The Shakespeare Code

Brothers and Sisters of The Shakespeare Code……

BEWARE, BEWARE…..

Just when you thought the dread movie……

….. Shakespeare in Love…..

 

….was dead and buried….

….it morphs into an even more dreadful….

…..PLAY FOR THE STAGE!!!

TWENTY-EIGHT actors and musicians have been hired to tell the story…..

…….first told by Caryl Brahms and S. J. Simon in their 1941 novel, No Bed for Bacon….

……..repeated by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard in the movie, Shakespeare in Love….

 

……..and now repeated AGAIN by Lee (Billy Elliot) Hall in his stage adaptation of the movie….

……..of Shakespeare’s affair with the stage-struck aristocratic Lady Viola…….

……..who dresses up as a boy and acts in Romeo and Juliet…..

What’s wrong with that, Trixie?

 …..Your Cat hears you cry…..

What’s wrong with a bit of romantic tosh in the West End of London?

NOTHING!!!

……except for one thing…..

…..the Producers are palming the whole thing off as an……

…. EDUCATIONAL EVENT……

…..as though the whole preposterous story were somehow…..

 REAL!!!

They are even producing Educational Packs for schools…..

…..and have inveigled a SERIOUS ACADEMIC, Dr. Natalie Mears….

……a Senior Lecturer at Durham University….

…..to produce an essay for the programme……

….. portentously entitled……

 Elizabeth I and the World of Shakespeare in Love….

(THE WORLD OF SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE!!!)

The programme also provides us with a thumb-nail gallery of

 The REAL LIFE FIGURES AND PLACES in Shakespeare in Love…..

‘

But perhaps the story IS real, Trixie!

……Your Cat hears you desperately cry…..

Let’s examine the facts….

Dr. Mears tells us that the play is set in 1593…..

……something the programme itself confirms….

…..and adds that it’s LONDON, 1593….

It HAS to be 1593……..

……because that is the year in which Christopher Marlowe….

…..who plays a big part in the evening’s proceedings…..

…..was killed in a tavern brawl in Deptford….

(In the movie version, Shakespeare is responsible for Marlowe’s death……

In the stage version, he is more honestly exonerated……

The Producers must have been thinking about their Education Packs)

But by FIXING the date as 1593……

…which neither the novel nor the play does….

……you are IMMEDIATELY into problems….

As Dr. Mears admits, there was a plague raging in London which killed thousands of people….

What she DOESN’T say is that……..

 ALL THE THEATRES WERE CLOSED!!!

NONE OF THESE EVENTS COULD HAVE HAPPENED IN LONDON AT THAT TIME!!!

Worse, we are shown a Shakespeare writing Romeo and Juliet……

BUT NO SERIOUS SCHOLAR PUTS THE PLAY BEFORE 1595……

TWO YEARS AFTER MARLOWE WAS STABBED!!!

Poetic Licence!…..

…..Your Cat hears you cry….

…..with even more desperation….

But believe her, it gets even worse….

Shakespeare isn’t writing Romeo and Juliet …..

He is writing Romeo and Ethel the Pirate’s Daughter…

(Big laugh from knowing groundlings….)

It is Marlowe who gives Shakespeare the idea for the play we now have…..

But as ANY Shakespeare Scholar knows..

…..and most A-Level students…

SHAKESPEARE WAS RE-WRITING AN ALREADY ESTABLISHED STORY…..

Arthur Brooke had written HIS version……

…… called The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Iuliet……

…….in 1562.

And William Painter had written his……

…….included in The Palace of Pleasure……

……..sometime before 1580.

Shakespeare’s habit was to work from old plots…..

….and even from old plays…..

But though he was in the habit of collaborating

…..Shakespeare in Love….

…..(or this play version, anyway)…..

…..DOES SHAKESPEARE A MASSIVE, PHILISTINE DISSERVICE.

IT IMPLIES HIS SONNETS

WERE WRITTEN BY CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE!!!

No-one can BEGIN to understand the complex nature of Shakespeare’s emotional life without reading his 154 Sonnets……

…..indeed, William Wordsworth……

……said the Sonnets were….

…..the key with which Shakespeare unlocked his heart…..

So to have the sublime love Sonnet 18…..

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day……

…..presented on the stage as a piece of plagiarism…..

…..is a vulgarity of such wickedness…..

YOUR CAT IS ALMOST SPEECHLESS…..

EDUCATIONAL PACKS INDEED!!!

YOUR CAT WOULD SEND THEM PACKING!!!

And it gets WORSER….

The Sonnet, in both the play and the film, is inspired by the beauty of Lady Viola…..

……and addressed to her….

There is not a serious Shakespeare scholar ON EARTH who believes that Sonnet 18 was written to a woman…..

It was written to a man…..

…..or at least a….

….lovely boy

…..and MORE and MORE Scholars…….

…..around the world….

…. are coming to agree with The Shakespeare Code…….

….that this man was……

Henry Wriothesley, the Third Earl of Southampton

 

a.k.a.Harry Southampton…….

See: Just how gay was the third Earl of Southampton.

Harry was Shakespeare’s patron….

And on good evidence gave him the colossal gift of £1,000 to….

make a purchase

Dr. Mears has the good grace to write:

There is no evidence of court ladies having affairs with poor players…..

…….and at least she mentions the Earl of Southampton…….

…….even if she does claim…….

……. WITH NO EVIDENCE AT ALL…….

……..that Elizabeth Vernon deliberately made herself pregnant……..

…..to MAKE Southampton marry her.

Indeed, there is every evidence that Harry and Elizabeth adored each other…..

…..so much so that there is an oral tradition in Titchfield……

…..the Earl of Southampton ‘s stately home….

 ……that their love was the inspiration for Romeo and Juliet….

….and the ambiguity of Mercutio’s reaction to the events in the play……..

….. would certainly have mirrored Shakespeare’s OWN ambiguity about the courtship of his lover, Harry, and Elizabeth….

See: Shakespeare in Titchfield.

But there is also LITERARY evidence that links the Southampton family to Romeo and Juliet……

  …..an entertainment for a wedding celebration in 1572……

….written by George Gascoigne.

Harry Southampton’s mother was Mary Browne, the 2nd Countess of Southampton…..

Her father was Anthony Browne…..

…..who became Lord Montague when he was elevated to the House of Peers in 1554.

Two of his children got married in 1572 ……

…..Anthony, Mary Browne’s twin brother –

…..and Elizabeth, her half sister…..

…..and Lord Montague commissioned Gascoigne to produce an entertainment……

…..BASED ON THE MONTAGUES…..

….AND THE CAPULETS…..

Two Famous Italian Families…

In the story, a Lord Montague……

……who in this version of events lives in Venice rather than Verona…..

 ……saves a little boy……..

……..(who wears a token of the Montacutes in his cap)……

……  from the clutches of the Capulets…..

……and a wind blows them to England and the wedding celebration…..

As the ‘pretty boy’ says:

This grave Venetian….

Gan straight with many courteous words in arms me to embrace.

And kissed me on the cheeks, and bade me make good cheer

And thanked the mighty hand of God, for that which happened there…

Originally all the wedding guests were to dress as Venetians…..

But this proved too costly, even for the Montagues…..

So the Romeo and Juliet story was dear to the Southampton family…

….especially the Countess of Southampton……

…..who may even have commissioned it…..

…..and it was, in all likelihood, first performed at Titchfield….

…..as local legend says.

It was, after all, Mary Browne who commissioned Shakespeare to write seventeen sonnet for her son’s seventeenth birthday….

TO TRY TO GET HIM INTERESTED IN GIRLS!!!

See: The Birthday Sonnets.

She could well have re-inforced the message of the Birthday Sonnets with a decidedly HETEROSEXUAL play!!!

 

At the end of Shakespeare in Love, Queen Elizabeth………

….. commands Shakespeare to write Twelfth Night…..

Shakespeare must have suffered another writer’s block…..

In reality, Twelfth Night did not appear till eight years later…….

…. in 1601!!!

But by this stage in the evening, reality is abandoned altogether……

The entire company perform a patriotic jig to the words of…..

…Vivat Regina….

….Long live the Queen…..

…..to the roaring delight of the modern groundlings….

Again, pure hokum……

Dr Mears insists that…..

Shakespeare in Love does not obviously reflect many of the tensions and problems of Elizabeth’s later years…

But as Brothers and Sisters  of The Shakespeare Code well know….

Shakespeare, a Catholic, loathed Elizabeth, a Protestant……

…..even in 1593!!!

But if Shakespeare COULDN’T have been in London in 1593…..

….because of the Plague which claimed 20,oo0 lives….

(thanks for this figure, Dr. Mears)

– …..where was he?

Click: SHAKESPEARE IN ITALY  to find out!

Bye, now.

 

To read about equally dazzling, subsequent reviews of Shakespeare in Love: the Play by Tim Walker and Ben Brantley –  please click: HERE!

THE SMART MONEY FOLLOWS TRIXIE THE CAT!!!

Note: To read Part Two of ‘The Original Ending to ‘King Lear’ – ‘The King’s Disease’ – click: HERE.

To read The Shakespeare Code’s new ‘Top Twenty Posts’…..

….click: HERE!

 

 

 

 

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 KING LEAR….

…..was first published as a single play…….

….. in a small, Quarto sized, edition in 1608……

…..eight years BEFORE William Shakespeare’s death.

It was later published as part of a collection in a larger, Folio sized edition in 1623..

 

……seven years AFTER Shakespeare’s death…..

This FIRST FOLIO edition, as it has come to be known…….

….(there were to be later Folio editions)….

……..was edited by two of Shakespeare’s friends…..

……the actors, businessmen and petty crooks….

 

…..who claimed this was the AUTHORISED version of the plays….

…..designed to replace the…..

…..diverse stolen and surreptitious copies maimed and deformed by the frauds and stealths of injurious impostors….

……of which the 1608 Quarto edition of King Lear, by implication, was one!!!

As a result of Heminge and Condell’s self-declared painstaking editorship…….

…..the plays now emerged…..

cur’d, and perfect of their limbs and….absolute in their numbers as [Shakespeare] conceived them…..

Thomas Heywood had made the same claims for himself eighteen years earlier in 1605……

…when he published his own version of his play……

….designed to replace a…...

……most corrupted copy…….

…..which had been…..

…..published without his consent….

In a new Prologue, Heywood describes, in similar language to Heminge and Condell, how he…..

…..took the pains…..

…..to put his play….

….upright upon its feet

To teach it walk….

He also recounts the method by which plays were stolen…..

STENOGRAPHY!!!

(Heywood’s own word!!!)

‘Pirates’ would lurk in the audience……

…..which…..

….thronged the seats, the boxes and the stage…..

….and take down the entire play……

BY HAND!!!

As a consequence, Heywood claims, their edition of the play had…..

….Scarce one word true….

But it must be remembered that Heminge, Condell and Heywood had a product to sell…..

…..their own new versions of existing plays….

…..so they exaggerated…..

…..and, in the case of Heminge and Condell, actually lied!

They claimed to have…..

….scarce received from [Shakespeare] a blot in his papers…..

…..but one glance at the manuscript of Shakespeare’s contribution to The Play of Sir Thomas More……

…..shows that Shakespeare certainly did blot his papers!!!

(Heminge and Condell were propagating the myth that Shakespeare wrote his plays ALONE…..

…..but as Brothers and Sisters of The Code well know…..

 ……..Shakespeare COLLABORATED throughout his career…..

…….and was constantly updating and re-writing his work.)

The stenographer of the 1608 Quarto version of Lear, it is true, DID sometimes mishear the words the actors were saying….

He wrote down…..

The mistress of Hecat, and the might….

…..wheras the Folio edition of 1623 has….

The miseries of Hecate and the night……

[The SECOND Folio of 1632 is DIFFERENT AGAIN ! It has ‘The mysteries of Hecate and the night’.]

The 1608 stenographer also heard as  PROSE…..

…….some passages that were later to be revealed as VERSE in the Folio edition…..

 

HOWEVER…..

The pirated Quarto edition has supplied us with lines from King Lear…..

….INDEED A WHOLE SCENE…

……WHICH WE OTHERWISE WOULD NOT POSSESS!!!

In the Quarto Version, King Lear, losing his wits, conducts a mock trial of his daughters……

…..in which he mistakes a joint-stool for Goneril….

