The Shakespeare Code

[It’s best to read  Shakespeare’s Destruction of Thomas Kyd (I) first. This Post is a continuation]

Give a man a mask…….

…….wrote Oscar Wilde…..

…….and he will tell you the truth…..

By writing A Groats-worth of Witte under Robert Greene’s name………

……..Thomas Nashe was free to say what he liked….

But the libel laws in Elizabeth’s England were Draconian……

In 1581 the Queen had ordered the amputation of the right hand of a pamphleteer….

……(the aptly-named ‘Stubbs’)…..

 …..who had attacked the Queen’s proposed marriage to the Duc d’ Anjou…..

The Queen had watched the whole thing…….

……. (according to Jesuit Sources)…….

……..from her bedroom window…

(See: ‘Queen Elizabeth, incest and sadism’)

So Nashe……

……who wanted to expose Shakespeare’s ‘plagiarism’…..

……his unwillingness to credit his collaborators……

……and his ruthless ambition…..

……had to cover his tracks expertly….

He does so by having ‘the author’ of the pamphlet……..

……let’s call him ‘Nashe-Greene’….

……. take up a repentant, highly moral stance….

This came easily to Nashe……..

…….even though he was known as a…..

…..biting satirist…..

…….and the English…..

……Juvenal

 He had wanted to be a priest like his father…..

……and had worked, for a time, for the Archbishop of Canterbury….

‘Nashe-Greene’ writes…….

To those gentlemen of his [Greene’s] Quondam [erstwhile] acquaintance, that spend their wits in making plays, R.G. [Robert Greene] wishest a better exercise and wisdom to prevent his extremities [his poverty and starvation]

‘Nashe-Greene’ then begs Christopher Marlowe to give up his Machiavellian-inspired atheism.

He talks about how God…..

……hath spoken to me in a voice of thunder, and I have felt he is a God who can punish enemies…

………and unless Marlowe starts to believe in Him, he will end up like ‘Nashe-Greene’……

…..OR EVEN WORSE!!!

In real life Nashe and Marlowe were close friends and collaborators…….

They worked together on…..

……and, The Code believes, on Dr. Faustus and Edward II as well…..

 To make the ‘Nashe-Greene’ deception complete………..

………NASHE HAD TO ATTACK HIMSELF!!!

‘Nashe-Greene’ warns ‘young Juvenal’ [Nashe] not to make enemies by indulging in satirical attacks on individuals…..

…….which is EXACTLY what Nashe is doing by ‘ghosting’  A Groats-worth of Witte….

‘Nashe-Green’ warns Nashe and Marlowe to be on their guard against the…….

 ……..burres…..[Kyd and Shakespeare] which ‘sought to cleave’ to him [‘Nashe-Greene’]…..those Puppets [actors] (I mean) that spake from our mouths [who used our dialogue] – those anticks [jesters] garnished in our colours [who stole our gags]….

‘Nashe-Greene’ then goes on to single out Shakespeare himself….

……….and plays on his name in the same way he played on Kyd’s….

Yes, trust them not: for there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his ‘Tiger’s heart wrapped in a Player’s hide’ supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johnannes fac totum [Jack-of-all-trades] is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country…..

QUESTION:

Why does ‘Nashe-Greene’ describe Shakespeare as an ‘upstart crow, beautified with our feathers’?

ANSWERS:

1. Shakespeare, like Kyd, had started out as a lawyers’ clerk.

Clerks were famous for their buckram bags and black gowns…….

Writing under his own name in Pierce Pennilesse, Nashe says:

The devil himself’ is as formal as the best scrivener of them all…To Westminster Hall I went and made a search of enquiry  from the black gown to the buckram bag……

2. Crows have high-pitched, nasal voices – and ‘Nashe-Greene’ later in the pamphlet attacks Shakespeare’s Midlands accent….

3. ‘Nashe-Greene’ is referring to the old story – often attributed to Aesop – of the crow or jackdaw who tied other birds’ feathers onto his own tail to make him look grander…..

This continues Nashe’s attack on Shakespeare’s plagiarism which Nashe began in his Preface to Greene’s Menaphon where he complains that …..

…….sweet gentlemen…..

…….by which he means Greene and himself…..

…….have…..

…….tricked up a company of taffety fools [Shakespeare’s acting company] with their feathers…..

But by using the phrase  ‘upstart crow’ ‘Nashe-Greene’ was making a further coded reference…….

……..for those ‘in the know’……

●

The anonymous history play Edmund Ironside….

……..which is set in the reign of King Canutus…….

……..of sea-shore fame…….

……..takes place, in part, in the town of Southampton……..

…….(which was only fourteen miles from Titchfield)…..

…….uses then-existent  Southampton Castle as scenery…..

…….and features a brave and generous ‘Earl of Southampton’ in the cast….

…….even though, in Canute’s time, the Southampton title didn’t exist.

The Code believes the play was written for performance in Southampton…….

…….in front of the young Earls of Southampton and Essex as part of the Whitsun Celebrations of 1592….

…….which included the premiere of Love’s Labour’s Lost in the grounds of Titchfield……

Canute, like Queen Elizabeth, is given to rages…… 

…….and  sudden, sadistic acts of tyranny…….

Like her, he even cuts off peoples’ hands……

But Edmund Ironside……..

……who treats his troops with respect and pays them for their services……

…..(UNLIKE Elizabeth, who left her army starving and penniless after the Armada engagement)……

…..controls Canute by rebelling against him……..

….. and then beating him in single combat…..

This portrayal of  young Edmund is clearly an invitation to the young Earl of Essex….

 …….to rebel against the tyranny of the aging  Queen Elizabeth…..

…….but not to overthrow her completely……

…….(well not yet, anyway)…..

The late, great, World War II Codebreaker, musicologist, Shakespeare scholar…….

…….and Thames Estuary intellectual……..

………Eric Sams……

……..argues powerfully that the play was written by Shakespeare……

There is certainly  a wonderful ‘villain’ role for Shakespeare…….

……the ambitious,  manipulative, lower class, Edricus….

…….who’s managed to flatter his way into power……

……and who works as a double (and even triple!)  agent for both Canutus and Edmund.

Edricus completely disowns his plebeian family……

…….convincing himself that, if he were to acknowledge them….

…….it would…

………make my peacock’s plumes fall down

If one such abject thought possess my mind….

And Edmund, discovering Edricus’s treachery, makes the ‘upstart crow’ reference complete by observing:

Base Edricus, thou wert the fatal crow

That by thy horrid voice this news did show…..

Another character in the play, the upper class Leofric, condemns Edricus in words that could come straight from Nashe…..

Oh what a grief it is to noble blood

to see each base-born groom promoted up

each dunghill brat arreared to dignity

each flatterer esteemed virtuous

when the true, noble, virtuous gentlemen

are scorned, disgraced and held in obloquy…..

The words could come straight from Nashe….

……..because……..

………THEY DO COME STRAIGHT FROM NASHE!!!

Edmund Ironside,  The Code believes, is a collaboration between Shakespeare and Nashe…….

………..and Nashe uses THE PLAY ITSELF to have another go at Shakespeare.….

●

When, in A Groats-worth of Witte, ‘Nashe-Greene’ describes Shakespeare as possessing……

…..a  tiger’s heart wrapped in a player’s hide…..

…..he is of course referring to the line in what is now Henry VI Part Three…..

……O tiger’s heart, wrapt in a woman’s hide….

……a play which Nashe – along with a team of others – wrote with Shakespeare…..

To make the charge of plagiarism stick, it’s highly likely that ‘Nashe-Greene’ chose the ‘tiger’s heart’ line…….

…….BECAUSE THE COLLABORATORS KNEW SHAKESPEARE HADN’T WRITTEN IT!!!

‘Nashe-Greene’s’ description of Shakespeare as a ‘fac totum’ fits in with Shakespeare’s dedication to Venus and Adonis……

……..to the handsome, young Harry Southampton…….

……..third Earl of Southampton…..

……..in which Shakespeare vows…..

…….to take advantage of all idle hours till I have honoured you [Harry] with some graver labour…….

This proves that Shakespeare had a day-job separate from his writing…..

………in which he turned his hand to everything….

………including working as secretary to young Harry……

[See: Shakespeare’s Destruction of Thomas Kyd (I) ]

‘Nashe-Greene’s’ description of Shakespeare as…….

……the only Shakes-scene in a country…..

…….ties in with the actor William Beeston’s statement – quoted by John Aubrey – that in his…..

…….younger years Shakespeare had been a schoolmaster in the country……

[See: Shakespeare was a Schoolmaster in the Country: TITCHFIELD. ]

‘Nashe-Greene’ then returns to a JOINT ATTACK on Kyd and Shakespeare……

………which shows that, even in 1592 , the two men were still thought of as writing partners….

And, indeed, there is good evidence that they were…

Prof. Brian Vickers………..

………using a computer software programme designed to expose plagiarism in students…….

………has recently demonstrated that at least two plays……

……….Arden of Feversham and Edward III…….

……..were collaborations by Shakespeare and Kyd.

The Shakespeare Code – using completely different criteria – has come to the same conclusion….

……….and believes both plays were written in same year as the Groats-worth Pamphlet……

……….1592……

……….a year of The Plague……

●

…………The Lamentable and True Tragedy of M. Arden of Feversham in Kent….

………..a play based on a true-life murder, in the reign of Henry VIII, of a wealthy farmer by his wife…..

………..and her subsequent execution by burning……..

………..was registered on 3rd April 1592…..

