The Shakespeare Code

[Photograph by Jianwei Chen]

Once on a morning of sweet recreation

I heard a fair lady a-making her moan,

With sighing and sobbing and sad lamentation,

Aye singing, ‘My Blackbird for ever is flown!

He’s all my heart’s treasure, my joy, and my pleasure,

So justly, my love, my heart follows thee;

And I am resolved, in foul or fair weather,

To seek out my Blackbird, wherever he be.

This song was sung in Scotland both before the 1715 Jacobite Rebellion and after it – and as the Editor of ‘The Jacobite Songs and Ballads’ (1861) makes clear, ‘The Blackbird’ was the nick-name his friends gave to the Old Pretender – James Frances Edward Stuart.

He had a very dark complexion – a characteristic he shared with his father-in-law, Charles II, who was named ‘The Black Boy’ by his mother – and described as a ‘tall, black man’ on Wanted Posters after his escape by hiding in Boscobel Oak.

Both men probably inherited their dark skins from Charles II’s Spanish maternal grandmother, Marie de Medici…

‘Black Boy’ Taverns sprung up for people loyal to King Charles to drink in – and people later loyal to the Old Pretender did the same thing…

Rich Jacobites would also include black page-boys in the household to show their loyalty to the Stuart cause.

James Gibbs began his decoration of St. Mary le Strand after the failure of the 1715 Jacobite Rebellion – which was led by his Patron John Erskine, the Earl of Mar…

Gibbs worked as a secrent Jacobite agent for Mar – telling him about the loyalty and strength of the Jacobites in both England and Scotland – and used the language of architecture as a code.

‘Lodge’ for example didn’t mean a house or a villa – as historians used to think it meant. It signified a secret enclave of Jacobites, prepared to over-throw the monarchy.

Gibbs – as we have seen – used symbols to promote the Jacobite cause – symbols that could mean one thing or another.

The bird, for example in the apse…

……has been taken to represent the Holy Spirit that descended on Jesus…..

……and the dove returning to Noah on his ark, carrying an olive branch…..

But the problem is that the bird is not descending on Christ, neither does it have an olive branch in its beak…..

So what does it represnt?

The answer, strangely, lies in a parody William Hogarth made of William Kent’s altarpiece to the church neighbouring St. Mary le Strand, St. Clement Danes….

….which is a Christopher Wren Church – but the steeple of which Gibbs designed – under duress.

Gibbs HATED steeples!

William Kent – a Jacobite Freemason –

…….painted an altar-piece of Saint Cecilia for this church in 1725….

[The only remaining photograph, copied from Ricky Pound’s excellent article ‘Jacobite Symbolism at Chiswick House’]

The congregation rebelled because they thought – rightly – that ‘Saint Cecilia’ – on the right of the painting on the keyboard – was in fact the Old Pretender’s striking wife – Maria Clementina Sobieska….

In 1725 Sobieska had rowed with her husband about how Bonnie Prince Charlie should be educated in religion – and had taken shelter in the Nunnery di Santa Cecilia in Travestere in Rome.

She was to remain there for two years – watching the services at the adjoining Basilica from her room.

The congregation of St. Clement’s Dane were loyal to their new King George I – and demanded the painting was removed. It was stored in the Vestry of the Church – and hired out for clandestine Jacobite celebrations – until it was destroyed by enemy action in WWII.

William Hogarth had a satirical response to all this.

He issued his own version of the painting – with Sobieska, now an ‘angel’, off keyboards and playing a harp – in which he claimed it was NOT Sobieska and her children…

The statement at the bottom reads:

The Print is exactly Engrav’d after the celebrated Altar-Piece in St. Clement’s Church which has been taken down by order of the Lord Bishop of London as tis thought to prevent disputes and laying of wagers among the Parishoners about the artist’s meaning in it. For public satisfaction here is a particular explanation of it humbly offered to be writ under the original that it may be put up again by which means the parishes 60 pounds which they nicely gave for it may not be entirely lost. Tis not the Pretender’s Wife and Children as our weak brethren imagine – nor St. Cecilia as the Commoisseurs think, but a choir of angels playing in consort.

XXX

Hogarth’s denial, of course, re-inforces the idea that it IS Sobieska and her children.

But the really interesting thing about this parody is the upper section…

The flying bird and the Cherubs are nowhere to be seen on the original painting. Hogarth has added them. And they correspond completely to the apse of St. Mary le Strand…

…….with its cherubs….

……and its flying bird…..

If we look at the Hogarth parody again…..

….we can see that the flying bird is casting down its light and power on the Old Pretender’s wife and children….

It is my contention that the bird – although gold! – is in reality the Old Pretender – the ‘Blackbird himself!

The beloved King Over the Water – waiting to fly back to his land and his people – and siring Stuart heirs a-plenty – because it is the will of God.

But what are we to make of the Cherubs? Two of them are so stupid they are colliding together….

Could they possibly be what Alexander Pope calls ‘Dunce the First’ and ‘Dunce the Second’?

George I and George II who famously were ‘at loggerheads’.

The cherubs near to the viewers are attractive – and might even represent the young Bonnie Prince Charlie with his ostrich feathers as Prince of Wales….

The Cupids in St. Mary le Strand become more unprepossessing the higher up in the apse they are carved – and the further away from the viewers….

……and here’s one from the same group that looks positively demonic!

Gibbs had designed St. Mary le Strand to re-create the Temple of Solomon – so the inhabitors of the Holy of Holies should, strictly speaking, be Cherubim – NOT Cherubs!

Cherubim were second down to Seraphim in the ranking of angels – and although descriptions of them differ – they are meant to be adults with long wings – sometimes with faces that combine the human and the animal…

The other job of the Cherubim was to guard the Gates of Eden – hardly a job you’d leave to grumpy toddlers….

So what is going on? Johnathan Swift satirises George I as the King of Lilliput, wearing shoes with the lowest heels in the Kingdom and with….

….an Austrian lip and an arched nose…

Is Gibbs engaged in satire as well? Is he carrying on the fine old tradition of the Masons who built the Cathedrals – and carved caricatures of living people into the stonework?

Are the chubby cheeked Cherubs – with their prominent lips and noses – satires on an immature monarch who – when angry would throw his wig onto the fire?

Are the dozens of Cherubs dozens of satires on the hated monarch, George I?

His wife-to-be, Sophia, when shown a miniature of George, famously cfried: ‘I will not marry the pig snout’

Is this Cherub – high up in the corner of the ceiling – pig snout himself?

I leave it to you.