Introduced by Trixie the Cat

Six years ago, the Revd Mark Oakley….

…now the Canon Treasurer at St. Paul’s Cathedral….

..was the Priest-in-Charge  of the Grosvenor Chapel…

Father Oakley asked Stewart Trotter to give a dramatised talk on Shakespeare…..

This grew to three talks entitled:

‘Shakespeare, Love, Politic and Religion.’

This was based partly on his book, Love’s Labour’s Found….

…published in 2002…

…….and in turn became the basis for this blog, The Shakespeare Code.

For the last six years, Stewart has given one talk a year at The Grosvenor Chapel….

..and this year the present Priest-in-Charge of the Grosvenor Chapel…….

…..the Revd. Dr. Richard Fermer…

…..asked Stewart to write another talk.

This was called….

Something Wicked This Way Comes

New Light on the Witches in Macbeth

It was given after Mass on All Hallows’ Day, 1st November, 2015….

..in the back rooms of the Grosvenor Chapel….

AND HERE IS THE TRANSCRIPT!!!

 ‘Bye, now…

STEWART

 

Ladies and Gentlemen, my name is Stewart Trotter and I should like to introduce the Trotter Players – Amanda Walker, Kate Godfrey, Karen Little – and our guest star, Mike Burnside. ….

We will now undertake the opening scene of Macbeth. Amanda, Kate and Karen will play the three witches. I will play Graymalkin the cat and Mike will play Paddock the toad.

We had considered using Scottish accents in this scene – but thought that might bring the terrible curse of the play down on our heads. So we’re going to be ENGLISH witches and ENGLISH warriors…

Simply by mentioning the Scottish play by name, I have, actors believe, activated its curse: so I shall now neutralise it by employing an ancient theatrical ritual. I shall leave the room, turn round three times, spit, swear a dreadful curse, then knock on the door and plead for re-admittance…..

(Stewart exits, closing the door. Pause: Stewart: One! Two! Three! Spit! Curse!. (Knocks on door). Shouts: ‘Can I come in?’. Stewart re-enters and pauses.)

I declare the curse lifted….

Ladies and gentlemen, it is with some trepidation the Trotter Players now give you the opening scene from Macbeth…..

(Thunder effects from Stewart…Witches stand.)

 FIRST WITCH (Amanda Walker)

When shall we three meet again In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

SECOND WITCH (Kate Godfrey)

When the hurlyburly’s done,

When the battle’s lost and won.

THIRD WITCH (Karen Little)

That will be ere the set of sun.

FIRST WITCH

Where the place?

SECOND WITCH

Upon the heath.

THIRD WITCH

There to meet with Macbeth.

(Stewart miaows insistently)

FIRST WITCH

I come, Graymalkin!

(Mike croaks insistently)

SECOND WITCH

Paddock calls!

THIRD WITCH

Anon!

ALL

Fair is foul, and foul is fair:

Hover through the fog and filthy air.

 

STEWART

So what do we learn about the witches from this opening scene? Well they clearly love team-work, the great outdoors and filthy weather. They are NOT patriotic: to them the battle against the rebels is simply ‘lost and won’. They are NOT rooting for Scotland. They hover through the air and are martyrs to their pets….

However, what they do have, even in this first scene, is the power of prophecy: they KNOW that the battle will be over by set of sun and they KNOW that they will meet with the great warrior, Macbeth. We shall see that this ability is the CRUCIAL function of the witches in the play.

But why did Shakespeare use witches at all? There are no witches in the other great tragedies – not even in Hamlet – and Denmark at the time was notorious for witchcraft. It still is…

The witches in Macbeth come with the territory. Shakespeare nearly always used someone else’s story for his plays and in the case of Macbeth it’s Raphael Holinshed…..

His Chronicles had been first published in 1577….

…but when they were re-published ten years later, Queen Elizabeth had had enough.

She recalled the books on the grounds that they were

….fondly set out.

Holinshed wrote about the reigns of Elizabeth’s predecessors – and Elizabeth didn’t want ANYONE comparing her reign with anybody else’s. She was even more obsessed with her ‘legacy’ than Tony Blair.

However, Shakespeare and his patrons got round this censorship by staging the stories: and the story of Macbeth comes ready-packaged with witches….

Mike will now read from Holinshed:

HOLINSHED

It fortuned as Macbeth and Banquo journeyed towards Forres, where the king then lay, they went hunting by the way together, without other company, passing through the woods and fields, when suddenly in the midst of a land, there met them three women in strange attire, resembling creatures of elder world, whom they attentively beheld, wondering much at the sight….

If you look at the woodcut that accompanies the Holinshed Chronicles…..

…. the ‘WOMEN’ note – NOT witches – are dressed in clothes that look rather stylish, expensive and fetching….in sharp contrast to – the witches in Macbeth!

(Thunder from Stewart. Witches stand.)

FIRST WITCH

Where hast thou been, sister?

SECOND WITCH

Killing swine.

THIRD WITCH

Sister, where thou?

FIRST WITCH

A sailor’s wife had chestnuts in her lap,

And munch’d, and munch’d, and munch’d:–

‘Give me,’ quoth I:

‘Aroint thee, witch!’ the rump-fed ronyon cries.

Her husband’s to Aleppo gone, master o’ the Tiger:

But in a sieve I’ll thither sail,

And, like a rat without a tail,

I’ll do, I’ll do, and I’ll do.

SECOND WITCH

I’ll give thee a wind.

FIRST WITCH

Thou’rt kind.

THIRD WITCH

And I another.

FIRST WITCH

I myself have all the other,

And the very ports they blow,

All the quarters that they know

I’ the shipman’s card.

I will drain him dry as hay:

Sleep shall neither night nor day

Hang upon his pent-house lid;

He shall live a man forbid:

Weary se’nnights nine times nine

Shall he dwindle, peak and pine:

Though his bark cannot be lost,

Yet it shall be tempest-tost!

Look what I have.

SECOND WITCH

Show me, show me!

FIRST WITCH

Here I have a pilot’s thumb, Wreck’d as homeward he did come.

(Stewart makes drum noises.)

THIRD WITCH

A drum! a drum! Macbeth doth come.

ALL

The weird sisters, hand in hand,

Posters of the sea and land,

Thus do go about, about:

Thrice to thine (take three sideways steps to left ) and thrice to mine (take three steps to right)

And thrice again,(take three steps to the left) to make up nine.

FIRST WITCH

Peace! the charm’s wound up.

MACBETH (Mike Burnside)

So foul and fair a day I have not seen, Banquo.

BANQUO (Stewart Trotter)

How far is’t call’d to Forres?

(seeing the witches) What are these

So wither’d and so wild in their attire,

That look not like the inhabitants o’ the earth,

And yet are on’t? Live you? or are you aught

That man may question?

You seem to understand me,

By each at once her chappy finger laying

Upon her skinny lips: you should be women,

And yet your beards forbid me to interpret

That you are so.

MACBETH

Speak, if you can: what are you?

FIRST WITCH

All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, thane of Glamis!

(Bows)

SECOND WITCH

All hail, Macbeth, hail to thee, thane of Cawdor!

(Bows)

THIRD WITCH

All hail, Macbeth, thou shalt be king hereafter!

(Bows)

(Macbeth looks astonished at the news – and tempted by it.)

BANQO

Good sir, why do you start; and seem to fear

Things that do sound so fair? I’ the name of truth,

Are ye fantastical, or that indeed

Which outwardly ye show?

If you can look into the seeds of time,

And say which grain will grow and which will not,

Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear

Your favours nor your hate.

FIRST WITCH

Hail!

SECOND WITCH

Hail!

THIRD WITCH

Hail!

FIRST WITCH

Lesser than Macbeth, and greater.

SECOND WITCH

Not so happy, yet much happier.

THIRD WITCH

Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none:

So all hail, Macbeth and Banquo!

FIRST WITCH

Banquo and Macbeth, all hail!

STEWART

Back to Holinshed….

Herewith the aforesaid women vanished immediately out of their sight. This was reported at first as some vain fantastical illusion: but afterwards the common opinion was, that these women were either the WAYARD Sisters, that is the goddesses of destiny, or else some nymphs or fairies, indued with knowledge of prophesies by their necromantical science, because everything came to pass as they had spoken….

STEWART

Shakespeare’s witches are far more sinister than Holinshed’s ‘wayard sisters’. As we have just seen, they kill pigs for fun, raise revenge storms for chestnut deprivation and try to cast death spells on war heroes….something Holinshed’s three women would never do…

Why did Shakespeare make these changes?

When I was at school studying Macbeth for O-level – as everyone did in those days – we were told that Shakespeare introduced the witches simply to flatter King James….

The implication was that Shakespeare was a highly intelligent Englishman and that James was a stupid, superstitious Scotsman….

But the truth, of course, was far more complex….

Well, a bit more complex…

The witches in Macbeth have their roots in real events that happened in Scotland in 1589….

Shakespeare would have known about them from a pamphlet called The Newes from Scotland printed in 1591….

He would also have known about it from King James’s own book about witchcraft called Demonologie printed in 1597….

But most importantly he would have known about it from James himself…

Because in 1599 Shakespeare visited Scotland!

William Guthrie of Brechin, the great Scottish historian, wrote in 1767:

King James, to prove how thoroughly he was now emancipated from the tutelage of his clergy, desired Elizabeth to send him in the year of 1599 a company of English actors. She complied, and James gave them a licence to act in his capital, and in his court.  I have great reason to think that the immortal Shakespeare was of the number….

 Putting together information from contemporary sources, this is what happened in Scotland 1589 – or appeared to have happened…..

 Within the town of Trenent in the Kingdom of Scotland, there dwelleth one David Seaton, who being deputy Bailiff in the said town, had a maid servant called Gillis Duncan, who used secretly to be absent and to lie forth of her Master’s house every other night: she took in hand to help all such as were troubled or grieved with any kind of sickness or infirmity: and in short space did perform many matters most miraculous, which things, forasmuch as she began to do them upon a sudden, having never done the like before, made her Master and others to be in great admiration, and wondered thereat: by means wherof Seaton had his maid in some great suspicion, that she did not those things by natural and lawful ways, but rather supposed it to be done by some extraordinary and unlawful means…..

STEWART

Witchcraft! The fact that Gillis was setting out to heal the sick and the infirm – and that she had ‘miraculous’ success with this – was neither here nor there.

She was exercising powers way beyond those of a serving –maid, so she must be in league with the Devil!

At this point her master, Seton….

……put thumbscrews upon her fingers and bound her head with a rope, which is a most cruel torment . Yet would she not confess anything, whereupon they suspecting that she had been marked by the Devil (as commonly witches are) made diligent search about her, and found the enemy’s mark to be in the forepart of her throat. She confessed that all her doings was done by the wicked allurements and enticements of the Devil and that she did them by witchcraft.

Every single witchcraft examination in Scotland at this time followed the same pattern. No witch EVER confessed voluntarily – or even when she was being tortured. It was only when the Devil’s mark was found that she admitted to being a witch. The Devil was said to kiss witches to seal his pact with them and his tongue left a permanent mark…..

But, of course, if you are looking for a body-mark that you are convinced is there, then you’ll find it. And once the mark is found, the game is up: the woman might as well confess she is a witch to stop the pain.

Gillis now began to name names and a literal witch hunt began. It soon became clear that the top witch was called Agnes Sampson….