…..just in time to cash in on the ‘real life’ execution by burning……

…. of the ‘contemporary’ husband-slayer, Anne Brewen………

……at Smithfield, on 28th June, 1592…..

This event excited Kyd so much he wrote a pamphlet about it…….

……..which was also published in 1592….

Arden of Feversham was clearly Kyd’s idea……..

…… and has all his grand guignol characteristics……

……poisoned portraits, poisoned crucifixes……

……desecrated prayer-books, multiple stabbings……

…….buckets of blood…..

…….and gory footprints in the snow….

But the play is also is full of ideas that Shakespeare was to develop  in his own later work….

Arden’s wife, Alice, calls out her lover’s name in her sleep….. (Othello)….

…….hires murderers to kill her husband…..(Macbeth)….

…… cannot wipe away his blood….(Macbeth)…..

…….and causes his corpse to bleed whenever she comes near it….(Julius Caesar)

The two murderers are called Black Will and Shakebag….

…….(Loosebag in real life)……

Shakebag…….

……stern in bloody stratgem…..

….. is another fantastic villain part for Shakespeare…..

….with wonderful language which suggests Shakespeare’s own hand……

Black night hath hid the pleasures of the day

And cheating darkness overhangs the earth

And with the black fold of her cloudy robe 

Obscures us from the eyesight of the world

In which sweet silence such as we triumph.

The lazy minutes linger on their time

As loathe to give due audit to the hour….

Shakebag’s last two lines could come straight from the Sonnets themselves…..

……..as could many of the lines in The Raigne of King Edward the third…..

 

Prof. Vickers believes that the first two acts were written by Shakespeare…..

……..and the last three by Kyd…….

The Code concurs……..

The first two acts deal with the married King Edward’s guilty infatuation with the married Countess of Salisbury……

……….and mirror the married Shakespeare’s own guilty infatuation with the Dark Lady of the Sonnets……

………the wayward, beautiful musician and courtesan, Amelia Basanno……..

The affair began in the spring of 1592…..

……..(when Amelia played the dark-skinned Rosaline in Love’s Labour’s Lost in the grounds of Place House at Titchfield)….

……..and continued there into the autumn……..

………largely because the Plague was raging in London……

……..so no-one could leave….

The relationship developed into a love-triangle with Harry Southampton…..

……..who broke the habit of a life-time by sleeping with Amelia….

Mostly he slept with lower class young men…..

In the play, Edward abuses his position of power – as King –  by trying to seduce a mere Countess…

Shakespeare also believed that  Harry abused his position of power – as an Earl – when he slept with people who were not of his class…. 

…….especially if they were male…..

…….and NOT Shakespeare….

In the play, Warwick, the Countess’s father, warns his daughter that…..

He that hath power to take away thy life, [the King]

Hath power to take thy honour;

He tests her, by suggesting she should sleep with the King …..

When she says she would rather die, he is overjoyed……..

…….but warns her:

The freshest summer’s day doth soonest taint

The loathed carrion that it seems to kiss:

Deep are the blows made with a mighty Axe:

That sin doth ten times aggravate it self,

That is committed in a holy place:

An evil deed, done by authority,

Is sin and subornation: Deck an Ape

In tissueand the beauty of the robe

Adds but the greater scorn unto the beast.

A spatious field of reasons could I urge

Between his glory, daughter, and thy shame:

That poison shews worst in a golden cup;

Dark night seems darker by the lightning flash…..

Corruption, both moral and physical, ensues when noble people act in an ignoble way………

………and when sexual union  is an act of joyless, unequal, co-ercion…….

Shakespeare, in  Sonnet 94, says EXACTLY THE SAME THING to Harry……..

They that have power to hurt [harm and/arouse others sexually] and will do none

That do not do the thing they most do show…..

[refrain from gay sex even though they display their penises in a ‘showy’ cod-piece]

Who, moving [turning on] others, are themselves as stone,

Unmoved, cold and to temptation slow,

They rightly do inherit heaven’s graces [as opposed to earthly favours from a lover]

And husband nature’s riches [semen] from expense [ejaculation]

They are the lords and owners of their faces

[their groins, with ‘beards’ of pubic hair and testicles for ‘eyes’ ]

Others but stewards of their excellence…..

The summer’s flower is to the summer sweet

Though to itself it only live or die [masturbate alone]

But if that flower with base infection meets

[lower class people, with depraved morals and sexual disease]

The basest weed outbraves his dignity.

For sweetest things [penises] turn sourest by their deeds…..

For his conclusion to the Sonnet……

………Shakespeare not only says EXACTLY THE SAME THING as Warwick……..

………he says so in EXACTLY THE SAME LANGUAGE…….

Warwick says:

Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds….

AND SO DOES WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE!!!

Kyd’s second half of the play deals with Edward’s conquest of France…….

It is the fore-runner to Shakespeare’s Henry V….

………and a re-write of the tub-thumper Kyd wrote for the Queen’s Men……

 

………in which the audience are encouraged to throw their caps in the air at every English success….

There is a great part in Edward III for Harry Southampton as the Black Prince…….

….. who is given his armour and wins his spurs….

……and, in the description of off-stage battles, Kyd can fully satisfy his ‘Stanley Kubrick’  taste for violence and horror…..

.Purple the Sea, whose channel filled as fast

With streaming gore, that from the maimed fell,

As did her gushing moisture break into

The crannied cleftures of the through shot planks.

Here flew a head, dissevered from the trunk,

There mangled arms and legs were tossed aloft,

As when a whirl wind takes the Summer dust

And scatters it in middle of the air

●

Nashe, speaking in his own voice, describes how, even in the autumn of 1592 he is also….

…..detained with my lord  [Southampton]…..

…….out of……

……..fear of infection……

……..and is still…….

………the plague’s prisoner in the country [Titchfield]…..

The plague was still raging in London and the best place to be was well away from it…….

……….near the sea in Hampshire……

But how could Kyd be there as well,  collaborating with Shakespeare?

By his own admission, he had been in the service of a ‘lord’ from the summer of 1590…..

…….joining in with the…..

…….divine prayers used  daily in his lord’s house…..

How could he be the servant of two masters?

How could he be in two places at once?

TO FIND OUT, CLICK: HERE!!!

 

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Thomas Kyd was far more popular with the theatre-going public than William Shakespeare….

Kyd’s gory revenge play, The Spanish Tragedy…….

…….or  Hieronimo is mad again…

…….is full of vindictive ghosts, mutilations, executions, murders, suicides, corpses, gory handkerchiefs and letters writen in blood….

The…..

……of its time…..

It went through TEN editions between 1592 and 1633……

…..far more than any play by Shakespeare…..

…  and was given TWENTY-NINE performances between 1592 and 1597.

…..a huge number for the time….

In 1598, four years after Kyd’s death, Francis Meres described Kyd as….

…..our best for Tragedy…

In 1607, thirteen years after Kyd’s death, Thomas Dekker described him as…..

 ……industrious….

In 1612, eighteen years after Kyd’s death, Thomas Heywood described Kyd as…..

 ……famous….

And in 1623, in the First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays, Ben Jonson described Kyd as…..

 ……sporting…..

NEARLY THIRTY YEARS AFTER HIS DEATH!!!

Yet, by 1675, Edward Phillips, John Milton’s nephew, was attributing The Spanish Tragedy to a ‘William Smith’

And it wasn’t till 1773 that the play was finally accepted as the work of Kyd….

What had happened?

Why does everyone remember Shakespeare but forget Kyd?

The answer is intriguing….

And disturbing….

And casts extraordinary light on A Midsummer Night’s Dream….

……and the nature of William Shakespeare himself….

●

By decoding pamphlet attacks on Kyd and Shakespeare…..

……written by the ‘University Wits’  Robert Greene….

…….and Thomas Nashe….

……..we learn that Kyd and Shakespeare………

……..both Grammar School boys……

…….. were FIRM FRIENDS AND COLLABORATORS in the 1580’s…..

They even LODGED TOGETHER in London…

……where the teenage Shakespeare had fled……

……. to escape the wrath of Sir Thomas Lucy….

…….whose hares and deer he had poached……

……. and whose personal hygiene he had lampooned in a ballad….

(See: Shakespeare: The Movie. I)

Kyd was six years older than Shakespeare……

…… and already established as a playwright for the patriotic Queens Men….

……so was very much the senior collaborator.

‘Sporting Kyd’ was addicted to horse-racing….

As, it seems, was Shakespeare…..

In Sommers’ Last Will and Testament…

………Nashe attacks Shakespeare in the figure of ‘Sol’ ……..

………the vain, selfish, insinuating, ‘richly attired’ ‘Sun’  who….

…..in the horse-race headlong ran at race…

And in the play A Knack To Know a Knave ……

…….(anonymous, but with all the signs of Nashe)…….

…….Shakespeare appears as the reluctant apprentice, Coneycatcher……

…….who wears  flashy clothes, takes scented baths and owns his own racing gelding…..

Shakespeare even writes about horses in his sonnets……..

…….. as though it were an extension of himself…..

They plod along when he is sad……………..

……..but gallop as swift as thought when he is happy.

Shakespeare even doodled in  his copy of Holinshed’s 1587 extended Chronicles…….

…… in a ‘secretary hand’……

……. (verified as Shakespeare’s by the American graphologist Charles Hamilton)…..

 Black soap, pig-meat and honey mingled together good for a horse’s leg swollen……

Kyd also wrote in a ‘secretary hand’…..

……..similar to Shakespeare’s….