 

THIS SCENE DOES NOT EXIST IN THE FIRST FOLIO EDITION!!!

(It was clearly cut from performances after 1608)

So, for all its faults….. 

THE 1608 QUARTO SHOWS US WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED ON THE STAGE….

MOSTLY this is the same as the Folio Version..

…except when it comes to the LAST SCENE of the play….

WHERE IT IS RADICALLY DIFFERENT!!!

•

In the First Folio version of the last scene…….

…….Lear comes across a soldier who is hanging his youngest daughter, Cordelia, in her cell…..

Old as the King is, he manages to kill him…..

…….then enters, carrying the body of Cordelia, in his arms…..

He COMMANDS everyone to howl in grief…..

….. if he still had a voice and eyes as strong as theirs are, he would…

……use them so that Heaven’s vault should crack….

Lear is a warrior king who has experienced death in battle…..

He KNOWS….

……when one is dead and when one lives…..

Cordelia is…..

…..dead as earth…..

But, in desperation, he clings onto the idea that she might be alive….

He asks for a looking glass to see if her breath will….

….mist or stain the stone….

He holds a feather to her mouth which….

…..stirs….

….probably because his hand is shaking….

….but Lear WANTS to believe that Cordelia is alive….

It is a chance which does redeem all sorrows

That ever I have felt….

The faithful Earl of Kent presents himself to Lear…..

…..but Lear doesn’t recognise him.

Lear then tries to convince himself that Cordelia is speaking to him…..

……and explains that the reason that no-one can hear her is because…

……..her voice was ever soft

Gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman….

The Duke of Albany……..

…..who has finally taken a stand against his evil and disloyal wife, Goneril….

……promises that….

What comfort to this great decay [King Lear] may come

Shall be applied….

He gives up his right to the throne to the old king…..

……..and promises to reward those who have behaved honourably.

Lear has returned to Cordelia’s body…..

…..and finally forces himself to accept the truth…..

And my poor fool is hang’d! No, no, no life!

Why should a rat, a dog, a horse have life,

And thou no breath at all. Thou’lt come no more,

Never, never, never, never, never!

Lear feels he is choking and asks for help….

Pray you, undo this button. Thank you sir…

He then turns back to Cordelia, looks at her and cries:

Do you see this? Look on her, look her lips,

Look there, look there….

He believes Cordelia’s lips are moving!

He thinks she is alive!

So all the sorrows that Lear has ever felt ARE redeemed….

And at this moment of supreme happiness, he dies.

The great Shakespearean, A.C. Bradley……

…….writes……

To us, perhaps, the knowledge that [Lear] is deceived may bring a culmination of pain: but if it brings only that, I believe we are false to Shakespeare, and it seems almost beyond question that any actor is false to the text who does not attempt to express, in Lear’s last accents and gestures and look, an unbearable joy.

So, like the Earl of Gloucester in the play……

……reunited with his loving, loyal son, Edgar….

……Lear’s heart has….

…..burst smilingly……

Edgar hopes that the King is still alive….

But Kent wills him to die…..

Break heart, I prithee break….

……explaining….

……he hates him

that would upon the rack of this tough world stretch him out longer.

Edgar concedes that the King is dead….

…..and Albany now offers his throne to the….

….friends of my soul…..

…….the Earl of Kent and Edgar, the new Earl of Gloucester…..

But Kent whose….

…..strings of life….

…have……

…. begun to crack….

…..knows he must soon join his master in heaven.

Edgar, however, takes up the responsibilities of kingship with a new resolve to…..

….speak what we feel, not what we ought to say…..

But he acknowledges that the times are so bad, the world must be coming to an end….

The oldest hath borne most. We that are young

Shall never see so much nor live so long…..

•

The last scene in the 1608 Quarto is almost exactly the same as the 1623 First Folio……

……up to Lear’s last speech….

……FROM WHICH POINT IT IS RADICALLY DIFFERENT!!!

This is a reprint of the FIRST FOLIO ending….

This is a reprint of the 1608 QUARTO version:

 

LEAR IN THE QUARTO VERSION DOES NOT BELIEVE HE SEES THE LIPS OF HIS DAUGHTER MOVE.

In fact, with his repeated ‘Never’ he drives home to himself…….

….THAT HE WILL NEVER SEE CORDELIA AGAIN!!!

As in the Folio version, this terrible truth stifles his breathing…..

…….and again he asks someone to undo his button.

He looks back to the body of his daughter…..

…..but this time he utters a terrible cry……..

…o,o,o,o….

…and faints.

Edgar goes to his aid…..

……but with an heroic effort of will, the King commands his own heart to stop beating…..

Break heart, I prithee break…..

And his heart obeys.

As in the Folio edition, the Duke of Albany offers his throne to Kent and Edgar……

But in the Quarto version, not only does Kent refuse it…..

…..EDGAR REFUSES IT AS WELL!!!

So the last speech in the play is spoken by Albany.

Left ruling a Kingdom he does not want to rule…..

….. employs for the first time the royal ‘We’…

….and rebukes himself for not speaking out against evil earlier…..

…Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say….

(What is a glimmer of hope on Edgar’s lips becomes an admission of complicity on Albany’s)

Albany, finally, comes to the same conclusion that Edgar comes to…..

……THAT THE WORLD IS SO CORRUPT IT MUST BE HURTLING TO ITS END….

The Quarto conclusion to King Lear…..

……Shakespeare’s first revision of the play since he collaborated with Thomas Kyd on the old King Leir….

See: The Background to ‘King Lear’.

…….is one of unremitting despair.

•

Kenneth Muir……

….whose Arden edition of King Lear my generation grew up with……

 ……claims that all these differences in the Quarto were down to compositors’ errors.

But in the next Posts, The Code will demonstrate………..

(1) How this bleak ending to the play was thoroughly prepared for by Shakespeare…..

(2) How it ties in with Shakespeare’s other work….

….and….

(3) HOW IT TIES IN WITH SHAKESPEARE’S LIFE ITSELF!!!

TO READ PART TWO, ‘THE KING’S DISEASE’, CLICK: HERE.

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 AN ANNOUNCEMENT FROM TRIXIE THE CAT

On Wednesday, 7th May, 2014, The Shakespeare Code registered its……

ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSANDTH VIEW!!!

To Honour the event, Your Cat has compiled a new….

….TOP TWENTY ALL TIME POSTS…..

…….AND HERE THEY ARE!!!

1.

Still way out in the lead is……..

‘Just how Gay was the Third Earl of Southampton’

……an exploration of William Shakespeare’s…….

……. fifteen year gay affair……..

….(1590 to 1605)….

……..with Henry Wriothesley, the Third Earl of Southampton……

……a Post that was tweeted by the ineffable Stephen Fry….

……producing THOUANDS UPON THOUSANDS of Views….

The Code draws largely on Shakespeare’s Sonnets for its information…..

….complex, coded poems, with which……

……. in William Wordsworth’s words…..

Shakespeare unlocked his heart…..

2.

‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream Decoded’

HURTLING up the charts is….

……our redical new interpretation of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’.

……which argues that the play was a commission from the lovely, widowed….

……Mary Browne, Second Countess of Southampton….

 ….the mother of Shakespeare’s boyfriend…..

 ….to celebrate her wedding, in 1594, at Copt Hall in Essex…….

……. to Sir Thomas Heneage….

….an old lover of Queen Elizabeth….

…..AND A PROTESTANT!!!

(Mary, as Brothers and Sisters of The Code well know, was a committed Catholic…….

…..often in trouble with the Privy Council for harbouring renegade priests.)

Shakespeare had to write a play that would please both Papists and Proddies….

……the supporters of  Mary Queen of Scots….

…..who’d had her head chopped off six years previously…..

…..and the supporters of Queen Elizabeth…..

 …..who was still very much alive….

‘Decoding ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ is still a work in progress…..

…..but in the light of the subject’s OVERWHELMING popularity….

…..WORLD WIDE…

…….THE CODE INTENDS TO PUBLISH A SCENE BY SCENE ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY IN THE COMING YEAR!!!

3.

Shakespeare in Titchfield. A Summary of the Evidence.

In 1590, The Code argues, Shakespeare went to live in Titchfield, Hampshire…..

…..as a ‘fac totum’ for the Southampton household….

…as an entertainer and playwright….

….as a teacher in the local Grammar School…..

….and as a lover of the teenage Harry Southampton….

(not to mention the beautiful, mixed race courtesan and musician…….

….. Aemilia Lanyer…..

…..the Dark Lady of the Sonnets)

This Post draws on  the topography of Titchfield….

….and references in the sonnets and plays to REAL PEOPLE….

….to show that many of the early plays were acted in the Hall and Grounds of Place House…

…….and that aristocrats……

….including FEMALE aristocrats…..

….. like Lady Penelope Rich….

……played in the entertainments along with professional actors…..

….. like Shakespeare.

4.

6,000 VIEWS AND THE APPOINTMENT OF MAGGIE OLLERENSHAW!

…..to a Code Fellowship!!!

Maggie Ollerenshaw, F.S.C….

…..is a.k.a. Wavy Mavis from the WORLD RENOWNED T.V. sitcom Open All Hours….

…..which was revived last Christmas…..

This Post includes Your Cat’s now CLASSIC interview with Maggie……

 ……in which she lays bare her soul to her Feline Friend.

5.

Viola’s ‘Willow Cabin’ Speech De-Coded.

….relates Viola’s SUBLIME from ‘Twelfth Night’……..

……to an incident at Tilbury during the Armada…..

…..when English noblemen were happy to camp out in ‘willow cabins’…..

 …….in the fields and beaches…..

…..to show their love for their Queen……

…shown here in armour on horseback.

6.

‘Macbeth’ Decoded. Part Four. The Witches (II)

…….argues that ‘Macbeth’ was first performed…

NOT when King James came to the English throne…

BUT in Queen Elizabeth’s reign…..

……in SCOTLAND…..

….. in 1599…..

….at Holyrood House….

(on the very spot where he had ‘examined’ the notorious Berwick witches)

……to encourage him to join the Essex rebellion….

….and seize the throne of England from Elizabeth.

7.

‘Macbeth’ Decoded. Part Two. The Political Backdrop…

8.

Twelfth Night Decoded: Part Four. Malvolio as Sir Walter Raleigh.

The Code argues that ‘Twelfth Night’ was staged in 1601 as an attempt to appease the Queen…..

….who was furious with the Earl of Essex for abandoning his post in Ireland…

…..and even more furious whenhe burst into her bedchamber at Nonesuch Palace….

….before she had time to put on her make-up!!!

Essex is presented sympathetically as the love-sick Orsino…..

…..and Essex’s great rival…..

……Sir Walter Raleigh…..

……UNSYMPATHETICALLY as the upstart Malvolio….

9.

‘Macbeth’ Decoded. Part Five. The Macbeths as Queen Elizabeth…

The Macbeths kill their royal guest and usurp the throne of Scotland…..

Queen Elizabeth had killed HER royal guest….

….King James’s mother….

Mary Queen of Scots….

….and as far as Catholics were concerned….

HAD USURPED THE THRONE OF ENGLAND!!!

10.

Shakespeare: The Movie I.

A Trilogy about Shakespeare…..

……in a series of stunning visual images……

…..which shows how the Bard’s life became……

……. inextricably woven…….

…. with those of the Earls of Essex and Southampton

…..how Shakespeare earned Queen Elizabeth’s disfavour…..

…. by being associated with the Essex rebellion against her….

….and being in a gay relationship wit h the Earl of Southampton…..

…and how he came back into favour when bisexual King James ascended the English throne.

11.

50,000 VIEWS AND FIFTEEN NEW COUNTRIES!!!

This includes UNCANNILY ACCURATE predictions that…..

…… Stewart Trotter has made…..

…including the prophesy that Sir Nicholas Hytner……

…….. would run the Royal National Theatre……

……before he had directed a single professional play!!!

At that Tony Blair was a psychopath….

……even before he took office.

Trotter attributes this astonishing gift….

…..to his HIGH ROMANY BLOOD…..

…….but looking again at the flakey photo of Blair….

YOU DIDN’T NEED ROMANY BLOOD TO MAKE THE PREDICTION!!!

12.

Why did William Shakespeare write the Sonnets?

This Post began life as an article for the Actors Centre in London….

‘An Actors’ Guide’ to Shakespeare’s Sonnets…..

…..but is useful to ANYONE with an interest in the Bard.

