The Shakespeare Code

ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE….

As You Like It was written, we believe, to celebrate the wedding of Henry Wriothesley, Third Earl of Southampton (‘Harry Southampton’)……

……..and Elizabeth Vernon, a poor cousin of the Earl of Essex…….

……at the end of August,1598.

It was originally given an outdoor performance in the grounds of a stately home, with its greenwood trees and brawling brooks serving as a background, but this time the stately home was NOT Place House in Titchfield.

Harry Southampton had taken up residence in Queen Elizabeth’s Court in 1595 at the age of 22. Everyone expected him to become the ageing Queen’s new lover, replacing an exhausted Earl of Essex…..

…….but he had fallen for one of her young Ladies-in-Waiting – the beautiful, but volatile Elizabeth Vernon. The Queen was furious when she found out and banished Harry from the Court: but Harry persisted in his love-suit, and commissioned William Shakespeare to write Romeo and Juliet as a way of wooing her.  

Despite the play, or perhaps because of it, Harry and Elizabeth V. continued to have a stormy, off-on relationship – and at one point it was rumoured Elizabeth had run off with another man.

Harry himself was ambivalent, insisting he needed time to think about the relationship – and in 1598, the Queen gave him permission to travel to Europe as a spy. Elizabeth V. responded to this with tears and tantrums – and the two ended up in bed.

By the end of August Harry was back in England, having docked at Margate to keep his visit a secret: Elizabeth V. was pregnant. Harry wrote to her uncle, the Earl of Essex, asking for a clandestine meeting. We know from Essex’s reply on 25^th August that Harry had ridden straight down to Leaze Priory in Essex – where Elizabeth V. was staying with Penelope Rich, Essex’s sister……

– and married her on the spot.

As a consequence, Harry was on a direct collision course with the Queen, who insisted that every aristocratic wedding be vetted by her.  Harry had hoped that Elizabeth V.’s uncle, the Earl of Essex, would intercede on his behalf. But Essex himself had been banished from the court for daring to turn his back on the Queen. 

We know that Harry was back in France by September 3^rd because Robert Cecil wrote a letter to him on that date, telling him the Queen was ‘grievously offended’ by his coming and going so ‘contemptuously’ and his marriage to a Lady-in-Waiting ‘without her privity. She ordered Harry to return to England and wait to be summoned.

What had Harry done between August 25^th and the beginning of September? We believe that, in an act of reckless bravura, Harry had thrown a wedding celebration at Leaze Priory and had asked Shakespeare to rush together an entertainment. The title – As You Like It – might well have been a dig at Her Majesty: this was something she wouldn’t like at all!

The play has all the signs of hasty composition. There are no real sub-plots, the passage of time is crudely marked with songs and deer hunts, and two of the characters even have the same name. But the rapid composition does give the entertainment a spontaneous, improvisatory quality – and a ring of truth.

We believe Shakespeare has based the characters in the play – mostly exiles from the Court of Duke Frederick – on the wedding guests at Leaze Priory – mostly exiles from the Court of Queen Elizabeth. Shakespeare got them to play themselves, proof positive that all the world really was a stage.

So who played what? We think John Harington……

– a friend of Harry’s who had the distinction of inventing the water-closet – played the melancholy Jacques – and that the name Jacques/Jakes is a jokey reference to his invention.

Jacques is accused of being a libertine by Duke Senior – so was Harington by the Queen when he was found distributing erotic poetry by Ariosto to her Ladies-in-Waiting.

Jacques is in exile from the Court: so was Harington, forced by the Queen to stay away till had translated the whole of Orlando Furioso as a ‘punishment’.

Both Jacques and Harington are wry, outside observers of the absurdities of life, both stopped from speaking the truth and both known as ‘The Traveller’.  

Tom Nashe, the pamphleteer………

……..we believe, not only played the role of Touchstone: he wrote the part as well.  

Touchstone’s words ‘roynish’ and ‘horn-beast’ appear nowhere else in Shakespeare – but they do appear in Nashe’s pamphlets. Some editors argue that Shakespeare lifted Touhchstone’s phrase ‘false gallop’ from Nashe’s Strange Newes : but it is much more likely that Nashe was Shakespeare’s gag-writer.