….. the form of writing used by lawyers’ clerks or ‘noverints’…..

We know, from a pamphlet attack by Nashe, that Kyd was the son of a noverint……

…….. and was a lawyer’s clerk himself…….

………as, it seems, was Shakespeare.

Nashe attacks Kyd and Shakespeare as……

……..buckram gentlemen……

……..and lawyers clerks in Westminster Hall were famous for their black gowns and buckram bags…..

Hamilton has even found examples of Shakespeare’s handwriting on legal documents….

……..not only his will……

………which many literate people at the time wrote out for themselves…….

……..but also his complicated legal agreement with Replingham over the Welcome Enclosures at Statford upon Avon…..

Law may have been the day-job for Kyd and Shakespeare….

……but at night, working by candle-light, they wrote ballads, pamphlets and plays…

……encouraged by the polemicist, publisher and radical priest, Robert Crowley…..

……the Vicar of St. Giles, Cripplegate…

…….the church where Sir Thomas Lucy worshipped when he was in London…

Crowley advocated the use of plain, unadorned language in writing and in life…

…….hated the use of make-up and wigs…

…….thought wealth should be voluntarily re-distributed….

………and believed that Christ’s teaching in the Gospels could best be spread by popular culture…..

…….i.e. ballads and plays…

We know from another attack on Shakespeare…….

…….. in an another anonymous play called Histrio-Mastix…

…….which ALSO has signs of being written, in part, by Nashe……

…….that Shakespeare fell completely under the spell of the charismatic Crowley…..

Shakespeare is lampooned in the play as the boastful, actor-poet Posthast….

(Just so we don’t miss the point, one of the characters in the play describes how he…

……shakes his furious spear…..)

Posthast himself describes how his ‘Ingles’ – his gay followers – have hands….

……..as hard as battle doors, clapping at baldness….

Posthast improvises alcohol-inspired epigrams of great ‘suavity’….

……..just as Shakespeare used to do in the Bear Tavern at Stratford upon Avon….

…….where he would make up mock ‘epitaphs’ for his friends.

Posthast, with the help of a ‘learned’ scrivener…..

……..clearly a reference to Kyd….

……..forms an acting company from drunken, bisexual, ex-tradesmen….

……..just as Peter Quince and Bully Bottom do in A Midsummer Night’s Dream…

Posthast calls his company ‘Politician Players’….

……and, inspired by drinking vast quantities of alcohol, writes a play version of the parable of the Prodigal Son…

……then persuades ‘Sir Oliver Owlet, the merry knight’ to become his patron.

……’Owlet’ is code for Ferdinando, Lord Strange….

……..whose family crest was the Stanley eagle….

Shakespeare’s real life company, Lord Strange’s Men, started touring the Midlands in 1583/4….

……. with a homely repertoire of bible stories, fairy stories, morality plays and romances…

 ……including the heart-warming The Fair Em, or the Miller’s Daughter of Manchester…

…….which started life as a ballad….

It is set in Manchester, but refers to Liverpool and Chester as well…

(Lord Strange was made an Alderman of Chester in 1587 and was Lord Lieutenant of Lancashire and Chester during the Armada conflict the following year)

King Charles II’s librarian believed that The Fair Em was written by Shakespeare….

……but Edward Phillips, in 1675, thought The Fair Em was written by Greene….

BOTH MEN WERE RIGHT!

This play, like so many at the time, was a collaboration….

It consists of two entirely different stories, loosely woven together in an end scene…

It has an eavesdropping scene IDENTICAL to the scene in  Love’s Labour’s Lost where the young Lords over-hear each others’ declaration of love….

It also has a wonderful proto-Berowne part for Shakespeare…..

 …..as the honest, plain-speaking Valingford…

……who falls in love with the Miller’s beautiful daughter Em…..

……who pretends to be blind to test Valingford’s love…

……but who turns out to be an aristocrat in disguise…

This plot has all the marks of Shakespeare’s hand…

But the other plot is about William the Conqueror….

…..who falls in love with a woman painted on another knight’s shield….

This section of the play was written by Greene…..

….. who based the story-line on his Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay…

Fair Em became a huge hit…..

It was even played by Strange’s Company in the ‘Honourable’ City of London…

But collaborations which turn into HUGE hits present HUGE problems…

Collaborators start to argue about who thought of what….

……especially if money is involved….

Greene grew jealous of Shakespeare…..

……and, in his 1587 pamphlet, A Farewell to Folly….

……attacks Shakespeare for being so heavily influenced by Crowley:

Shakespeare quotes DIRECTLY from the Bible instead of inventing his own dialogue:

 If they [Grammar school boys like Shakespeare] come to write, or publish anything in print, it is either distilled out of ballets [ballads] or borrowed of theological poets…..and he that cannot write true English without the help of clerks of Parish Churches [Crowley] will needs make himself the father of interludes……But to bring Scripture to prove any thing he says, and kill it dead with a text in a trifling subject of love, I tell you is no small piece of cunning. As for example, two lovers on the stage….her knight excuseth himself with that saying of the Apostle, Love covereth the multitude of sins. I think this was but simple abusing of Scripture.

‘Love covereth a multitude of sins’ is a direct quote from The Fair Em, which in turn is a quote from the Apostle, Peter (1 Peter 4:8)…..

 …….for charity shall cover the multitude of sins…..

Greene, to make sure we know EXACTLY whom he is attacking (Crowley) adds:

…….I am persuaded the sexton of St. Giles without Cripplegate would have been ashamed of such blasphemous rhetoric….

Thomas Nashe joins in the attack on Kyd and Shakespeare the following year in his The Anatomy of Absurdity [1588]:

It makes the learned sort [Greene and Nashe himself, of course] to be silent whenas they see learned sots [Kyd and Shakespeare] so insolent…..They come to speak before they come to know…[and] shrift to the vicar of S. Fooles [Crowley]

Kyd, like Shakespeare, was also enjoying huge success at this period…..

………which made Nashe all the more jealous…

 In his 1589 Preface to Greene’s Menaphon……

………pointedly dedicated……..

………to the Gentleman Students of both Universities……

………Nashe attacks The Taming of a Shrew…

…….a collaboration between Kyd and Shakespeare….

……which is a knock-about farce set in Athens at the time of Plato…..

……and which formed the basis for Shakespeare’s later The Taming of the Shrew…

Nashe warns ‘gentlemen students’ [University Graduates] not to imitate….

……vainglorious Tragedians [Kyd and Shakespeare]…thinking themselves more than initiated in a poet’s immortality, if they once get Boreas by the beard and the heavenly bull by the dewlap…

‘Boreas by the beard’ is a quote from The Taming of a Shrew:

Sweet Kate the lovelier than are Diana’s purple robe,

Whiter than are the snowy Apenines

Or icy hair that grows on Boreas chin…

Nashe then goes on to attack Hamlet…

……another early collaboration between Kyd and Shakespeare which also formed the basis for Shakespeare’s later play….

English actors toured this version in Germany – and we know from a German synopsis  (Der Bestrafte Brudermord) that this also was a bit of a knock-about farce….

The sex-crazed Ophelia chases the courtier Phantasmo round the stage…..

…….and Hamlet, having been abducted by two bandits, suddenly ducks so that the bandits shoot each other instead of the Prince…

Kyd and Hamlet clearly based the character of Hamlet, and his dithering, on the character of Queen Elizabeth…..

……… and her dithering about what to do about Mary Queen of Scots…..

William Camden, the contemporary historian, describes how….

In the midst of these doubtful and perplexed thoughts, which so troubled and staggered the Queen’s mind, she gave herself over wholly to solitariness, sat many times melancholic and mute and, frequently sighing, muttered to herself, ‘Aut fer aut feri: either bear with her or smite her.’. And ‘Ne feriare, feri – Strike lest thou be stricken…

…..which sounds very much like a Latin version of….. 

…….To be or not to be….

Elizabeth even wore black for months after Mary’s execution…

Nashe claims that Kyd and Shakespeare were only able to write Hamlet by plagiarising English translations of Seneca…..

……yet English Seneca read by candlelight yields many good sentences…. and if you entreat him fair in a frosty morning, he will afford whole Hamlets, I should say whole handfuls, of tragical speeches…..

But Nashe warns these literary thieves that there is a finite limit to what can be stolen…

And then goes on to make fun of Kyd’s ACTUAL NAME:

The sea exhaled by drops will in continuance be dry, and Seneca let blood, line by line and page by page, at length must die to our stage: which makes his famished followers [Kyd and Shakespeare] to imitate the Kid in Aesop….

……..who became….

….enamoured with the Fox’s newfangles and forsook all hopes of life to leap into a new occupation….to intermeddle with Italian translation…..

The newfangled fox is, of course, Shakespeare……

……and the ‘Italian translation’ is Kyd’s  1588 translation of Torquato Tasso’s The Householder’s Philosophy…Nashe then asks…..

……What can be hoped of those that thrust Elisium into Hell?….

This is a coded attack  on The Spanish Tragedy….

Poets generally equate Elisium with Heaven…..

Not Kyd!

In The Spanish Tragedy he locates…

…. Fair Elisian Green…..

 …..in the UNDERWORLD with King Pluto and Persephone!

Nashe then launches an attack on the PERSONAL habits of Kyd and Shakespeare:

For recreation after their candle stuff, [writing by candlelight] having starched their beards most curiously, to make a peripatetical path into the inner parts of the City, and to spend two or three hours in turning over French Dowdie where they attract more infection in one minute than they can do eloquence all the days of their life……

Nashe is implying that Kyd and Shakespeare would visit French prostitutes……

….. in inner city brothels…

….and catch venereal disease…..