13.

Twelfth Night Decoded: Part Three. Sir Toby Belch as George, Lord Hunsdon.

George, Lord Hunsdon was Queen Elizabeth’s boozy, gormandising cousin……

…… with whom she’d had an enormous row.

(He’d said she was too old to ride on a horse)

He was at the first night of ‘Twelfth Night’ and is the model for Sir Toby Belch.

14.

Twelfth Night Decoded: Part One. Olivia as Queen Elizabeth.

Olivia is the mistress of the household after the death of her father and brother.

Malvolio wants to take over and control her…..

Elizabeth became Queen of England after the death of her father and her brother….

Sir Walter Raleigh wants to take over and control her….

15.

BIOGRAPHY

……of our reclusive Chief Agent….

……STEWART TROTTER….

….whom we see up a coconut tree in Papua….

He has been up one sort of tree or another all his life…

16.

Shakespeare: The Movie III

This covers Shakespeare’s ‘retirement’ to Stratford….

…and the burst of new life he got from his relationship with his daughter, Susanna.

17.

The Dedication to ‘Shakespeare’s Sonnets’ Decoded…..

…….which reveals that the Dedication to the Sonnets is a coded reference to Shakespeare’s THEN EX-BOYFRIEND….

…..Henry Wriothesley, Third Earl of Southampton.

Southampton dropped the Bard in 1605….

….when he finally produced a son and heir.

(He wanted to hid his gay side from his son)

Shakespeare’s bitter, murderous anger at this rejection was to fuel Sonnet 126…

……and much of the misanthropy in parts of ‘King Lear’……

18.

‘Richard III’ Decoded: Part One. ‘All the Queen’s Men…’

……argues that the character of King Richard……

…..a.k.a. the Boar…..

…..is a coded attack on the recently deceased,

……Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester…

….lover of Queen Elizabeth, poisoner of rivals, wife slayer, adulterer, murderer and bigot…..

…..a.k.a. The Bear…

19.

Twelfth Night Decoded: Part Two. Feste the Clown as Thomas Nashe.

Tom Nashe, The Code believes, was Shakespeare’s regular collaborator…..

(Tom wrote the dreadful gags)

In ‘Twelfth Night’ – to gain the forgiveness of the Queen whom he’d offended – he played Feste the jester….

…..in an attempt to make Her Majesty laugh…..

20.

Trixie the Cat’s Guide to The Sonnets: (2) The Birthday Sonnets.

This is Your Cat’s argument that the first 17 Sonnets of Shakespeare were written….

….to a commission from Mary Southampton…..

…..to celebrate Harry Southampton’s seventeenth birthday…..

…..and to try to get him interested in girls!!

But as Brothers and Sisters of The Code well know….

…..THE SCHEME SERIOUSLY MISFIRED!!!

•

Well, that’s The Code’s current TOP TWENTY…..

…..and quite enough from Your Cat.

She will hand you over to our dishy new agent, Tom ‘X’….

 

…..who has been looking through the Posts that DIDN’T make it into the Top Twenty …..

Stand by for….

TOM’S HOT TIPS!!!

‘Bye, now….

•

Ta, Trix.

The first thing to be said, Bruvs and Sorellas,

…..is that many of these Top Twenty Posts have the most Views…….

…. because they have been there the longest!!!

Hovering just outside the Top Twenty are wonderful Posts like…….

The Earl of Southampton and Trixie the Cat

 ….which decodes this highly enigmatic painting of Trixie and Gay Harry…..

Queen Elizabeth had died and Harry was hoping to become King James’s….

……FIRST ENGLISH BOYFRIEND!!!

But he was still imprisoned in the Tower of London….

…as a traitor to the late Queen Elizabeth..

….while the Countess of Pembroke’s sons were rushing North….

…hoping to be the first to jump into King James’s bed!!!

Gay Harry solved the problem in a flash!

He sent the King a wooing portrait…..

…..offering his ‘hand in marriage’ to the King…..

…….along with a couple of highly  flattering Sonnets  from Will….

This story is also told in the dazzling……

Shakespeare: the Play.

The great SIMON CALLOW……

….was kind enough to read an early draft of and pronounced it…..

a delight…..

The distinguished actor director and teacher , ANDREW JARVIS….

…took part in a read-through of the play in London and wrote to Stewart Trotter…

I think your play is wonderful. I thought it read absolutely beautifully – and it was a joy to be part of….

THE PERFORMING RIGHTS, WORLD-WIDE, ARE NOW AVAILABLE.

TRANSLATION RIGHTS ARE ALSO AVAILABLE

To read Stewart’s review of Simon Callow’s…..

…… glorious biography of Charles Dickens….

……click: HERE

After the review was published, Simon wrote to Stewart…..

You certainly got it!

Also I’d like to draw the attention of Bruvs and Sorellas to….

Shakespeare in Italy

 

……which traces the influence of Titian’s Paintings……

…..’Venus and Adonis’ and ‘The Rape of Lucrece’….

….on Shakespeare’s poems of the same name…

(Shakespeare even uses the same COLOURS in his two poems that Titian uses in his paintings)

 These Posts also show that the obelisk in front of St. Peter’s in Rome…..

……and the brass orb that once surmounted it……

……also make coded appearances in the Sonnets….

 Shakespeare made a secret journey to the Continent in 1593…..

….accompanied by Harry Southampton and Tom Nashe…

The distinguished Shakespearean scholar, Prof. Roger Prior…..

……using completely different criteria to The Code…..

…..ALSO argues that Shakespeare visited Italy……

IN THE VERY SAME YEAR!!!

A Post destined for greatness is….

How Shakespeare’s Dark Lady found God

….which shows how Aemilia Lanyer……

…..a beautiful young musician and courtesan…..

……and proto feminist…..

……became the mistress of Shakespeare and Gay Lord Harry…..

……as well as Old Lord Hunsdon….

…..wrote a scandalous attack on ALL her lovers under the pen-name of a man…..

(See: Willobie his Avisa Decoded)

…..then converted from Judaism to Christianity….

BUT CHRISTIANITY OF A HIGHLY IDIOSYNCRATIC…..

….POLITICAL AND EROTIC NATURE……

Also of profound interest is…..

The Background to ‘King Lear’

……which catalogues all the changes Shakespeare made to the original ‘historical’ story…..

…..and the old play of King Leir…..

…..which the Chief Agent argues was an early collaboration between Shakespeare and Thomas Kyd…..

…AND WHICH HAS A HAPPY ENDING!!!

Stewart traces the influence of Catholic thought on Shakespeare after the disappointment…..

….. (to Catholics at least!)….

…….of the botched Armada invasion.

This was one of Stewart’s celebrated ‘Grosvenor Chapel Talks’….

……which originally formed the basis for The Shakespeare Code….

Anyone seeking a summary of The Code’s FUNDAMENTAL IDEAS about Shakespeare….

…..should read the three Talks entitled….

Shakespeare, Love and Religion

…..which puts Shakespeare’s work into the context of history, philosophy and theology….

Adventurous Bruvs and Sorellas will also be interested in…..

The Strange Case of Mr. Apis Lapis

…..which argues that Sir John Falstaff….

…..was based on William Beeston….

(Apis = Bee, Lapis = Stone, Apis Lapis = Beeston(e))

…of Great Posbrook Farm in Titchfield….

(See: Why Falstaff is Fat)

 William, The Code argues, had an illegitimate son…

….the actor Christopher Beeston who acted for a time in Shakespeare’s company….

…. who first told John Aubrey that….

Shakespeare was a schoolmaster in the Country – Titchfield

….an idea first advanced in 2002 by Stewart Trotter in his ground breaking….

……which the Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Greg Doran….

……was kind enough to describe as….

exquisite

And which has received praise from….

 Simon Callow

Sir Nicholas Hytner

Maggie Ollerenshaw

Prof. Jonathan Bate

Prof. David Womersley

Lord Bragg of Wigton

China Mieville

 Jane Howell

Alan Samson

Martin Green

The ideas formed the basis of a brilliant T.V. documentary by Carol White for ‘Meridian……

(Please click : http://www.mellingwhite.co.uk/ Then press the ‘ARTS’ button)

The lovely Trix  is currently working flat out on…..

The Story of Elizabeth, Essex and the Ring

…..which proves that an old romantic myth is true…..

Elizabeth really DID give the Earl of Essex a ring…..

….with the understanding that if he sent it back to her she would protect him…..

WHATEVER THE CIRCUMSTANCES!!!

As he was awaiting execution, he slipped the ring to a boy…..

WHO, BY MISTAKE, SLIPPED IT DIRECTLY INTO THE HANDS OF HIS ENEMIES!!!

Trix promises another dazzling Post on the subject……

…..VERY SOON.

Bruvs and Sorellas who LOVE theatre gossip…….

…..will LOVE….

Paul Greenhalgh’s Tale

It is a HILARIOUS account of what it was like act in Weekly Rep in England in the ‘Sixties….

…..and comes from a book Stewart compiled last year with Code Fellow, Charles Sharman-Cox, F.S.C….

……which has a forward by Southend Girl Dame Helen Mirren…..

…..and is called….

(See: Critics heap praise on ‘Tales from the Palace Theatre’)

Finally, for those fascinated by British politics….

…….and also fascinated by Margaret Thatcher….

The Men who made Margaret Thatcher

This draws on…..

….. TOP SECRET information……

….. which Thatcher’s late speech writer, playwright Ronnie Millar…..

….passed on to Stewart as they worked at the High Tory watering hole, White’s Club…..

….on the script for a Chichester Festival revival of Ronnie’s musical….

‘Robert and Elizabeth’

And speaking of Stewart Trotter it’s time for me to sign off now…..

Our Chief Agent is about to reminisce ….

See ya ’round…..

Bruvs and Sorellas…..

•

Thanks, Tom.

And again, welcome to The Code….

We would also like to welcome a NEW COUNTRY to our ranks…..

UZBEKISTAN

This brings the number of participating countries to…..

ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY ONE!!!

See: The Shakespeare Code Salutes the Nations

One of the capitals of Uzbekistan is, of course…..

……the fabled and fabulous…..

SAMARKAND….

 

…..Uzbekistan’s entry to The Code is particularly timely…..

….. for reasons I shall now reveal….

•

WILSON KNIGHT REMEMBERED

Between 1980-5, I was Artistic Director of the Northcott Theatre in Exeter.

I got to know the great Shakespearean scholar…..

G. Wilson Knight…..

He had retired to Exeter and lived in a house near the theatre.

Richard, as he was known, was a practising spiritualist….

….and would regularly communicate with the spirit of Shakespeare…..

…..as would his classicist brother, Jackson Knight, with Virgil…

It was in fact Jackson Knight who first came to my attention when I was a schoolboy……

….at the notorious Southend High School for Boys…..

We were construing some Latin lines from the First Book of the Aeneid…..

(working class grammar school boys DID those sort of things then!)

Fronte sub adversa scopulis pentibus antrum

Intus aquae dulces, vivoque sedilia saxo

Nympharum domus

….a literal translation of which might run….

Under the opposite front a cave is formed of pendant rocks, within which are fresh springs, and seats of living stone, the cool recess of nymphs.

‘What’ we asked our teacher ‘did Virgil mean by…..

Seats in the living rock…..

Without turning a hair, our young classics master replied:

Stalagmites. The spirit of Virgil appeared to Jackson Knight and told him so…..

The spirit of Shakespeare also used to appear to Wilson Knight…..

Sometimes he liked Richard’s books…..

And sometimes he didn’t!!!

Richard would attend all the Dress Rehearsals of my Shakespearean productions…..

He would enter from a side door in the auditorium which led directly to the outside….

….so he would always make his entry in a blaze of light….

…..then sit in the very first row and stare intently at the stage…..

….before the action had even begun!

Afterwards he would send me very useful, practical notes….

…indeed he used to give Shakespeare recitals himself, clad only in a jock-strap.

Here he is giving his Richard III….

One morning I came into my office to find a pile of books on my desk…….

…..books with the most wonderful titles…..

The Wheel of Fire

The Imperial Theme

The Crown of Life

The Mutual Flame

It was the complete collection of Richard’s Shakespearean criticism….

…. which he had inscribed and left as a gift to me…

I would walk him back to his home when he came to see a production at the theatre…….

……and we spent many late nights drinking his favourite tipple….

…..the ghastly….