….commonly called the wise wife of Keith, a woman not of the base and ignorant sort of witches, but matron-like, grave and settled in her answers. In her examination she declared…..

AGNES SAMPSON (Amanda Walker)

I have a familiar spirit, who when I call ‘Holla Master!, appears in animal form, and resolves me of any doubtful matter, especially concerning the life or death of persons lying sick….

STEWART

So that’s why Shakespeare’s witches were martyrs to their pets! They were powerful spirits in animal form.

Agnes had spent her life doing good – most of the time. Like Gillis, she healed people, often using Christian prayers, creeds and Ave Marias – and sometimes even transferred their illnesses to herself.

But if people paid her to do evil, she did evil.

She was a hired gun…

She claimed she had made a pact with the Devil out of economic necessity: her husband had died, leaving her penniless, with children to support, in the middle of a famine. Satan had appeared to her in the form of a black dog and told her that if she worked for him he would make her, and her children, rich.

She could also have revenge on her enemies. This last offer seems to have been particularly appealing.

To Agnes, it was a no-brainer.

To have the Devil as her sponsor would give her massive prestige in the area – with the nobility as well as ordinary people. With royalty, even…

King James himself, it seems, was one of her clients.

He wanted to marry Anne of Denmark.

He much preferred young men, but he needed to ensure his succession.

However, every time Anne sailed from Denmark, her ship was driven back by storms.

James was staying at Seton at the time – so he could spot Anne’s ship when it sailed down the Firth of Forth. This was only six miles away from the village of Haddington where Agnes was living. She claimed ‘The Sprite’ – the Devil – had told her that Anne would only arrive safely in Scotland if James went to fetch her himself – and she passed on this information to King James.

A timorous, hesitating man, he acted entirely out of character. Like a hero of romance, he risked the storms at sea to claim his bride. The royal couple enjoyed an extended honeymoon at in Norway and Denmark.

But when they returned to Scotland they encountered stormy weather at sea….

Agnes, as part of the witch-hunt, was now being blamed for these storms – and when James heard about this, he had her brought to Holyrood House so he could examine her himself. He ordered her to be tortured and her hair shaved off, so he could look for the Devil’s mark. Sure enough he found it…

KING JAMES (Mike Burnside)

…..upon her privities…….

STEWART

…..and only then did Agnes confess.

AGNES

Upon the night of Allhallows Even last, I was with a great many other witches, to the number of two hundredth. We all together went by sea, each one in a sieve…

STEWART

Just like the witches in Macbeth……

AGNES

…….with flagons of wine, making merry and drinking by the way to the Kirk of North Berwick in Lothian.

After we landed, we took hands and danced this reel or short dance, singing all with one voice….

 Commer go ye before, commer go ye, If you’ll not go before, commer let me…….

Gillis Duncan went before us playing this reel upon a small trump, called a Jew’s Harp, until we entered the Kirk….

STEWART

These confessions, says The Newes from Scotland, made the King in a wonderful admiration and sent for the said Gillis Duncan, who upon the like trump did play the said dance before the King’s Majesty.

AGNES

The Devil was already at the Kirk, attending our coming in the habit or likeness of a man, and seeing that we tarried over long, he enjoined us all to a penance, which was, that we should kiss his buttocks: which being put over the pulpit bare, we all did as he said…

The Devil also told them to dig up bodies in the graveyard and to use bits of them – properly dried and prepared of course – for magical spells.

But even King James’s credulity snapped when, according to the pamphlet.…

Agnes Sampson confessed before the Kings Majesty sundry things which were so miraculous and strange his Majesty said…..

KING JAMES

You are all extreme liars!

AGNES

I dinna wish you to believe my words are false! I want you to believe them. I will discover such matter to you as Your Majesty should not any way doubt of….

STEWART

And thereupon, taking his Majesty a little aside, she declared unto him the very words which passed between the Kings Majesty and his Queen at Oslo in Norway the first night of their marriage, with their answer each to other: whereat the King’s Majesty wondered greatly, and swore…..

KING JAMES

By the living God, I believe that all the Devils in hell could not have discovered this! Your words are true.

STEWART

Agnes then confessed she had been part of a witchcraft conspiracy to kill the king….

AGNES

I took a black Toad, and did hang the same up by the heels, three days, and collected and gathered the venom as it dropped and fell from it into an oyster shell. I kept the same venom close covered, until I should obtain a part or piece of foul linen cloth, that had appertained to Your Majesty……

STEWART

She means his dirty old underpants…

AGNES

I would then have bewitched you to death, and put you to such extraordinary pains, as if you had been lying upon sharp thorns and ends of needles.

STEWART

Agnes also admitted that, working in concert with a group of other witches, she had christened a cat, tied body parts to it and threw it into the sea. The first time it had swum back – so they went to sea in  their sieves and threw it further out. It was this act of magic that had raised the tempest on King James’s return from Denmark and caused James’s ship to have a wind contrary to the other ships in his party, which the King acknowledged was….

KING JAMES

Most strange and true….

STEWART

Agnes then tried to save her skin with a bit of flattery….

AGNES

…Your Majesty had never come safely from the sea, if your faith had not prevailed above our intentions….

STEWART

But it was too little and too late. Agnes was first strangled, then burnt at the stake. Her naked, hairless ghost is said to haunt Holyrood House to this day….

But why had she raised a storm against the King’s return? People in the past have argued that the Scottish witches didn’t want a Danish Queen: but we KNOW from Macbeth that Scottish witches at the time WEREN’T patriotic.

They were available to the highest bidder!

And Agnes and her colleagues had been hired by a very high bidder indeed – Francis Stewart, 5^th Earl of Bothwell – King James’s cousin and Chancellor – and his greatest enemy.

Bothwell wanted to be King of Scotland.

While James was cavorting with young men, he was easy to manipulate: but when he decided to found a dynasty, he had to go. So while he was on his honeymoon, Bothwell paid every witch in the area to destroy the King. That’s why they met with the Devil in the Kirk at North Berwick….

And that’s why Agnes Sampson switched sides….

But I can hear you thinking………..

Bare-bottomed Devils? Sea-borne sieves? Talking dogs? Drowned cats, body parts and storms? What on earth was going on?

To find out WHAT WAS going on, read ……PART TWO..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s best to read Part One and Part Two first…..

•

The dark side of Queen Elizabeth was very much in the minds of Catholics in the months leading up to Love’s Labour’s Lost….

In the same month that she visited Titchfield (September, 1591) Richard Topcliffe – Elizabeth’s hangman – told Thomas Pormont….

…….(a Catholic priest he was torturing on a rack set up in his own home)..

……that he was so great and familiar with her Majesty that he many times putteth his hands between her breasts and paps, and in her neck; that he hath not only seen her legs and knees, but feeleth them with his hands above her knees; that he hath felt her belly, and said unto Her Majesty that she hath the softest belly of any womankind…..

 Topcliffe also claimed that Elizabeth  had said:

…….Be not these the arms legs and body of King Henry?……..

To which he had answered…..

…….Yea…

Topcliffe also said that Elizabeth….

…..gave him for a favour a white linen hose wroughte with white silk etc.

Topcliffe also claimed that he that he was……

……so familiar with her that when he pleaseth to speak with her he may take her away from any company, and that she is as pleasant with every one that she doth love…..

……and……

……that he did not care for the Council, for he had his authority from Her Majesty.

Pormont managed to record and smuggle out these notes to his fellow Catholics…..

…….including the Jesuit missionary and propagandist Robert Persons…..

……who was to have a big influence on Love’s Labour’s Lost.

Indeed, he is even mentioned by name in the play!

Jaquenetta, the wench, brings a letter she believes Don Armado has sent her, to Sir Nathaniel, the curate, to read….

She says:

God give you good morrow M. Person….

To which Nathaniel replies:

Maister Person, quasi Person? And if one should be perst, which is the one.

(Note: In modern additions, this line is give to Holoferenes – but in the Quarto and First Folio editions it is given to Holofernes.)

Jaquenetta, as can be seen from the above, then switches names for the curate:

Good M. Parson be so good as read me this letter….

This, The Shakespeare Code believes, was a dangerous in-joke for the Catholic recusants in the audience….

ROBERT PERSONS LATEER CHANGED HIS NAME TO ROBERT PARSONS!!!

In 1592 he was to write a pseudonymous attack, in Latin, on Sir Walter Raleigh………

…….entitled………

An Advertisement Written to a Secretary of my Lord Treasurers of England, by an English intelligencer as he passed through Germany towards Italy.

The English summary, which was published alongside it, claims that Raleigh presided over………

……..a school of atheism………….

…. in which, under direction of the astronomer and mathematician Thomas Harriot….

…….whom the book describes as a ‘conjurer’…

……..both Moses and our Saviour, the old and the new testament are jested at, and the scholars taught among other things to spell God backward…..

In Love’s Labour’s Lost ‘the school of atheism’ becomes, in the King of Navarre’s words…..

……The school of Night…..

……..and the blasphemy of writing…..

….God backward…

(…to produce…

….Dog….)

…..is satirised in an exchange between the educated infant, Moth….

……and Holofernes…..

MOTH

Yes, yes; he teaches boys the hornbook. What is a,
b, spelt backward, with the horn on his head?

HOLOFERNES

Ba, pueritia, with a horn added.

MOTH

Ba, most silly sheep with a horn. You hear his learning.

Persons also wrote his Responsio later in November 1591…..

This was a reply to Elizabeth’s famous 1591……

……Declaration of Great Troubles Pretended against the Realm by a number of Seminary Priests and Jesuits…..

……written on 18th October, by Lord Burghley, but not published till November….

In the ‘Declaration’ the designs of Spain and Rome on England were exposed and it was asserted that….

………the Jesuits form the nests and lurking places of those who are in rebellion against [Elizabeth’s] person, that their General has  been to Spain and armed its King against her, that Parsons who taught amongst them and was the general of the English seminary at Rome has done the same and that the Jesuits as a Society has been the life and soul of the enemies which had been raised against England.

Persons/Parsons, replying to this personal attack, countered by describing Elizabeth as…….

……the defender of the Calvinian heresy….

…..and pointed out that King Philip of Spain……

….. had saved her life when she had been imprisoned in the Tower by her half-sister, Mary Tudor……….

Persons claimed that Elizabeth’s Anglican priests were…..

…..the dregs of mankind….

…..whereas the young Catholic missionaries, who were accused by Elizabeth of being traitors, were often from noble English families.

Persons chose as his text……

……And I saw a woman drunk with the blood of saints and the blood of martyrs of Jesus.

The events of the next month were to suggest Persons was right……

On 10th December, Swithin Wells….

……a great friend of the Southampton family who had taught at Titchfield…..

…… had recruited Catholic missionary priests…..

…..was hanged outside the Southampton family home in London….

…..together with Edmund Genings…..

……a young man who had been fast-tracked to a priesthood at Rheims…..

……who was also drawn and quartered…..

At Genings’s hearing……….

…..to make him a scoffe to the people………..

…….the authorities had………..

………….vested him again, not with his priestly garments, but (almost as King Herod and Pilates soldiers did our Saviour) with a ridiculous  fool’s coat, which they found in Mr. Wells his house, and when they had so altered him, 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.