……. TOGETHER!

Nashe goes on to talk up Greene’s part in the success of The Fair Em….

…..declaring that….

…….sundry other sweet gentlemen [i.e. Greene] have vaunted their pens in private devices, and tricked up a company of taffety fools [Shakespeare’s acting company] with their feathers with whose beauty….they [Shakespeare and the players] might have anticked it until this time up and down the country with the King of the Fairies and dined every day at the pease-porridge ordinary [inn] with Delphrigus….

Shakespeare might be enjoying great success in the rôle of King of the Fairies….

……a proto-Oberon…..

…… but the part itself, Nashe points out, was originally created by Greene….

(Delphrigus, though no-one has been able to identify the play, was clearly another role in which Shakespeare excelled – and to which Nashe was again to allude three years later…)

Shakespeare, Nashe goes on to warn, must never forget he was once a humble, touring player….

If he doesn’t, there’s every danger he’ll become one again…

‘Beggars [forget] that ever they carried their fardels [luggage] on footback….Yet let subjects [actors] for all their insolence dedicate a De Profundis [prayer] every morning to the preservation of their Caesar [the boastful, actor-manager, Shakespeare] lest their increasing indignities return them ere long to their juggling to mediocrity [performing to simple country audiences]

But Shakespeare wasn’t in the mood to listen to Nashe’s advice…..

On 6^th November, 1589, the Lord Mayor of London complained that Lord Strange’s Men…

….i.e. Shakespeare’s company…

…….take upon them to handle in their plays certain matters of Divinity and State unfit to be suffered….

(Posthast, in Histrio-Mastix, had named his company ‘Politician Players’ and, Ingle, one of his gay actors, describes politicians as ‘the falsest, subtle fellows alive’.)

Strange’s actors, told they were not allowed to play in London any more…

…….parted in a very contemptuous manner….

…….and defied the Mayor’s ban on London performances by playing at Cross Keys that very afternoon….

The Mayor had two of the actors from the company slammed into a lock-up……

One of them was certainly Shakespeare!!!

Posthast (in the play) is also arrested by a Constable…..

 He tries to pull rank on him by saying:

…….Know you our credit with Sir Oliver [Owlet]?

The Constable replies:

True, but your boasting hath cracked it, I fear.

Shakespeare, too, had ‘cracked’ his credit with Lord Strange for the very same reason….

And to add to his troubles, the invasion of the Spanish Armada had changed everything…..

Actors……

……because they were thought of as unmanly…..

……were no longer popular with the public…

In fact, the public tore the costumes off the actors’ backs to give to the ‘real men’ to wear….

……the soldiers and sailors who were defending England from the Spaniards…

The public were also beginning to tire of Shakespeare’s homespun ‘morality’ plays…

……and the London stage itself was being hijacked by Anglican Bishops who hired hack writers to make scabrous….

……and deeply unchristian….

……attacks on their enemies…

……the Puritans….

This was no place for……

 …….pleasant Willy…..

……as Edmund Spenser………..

…….. calls Shakespeare in his 1590 collection of poems…

……The Teares of the Muses….

(See:Shakespeare in Titchfield. Startling New Evidence from Edmund Spenser.)

Instead Shakespeare chose to live in what Spenser calls his ‘idle cell’….

…..the schoolhouse and tollhouse in Titchfield……

…..with its fortified room….

……where Shakespeare worked as a schoolmaster…….

 …….in the country….

……and as a Jack-of-all-trades to the aristocratic Catholic Southampton family…..

……for Mary, second Countess of Southampton…..

……and her wayward, teenage son, Henry Wriothesley, the Third Earl of Southampton…

……a.k.a. ‘Harry Southampton’….

In Histrio-Mastix, Posthast is also more than happy to ditch his obligations to the Mayor and citizens of the town where he has promised to play…..

……and perform before the aristocratic Lord Mavortius……..

…….whose cellars Posthast and his company drink  dry…..

……. and whose coffers they deplete by demanding more and more money to perform…

(Harry Southampton was later to make a gift to Shakespeare of £1,000 – £500,000 in our money)

In 1590 Kyd joined the household of a certain ‘Lord’ ….

Even Christopher Marlowe……..

…… followed suit……

He was employed by the formidable Bess of Hardwick………

…….. as tutor to her granddaughter, Arbella Stuart……

But from 1591, he was to share lodgings with Kyd when he was in London…..

Just as Shakespeare had done…..

Shakespeare himself was getting closer to Harry Southampton…..

….and on 27^th June, 1592, even acted as his amanuensis…….

……..writing a letter which Harry himself signed……

Like Posthast, Shakespeare now had access to aristocratic wealth……

When asked to write entertainments for the Southampton household, he was in a position to employ others to ‘help’ him……

Especially on historical entertainments…..

And plays dependent on comic scenes…..

Like Posthast, Shakespeare was primarily a poet……

……from whose pen…….

Spenser writes……

Large streams of honey and sweet nectar flow……

Shakespeare, in an outrageous act of chutzpah, employed his worst enemies, Greene and Nashe, to collaborate on his entertainments for the Countess of  Southampton….

……..and for the Countess of Pembroke…….

……..at nearby Wilton……

Both women hated Queen Elizabeth – for entirely different reasons…..

 ……so when she ‘called in’ Holished’s historical Chronicles……..

…….(she didn’t want ANYONE to compare her reign with anyone else’s)…..

…….they simply commissioned Shakespeare to DRAMATISE history itself…..

……..which is why Shakespeare had a copy of the Chronicles to doodle in…..

To be hired by the upstart Shakespeare was too much for Greene…….

………even though he was in desperate need of money……

………and he left soon after collaborating on The Troublesome Reign of King John….

But Nashe, gritting his teeth, stayed on…..

And between 1590 and the summer of 1592 collaborated with Shakespeare on…..

 The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York, Richard III, The Comedy of Errors, The Play of Sir Thomas More, Edmund Ironside and Love’s Labour’s Found…..

At the end of 1591 the two men collaborated on a special entertainment about the diminutive English soldier-hero Talbot…..

……..now known as Henry VI Part One – even though it was written after the other two parts….

This was to celebrate Robert Devereux, the Second Earl of Essex…….

 ………(an intimate friend of the Earl of Southampton) – who had just returned from the disastrous siege of Rouen…

……..which was being spun as a triumph….

And to get into Lord Strange’s good books……..

…….Talbot was one of Strage’s ancestors…..

Nashe , uncharacteristically, praises this entertainment in Pierce Pennilesse for one simple reason…..

……he wrote parts of it!

How it would have joyed brave Talbot (the terror of the French) to think that after he had lain two hundred years in his tomb, he should triumph again on the stage and have his bones new embalmed with the tears of ten thousand spectators at least (at several times) who, in the Tragedian that represents his person, imagine they behold him fresh bleeding…

But NOT being in the limelight began to wrankle with him…..

So he began to attack Shakespeare obliquely……

In the same pamphlet he warns Southampton…..

……..to whom, at the end, he offers extravagant praise as…..

……..a pillar of nobility……to whom I owe all the utmost powers of my love and duty….

……..that…..

Drudges that have no extraordinary gifts of body nor of mind, filch themselves into some nobleman’s service, either by bribes or flattery, and when they are there, they so labour it with cap and knee, and ply it with privy whisperings, that they bring themselves into his good opinion ere he be aware. Then do they vaunt themselves over the common multitude, and are ready to outbrave any man that stands by himself. Their Lord’s authority is as a rebato to bear up the peacock’s tail of their boasting….

Peasants that come out of the cold of poverty, once cherished in the bosom of prosperity, will straight forget that ever there was a winter of want or who gave them room to warm them. The son of a churl cannot chose but prove ingrateful, like his father. Trust not a villain that hath been miserable, and is suddenly grown happy…..

Virtue ascendeth by degrees of desert unto dignity….there is no friendship to be had with him that is resolute to do or suffer anything rather than endure the destiny whereto he was born, for he will not spare his own brother or father, to make himself a gentleman……

Nashe genuinely believed that a man who was suddenly elevated out of his class into a position of power and influence – like Shakespeare – would inevitably behave with ruthless cruelty….

Greene died in the summer of 1592 in the house of a kindly cobbler…..

……who found him ill and starving on the streets of London….

Nashe saw his chance…..

He could pretend that he had found unpublished papers in Greene’s room…..

 ……(not that Greene had a room, let alone papers)…..

…….and publish a scathing attack on Shakespeare directly…..

UNDER GREENE’S NAME!!!

TO READ THE NEXT POST IN THIS SERIES,

‘SHAKESPEARE’S DESTRUCTION OF THOMAS KYD: PART TWO’

PLEASE CLICK: HERE!

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Yes, Brothers and Sisters of The Shakespeare Code……

If you don’t believe it, click here:

http://www.amazon.com/Loves-Labours-Found-Shakespeares-Criminal/dp/1873953356

$480.53 to be precise

PLUS

$3.99 Postage and Packing!!!

You’d have thought they’d have thrown that in…..

Meanwhile, back at The Code, the Agents are all working on the next episode of:

‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ Decoded:

Shakespeare’s Destruction of Thomas Kyd……

Watch the price rocket when THAT POST hits the fan…..

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[On i-phones please click the MENU button above for a full list of contents]

YES,  Brothers and Sisters of The Shakespeare Code………

…………Amazon is currently offering a copy of Chief Agent Stewart Trotter’s 2002 book…….