….Bailey’s Whisky Cream…

No subject of conversation was taboo….

…and one night I asked him, if he were to die next week….

(He was a spiritualist, remember, so death held no terror for him)

…..which two plays would he most like to see?

Nothing by Shakespeare, he admitted.

He’d had enough of the Bard by then…..

He wanted to see R.C. Sheriff’s shattering First World War play….

Journey’s End…

…and James Elroy Flecker’s pervy Middle Eastern Romance….

Hassan.

(Here is the Procession of Protracted Death!)

Richard died while I was still in office…..

…and I had the privilege of hosting his Memorial Celebrations at the Northcott Theatre.

My company, which was performing ‘Twelfth Night’ at the time….

 

(To read B. A. Young’s review, click: HERE)

…..performed the closing pages of ‘Hassan’ in his honour…..

…and it is appropriate to quote the great words here….

WE TAKE THE GOLDEN ROAD TO SAMARKAND

We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go
Always a little further: it may be
Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow,
Across that angry or that glimmering sea,

White on a throne or guarded in a cave
There lives a prophet who can understand
Why men were born: but surely we are brave,
Who take the Golden Road to Samarkand.

Sweet to ride forth at evening from the wells
When shadows pass gigantic on the sand,
And softly through the silence beat the bells
Along the Golden Road to Samarkand.

We travel not for trafficking alone;
By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned:
For lust of knowing what should not be known
We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.

The line….

For lust of knowing what should not be known…..

…..could well sum up Richard….

…..and it could certainly sum up The Shakespeare Code….

It is YOUR CURIOSITY……

……Brothers and Sister’s of The Code……

…….that keeps this blog so gloriously afloat…..

And I am deeply grateful.

YOU ARE THE WILSON KNIGHTS OF THE FUTURE!!!

S. T.

 

Read Full Post »

A STATEMENT FROM TRIXIE THE CAT

Yes, Brothers and Sisters of the Shakespeare Code…….

……..one of its most illustrious Fellows……

……Eddie Linden, F.S.C…..

…….. celebrates his 79th Birthday this week.

Here is the photograph of him that graces London’s National Portrait Gallery…..

Tom X and I saw the Great Poet yesterday……

…….as he sauntered through the heady streets of Maida Vale, West London…….

……where a spectacular Canal Boat Regatta was being held in Little Venice…..

Another Great Poet, Robert Browning……

…..once lived in a house now occupied by the nondescript white block of flats shown in the photo……

A Grand Dinner is to be held in honour of Eddie…..

……and to honour Eddie in its own way,  The Shakespeare Code now prints what it considers the finest of his poems:

THE NEST

The echo of the burn as it runs yellow 

And the dark blue slag on the pit surface

Reminded him of his past.

The wheel of life sounded its

Message of time.

The blast of death

Rang its bells in the hearts of the homes.

The grim face in the mirror

Faded with time into the slag heaps

From where he came.

The moon revealed its ugly village casa.

A dog howled its death-like sound,

A baby cried from the cold of the night,

A father knelt in

the bowels of the earth, waiting for light

In the darkest hell, where he never saw.

Only winter remained.

And nothing returned to the nest

In the tree, but the snow that covered

The world of his past.

•

A collection of Eddie’s poems, A Thorn in the Flesh……

 …….has been published in a beautiful edition by the enterprising ‘Hearing Eye’……

http://hearingeye.org/

If you would like to read Your Cat’s NOW CLASSIC interview with Eddie on his Acceptance of his Fellowship, please click: HERE

And if you would like to read Your Cat’s FÊTED review of the Collection, please click:

HERE

So, it’s Happy Birthday, Eddie Linden…..

…..F. S. C…

…..from all of us at The Code….

‘Bye, now….

Read Full Post »

 

A TRIXIE SPECIAL

PROVING THAT AN OLD ROMANTIC MYTH IS TRUE

(It’s best to read Parts One , Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven and Eight first)

In her Last Post,  Your Cat reported what Sir Walter Raleigh……

…. had said to the Duke of Buckingham……

……a favourite of King James….

…..about his own life as a favourite of Queen Elizabeth……

…..viz, that…

Minions were not so happy as vulgar judgements thought them , being frequently commanded to uncomely and sometimes unnatural employments.

This quotation was taken from Francis Osborn’s Memoires of the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James……

…..published in 1658…..

What makes this anecdote……

……and indeed this whole book…….

…….so fascinating is that……

OSBORN WASN’T REPEATING SOMETHING HE’D READ…

HE WAS REPORTING A CONVERSATION HE’D OVERHEARD HIMSELF!!!

Osborn states he hasn’t used any……

….. common Chronicles……

…..for his sources

…..which he…..

…..shuns….

…..because he believes these writers of official histories…..

…..had some fear or hope at their elbows ready to jog them towards the interest of the present or future Governors…..

He cites William Camden’s history of the life of Queen Elizabeth…..

…..and astutely observes that it was written to meet the eyes of King James……

…..and consequently favours James’s mother, Mary Queen of Scots…..

…..above Camden’s own patron, Queen Elizabeth, who created him a King of Arms at the age of 17.

Osborn claims that Camden…..

…..feeds his pen rather with such scraps as I have picked out of letters and discourse, the storehouse of ‘Tradition’, not so likely to flatter or to lie as the writings of those mean contemporaries that for the most part have embarked their pens in our English affairs….

In this, Osborn is our contemporary.  He constructs history in exactly the way the great Jeremy Isaacs…..

….constructed…..

…..using interviews and anecdotes.

Osborn was born on 26th September, 1593……

…..so was four years old when Elizabeth gave Essex the Ring…..

……eight years old when Essex was executed…….

…..and ten years old when Elizabeth died…..

He was educated privately; but came to London in his ‘riper years’…..

….. and attracted the notice of William Herbert, Third Earl of Pembroke……..

……..who made him his Master of Horse.

In this position…….

……..as an upmarket ‘chauffeur’ to the Earl of Pembroke…..

……..Osborn would have learnt all there was to know about court gossip…….

……in the reigns of BOTH Elizabeth and James….

On 29^th November, 1599, Elizabeth had granted William Herbert a private, HOUR-LONG audience, even though he was only nineteen…..

And when James came to the throne in 1603, William…….

…..and his younger brother Philip….

…..rushed to York to seduce the bisexual King as he journeyed from Scotland……

…..leaving the Earl of Southampton……..

…..(who also longed to be James’s favourite)….

…..locked in the Tower of London…..

…..with an ancestor of mine……

 

See: The Earl of Southampton and Trixie the Cat.

James instantly made the Herbert Brothers Grooms of the Privy Chamber…..

……and the following year, The Venetian Ambassador reported that William……..

……at James’s Coronation Service…..

…….kissed the King full on the lips.

The Ambassador, though, may have mistaken William for Philip………

…….who, in the words of Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon……

…….had the good fortune, by the comeliness of his person, his skill and indefatigable industry in hunting to be the first to draw the King’s eyes towards him with affection…He pretended no other qualifications than to understand horses and dogs very well, which his master loved him the better for……

But James was fond enough of William to put a live frog down his neck……

William retaliated by putting a live pig in James’s…..

…. close stool…

Even when William got married, the King, dressed only in his night-shirt, joined the couple for a romp in their bridal bed…..

So William was an excellent source for Osborn’s memoires…..

……with an intimate knowledge of how monarchs behave with favourites…..

……and how Elizabeth behaved with Essex.

Osborn described Elizabeth’s….

……infinite indulgence that appeared so long in favour of Essex, who becoming wanton from his late success [the Cadiz Expedition] though after moderated by some less happy, he grew into such heats and insolences towards any his jealousy had marked for enemies , that the Queen , to keep even the scales between him and those of the Cecililian [Robert Cecil’s] party, not only forbore to pamper him with new favours , but did not seldom frown upon him ; though he had yet so true a friend of her affection, that upon the least semblance of submission and promiseof return to a better temper , it did mediate for him : Love, like a bone, becoming more strong by breaches, he being certain upon every re conciliation to receive from her double the value of that her anger had cost him, till these frequent repetitions of his faults and her forgiveness had swelled him into such a confidence of his own mediation that he looked up on all as enemies, that in their words or actions acknowledged not his friendship….

Osborn names another source for information about the Queen ……

…….Sir Edmund Carey……

……the son of Lord Hunsdon….

……the cousin of Elizabeth herself……

[Osborn’s memory here play tricks…..

…….he claims that Edmund was Lord Hunsdon’s brother.

…….But he was writing his Memoires in his sixties…..

…….and at one point openly admits he has forgotten the source of one of his stories]

Osborn, by then, was already famous for his Advice to his Son…….

…….which was said to be among the three most popular books of the day…..

…….even though it was attacked, by some, for its misogyny.

For us the important thing is that Osborn…..

……steeped in court gossip……

…..NEVER DOUBTS THAT THE RING STORY IS TRUE!!!

He became a Parliamentarian…….

……and even uses the Ring Story to PROVE how stupid a monarch could be……

……especially a female monarch……

….Her [Elizabeth’s] death [was] reported to proceed from an occasion that would have been thought ridiculous in an ordinary lady, much more in a person of her magnitude: but such as take Princes for other than men, show they never saw them in true light: who, like the Gods of the Heathen, cannot in their actions or speeches during life be discerned from ordinary mortals but by the worship given them, being so remote from owning any real Divinity, as with the crown, they put on greater frailties than they do devest….

Osborn then goes on to begin to explain what that ‘occasion’ was…..

For during the critical minute of the Queens strongest affection (which was upon Essex his return from Cales) he had importuned her for some signal token which might assure him , that in his absence (to which his own Genius, no less than the respect he bare to the promotion of her honour , and obedience to her commands did daily prompt him) his enemies ( of whom he had many about the Chair of State ) should not through their malice or subtlety distress him, or render him less or worse deserving in her esteem: upon this , in a great deal of familiarity , she presented a ring to him ; which after she had by oaths indued with a power of freeing him from any danger or distress his future miscarriage, her anger , or enemies’ malice, could cast him into, she gave it him , with a promise , that at the first sight of it, all this and more if possible should be granted….

The vital detail here is the mention of…..

…..Essex his return from Cales….

…..which we now call…..

….Cadiz….

OSBORN’S DATE FOR THE GIFT OF THE RING TIES IN EXACTLY WITH THE DATE OF ESSEX’S ‘ANGEL’ LETTER

See Part Eight. The Essex Letters.

How did Osborn know this?

It is HIGHLY UNLIKELY that he would have seen Essex’s letter to the Queen when he wrote his Memoires…..

…..which leaves us only one conclusion…..

OSBORN KNEW THAT QUEEN ELIZABETH HAD SENT ESSEX THE RING……

…. AFTER THE CADIZ EXPEDITION…..

….. BECAUSE THE STORY IS TRUE!!!

 

Osborn goes on to cover Essex’s fatal Irish expedition……

…..and his even more fatal return to England…..

…..engineered, Osborn believes, by the cunning of Robert Cecil…….

….. who persuaded Essex that the Queen was dying.

Osborn writes:

In case he [Essex] took the wiser counsel of his friends to land in Wales with all the power he could raise , the English militia were put in a posture of defence : of which no use was made, for the Earl’s composition having always participated more of truth and loyalty to his Sovereign , with zeal to the Protestant Religion , than prudence or Reason of State, he, not only contrary to the will of his friends, but beyond the highest hopes of his enemies , came over attended with some few Gentlemen and in this naked condition he cast himself habited as a traveller at the feet of his mistress whom after he never met (unless since in heaven)……

On this last point, Osborn was wrong….

We now know from a letter from William Trew to his wife, that the Queen, Lady Warwick and the Earl of Worcester went privately to York House to visit Essexwho was….

….in extremity…..

….and suffering from…..

…..the Irish looseness….

But this was a top secret meeting, known only to a few…..

The rest of Osborn’s account is true or……

…..in the case of Cecil’s deception about the Queen’s illness……

….certainly possible.

Osborn goes on to describe how Essex was….

……presently confined; yet to no stricter prison than his chamber, and under no other guard but the obedience he owed to his Sovereign’s commands, who though daily importuned, could not be brought to sign a warrant for any severer commitment , till after hit passage through the City……

 ….that is, the Essex rebellion….

