The Shakespeare Code

Brothers and Sisters of the Shakespeare Code……

At a meeting of the august Hampshire Writers’ Society in December last year (2014)….

…the Titchfield Festival Theatre Company performed an extract from Stewart Trotter’s play….

OUR COUSIN WILL….

Here is the HIGHLY LITERATE report from the Society itself….

The evening began with Her Grace Queen Elizabeth 1 (Barbara Large, most elegantly attired) greeting her subjects. Her first assignment was to welcome the Titchfield Festival Theatre Group, under the stewardship of their chairman and artistic director, Kevin Fraser……

…..who were to perform part of a new play ‘Our Cousin Will’ by Stewart Trotter.

Kevin then introduced the troupe, the performances that they carry out, and posited Titchfield as the location where Shakespeare wrote the play ‘Love Labour’s Lost’. Stewart Trotter gave a brief outline as to why it was thought that Shakespeare could have spent a period in Titchfield as a teacher.

Several scenes from the play were performed, and this involved the Lady Mary, the mother of the Earl of Southampton, engaging Will Shakespeare to teach her son Harry the art of writing sonnets, which she hopes will turn his attentions to women; instead of his dressing like one.

Will endeavours to do this, although his efforts with Harry appear futile. Will is then drawn to Aemilia; however, she resists his advances with a curt “Get lost, Baldy!” Will is then involved in an affair with Harry himself, much to Lady Mary’s disquiet. However, Will and she are eventually reconciled; and Harry’s own situation is accepted. The dialogue was witty, lively, and the performances of the actors were highly amusing.

Here then is the twenty minute extract the Titchfield Festival Players performed…..

WILLIAM BEESTON (the narrator)

Disaster struck the acting profession. The Spanish Armada attacked England. Actors were despised. The public wanted ‘real men’. Playwrights pulled strings to get teaching jobs. Will, aged by touring and with his hair starting to fall out, pulled Papist strings….

(Enter MARY, COUNTESS OF SOUTHAMPTON, early middle aged and beautiful…..

She shows the OLDER SHAKESPEARE a painting of the 2^nd Earl of Southampton, which is presumed to be out front. SHAKESPEARE, at this stage of his life, is still thin)

MARY

And this, Master Shakespeare, is my late husband, the second Earl of Southampton.

If you are to become tutor to my son, you must be aware of the facts, however painful. The second Earl was a fine Catholic: he fought to bring the Blessed Mary Queen of Scots to the English throne.

(MARY and SHAKESPEARE cross themselves) He was imprisoned in the Tower and nearly lost his head. However, as a husband he was….unappreciative. He accused me, quite insanely, of falling in love with a common person…(Looking SHAKESPEARE, discreetly, up and down)…I can see you’ll be needing some new clothes…….And an allowance…

(Recovering herself – she is clearly taken with SHAKESPEARE) My husband snatched my young son, Harry, away. He turned his manservant into his wife and left him everything. I overturned the will, of course, but could not overturn the damage done to Harry….

(BEESTON holds up a painting of Henry Wriothesley in drag which MARY and SHAKESPEARE look at)

As you can see, he loves dressing up as a girl. Other than that, has no interest in women whatsoever. This, Master Shakespeare, is where you come in. (SHAKESPEARE looks startled) You are a married man with children. I want you to get Harry excited by the idea of fatherhood. Unless he marries, the Southampton line will die out…Soon it will be Harry’s seventeenth birthday… I want you to write seventeen sonnets to show him the joys of the opposite sex. I want you to ‘turn the vessel round’ as it were….Wait here….(MARY exits)

SHAKESPEARE

(To himself) Sonnets? Aaaagh! (MARY re-enters)

MARY (announcing)

Master Shakespeare, my son, Henry Wriothesley, the third Earl of Southampton and Baron of Titchfield….[‘Wriothesley’ is pronounced ‘Ryosely’]

(SHAKESPEARE kneels as HARRY enters to trumpets and drums. HARRY, a handsome young man with shoulder length hair, offers SHAKESPEARE his ring to kiss. SHAKESPEARE does so, then looks up into HARRY’S face)

MARY

(in all innocence) I’m sure you two will get on like a house on fire….

(SHAKESPEARE and HARRY exit…..)

(EXIT)

Harry turned seventeen….And read the seventeen Sonnets Shakespeare had written for him…

(Enter HARRY with SHAKESPEARE following behind, quill and paper in hand)

HARRY

(Brandishing the seventeen pieces of paper)  Master Shakespeare, these Sonnets are an utter failure…(SHAKESPEARE looks crestfallen)  I still don’t like girls!

(SHAKESPEARE rallies: it’s not his writing that is being attacked after all)

SHAKESPEARE

Even though you look like one?

HARRY

Are you being offensive?

SHAKESPEARE

No. It’s the theme of this new sonnet I’m writing about you….

(SHAKESPEARE sits and writes. HARRY hates not being looked at, so he reads aloud from his Birthday Sonnets, gesturing with his hand as he recites)

HARRY

Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend

Upon thyself thy beauty’s legacy….

(HARRY’S hand-gestures turn into a suggestion of masturbation)

Does that mean what I think it means? (SHAKESPEARE continues to write, not looking at him) And what about…..

No love towards other in that bosom sits

That on himself such murderous shame commits…

(Looks down at his codpiece)

Master Shakespeare, are you implying that I am a…(He is about to say ‘wanker’)

SHAKESPEARE

(cutting him off) Sir! I have nothing but the highest respect for you…(hesitates)…love, even….

HARRY (brightening)

You do praise my beauty….

SHAKESPEARE

And continue to do so in this…..

HARRY

Let’s hear it then!  (He lies back, anticipating flattery like a warm bath)

SHAKESPEARE

It’s not finished….

HARRY

(Suggestively) Perhaps I can give you some ideas….

SHAKESPEARE

(Pretending not to pick up the implication, reading from his Sonnet)

A woman’s face with nature’s own hand painted

Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion….

(HARRY shows interest)

A woman’s gentle heart but not acquainted

With shifting change as is false women’s fashion….

An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling….

(HARRY can contain himself no longer)

HARRY

See! You don’t like girls either!

SHAKESPEARE

(Ploughing on)

Gilding the object where-upon it gazeth,

A man in hew, all hews in his controlling

Which steals men’s eyes…

HARRY

(Excited) Ha!

SHAKESPEARE

….and women’s souls amazeth……

(HARRY, disappointed, groans)

And for a woman wast thou first created

Till Nature as she wrought thee, fell a-doting….

(SHAKESPEARE is unconsciously beginning to find HARRY attractive)

HARRY

Go on….

SHAKESPEARE

That’s as far as I’ve got, sir….

 HARRY

Would you like me to finish the Sonnet for you, Master Will….

SHAKESPEARE

The greatness of your words, sir, would utterly eclipse my own…I shall finish the sonnet in my own spare time.

(SHAKESPEARE folds the paper and starts to put it away)

HARRY

(Suddenly imperious) Finish it NOW! HERE! (For a moment we should  think that SHAKESPEARE is about to tell HARRY where to go. But HARRY, sensing this, immediately lightens his tone and starts to flirt) As Master-Mistress of your passion, I command you!

(SHAKESPEARE seems to comply. He scribbles a few lines…then hands them to HARRY)

HARRY

Till Nature as she wrought thee fell-adoting….

And by addition me of thee defeated

By adding one THING to my purpose nothing….

(HARRY looks down at his cod-piece again)

Master Shakespeare, does this also mean what I think it means….?

Your conclusion, please…..

(SHAKESPEARE scribbles again – and hands him the sheet)

HARRY

But since she prick’d thee out for women’s pleasure

Mine by thy love – AND THY LOVE’S USE THEIR TREASURE!!!

Is this a poetic way of telling me to get stuffed?

SHAKESPEARE

No, sir. It’s a poetic way of telling you to stuff women…

(MARY SOUTHAMPTON enters, looking white and shaken and near to fainting. SHAKESPEARE sees her and kneels. Alarmed)

SHAKESPEARE

M’Lady….

(HARRY looks round and bows stiffly)

MARY

I have some dreadful news….(SHAKESPEARE rushes to her and leads her to a chair) The Moon intends to beam over Titchfield….(Blank incomprehension from the men) Queen Elizabeth is coming to stay!

 (HARRY and SHAKESPEARE look aghast. BEESTON claps. All exit)

 BEESTON

…………And stay she did. With all her court. And with all her soldiers. She had a beautiful musician with her….the dark-skinned Aemelia Bassano…

(Enter AEMELIA, with  black, wiry hair. She sits and plays a lute)

…mistress to the Queen’s randy old cousin, Lord Hunsdon.

He paid her £40 a year for her services…

(To BEESTON, £40 a year is a fantastic sum…SHAKESPEARE enters and gazes at AEMELIA)

Will wanted to find out if £40 gave Hunsdon exclusive rights.

(BEESTON opens First Folio and reads…)

SHAKESPEARE (approaching AEMELIA, who continues to play)

Did not I dance with you in London once?

AEMELIA (a cockney girl)

Did I not dance with you in London once?

SHAKESPEARE

I know you did.

AEMELIA

How needless was it then to ask the question.!

SHAKESPEARE

You must not be so quick.

AEMELIA

‘Tis long of you to spur me with such questions.

SHAKESPEARE

Your wit’s too hot, it speeds too fast, ‘twill tire.

AEMELIA

Not till it leave the rider in the mire.

SHAKESPEARE

What time of day?

AEMELIA

The hour that fools should ask.

(She puts down her lute and puts on a mask)

SHAKESPEARE

Now fair befall (sees AEMELIA’S mask) your mask.

AEMELIA

Fair fall the face it covers.

SHAKESPEARE

And send you many lovers.

AEMELIA

Amen, so you be none….

SHAKESPEARE

(After a pause, in which he can’t think of anything to say) Nay then will I be gone.