……………….Love’s Labour’s Found……

…….for the incredible sum of…….

THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTEEN DOLLARS!!!!

http://www.amazon.com/Loves-Labours-Found-Shakespeares-Criminal/dp/1873953356

DO NOT TOUCH THIS OFFER WITH A BARGEPOLE!!!

All of the information in this ground-breaking book will appear on The Shakespeare Code in time……

REVISED AND UPDATED!!!

And when The Code begins to publish its e-books…..

…..as it plans to do very shortly……..

………….it will be at a price that every scholar…….

…………………in every one of its 166 PARTCIPATING COUNTRIES….. 

……………………………………………………………….. CAN AFFORD!!!

This is the Solemn Vow of the Chief Agent of  The Shakespeare Code…..

…….witnessed by Trixie the Cat…..

…….and the mysterious Thomas ‘X’…..

IN VINCULIS INVICTUS

 

 

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FROM THE DESK OF THE CHIEF AGENT

The Shakespeare Code is DELIGHTED to report that on….

……18th February, 2013….

….The Code received its……..

NINETY THOUSANDTH VIEW!!!

As Brothers and Sisters of The Code can imagine…..

…… plans are well under way to celebrate our HUNDRED THOUSANDTH View….

…….in ways that will both startle and delight….

RUMOURS have also reached Head Office…. 

……..that plans are ALSO WELL UNDERWAY…….

……..the MOMENT the legislation has passed through Parliament…..

……. to celebrate THE FIRST EVER GAY WEDDING IN ENGLAND AT TITCHFIELD ABBEY….

……in honour of the steamy love affair between William Shakespeare….

…..and Henry Wriothesley, the lance-toting Third Earl of Southampton…..

 

See The Code’s TOP EVER POST: Just How Gay was the Third Earl of Southampton?

……..a Post that was tweeted by THE ILLUSTRIOUS STEPHEN FRY…..

The Abbey has long been a favourite spot for weddings….

 

……and for CENTURIES, Titchfield Village has been one of the most Gay-Friendly spots on earth…. 

It’s HAD TO BE……

…….. with AT LEAST TWO GAY EARLS IN CHARGE OF IT!!!

The Second Earl of Southampton……

………the Third Earl’s father…..

………seen here lying here next to his MOTHER……..

………the iron-willed, arts-loving Jane, First Countess of Southampton….

……….was said to have made……

….his manservant his wife…….

………and surrounded himself with…..

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

……….So, Brothers and Sisters of The Code……

……… get on down to The Abbey to celebrate your own…..

Marriage of true minds…..

A warm welcome awaits you……

……..in HOMOPHILOUS HAMPSHIRE…..

●

 SIX New countries have joined The Fellowship of The Code….

They are……

KAZAKHSTAN

NORTHERN MARIANA ISLANDS

CAPE VERDE ISLANDS

REUNION

 TURKS AND CAICOS ISLANDS

ALGERIA

This brings the number of participating countries to an eye-watering…..

ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY SIX!!!

IN VINCULIS INVICTUS

●

COMING SOON………

IN THE HIGHLY POPULAR  MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM DECODED SERIES…..

How William Shakespeare Destroyed Thomas Kyd…..

And if by any chance you missed:

‘Shakespeare in Titchfield: A Summary of the Evidence. Startling NEW EVIDENCE about Edmund Spenser’….

Then see IMMEDIATELY BELOW!!!

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Note: It’s best to read  Shakespeare in Titchfield – A Summary of the evidence first.

Edmund Spenser….

……..who, according to John Aubrey, was…

a little man [who] wore short hair, little band and cuffs

….had worked as a Civil Servant in Ireland from 1582…

….but in October, 1589, travelled back to England…..

….with the completed manuscript of his epic romance, The Fairie Queene….

Early the following year he read parts of his poem to Queen Elizabeth….

…..the real Fairy Queen…

…..who was so pleased with it she broke the habit of a life-time….

She ACTUALLY PAID Spenser a pension of £50 per annum…

The poet Samuel Woodford, who lived in Hampshire near Alton, told Aubrey that…

Mr. Spenser lived sometime in these parts, in this delicate sweet air; where he enjoyed his muse, and wrote [a] good part of his verses.

We KNOW FOR CERTAIN that Spenser spent the Summer of 1590 in Alton, Hampshire….

We also KNOW FOR CERTAIN that, fresh from Cambridge, Henry Wriothesley, the Third Earl of Southampton, spent the Summer of 1590 with his mother, Countess Mary, in Titchfield, Hampshire…

And The Shakespeare Code BELIEVES FOR CERTAIN that William Shakespeare was employed as ‘fac totum’ by the Southampton family in the Summer of 1590 at Titchfield, Hampshire….

ALTON AND TITCHFIELD ARE ONLY TWENTY FIVE MILES APART!!!

On 29^th December, 1590, Spenser registered a volume of poems called The Tears of the Muses….

…..and published them the following year….

….dedicated to Lady Strange….

…..the wife of Ferdinando, Lord Strange…

…..who had given his patronage to Shakespeare’s touring company in the late 1580’s…

The Lady Strange’s maiden name was Alice Spencer…

She was one of the Spencers of Althorp….

….just like the late Princess Diana….

Edmund Spenser was related to this family…

Of which, I, meanest, boast myself to be…

….and refers in his Dedication to…

some private bands of affinity [blood ties] which it hath pleased your ladyship to acknowledge…’

In Teares of the Muses one of the poems is entitled Thalia…

….the Muse of Comedy….

She laments the fact that she is no longer ‘Queen’ of the stage…

…..’Sorrow’ now resides there, ‘ugly barbarism’, ‘brutish ignorance’ and ‘rudeness foul’ to ‘entertain….the vulgar’…

Unhurtful sport, delight and laughter deck’t in seemly sort

………have been….

 …..banished

…along with

seasoned wit and goodly pleasance…

By which man’s life in his likest image

Was limned [painted] forth….

In these degraded times….

 sweet wits…are now despised and made a laughing game….

What had happened?

●

The Puritans in England had begun a pamphlet war against the Anglican Church….

……especially against its Bishops…

And the Bishops had retaliated by employing ‘spin doctors’…..

……University ‘wits’ like Robert Greene and Thomas Nashe……

……to attack the Puritans…

….. and to use all the scurrilous and obscene means at their disposal.

Shakespeare, who had been touring the Midlands under Lord Strange’s patronage…

……in ‘naturalistic’ romances ….

……was suddenly redundant….

And he, the man, whom Nature self had mad

To mock herself, and Truth to imitate,

With kindly counter under mimic shade,

Our pleasant Willy, ah! is dead of late:

With whom all joy and jolly merriment

Is also deaded, and in dolour drent.

It takes no Sherlock Holmes to deduce that ‘pleasant Willy’ is William Shakespeare….

…..though some scholars have suggested John Lyly….

……who is no more a ‘Willy’ than Trixie the Cat….

Shakespeare himself, in Sonnet 136, says:

My name is Will….

And Thomas Heywood writes:

Mellifluous Shakespeare, whose enchanting quill

Commanded mirth or passion, was but Will…

‘Pleasant Willy’ was not literally ‘dead’…..

…he was simply ‘dead to the London stage’….

Spenser continues:

Instead thereof [instead of Shakespeare] scoffing scurrility,

And scornful folly with contempt is crept,

Rolling in rhymes of shameless ribaldry

Without regard, or due decorum kept,

Each idle wit at will presumes to make

And doth the learneds’ task upon him take…

‘The learneds’ task’ is the task set by the ‘learned’ Bishops of the Church of England to rubbish the Puritans

……..which unemployed, hungry, graduates were happy to take up…

Spenser continues:

But that same gentle spirit, from whose pen

Large streams of honey and sweet nectar flow….

The ‘gentle spirit’ is Shakespeare…..

Ben Jonson……

……..described Shakespeare as…..

 ….gentle….

Frances Meeres wrote about…

Mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare…

And Richard Barnfield wrote about his….

Honey-flowing vein….

Spenser, highlighting the humble beginnings of the University Wits themselves…

….both Greene and Nashe had to work their way through college…

….continues…

[Shakespeare] Scorning the boldness of such base-born men,

Which dare their follies forth so rashly throw;

Doth rather choose to sit in idle cell,

Than so himself to mockery to sell…

What is the ‘idle cell’ Shakespeare chooses to sit in?

It is the firm belief of The Shakespeare Code that in 1590 Shakespeare joined the Southampton family entourage…

As Thomas Kyd had joined Lord Strange’s….

And Christopher Marlowe, Bess of Hardwick’s…

On 6^th October, 1590, the Third Earl of Southampton turned 17….

And Shakespeare wrote 17 Sonnets, at the request of his mother, to try to get him interested in girls…

See: The Birthday Sonnets.

Actor/Impresario William Beeston…..

…..whose actor father, Christopher, The Code believes, was brought up in Titchfield….

…..told Aubrey that Shakespeare….

in his younger years had been a schoolmaster in the country…

A ‘schoolhouse’ stands in Titchfield to this day…

It is small, but could not be described as a cell…

There are, however, remnants of a SECURE ROOM in the property…

The schoolhouse is on the road and could well have doubled, as many schools did, as a toll-house…

And as a toll-house, would have a lock-up room for valuables, drunks, lunatics and vagrants…

Shakespeare himself clinches the matter…

John Florio…..

…..the scholar, lexicographer and translator of Montaigne….

…..was part of the Southampton family entourage….

According to a tradition that goes back to Bishop Warburton in the eighteenth century…..

