of the Queen’s cousin old Lord Hunsdon…..

– visited Titchfield in 1591 as part of the Queen’s Progress to Hampshire. She stayed on, ostensibly to avoid the London plague and to be a companion to Countess Mary.

In reality she had set her cap at the handsome, and soon-to-be-rich, Lord Harry.

Shakespeare fell desperately in love with her and cast her as the sexy, dark-skinned coquette, Rosaline, in ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ ……

……a play commissioned, we believe by Countess Mary – which celebrates heterosexual love, in the hope that some of it might rub off on young Harry.

Astrologer Forman – who had no professional scruples at all in his dealings with his female clients – later attempted to make love to Aemilia. She allowed him to feel…

all parts of her body willingly [and] kiss her often [but]she would not do in any wise.

Poor Shakespeare didn’t even get as far as that.

She had no interest in a prematurely balding, penniless hack…….

Aemelia pointedly looked in the opposite direction any time Shakespeare appeared. Especially if Lord Harry was around.

In desperation, Shakespeare asked Harry to plead his love-cause with her – just as Count Orsino asks his page ‘Caesario’ to woo Olivia for him in ‘Twelfth Night’

Aemilia pounced and Harry complied. He wanted to pay Shakespeare back for rejecting his advances.

Shakespeare, in an agony of jealousy, went on tour again with Lord Strange’s Men. He wrote sonnet letters every day to Lord Harry until it finally dawned on him that he was more in love with the young man than the young woman.

Aemilia, meanwhile, became pregnant and was married off to…

‘a minstrel’ –

Alfonso Lanyer – ‘for colour’ – that is, to save everyone’s reputations. She took her revenge by publishing an anonymous attack on the balding Shakespeare as….

the old player

……and on the ‘blobbering’ Harry as…..

Mr. H.W.

..that is Mr. Henry Wriothesley…..

…….pronounced ‘Rosely’ as we know from the Titchfield Parish Register.

But Shakespeare was now free to declare his love for the young man – which he did in the greatest love sonnet of all time….

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

He promised Harry he would make him immortal because his poem would be immortal.

The wily Countess of Mary, of course, found out. She herself had fallen in love with….

a common person

,…..which had led to her rejection by her late husband and her son. Shakespeare used this in his defence.

Mary’s love crossed boundaries of class. Shakespeare’s love crossed boundaries of sex.

Mary finally gave her blessing to the union. In the Spring of 1593, Shakespeare and Harry travelled across Europe to Italy – to celebrate their love and to spy for Harry’s friend, Robert Devereux, the 2nd Earl of Essex.

This brush with Italy, as we shall see, was to transform Shakespeare’s life and art.

Shakespeare was already involved in politics. With his collaborator, little Tom Nashe….

…he had written plays about the English Civil War – which we now call ‘The Wars of the Roses’ – at the request of the Countess of Southampton and her neighbour, the Countess of Pembroke…..

The two Marys, who hated Elizabeth, wanted the world to know what would happen if the Queen died without naming her heir.

Now, as the Earl of Essex rose in power, Shakespeare and Harry’s involvement in politics became more intense.

Essex was the Queen’s lover – but he planned to ‘unthrone’ her. He commissioned Shakespeare to write a play which exposed Elizabeth’s vacillations and weakness – ‘Richard II’ which was played as a piece of agitprop in the streets and private house of London.

The Queen got the point. She later said to the scholar William Lambarde….

I am Richard the Second – know ye not that?

Shakespeare and Harry’s relationship wasn’t all plain sailing. Harry had a penchant for lower class men – which Shakespeare predicted would lead him into political trouble…..

Shakespeare was often away on tour – a traditional time in theatre for….

playing away from home

…in every sense of the word. Also we know from John Aubrey that Shakespeare returned to Stratford in the summer months to be with his family…..

….but he hid himself away to write long, narrative poems and love sonnets to Harry.

By 1595 it was time for Harry, who had come of age, to go to Queen Elizabeth’s Court.

Here the strangest of things happened.

He fell in love with Elizabeth Vernon – a poor cousin of the Earl of Essex.

Shakespeare realised this was good for Harry and the Southampton line. He himself was, after all, a married man with children.

So he wrote ‘Romeo and Juliet’ to encourage the match…..

…… and played the character of Mercutio to express his own, angst-ridden ambivalence.

But Shakespeare believed he had a spiritual affinity with Harry. It was a….

marriage of true minds…

……which would survive Harry’s new relationship – which it did for many years, even when Elizabeth gave birth to two daughters.

But, in 1596, tragedy was to enter Shakespeare’s private life.

His son, Hamnet, twin to Judith, died in 1596.

We do not even know if Shakespeare, whose company was about to open at the new Swan Theatre, was able to attend the funeral….