(SHAKESPEARE exits – then AEMELIA, with another infatuated man to add to her list, exits as well)

BEESTON (looking up from First Folio)

Shakespeare was ’ooked… (Looks back at book)

SHAKESPEARE (re-entering with parchment and pen)

O! And I forsooth in love!

I that have been love’s whip!

A very beadle to a humorous sigh: a critic,

Nay, a night-watch constable,

A domineering pedant o’er the boy…

What I love? I sue? I seek a wife?

A woman that is like a German clock,

Still a re-pairing, ever out of frame,

And never going aright, being a watch:

But being watch’d that it may still go right.

A whitely wanton with a velvet brow

With two pitch balls stuck in her face for eyes,

Aye, and by heaven, one that will do the deed,

Though Argus were her Eunuch and her guard…

(BEESTON closes book with a bang)

BEESTON

The Plague was raging in London, so Aemelia stayed on at Titchfield. Will started writing sonnets to her instead of Harry…

(SHAKESPEARE sits and writes. HARRY approaches him quietly from behind and peers over his shoulder. SHAKESPEARE senses he is there and looks round.  He quickly turns the page over so that HARRY cannot read it)

HARRY(delighted)

It’s another Sonnet, Will.  I saw it. (Sitting) Read it to me. (Anticipating SHAKESPEARE’s excuse) I don’t care if it’s not finished….

SHAKESPEARE

(Reddening, reads) My (hesitates) master’s eyes are….nothing like the sun….

(HARRY looks startled)

Coral is far more red than his lips red,

If snow be white, why then his breasts are dun;

(Trailing off) If hairs be wires, black wires grown on his head…..

HARRY

(In a fury) Breasts? Black wires? (Snatching sonnet from SHAKESPEARE) HER breasts! HER head! (AEMELIA enters) Will, you’re not writing to me – you’re writing to that dreadful….(SHAKESPEARE indicates to HARRY that AEMELIA has entered. HARRY turns to look at her)

AEMELIA

(Curtsying beautifully) Good day, m’Lord….

(HARRY bows stiffly and exits. AEMELIA crosses and gazes rapturously after HARRY, glancing surreptitiously back at SHAKESPEARE to make sure he’s noticing)

BEESTON

Aemelia liked to play hard to get….

SHAKESPEARE

(Turning AEMELIA around) Tell me thou lov’st elsewhere; but in my sight

Dear heart, forbear to glance thy eye aside…

What need’st thou wound with cunning, when thy might

Is more than my o’er pressed defence can hide….

(Looking into AEMELIA’S eyes) Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me,

Knowing thy heart torments me with disdain,

Have put on black, and loving mourners be,

Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain…..

 (SHAKESPEARE starts to hug AEMELIA closely.)

Will’t thou, whose will is large and spacious

Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?

(He holds her even closer)

Shall will in others seem right gracious

And in my will no fair acceptance shine…..

(AEMELIA breaks away…SHAKESPEARE pursues her)

He rises at thy name and points out thee

As his triumphant prize, proud of this pride:

He is contented thy poor drudge to be,

To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side…..

(He pulls AEMELIA to him and tries to make love to her. AEMELIA pushes him away…)

AEMELIA

Get lost, baldy!

(AEMELIA runs off.  SHAKESPEARE, recovering, muses to himself…)

SHAKESPEARE

Then will I swear beauty herself is black

And all they foul that her complexion lack…..

BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL……

(SHAKESPREARE exits)

BEESTON

Will asked Harry to plead his love-suit with Aemelia. Now Harry wanted to hurt Will in any way he could. And, for Aemelia, a rich, handsome, young aristocrat, however gay, was better than an aging playwright. So, to Will’s horror, Harry started an affair with Aemelia….

SHAKESPEARE

(Entering and sitting) Two loves I have of comfort and despair

Which like two spirits do suggest me still:

The better angel is a man right fair…..

(Enter HARRY – stands near to SHAKESPEARE)

The worser spirit, a woman coloured ill.

(Enter AEMELIA, standing some distance away from SHAKESPEARE)

To win me soon to hell my female evil

Tempteth my better angel from my side….

(AEMELIA approaches HARRY and kisses him. She then takes him away from SHAKESPEARE’S side)

And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,

Wooing his purity with her foul pride…

(AEMELIA starts to make violent and graphic love to HARRY…They exit)

And whether that my angel be turned fiend

Suspect I may, yet not directly tell;

But being both from me both to each friend….

I guess one angel in another’s….

(SHAKESPEARE, overcome with sexual jealousy, cannot finish what he was to say. He exits)

 BEESTON

Will left Titchfield and went on tour again. He had to admit that the loss of Harry meant more to him than the loss of Aemelia….

(SHAKESPEARE enters)

SHAKESPEARE (writing)

That thou ha’st her it is not all my grief

And yet it may be said I loved her dearly…

That she hath thee is of my wailing chief

A loss in love that touches me more nearly….

BEESTON

Will, finally, told Harry that he loved him…

SHAKESPEARE

(Writing. Music beneath.) Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

(He looks up – and we can see he is thinking ‘No!’)

Thou art more lovely and more temperate.

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May

And winter’s lease hath all too short a date….

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines…

And often is his gold complexion dimm’d,

And every fair, from fair, sometime declines,

By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimm’d….

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest….

Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou growest….

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, (holding up the Sonnet)

…and this gives life to thee….

BEESTON

Aemelia became pregnant and was married off ‘for colour’. Will returned to Titchfield and Harry….

(Music continues. HARRY enters.  SHAKESPEARE enters and kneels in front of him, but HARRY raises SHAKESPEARE to his feet and embraces him. NASHE enters and sees this. SHAKESPEARE and HARRY walk off)

There was a problem in all this for Will and Harry….(COUNTESS MARY  enters)

Mother Mary! (MARY sits and does needlework) Will wasn’t exactly fulfilling his job description…

(NASHE crosses over to MARY, bows, kneels to her) Nashe felt obliged to tell Mary what he had seen. (NASHE whispers in MARY’s ear. MARY looks horrified. NASHE whispers again) And one or two things that he hadn’t. (MARY looks even more horrified. NASHE exits) Mary summoned Will….

(SHAKESPEARE enters and kneels in front of MARY. BEESTON opens First Folio)

MARY

 Do you love my son?

SHAKESPEARE

Your pardon noble mistress?

 MARY

Love you my son?

SHAKESPEARE

Do you not love him, madam?

MARY

Go not about. My love hath in’t a bond,

Whereof the world takes note. Come, come, disclose

The state of your affection, for your passions

Have to the full appeach’d.

SHAKESPEARE

Then I confess

Here on my knees, before high heaven and you,

That before you, and next unto high heaven,

I love your son. My dearest madam,

Let not your hate encounter with my love,

For loving where you do….

BEESTON

Will then reminded Mary that, when she was younger, she herself had been in love with someone she shouldn’t have been….

SHAKESPEARE

…..but if yourself

Whose aged honour cites a virtuous youth,

Did ever in so true a flame of liking,

Wish chastely and love dearly, that your Diane

Was both herself and love – o then give pity

To him whose state is such that cannot choose….

(A pause. MARY reddens, then raises SHAKESPEARE to his feet and kisses him on the cheek. She is accepting him into the family)

MARY

Our Cousin Will….

 (End of Extract)

TO READ THE REST OF ‘OUR COUSIN WILL’ PLEASE CLICK: HERE!

 

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In 2002, Stewart Trotter…….

……The Shakespeare Code’s Chief Agent…

…….published Love’s Labour’s Found…..

This book has formed the foundation of The Shakespeare Code…..

…..and its ideas have been examined, developed, enhanced……

…..and sometimes changed…

…..in 200 + Posts.

THE SHAKESPEARE CODE BELIEVES….

William Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost was first performed, at Whitsun in 1592, in the park and grounds of Place House….

…..the stately home of the Southampton family in Titchfield, Hampshire…….

…..to whose topography the play makes reference….

See: ‘Shakespeare in Titchfield – a Summary of the Evidence’ and ‘Shakespeare was a Schoolmaster in the Country – Titchfield.’

The play had been commissioned by Mary, the widowed Second Countess of Southampton…..

…..a committed and politically active Roman Catholic…..

….. to honour the return to England of Robert Devereux, the Second Earl of Essex……

…..the close friend of her son, Henry Wriothesley, Third Earl of Southampton…….

 

 

…..also known as Harry Southampton….

Although Essex wanted freedom of worship for English Catholics, he had been fighting against the Catholic League at the siege of Rouen in France…..

(The siege had been a catastrophic failure – for which Essex had been partly responsible: but it was being spun in England as a triumph.)

Two years before the Countess had also commissioned Shakespeare to produce seventeen sonnets for the seventeenth birthday of her son, Harry….

 ….to try to persuade him to marry Elizabeth de Vere…..

…  grand-daughter of William Cecil, Lord Burghley…..

 

(See:‘Trixie the Cat’s Guide to the Birthday Sonnets.’)

Burghley was Harry Southampton’s guardian……..

…..(and had been guardian to the Earl of Essex)……

……so he had the legal right to name the woman Harry should marry.

Harry, though, preferred male company……..

See: ‘Just how Gay was the Third Earl of Southampton?’

If Harry were to refuse Elizabeth’s hand, the Southampton family faced a tremendous £5,000 fine….

So Love’s Labour’s Lost tries to do what the Sonnets tried to do…..

…..TURN HARRY STRAIGHT!!!

……..by praising heterosexual love……

In the play, Fedinand, the King of Navarre, and his young aristocratic friends, Berowne, Longavill and Dumaine……

…..take an oath to cut themselves off from women in order to devote themselves to study…..

Ferdinand, King of Navarre…

….is Shakespeare’s compliment to two different noblemen….

Henri of Navarre….

…….under whose command Essex had fought the siege at Rouen.