……Shakespeare lampooned Florio in the figure of the pedant, Holofernes…

In the play, Don Armado, the braggart Spaniard, asks him:

Do you not educate youth at the Charg-house on the top of the Mountaine….

[Original spelling]

‘Mountaine’, The Code believes, is a play on ‘Montaigne’…

And the ‘Charge-house’ is the secure room in the school….

Or, as Spenser would have it, the

idle cell

…….in which the young Shakespeare himself….

educated youth….

But why did Spenser mention Shakespeare at all to Lady Strange?

That question will be answered in The Shakespeare Code’s next mind-bending Post:

William Shakespeare’s Destruction of Thomas Kyd!!!

Note: If you are interested in this, you might like:

Shakespeare in Titchfield: A Summary of the Evidence

or Shakespeare was a Schoolmaster in the Country: Titchfield. 

For an overview of Shakespeare’s life, see: Shakespeare, Love and Religion. The Grosvenor Chapel talks.

Or Shakespeare the Movie.

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Being the True Account of the Life of William Shakespeare, performed by Mr. William Beeston, Gent., and his Troop of Alchemical Spirits, at Posbrook Farm, Titchfield, Hampshire, in the Year of Our Lord, 1623.

TO READ EPISODE ONE , PLEASE CLICK:  HERE

TO READ EPISODE TWO, PLEASE CLICK: HERE

TO READ MORE ABOUT SHAKESPEARE THE PLAY PLEASE CLICK: HERE.

EPISODE THREE

BEESTON

The Countess of Southampton had been banished from the Court, like her near neighbour, the Countess of Pembroke. So the Two Ladies set up their own rival establishments. They decided to stage the entire Wars of the Roses in the grounds of their estates – script by William Shakespeare. There was one problem, though…..Will knew nothing about history…But he knew two men that did! Tom Nashe (NASHE enters)……

………..and Bob Greene! (GREENE enters)

Will employed his old enemies and hid them away here – at Posbrook Farm….

(GREENE and NASHE sit at a table with tankards, quill pens, books and sheets of paper, writing away)

GREENE

Where is he then? (Silence) And why am I here?

NASHE

The answer to the first is, ‘I don’t know’. The answer to the second is ‘you need the cash’. Willy Shakespeare’s cash….

GREENE

The Countess of Southampton’s cash. I only work for old money….

BEESTON

(To Nashe and Greene) More sack anyone….?

NASHE

We’re working, ‘Apis Lapis’….(NASHE tries not to laugh at his own joke and nearly chokes at the effort)

[‘Apis Lapis’ is pronounced, by NASHE at least, as ‘ARPIS LARPIS’]

BEESTON (aside to audience)

‘Apis Lapis’ was Tom’s little joke. ‘Apis’ is Latin for Bee and ‘Lapis’ for stone. Bee-stone.  Beeston. Me. Jokes like that ensured that little Tom was destined for oblivion….(Back to action) Come off it! (Picking up a book then tossing it down) Learning is a mere hoard of gold kept by a devil, till sack commences it and sets it in act and use…

GREENE

Belt up. (The two men are used to BEESTON boring on…)

BEESTON

What about cheese then? I’ve got some in the loft….

(NASHE and GREENE shake their heads as they write on)

BEESTON

What about Molly then?  She’s in the loft as well….

(Before the two men can answer, SHAKESPEARE enters, now flashily dressed)

SHAKESPEARE

Sorry I’m late, chaps.  Just been with The Two Ladies…..

(GREENE and NASHE look at one another. BEESTON pours sack into a tankard for SHAKESPEARE) 

SHAKESPEARE

We’ve come up with a title….  ‘

The First Part of the Contention betwixt the two famous houses of York and Lancaster, with the death of the good Duke Humphrey and the banishment and death of the Duke of Suffolk, and the tragical end of the proud Cardinal of Winchester, with the notable rebellion of Jack Cade: and the Duke of York’s first claim unto the throne…

GREENE

Snappy…..

SHAKESPEARE

They want Queen Margaret to be a real ball-breaker of a woman….

GREENE

Another attack on the Moon….

SHAKESPEARE

A part the Countess of Pembroke can really get her teeth into…

BEESTON

Well it’ll make a change from getting her teeth into Walter Raleigh….

IMAGE

(He roars with laughter – none of the others do…)

 [Note: Raleigh should be pronounced ‘Rawley’]

GREENE (capping him)

I’m surprised she’s got any teeth left! (All roar with laughter this time…except BEESTON)

BEESTON

(sarcastically) I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men….

GREENE AND NASHE

WILL YOU BELT UP!

BEESTON

(Looking up at the loft, shouts) Molly! I’m a-comin’ h’up! I like it when you smell of cheese…(and  leaves…)

NASHE

Why do aristocrats love acting?

GREENE

The women are bored and the men are vain…Simple as that….

SHAKESPEARE

The Countess of Southampton wants us to build up the part of Joan of Arc…

GREENE (Speaking together)

The Papist trollop….

SHAKESPEARE (Speaking together)

The holy martyr….

NASHE

This collaboration’s going to be interesting…

GREENE

Sorry, Will. I cannot compromise my artistic integrity for anyone….

(SHAKESPEARE  places a gold coin on the table in front of GREENE)

GREENE (taking up a quill)

Act One, Scene One…..(EXIT)

BEESTON (re-entering)

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

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

HARRY

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

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

SHAKESPEARE

Even though you look like one?

HARRY

Are you being offensive?

SHAKESPEARE

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

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

HARRY

Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend

Upon thyself thy beauty’s legacy….

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

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

No love towards other in that bosom sits

That on himself such murderous shame commits…

(Looks down at his codpiece)

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

SHAKESPEARE

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

HARRY (brightening)

You do praise my beauty….

SHAKESPEARE

And continue to do so in this…..

HARRY

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

SHAKESPEARE

It’s not finished….

HARRY

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

SHAKESPEARE

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

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

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

(HARRY shows interest)

A woman’s gentle heart but not acquainted

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

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

(HARRY can contain himself no longer)

HARRY

See! You don’t like girls either!

SHAKESPEARE

(Ploughing on)

Gilding the object where-upon it gazeth,

A man in hew, all hews in his controlling

Which steals men’s eyes…

HARRY

(Excited) Ha!

SHAKESPEARE

….and women’s souls amazeth……

(HARRY, disappointed, groans)

And for a woman wast thou first created

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

(SHAKESPEARE is unconsciously beginning to find HARRY attractive)

HARRY

Go on….

SHAKESPEARE

That’s as far as I’ve got, sir….

 

HARRY

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

SHAKESPEARE

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

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

HARRY

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

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

HARRY

Till Nature as she wrought thee fell-adoting….

And by addition me of thee defeated

By adding one THING to my purpose nothing….

(HARRY looks down at his cod-piece again)

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

Your conclusion, please…..

(SHAKESPEARE scribbles again – and hands him the sheet)

HARRY

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

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

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

SHAKESPEARE

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

(MARY SOUTHAMPTON enters…….

…… looking white and shaken and near to fainting. SHAKESPEARE sees her and kneels. Alarmed)

SHAKESPEARE

M’Lady….

(HARRY looks round and bows stiffly)

MARY

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

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

TO READ EPISODE  FOUR PLEASE CLICK: HERE.

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The Agents of The Shakespeare Code are OVERWHELMED to announce that……..

……..in an ACT OF SUBLIME SYNCHRONY…….

……..The Code received its……..

…….EIGHTY THOUSANDTH VIEW…….

……ON THE EVE OF THE NEW YEAR…..

…..2013….

In addition to THIS SERENDIPITY……

EIGHT New Countries have elected to join The Code!!!

BOTSWANA

YEMEN

ARUBA

SAINT KITTS AND NEVIS

GUAM

ALBANIA

FAROE ISLANDS

BRITISH VIRGIN ISLANDS

…….which brings the number of participating nations to a plump and satisfying……

ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY!!!

The Brothers and Sisters of The Shakespeare Code have well and truly enacted the prediction of the Canadian philospher, seer and Roman Catholic convert……..

……..MARSHALL McLUHAN……

……who, in the 1960’s, prophesied the coming of the Internet ………

……and declared it would transform the  world into a…….

GLOBAL VILLAGE!!!

McLuhan, derided at the time by many academics, claimed to have been profoundly influenced by the English teaching at Cambridge University……..

 

………and by the spiritual guidance of The Virgin Mary……..

Be that as it may, The Shakespeare Code has decided to celebrate by creating a new Fellow……

……..the outstanding, visionary architect, JOHN LYALL,  RIBA, FRSA……

…….who from this moment onwards has the INALIENABLE RIGHT to style himself……..

JOHN LYALL , F.S.C.  

(Fellow of The Shakespeare Code)

The Code sent Trixie the Cat along to Farringdon in trendy East London – where John’s new practice…….

……… Lyall, Bills and Young…….http://www.lbyarchitects.com/news/

…….. is located……..

………to offer John his much deserved Fellowship…..

John was rumoured to have turned down some of the highest Honours in the land……

So Trixie would need to call upon all her feline charms…..

THE TRIXIE INTERVIEW

Your Cat was nervous as a kitten meeting the LEGENDARY John Lyall……

……..who, as everyone knows, is equally at home designing for the Dance……..

……. and the Opera…….

 

…….as he is in designing buildings that will last for all time……

…….like the fêted Jerwood Dance House in Ipswich…….