Bodies on those days were buried with speed.

Shakespeare went off the rails with grief and had to be bound over to keep the peace.

His one consolation was that Harry was now his surrogate son.

Politics now took over. Elizabeth appointed Essex to put down the Irish rebel Tyrone, and, going against the Queen’s wishes, he made Harry his General of Horse.

Essex’s plan was to defeat the Irish, lead his victorious army back to England, join up with King James VI at the Scottish border, then march to London and push Elizabeth from the throne.

To this end, Essex commissioned Shakespeare to write ‘Henry V’, to draw parallels between himself and the brave Agincourt King…..

…….and ‘Macbeth’ – to convince the Scottish King that he had a pre-destined right to the English throne and it was correct to invade a foreign country in the thrall of tyranny.

But there were two problems:

(1) The Irish campaign proved a disaster and

(2) King James had no intention of invading England.

Elizabeth by now was an old woman.

James believed he simply had to wait for her to die in order to succeed.

Shakespeare and Nashe rapidly back-tracked: they wrote ‘Julius Caesar’ to expose the folly of rebellion…….

….and ‘Troilus and Cressida’ to expose the folly of war.

But it was too late.

Essex deserted his post, returned to England was clapped under house arrest.

Half of his entourage wanted to appease the Queen.

But the other half put on a performance of ‘Richard II’ at the Globe to stir the citizens of London to rebellion.

It was time for Shakespeare to get out of town.

We believe that he fled to the Court of the gay-friendly King James.

Both James and Shakespeare had written poems which compared their male lovers to the fabulous, exotic Phoenix bird.

While Shakespeare bonded with the King, Essex had his head cut off…..

…and Harry, whose gay promiscuity in Ireland was brought up at his trial, was thrown into the Tower of London for life.

But two years later, Queen Elizabeth died. Everything turned round.

James became King of England as well as Scotland, and Harry, as his champion, was now his hero.

Shakespeare was asked to head up James’s new company of player, the King’s men – and wear the King’s scarlet livery.

Harry fully expected to become James’s new lover. But the King preferred younger men. Harry, ravaged by disease, had also lost his looks.

Shakepeare, however, loved him in the way he had always loved him.

He compared this love to the eternal, holy strength of the obelisk outside St. Peter’s that both men had seen on their trip to Rome.

But things started to decline. James did not keep his promise to give freedom of worship to Catholics and Southampton, to please him, renounced his Roman Catholic faith.

But in March, 1605, Shakespeare’s world fell apart. Elizabeth, 3rd Countess of Southampton……

…. finally presented Harry with a little son, James, named after the King.

Harry wanted him to become a brave and fearless soldier. He felt his gay side had to go. And with it, William Shakespeare.

Shakespeare replied with a vicious poem – at twelve lines not even a full sonnet – stating that Harry’s neglect had left him….

withering

…..but that Harry himself – from whom he withdrew his promise of immortality – was destined to rot and decay in a grave.

Shakespeare’s mental torment was compounded by the Gunpowder Plot.

Shakespeare had to face the fact that his co-religionists…..

…..including Guy Fawkes….

….who had worked for Mary Southampton’s father at Cowdray – were prepared to slaughter the whole family of his benefactor and friend, King James.

Not to mention the entire nobility of England.

Shakespeare suffered a breakdown.

He poured all his nihilistic despair into ‘King Lear’ – in which the old King – in a Godless, hostile universe – carries the hanged corpse of his daughter in his arms.

Shakespeare had lost his real son – and now he had lost his surrogate one as well.

But already…

great creating nature

…..in the words of ‘The Winter’s Tale’ – had started her work….

When Shakespeare travelled between London and Stratford, he used to stay the night at Oxford, where John Davenant, a fan of Shakespeare’s writing, owned a tavern.

John loved his beautiful wife, Jennet, but couldn’t give her children. So he asked Shakespeare to sleep with her. Exactly a year after the birth of Harry’s son, Shakespeare had his own son as well.

The Davenants christened him William – and made Shakespeare his Godfather.

Shakespeare’s mother, Mary, died in September, 1608. We believe that the Old Shepherd’s description of his caring, hospitable late wife is a tribute to her.

Also Shakespeare’s beloved daughter, Susanna, had presented her father with a granddaughter, Elizabeth, earlier in the year.

Shakespeare clearly felt the need to be nearer his family. A Stratford legal document for the following year describes him as…

nuper in curia domini Jacobi

……’recently at the Court of King James’.

This meant he was now in Stratford.

Shakespeare was to take one final act of revenge on Southampton. He published all his sonnets to him and Aemelia. He made sure everyone knew who the recipient was in a coded dedication. He called the deicatee…

Mr. W. H.

….a variation on the Dark Lady’s….