….and Ferdinando, Lord Strange…..

…..for whose ‘Men’ Shakespeare had acted, written and collaborated before he joined the Southampton household in 1590…..

…..and who was also a cousin of Mary Southampton…..

(Earlier in the year, Shakespeare had obliquely complimented Lord Strange in the figure of the gallant Lord Talbot in what is now Henry VI Part One. One of Talbot’s titles mentioned in the play is ‘Lord Strange of Blackmere’. )

Berowne….

……is a play on…….

Browne

……the maiden name of Mary, Second Countess of Southampton…..

…….daughter of Sir Anthony Browne, 1st Viscount Montague…..

……..one of England’s leading Roman Catholics…..

We know that the character’s name was pronounced like the colour  brown…….

……..with an extra syllable after the ‘B’……

……..because Berowne says to Rosaline:

Studies my lady? mistress, look on me;

Behold the window of my heart, mine eye,

What humble suit attends thy answer there:

Impose some service on me for thy love.

Studies

……here is a reference to…..

Brown studies

……defined by Samuel Johnson as…..

…gloomy meditations

……and was a phrase which was in  use by 1555……

The author of Manifest Detection Diceplay wrote….

Lacke of company wyll son lead a man into a brown study.

(The character is still called ‘Berowne’ in the First Folio edition of Shakespeare’s plays.  But in later editions – when the topical reference had been lost – the name is changed to……

 …….Biron…..

…..a reference to Charles de Gontaut, duc de Biron

…..who was also fighting at the siege of Rouen)

The name……

Longavill

……is a reference to Henri d’Orleans, duc de Longueville…..

……and…..

Dumaine

…..to Charles, duc de Mayenne……..

….who ALSO fought at the Siege of Rouen…..

…..but on the other side!!!

In the play the beautiful Princess of France arrives with her entourage,  Rosaline, Katherine and Maria…….

……in a parody of Queen Elizabeth I’s progress to Cowdray and Titchfield the year before (1591)….

……when, like the Princess in the play, Elizabeth shot deer from a specially erected….

stand….

 

 See: ‘The Progresses of Queen Elizabeth.’

 The vows of celibacy the young men take in the play are soon forgotten…..

……….and in a scene identical to the eaves-dropping scene in The Fair Em…….

…….a play Shakespeare collaborated on with Robert Greene for Lord Strange’s Men…..

 …..the Lords catch each other out writing love poetry to their mistresses…..

……and finally give in to the power of love….

As Berowne, echoing the Birthday Sonnets, says in one of the finest passages in the whole of Shakespeare….

But love, first learned in a lady’s eyes,

Lives not alone immured in the brain;

But, with the motion of all elements,

Courses as swift as thought in every power

And gives to every power a double power,

Above their functions and their offices.

It adds a precious seeing to the eye;

A lover’s eyes will gaze an eagle blind;

A lover’s ear will hear the lowest sound,

When the suspicious head of theft is stopp’d:

Love’s feeling is more soft and sensible

Than are the tender horns of cockl’d snails;

Love’s tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste:

For valour, is not Love a Hercules,

Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?

Subtle as Sphinx; as sweet and musical

As bright Apollo’s lute, strung with his hair:

And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods

Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.

The Code believes Love’s Labour’s Lost was written by Shakespeare in collaboration with Thomas Nashe……

…..who wrote the jokes…..

…..and, being beardless and tiny….

also played the part of the……

…… well-educated infant……

…..Moth….

Shakespeare himself played the  witty and lyrical part of Berowne…..

See: ‘Shakespeare as Berowne and Nashe as Moth’.

The Shakespeare Code believes that many of the characters in Love’s Labour’s Lost were lampoons of the ‘enemies’ of the Southampton and Essex….

…..as well as ‘enemies’ of Shakespeare and Nashe.

 The boastful lover, Don Armado, who is in love with a country wench, Jacquenetta, was a satire on Sir Walter Raleigh…..

……who at the time of the first production of the play was in love with Elizabeth (‘Bess’) Throckmorton…..

Shakespeare and Nashe even have Costard, the Clown, refer to Bess’s fan….

…….shown in the painting above…..

Armado o’ th’ one side, O, a most dainty man!

To see him walk before a lady and to bear her fan!

…and Nashe, writing by himself in his pamphlet Pierce Pennilesse, had also referred to Raleigh in code as an…

….inamorata poeta…..

…..who would….

…..sonnet a whole quire of paper in praise of Lady Swine-Snout, his yellow-faced Mistress [Bess Throckmorton] and wear a feather of her rain-beaten fan for a favour, like a fore-horse….

Raleigh married Bess without the Queen’s permission….

And so was banished from the Court.

When news came that Elizabeth Throckmorton was pregnant, the plot of the play had to be changed…..

Instead of being rejected by Jacquenetta……..

…..as he is at the beginning of the play….

….by the end of it Armado has managed to impregnate her!!!

Raleigh was a major rival with the Earl of Essex for the Queen’s affections….

And he had angered Nashe by not coming up with the money he had promised him for a commission….

NOTE

The edition of the play that has come down to us is one that had been…

……..presented before her Highness this last Christmas. Newly corrected and augmented by W. Shakespere…

‘Last Christmas’ was probably 1597 – and Raleigh was back at Court and back in favour.

The Code has argued how Shakespeare ‘adapted’ the part of Armado to suggest a attack on Antonio Pérez….

 

……a conniving gay Spaniard who was part of Essex’s entourage….

….and who was hated by the Queen.

(See:‘Thomas Nashe’s revenge on Sir Walter Raleigh.’)

Boyet….

…..the lisping sycophant fac totum to the Princes, was a satire on the Rival Poet to whom Shakespeare makes coded reference in the Sonnets…..

…..George Chapman….

See:‘Boyet – Shakespeare’s revenge on George Chapman’. 

Chapman was a practising occultist……..

…..part of ….

…The School of Night…..

…. mentioned in the play….

…..which the Jesuits described as….

….the School of Atheism….

……a group of ‘scientific’ free-thinkers whose numbers included ‘The Wizard Earl’ Henry Percy, Ninth Earl of Northumberland……

…….who lived at nearby Petworth….

…..Sir George Carey….

…..a rioter and gourmet who was later to be Shakespeare’s model for Sir Toby Belch….

See: ‘Sir Toby Belch as George Carey, the Lord Hunsdon’

…and who lived across the water from Titchfield on the Isle of Wight….

Ferdinando Strange was associated with the School……

(Sir Nathaniel, the Curate in the play, uses the coded phrase ‘Strange without heresy’)

…..as was Raleigh…..

…and as was Christopher Marlowe.

(Marlowe might well have written the séance-obsessed Doctor Faustus for the group, in collaboration with Nashe – who again supplied the jokes…

We know for certain that Nashe collaborated with Marlowe on Dido, Queen of Carthage – a satire on Queen Elizabeth’s infatuation with the Earl of Essex)

 Chapman would regularly summon up the spirit of Homer….

…..and, later on....

……after he had been stabbed in Deptford in 1593……

…. Christopher Marlowe himself…..

(For Chapman’s rôle in the Sonnets, please see:‘Chapman talks to Marlowe’s Ghost.’)

The pedantic schoolmaster in the play, Holofernese, was first identified as a satire on John Florio…..

….by William Warburton(1698-1779) The Bishop of Gloucester.

Florio was part of the Southampton household at the time of the play, tutoring young Harry in Italian, translating the Essays of Montaigne into English and compiling an Italian/English dictionary…..

Florio defines…

…caelo…

…as…

…the heaven, the sky, the firmament or welkin…..

Holofernes describes the deer that Princess shoots as…

…ripe as the pomewater [a whitish apple] who now hangeth like a jewel in the ear of caelo, the sky, the welkin, the heaven….

Florio employs heavy alliteration….

Proverbs are the pith, the properties, the proofs, the purities of language….

So does Holofernes…..

The preyful Princess pierc’d and prick’d a pretty, pleasing pricket….

Dame Frances Yates……..

…… believed Florio was placed in the Catholic household by Lord Burghley as part of his spy network…..

The Code believes he replaced Shakespeare as the local schoolmaster in the Titchfield Grammar School….

As Love’s Labour’s Found also argues, Florio could well have written the Progress Entertainment which Mary Southampton’s father, Lord Montague, put on at nearby Cowdray for Queen Elizabeth the previous year….

And which Shakespeare lampoons in the entertainment Holofernes put on for the Princess of France….

See: ‘Shakespeare in Titchfield – a Summary of the Evidence’ and ‘Shakespeare was a Schoolmaster in the Country – Titchfield.’

 Love’s Labour’s Lost was clearly a coterie play…….

…..intended for an aristocratic, coterie audience…..

…..with an aristocratic, coterie cast.

The next Post reveals who these people were…..

PLEASE CLICK: HERE!

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Brothers and Sisters of The Shakespeare Code…..

It is with great pride that the Agents of the Code….

….along with Trixie the Cat….

…..announce that on…..

Wednesday, 14th January, 2015…

The Shakespeare Code recorded its……

175,000th VIEW!!!

In addition, FIVE more countries joined The Code……

They are:

SAINT MARTIN

LESOTHO

MALI

FRENCH POLYNESIA

CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC

This brings the number of participating countries to…..

ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY SEVEN!!!

THE SHAKESPEARE CODE HAS CONQUERED THE WORLD!!!

(nearly….)

TO SEE A MARCH-PAST OF ALL THE NATIONS…..

CLICK: HERE!!!

The Code has received congratulations from its

ONLIE BEGETTER…..

Michael Hentges, F. S. C.

It was Michael who responded with enthusiasm to The Code’s very first Post…..

….and encouraged us all to continue with our work.

WITHOUT MICHAEL, THE CODE WOULD NOT EXIST.

(To read more about Michael’s induction as Fellow to The Code, click: HERE.)