The Shakespeare Code believes that it was this incident that caused Shakespeare to describe the Catholic martyrs in Sonnet 124 as……

………..the fools of time,
Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime.

See: Shakespeare in Italy

But there was another Jesuit missionary who also had a profound effect on Shakespeare…..

……..whom he describes as his…..

…….loving cousin, W.S……

He  influenced Shakespeare’s imagery, vocabulary and thought.

He was Robert Southwell.

[See Shakespeare, the Earl and the Jesuit (2008) a brilliant book by the distinguished American Shakespeare scholar, John Klause.]

In 1587 Southwell wrote his Epistle of Comfort for the wife of Philip Howard, 20th Earl of Arundel…..

…….a Catholic convert who from 1585 had been under sentence of death in the Tower.

In it Southwell writes about the glory of martyrdom…..

……BUT HE DOES NOT ATTACK ELIZABETH PERSONALLY….

He writes:

Then as regards to the Queen (to whom I have never done nor wished any evil) I have daily prayed for her and now with all my heart do pray that from his great mercy, through the wounds and most worthy merits of Christ his son, He may grant that she may use the ample gifts and endowments wherewith He has endowed her to the immortal glory of her name, the prosperity of the whole nation and the eternal welfare of her whole soul and body……

Southwell also responded to Elizabeth’s 1591 Declaration with……..

…..An Humble Supplication to Her Majesty………..

……..never published, but circulated in manuscript.

 Southwell makes the same point about the Anglican clergy that Persons made…..

…..that though the Catholic priests numbered only one tenth of the Protestant priests, they had….

……….happily more gentlemen than in all the other clergy of the whole realm.

He vividly describes the torture Elizabeth’s officers use……….

……sleep deprivation and mutilation of….

………….those parts that it is almost a torture for Christian ears to hear it. Let it then be judged what it was to chaste and modest men to endure it the shame being no les offensive to their mind than the pain, though most excessive to their bodies.

But, unlike Persons, Southwell firmly believed that Elizabeth was opposed to such cruelties herself. He addressed the Queen with…. 

…..the most formal respect, acknowledging her as an anointed sovereign, and presenting his arguments as if she knew nothing of the barbarous treatment ordered by her ministers.

He called her…….

………most merciful Princess………

……and made a direct, personal appeal to her……..

……gracious self……………….

……to bring her back to Catholicism.

In Love’s Labour’s Lost Shakespeare, like Southwell, gives Elizabeth the benefit of the doubt.

The Princess of France is not a sadist…..

…..drunk with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.

She is simply morally compromised by her pursuit of fame.

She kills deer because she wants to be recognised as a skilled hunter.

We have seen how

…..the poor deer……..

……which is spelt…..

……the poore Deare…

…..in the 1599 Quarto version of the play…

 

…..can symbolise…..

(1) …the literal deer which Elizabeth slew on her Progresses….

…and….

(2) ….the men who are ‘slain’ by the beauty of Elizabeth.

…..as the song in the Cowdray Progress demonstrates….

See Part Two

But it is the view of The Shakespeare Code that there are……

 …….THREE MORE CODED MEANINGS TO ‘DEARE’!!!

……MEANINGS THAT ONLY A ROMAN CATHOLIC WOULD HAVE SPOTTED!!!

FIRST, THOUGH, WHAT WAS THE ‘FAME’ THAT QUEEN ELIZABETH SOUGHT?

Elizabeth once discussed her posthumous fame – her legacy – with her ladies-in-waiting…………..

…..and said on the subject of her epitaph:

I am no lover of pompous title, but only desire that my name may be recorded in a line or two, which shall briefly express my name, my virginity, the years of my reign, the reformation of religion under it, and my preservation of peace.

And the inscription on her actual tomb begins with:

Sacred to memory: Religion to its primitive purity restored….

So the fame that Elizabeth most earnestly sought was as the reformer of religion…..

 ………and it was this longing….

……for praise, an outward part….

…….that caused her to….

….spill

The poore Deare’s blood….

So what or who was the ‘poore Deare’?

MEANING (3).

In August 1581, Robert Persons was working as a missionary in England, disguised as a soldier.

He wrote:

It is the custom of the Catholics themselves to take to the woods and thickets, to ditches and holes even, for concealment, when their houses are broken into at night.

Sometimes when we are sitting at table quite cheerfully, conversing familiarly about matters of faith or piety…it happens that someone rings at the front door a little more insistently than usual, so he can be put down as an official.

Immediately, like deer that have heard the voice of hunters and prick their ears and become alert, all stand to attention and stop eating and command themselves to God in the briefest of prayers; no word or sound of any sort is heard  until the servants report what is the matter….

The deer as an image of  Roman Catholics was an old one….

…….as can be seen in one of Rome’s earliest basilicas…….

……..of deers drinking from the waters of spiritual truth…..

…….in reference to Psalm 41………

…As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee……..

So spilling….

…..the poore Deare’s blood….

…..is a reference to Elizabeth’s bloody execution of Catholic Martyrs…..

….the fools of time….

…..like Wells and Genings.

MEANING (4).

When John Dryden……

….. recorded his conversion to Catholicism, he did so in a poem entitled…..

The Hind and the Panther…………

….where….

A milk-white Hind, immortal and unchanged

………represented the Catholic Church…….

…….. and the  panther, the Church of England.

Dryden was drawing on a on a long tradition of equating the deer with Christianity…….

………..which before the reformation meant only Catholicism.

So spilling….

…..the poore Deare’s blood….

….can also mean destroying the Roman Catholic Church….

….which is exactly what Elizabeth intended to do.

MEANING (5).

But the deer was also thought to kill snakes….

It miraculously drew them out of holes with its breath…..

 

……and trampled them underfoot.

So the deer was also an image of Christ himself….

…..(destroying the Devil and all his works)….

…..and often appeared with a crucifix between his horns……

George Herbert……

………born the year after the premiere of Love’s Labour’s Lost…..

……in his great poem Love….

Lover bade me welcome

But my soul drew back,

Guilty of dust and sin……….

……uses the phrase………..

……..my dear……..

….when he is addressing Christ….

…..and this equation of the deer and Christ has its roots in the Christianised interpretation of The Song of Solomon…..

My lover is like a swift gazelle or a young dear….

So when the Princess of France….

….spills the poore Deare’s blood….

…..it can also refer to Elizabeth’s re-crucifying Christ himself……

….. when she kills his Catholic followers…..

……and tries to destroy the Old Faith….

We can never know how many Catholics in Shakespeare’s audience picked up these coded references…..

……but they seem to have been forgotten by the time the First Folio was published in 1623…..

….or deliberately suppressed after the Catholic Gunpowder Plot.

Here the spelling of…..

…..Deare….

….is changed back to its more usual spelling…..

….Deere…..

By then, Catholicism in Britain was seen as a lost cause….

•

ENVOI

Robert Southwell was himself arrested the month after the first performance of Love’s Labour’s Lost.  

Topcliffe tortured  him ten times, then hanged him in 1595.

He had intended to draw and quarter him alive as well: but Southwell cut a figure of such dignity and bravery on the scaffold that the crowd, led by Charles Blount, recently created Lord Mountjoy, insisted that Southwell be hanged till he was dead.

Some accounts say Mountjoy – who played Longaville in the play…..

See: ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ revisited: Aristocratic Actors.

…..pulled on Southwell’s legs himself.

If Mountjoy was in the crowd, it is highly likely that Southwell’s ‘loving cousin, W.S.’ was there as well.

Southwell prayed for the Queen on the scaffold.

We don’t know if he still believed that Elizabeth was unaware of the tortures that Topcliffe inflicted: but he would have been horrified by the letter about him Topcliffe sent to the Queen in June, 1592, for her….

…. pleasure.

He describes how Southwell would 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.

Trenchmore was a lively dance….

THE END

 

 Brothers and Sisters of the Code might be interested in reading:

‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’: The Background.
‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’: The Original Cast.
‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’: Aristocratic Actors.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brothers and Sisters of The Shakespeare Code…

It is with tearful pride that…

….Stewart Trotter….

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….Trixie the Cat….

…the MYSTERIOUS Tom ‘X’….

…..and all our NECESSARILY ANONYMOUS Secret Agents….

…announce that…

….on Friday, 25th September, 2015….

The Shakespeare Code…

…..received its….

200,000th View!!!

Thanks to all our Honoured Subscribers and Readers…

…..spread throughout the Globe…..

…..IN TWO HUNDRED DIFFERENT COUNTRIES!!!

IN VINCULIS INVICTUS

Clare Shepherd writes…..

Well done, Stewart. I do hope you are thinking of writing another book, as you little volume lives with my Shakespeare volumes. I may have to get a new copy soon, as the old one is getting a bit battered from frequent use. I love your blog. Thanks for keeping it going.

Stewart Trotter replies….

Thank you for your inspiring comments, Clare.  They are much appreciated.

It’s best to read Part One first…..

4.  THE PRINCESS OF FRANCE…….

……is a Calvinist…..

……who believes in pre-destination….

The Forester says to her:

Nothing but fair is that which you inherit……

…and the Princess replies……

See, see my beauty will be saved by merit!

O heresy in fair, fit for these days!

A giving hand, though foul, shall have fair praise.

The heresy referred to is a Roman Catholic one.

The Catholics believed that good works – including charity – were one of the ways to salvation……..

…..but Calvinists believed that good works…..

….a giving hand….

….could NOT save you from Hell.

You could only enter heaven if you were one of God’s….

…..elect…

QUEEN ELIZABETH………

….like the Princess of France….

…..was  a Calvinist…..

She had been taught the doctrines of Calvin, by her stepmother, Henry VIII’s sixth wife, Katherine Parr.

When Elizabeth’s half-sister, Mary Tudor….

…..had locked her in the Tower, she prayed to God top release her.

When God, in her mind, not only released her……

….. but made her Queen of England as well…..

……she was convinced that she was one of his ‘Elect’.

5. THE PRINCESS OF FRANCE……

…..is handed a cross-bow……

…..and shoots deer from a stand erected in the park of the King of Navarre.

In doing this she admits that she must….

….play the murderer….

….and ponders the paradox that, although she is the embodiment of

….mercy……

….she is prepared to take a helpless creature’s life….

In these circumstances shooting…..

…… well……

…..and killing the deer is judged to be morally

…….ill…….

……because the deer dies.

The Princes says:

But come, the bow: now mercy goes to kill,

And shooting well is then accounted ill.

She wants to be considered a good shot….

….so has her excuses ready if she fails to kill the deer.

(1) If  she doesn’t hit the deer at all……

……it was pity that stopped her from doing so…..

(2) If she wounds the deer, but does not kill it……

……it was because she would rather be praised for her shooting skills than any wish to see the deer dead.

Thus will I save my credit in the shoot:

Not wounding, pity would not let me do’t;

If wounding, then it was to show my skill,

That more for praise than purpose meant to kill.

She then goes on to explain that a desire for glory can lead people to perform dark actions that other people hate….

…..when for the sake of fame, for the praise of others, for external approval….

….we ignore our instinctive, human sympathies.

And out of question so it is sometimes,

Glory grows guilty of detested crimes,

When, for fame’s sake, for praise, an outward part,

We bend to that the working of the heart.

The Princess admits that it is this need for praise which drives her to spill the blood of the deer…

….with whose plight she begins to empathise……

…..and to whom she  feels no animosity….