Like Touchstone, Nashe had been banished from the Court after writing a satirical play, with Ben Jonson, about the Privy Council.

Touchstone doesn’t care for living in the country – and neither did Nashe!

The part of Duke Senior – banished to the Forest of Arden – was played by the Earl of Essex – banished by the Queen to Wanstead. Both Essex and Duke Senior were very attracted to the reclusive country life – and both have a highly developed sense of chivalry and courtesy: when Orlando threatens him with violence, he invites him to sit and eat.

Essex was in constant communication with King James VI who was developing these ideals at his Scottish Court – and, fully believing in ‘second sight’, encouraged the practice of rites, rituals and magic in the open air.

It is thought that when he became King of England as well as Scotland, King James attended a performance of As You Like it at Wilton – the Pembroke family home.

Celia was played, we think, by Penelope Rich and Rosalind by Elizabeth V. Both were best friends in real life: Elizabeth V.’s daughter was later named Penelope and Penelope became the baby’s Godmother.

Penelope, who we think played the Princess of France at Titchfield – with plays on her surname – was famously tall, as is Celia in the first mention of her height by Le Beau the First Folio edition of the play.

There is also a play on her name and features in Rosalind’s phrase ‘rich eyes’: Penelope was renowned for her black eyes and fair hair….

Elizabeth V. certainly looks tiny in the paintings of her, and Orlando says she comes ‘up to my heart’ – though other mentions of Rosalind in the play suggest she was in fact taller than Celia. We believe this is because in later productions of the play, Rosalind was played by a taller boy actor, and the text hasn’t been properly amended.

Celia calls Rosalind ‘my Rose’ and ‘my dear Rose’[Shakespeare’s italics] in honour of Elizabeth V. new family name – Wriothesley – pronounced (by Harry and Shakespeare at least) – as ‘Rosely’. And she is given a coded identification when Orlando asks the ‘thrice crown-ed queen of night’ (= the Moon = Diana = The Virgin Queen Elizabeth) to ‘survey/with thy chaste eye, from thy pale sphere above/Thy huntress name that my full life doth sway’. ‘

Huntress’ = Maidservant of Diana = Lady-in-Waiting to Diana = Elizabeth V.)

There is no doubt at all that Orlando was played by Harry. Orlando’s hair is described as ‘chestnut ’in the play: in the sonnets, Harry’s hair is likened to ‘buds of marjoram’.  Orlando is a bad time-keeper – so was Harry as we know from Sonnet 57 where Shakespeare describes himself as being Harry’s ‘slave’ and ‘watching the clock’ for him.

So what was Shakespeare’s intention in writing As You Like It? We think it was like a modern day Best Man’s speech – which both celebrates the bride and groom and sends them up.

Shakespeare and Harry had their own love for each other – an affair that lasted, off and on, for fifteen years. Harry had a life-long weakness for lower class young men which was the source of his ambivalence about Elizabeth V.

So in the play Shakespeare pours sunlight on this shadow – and dresses Elizabeth up as a pretty youth – everything Orlando could possibly want. But at the end of the day, it is Rosalind/Elizabeth V. that he wants. Shakespeare has made his mind up for him.

What of Shakespeare himself?

The tradition in Stratford was that he played Old Adam. Now Shakespeare might well have been taken with the idea of being carried in the arms of his own Lord and Patron.

But the TFT thinks that he also played William – who, like Shakespeare, lives in the Forest of Arden. William has clearly taken his hat off when he speaks to Touchstone, so the audience would have seen his hair – which we know from Sonnet 73 had largely fallen out like ‘yellow leaves’ from a tree……

So when asked his age, and William replies ‘25’, it most probably brought the house down.

But there is a darkness over this sunlit play.

Duke Frederick, with his capriciousness, his jealousies, his paranoias, his banishments and his suspicions – is Queen Elizabeth in drag.

Roman Catholics, like Harry and Shakespeare, hoped Elizabeth would convert to the Old Faith – and in the play Duke Frederick does.

But this was not to be in real life. Within three years of this play, the Earl of Essex was to lead a rebellion against the tyrannical Queen – and within three years he was to have his head cut off in the Tower of London.