Michael has given us permission to quote from his private correspondence with our Chief Agent….

Stewart Trotter.

I actually (for a change) had some quality research time available last winter/spring. I spent said time re-reading the early “Collected Works”, looking primarily for timeline and biographical clues. In the process, I frequently found myself referring back to corresponding earlier posts in the Shakespeare Code. Without going into hard details – what struck me most at the time was the clarity with which you manage to “read between the lines”. So many of your theories do resonate: they’re not just possibly true – they’re probably true. And “probably” (given the absence of verified historical facts) is about as good as it gets…

P. S.

To read The Code’s next Post…..

Love’s Labour’s Lost REVISITED…..

Please click: HERE!

P.P.S.  If you came here searching for ‘Fairie Lore and Roman Catholicism in A Midsummer Night’s Dream’….

…..click: HERE! 

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(It’s best to read Parts ONE, TWO, THREE and FOUR first)

 Puck thinks all mortals are fools.

 

He terrifies them…..

……manipulates them…..

……imitates them….

……and laughs at them….

But in the end he blesses them….

When thou wakest,

Thou takest

True delight

In the sight

Of thy former lady’s eye:

And the country proverb known,

That every man should take his own,

In your waking shall be shown:

Jack shall have Jill;

Nought shall go ill;

The man shall have his mare again,

And all shall be well.

Shakespeare here gives Puck the same words that God Himself used when he spoke to Mother Julian of Norwich….

All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well….

At the end of the play, the iron tongue of midnight tolls twelve.

Theseus and Hippolyta…

…….Lysander and Hermia…….

…….. and Demetrius and Helena……

…….. leave the wedding feast to consummate their love in their bedchambers.

Puck then enters, lit by the dying embers of the fire….

……broom in hand, to cleanse the Hall and prepare it for magic….

Now the hungry lion roars,

And the wolf behowls the moon;

Whilst the heavy ploughman snores,

All with weary task fordone.

Now the wasted brands do glow….

Whilst the screech-owl, screeching loud,

Puts the wretch that lies in woe

In remembrance of a shroud.

Now it is the time of night

That the graves all gaping wide,

Every one lets forth his sprite,

In the church-way paths to glide:

And we fairies, that do run

By the triple Hecate’s team,

From the presence of the sun,

Following darkness like a dream,

Now are frolic: not a mouse

Shall disturb this hallow’d house:

I am sent with broom before,

To sweep the dust behind the door.

Oberon then enters with Titania followed by the fairy band…..

….with, the original stage directions say…..

……waxen tapers on their heads…..

Queen Elizabeth might have banned candles from her subjects’ altars….

But King Oberon floods Theseus’s palace with living light…..

Through the house give glimmering light

By the dead and drowsy fire

Every elf and every sprite

Hop as light as bird from briar…

We can be sure that when Mary married the Second Earl of Southampton, Catholic priests were in secret attendance…..

(Mary’s father kept them on his payroll, disguised as liveried servants and gardeners)

One of them would have said the ‘Benedictio Thalami’…….

…..the traditional blessing on the wedding bed…..

Benedicto domine thalamum hunc….

Bless o Lord this bed. May all who dwell in it remain in Thy peace, abide in Thy will, grow to old age, and be multiplied to the length of days and attain at last to the kingdom of heaven.

Per Christum dominum nostrum. Amen

The priest then sprinkles holy water over the bed……

……and over the bride and groom……

……in the form of a cross…

Shakespeare gives Oberon a fairy version of this blessing.…

To the best bride-bed will we,

Which by us shall blessed be;

And the issue there create

Ever shall be fortunate.

So shall all the couples three

Ever true in loving be;

And the blots of Nature’s hand

Shall not in their issue stand;

Never mole, hare lip, nor scar,

Nor mark prodigious, such as are

Shall upon their children be.

But instead of using holy water for the consecration, Oberon uses dew from the fields….

With this field-dew consecrate,

Every fairy take his gait;

And each several chamber bless….

Through this palace, with sweet peace;

And the owner of it blest

Ever shall in safety rest.

Trip away; make no stay;

Meet me all by break of day…

Puck, left alone, addresses the audience directly……

If we shadows have offended,

Think but this, and all is mended,

That you have but slumber’d here

While these visions did appear.

And this weak and idle theme,

No more yielding but a dream…..

But nothing is ever straightforward with Puck…

The rest of his speech is filled, if not with the equivocation of the fiend, then certainly with ambiguity….

Gentles, do not reprehend:

If you pardon, we will mend:

Does he mean ‘If you pardon our failings as actors, we will improve as performers….’?

Or does he mean ‘If you pardon our failing as fairies we will make your lives better for you…..’?

And, as I am an honest Puck…..

…..which clearly he isn’t….

 If we have unearned luck

Now to ‘scape the serpent’s tongue,

We will make amends ere long….

Is ‘the serpent’s tongue’ the hiss of a displeased audience?

Or is it the tongue of Satan himself, tempting figures of light – as he tempted Eve – to become figures of darkness like himself?

And what are these ‘amends’?

Else the Puck a liar call…..

So, good night unto you all.

Give me your hands, if we be friends,

And Robin shall restore amends.

What does Puck mean by ‘Give me your hands’?

Does he mean: ‘Applaud’?

Or does he mean: ‘Take your hands in mine’?

And what does he mean by ‘Robin shall restore amends’?

Does he mean he will make amends for what he has done?

Or does he mean he will make amends for what has been done to you?

 Is Puck saying:

Applaud us and we will produce better plays for you in the future….

 Or is he saying:

 Reach out and grasp my hands and I will make up for all you have suffered…..

 I will heal the past….

Puck means both……

………and Shakespeare is directing these last lines at his patron, the Countess Mary…..

Did she reach out to grasp the hands of Puck?

Did the reconciling magic of the play work ?

We are in the extraordinary position of knowing that it did…

Heneage, sadly, died the year after the play was performed……

….but  Mary went on to marry a third, much younger husband ….

When, however, she finally came to write her will in 1607, she asked to be interred at St. Peter’s, Titchfield…..

….as near as may be unto the body of my honorable and dearly beloved Lord and husband, Henry, late Earl of Southampton…..

The Fairies had done their work well…….

FINIS……

……AND FAIRY POSTLUDE…..

When The Shakespeare Code first announced these Posts……

…… the Rev. Canon Tony Dickinson…..

…..Vicar of  Giles Gilbert Scot’s St. Francis of Assisi Church, High Wycombe…

…..contacted The Code’s Chief Agent…..

…Stewart Trotter…

…and asked him if he planned to quote from….

THE FAIRIES’ FAREWELL

This was written by Bishop Robert Corbett (1582-1635)

…..who would have been twelve years old when A Midsummer Night’s Dream was first performed.

Stewart could not believe his eyes when he read the poem!!!

It entirely corroborates The Shakespeare Code’s theory…..

That magic and spirituality fled England in the reign of Elizabeth…..

….and that the Fairy World was equated completely with…..

‘The Old Profession’….

ROMAN CATHOLICISM!!!

Here is the poem, with thanks again to Rev. Canon Dickinson….

FAREWELL rewards and Fairies!

Good housewives now may say;

For now foul sluts in dairies

Do fare as well as they;

And though they sweep their hearths no less

Than maids were wont to do,

Yet who of late for cleanliness

Finds sixpence in her shoe?

Lament, lament old Abbeys,

The fairies lost command;

They did but change priests’ babies,

But some have chang’d your land;

And all your children stol’n from thence

Are now grown Puritans,

Who live as changelings ever since,

For love of your demaines.

At morning and at evening both

You merry were and glad,

So little care of sleep and sloth

These pretty ladies had.

When Tom came home from labour,

Or Ciss to milking rose,

Then merrily went their tabour,

And nimbly went their toes.

 

Witness those rings and roundelayes

Of theirs, which yet remain;

Were footed in Queen Mary’s days

On many a grassy plain.

 

But since of late Elizabeth

And later James came in;

They never danc’d on any heath,

As when the time hath been

 

By which we note the fairies

Were of the old profession:

Their songs were Ave Maries,

Their dances were procession.

But now, alas! they all are dead,

Or gone beyond the seas,

Or farther for religion fled,

Or else they take their ease.

THE END

The Shakespeare Code would also like to acknowledge the work of Richard Simpson, M. A. (1820-76)

….an Oxford Graduate and Anglican Priest who converted to Roman Catholicism in 1844.

He was the first to advance the theory that William Shakespeare was a Catholic…….

….and met with howls of derision from the Victorian Academic Establishment.

They needed their Bard to be  a Protestant…..

…..in the way our own Establishment once needed him to be Straight!!!

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL BROTHERS AND SISTERS OF THE SHAKESPEARE CODE!!!

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(It’s best to read Parts ONE, TWO  and THREE  first)

William Shakespeare couldn’t have Saints and Angels in A Midsummer Night’s Dream interfering in the destinies of men…….

…….so he had fairies and goblins do the job instead.

And he establishes from the start that Puck – like the old Roman Catholic Church – is powerful, magical AND ambivalent…..

 As the First Fairy says to him…

Either I mistake your shape and making quite,

Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite

Call’d Robin Goodfellow: are not you he

That frights the maidens of the villagery;

Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern

And bootless make the breathless housewife churn;

And sometime make the drink to bear no barm;

Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?

But the First Fairy then goes on to reveal there are different names for Robin Goodfellow…

……and different natures…..

Those that Hobgoblin call you and sweet Puck,

You do their work, and they shall have good luck…..

If you are good to Puck, Puck will be good to you…

It was just like praying to a Catholic Saint…..

Puck replies….

 Thou speak’st aright;

I am that merry wanderer of the night.

I jest to Oberon and make him smile

When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,

Neighing in likeness of a filly foal:

And sometime lurk I in a gossip’s bowl,

In very likeness of a roasted crab,

And when she drinks, against her lips I bob

And on her wither’d dewlap pour the ale.