As I for praise alone now seek to spill

The poor deer’s blood, that my heart means no ill.

Boyet criticises………….

……and eroticises………..

….. the Princess’s hunting by comparing her to shrewish wives who also crave praise for dominating their husbands….

(Death and blood could be Elizabethan symbols for orgasm and semen)

Do not curst wives hold that self-sovereignty

Only for praise sake, when they strive to be

Lords o’er their Lords…

But  the Princess defends female dominance over men..

…..praise we may afford

To any Lady that subdues a Lord.

•

NOTE

In other of his poems and plays, Shakespeare introduces characters who are HIGHLY CRITICAL of hunting……..

…….and empathise  with the suffering of the animals.

In Venus and Adonis…….

…….Venus begs her young lover Adonis not to hunt the dangerous boar….

… but to hunt the harmless hare instead….

But as the poem goes on, Venus argues against herself.

She begins to sympathise with the terror of the hare, ‘Poor Wat’….

And when thou [Adonis] hast on foot the purblind hare,
Mark the poor wretch, to overshoot his troubles
How he outruns the wind and with what care
He cranks and crosses with a thousand doubles:
The many musets through the which he goes
Are like a labyrinth to amaze his foes…..

By this, poor Wat, far off upon a hill,
Stands on his hinder legs with listening ear,
To harken if his foes pursue him still:
Anon their loud alarums he doth hear;
And now his grief may be compared well
To one sore sick that hears the passing-bell…..

There is also a celebrated description of the death of a deer in As You Like It…

 Duke Senior says:

Come, shall we go and kill us venison?
And yet it irks me the poor dappled fools,
Being native burghers of this desert city,
Should, in their own confines, with forked heads
Have their round haunches gor’d.

The First Lord replies….

To-day my Lord of Amiens and myself
Did steal behind Jacques as he lay along
Under an oak whose antique root peeps out
Upon the brook that brawls along this wood!
To the which place a poor sequest’red stag,
That from the hunter’s aim had ta’en a hurt,
Did come to languish; and, indeed, my lord,
The wretched animal heav’d forth such groans
That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat
Almost to bursting; and the big round tears
Cours’d one another down his innocent nose
In piteous chase; and thus the hairy fool,
Much marked of the melancholy Jaques,
Stood on th’ extremest verge of the swift brook,
Augmenting it with tears.

Most Elizabethan men – especially aristocrats – were addicted to hunting……

They couldn’t wait to leave smelly, noisy London and get back to their estates….

But even though Shakespeare was a country-man……

……and his father a butcher as well as a glover…….

…….it seems Shakespeare himself was deeply disturbed by the wounding and killing of animals.

 

•

QUEEN ELIZABETH………

…like the Princess of France…..

……also shot deer, with a cross-bow, from specially erected stands…….

……..both at Titchfield…….

……where the Groom of the Chamber had been instructed to build……

…..two standings for her Majesty…..

…..and at Cowdray…..

……the estate of Mary Southampton’s father, Viscount Montague……

…… which Queen Elizabeth also visited on her 1591 Progress.

The deer were rounded up and run before her into a small enclosure…..

…a degraded form of hunting devised by her father, Henry VIII….

….when he grew too fat to ride a horse…

At Cowdray music had accompanied the slaughter….

 ….a delicate bower…

…….had been prepared to house…

….her Highnesse musicians….

….(the dark-skinned Bassano family, which included Aemilia…..

….. who was shortly to become the ‘Dark Lady of the Sonnets’…)

A nymph…..

……(possibly the mixed-race Aemilia)

…..handed Elizabeth a decorated crossbow…..

…..just as the Princess in the play is handed one before her ‘Now mercy goes to kill’ speech….

[Note: Queen Elizabeth left this bow at Cowdray as a memento of her visit.

It is The Code’s belief that it was THIS VERY BOW that was used in the production of Love’s Labour’s Lost at Titchfield.

Everyone would recognise that the bow presented to the Princess in the play…..

…..when she says….

……..but come, the bow….

 …..was the bow presented to Queen Elizabeth at Cowdray.]

The nymph in the entertainment then sang…..

….a sweet song….

….which eroticises the hunt….

….as Boyet does in Love’s Labour’s Lost…..

Goddess and monarch of this happy Isle,

Vouchsafe this bow which is an huntress part ;

Your eyes are arrows though they seem to smile

Which never glanced but galled the stateliest heart [hart],

Strike one, strike all, for none at all can fly,

They gaze you in the face although they die.

‘Strike one, strike all’ is a reference to the Southampton family motto….

…..to be found on the family tomb at St. Peter’s Church in Titchfield….

Une par tout…..

…One for all….

So young Harry Southampton……

….. was certainly in attendance.

It was HIS……

…stateliest heart…

…that the song refers to…….

….. because he was being set up by his family as a future ‘favourite’ of Elizabeth….

 As in Love’s Labour’s Lost, the song equates images of hunting and death…..

….with falling in love and orgasm….

They gaze you in the face although they die….

It suggests that Elizabeth’s beauty is so great that men will reach a sexual climax just by the act of looking at her!

Elizabeth shot four deer at Cowdray…..

……..but Lord Montague’s sister had the temerity to shoot one as well.

For her impertinence she was denied a place at dinner that night…

AT HER OWN BROTHER’S TABLE!!!

Later in the week the Queen…..

….viewing my Lord’s walks…..

….. came across a Pilgrim…

…clad in a coat of russet velvet….his hat being of the same, with scallop shells of cloth of silver…

Hailing the Queen as…

…fairest of all creatures…

…he tells her of a marvellous oak tree hung with ornaments.

She follows  him and finds the tree hung with her own arms and the arms of all the….

Noblemen and gentlemen of that Shire….

A wild man appears and compares the mighty oak to Elizabeth, protected by her noblemen and gentlemen.

Abroad the Queen’s courage has made her feared: but at home it is her….

….clemency….

…which…

…the owner of this grove hath tasted….that hath made her loved……..

Montague had joined the Rebellion of the  Catholic Northern Lords against Elizabeth in 1569…..

…..but instead of chopping off his head, Elizabeth had made him a Lord Lieutenant…….

So, Montague’s entertainment for Elizabeth, like Love’s Labour’s Lost, acknowledges both the dark and light sides of Elizabeth……

……her delight in killing………

…..(once, in 1574, she had slaughtered 27 deer IN A SINGLE DAY at Berkley Castle)

But also her mercy in pardoning Lord Montague’s life……

…..mercy which was in short supply in the months leading up to the first production of Love’s Labour’s Lost…

•

 To read Part Three, the conclusion,

Click: HERE!

 

 

THE SHAKESPEARE CODE PROUDLY PRESENTS A THREE-PART SERIES…

…. DEMONSTRATING THAT THE CHARACTER OF THE PRINCESS OF FRANCE IN ‘LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST ‘

…….IS BASED ON QUEEN ELIZABETH…..

THE SERIES WILL CULMINATE IN A TOTALLY NEW DECODING OF THE PRINCESS’S ‘MERCY GOES TO KILL’ SPEECH….

…AND WILL REVEAL IT COULD ONLY HAVE BEEN FULLY UNDERSTOOD BY ROMAN CATHOLICS!!!

PART ONE

The Shakespeare Code believes….

(A) ….that the original AUDIENCE of Love’s Labour’s Lost was composed largely of aristocrats…

(B) ….that the original CAST was composed largely of aristocrats….

(C) ….that the play was first performed in the grounds of Place House….

…..the stately home of Mary Browne, 2nd Countess of Southampton….

…..at Whitsun, 1592…

(E. A Honigmann…….

……the distinguished Shakespearean scholar, agrees with a 1592 date)

See Love’s Labour’s Lost Revisited: the Background

Love’s Labour’s Lost: The Original Cast

Love’s Labour’s Lost: Aristocratic Actors

Love’s Labour’s Lost: Penelope Rich plays the Princess

So, the odds are…..

…… ALMOST EVERYONE….

…. involved in the first Love’s Labour’s Lost production would have had personal contact with Queen Elizabeth…..

…..and ALMOST EVERYONE…….

….would have seen, at a glance, the similarities between the character of the Princess of France….

……and QUEEN ELIZABETH HERSELF!!!

The ‘1598’ Quarto Version of the play…..

……has the direction….

….Enter the Princesse of Fraunce, with three attending Ladies and three Lordes….

….but when the Princess first speaks, her speech-heading is…..

Queene…

She reverts to being a

Princ.

…..for the rest of the scene…..

But whenever she speaks again in the play, she is a Quee…

Jaquenetta the wench, Holofernes the pedant and King Ferdinand of Navarre all refer to her as a ‘queen’ in their speeches.

In the unconscious of both William Shakespeare and the compositor….

THE PRINCESS OF FRANCE WAS QUEEN ELIZABETH HERSELF!!!

THESE POSTS WILL TABULATE THE SIMILARITIES….

(1) THE PRINCESS OF FRANCE…….

…..with all her entourage, both female and male, arrives at the Court of the King of Navarre…..

….. on what is both a social visit and a diplomatic mission…..

About surrender up of Aquitaine

To her decrepit, sick and bedrid father….

The Princess is in a man’s world…..

The King has made a vow to study for three years with his male friends…..

….and has banned all women from his court….

But the Princess takes total charge of the situation:

Tell him, the daughter of the King of France,

On serious business, craving quick dispatch,

Importunes personal conference with his grace:

Haste, signify so much; while we attend,

Like humble-visage suitors his high will.

….and more than  holds her own in political debate with the King of Navarre…

You do the king my father too much wrong

And wrong the reputation of your name,

In so unseeming to confess receipt

Of that which hath so faithfully been paid.

QUEEN ELIZABETH…..

…like the Princess….

….. had arrived, with all her entourage, at Place House in Titchfield….

…..ONLY EIGHT MONTHS BEFORE THE PRODUCTION OF THE PLAY THERE!!!

Though spun as social events, Elizabeth’s visits were always highly political as well…..

The Southampton family would be forced to leave their house so the Privy Council could meet there…..

….and the house itself searched for signs of Roman Catholic…

…massing….

Top of the Titchfield agenda would have been the matter of the marriage of Mary Southampton’s son, Henry Wriothesely, 3rd Earl of Southampton.

Lord Burghley…….

……the Third Earl’s guardian…..

…..wanted Harry to marry his grand-daughter…..

….Lady Elizabeth de Vere….

….but at the time Harry wasn’t interested in girls.

Letters to Burghley show that both Countess Mary…..

….. and her father, Anthony Browne, First Viscount Montague….

…..were on Burghley’s side….

(They faced a gigantic £5,000 fine if Harry didn’t marry Elizabeth)

Mary had even commissioned Shakespeare to write 17 Sonnets for her son’s seventeenth birthday which lauded the joys of married love…..

Sonnets she could show to the Queen herself….

….to prove her loyalty….

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

This was a particularly important thing to do as Mary had been reported to the Privy Council for harbouring Catholic Priests in her London home.

(2) THE PRINCESS OF FRANCE…..

 ……is flattered by her sycophantic courtier, Boyet….

 

….who says to the Princess….

Be now as prodigal of all dear grace

As Nature was in making graces dear

When she did starve the general world beside

And prodigally gave them all to you.

The Princess claims not to like flattery……

Good Lord Boyet, my beauty, though but mean

Needs not the painted flourish of your praise….