 

…….his conversion of the Leeds Corn Exchange……

……into a Shopping Mall of taste and splendour……

 ……. and the fabulous North Greenwich Tube Station……….

…….which he designed in collaboration with Will Alsop…..

…….and which won the coveted Stirling Prize.

But for many, the true jewel in the crown is his Harry Ramsden Fish and Chip Restaurant in Cardiff Bay…….

John hales from Southend-on-Sea.

You can take the boy out of Southend….

But you cannot take Southend out of the boy….

John had asked to meet, not at his office, but outside Farringdon Tube Station…..

……..I instantly recognised him…….

……..(as he strode towards me, hair flying in the wind………

……..donnishly clutching a pile of books under his arm)…….

………from the photograph in Kenneth Powell’s celebrated book……..

…….John Lyall, Contexts and Catalysts……

 

He instantly recognized me from The Shakespeare Code……

He beamed from ear to ear……

Stewart’s told me ALL about you, Trixie…….

Your Cat blushed bright red……

Did he know about my feelings for young ‘Tom’ – our mysterious new agent – back at the Code office?…….

(See: Amazing New Light on Sonnet 86: Chapman talks to Marlowe’s Ghost.)

Stewart Trotter, the Code’s Chief Agent, had filled me in about his relationship with John……

Both had attended the stringently academic – if deviant – Southend High School for Boys…..

…….and both had worked hard for the Arts Council to create Opera ‘80…..

……. (now re-named English Touring Opera)

It was a company which toured fully-staged, fully orchestrated, opera to places in England which had never experienced opera before…..

……sometimes to places that didn’t even posses a theatre……

…..like REDRUTH in CORNWALL….

……where the operas were presented in a SPORTS CENTRE……

The New Statesman  critic reported that the applause which erupted there at the end of The Marriage of Figaro……

 

………was……

……..reminiscent of a Kleiber/Domingo performance at Covent Garden……

John and Stewart had also worked on a Biblical rock-opera in a London Church……

……. which shall remain nameless….

It had been sponsored by an anonymous donor……

……..who turned out to be the Curate……

He was prepared to shell out thousands and thousands of pounds of his own money…..

………for two simple reasons……

(1) He hated the Vicar……..

……..and……

(2)  The Vicar hated rock music.

Come on , Trix……

…….said John, sweeping me up with his free arm……

Let me buy you lunch……

As we hurtled through the Lanes of Farringdon, Your Cat craned sideways to read the titles of the books John was holding……

John, ever observant, said……

They’re books about the London Olympics. They’ve just arrived as a ‘thank you’ from Sebastian Lord Coe…… 

It was John’s turn to redden…..

He is the most modest of men….

Boasting is as remote from him as the moon…..

You see , I designed the pumping stations for the Olympic Park….

……but I’ll explain over lunch……

We had swerved into Britton Street and stood before a magnificent new building……

……The Goldsmiths’ Centre….

Why had we stopped?

John took me up to the plaque on the wall…..

Feel it, Trixie…..

…….he said…..

It’s real gold.  I wanted to cover the whole building in the stuff!

There was a pause……

Only joking……

Then there was another pause…..

And the penny dropped……

Trixie, you didn’t know I’d designed this, did you? Don’t worry! It’s only just opened. There’s a caff attached where I thought we could eat. It’s a Victorian school I’ve converted…..

We entered a splendid , light, airy cafeteria…..

We both ordered DELICIOUS onion soup and home-made hamburger…..

Don’t want to spoil your lunch, Trixie, but I’ll explain about the pumping stations.

They convert human waste into what is called ‘grey water’…..

This can’t be drunk, but it’s good enough to irrigate the land…….

……..and it watered the whole of the Olympic Park…..

My partners and I are working on a new project which will convert human waste into dry pellets. These we give free to farmers to fertilise the land…..

We heat the waste and ventilate it – in fact, to make the process work properly……

……THE SHIT HAS TO HIT THE FAN!!!

We moved onto the hamburgers……

And , after a while, there was another pause…….

So, Trixie, what’s Stewart after this time……?

Your Cat replied……

It’s what we are ALL after. The Shakespeare Code would like to offer you a Fellowship…..

John stared down at his half-demolished burger in silence….

……..a silence that to Your Cat seemed utterly cold…….

Yes, he had turned down other Establishment Honours……

But would he turn down a FELLOWSHIP FROM THE CODE?

Trixie……

…….he said in a tone of command…..

…….command that has raised great towers of steel into the sky…..

……. please leave me to think about this.  Return  to Code Head Office and dispatch a rider to the Caff to pick up my written reply…….…..

Then he suddenly looked up and smiled…..

Why not send ‘Tom’?’

HE KNEW…….

●

My Tube journey back was longest in Your Cat’s life…..

To return to Head Office, with mission UNaccomplished, was more than she could bear…..

‘Tom’ gave me a weak, supportive smile and set off to Farringdon on his motorbike….

Even the roar of his Harley Davidson seemed muted….

As as word got round, the Agents, one by one, filed into my office…….

……grim-faced, silent…..

Even the ebullient Stewart seemed subdued….

●

After an age, ‘Tom’  could be heard, climbing  The Code staircase…..

……..his footsteps tentative and slow….

He bore a sealed envelope……

It’s addressed to ‘The Shakespeare Code’…..

……..he announced.

Read it aloud, ‘Tom’

………whispered Stewart.

In a husky voice, ‘Tom’ began……

Please forgive my delay in responding to your invitation. I was in a public place which I had designed and where I was known.

I did not want my clients to see me break down.

The fact is, I couldn’t believe what Trixie said was true.

I did, literally, have to pinch myself.

I’ve had a few adventures in the world of theatre over the years, but I am principally known as an architect.

So to be welcomed into such an august body as The Shakespeare Code is totally unexpected.

It’s beyond my wildest dreams…..

Signed,

John Lyall, F. S. C.

For a moment there was complete silence…..

Then a roar of joy such as the old building had never heard before……

Three cheers for Trixie the Cat…..

…….cried Stewart…..

But it wasn’t the cheers that sent the tears gushing down the cheeks of Your Cat…..

It was the shy, boyish smile from ‘Tom’……

‘Bye, now……

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Brothers and Sisters of The Shakespeare Code,

In Your Cat’s Last Post…..

…….’Trixie the Cat’s Guide to the Sonnets (4): The Rival Poet Revealed’…..

…..Your Cat wrote……

HOWEVER,  in Sonnet 86 we learn something EXTRAORDINARILY IDIOSYNCRATIC about The Rival…..

HE TALKS TO GHOSTS!!!

…..or rather, one particular…..

…..affable, familiar ghost……

i.e. a friendly spook…..

 

…….who…….

…….nightly gulls him with intelligence…..

i.e. appears to the Rival Poet every night and gives him false information….

The Rival Poet has been taught to write…..

……by spirits…..

There is one contemporary writer who fits this description EXACTLY…..

STEP FORWARD GEORGE CHAPMAN!!!

He claimed to have been in spirit contact, all his life, with the ghost of Homer…….

…..who first appeared to him in the most unlikely of places….

 I am, said he, [Homer] that spirit Elysian ,

That (in thy native air; and on the hill

Next Hitchin’s left hand) did thy bosom fill,

With such a flood of soul……

Chapman translated Homer into English…….

…….a version which the poet, John Keats….

…….famously praised in his On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer….’

●

Now all this is true……

But Your Cat began to get an itch under her collar……

Why should William Shakespeare describe Homer as……

……affable……

……and……….

……familiar…….

……and why should Homer…..

…..nightly gull…….

…..Chapman…..

….with intelligence…..?

Your Cat was at her desk in Head Office, musing on these problems, when the door suddenly flew open…

It was our new Agent……

……codename ‘Thomas X’….

……fresh from a secret assignement in Heidelberg…….

Your Cat CANNOT of course reveal his true name or identity……

……but it would be CRUEL to The Sisters of The Code….

…..and indeed a GOODLY NUMBER of The Brothers…….

…..to withold from them what ‘Tom’ looks like……

‘What’s up, Trix?’ he cried…..

…..like all sexy men, ‘Tom’ is deeply intuitive…..

‘I’m worried about Chapman’s ghost, ‘Tom’….The evidence SHOULD stack up – but somehow it doesn’t…..

Does Homer LOOK ‘affable’……

….. or even  ‘familar’?

And what’s the ‘intelligence’ he ‘gulls’ Chapman with…..?’

‘Don’t worry,’ Tom beamed,‘I’ll fix it in a trix…..

……That’s why The Code employs me…..’

He then jumped down the staircase, frog-leapt onto his Harley Davidson…….

…..and was roaring off to The London Library before you could say…..

……Notes Towards a Definition of Culture…..

Within the HOUR he was bounding back up the stairs…..

…..his leathers creaking…..

‘Got it, Trix’  he cried…….

……and held up a battered tome….

And got it ‘Tom’ had!

He had remembered, from his Cambridge University days……

……..where he took a Double First in English…….

……..and gained a Fencing Blue…..

……..that there was a mysterious passage in George Chapman’s Hero and Leander…..

……..a continuation of the poem Marlowe had begun before he got killed in a gay Deptford brawl..….

(See: Was Christopher Marlowe the Rival Poet? )

‘Tom’ leapt onto my desk and declaimed:

Then thou most strangely-intellectual fire,

That proper to my soul hast power t’inspire

Her burning faculties, and with the wings

Of thy unsphered flame, visit’st the springs

Of spirits immortal; now (as swift as Time

Doth follow Motion) find the eternal clime

Of his free soul, whose living subject stood

Up to the chin in the Pirenian flood,

And drunk to me half this Musean story,

Inscribing it to deathless memory:

Confer with it, and make my pledge as deep,

That neither’s draught be consecrate to sleep.