The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,

Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;

Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,

And ‘tailor’ cries, and falls into a cough;

And then the whole quire hold their hips and laugh,

And waxen in their mirth and sneeze and swear

A merrier hour was never wasted there.

This is close to the joy, celebration and anarchy of the old Catholic holidays……..

….which Elizabeth killed at a stroke.

She cut the number of Holy Days from over a hundred a year to a mere twenty-seven….

But Shakespeare goes out of his way to show that the Fairies in the play…..

 ……are NOT……

…..as the Protestants taught……

…..sent from the Devil.

Puck warns Oberon that daylight is approaching……

……a time when the ghosts of men and women who have done evil in their lives return to their graves….

 Night’s swift dragons cut the clouds full fast,

And yonder shines Aurora’s harbinger;

At whose approach, ghosts, wandering here and there,

Troop home to churchyards: damned spirits all,

That in crossways and floods have burial,

Already to their wormy beds are gone;

For fear lest day should look their shames upon,

They willfully themselves exile from light

And must for aye consort with black-brow’d night.

But Oberon then explains to Puck how he and his entourage are a quite different order of beings….

…..spirits of light who relish the golden dawn…

 

But we are spirits of another sort:

I with the morning’s love have oft made sport,

And, like a forester, the groves may tread,

Even till the eastern gate, all fiery-red,

Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams,

Turns into yellow gold his salt green streams.

Shakespeare shows how the world of fairies resonates with the world of mortals…..

Puck says of Oberon…

The king doth keep his revels here to-night:

Take heed the queen come not within his sight;

For Oberon is passing fell and wrath,

Because that she as her attendant hath

A lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king;

She never had so sweet a changeling…..

Anita Louise as Titania.

And jealous Oberon would have the child

Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild….

But she perforce withholds the loved boy,

Crowns him with flowers and makes him all her joy:

And now they never meet in grove or green,

By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen,

But, they do square, that all their elves for fear

Creep into acorn-cups and hide them there.

This fight between Oberon and Titania over the changeling boy EXACTLY mirrors the fight between Countess Mary…….

……and the Second Earl of Southampton……..

…… over their son Harry……

The phrase Puck uses about the changeling……

…..lovely boy……

…..is EXACTLY the phrase Shakespeare uses to describe Harry in Sonnet 126….

O thou my lovely boy who in thy power

Dost hold time’s fickle glass, his sickle hour….

When Oberon and Titania meet for the first time in the play, they accuse each other of sexual infidelities…

…..just as the Second Earl and Mary had done….

Oberon, confronting Titania for the first time in the play, says:

I’ll met by moonlight, proud Titania.

And she replies with…

What, jealous Oberon! Fairies, skip hence:

I have forsworn his bed and company….

Oberon:

Tarry, rash wanton: am not I thy lord?

Titania:

Then I must be thy lady: but I know

When thou hast stolen away from fairy land,

And in the shape of Corin sat all day,

Playing on pipes of corn and versing love

To amorous Phillida…..

They even accuse each other of affairs with Theseus and Hippolyta themselves…

Titania:

Why art thou here,

Come from the farthest Steppe of India?

But that, forsooth, the bouncing Amazon,

Your buskin’d mistress and your warrior love…..

To Theseus must be wedded, and you come

To give their bed joy and prosperity.

Oberon:

How canst thou thus for shame, Titania,

Glance at my credit with Hippolyta,

Knowing I know thy love to Theseus?

Didst thou not lead him through the glimmering night

From Perigenia, whom he ravished?

And make him with fair Aegle break his faith, With Ariadne and Antiopa?

Their quarrel is so charged it affects the weather itself…

As Titania says:

 ……the winds, piping to us in vain,

As in revenge, have suck’d up from the sea

Contagious fogs; which falling in the land

Have every pelting river made so proud

That they have overborne their continents:

The ox hath therefore stretch’d his yoke in vain,

The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn

Hath rotted ere his youth attain’d a beard;

The fold stands empty in the drowned field,

And crows are fatted with the murrion flock;

The nine men’s morris is fill’d up with mud,

And the quaint mazes in the wanton green

For lack of tread are undistinguishable….

The human mortals want their winter here;

No night is now with hymn or carol blest:

Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,

Pale in her anger, washes all the air,

That rheumatic diseases do abound:

And this same progeny of evils comes

From our debate, from our dissension;

We are their parents and original….

This is a blow by blow description of the weather in 1594 – the year of the play’s premiere…..

Simon Forman, the astrologer, wrote:

June and July were very wet and wonderful cold like winter, that the 10^th day of July many did sit by the fire it was so cold and so it was in May and June. There were many great floods this summer….

Heneage and Mary had had their official wedding ceremony in London on 2^nd May – but wanted a Midsummer wedding celebration at Copped Hall round what had become St. John’s Day – 24^th June….

Parts of A Midsummer Night’s Dream were clearly written to be played in the grounds and woods: there are mentions of oaks and hawthorn brakes and at one point Puck has to……..

……overcast the starry welkin with drooping fog as black as Acheron…….

…..an effect more easily achieved outdoors than indoors.

So the weather would have had a devastating effect on the plans for the Wedding Feast….

According to the historian and antiquarian, John Stow……….

……..it wasn’t till August that the weather improved.

Now even in these Godless times, people take the weather at a wedding as a sign of things to come….

So what did the Roman Catholic friends of the Southamptons make of the weather of 1594? Catholics then – and indeed Protestants – saw omens in everything!

They would have believed that the soul of the Second Earl, cheated of his tomb, was unquiet. And that the row between himself and Mary was echoing through the cosmos…..

Just as Oberon’s and Titania’s was…..

 This row would HAVE to be resolved before Mary’s second marriage had a chance of succeeding….

So Shakespeare resolves it in the play itself….

Oberon punishes his wife for the theft of the changeling boy.

He enchants her eyes and she falls madly in love with Bottom the Weaver…..

…..whom Puck has transformed into an ass…..

 

….just as Countess Mary had fallen madly in love with a…….

 ……common person.

It’s the Feast of Fools all over again…..

Titania, though, expresses her infatuation with Bottom in language of great naturalness and beauty…..

Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms.

So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle

Gently entwist; the female ivy so

Enrings the barky fingers of the elm.

O, how I love thee! how I dote on thee!

 

Oberon’s heart fills with pity for Titania’s dotage……

…… for her humiliation as a woman……..

…….which even the dew on the flowers she has picked for Bottom feels as its own….

Oberon forgives her and takes the spell from her eyes….

 

Be as thou wast wont to be;

See as thou wast wont to see:

Dian’s bud o’er Cupid’s flower

Hath such force and blessed power.

Now, my Titania; wake you, my sweet queen…

It is as though the spirit of the Second Earl has returned to forgive his wife….

Titania restores the changeling boy to Oberon’s bower in fairy land……..

….. and Oberon and Titania….

…..new in amity….

…rock the ground…..

…… with a dance of concord as they prepare to bless Duke Theseus’s house…..

And Fairy blessings fill the rest of the play….

 

To Read the Fifth and Last Post in this series, ‘Fairy Blessings’, please click: HERE!

 

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(It’s best to read Parts ONE and TWO first)

In writing A Midsummer Night’s Dream William Shakespeare takes on the rôle of a Catholic Priest…..

……but, like Bottom in the play who wants to act all the parts himself…….

 

……he can’t help taking on the rôle of Best Man as well….

A Best Man needs, above all things, to be diplomatic. Shakespeare knew that half of his audience at Copt Hall would be Roman Catholic and half would be Protestant. Catholics had had their hopes dashed only seven years before with the execution of Mary Queen of Scots….

……..followed swiftly by the defeat of the Spanish Armada.

Heneage had played a large part in both….

Shakespeare deals with this problem by acknowledging it….

Aristocrats, in Elizabethan times, often acted at university and in private entertainments. It is my belief that Thomas Heneage – described as …

……a man for his elegancy of life and pleasantness of discourse, born, as it were, for the court

…..took the part of the conqueror Theseus……

……and Countess Mary Southampton – who had fought so much for the Catholic faith – the conquered Amazon, Hippolyta……

Theseus says….

Hippolyta, I wooed the with my sword

And won thy love doing thee injuries

But I will wed thee in another key

With pomp, with triumph and with revelling…..

Heneage was Queen Elizabeth’s old lover to whom she had sent the famous Armada jewel…….

She hated weddings, but was bound to see the play at some time…

….so Shakespeare had to work in a compliment to her….

Officially, at least, she was still the Virgin Queen – so Shakespeare has Oberon, the King of the Fairies……..

……say to his henchman, Puck….

That very time I saw, but thou couldst not,

Flying between the cold moon and the earth,

Cupid all arm’d: a certain aim he took

At a fair vestal throned by the west, And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow,

As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts;

But I might see young Cupid’s fiery shaft

Quench’d in the chaste beams of the watery moon,

And the imperial votaress passed on,

In maiden meditation, fancy-free.

Shakespeare knew this would upset the Catholics…….

…..especially as Mary Queen of Scots had been imprisoned for a time at Copped Hall itself….

So Shakespeare has Oberon slip in a coded compliment to her as well…

She was often depicted as a Mermaid, bare breasted with he hair cascading over her shoulders….

Thou rememberest

Since once I sat upon a promontory,

And heard a mermaid on a dolphin’s back…..

The…..

……dolphin…..

……is Dauphin Francis of France……

Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath

That the rude sea grew civil at her song……

The ‘rude sea’ is rebellious Scotland..

And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,

To hear the sea-maid’s music……

The……

 …..stars……

….are the late Lord Montague……

……. and the Second Earl of Southampton…….

…….who plotted to put her on the throne of England and so……

 ……shot madly from their spheres….

The Best Man is also expected to send everyone up – and Shakespeare is happy to oblige.