But when the Forester says to her….

Hereby upon the edge of yonder coppice,

A stand where you may make the fairest shoot….

….she transforms it into a personal compliment….

….and replies….

I thank my beauty, I am fair that shoot

And thereupon thou speak’st the fairest shoot…

When the Forester sticks to his guns…..

Pardon me madam for I meant not so…..

……the Princess takes her revenge….

……by FORCING a compliment out of him!

Yes, madam, fair…..

The Princess is FURIOUS when Costard, the clown, tells her she is plumper than her ladies-in-waiting….

An your waist, mistress, was as slender as my wit,

One o’these maids’ girdles for your waist should be fit….

She is also AMBIVALENT about her ladies-in-waiting themselves…..

She enjoys their company and their wit….

Well bandied both, a set of wit well played….

But needs to call the shots….

Good wits will be jangling but gentles, agree

This war of wits were better used on Navarre and his bookemen…

Here ’tis abused…..

She needs to outshine and mock her ladies…..

God bless my ladies! Are they all in love,

That every one her own hath garnished

With such bedecking ornaments of praise?

And hates it when she learns Berowne has sent a love-letter to the dark-skinned Rosaline….

She tries to humiliate Rosaline by getting Boyet to read it aloud to the group….

(But the plan misfires as the letters have been swapped)

Elizabeth’s lady-in-waiting, Maria, is forced to wear plain white…..

…. so that the Princess will dazzle all the more in her colours…

QUEEN ELIZABETH…….

……like the Princess…….

……CLAIMED to dislike flattery…..

…..and once walked out of a fulsome masque, stating……

If I had known that so much was to be said about me I would not have been here……

But all her life she’d had strings of favourites…..

….. and courtiers whose full-time job it was to praise her beauty.

At the time of Love’s Labour’s Lost she was almost sixty….

…….but she had a lover half her age…..

…….her Master of Horse, Robert Devereux, Second Earl of Essex……

…….who, The Code argues, was at the first performance of Love’s Labour’s Lost at Titchfield……

…….watching his sister Penelope Rich…….

…….play the rôle of the Princess….

(See: Penelope Rich plays the Princess of France.)

Six months earlier Essex had been at the siege of Rouen….….

….fighting alongside the ‘real’ King of Navarre, Henri……..

To celebrate Elizabeth’s Accession Date (17th November) Essex challenged the Mayor of Rouen to a joust to decide which of their mistresses was the more beautiful…..

The Mayor had bluntly replied:

……as to the beauty of their mistresses it was scarcely worth his while to put himself to much trouble about that…..

But Essex, writing from Dieppe, flattered the aging Queen…..

…..who was very much his meal-ticket.

He described her…

….perfections…..

…and declared that when he returned from war….

…..the two windows of your privy chamber shall be the poles of my sphere, where, as long as your majesty will please to have me, I am fixed and unmovable. When your Majesty thinks that heaven too good for me, I will not fall like a star, but be consumed like a vapour by the same sun that drew me up to such a height…..

Elizabeth’s godson, Sir John Harington…….

…..observed…..

No-one who waited in Queen Elizabeth’s court, and observed anything, but could tell that it pleased her much to be thought and told that she looked young……

Queen Elizabeth had seven Ladies of the Bedchamber, six maids of honour, and four chamberers…..

…..all SEVENTEEN of whom would appear with her when she appeared in public.

She enjoyed this young female companionship in what was basically the man’s world of the court…..

(All older intelligent, attractive women – like the Countess of Pembroke…..

….or Leicester’s wife, Lettice Knollys….

….had been banished from it.)

But Elizabeth wanted to be the centre of attention……

….and she wanted to be in control…..

Harington remarked:

I could relate many pleasant tales of her Majesty outwitting the wittiest ones; for few knew how to aim their shaft against her cunning.

Like the Princess of France, she often dressed her ladies-in-waiting in white (and black) so she would stand out the more.

Once Lady Howard, who was much smaller than the Queen, had a colourful border sewn onto her dress…..

…so Elizabeth seized the dress and wore it……

…..claiming it was too SHORT for her….

…..and too GRAND for Lady Howard.

She hated it if any of her courtiers made love to her ladies-in-waiting…..

….WITHOUT HER KNOWLEGE AND CONSENT…

…..and often abused the women, both verbally and physically.

She would scream at them and hit them…..

….and on one occasion actually broke a lady-in-waiting’s finger…..

3. THE PRINCESS OF FRANCE……

…. constantly belittles men.

She mocks their attempts at wit…

Such short-lived wits do wither as they grow…..

…..and mocks their sex drive…..

…..which, she believes, completely overpowers their reason….

Why, will [the penis] shall break it [the vow of chastity]; will and nothing else.

A  man with an erect penis is an object of mockery to the Princess….

She talks about the King of Navarre’s…..

….high will…..

….and accuses him of having a…….

….mounting mind……

Boyet even entertains the Princess with a coded description of the erection the King experiences when he first claps eyes on her….

[Note: For the Elizabethans, all the features of ‘the face’ could apply equally to the genital area. So

…eye(s)..

…could imply the testicles/penis….]

Why, all his behaviours did make their retire

To the court of his eye [penis], peeping thorough desire:

His heart, like an agate, with your print impress’d,

Proud [erect] with his form, in his eye pride [sexual desire] express’d:

As the Princess predicts, their craving for sex causes the men to forswear their vows of chastity….

….and when the Princess and her ladies discover that the men plan to woo them disguised as Russians…..

…..the ladies mask themselves and change favours…

…..SIMPLY TO HUMILIATE THEM!!!

The Princess says:

There’s no such sport as sport by sport o’erthrown,

To make theirs ours and ours none but our own:

So shall we stay, mocking intended game,

And they, well mock’d, depart away with shame.

At one point Berowne is worried that the Princess intends to castrate him.

He says to her:

Our states are forfeit. Seek not to undo us….

‘Undoing’ was a technical term in hunting……..

….when the ‘Chief Man’ cut off the……

…..coddes……

…..the testicles of the slaughtered deer…….

…..a delicacy at table.

QUEEN ELIZABETH…..

…like the Princess of France….

……constantly humiliated men and undermined their masculinity…..

In the early days of her reign, her relationship with her lover, Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester……

…….had been a struggle for mastery…..

She had famously said to him…..

…..I will have here but one mistress and no master….

…..and in 1586, when Leicester was made Governor General of the Netherlands without Elizabeth’s permission, she had said to her Council:

…..I will let the upstart know how easily the hand which has exalted him can beat him down to the dust.

Leicester had died in 1588…..

…..but Elizabeth had perpetuated this sado-masochistic form of love-affair with Essex…..

…..who once wrote to her….

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.

For a long time Elizabeth had refused to grant Essex’s greatest desire……

…….to win fame and glory by fighting the Catholic League in Europe….

He had to kneel in front of her for TWO HOURS before she would agree…..

…..and then she emasculated the highly sexed Essex….

….(whose wife and mistress had both produced baby boys for him in 1591)….

 ….by insisting that he kept well away from any fighting.

And Elizabeth went one further than the Princes of France.

As ‘Chief Man’ of the hunt, she would regularly….

……..CASTRATE THE DEER SHE HAD SHOT!!!

And here she is, knife ALMOST in hand……

 

•••

TO READ PART TWO…..

…….WHICH DEALS WITH THE QUEEN’S CALVINISM AND HER DEER HUNTING……

CLICK: HERE!

A Statement from Head Office.

Brothers and Sisters of the Shakespeare Code….

You will know that in her last vibrant Trixposé….

Trixie the Cat….

…..advised the producers of the Cumberbatch ‘Hamlet’….

….to put the……

To be or not to be

…..soliloquy….

BEFORE rather than AFTER…

Oh what a rogue and peasant slave am I

…which follows the arrival of the Players….

IT WOULD SEEM, FROM MICHAEL BILLINGTON’S REVIEW IN THE GUARDIAN….

….THAT THE PRODUCERS HAVE DONE JUST THAT!!!

THEY HAVE FOLLOWED THE CAT!!!

Here is part of Billington’s review:

“To be or not to be”, about which there has been so much kerfuffle, mercifully no longer opens the show: I still think it works better if placed after, rather than before, the arrival of the players, but Cumberbatch delivers it with a rapt intensity.

Brava, Trixie the Cat!!!

Your saucer will run over….

To read Trixie’s piece, please click: HERE!

STOP PRESS!!!

And here is Paul Taylor’s review in the Independent….

The “To be, or not to be” soliloquy that he prematurely delivered at this point in the early previews has been restored to Act 3, though ahead of where it usually comes.

A Trixposé

FROM TRIXIE THE CAT

Brothers and Sisters of The Shakespeare Code….

There can be few Shakespeareans round the globe who are UNAWARE that Benedict Cumberbatch…..

……famed for his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes….

 

……is currently playing Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, in London…..

The play is currently in preview – and opens to the Press on Tuesday, 25th August, 2015……

HOWEVER….

…..the Times broke the critical embargo…..

…..and sent along one Kate Malby……

……critic AND academic….

….. to cover the first preview.

She reported – in horror – that Hamlet’s soliloquy…..

To Be or not to Be……

…. had been moved from Act Three to the very beginning of the play…..

….described this as….

…indefensible…..

…..and awarded the production only two stars….

Tony Award-winning director, John Tiffany….

(No, Your Cat had never heard of him either)

….attacked Maltby in the Observer for…..

….moralising….

…and criticised her….

….lack of understanding of what previews are for….

Maltby went onto BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the morning after the first preview to defend the Times’s decision to publish her review. She agreed it would be unfair to criticise energy and pace at such an early stage but criticising structural changes was justified.

 Since then more theatre folk have leapt from the woodwork to defend the play’s director, Lindsey Turner….

….declaring that young directors now feel more at liberty to change the structure of old plays…..

IN ANY WAY THEY LIKE…..

HOWEVER…..

….reports are coming in that the soliloquy has been restored to….

…..it’s rightful place….

…..in Act Three….

BUT YOUR CAT HAS NEWS FOR EVERYONE!!!

THERE IS NO RIGHTFUL PLACE FOR ‘TO BE OR NOT TO BE’!!!!

The very first version of Hamlet that we now have is the 1603 Quarto….

…..known as the Bad Quarto….

In the last century academics came up with the bizarre theory that this version was put together from memory by a bunch of actors….

…and that’s why it’s full of….

…mistakes…

Bletchley Code Breaker, Eric Sams…

…made short work of the….

…amnesiac actors theory….

After all……

THE ONE THING YOU CAN BE SURE OF IN ACTORS IS THAT THEY HAVE GOOD MEMORIES!!!

No, Thomas Heywood, Shakespeare’s contemporary, gives a vivid account of how plays were pirated by…

….stenographers…

…HIS WORD….

….who would stand in the pit and write down the words of the actors…..

In this Bad Quarto version, the ‘To Be or not to Be’ speech comes earlier than Act Three…..

It comes in what would be the equivalent of Act Two!!!

(The Bad Quarto, for obvious reasons, has no Act or Scene divisions.)

It comes BEFORE the…

Oh what a rogue and peasant slave am I…..

…..soliloquy….

…..and NOT AFTER IT…..

…. as it does in the Second Quarto (1604/5)

…..which represents Shakespeare’s ‘second thoughts’ about the play….