Mr. H. W.

But he included a sonnet – probably the latest – completely unlike any of the others – a religious one, addressed to his own soul. He questions why he has spent so much time and money on his clothes and body (he had grown fat)…..

…..and so little on his spirit. He determines to make up for this neglect. He wants his soul to feed on death. That way he can destroy death itself.

We believe that in his last plays – ‘Cymbeline’, ‘The Tempest’, ‘The Winter’s Tale’ and even ‘Henry VIII’ – Shakespeare goes on a spiritual journey.

In the words of Matthew Arnold, he attempts to….

See life steadily and to see it whole.

By this stage in his life, he knows that he is capable of all the sins that characters in the plays commit – and that murderous, destructive actions – even his own – spring from lack of self-knowledge.

Even historical figures who, in Shakespeare’s life, were regarded as enemies, in his art become friends – even Henry VIII…

…even Anne Bullen……

…..and even the corrupt Cardinal Wolsey…….

little wanton boys that swim on bladders

This many summers in a sea of glory

But far beyond their depth….

When Cromwell asks Wolsey how he does, he replies:

Why well

Never so truly, I know myself now…

Prospero in ‘The Tempest’ says of Caliban…

This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine.

Shakespeare acknowledges his own things of darkness as well. We know from the Sonnets he had all the thirst for power and fame that Wolsey had – and all the twisted sexual jealousies of Leontes….

Like Autolycus……

……Shakespeare wrote ballads and stole things when he was young. And when he was older, he continued to steal plots from other authors – especially Italian ones. He could well have been thinking of himself when he described the pedlar as a….

snapper up of unconsidered trifles..

Shakespeare also knows we are led by powers we do not understand.

Some ill planet reigns

….is the way Hermione describes her husband’s jealousy. But Shakespeare’s perceptions were way ahead of his time.

Now we might describe these powers as ‘the Unconscious’. Leontes and Polixenes enjoyed a boyhood love whose innocence they insist on – perhaps over insist on.

Was there an early glimmering of sexual love as well? As there was between Shakespeare and Harry first met?

Does Leontes, on meeting Leontes again, project these taboo feelings onto his wife?

♦

What form does Shakespeare’s spirituality take in ‘The Winter’s Tale’?

Time plays a part – but it’s not everything. It is perceived differently by different people.

Nature plays a part – but again, it’s not everything. She can be destructive as well as creative – producing storms and death as fast as she produces new born babies.

Christ is mentioned, obliquely, in the play as…

the Best

……but we are not in a Christian universe. God does not involve Himself in our lives. He is a remote figure – an Oracle – who can be consulted but who stays passive.

He leaves active religion to people like Paulina who take on themselves all the spiritual responsibility for another’s soul that the old Father Confessors did – and on the whole they do it very well.

Shakespeare ultimately concludes humankind is decent, wants the best for others and is more than ready to speak truth to power.

When he lays out Sicilia and Bohemia, Shakespeare has, consciously or unconsciously, Titchfield and Stratford in mind.

We know the Sicilian Court is sophisticated because the language the people speak is sophisticated – fractured, almost, to the point of repression.

Whereas sex and feasting in Bohemia are openly enjoyed and the culture of ballad singing is a deep and natural one.

Perdita is given ravishing language as she describes the different flowers for the different seasons.

Central to Shakespeare’s examination of his own life is the passage on grating.

Perdita refuses to grow carnations and gillyvors in her rustic garden.

They are created artificially so she calls them…

nature’s bastards.

As Polixenes says in their defence……

We marry

A gentler scion to the wildest stock,

And maker conceive a bark of baser kind

By bud of noble race.

Harry Southampton had been the gentler, Titchfield scion and Shakespeare the wildest Stratford stock. Had this produced a bastard or not?

Perhaps Shakespeare himself could not answer the question.

Like Autolycus, he was a nobleman when he wore aristocratic clothes, and a countryman when he wore rustic clothes.

The problem of his identity was compounded by his profession of actor – with so many costumes to wear.

It is the final, sublime scene – when the statue of Hermione comes to life….

……that never fails to move the audience to tears.

What was Shakespeare thinking of?

We know that the Second Earl of Southampton had accused his wife of adultery and rejected her. But that had all happened more than a decade before Shakespeare came to Titchfield, and Mary Southampton had died four years before.

Isn’t it more likely that Shakespeare was thinking of his own life?

Isn’t the statue of his wife, Anne?

He had rejected her for Harry, and his own son, Hamnet had died, as Mamillius dies…

We like to think that, back in Stratford, Shakespeare had finally begun to realise Anne’s true worth – her tolerance, acceptance and patience.

And that he willed her his second bed because, unlike the first – the guest bed….

…it was the one they were finally sleeping in together.