The very opening speech of the play is a satire on Queen Elizabeth herself – who, hitting sixty, her cheeks stuffed out with rags, loved to be compared to the moon….

Theseus says:

Now fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour

Draws on apace; four happy days bring in

Another moon – but o methinks how slow this old moon wanes….

Shakespeare saves himself from the Tower by immediately shifting the attack to Mary Southampton herself ……

…..notorious for keeping son Harry short of money….

She lingers my desires

Like to a step-dame or a dowager

Long withering out a young man’s revenue….

Shakespeare has another dig at Elizabeth – this time at her sexuality – when he has the First Fairy say to Puck….

And I serve the Fairy Queen

To dew her orbs upon the green…..

(Elizabeth ALSO loved to be known as the Fairy Queen…)

The cowslips tall her pensioners be……

Now pensioners to us are old men who hang round Chelsea in red, wearing their medals….

But not to Elizabeth! They were her body-guard, a hand-picked corps of fifty tall, handsome young bucks on horseback – the flower of the gentry – dressed in gold lace and jewels.

One of the Pensioners – recruited personally by Elizabeth for his height and his staggering good looks – was only seventeen….

The First Fairy continues describing the red ‘spots’ in the yellow petals of the cowslips…..

…..and compares them to the ruby ‘favours’ Elizabeth would give to certain of her Guards….

In their gold coats spots you see;

Those be rubies, fairy favours,

In those freckles live their savours.

I must go seek some dew-drops here

And hang a pearl in every cowslip’s ear….

The particular ‘cowslip’ Shakespeare had in mind was the newly appointed Captain of the Pensioners…..

…..Sir Walter Raleigh, another of Elizabeth’s lovers……..

…..who was so proud of his pearl earring he had himself painted wearing it…….

A Best Man is also expected to make jokes about sex….

Nowadays, the Bride and Groom have probably been living together for years before the ceremony……

…… and often bop till they drop with the rest of the guests….

Not so in the old days!

Then there was a massive sexual charge in the air at a wedding……

……resolved only when the Bride and Groom left the feast for the honeymoon….

We have seen Theseus, at the beginning of the play, yearning for his wedding night, scarcely able to cope with the four days’ wait…

And Shakespeare shows how sex is on Lysander’s mind when he finds himself lost in the woods with his beloved Hermia….

 

– the Elizabethan equivalent of running out of petrol in your car…

Lysander:

Fair love, you faint with wandering in the wood;

And to speak troth, I have forgot our way:

We’ll rest us, Hermia, if you think it good,

And tarry for the comfort of the day.

Hermia (suspecting what’s up)

Be it so, Lysander: find you out a bed;

For I upon this bank will rest my head.

Lysander: (trying it on)

One turf shall serve as pillow for us both;

One heart, one bed, two bosoms and one troth.

Hermia: (warding him off – but trying not to offend him)

Nay, good Lysander; for my sake, my dear,

Lie further off yet, do not lie so near.

Lysander: (trying to suggest that all he wants is a spiritual union)

O, take the sense, sweet, of my innocence!

Love takes the meaning in love’s conference.

I mean, that my heart unto yours is knit

So that but one heart we can make of it;

Two bosoms interchained with an oath;

So then two bosoms and a single troth.

Then by your side no bed-room me deny;

For lying so, Hermia, I do not lie.

Hermia: (not taken in for a second)

Lysander riddles very prettily:

Now much beshrew my manners and my pride,

If Hermia meant to say Lysander lied.

But, gentle friend, for love and courtesy

Lie further off; in human modesty,

Such separation as may well be said

Becomes a virtuous bachelor and a maid…..

(Suddenly worried Lysander might walk off altogether…..)

So far be distant; and, good night, sweet friend:

Thy love ne’er alter till thy sweet life end!

 

Mary was hoping that some of this heterosexuality would rub off onto the gay Lord Harry….

…..so Shakespeare obliges by showing how perverse it is for Demetrius to flee from the charms of the beautiful Helena….

……just as it was for Harry to flee from Lord Burghley’s grand-daughter, the Lady Elizabeth…

Oberon, invisible, watches the whole episode….

Demetrius:

I love thee not, therefore pursue me not.

Hence, get thee gone, and follow me no more.

Helena:

You draw me, you hard-hearted adamant;

But yet you draw not iron, for my heart

Is true as steel: leave you your power to draw,

And I shall have no power to follow you.

 

Demetrius:

Do I entice you? do I speak you fair?

Or, rather, do I not in plainest truth

Tell you, I do not, nor I cannot love you?

Helena:

And even for that do I love you the more.

I am your spaniel; and, Demetrius,

The more you beat me, I will fawn on you:

Use me but as your spaniel, spurn me, strike me,

Neglect me, lose me; only give me leave,

Unworthy as I am, to follow you.

Demetrius:

Tempt not too much the hatred of my spirit;

For I am sick when I do look on thee.

Helena

And I am sick when I look not on you.

Demetrius:

I’ll run from thee and hide me in the brakes,

And leave thee to the mercy of wild beasts.

Helena:

The wildest hath not such a heart as you.

Run when you will, the story shall be changed:

Apollo flies, and Daphne holds the chase;

The dove pursues the griffin; the mild hind

Makes speed to catch the tiger; bootless speed,

When cowardice pursues and valour flies.

Demetrius:

I will not stay thy questions; let me go:

Or, if thou follow me, do not believe

But I shall do thee mischief in the wood.

Helena:

Ay, in the temple, in the town, the field,

You do me mischief. Fie, Demetrius!

Your wrongs do set a scandal on my sex:

We cannot fight for love, as men may do;

We should be wooed and were not made to woo.

(Demetrius runs off)

I’ll follow thee, and make a heaven of hell

To die upon the hand I love so well.

(Helena runs after Demetrius)

 

Oberon then steps forward and says:

Fare thee well, nymph: ere he do leave this grove,

Thou shalt fly him and he shall seek thy love.

Oberon then orders Puck to put a ‘conversion’ spell on Demetrius….

……rather in the way that Countess Mary would like a conversion spell to be put on her son…..

Churl, upon thy eyes I throw

All the power this charm doth owe.

When thou wakest, let love forbid

Sleep his seat on thy eyelid:

So awake when I am gone;

For I must now to Oberon…..

Puck of course gets his Athenians mixed up….

……which just adds to the chaos….

But with this intrusion of the world of spirit into the world of mortals, Shakespeare abandons his Best Man role…….

…..and takes up that of Priest……

 

To read Part Four, please click: HERE!

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 (It’s best to read Part ONE first)

To appreciate what William Shakespeare was up to with A Midsummer Night’s Dream, we need to understand the woman who commissioned it……..

……the extraordinary Mary Browne, Second Countess of Southampton…..

She was the daughter of Anthony Browne, first Viscount Montague……..

………one of England’s leading Catholics who had refused to take the Oath of Supremacy when Elizabeth came to the throne.

Mary married the Second Earl of Southampton………

………another committed Catholic……

……..and both families plotted to overthrow Queen Elizabeth and put Catholic Mary Queen of Scots on the throne.

The rebellion failed and Montague and Southampton nearly lost their heads.

But canny Elizabeth – wanting the bad boys on her side – made the repentant Montague a Lord Lieutenant.

The unrepentant Second Earl, however, was thrown into the Tower. His wife Mary must have had very liberal visiting rights. While he was still a prisoner she bore him a son – Henry Wriothesely, the third Earl of Southampton, also known as Harry.

The Second Earl’s mother, Jane, had warned her son about marrying the strong-willed Mary – and she was right. Mary fell in love with…..

….a common person….

…..and her husband, worked on by a family ‘friend’, disowned her.

She wrote a letter to her husband, pleading her innocence and got six year old Harry to deliver it.

But, as she later wrote to her father…..

….his heart was too great to bestow the reading of it, coming from me. Good my lord, procure as soon as you conveniently may, some end to my misery for I am tired of this life…..

The Second Earl seized the boy, cut off all relationships with the Montague family and in the words of Mary….

….made his manservant his wife….

He also passed on his hatred of women to his son and surrounded himself with an all-male entourage of…

….at least a hundred well-mounted gentlemen and yeomen – tall goodly fellows that kept a constant pace…

The servants of the Southampton family would fight with the servants of the Montague family – just as they do in Romeo and Juliet…

The Catholic Faith was the Second Earl’s undoing. He tried to arrange a meeting with the Jesuit Missionary, Edmund Campion……..

……..but Campion was arrested and tortured and revealed names. The Second Earl was thrown into the Tower again and ‘examined’. He died two months later, under house arrest, at the age of 36.

He had written a will leaving the care of his eight year old son and his estates to his manservant: but Mary was having none of it.

She pulled aristocratic strings and got the will reversed …..

One of her husband’s requests had been for a solitary tomb to be set up for him at St. Peter’s Church in Titchfield…….

……..as an eternal rebuke to his wife…

Mary ignored this request for thirteen years – then subverted it in 1594…..

This was the year young Harry was to come of age.

Like his father, he was fiercely Catholic and, also like his father, loathed women – his mother in particular.

So Mary had commissioned fellow Catholic, William Shakespeare, to write a series of Sonnets to persuade her son of the joys of marriage.

William Cecil, now Lord Burghley……….

…….had become Harry’s guardian and wanted him to marry his Protestant grand-daughter, Lady Elizabeth de Vere.

If Harry refused, the Southampton family faced a gigantic £5,000 fine…

Mary knew that Harry would throw her out of the family estate at Titchfield when he reached his majority. So she decided to marry an old friend and widower, Sir Thomas Heneage………

……..who lived at Copped Hall in Essex.

But there were problems.

First, Heneage was a committed and politically active Protestant.

Second, he had no son: so his hated his son-in-law stood to inherit his estate. Heneage was in his sixties – but Mary was only forty two. So Bride and Groom HAD to produce a son to block the inheritance.