……and which forms the basis of our ‘standard’ Hamlet text.

In The Code’s view, the early positioning of the soliloquy is the better one…..

….and Stewart Trotter used this in his LAUDED 1982 production of the play at the Northcott Theatre in Exeter….

….starring the fabulous Anthony May as the Dane….

(The late B.A. Young, the distinguished theatre critic of the Financial Times, described Stewart’s ending of Hamlet as the best he had ever seen…)

In this earlier placing of the soliloquy, Hamlet enters…..

….in King Claudius’s words….

…poring upon a book…

This means that when Hamlet says….

To be or not to be…..

HE IS QUOTING FROM THE BOOK ITSELF!!!

He then responds with delight at the truth of this observation by declaring…..

….. in the 1603 version….

Aye, that’s the point…..

…and in the 1604 version….

…that is the question….

Lewis Fiander…..

….the great Australian actor….

….once told Your Cat that he auditioned with this speech for the legendary Laurence, Lord Olivier….

Lewis entered from the wings reading a book….

…and when he said….

That is the question….

…he flung the book across the stage in an explosion of intellectual excitement….

Olivier’s reaction?

Baby, if I had seen you do this twenty years ago I would have stolen it….

‘Bye now….

Thanks for the kind words, Trixie.

Just to let Brothers and Sisters know that I’m hard at work on ‘The Princess of France (from Love’s Labour’s Lost) as Queen Elizabeth I.

Trix ‘n’ Tom are also busy decoding Shakespeare’s ‘Bath Sonnets’…..

ALL WILL BE REVEALED SOON!!!

Best wishes…..

…. and thanks for your Patronage…..

Stewart T.

TAILNOTE FROM TRIXIE THE CAT

The Independent newspaper has printed the following note from Stewart in its 25th August edition:

Hamlet in any order

Lyndsey Turner, the director of the Cumberbatch Hamlet, has every right to make “To be or not to be” a movable feast. It’s exactly what Shakespeare did himself.

The First Quarto of Hamlet (1603) places this speech before “Oh what a rogue and peasant slave am I” and the Second Quarto (1604/5) – the version now generally followed – after it. I prefer the earlier version as it allows Hamlet to enter “poring upon a book” – so “To be or not to be” becomes a quote from the book itself.

Stewart Trotter
London W9

Well done, Boss XXX

A SPECIAL REPORT from…..

TRIXIE THE THEATRE CAT!!!

Brothers and Sisters of The Shakespeare Code…

The Making of a King – Henry V 

…..opened on 24th June, 2015…..

 ……at the HISTORIC Great Barn in Titchfield, Hampshire….

(which was built at time of the Agincourt Campaign)

….to RAVES from the PRESS and the PUBLIC!!!

The DISTINGUISHED Theatre Critic, ED HOWSON…..

 …….writing in the HIGHLY PRESTIGIOUS Daily Echo…..

….stated….

PRESENTED as one of the countrywide events celebrating the 600th anniversary of Agincourt, Stewart Trotter’s seamless adaptation of four plays (one anonymous and three by Shakespeare) all chronicling the life of Prince Harry and his accession to the throne as Henry V, was clearly a labour of love, and one which Titchfield Festival Theatre (TFT) made the most of in director Kris Refevan’s traditional staging at The Great Barn, Titchfield.

On his impressive TFT debut, Chris Mills’ Prince Harry started out with the brashness of youth, drinking and whoring…..

….in the company of Kevin Fraser’s dissolute Falstaff……..

…….growing into a warrior king leading his troops into battle……..

…….while still finding time to woo the French Princess Katherine……..

(another notable Titchfield debut by Lara Cooper-Chadwick)

As the rebellious Harry Hotspur, Joshua Coates turned in another fine performance………

…..and with live period music throughout (Charles Wood)

…….the icing on the cake was Stewart Trotter’s own enjoyably clear narration as The Chorus”.

 

•

Thanks, Ed.

Trixie the Cat is in total agreement!!!

She would add mention of the vibrant, warm and sexy Hannah Wood who plays Doll Tearsheet…..

 ……harlot and mistress of ‘The Sow’s Head’ Tavern’ in Eastcheap…

 

…….who loves her clients as much as they love her!!!

 

And the delightful Toby Bennett……

…… in the role of Francis, the little orphan boy Doll has taken under her wing….

 ….who mischievously pours salt into Falstaff’s sack….

….and is taken off to war by Falstaff’s oafish side-kicks….

……Peto (John Boyle) and Bardolph (David Launder)…

(‘No need to pack, Francis. You can steal all you need in France’)

Francis, though, ends up dead as King Henry’s page at Agincourt…

(‘I was not angry till I came to France/Until this instant’)

Your Cat’s eye was also drawn to Dan Cox as an utterly convincing Poins….

 …..wideboy, petty crook, alcoholic and louche friend of Prince Hal and Falstaff….

Your Cat also noticed Samuel F. Bowers as the thuggish, swaggering sheriff….

…..who drops like a sycophantic stone when he encounters Prince Hal….

 

…..and David Lee as the dour, dark, guilt-ridden…

Sire of Harry, Henry IV….

….who, in the words of the play,…..

…..yearns for Holy War,

In part to honour sacred Jesu’s name….

But mostly to prop up his dubious reign…..

 After fights, reconciliations and more fights with his son, Prince Hal…..

….Henry IV laughs himself to death at the trick the universe has played on him….

He was told he would die in Jerusalem……

…..and he took that to be the Middle East….

…..but it was the name of his bedchamber in Westminster!!!

And so I meet my end where I do lie;

In THIS Jerusalem doth Harry die…

What Your Cat LOVED about this version of the plays is that, again in its own words, it…..

Tells the tale of dissolute Prince Harry,

Who, more in love with taverns than with courts

And constant comrade to a gross fat knight

Transformed upon his father Henry’s death

Into the star of England….

….IN ONE SINGLE EVENING!!!

 We see just how painful it is for him to reject his outrageous, drunken old friend, Falstaff…..

 

…..and to sign the warrant for Bardolph’s execution for stealing church property….

We see him forging bonds with his father’s loyal old friend, the Earl of Westmoreland (Alan James)

…and growing stronger in friendship and amity with his estranged brother, Prince John (Frank Hussey)…..

For Your Cat, two of the highlights of the show were the hilarious ‘robbery’ at Gadshill….

…where we see….

the robbers robbed….

….and Falstaff’s extempore drilling of a bunch of hopeless, raw recruits…..

Frankie Patterson as the wise, peace-loving Duchess of Burgundy…..

……knocks together the heads of the warring Kings of England and France at the end of the play…..

…..and it is a delight to see King Henry winning over the not TOO reluctant Princess of France…..

Do you teach her English?

….asks the Duchess of Burgundy……

No, she teaches me French!

….replies the King…..

The Making of a King shows Prince Henry, in battle, going through a dark night of the soul…..

…… when he begins to think all political power is meaningless.

But he throws himself into the hands of God….

And God grants him victory at Agincourt….

 

All told The Making of a King is a celebration of England…..

…..and English values…..

…..which culminates, appropriately enough, in a joyous dance….

…..choreographed by Hannah Wood….

 

The show was beautifully lit by Mike Andrews……

…. and brilliantly directed by the mysterious, reclusive Swede, Kris Refevan….

All the photographs from the show were taken by Rich Patterson.

•

Kevin Fraser, who plays the rip-roaring Falstaff, is also the Director of the WORLD-FAMOUS Titchfield Festival Theatre……..

…..and I spoke to him backstage, after the show…..

…..as he struggled out of his padding…..

…..and sank exhausted into his chair.

That was great, Kevin….

I purred….

Kevin smiled and pointed wearily to a huge pile of papers on his dressing table…..

Look at these, Trixie….

….he said…..

I’ve been INUNDATED with e-mails!!!

Kevin picked up two at random and handed them to me….

Brothers and Sisters, I was so excited by what I read that I copied them in shortpaw…..

Here’s the first….

(No names, no pack drill!)

(1) Last evenings performance of Henry V – The Making of a King was magnificent. The comments I heard at the interval and at the end of the evening were very, very complimentary with two of my ladies, who are ardent Shakespeare “Groupies” who have been regulars at The Barbican and The Globe in London and of course at Stratford-upon- Avon, were so full of praise for your production. Please pass our congratulations and sincere thanks for a wonderful evening onto all members of the cast and back stage crew.

And here’s the second….

(2) How do you do it? I don’t often put pen to paper ( or keyboard to screen!) but what a whirlwind brilliant production. From start to finish we were all three enthralled. We were half expecting this to be a long evening, 4 plays in one – but what an experience. As usual we will spread the word. Fantastic! Pass on our best wishes to everyone who without fail made this a night to remember.

Kevin then told me, with an entrepreneurial smile, that the very moment the show opened…..

…. the Box Office went through the roof!!!

To celebrate, Kevin, the entire cast and crew and myself, then hot-pawed it down to the Queen’s Head in Titchfield….

…..where, in the words of the play we all

Drank an English toast for Harry’s sake….

…and for the sake of the whole Titchfield Festival Theatre….

‘Bye now

•

To find out WHY the Box Office went through the roof….

Read the entire play by clicking: HERE!

The Rights of the play are now available….

PERHAPS TO YOUR COMPANY!!!

P.S Brothers and Sisters of The Shakespeare Code might also be interested in…

1. Why did Shakespeare write the King Henry plays? Click: HERE

2. The character of Falstaff. Click: HERE

3. Why Falstaff is fat. Click: HERE

P.P.S. The Code agents are busily at work on our next post……

‘The Princess of France in Love’s Labour’s Lost as Queen Elizabeth’.

AN IMPORTANT STATEMENT FROM TRIXIE THE CAT.

The Shakespeare Code NEVER includes links to other sites….

…..BUT THIS IS EXCEPTIONAL!!!

Six students at De Montfort University in Leicester have produced…….

 …..AN ANIMATION OF THE STREETS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY LONDON!!!

This is the London, before the Great Fire in 1666……

…the London that William Shakespeare would have known.

For Your Cat this is like coming home…

I know I skulked these alleys in one of my….

……PREVIOUS LIVES!!!

Enjoy….

http://www.openculture.com/2013/11/fly-through-17th-century-london.html

(P.S. The brilliant animators are named at the end of the video. Snap them up now!)

 Stewart Trotter writes….

On page 146 of my book, Love’s Labour’s Found…..

…..published in 2002…

…..I wrote:

At the same time John Clapham, [Lord] Burghley’s secretary, was writing Narcissus, another poem on an Ovidian theme – also dedicated to [Henry Wriothesley, the Third Earl of] Southampton and printed in 1591. It deals with the legend of Narcissus, a young man fed on ‘the warm milk of error’ (Catholicism) who mounts a steed called Lust and dies in the spring of Self Love – infatuated with his own reflection. Shakespeare’s poem [Venus and Adonis] is about the Goddess Venus’s unrequited love for the beautiful Adonis who refuses her embraces and dies in a boar hunt. Although the poem is dedicated to Southampton, Mary Southampton still controlled his finances and Burghley was his guardian. I believe they commissioned Shakespeare , as Burghley commissioned his secretary, to continue to put pressure on Harry [Southampton] to marry and warn him of the deadly consequences of pursuing a homosexual life….

