The Shakespeare Code

An Extract from ‘The Book that Never Was…’.

Nashe mock-dedicates his Strange News (1592) to the ‘most copious carminist of our time’ [lover of red wine and poetry] ‘his very friend Mr. William Apis Lapis’. Wishing ‘new strings to his tawny purse and all honourable increase of acquaintance in the cellar’ he refers to ‘Gentle M. William’ as ‘that learned writer Rhenish wine and sugar in the first book of his comment upon red-noses…’

Scholars have worked out that ‘Apis Lapis’ is Latin code for ‘Bee’ (Apis) and ‘Stone’(Lapis). William Apis Lapis is William Beestone. William Beestone = William Beeston. Up till now no-one has known who he was. The William Beeston who told Aubrey that Shakespeare was ‘a schoolmaster in the country’ was not born till 1610.

There was, however, another William Beeston who lived at Posbrook Farm in Titchfield.

With the help of the Archivist of Winchester College, I have discovered both his will and his inventory. He fits the dates, and the description, exactly.

Nashe’s Apis Lapis was a huge, red-nosed, aristocratic, impoverished, highly literate, highly sexed, Latinist, lawyer and farmer whose ‘hospitality’ (Nashe’s code for love-making) ‘is chronicled in the archdeacon’s court, and the fruits of it brought forth (as I guess) are of age to speak for themselves’.

As well as hogs, cheese and cider presses, William Beeston of Titchfield owned a library worth £10 (£5,000) and drafted his own will, partly in Latin, in which he bequeaths ‘to every child that God hath sent me five shillings [£125] a piece for their portions’.

One of his love children, the book will argue, was the Christopher Beeston (who also used the name Hutchinson) who was a boy actor with Shakespeare’s company. William Beeston and Christopher Beeston wrote their wills within five days of each other.

 Christopher’s own son (also called William Beeston/Hutchinson) is the man who told John Aubrey that Shakespeare had been a schoolmaster in the country.

William (‘Apis Lapis’) Beeston, who died in his seventies in 1638 a week after his new baby daughter was baptised, was intimate with the Southampton family In his will Beeston talks of his love for his executor, Thomas Risley (Wriothesley), 4th Earl of Southampton, to whom he leaves 40 shillings (£1,000) for a ring to remember him by.

Trixie the Cat says….

Brothers and Sisters of The Shakespeare Code……

Stewart was to do a lot more more on William Beeston four years later – in 2011.

See: https://theshakespearecode.blog/the-strange-case-of-mr-apis-lapis/

This work received praise form the great Shakespearean scholar, Professor Sir Jonathan Bate CBE FBA FRSL….

….who wrote:

 ‘It’s a terrific article and very persuasive that Beeston [of Posbrook Farm, Titchfield] is Apis Lapis… All very interesting….‘

If you would like to read the full article, click here: ‘The Strange Case of Mr. Apis Lapis.

To give Academe its due, the top English Studies Journal offered to publish the essay – but only if the speculation was removed!

If you are enjoying these posts, please click the ‘Likes’…..

And why not read Stewart’s new book, Shakespeare’s Sonnets Decoded, at £12.95 from Magic Flute Publishing?

Shakespeare’s Sonnets Decoded – Magic Flute Publishing

So see you all next Monday, 31st August, God willing, for The History Plays……..

And here, in Maida Vale, the Notting Hill Carnival!

‘Bye, now!