And then there was the question of the Second Earl’s tomb…..

Unless Mary moved quickly, Harry would carry out his father’s wishes.

So she ordered a family tomb instead, which displayed the effigies of her husband’s father and mother as well as the Second Earl himself…….

……and engraved her own name and history at the back.

The actual bodies remained in the crypt and do so to this day – preserved in the purest honey….

There had never been any reconciliation between Mary and her husband. He had gone to the grave hating her – and she herself had written….

That his lordship continued his hard mind towards me to his last I grieve more for his soul than any harm he hath done therein, for my assurance of living rested not in his arms to bear. For the rest I weigh not, but by my troth am rather glad he hath given me so just a cause to forget him that otherwise I should have carried my remembrance with grief more than enough to my last hour….

For a Catholic woman, this was a catastrophe. She knew – despite what the Calvinist State was telling her – she still had active, spiritual links with her dead husband.

What either of them did or thought would affect the other – in this world and the next.

What she wanted was an old-fashioned, Roman Catholic priest who could hold Requiem Masses for the soul of her first husband and bless the wedding bed of her second….

But what she got instead – to our lasting benefit – was William Shakespeare……

To read Part Three, click:HERE!

 

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HOW QUEEN ELIZABETH’S CALVINIST STATE TRIED TO DESTROY THE SPIRITUAL IMAGINATION OF ENGLISH CATHOLICS….

AND HOW WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE CAME TO THEIR DEFENCE BY USING…..

FAIRY POWER!!!

A FIVE PART SERIES…..

PART ONE

On 17^th November, 1558, Princess Elizabeth became Queen of England and Ireland.

She inherited from her half-sister, Mary Tudor……..

…..known to history as ‘Bloody Mary’……….

 

……a kingdom that was Roman Catholic.

For the first month of her reign Elizabeth attended the Latin Mass and all Catholic services, wearing a black dress and holding a rosary and missal….

But at Christmas it was all change. She flounced out of  Mass when the Bishop of Carlisle elevated the host.

And on Twelfth Night, Robert Dudley, Elizabeth’s new Master of Horse……….

……put on a court entertainment which shocked the Duke of Mantua’s agent to the core:

He described it as a…..

….mummery performed after supper

….which featured….

….crows in the habits of Cardinals, asses habited as Bishops, and wolves representing Abbots.

This entertainment I will consign to silence. Nor will I record the levities and unusual licentiousness practised at the Court….

Dudley had been Elizabeth’s childhood friend. Now he was her open lover.

Together with William Cecil, her new Secretary of State……….

…….the three intended to destroy Roman Catholicism in England for ever.

It had been introduced by Pope Gregory the Great at the end of the sixth century……..

…….partly for aesthetic reasons…

One day he had seen some handsome slave boys, with beautiful blonde hair, for sale in the market place at Rome. He asked where they came from, and on being told they were Anglo-Saxons, famously remarked:

Not Angles but Angels…

On learning the lads were Pagans, he determined to convert their land to Christianity. So he sent St. Augustine to England….

Gregory was a brilliant psychologist. He said…

You can’t convert a whole people over-night – anymore than you can climb a mountain in a single step…

He instructed Augustine to take over existing Temples and Shrines, clear out the Pagan idols and replace them with crucifixes and relics of Christian Saints. That would give the new faith a warm, familiar feel. Holy Wells stayed Holy Wells…….

……but now they were presided over by Christian Saints, sometimes by the Virgin Mary herself.

Pagan Festivals – like Samhain – which heralded the Autumn –

…..became Hallowmass…..

…….and Yuletide, of course….

……became Christmas.

The Anglo-Saxons also loved roasting and eating oxen on their holidays: so Gregory continued this custom on Dedication Days and Saints’ Days. He wanted the practice of Christianity to be associated with celebration, feasting, holiday and joy.

So for centuries in England, Paganism rubbed along comfortably with Roman Catholicism. The Feast of Fools…….

……..inspired by the Roman Saturnalia……….

…..was brought into the Churches.

The congregation played card games on the high altar, a choir-boy became the bishop……..

……. and the ‘Amen’ at the end of each prayer was replaced by a donkey’s bray…

But there was already an element of magic in Roman Catholicism itself……

The Catholic Priest – regardless of any shortcomings he might have as a man – possessed the miraculous power of turning bread and wine into the literal body and blood of Christ.

 

This had a knock-on effect. People would steal consecrated wafers and holy water for their own uses – bad as well as good – and many Catholic practices became profoundly ambivalent. When you prayed to the Saints, it was as much to ward off harm as to enlist their positive aid.

Babies were baptised largely to save them from Satan….

And Requiem Masses said to stop visits from ghosts.

In fact a Requiem Mass was the most ambivalent practice of all. If you wanted to kill off an enemy, you got a priest to say a Requiem Mass for him…

Priests were more like shamans……….

……blessing fields and wedding beds, exorcising demons and healing the sick.

The new Queen Elizabeth did away with all this. Although her father, Henry VIII…….

……had broken with Rome, he had stayed a Catholic: but her stepmother, Katherine Parr……….

……Henry’s last wife, had been a closet Protestant. She had introduced the young Princess Elizabeth to the teachings of John Calvin………

These had been re-enforced by Elizabeth’s tutors – all Cambridge men and all graduates from the new St. John’s College – a hotbed of Calvinism.

Calvin, like other Protestants, taught that Scripture was everything. If it wasn’t in the Bible, it wasn’t Christianity.

So out went transubstantiation…….

…….purgatory…..

……Saints…….

 

…relics…..

 

…..shrines……

…..pilgrimages…..

…..requiem masses……

…..incense…….

…..copes……

…..processions……

….. and even candles on the altar.

But Calvin also advanced a doctrine which appears NOWHERE in the Bible:

PREDESTINATION.

He argued that because God knows everything, he knows whether you are going to heaven or hell……

…..BEFORE YOU ARE EVEN BORN…

If you are one of the chosen – the elect – he bestows favours to you in this world as well as the next….

Bloody Mary had imprisoned Princess Elizabeth in the Tower of London……..

Elizabeth had prayed to God, God had released her and then made her Queen of England.

So Elizabeth reckoned she must have been one of His ‘elect’.

But if she hadn’t been, there was nothing she could have done about it.

Nothing at all.

She would have been packed off to a predetermined Hell.

The living had no interplay with the souls of the dead – not even with the Virgin Mary and the Saints.

Miracles had ceased with the Apostles and if you saw a ghost…….

……..or even a goblin…..

……..elf……

……..or fairy…..

…….it was an illusion sent from Satan himself.

 

At a stroke, Elizabeth robbed the Catholic Priest of all his power. And his congregation of theirs. There was no intercession, no negotiation, no redemption, no romance, no colour, no magic, no warmth, no joy, no celebration, no hope.

And above all……

….NO DRAMA!!!

This is where William Shakespeare…..

 …..and A Midsummer Night’s Dream……

 …..come in…..

TO READ PART TWO, CLICK: HERE!

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  [It’s best to read Parts One, Two and Three of Trixie the Cat’s Interview with Stewart Trotter first]

How embarrassing, Brothers and Sisters of The Shakespeare Code……

……to fall in a dead faint to the floor of the Café Laville!!!

But Your Cat was soon revived in the strong arms of Chief Agent  Stewart Trotter….

…and the divine Marco….

…also brought her a saucer of Bailey’s Cream…..

 …which she LAPPED UP.

As soon as she had her wits about her…….

……Your Cat returned to her Interview…..

…to question Stewart’s EXTRAORDINARY CLAIM!!!

TRIXIE

Shakespeare!

Evil?

Boss!!!

How can you say such a thing?

STEWART

I didn’t say Shakespeare was evil.

I said the evil in the play comes from Shakespeare’s own heart.

He has looked at his dark side with complete honesty….

…..and is trying to work out the implications of this in dramatic form.

It must be said, it’s not always to the advantage of the play….

TRIXIE

Give me an example!

STEWART

Take Lear’s great tirade on the heath against society….

…..when he has gone completely ‘mad’……

See how yond justice rails upon yond simple thief. Change places – and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief? Thou hast seen a farmer’s dog bark at a beggar….And the creature run from the cur? There thou mightst behold the great image of authority: a dog’s obeyed in office.

How, Trixie, has the King acquired this perspective on life?

He admits, in the storm, that he has taken….

…..too little care….

…..of the poor and oppressed in his Kingdom…..

….but this is a far cry from the satirical outburst of……

.…..a dog’s obeyed in office….

TRIXIE

Well, a cat certainly isn’t!

STEWART (ignoring Your Cat’s observation)

Where has this view of the world come from?

It bears only a marginal relationship……

……..if any relationship at all……

…….. to anything Lear himself has experienced in the play.

It DOES however bear a COMPLETE RELATIONSHIP to Sonnet 66……….

…….in which Shakespeare……

…….disgusted by the unfair ills of society under Queen Elizabeth….

……and her imprisonment of the Third Earl of Southampton for treason….

…….contemplates suicide……

 

As the concluding couplet tells us…….

…..the only reason Shakespeare does NOT commit suicide is that he would leave his lover…..

…..the Third Earl of Southampton….

…..alone in the Tower of London…..

…..a true case of…..

…..gilded honour shamefully misplac’d…..

Shakespeare is appalled by a system in which some people…….

……through no fault of their own……

…….are…..

….born….

….into beggary…..

……while others……

…..through no merit of their own…..

….. are born into the aristocracy…..

Shakespeare in the Sonnet describes these ‘noblemen’ as….

……needy nothing trimm’d with jollity…..

And Lear, in the play, describes them as…

……gilded butterflies….

Shakespeare is clearly using the King as a mouthpiece for his own anarchic ideas…..

……and so is stretching DRAMATIC credibility.