In the 20th May, 2015 edition of Country Life Mark Griffith……

…. writes:

In 1591, Burghley’s secretary John Clapham had tried and failed to teach the 17 year-old Earl [of Southampton] the error of his ways with Narcissus, a long Latin poem on the perils of self-love.When Shakespeare’s turn came, [with Venus and Adonis] he kept something of that earlier identification. Far from the usual he-man lover and hunter, his Adonis is an effeminate, petulant, self-obsessed and woman spurning youth – in other words, more like Narcissus and just like Southampton..

..Because Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece are dedicated to Southampton in warm and dutiful terms, it’s widely assumed that he was Shakespeare’s patron. But a dedicatee is not necessarily a patron, and neither sent the head-strong Earl a message he wanted to hear. No, Shakespeare was acting for Burghley; the Lord Treasurer was his mysterious early backer…..

In some ways, Mr. Griffiths and I are very close……

He clearly subscribes to the theory I first put forward in Love’s Labour’s Found thirteen years ago….

……that William Shakespeare was discovered, created and financially assisted by a powerful patron….

……who commissioned him to write…..

(1) Poetry to persuade the Earl of Southampton to get married….

(2) Plays to support the Patron’s political position…

(3) Open air country house entertainments which brought him to the attention of Queen Elizabeth I…

….and….

(4) A Midsummer Night’s Dream to celebrate a family wedding…..

The only difference is that Griffiths believes this Patron to be William Cecil, Lord Burghley….

……while I argued in my book…..

……and subsequent blog The Shakespeare Code…..

….. that…..

……SHAKESPEARE’S MAIN PATRONS WERE THE SOUTHAMPTON FAMILY!!!

….namely…

……(1) Mary Browne, Second Countess of Southampton…..

….who financed Shakespeare from 1590 (when he joined the Titchfeld household) till 1594……

….and (2) Her son, Henry Wriothesley, the Third Earl of Southampton and Baron of Titchfield……

…. who then took over the patronage of Shakespeare when he came of age in 1594…..

….. till 1605, when he broke all ties.

(To read about this break, click: ‘Shakespeare, Love and Religion, Part Three.’)

Mr. Griffiths rejects these ideas and writes:

Forget the often-repeated tale, first set down at the start of the eighteenth century, that Southampton gave Shakespeare the vast sum of £1,000.

(£1,000 would be the equivalent of £500,000 today.)

But WHY should we forget it?

The story comes from Nicholas Rowe’s 1709 Some Account of the Life  etc. of Mr. William Shakespear. [sic]

….and Rowe meticulously records:

[Shakespear] had the honour to meet with many great and uncommon marks of favour and friendship from the Earl of Southampton, famous in the histories of that time for his friendship to the unfortunate Earl of Essex..

..There is one instance so singular in the magnificence of this patron of Shakespear’s, that if I had not been assured that the story was handed down by Sir William D’Avenant……

…. who was probably very well acquainted with his affairs, I should not have ventured to have inserted, that my Lord Southampton, at one time, gave him a thousand pounds, to enable him to go through with a purchase which he heard he had a mind to….

D’Avenant claimed…..

….with some plausibility….

….according to Charles Nicholl……

…..who edited Rowe’s Life..

….to be one of Shakespeare’s illegitimate sons….

The actor, Sir Thomas Betterton……

…..was the lead actor in D’Avenant’s company…..

…..did his own investigations into Shakespeare by visiting Stratford-upon-Avon….

….and passed on his information to Rowe.

The Southampton…..

….. tale….

….(Griffiths’s word)

…..has an excellent provenance……..

….. stretching back to the time of Shakespeare himself.

Now it is true that in the excerpt from Love’s Labour’s Found that I quoted, I stated that….

I believe they [Burghley and Mary Southampton] commissioned Shakespeare [to write Venus and Adonis] , as Burghley commissioned his secretary….

….but I do not think Burghley actually PAID for the poem.

That was Mary Southampton’s task….

Burghley, working with Mary….

…and her father, Anthony Browne, Lord Montague….

….merely suggested the Ovidian subject matter.

Burghley was Southampton’s guardian….

He wanted Harry to marry his grand-daughter Elizabeth de Vere….

……so that his family would make another association with an aristocratic family……

…… (Burghley himself came from a relatively humble background)

…….and to prevent Southampton……

……..who, like all his family, was a Roman Catholic recusant……

……..from marrying a Catholic girl.

Burghley was a committed Protestant…..

…….who had worked with Queen Elizabeth to establish the Church of England…..

He was also notoriously tight-fisted….

….(even his secretaries like Clapham were paid in kind rather than money)….

….and had no interest at all in ‘contemporary’ English literature.

(Clapham’s poem to Southampton was in Latin)

Burghley was a classicist who, when asked by Queen Elizabeth…….

……..to grant Edmund Spenser…….

…..£100 for writing The Fairie Queen, famously said….

…..What? All this for a song….

And in the new Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Wallace T. Macaffery writes….

Writers in the literary genre, however, found little favour from the Treasurer [Lord Burghley]. He showed no interest in the contemporary outpouring of poetry and drama. In fact he seems to have preferred to read continental authors.

Also Burghley, as Southampton’s guardian, had the legal right to DEMAND the marriage….

…..and stood to gain a colossal £5,000 in fines if Southampton refused….

…..£1,000 more than his annual salary as Treasurer….

…..and the equivalent today of £2.5 million.

Either way, Burghley would win…..

So why waste money on…

…..songs..

……from Shakespeare….?

……..especially as Shakespeare came from a recusant background.

It was in Mary’s INTEREST to pay Shakespeare to persuade Harry to marry because….

(1) Harry was an only son and it would continue the Southampton line….

(2) Marriage might get him to turn his interest from young men to young women.

His father, Mary’s dead husband, the Second Earl of Southampton…..

…..had been homosexual.

He had made, in Mary’s words……

…..his manservant his wife.

(3) It would release her from the ruinous fine Burghley was about to impose.

And even in the unlikely event that Burghley DID share in the expense of Venus and Adonis…..

……he would have been horrified by the result…

……and would certainly never have employed Shakespeare again!!!

Shakespeare might well have INTENDED the poem to be a ‘moral’ work like Clapham’s….

…..to show that when Adonis refuses the heterosexual love of Venus…..

….and insists on hunting the boar…..

…..with certain of his friends…..

…..he ends up dead.

But, as so often happens in Shakespeare’s work…….

……Shakespeare’s own feelings get in the way.

By the time he wrote Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare was in love with Harry Southampton….

…so he EROTICISES the death of Adonis….

Tis true, tis true, thus was Adonis slain:

He ran upon the boar with his sharp spear,

Who did not whet his teeth at him again

But by a kiss thought  to persuade him there;

And nuzzling in his flank, the loving swine

Sheath’d unaware the tusk in his soft groin….

And far from being a cautionary tale, the image of the sprawled Adonis, exposing…

The wide wound that the boar had trench’d

In his soft flank…

….with blood covering every….

….grass, herb, leaf or weed…

….suggested to the Elizabethans (for whom …..

…..death…..

….could symbolise orgasm, and….

… blood…..

….could symbolise semen)

…..sublime, exhausted, homosexual orgasm.

The very……

…..effeminate, petulant, self-obssessed…….

……qualities that Griffiths disparages in Adonis/Southampton……..

…… were the very qualities that turned Shakespeare on!!!

In Sonnet 53, Shakespeare even imagines Southampton IN DRAG….

Describe Adonis, and the counterfeit
Is poorly imitated after you;
On Helen’s cheek all art of beauty set,
And you in Grecian tires are painted new……

But the major objection to  the theory of Burghley as Patron of Venus and Adonis……

……and any further works by Shakespeare……

……is a political one.

Venus in the poem is a strong-willed, sexually rampant woman  who, trying to prevent Adonis from hunting, rugby-tackles him to the ground….

She even wishes that Adonis….

…were’t as I am and I a man….

At least one contemporary reader interpreted this as a portrait of Queen Elizabeth…..

…..who dominated men in a men’s world….

…..who wore a breastplate at the time of the Armada….

….and who, like Venus, was doing everything to keep her young lover, Robert Devereux, Second Earl of Essex…….

…….by her side….

…….to stop him running away to physical dangers…

……..(in Essex’s case, war in Europe).

The deeply loyal Burghley would NEVER have willingly commissioned a satire on the Queen….

And he would have run a mile from The Rape of Lucrece…..

For a start, its Dedication to Southampton is not, as Griffiths would have us believe…..

……warm and dutiful…..

It is an outright declaration of gay love!

The love I dedicate to your lordship is without end; whereof this pamphlet, without beginning, is but a superfluous moiety. The warrant I have of your honourable disposition, not the worth of my untutored lines, makes it assured of acceptance. What I have done is yours; what I have to do is yours; being part in all I have, devoted yours. Were my worth greater, my duty would show greater; meantime, as it is, it is bound to your lordship, to whom I wish long life, still lengthened with all happiness.

[By then Mary Southampton knew all about her son’s affair with Shakespeare – and even welcomed it. To read more about this, click: ‘Shakespeare, Love and Religion: Part One’]

The poem’s depiction of violent sex and suicide…..

…….which, in my view, could NEVER have been written to persuade a camp young man to marry…..

 …..is a coded, Roman Catholic work……

It is an attack on……

..The Bear….

…Queen Elizabeth’s lover who had died six years before….

…Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester…..

…….the serial rapist and poisoner….

……who had terrorised and killed Roman Catholics….

…..including Edward Arden, a member of Shakespeare’s own family….

……whom he hanged, drew and quartered.

In an anonymous Catholic work, finally called called Leicester’s Commonwealth……

…..which was originally published in 1584 under the title A Copy of a Letter from a Master of Arts of Cambridge…

……Leicester……

……whom the pamphlet accuses of paying up to £300 a night to sleep with Elizabeth’s young Ladies-in-Waiting…..

…..is compared to villains from history….

…..including Sextus Tarquinius……

THE RAPIST IN SHAKESPEARE’S POEM!

 

Leicester’s Commonwealth also compared the religious hypocrite and wife-murderer, Leicester to King Richard III….

….and Shakespeare obliged by writing a play of that name……

 

(In one Quarto copy of the play,  the compositor makes an unconscious slip: King Richard is called ‘the Bear’ instead of ‘the Boar’!)

[See: ‘Richard III Decoded.’]

Leicester’s Commonwealth even attacks Queen Elizabeth herself for favouring Leicester…..

….and shows how the indulgence of favourites……

… by otherwise good Kings and Queens….

… led on to the Wars of the Roses.

Shakespeare again obliges Catholics with his Richard II and Henry VI plays….

……which deal with the horrors of Civil War…..

I’ve argued that Mary Herbert, the Countess of Pembroke…..

…. also acted as a sponsor for these plays….

……and they were sometimes acted in the grounds of Place House at Titchfield….

…..and Wilton House in Salisbury…….

…..a day’s horse-ride from Titchfield…

The Countess of Pembroke was a Protestant, but was as hostile to Elizabeth as the Southampton family because of the Queen’s foreign policy….

…..and because Elizabeth had excluded her from the Court.

[See: ‘Why did Shakespeare write the ‘King Henry’ plays?’ ]

But one thing is certain….

THE PATRON FOR THESE SUBVERSIVE PLAYS CANNOT HAVE BEEN BURGHLEY!!!