…in which he did not only exceed the extent of his own ordinary rashness, but the highest and most extraordinary plots of his enemies. And thus was the Earl snatched out of the arms of his Mistress, and torn from the hearts of the people that were his Servants, by the subtlety of his enemies , and in the sight of both brought to an untimely death.

Osborn then describes how Elizabeth, after she had beheaded Essex…..

….fell into a deep melancholy whereof she died not long after….

Osborn then tells why……

……AND TELLS THE STORY OF THE RING!!!

After his commitment to the Tower he [Essex] sent this jewel to Her Majesty , by the then Countess of Nottingham whom Sir Robert Cecil kept from delivering it: this made the Queen think her self scorned, a treason against her honour, and therefore not unlikely to be voted by the pride of so great a Lady more capital than that pretended against her person, which power doth rarely suffer to scape unpunished : besides, he had been tempted through passion to say, or his enemies to devise, that she now doted, and owned a mind no less crooked than her body; a high blasphemy against such a divine beauty , as flatterers, the idolizers of Princes , had enshrined her in.

And from these his misfortunes , led on by the weakness jealousy and age had bred in her , his maligners took advantage , so as his head was off before discretion , love or pity had leisure to dictate , the ring might be miscarried and the former relation false. But the Lady of Nottingham, coming to her death bed , and finding , by the daily sorrow the Queen expressed for the loss of Essex her self a principal agent in his destruction, could not be at rest till she had discovered all , and humbly implored mercy from God and forgiveness from her earthly Sovereign: who did not only refuse to give it, but having shook her as she lay in her bed , sent her accompanied with most fearful curses to a higher tribunal.

Not long after the Queens weakness did appear mortal , hastened by the wishes of many, that could not in reason expect pardon for a fault they found she had so severely punished in her self, as to take comfort in nothing after. But upon all occasions of signing pardons would upbraid the movers for them with the hasty anticipation of that brave mans end , not to be expiated in relation to the Nation’s loss by any future endeavour, much less so unseasonable an uncharitableness to a dying Lady.

In Osborn’s account, it’s Robert Cecil who convinces Lady Nottingham not to deliver the ring…….

……..but Cecil could well have worked in concert with the Earl of Nottingham.

And Osborn’s grasp of Elizabeth’s psychology is profound…..

…..if misogynistic….

OF CORSE she would find a sleight to her honour and beauty more insulting than a political coup…..

…..and her physical violence, even to a dying lady, rings completely true…..

She was, after all, in the habit of breaking the fingers of her ladies-in-waiting.

So, we have the first account of the Ring Story…….

…. from a philosopher, writer and historian…….

…. in 1658…….

…..not, as Lytton Strachey…..

……and Alison Weir…….

…..assert….

……a romantic novelist….

……in 1695….

1658 was only FIFTY FIVE YEARS after the death of Elizabeth….

This is ALMOST……

….(give a year or two)….

…….like an historian NOW…….

……writing about the assassination of President Kennedy!!!

But there is even more CONTEMPORARY evidence to back the RING STORY!!!

STAY TUNED TO YOUR CAT’S NEXT BREATH-TAKING POST….

….when she promises…..

TO REVEAL ALL!!!

‘Bye now……

Read Full Post »

PROVING AN OLD ROMANTIC MYTH IS TRUE

A TRIXIE SPECIAL

(It’s best to read Parts One , Two, Three, Four, Five, Six and Seven first)

Now, Brothers and Sisters of The Shakespeare Code…..

We come to the crux of The Ring argument…..

We come to letters that Robert Devereux, Second Earl of Essex…..

 

……wrote to Queen Elizabeth I……

…..letters cited by his descendant, Walter Bouchier Devereux…..

….in his magnificent two-volume Life and Letters of the Devereux Earls of Essex (1853)….

(See Part Seven for information about Old Salt Devereux

….who believes ‘The Ring Story’ is true…..)

Here is one letter – undated – which reveals the true nature of the relationship between the Queen and her young favourite, Essex…..

Madam, The delights of this place cannot make me unmindful of one in whose sweet company I have joyed as much as the happiest man doth in his highest contentment; and if my horse could run as fast as my thoughts do fly, I would as often make mine eyes rich in beholding the treasure of my love, as my desires do triumph when I seem to myself in a strong imagination to conquer your resisting will. Noble and dear lady, though I be absent, let me in your favour be second unto none; and when I am at home, if I have no right to dwell chief in so excellent a place, yet I will usurp upon all the world. And so making myself as humble to do you service, as in my love I am ambitious, I wish your Majesty all your happy desires. Croydon, this Tuesday, going to be mad and make my horse tame. Of all men the most devoted to your service. Essex.

The sado-masochistic nature of the relationship is clear…..

Essex dreams of conquering the Queen’s……

 ……resisting will……

  ….and plans to go…….

…….mad…..

…….and make his horse…..

……..tame……

…….much as he plans to ‘tame’ the Queen of England…..

Essex, who was half the Queen’s age…..

……was a replacement for Elizabeth’s old lover, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester……

 

…..who had been Elizabeth’s exact contemporary…..

…… and who had died in Armada year, 1588.

Essex…….

…..who was rumoured to be Leicester’s son…..

…..came from an old, but impoverished family.

Elizabeth’s favour allowed Essex to live up to his title….

…..and wear clothes that weren’t falling to bits.

But there was a price to pay….

 The Queen wanted Essex constantly by her side……

…..that’s why she made him her Master of Horse.

But Essex…..

……like most young noblemen at the time…..

……wanted to achieve glory in battle……

So there was always a tension between his wishes and the Queen’s.

The Queen had no interest, as Essex did, in creating an empire…..

…….or ruling over countries that were not Protestant.

She thought that the cult of….

…… chivalry…..

…….developed by Essex’s soldier-hero, the late Sir Philip Sidney……

……..was a stupid and dangerous waste of time……

……..except of course when handsome knights…….

 

 …..tilted before her at Whitehall each year….

……in honour of her Accession to the Throne 0n 17th November.

 

When Essex came to the court, the Queen was in her mid-fifties……..

….. and so could, if she wished, have sexual relations with her favourites without danger of child birth.

(She was rumoured to have given birth, by Leicester, to a son – who was brought up in Venice – and a daughter as well.)

Essex wasn’t the only one to receive the Queen’s attention…..

Sir Walter Raleigh…..

.

……had his work cut out….

He later confessed to, George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham…..

……King James’s boyfriend…..

……that….

Minions were not so happy as vulgar judgements thought them , being frequently commanded to uncomely and sometimes unnatural employments.

Elizabeth, as we have seen from Essex’s letter, was excited by ritualistic sex…..

….and dark games.

Her hangman, Topcliffe, even wrote letters to the Queen…….

…..describing how he intended to torture Roman Catholics….

He even claimed to have fondled the Queen’s breasts and thighs…..

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

When the Spanish seized Calais, though, the romps with Essex had to stop….

Everyone thought that Spain was planning another Armada…..

…….so Essex had to go to war to save England.

He sailed on an expedition to sack Cadiz……

…..and though Elizabeth had told the Lord Admiral, Charles Howard, First Earl of Nottingham……

 

…..to keep Essex out of danger…….

…..Essex was the first to jump into the waters and lead the attack on the town….

Dressed in the Queen’s colour, white,  he returned a bearded hero….

…….and for a while led a self-consciously godly and religious life.

But he soon embarked on affairs again with Elizabeth’s Ladies-in-Waiting…..

…..and sulked in his bedchamber for days on end when he couldn’t have his way with the Queen.

Elizabeth thought he had inherited his stubbornness from his mother…….

…..her cousin once removed….

…..her great friend……

…..and great enemy…..

…..and great rival for Leicester’s affection…..

…..Lettice Knollys…..

On 25^th February, 1597, Rowland White wrote:

 My lord of Essex comes out of his chamber in his gown and nightcap…Full fourteen days hath my Lord of Essex kept his chamber: Her Majesty, as I heard, resolved to break him of his will, and pull down his great heart; who found it a thing impossible, and says he holds it from the mother’s side; but all is well again, and no doubt he will grow a mighty man in our state…..

Essex would visit the Queen every day……

……..often dressed in in his night-clothes and using a secret stairway……..

But the Spanish returned to their attack on England…..

……and planned to join forces with the Irish rebels.

The Queen had to agree to release Essex for a further expedition…..

This time to the Azores….

……to seize Spanish ports….

……and to seize Spanish shipping….

……galleons, laden with silver, returning from the Indies.

While Essex was waiting to sail with the English ships at Sandwich…..

…..Elizabeth sent one of her Knights to deliver her…..

…..blessings to the fleet and the army…..

…..and to……

….bestow…..

…. on Essex a…..

…..fair angel to guard [him]

Essex sent a letter of thanks to the Queen by way of the Knight:

 Most dear Lady – For your Majesty’s high and precious favours, namely for sending this worthy Knight to deliver your blessings to the fleet and army, but above all other for your Majesty’s bestowing on me that fair angel which you sent to guard me; for these, I say, I neither can write words to express my humble thankfulness, nor perform service fit to acknowledge such duty as for these I owe. For whatsoever I could be able to do as your Majesty’s servant , subject, creature, and humble vassal, I did owe it and a great deal more before. But as I am tied to your Majesty by more ties than was ever subject to a Prince, so I will strive to be worthy of your gracious favour with more industry than ever man did upon this earth, for my industry and my humble affection will be, as my duty, an obligation ever infinite, which I most humbly beseech your Majesty to believe of your Majesty’s humblest and most affectionate vassal.                                     Essex

 Just over a week later – on 6th July – Essex, docked at Portland Road, wrote another letter to the Queen:

My dear and most excellent sovereign, – I received your gracious letter full of princely care, of sweetness, and of power to enable your poor vassal to all duties and services that flesh and blood can perform. I received this dear letter, I say, as I was under sail, coming with your Majesty’s fleet into the road of Portland. And because I think it will be welcome news to your Majesty that we are all with safety thus advanced, I send the gentleman whom your Majesty despatched to me forthwith back again. By whom, if I could express my soul’s humble, infinite and perfect thankfulness for so high favours as your Majesty’s five dear tokens, both the watch, the thorn, an, above all, the angel which you sent to guard me, for your Majesty’s sweet letters indited by the spirit of spirits; if, for this I say, I could express fit thankfulness, I would strain my wits to perform it. But till God in time make my poor endeavours and services my witnesses, I must hope your Majesty will conceive, in your royal breast, that which my weak words cannot signify. So shall you do justly as you ever used to do, and so shall you bless and make happy your Majesty’s Humble vassal whose soul is poured out with most earnest, faithful, and more than most affectionate wishes.

Essex AGAIN uses the phrase…….

…..the angel which you sent to guard me…..

So the words…..

…… MUST HAVE COME FROM QUEEN ELIZABETH HERSELF!!!

But what was this ‘angel’?

Essex uses the same word in a letter to the Queen, written three years later…..

……on 4th April, 1600….

To encourage me to be an unfortunate petitioner for myself, I have a lady, a nymph, or an angel, who, when all the world frowns upon me, cannot look with other than gracious eyes ; and who, as she resembles your Majesty most of all creatures, so I know not by what warrant she doth promise more grace from your Majesty than I without your own warrant dare promise to myself.

So, this….

…..angel….

…is also….

….a lady or nymph….

….who….

…..resembles your Majesty most of all creatures…

….and…..

….promises more grace from your Majesty than I without your own warrant dare promise to myself…..

Devereux believes…..

…….and Your Cat is happy to believe with him…..

……that the ‘angel’ is the ring which Elizabeth gave to Essex…..

……with a portrait of herself engraved on it…..

It came with a……

…… promise……

…… of the Queen’s…..

……grace…..

It CANNOT be a painting…..

……or even a miniature…..

……because Essex, in the first two letters, is about…..

…..TO DO BATTLE AT SEA!!!

 But is there any HISTORICAL evidence…….

……as opposed to LITERARY evidence……

…. that the…..

…..fair angel….

….. is the ring?

BRILLIANT EVIDENCE….

…..NEVER CITED BEFORE…..

…..WHICH YOUR FAITHFUL CAT WILL PRESENT IN HER NEXT POST!!!

See Post Nine: Enter Francis Osborn.

‘Bye now…..

 

Read Full Post »

 

PROVING THAT AN OLD ROMANTIC MYTH IS TRUE

A TRIXIE SPECIAL

(It’s best to read Parts One , Two, Three, Four, Five and Six first)

For a summary of ‘The Ring Story’, click: HERE.