Tell it how much his late desires I tender,

(If yet it know not) and to light surrender

My soul’s dark offspring, willing it should die

To loves, to passions and society.

‘Tom’ gave a whoop of delight!

‘Get it, Trix?’

I did ‘get it’. 

But I also wanted ‘Tom’ to have his moment of glory…….

So I shook my head…….

And Tom took off…….

……his mind sharp and bright as the studs in his belt and wristbands….

‘Chapman is describing how……….

……..as well as being in contact with the spirit of Homer…..

……..he is ALSO IN CONTACT WITH THE SPIRIT OF MARLOWE!!!

Marlowe is the….

…..free spirit…..

……who, while he was a…….

…..living subject…….

……certainly……

…….stood up to the chin in the Pirenian flood…….’

‘Tom’ paused, then added, cheekily:

‘You don’t know what a Pirenian flood is, do you Trixie?

Young ‘Tom’ clearly needed taking down a peg or two…..

‘Is it by any chance the spring in Macedonia consecrated to the Muses? ‘ I replied……

……..of which Alexander Pope wrote…….

……..Drink deep, or taste not…….

……..famously making his point that………

…….a little learning is a dangerous thing…..

I might have started off in an alley, ‘Tom’, but I didn’t stay there……’

Tom reddened……

……..then sheepishly climbed down from my desk.

He stood facing me, eyes lowered, as though I were his Headmistress……

……and he were a schoolboy…..

Beneath his tight denim jeans there clearly lurked a fragile, wounded soul…..

A soul Your Cat needed to nurture and cherish….

‘Look , Tom,’ I purred, ‘this is an ASTONISHING discovery you’ve made…..

No scholar – to my knowlege – has suggested this before…..

Not the editor of the Arden edition of the Sonnets…..

Not even the great DOVER WILSON himself……

Shakespeare describes Marlowe as the……

…….. dead shepherd……

……..and even bitchy Tom Nashe wrote that Marlowe was…..

……one of my friends that used me like a friend…..

So Shakespeare would have every reason to describe Marlowe’s ghost as ‘affable’ and ‘familiar’….’

My praise worked: ‘Tom’ bounced back into life….

‘My theory’, he exclaimed,  ‘also explains why Chapman’s ghost……

 ……gulls……

……him…..

…… nightly with intelligence…..

Marlowe, when he was a student, worked for the government as a spy…..

That’s how, as a spirit, he could…..

 …..gull….

….. Chapman with……

……intelligence….

……which is false…..

‘Tom’, now, was beaming at me…..

……back to his cocky self…

‘How about a reward, Trix?’ he smirked……

……..then put his hands, firmly but gently, beneath my front legs……

……. swept me into the air…..

……held his lips very close to mine……

……and closed his eyes……

I scratched his cheek.

He yelled and dropped me.

‘Your reward will be to help me revise my Last Post,’ I said.

 ‘Tom’ rushed to the mirror on the wall to examine his face…..

‘Tell your  lovers it’s a dueling scar from Heidelberg…….

……I added helpfully…..

‘Now come and sit next to me and let’s get on with it…..’

‘Tom’  hesitated for a second……

Then obeyed…..

And, Brothers and Sisters of The Code, if you would like to read what we came up with, please click: HERE.

‘Bye, now…..

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Being the True Account of the Life of William Shakespeare, performed by Mr. William Beeston, Gent., and his Troop of Alchemical Spirits, at Posbrook Farm, Titchfield, Hampshire, in the Year of Our Lord, 1623.

TO READ EPISODE ONE , PLEASE CLICK:  HERE

TO READ MORE ABOUT SHAKESPEARE THE PLAY PLEASE CLICK: HERE.

 EPISODE TWO

BEESTON

Will had to get out of town and the place to go was London. He wanted to be a writer and the City was full of them. Some of them were friendly to him, like ‘mighty’ Kit Marlowe….

 (Enter MARLOWE, smoking a long clay pipe, with a HANDSOME YOUNG MAN on his arm….

 

 

….who openly declared that….

 MARLOWE

All they that love not tobacco and boys be fools…..

 (Enter YOUNG SHAKESPEARE, now with small, stylish moustache and beard. MARLOWE draws on his pipe and gives it to YOUNG SHAKESPEARE. YOUNG SHAKESPEARE draws on the pipe and chokes.  MARLOWE takes back the pipe and offers SHAKESPEARE the HANDSOME YOUNG MAN instead)

 YOUNG SHAKESPEARE

 (Still choking from the tobacco) Pass….

 (ALL EXIT)

 BEESTON

Other writers, like Robert Greene and Thomas Nashe, were not friendly at all….

NASHE AND GREENE

(Entering by trapdoor, standing arm in arm, Little and Large)

How dare this Will Shakespeare set up as a poet…

He’s a grammar school oik and we’ll make him know it! 

NASHE (light tenor voice)

His voice is a screech….

GREENE (Basso profundo)

And his background is lowly…..

NASHE AND GREENE

And he’s taught how to write by the mad Robert Crowley….

(EXIT via trapdoor)

BEESTON

Robert Crowley was the vicar of St. Giles, Cripplegate. (BEESTON puts on a surplice) Sir Thomas Lucy was still hot on Will’s trail…..And when Lucy went to London, he worshipped at St. Giles. Best to get the vicar on your side….(BEESTON kneels in prayer) Even if he is mad….

(BEESTON becomes CROWLEY, a violent anti-Papist who keeps trying to be tolerant. He finishes his prayer, takes off his surplice, looks around then jumps up and down on it, with his feet together, as though he were killing a living thing)

CROWLEY/BEESTON

(With full ecclesiastical voice) Satan’s sinful surplice….

(YOUNG SHAKESPEARE enters)

The Devil’s direful dress…..

Old Nick’s nasty night-gown…

Beelzebub’s…..

(CROWLEY/BEESTON can’t think of anything to go with ‘Beelzebub’ so he stops)

YOUNG SHAKESPEARE

I’m sorry, father, is this a bad time?

(CROWLEY/BEESTON looks round at SHAKESPEARE)

CROWLEY/BEESTON

No, Will. It’s a very good time! POPERY HAS POOPED! (Trying to calm down) As you can see, Will, I’m opposed to the clergy wearing vestments of any kind. (Getting over-excited again) IT REEKS OF ROME!… (Trying to calm down again, he holds up some sheets of paper) Now this ballad of yours…how would you feel about if you were Sir Thomas Lucy?

YOUNG SHAKESPEARE

But I’m not Sir Thomas Lucy….I don’t have his penchant for genital mutilation…

CROWLEY/BEESTON

Will, it’s your job as a writer to empathise with everyone. You have to imagine, for example, what it’s like to be poor….

YOUNG SHAKESPEARE

But I AM poor!

CROWLEY/BEESTON

(ignoring him)…and to imagine what it’s like to be rich. If everyone did that, the rich would give everything they had to the poor…

YOUNG SHAKESPEARE

Then the poor would give it back….

CROWLEY/BEESTON

Look, Will, I’ll get Lucy off your back, but I’ll want something in return….

YOUNG SHAKESPEARE

Of course….

(YOUNG SHAKESPEARE gets out a bag of coins. CROWLEY/BEESTON grabs them, goes to the window and flings them outside)

CROWLEY/BEESTON

(To people outside) Come and get it! (To YOUNG SHAKESPEARE, who is standing aghast) Isn’t redistribution of wealth a wonderful thing? It’s not your money I want, Will.  It’s your soul…I want you to travel the length and breadth of England, spreading the word of the Gospel… (YOUNG SHAKESPEARE looks crest-fallen)…WITH ACTORS AND PLAYS….

YOUNG SHAKESPEARE

(Suddenly excited) Now you’re talking, Proddie Bob!

(YOUNG SHAKESPEARE claps CROWLEY/BEESTON violently on the shoulders. BEESTON becomes BEESTON again)

BEESTON

(Resuming his normal voice) You overstep the mark, young Spirit!

 (BEESTON blows a whistle and orders YOUNG SHAKESPEARE off – like a soccer referee with an errant player)

BEESTON

(Resuming his pleasant manner) Will formed a company, but the only actors he could get were failed, alcoholic tradesmen. They toured the Midlands, dragging a cart full of props and costumes behind them. Often there were very few in the audience. Sometimes there was only one….

(Lights up on the single seated member of the audience, clapping the players we presume to be out front)

MIDLANDS GENTLEMAN

Bravo! Bravo! (Looking off stage) A friend of mine’s just turned up. Would you mind doing it all again?

(EXIT)

BEESTON

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

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

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

MARY

And this, Master Shakespeare, is my late husband, the second Earl of Southampton. If you are to become tutor to my son, you must be aware of the facts, however painful. The second Earl was a fine Catholic: he fought to bring the Blessed Mary Queen of Scots to the English throne. (MARY and SHAKESPEARE cross themselves) He was imprisoned in the Tower and nearly lost his head. However, as a husband he was….unappreciative. He accused me, quite insanely, of falling in love with a common person…(Looking SHAKESPEARE, discreetly, up and down)…I can see you’ll be needing some new clothes….

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

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

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

SHAKESPEARE

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

MARY (announcing)

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

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

MARY

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

(SHAKESPEARE and HARRY exit swiftly down the trapdoor…..)

TO READ EPISODE THREE, PLEASE CLICK: HERE.

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