Griffiths writes:

Despite Shakespeare’s efforts, Southampton rejected Burghley’s grand-daughter Elizabeth Vere. She found herself a more willing suitor, William Stanley 6th Earl of Derby……

… and they were married on January 26, 1595. The Queen attended the festivities at Cecil House. It was for these celebrations that A Midsummer Night’s Dream was composed….

THERE IS NO EVIDENCE FOR THIS WHATSOEVER!!!

It is much more likely that Mary, Second Countess of Southampton, commissioned Shakespeare to write the play to celebrate her wedding to Sir Thomas Heneage…..

….on 2nd May in 1594…..

…..(the year that England experienced the dreadful summer that is mentioned in the play)….

….and it was later performed, when the weather improved, in the grounds of Copped Hall in Essex….

The play had probably been staged before 3rd September, 1594…..

…..because the satire Willobie his Avisa was entered on the Stationer’s Register on that date…..

…..and, as Bletchley Park Code-Breaker, Eric Sams…..

….. has pointed out……

…..there are strong verbal parallels between the two works.

[It is my belief that Willobie his Avisa was written by Aemilia Bassano/Lanyer – Shakespeare’s ‘Dark Lady’ – and that she played Hermia in the play. See: ‘Willobie his Avisa Decoded.’]

In Willobie his Avisa, ‘H. W.’ ……

…….a not very disguised code for Henry Wriothesley, the Third Earl of Southampton…..

…….says:

I saw your gardens passing fine

With pleasant flowers lately deckt

With cowslip and with eglantine

When woeful woodbines kiss reject;

Yet these in weeds and briars meet,

Although they seem to smell so sweet

This is very close to Oberon’s….

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,

Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,

Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,

With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine….

Because Heneage was a Protestant, half the wedding guests would be Protestant…..

…….so Shakespeare….

……through the character of Oberon….

……slips in a compliment to Queen Elizabeth…..

That very time I saw, but thou couldst not,
Flying between the cold moon and the earth,
Cupid all arm’d: a certain aim he took
At a fair vestal throned by the west,
And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow,
As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts;
But I might see young Cupid’s fiery shaft
Quench’d in the chaste beams of the watery moon,
And the imperial votaress passed on,
In maiden meditation, fancy-free.

But the other half of the wedding guests were Roman Catholic…..

…and so Shakespeare caters for them as well…….

My gentle Puck, come hither. Thou rememberest
Since once I sat upon a promontory,
And heard a mermaid on a dolphin’s back
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath
That the rude sea grew civil at her song
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,
To hear the sea-maid’s music.

The Mermaid

…….as Bishop William Warburton…

……. pointed out in 1747…………

…….was the symbol for Mary Queen of Scots….

….the….

….dolphin…

….was the French Dauphin Francis whom Mary married…

(the Elizabethans sometimes spelt ‘dauphin’ as ‘dolphin’)

……and the…

…certain stars….

…..which…….

….. shot madly from their spheres…..

…….were the Lords who took part in the 1569 Northern Rebellion  to put Mary on the throne of England…..

………among whom were Mary’s late husband, the Second Earl of Southampton.

(See: ‘Shakespeare, Love and Religion, Part Two.’ )

Burghley, who had been instrumental in ensuring that Mary Queen of Scots had her head chopped off……

….and who had been banished from the Court by Queen Elizabeth for four months for so doing….

….would never have tolerated a compliment to the Scottish Queen in any play that he commissioned.

(See: ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream Decoded’.)

We don’t know if Queen Elizabeth visited Copped Hall for the performance as all Privy Council records for 1594 were burnt in a fire….

But we DO know that Heneage entertained the Queen at Savoy Palace…..

….. his London home, on 7th December of that year….

…..that Henry Car, Lord Hunsdon’s……..

……..’The Lord Chamberlain’s Men’ played at Court that Christmas for the first time….

……and that on 15th March 1595, Shakespeare went to Whitehall, along……

……with Richard Burbage……

…… and Will Kempe……

 

…….to be paid for their Christmas performances.

It is my guess that Southampton, who came of age on 6th October, 1594, gave Shakespeare the gift of £1,000 on his birthday to………

….purchase……..

a share in the Lord Chamberlain’s Company.

•

Perhaps the weakest aspect of Griffiths’s theory is that at no point does he mention Shakespeare’s Sonnets.

They are – as William Wordsworth said……

 

…..The key,

with which Shakespeare unlocked his heart…..

The first seventeen sonnets are addressed to…..

……beauty’s rose…..

….. Harry Southampton…..

……and they were written to him as a seventeenth birthday present….

….. in an attempt to persuade him to marry.

They include a reference in Sonnet 13 to Southampton’s dead father, the Second Earl….

You had a father: let your son say so.

……and in Sonnet 3 a compliment to Harry’s mother….

Thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime……

MARY SOUTHAMPTON WAS CLEARLY THE COMMISSIONER OF THE BIRTHDAY SONNETS!!!

[See: ‘Trixie the Cat’s Guide to the Birthday Sonnets.’]

The later Sonnets…..

……which Shakespeare wrote off his own back…..

……trace Shakespeare’s growing intimacy with Harry…..

…..and his final falling in love with him in the great sonnet…..

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

But they tell us all sorts of other things as well…..

…..including Shakespeare’s feelings for Burghley!

Burghley’s nick-name was….

…..Old Saturnus….

And Shakespeare refers to it in Sonnet 98…..

….which suggests that the Spring is so powerful it has even made ‘heavy’ old Burghley feel young again….

From you I have been absent in the spring

When proud-pied April, dress’d in all his trim

Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing

That heavy Saturn laugh’d and leap’d with him.

Shakespeare also satirises Burghley in Titus Andronicus in the figure of

…..Saturninus….

….a name and character he made up….

….as he makes up……..

…..Aemilius……

….. and…….

…..Bassianus……….

……as a tease to his mistress, Aemilia Bassano….

Saturninus is the unscrupulous henchman who advances the sadistic Goth Queen Tamora…..

…..who was forced to kneel in the streets….

…..just as the Princess Elizabeth was forced to kneel in front of the Tower….

…..and who rides….

….a snow-white goodly steed…

….just as Queen Elizabeth did on her visit to Tilbury during the Armada….

Tamora’s equally blood-thirsty sons chop off Lavinia’s hands….

……just as Elizabeth chopped off the right hand of John Stubbs in 1579…..

….. for daring to write a pamphlet criticising her proposed marriage to Anjou…..

(The Catholics claimed that Elizabeth had watched the event from her bedroom window.)

Later in his career, when Burghley was dead, Shakespeare, was to have a full revenge on him in the character of Polonius in Hamlet …

When Polonius says….

My liege, and madam, to expostulate
What majesty should be, what duty is,
Why day is day, night night, and time is time,
Were nothing but to waste night, day and time.
Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,
And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
I will be brief……

…..it is a parody of the pompous, long-winded style that Burghley adopted in his speaking and writing….

…..for instance, in his 1579 letter to the Queen…

The clock that stond so long hath now so weighty plummets of favour and courage put on that it striketh still, a clock not to tell how this day passeth only, but how days and time passeth like river streams, whose waves return no more….

Shakespeare scholars, like Mark Alexander, have also pointed out the similarities between Polonius’s advice to Laertes and Burghley’s own written advice to his son, Robert Cecil….

ENVOY

Griffiths’s coup de grâce is to reveal that the figures on the frontispiece of John Gerald’s Herball…

…..engraved by William Rogers…

 

……are drawn from life……

….. and are the  likenesses of living…..

……or recently departed….

…… men.

As we only know what they looked like through other paintings and engravings….

….this is a proposition difficult to prove.

It’s certainly possible that the older figure on the left plinth is Lord Burghley…..

…….after all the work was dedicated to him……..

…….and he has been depicted in his garden holding flowers before…..

 And the two top figures……

…. COULD be the herbalist Rembert Dodoens on the right and John Gerard on the left…….

………though it seems unlikely that Gerard would have himself depicted as a garden labourer  with a spade……

….especially as in subsequent editions of the Herball he appears in full ruff…..

But Griffiths’s identifications of the other frontispiece figures are more problematical….

…….He claims that the woman shown walking in the garden……

 

…..is Queen Elizabeth…..

…..accompanied by Gerard…..

The idea that Gloriana would allowed herself to be depicted walking along in terms of complete equality with a commoner…..

…..WHO KEEPS HIS HAT ON…..

…..in a garden where both the gardeners…..

….ARE TURNING THEIR BACKS ON HER…

…..is unhistorical to say the least!

Even Knights of the Garter removed their hats when they were in procession with the Queen….

….and less illustrious folk knelt bareheaded….

But it is the claim that Griffiths makes for….

….the fourth man….

….man on the right hand plinth…..

…..that is truly preposterous….

The claim that….

…….IT IS WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE HIMSELF!!!

The only ‘authenticated’ portrait we have of Shakespeare is the Martin Droeshout engraving in the First Folio…..

 

…..of which Ben Jonson…..

….. wrote….

This figure, that thou here seest put

It was for gentle Shakespeare cut;

Wherein the graver had a strife

with Nature to out-do the life:

O, could he but have drawn his wit

In well as brass, as he hath hit

His face, the print would then surpass

All that was ever writ in brass.

But since he cannot, Reader, look

Not on his picture but his book….

Jonson is admitting that it is not a very good engraving….

….but that it accurately depicts how Shakespeare looked in life….

You don’t need to be a Shakespeare scholar to realise that…..

…..while the Gerard engraving shows a man with a head full of hair….

…..DROESHOUT’S SHAKESPEARE IS BALD AS A COOT!!!

……as is the Shakespeare memorial bust in Stratford-upon-Avon….

……as is the Chandos portrait……

…..as is the Davenant bust in the Garrick Club….

……or even the 1588 Grafton portrait….

Shakespeare, in fact, was FAMOUS for his baldness….

In 1601 Shakespeare’s company commissioned Thomas Dekker……

….. to write a satire on the literary world called Satiro-Mastix….

 

Shakespeare appears as……

…… Sir Adam Prickshaft…..

…….the potent wooer of a beautiful widow, who….

……shoots his bolt seldom, but when Adam lets go, he hits…

Sir Adam is bald….

So one of the rival wooers of the widow commissions ‘Horace’………

……..in reality Ben Jonson……..

…….to attack baldness as……………

……ugly base and vile…..

But ‘Crispinus’……

 …….in reality John Marston……

…….ensures that Sir Adam becomes……….

….the first man………..

……..with his paeon to baldness……………..

….. which even manages to work in a reference to Shakespeare’s theatre………..

A head and face o’regrown with shaggy dross

O ‘tis an orient pearl hid all in moss,

But when the head’s all naked and uncrowned,

It is the world’s Globe, even, smooth and round;

Baldness is Nature’s butt, at which our life

Shoots her last arrow: what man ever lead

His age out with a staff, but had a head

Bare and uncovered? He whose years do rise

To their full height, yet not bald, is not wise….

On this strong tower shall my opinion rest

Heads thick of hair are good, but bald the best…..

But perhaps it’s best to leave the subject of Shakespeare’s baldness to the Bard of Avon himself……..

In Sonnet 73 he writes:

That time of year thou may’st in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

If only Mark Griffiths had read the Sonnets, none of this might have happened……

© Stewart Trotter June 2015.