Your Cat has demonstrated how ALISON WEIR…..

…..a.k.a….

….’A.W.’…

…great as she is….

……has lifted her dismissive view of ‘The Ring Story’…….

…….word for word…..

….. almost…..

….. from LYTTON STRACHEY’S…..

…..Elizabeth and Essex….

….without examining Strachey’s ‘evidence’ at all….

( See Ring Story: Part 6

Alison Weir – j’accuse!)

This was an easy mistake to make……

BECAUSE THERE WASN’T ANY!

But Your Cat’s……..

…… PAW OF BLAME…….

…… now points at…..

STRACHEY HIMSELF!!!

Brilliant new evidence has been unearthed by our mysterious…..

…..and hugely talented, tender-foot, agent……

…..(with a Triple First in Persian and Arabic from Oxford and Cambridge)….

…..not to mention Harvard and the Bronx….

….. ‘Tom X’…..

While everyone was hard at work on the highly prestigious Grosvenor Chapel Lecture……

THE BACKGROUND TO ‘KING LEAR’

 …….(including Your Cat, who was honoured with a Guest Spot in Part Two)…..

…..Tom was hurtling down to the London Library on his Harley Davidson…..

…..WAKING UP the older scholars trying to sleep there….

…..and SHAKING UP the entire Academic Establishment.

He is now in a position to…..

…….. REFUTE……

……. Strachey’s…….

………REFUTATION…..

….. of the Ring Story!!!

 It isn’t just A.W. who hasn’t read the ‘sentimental novelette’…..

……. The Secret History of the Renowned Queen Elizabeth and the Earl of Essex…

IT WAS STRACHEY HIMSELF!!!

Over to you, Tom…..

….for your first ‘Solo Spot’ for The Code!!!

Toi! Toi! Toi!

Thanks, Trix….

Brothers and Sisters of The Code…….

I would like to introduce the bracing tang of sea air to the ‘Ring Story’….

Step forward……

……WALTER BOURCHIER DEVEREUX…….

……a Captain in Queen Victoria’s Royal Navy…..

…….and a water colourist to boot….

He published a two volume Family History.

Nothing exceptional about that, you might think…..

…. except he was from……

THE ANCIENT HOUSE OF DEVEREUX….

….AND CONSEQUENTLY A DESCENDANT OF ROBERT DEVEREUX, SECOND EARL OF ESSEX!!!

Walter B. Devereux published his…..

……..Lives and Letters of the Devereux, Earls of Essex……

……in 1853……

(It kept him occupied when he was……

……’left high and dry’…..

…… with no more ships for him to command at sea).

DEVEREUX BELIEVES THE RING STORY IS TRUE!!!

…….and in a footnote in the Second Volume, he writes:

The story of the ring is also related in a little book called ‘Secret History of the most Renowned Queen Elizabeth and the Earl of Essex by a Person of Quality’. Printed at Cologne in 1695 and in London without date.

So, Devereux mentions 1695 as the Cologne printing date……

But offers NO DATE for the London edition…..

Strachey……

…..(who cites Devereux’s work in his Bibliography)….

…..takes the LONDON date to be the same as the COLOGNE date…..

SOMETHING DEVEREUX NEVER DID!!!

…..AND TAKES THAT DATE TO BE THE DATE OF FIRST PUBLICATION!!!

SOMETHING DEVEREUX NEVER DID EITHER!!!

This is a piece of sloppy plagiarism…..

(No wonder Strachey never got the Cambridge Fellowship he applied for)

If Strachey had been a Genuine Scholar…..

…..one glance at the British Library Catalogue would have shown him that the earliest date……

…….on the DOZEN or so copies of the novel held in the Library…….

…… is 1680…..

 

So, the great debunker of all things Victorian…

…..Giles Lytton Strachey…..

….has lifted his information wholesale from an Eminent Victorian sailor….

…..but twisted it to his own Freudian-based….

……anti-Romantic…..

…..achingly snobby….

….Bloomsbury Set……

…. Agenda…

 

That’s it Trix…..

See you in The Chippenham later?

•

 

 

You certainly will, Tom!

Mine’s a LARGE plate of cream!

You’ve helped me re-write history!

•

We’ll be hearing MUCH MORE from Tom’s ‘Old Salt Devereux’ in subsequent Posts…….

 So, to recap,  The Shakespeare Code has now……

…… UTTERLY REFUTED…..

….. the claims of…..

The Earl of Clarendon

 

See Part: Three.

Leopold von Ranke

See Part: Four.

Lytton Strachey

See Parts One,Two and Three

Alison Weir

See Part: Six.

…….and poor Simon Adams….

1. ….(remember him?)….

 

See Parts One and Two.

The only ‘authority’ left to refute is the anonymous writer in the 1876 Quarterly Review Volume…..

….. who…..

……parroting von Ranke…..

……writes:

To those who know how carefully all prisoners were guarded in the Tower when left for execution, it will appear incredible that the Earl ‘suspicious of those about him’ – for so the original story runs – ‘and not caring to trust any one of them with the ring, as looking out of his window one morning’ – where did the narrator suppose he was confined? – ‘saw a boy with whose appearance he was pleased; and engaging him with money and promises’ – his keeper of course taking no notice – ‘directed him to carry a ring, which he took from his finger and threw down to Lady Scroope, a sister of the Countess of Nottingham, with the request that she should present it to her Majesty. ‘ These directions he must have given to a boy wandering about the Tower, whom he had never seen before, and must have furnished him with sufficient instructions how to find Lady Scroope, and what to say to her without attracting the notice of the warders…..

The Tower has always been NOTORIOUS for the laxness of its security…..

It was never designed to be a prison….

….and in Queen Elizabeth’s time boasted royal apartments…..

….a library…..

… and even a menagerie!

(The lions had kept Elizabeth awake when she had been imprisoned there……..

……and access to the Princess was so open a little boy brought flowers to her every day.)

Indeed the FIRST EVER prisoner placed there in 1100…..

….one Bishop Ranulf Flambard….

…..effected an escape by getting all his guards drunk.

In 1597……

……..only four years before the execution of Essex….

…….a Jesuit priest called Father John Gerard….

…….who was tortured, chained and imprisoned in the Salt Tower in April of that year……

…… kept up a correspondence with a number of people, by sending seemingly harmless letters with secret information written with invisible orange juice. One of the men he sent letters to was a fellow Tower prisoner, John Arden, who was detained in the Cradle Tower opposite the Salt Tower. They were able to convince the guard to let them meet in order to celebrate Mass together in the Cradle Tower. In their meetings, Gerard was able to form a plan. On October 5 1597, in collaboration with people outside, Gerard and Arden were able to descend the Cradle Tower on a rope, swing across the moat and catch a boat that was waiting for them….

If a manacled Jesuit was able to execute this high-wire escape from the Tower….

……then the Earl of Essex was certainly able to throw a ring to a boy….

…..as a present, via Lady Scrope, to his Queen….

…..from one of the many windows in the Devereux Tower….

And we know FOR CERTAIN Essex was able to open the windows in his cell…..

Devereux records how:

……On Tuesday night, between eleven and twelve, he [Essex] opened the casement of his window, and spoke to the guards: ‘My good friends, pray for me, and tomorrow I shall leave an example behind me you shall all remember. You shall see in me a strong God in a weak man. I have nothing to give you, for I have nothing left but that which I must pay to the Queen tomorrow, in the morning…

 

 BUT ENOUGH OF THIS DEFENSIVE NEGATIVITY!!!

LET’S BRING ON MORE OF THE HISTORIANS WHO BELIEVE THE RING STORY IS TRUE….

AND, MORE IMPORTANT, BRING ON THE DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE!!!

‘No Documents! – No Evidence!’

…..cries von Ranke….

‘I have Documents! I have Evidence’..

….cries Your Cat…

AND SHE WILL REVEAL THEM ALL IN HER NEXT POST!!!

NOW READ PART EIGHT.

‘Bye now…..

Read Full Post »

(It’s best to read Parts One, Two and Three first.)

As part of the Lent 2014 Lent Course at The Grosvenor Chapel…..

…. Trevor Nunn’s 2008 production of King Lear was screened on 12th March.

 

It stars Ian (‘Gandalf’) McKellen……..

…..and Sylvester (‘Dr. Who’) McCoy…..

…….as King Lear and his Fool…..

The production has some fine things in it…..

….McKellen’s willowy grace as the King…..

…..and the knowing innocence of McCoy’s Fool……

However……

NUNN’S PRODUCTION CHEATS!!!

How?

IT SETS OUT TO SHOW THAT SHAKESPEARE WAS AN ATHEIST!!!

Why?

BECAUSE NUNN HIMSELF IS AN ATHEIST!!!

In the Daily Telegraph, on 16th March, Nunn stated:

Shakespeare is my religion. Shakespeare has more wisdom and insight about our lives, about how to live and how not to live, how to understand out fellow creatures, than any religious tract.

Nunn goes on to say that Shakespeare does this….

…..one hundred times more than the Bible. Over and over again in the plays there is an understanding of the human condition that doesn’t exist in religious books….

Nunn may not be interested in religion……..

But Shakespeare certainly is!!!

As I have shown in the three ‘Background to ‘King Lear’ Posts…….

(See Parts One, Two and Three) 

…….Shakespeare wrote with a Roman Catholic sensibility.

This is not to say he didn’t express the darkest, most nihilistic thoughts in the piece….

…..and paints Ancient Britain as a wasteland neglected by the Pagan Gods…..

…..abused by them, even.

But he also shows the redeeming power of love…..

…..even in the vilest and most brutal of circumstances….

…..and how Christian values arise naturally in men and women….

…HUNDREDS OF YEARS BEFORE THE TIME OF CHRIST!!!

To drive this point home, Shakespeare in the play employs blatant……

……deliberately anachronistic……

….. Christian language….

…..and Christian imagery…..

……as the ‘decent’ characters experience redemption…

So how does Nunn cheat?

Well, for a start he sets the play in Edwardian times……

…..in a sort of mittel-European ‘Ruritania’…..

Lear is first shown crowned …….

…..like a Patriarch in the Russian Orthodox Church….

…..and in the dim light he appears to be making signs of the cross with his fingers…..

Immediately Nunn equates the Pagan Gods with the Christian God…..

……so when the one is discredited, so is the other…..

And in pursuing his atheistic agenda……

…..Nunn deliberately robs the play of all its spirituality.

…..SO POOR ROMOLA GARAI…..

……WHO PLAYS CORDELIA…..

……..suffers most.

Shakespeare shows  Cordelia to be in a mystical bond with the earth…..

She says:

All bless’d secrets,

All you unpublished virtues of the earth

Spring with my tears….

How does Nunn get out of this?

HE CUTS CORDELIA’S LINES!!!

Returning from France……

…… to save Lear from the savagery of Goneril and Regan……

…….Cordelia says:

O dear father!

It is thy business that I go about…..

…..a direct quotation from the Gospel According to St. Luke, 2.49….

When the boy Jesus goes missing and is found by his frantic parents in the Temple, he asks them….

How is it that ye sought me? Know ye not I must go about my Father’s business?

How does Nunn get out of this?

HE CUTS CORDELIA’S LINES!!!

Lear is spiritually re-born in the hovel…..

…..and Cordelia evokes the birth of Christ in the manger when she says…..

And was thou fain, poor father,

To hovel thee with swine and rogues forlorn,

In short and musty straw?

How does Nunn get out of this?

HE CUTS CORDELIA’S LINES!!!

And when Cordelia prepares to restore the senses of her deranged father….

…. by drawing on the spiritual power of her love…..

….she says:

O my dear father, Restoration hang

Thy medicine on my lips, and let this kiss

Repair those violent harms that my two sisters

Have in thy reverence made….

How does Nunn get out of this?

HE CUTS CORDELIA’S LINES!!!

ROMOLA GARAI SHOULD HAVE BEEN ON THE PHONE TO HER AGENT!!!

AND IT’S NOT JUST CORDELIA WHO SUFFERS……

When Lear goes mad and is found…..

…Crown’d with rank fumiter and furrow weeds,

With hardocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo flowers,

Darnel and al the idle weeds that grow

In our sustaining corn….

…..Shakespeare clearly wants to suggest Christ crowned with thorns…..

And to make his point, he has Edgar say of the King…..

….in pity…..