He stretches this even further with Lear’s ‘mad’ rants about female sexuality……

Behold yond simpering dame,

Whose face between her forks presages snow;

That minces virtue, and does shake the head

To hear of pleasure’s name;

The fitchew, nor the soiled horse, goes to ‘t With a more riotous appetite.

Down from the waist they are Centaurs,

Though women all above:

But to the girdle do the gods inherit,

Beneath is all the fiends’…..

There’s hell, there’s darkness, there’s the sulphurous pit,

Burning, scalding, stench, consumption; fie, fie, fie! pah, pah!

Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination: there’s money for thee.

NOTHING that Lear himself experiences in the play justifies this attack on women.

He does not know, as we do, that Goneril and Regan have been lusting after Edmund…..

……..in fact Lear still believes at this stage in the play that Edmund is Gloucester’s good son.

Lear’s sexual disgust, though, is……..

….. IDENTICAL…….

…… to Shakespeare’s OWN sexual disgust in Sonnet 66…..

……when he writes about….

……maiden virtue…..

……being…..

……rudely strumpeted….

And in Sonnet 129 which begins…..

Th’expense of spirit in a waste of shame…..

Is lust in action; and till action, lust

Is perjur’d, murderous, bloody, full of blame,

Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;

Enjoy’d no sooner but despised straight…..

And again in Sonnet 144 where Shakespeare makes……

…… EXACTLY THE SAME COMPARISON…..

……that of female genitals with Hell….

……. as Lear does in the play.

Shakespeare describes in the Sonnet how his mistress, the Dark Lady……

….. has seduced his patron and lover…….

And whether that my angel [Southampton] be turn’d fiend

Suspect I may, yet not directly tell;

But being both from me, both to each friend,

I guess one angel in another’s hell.

TRIXIE

So, Boss, you are saying Shakespeare’s……

…….. PERSONAL AGENDA……

……. threatens to wreck the play……

Are there any other examples of this?

STEWART

Yes. A very famous one. The dreadful curse of Lear……

…..on his daughter, Goneril….

…..when he asks the Goddess, Nature, to…..

…..convey sterility….

….into her womb.

You’ll need some background first…..

TRIXIE

Your Cat’s all ears!

STEWART

In my Grosvenor Chapel talk on King Lear…….

[See: The Background to ‘King Lear’]

…….I argued that in the original, ‘Armada’,  King Leir play……

 

‘Gonorill’ was a satirical portrait of Mary Tudor….

…..the Catholic ‘Bloody Mary’……

…..who burnt hundreds of Protestants to death…..

…..and who, in a desperate wish  to produce a son for her husband, King Philip II of Spain…..

…..and, indeed, King of England….

…..experienced a whole series of phantom pregnancies.

These pregnancies are referred to in the old play by King Leir……

……. who says of ‘Gonorill’….

…….poor soul, she breeds young bones,

And that is it makes her so touchy, sure.

‘Young bones’ was the phrase the Elizabethans and Jacobeans used to describe the foetus in the womb…..

I discovered in rehearsals for King Lear that…….

……GONERIL IN THE LATER PLAY IS PREGNANT AS WELL!!!

TRIXIE

Proof, Boss, proof!

STEWART

The proof shall be yours, Trixie the Cat!

In a scene with Regan and her husband Cornwall……

……Lear curses Goneril in her absence….

……and says..

All the stored vengeances of heaven fall

On her ingrateful top! Strike her young bones,

You taking airs, with lameness!

‘Young bones’ is EXACTLY the same phrase that Leir uses in the old play……

The King is WILLING Goneril to give birth to a disabled child….

To make the point clearer, I hobbled round the stage….

 TRIXIE

Did this shock the audience?

STEWART

Well it certainly shocked my son-in-law, the Duke of Cornwall…..

He responds with…..

Fie, sir, fie!

TRIXIE

Hang on a minute! 

This must mean that when Lear calls on Nature to sterilise Goneril….

……or at least to make any child born to her….

A thwart disnatured torment to her…..

…..HE KNOWS SHE IS ACTUALLY PREGNANT!!!

STEWART

Yes. And to point up the horror, I struck her across the womb with my whip….

TRIXIE

That is truly horrible….

STEWART

I agree, Trixie….

….but it seemed something Lear……

…..in his highly charged state……

….would do.

But NOTHING in the play has justified……

…..or remotely provoked….

…. this extreme behaviour.

…..Goneril has simply asked him to…..

…..disquantity…..

…..his train of a hundred knights!

HE IS NOT ONLY CURSING HIS OWN DAUGHTER…..

……HE IS ALSO CURSING HIS OWN POTENTIAL GRANDCHILD…..

HE IS, IN FACT, CURSING THE WHOLE WORKINGS OF NATURE!!!

Lear’s……

……strong emotions….

….in the words of T.S. Eliot….

…….in an essay he wrote about Hamlet……

…..exceed the facts of the play…….

And they exceed ‘the facts of the play’  because they proceed from Shakespeare himself…..

As I explained in the SECOND PART  of my Grosvenor Chapel talk on Lear……

……Shakespeare’s heart had been broken in 1605……

……when the Third Earl of Southampton’s wife, Elizabeth Vernon……

……gave birth to a son.

Fifteen years before, working to a commission from The Third Earl’s mother, Mary Southampton….

…..Shakespeare had written seventeen sonnets on the Third Earl’s seventeenth birthday……

…..to encourage him to get married and have an heir……

See: THE BIRTHDAY SONNETS.

But, following a love triangle with the Dark Lady……..

……Shakespeare had embarked on a passionate affair with the Third Earl himself.

This affair survived Southampton’s courtship and marriage to Elizabeth Vernon……

……and survived the birth of daughters to the Countess…….

But the arrival of a BABY BOY led to Southampton’s rejection of Shakespeare.

Southampton had hoped to be King James’s lover when he came to the throne in 1603…..

….and had even sent him a wooing portrait…..

See: THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON AND TRIXIE THE CAT.

But when he was rejected…..

…..and excluded from the King’s gay inner circle….

……Southampton turned bitterly homophobic.

He wanted to set a ‘manly’ example to his son….

So Shakespeare, the player, had to go.

Shakespeare responded with the poisonous  Sonnet 126………

…….which I decoded in my Grosvenor Chapel talk……

(See: The Background to ‘King Lear’. Part Two.)

…..in which Shakespeare describes how Southampton’s affection…….

….. and pre-occupation with his baby boy…….

…… had led to Shakespeare’s own…..

…..withering….

……while Southampton’s…..

……sweet self…..

……his son….

……grow’st…..

Shakespeare is so devastated by this neglect that he wishes Southampton dead…..

…..and rotting in his grave…..

….. like meat that has been….

…..rendered….

…..by Nature herself….

For a dark, bleak period in Shakespeare’s life, Shakespeare became…..

AN ENEMY TO LIFE……

AND TO ALL THE FUNCTIONS OF LIFE.

TRIXIE

Knowing this, do you still love Shakespeare?

STEWART

If anything, Trixie, I love him even more…..

The great American playwright Tennessee Williams……

….admitted that all great artists were……….

…. monsters….

And Shakespeare has acknowledged his own monstrosity.

As  the great magus, Prospero, says of Caliban…..

…This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine….

 

Shakespeare has looked at himself with devastating honesty…..

…..AND MADE HIS BRUTALITY WORK FOR HIM IN HIS ART…..

……AS PROSPERO MAKES CALIBAN WORK FOR HIM ON HIS ISLAND…..

TRIXIE

So do you think we need to reconsider ‘Shakespeare the Man’?

STEWART

Yes. 

When Charles Darwin………

…….challenged conventional religious belief in the nineteenth century……..

……..people needed a new divinity. 

Shakespeare fitted the bill.

He  became the guru who……..

…….in the words of Matthew Arnold…..

…out-topped knowledge…..

….like a great mountain whose top could never be seen.

And if you look at Shakespeare’s statue in Stratford-upon-Avon….

…….you see a man contemplating life from afar…..

…….as though he were a philosopher rather than a playwright…..

But anyone who has read the Sonnets finds a man completely engaged with life…..

 …..full of contradiction, lust, obsession, self-doubt, loyalty, violence, tenderness and jealousy…….

…..just like the characters in his plays…

……and just like humanity itself….

He was probably the most fully HUMAN writer that has ever lived…..

TRIXIE

But how did the audience respond to your own performance as King Lear?

Could you keep their sympathy AT ALL as you hit your pregnant daughter with a whip?

STEWART

I only acted the part, Trixie!

I’m in no position to judge….

 Just then there was a roar of a Harley Davidson outside….

…..then Tom ‘X’ came bounding into the caff…….

….. brandishing a piece of paper in the air…..

Tom ‘X’

Chief, guess what?

You’ve just had an e-mail about King Lear…..

……from the Revd. Susan Allman!!!

(Susan, as many will know, is the highly respected and dynamic Vicar…….

…..of  the thriving St. Peter’s Church in Titchfield)

You Cat grabbed the e-mail before Stewart could take it……..

…. read it….

……. then said……

We have the answer to my question here, Boss!

And what a glorious answer it is!!!

Susan writes…..

I don’t know whether you realised but we were sitting right at the front at the Great Barn, partly because I forgot my long-distance specs. We did enjoy the intimacy of the performance and had a real sense of being transported back to the Shakespearean era. I studied Lear for my A-Levels many years ago but had forgotten some of the subterfuge and sexual jealousy which was so vivdly portrayed. When you carried in Cordelia at the end it was truly heart-rending and brought a tear to my eye. I always had a soft spot for her. 

Your Lear was very human; infuriating at times but mostly lovable, with occasional glimpses of the powerful bearing he once had.

Our local community is truly blessed to be able to access drama of this high standard – and in such a special place!

 

After such an endorsement…….

……. from such a person……

……. there was little left for Your Cat to do…..

……..except bring this Interview with Stewart to a tactful, silent, close……

‘Bye, now….

 

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