O thou side-piercing sight

…..a reference to Christ’s agony on the cross when…..

…..one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water. (Gospel According to St.John, 19.34.)

How does Nunn get out of this?

HE CUTS EDGAR’S LINE!!!

And even King Lear is not exempt….

In expressing his sublime happiness at being with Cordelia in prison, Lear evokes the image in Joseph’s dream in Genesis (41.35) of the seven ‘good years’ of plenty Egypt would experience….

And let them gather all the food of those good years that come and lay up corn under the hand of Pharoah for food, in the cities and let them keep it

He says to Cordelia….

Wipe thine eyes,

The good years shall devour them flesh and fell

Ere they shall make us weep: we’ll see ’em starv’d first.

Cordelia’s eyes CANNOT be starved in the Biblical time of plenty…..

It is a beautiful, oblique, sophisticated way of saying that the good-hearted Cordelia will never make Lear unhappy….

How does Nunn get out of this?

Yes, you’ve guessed it…..

HE CUTS KING LEAR’S LINES!!!

But even more pernicious than what Nunn leaves out…..

….IS WHAT NUNN PUTS IN!!!

Edmund has ordered that Lear and Cordelia be killed in prison.

He repents – and an officer is sent to stop the executions.

At this point in the production, Albany says:

The Gods defend her!

…..and the whole company kneels in silent prayer……

…..a silence which is broken by Lear’s howls of grief as carries on the dead body of his daughter….

The prayers were all in vain…..

No God – or Gods – are listening…..

All very effective….

….BUT NOTHING TO DO WITH THE TEXT OF THE PLAY!!!

Immediately after Albany has said ‘The Gods defend her’ – he gives orders for Edmund to be taken away…

Bear him hence a while….

…and Lear immediately enters with Cordelia…..

WITH NO PRAYER MEETING AT ALL!!!

Perversely, what this screening did for me was to ENFORCE the Catholic perspective of the play……

In Elizabeth’s time, Roman Catholics believed that the queen was an evil, usurping tyrant…..

To be true to England, they would have to back Mary Queen of Scots’ claim to the English crown….

…..and as such they were considered traitors…..

…..and tortured and executed…..

THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENS TO THE ‘DECENT’ PEOPLE IN KING LEAR!!!

To back King Lear means they must be disloyal to the reigning monarchs of England….

…..suffer victimization and persecution just as the recusants did…..

…..and look to liberation from the French army landed at Dover…..

……just as Catholics looked to liberation from the Spanish Armada…..

But why Dover?

Dover is mentioned a staggering ELEVEN times in the play……

……and often as a haven of friendship, warmth and love…..

Kent says:

To make your speed to Dover, you shall find
Some that will thank you, making just report
Of how unnatural and bemadding sorrow
The King hath cause to plain.

Gloucester says:

Dover, friend, where thou shalt meet
Both welcome and protection.

And Oswald says:

Who, with some other of the lord’s dependants,
Are gone with him towards Dover, where they boast
To have well-armed friends.

Dover isn’t mentioned in any of the King Lear sources…..

…. or in the original King Leir play…..

It was while I was watching this screening that the penny dropped…..

IT IS ANOTHER CATHOLIC REFERENCE!!!

Dover was the landing place for many of the Jesuit missionaries…..

…..Englishmen, often young……

…..who had been ordained abroad at Douai and Rheims.

Edmund Campion, Cuthbert Mayne, Robert Persons, Henry Garnet, John Hart landed at Dover……

…..and Shakespeare’s ‘cousin’…..

… the mystic poet, Robert Southwell……

…..not only landed there……

…..he was also later arrested there as well….

Dover for Catholics was a place of hope and martyrdom…..

Exactly as it is, for the ‘decent’ people, in Shakespeare’s play……

Read Full Post »

 (It’s best to read Parts One and Two first)

In King Lear Shakespeare allows all his revulsion at Queen Elizabeth’s cruelty and lust to boil into dreadful life in the love-denying, language-abusing figures of Goneril and Regan.

They both pursue Edmund in the same lustful way that Elizabeth pursued Essex.

And Regan relishes bloodshed every bit as much as the dead Queen.

It is Regan who insists that BOTH of Gloucester’s eyes are gouged out….

Cinderella has turned into the Ugly Sisters. With a vengeance….

Shakespeare also spews up all he hates about mankind….

 …..and womankind…..

…..in the words of the mad, but profoundly percipient, old King.

He also allows all the unexpressed grief for his son, from a decade ago, to well up and overwhelm him.

The dead body of Cordelia in Lear’s arms…….

……. is, in reality, the dead body of Hamnet, finally in Shakespeare’s.

It was cathartic for him.

And horrifying for us.

So horrifying, that the Poet Laureate, Nahum Tate…..

……chiefly remembered now for composing ‘While Shepherds watched their flocks by night’ …

…..substituted a happy ending for the play in the 1680’s….

……in which Lear is restored to his throne again…..

…….and Cordelia marries Edgar…

This version held the stage for…..

A HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS!!!

Even Samuel Johnson…….

……preferred Tate’s version, admitting….

……I was many years ago so shocked by Cordelia’s death, that I know not whether I ever endured to read again the last scenes of the play till I undertook to revise them as an editor.

So can these last scenes be justified? Understood even?

At the end of Shakespeare’s original version, the stage is littered with corpses.

As Gloucester says earlier in the play….

As flies to wanton boys are we to the Gods,

They kill us for their sport.

But is this what Shakespeare himself believes?

We must remember that the play is set in Celtic times…..

Gloucester is talking about PAGAN gods!

Even the characters in the play express scepticism about the beliefs of the age they live in….

Edmund the Bastard, denying that the stars in the heavens have any influence at all on human behaviour, says

I am rough and lecherous. Fut! I should have been that I am had the maidenliest star twinkled on my bastardising….

And when Lear swears…..

By Apollo…..

…..Kent responds with…

Now, by Apollo King,

Thou swearst thy God’s in vain.

There is certainly no Calvinist God in control of events in the play.

The good perish headlong with the bad.

But is there the shadow of a Roman Catholic God?

Philip II of Spain’s reaction to the defeat of the Armada was fascinating.

He said, the following year…..

It is impiety, and almost blasphemy, to presume to know the will of God. It comes from the sin of pride. Even kings must submit to being used by God’s will without knowing what it is.

It is my belief that that Shakespeare came to the same conclusion.

God’s will is unknowable.

Anarchic even.

And that is why Shakespeare introduced the Fool to the play.

Fools were already famous for their wisdom, healing and truth-telling.

Even Elizabeth had her own Fool, Richard Tarleton…….

…….who, John Fuller tells us….

…..was master of his faculty. When Queen Elizabeth was serious, he could un-dumpish her at his pleasure. In a word, he told the Queen more of her faults than most of her chaplains, and cured her melancholy better than all of her physicians…

But Shakespeare had lived through an event that raised the Fool to the level of Christ himself…

When St. Swithin Wells was executed in 1591, with him on the scaffold was a twenty four year old Jesuit priest, called Edmund Jennings…….

– codename, Ironmonger.

He was celebrating a mass at Wells’s house when it was raided by Topcliffe and his thugs. Just like a priest in a Graham Greene novel, Jennings refused to let them in till the mass was completed.

Topcliffe demanded revenge. So, to make Jennings…

……a scoff to the people…..

…..the authorities at his trial…..

……vested him again, not with his priestly garments, but (almost as King Herod and Pilates soldiers did our Saviour) with a ridiculous fools’ coat, which they found in Monsignor Wells’s house, and they laughing told him, he was more fit in that attire to be presented to the Queen for a jester, then to a Nun for a Confessor…..

This image – of a Catholic martyr dressed as a Fool – haunted Shakespeare’s imagination.

When, in Sonnet 124, he talks about….

…..the fools of time

Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime…

….’the fools of time’ are the Catholic martyrs who have been executed…..

…..not because they are bad, but because they are good.

For them, being alive as Catholics in the reign of Elizabeth, is a crime in itself.

Jennings in his fool’s coat also had Biblical resonances for Shakespeare…

St. Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, writes…

For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness.

Hath God not made foolish the wisdom of the world?

St. Paul is pursuing the conundrum that, in the material world, what is thought foolish is, in fact, wise.

And what is thought wise is, in fact foolish.

And this is the conundrum that motors Shakespeare’s play…

Vicktor Frankl……

……the Jewish psycho-therapist who survived Auschwitz…..

……believed people divide basically into two groups….

….the decent and the indecent….

…..and that is certainly true of King Lear.

The indecent people…..

…….Goneril, Regan, Edmund, Cornwall and Oswald the servant….

…….start by destroying other peoples’ lives…..

……..but end up by destroying their own.

The ‘worldly wisdom’ of the indecent people has, in fact, proved foolish.

But, you might say, the decent people…. –

…….Cordelia, Kent, Edgar, the Fool, Albany, Gloucester and Lear……

……every single one of whom is called ‘fool’ at some point in the play…..

……also end up either dead or damaged.

So how can their foolishness be wisdom?

The answer is…….

…….they have found love.

Death comes to us all.

Love doesn’t.

And as Shakespeare, along with everyone else at the time…..

…..thought the world was so bad it must be coming to an end….

….life wasn’t that important.

Along with love come truth, loyalty and humour……

……all the qualities displayed, in the highest degree, by the character of the Fool himself…

As he says to Kent…

That sir which serves and seeks for gain,

And follows but for form,

Will pack when it begins to rain,

And leave thee in the storm.

But I will tarry; the Fool will stay,

And let the wise man fly:

The knave turns fool that runs away;

The Fool, no knave perdy.

All the decent characters learn to empathize with others…..

……as the Fool has to do to keep his job.

They also discover a paradox: to hold onto the truth, you must act a part…..

……something the Fool does every day of his life.

Kent has to act out the part of a rustic to protect the King…..

…….and Edgar has to act out the part of a madman to protect his father.

He makes him believe that his life has been saved by a miracle.

It’s a lie – but it gives Gloucester a reason to go on living.

And, as Frankl says, you could only survive in the camps if you found meaning in life.

And with that meaning comes the ability to endure…..

…….as Gloucester manages to do till his heart…..

….. bursts smilingly….

And as Lear, to everyone’s astonishment, also manages to do, to the very end.

He has gone through the greatest journey of all.

He is not a bad man, just a superficial, unthinking, sentimental one who has been flattered all his life and who has never properly known himself.

He has to lose everything to discover who he is.

He can only become himself when he finds out – in the storm – what it’s like to be somebody else…

Learns, in fact, the ultimate Christian lesson…

Another paradox of this play is that in a brutal, ruthless, Pagan world, the teachings of Christianity…

…..and its imagery……

…….rise up as naturally as the leaves to the trees….

The new Lear is born in a hovel among straw and swine…..

….descends into the hell of madness…

…. and rises again, from his purgatorial ‘wheel of fire’, to the heaven of Cordelia’s love.

And when Cordelia returns from France to save her father, she speaks the same words as the Christ-child in the Temple….

O dear father!

It is thy business that I go about…..

Lear learns to love – properly love – his glorious daughter.

As they are sent away to prison , the two achieve a bliss that is almost beyond this world….

Cordelia

We are not the first

Who, with best meaning, have incurr’d the worst.

For thee, oppressed king, am I cast down;

Myself could else out-frown false fortune’s frown.

Shall we not see these daughters and these sisters?

King Lear

No, no, no, no! Come, let’s away to prison:

We two alone will sing like birds i’ the cage:

When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down,

And ask of thee forgiveness: so we’ll live,

And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh

At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues

Talk of court news; and we’ll talk with them too,

Who loses and who wins; who’s in, who’s out;

And take upon’s the mystery of things,

As if we were God’s spies: and we’ll wear out,

In a wall’d prison, packs and sects of great ones,

That ebb and flow by the moon.

Edmund

Take them away.

King Lear

Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia,

The gods themselves throw incense. Have I caught thee?

He that parts us shall bring a brand from heaven,

And fire us hence like foxes. Wipe thine eyes;

The good-years shall devour them, flesh and fell,

Ere they shall make us weep: we’ll see ’em starve

first. Come.

And so Lear finds completion in his daughter Cordelia……

……as I believe, Shakespeare found completion in his own daughter, Susanna.

From now on his plays brim over with fathers and daughters!!!

But, remember…..

Lear and Cordelia have only been able to achieve their supreme happiness because others have set out to destroy it.

Is this a law of the universe?

That, in response to a great evil, a great good will automatically arise?

Or is it the working of a God, wise enough to know he must leave his creatures to suffer so they might learn?

This play doesn’t give answers: it asks questions.

And one of them is the profoundest ever asked by any character, in any play, at any time – Lear’s question to the dead Cordelia….

And my poor fool is hanged. No, no, no life.

Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life

And thou no breath at all?

For us, here, there can be no answer….

All we can do is accept what life has to throws at us…

And respond to it with as much truth as we can.

As Shakespeare has done by writing this play…

And as Edgar says at its end….

The weight of this sad time we must obey

Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say

The eldest hath borne most. We that are young..

Shall never see so much, nor live so long.

The End

To read the Postcript to these Posts, click: HERE.

To read about the ORIGINAL ENDING to King Lear, click: HERE

To read about the PLAY IN PERFORMANCE, click: HERE.

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 (It’s best to read Part One first)

As promised in the last Post, Trixie the Cat…..

……who is working night and day on…

‘Queen Elizabeth, the Earl of Essex and the Ring’

…….has agreed to do a guest spot on ‘The Background to King Lear‘ Trilogy…….

She will now give a potted summary of the changes William Shakespeare made to the original King Leir story and play…..

Take it away, Trix…

•

Hi, Brothers and Sisters of The Shakespeare Code!!!

Fasten your seatbelts!

We’re in for a bumpy ride!

The Earl of Gloucester has two sons.

One, Edgar, is legitimate……

…..the other is a bastard, Edmund…..

Edmund wants Edgar’s inheritance, so persuades Gloucester that Edgar is plotting to kill him.

Edgar is proclaimed a traitor and has to flee into the countryside and disguise himself as mad Tom.

Poor Tom’s a-cold!

Lear has a faithful follower, Kent, whom he banishes, but who returns in disguise as the blunt old soldier, Caius.

If but as well I other accents borrow

That can my speech defuse, my good intent

May carry through itself to that full issue

For which I razed my likeness.

Goneril and Regan throw Lear out into the storm, accompanied by his Fool and Kent…..

Blow winds and crack your ….

Lear starts to go mad and the trio encounter Mad Tom.

An extraordinary scene ensues in which one character is pretending to be mad, one is genuinely going mad, one makes a living out of madness and one is in rustic disguise.

It doesn’t get more complicated than that!

Cornwall and Regan discover that Gloucester is aiding the old King……

…..so tear out his eyes as a punishment.

Out, vile jelly!

One of Cornwall’s servants, shocked by what is happening, kills his master.

Regan throws Gloucester out of his own house ordering him to….

…..smell his way to Dover.

The lustful widow Regan is now free to pursue Gloucester’s dishy bastard son, Edmund. Goneril fancies Edmund as well and ends up in deadly rivalry with her sister.

Goneril’s husband, the Duke of Albany, finally sees the truth about his wife.…

O Goneril, you are not worth the dust which the rude wind

Blows in your face….

But it is too late! Cordelia has set sail from France to save her father with the French army. Gloucester decides to kill himself…..

…. and his son, Edgar, still disguised as Mad Tom, leads his father to the edge of a cliff.

Except it isn’t the edge of a cliff. It’s flat ground.

Edgar wants his father to think that when he jumps, he has been saved by a miracle.

Lear, now completely mad, enters fantastically dressed in flowers….

…. but…

Every inch a king!

He and Gloucester meet and Lear rails against the ills of society.

Cordelia sedates Lear with herbs and, in one of the most touching scenes in all drama, father and daughter are reconciled.

BUT…

Cordelia’s forces are overcome in battle, Edgar kills his brother Edmund, Goneril poisons Regan then stabs herself, Cordelia is hanged in prison and Lear enters with Cordelia dead in his arms…..

He then dies himself.

And Kent isn’t feeling too well either….

‘Bye, now….

•

Thanks, Trix.

And now back to me.

•

What is going on? 

How could such a light and optimistic play turn into such a dark and strange one?

To try to understand, we must look at what had happened to Shakespeare….

……and what had happened to England……

…….after the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots.

First, the Spanish tried to conquer the English…..

The battle that ensued was nothing short of a holy war.

Queen Elizabeth……

…..wrote a special prayer to be read in churches twice every week…..

O let Thine enemies know that Thou hast received England, which they most of all for thy Gospel’s sake do malign, into thy protection. Set a wall about it, O Lord, and evermore mightily defend it. Let it be a comfort to the afflicted, a help to the oppressed, and a defence to Thy Church and people prosecuted abroad. O give good and prosperous success to all those that fight this battle against the enemies of thy Gospel.

And King Philip II of Spain….

…..according to Gregorio Leti…

……caused to be placed in all the vessels of the Armada, a quantity of relics of saints, of crosses, of crucifixes and images which he had blessed by the Nuncio on behalf of the Pope. Each vessel was like a church; mass was said every morning and vespers with music every evening.

The Protestant winds blew and the Spanish ships were scattered.

This was great if you were an English Protestant.

But what if you were an English Catholic?

How would it look to you?

How, in fact, would it look to William Shakespeare……..

…….whose parents were Catholic……..

……..whose patrons, the Southampton family, were Catholic……..

…..and who, according to Richard Davies, the Dean of Lichfield, writing in 1690…..

Died a Papist

Would you still believe in a Catholic God?

After the Armada victory, Elizabeth persecuted Catholics even more violently than before. Catholicism had to go underground……

……..Jesuit priests arrived with bogus identities and codenames……

…….and masses were held, often at night, in conditions of the utmost secrecy.

Shakespeare joined the Southampton household at this time as a ‘fac totum’……

See Shakespeare the Movie.

……and was commissioned by the Countess of Southampton……..

…….to write seventeen sonnets for her son’s seventeenth birthday. Their aim was to persuade her son…..

……the gay, wayward, Third Earl of Southampton…….

…….to get married and have an heir.

[See: Just how gay was the Third Earl of Southampton? This Post has received nearly 10,ooo Views]

The problem was the young man was more interested in Shakespeare than he was in fatherhood . And Shakespeare, finally, reciprocated. He wrote…..

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day…..

….. to Southampton and the two began an affair that was to last into the reign of King James.

Shakespeare witnessed, at first hand, the agony Queen Elizabeth caused the Southamptons.

In 1591 she executed Swithin Wells……..

……an old family friend, outside Southampton House in London.

Her psychotic hangman, Richard Topcliffe, went on to hang, draw and quarter Shakespeare’s own cousin, the Jesuit mystic, Robert Southwell.

Topcliffe even wrote a letter to Elizabeth, describing in detail the tortures he intended for Southwell, for the Queen’s…..

….pleasure….

Southwell, he wrote, should be manacled at the wrists…

……his feet standing upon the ground and his hands but as high as he can reach against the wall. It will be as though he were dancing a trick or a figure at trenchmore.

Topcliffe also boasted how he would fondle Queen Elizabeth’s body, telling her that she had….

…..the softest belly of any womankind….

…..to which Elizabeth, allegedly, replied….

Be not these the arms, legs and body of King Henry?

And when Topcliffe affirmed they were…..

…..Elizabeth gave him a present of….

….a white linen hose wrought with white silk….

But Elizabeth’s sado-masochism was not confined to torturers….

She was also having an affair with Southampton’s friend, the impoverished Earl of Essex…….

……..a man literally half her age. Everything had turned into a gigantic game of who would dominate whom.

To excite the aging Queen, Essex writes….

….if my horse could run as fast as my thoughts do fly, I would as often make mine eyes rich in beholding the treasure of my love, as my desires do triumph when I see myself in a strong imagination to conquer your resisting will….

In 1596, though, real life intruded on Shakespeare…

His son, Hamnet, died, aged 11.

Shakespeare threw himself into work, gambling, drinking, sex and violence…….

He was even bound over by a London magistrate to keep the peace.

We know, from Sonnet 37, he turned the Earl of Southampton into his surrogate son….

As a decrepit father takes delight

To see his active child do deeds of youth,

So I, made lame by fortune’s dearest spite,

Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth…

Shakespeare, in fact, did everything except what he should have done…..

……mourn with his family back at Stratford-upon-Avon.

Hamnet had a twin sister, Judith, and an older sister, Susanna.

And, of course, a mother, Anne….

•

Queen Elizabeth became too much, even for Essex….

She refused to name her successor…….

….so Essex rebelled against her to secure the throne for King James VI of Scotland…….

…….Mary Queen of Scots’ son.

Initially Shakespeare was in favour of this rebellion as he believed it would lead to religious freedom for Catholics: but when Essex failed so spectacularly in his campaign against the rebels in Ireland, Shakespeare realised all was lost.

He tried to give Essex coded messages through his plays……

………particularly Julius Caesar…….

………that the rebellion was doomed…..

But Essex wasn’t listening. He went ahead.

And Elizabeth played the ultimate sado-masochistic game.

She chopped off his head.

Southampton was sentenced to death and sent to the Tower.

He was reprieved…..

…..but Shakespeare believed he would never see his lover again.

The rebels had performed Shakespeare’s Richard II on the eve of the rebellion……

….. and Elizabeth knew she was the target of the satire.

She said to the old scholar, William Lambarde…

I am Richard II. Know ye not that?

Shakespeare, who hated Elizabeth just as much as she hated him, considered suicide….

In Sonnet 66, he launches a scathing attack on the sort of society that Elizabeth…..

…..who at this stage walked with a stick…

…..had created….

He loathes its disparities in wealth, its frivolity, its Godlessness, its apostasy, its perversion, its censorship and its tyranny…

Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,

As to behold desert a beggar born,

And needy nothing trimmed in jollity,

And purest faith unhappily forsworn,

And gilded honor shamefully misplaced,

And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,

And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,

And strength by limping sway disablèd,

And art made tongue-tied by authority,

And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill,

And simple truth miscalled simplicity,

And captive good attending captain ill.

Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,

Save that to die, I leave my love alone…

Alone in the Tower of London…

But suddenly Elizabeth died……

…..James became king of England and everything turned round.

The Earl of Southampton…….

……. became a hero rather than a traitor……..

……. and was released from the Tower.

Everyone thought he would become James’s new favourite…

But James preferred much younger men.

Blocked from the centre of power, Southampton became bitterly homophobic.

His affair with Shakespeare had survived his marriage to Elizabeth Vernon……

……and the birth of two daughters.

But in 1605, Southampton finally had a son.

Shakespeare, the actor, had to go.

Shakespeare’s response was to send Southampton the infamous Sonnet 126…..

…….a poem of pure, distilled poison.

It begins positively by stating that Southampton has conquered Old Father Time….

…..and even holds Time’s hour glass and sickle in his own hands.

Southampton has become even more fortunate and  more good-looking with the passing of the years.

He has, miraculously….

……by waning grown…

But as Southampton’s baby son……

……whom Shakespeare’s calls his….

…sweet self….

…grows…..

……..Southampton neglects his lover, Shakespeare, leaving him….

…..withering…..

Shakespeare, though, warns Southampton…..

…….termed, ironically, his…

…lovely boy….

….that he is simply a pawn in the battle between Dame Nature and Father Time.

Nature may be keeping her….

…minion….

….her toyboy Southampton….

…..preternaturally young. But in the end she will have to pay back her debt to Father Time……

…..and she will do it by…..

….. rendering….

……Southampton.

‘Rendering’ here has two meanings…

It means giving Southampton over to the ravages of time….

….but it also means breaking down Southampton’s body….

….as you ‘render’ a lump of meat for it’s fat….

Sonnet 126

O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power

Dost hold Time’s fickle glass, his sickle, hour;

Who hast by waning grown, and therein show’st

Thy lover’s withering as thy sweet self grow’st;

If Nature, sovereign mistress over wrack,

As thou goest onwards, still will pluck thee back,

She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill

May time disgrace and wretched minutes kill.

Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure;

She may detain, but not still keep, her treasure:

Her audit, though delay’d, answer’d must be,

And her quietus is to render thee.

The sonnet – which at twelve lines isn’t a sonnet at all – concludes with two pairs of empty brackets….

….the empty, gaping, grave that, Shakespeare hopes, awaits Southampton.

Shakespeare’s real son had died. Now he wants his surrogate son dead as well.

It was in this murderous, bloody frame of mind that Shakespeare wrote King Lear….

CLICK HERE FOR PART THREE!!!

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