The Shakespeare Code

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

TO READ EPISODE ONE , PLEASE CLICK:  HERE

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

 EPISODE TWO

BEESTON

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

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

 

 

….who openly declared that….

 MARLOWE

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

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

 YOUNG SHAKESPEARE

 (Still choking from the tobacco) Pass….

 (ALL EXIT)

 BEESTON

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

NASHE AND GREENE

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

How dare this Will Shakespeare set up as a poet…

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

NASHE (light tenor voice)

His voice is a screech….

GREENE (Basso profundo)

And his background is lowly…..

NASHE AND GREENE

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

(EXIT via trapdoor)

BEESTON

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

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

CROWLEY/BEESTON

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

(YOUNG SHAKESPEARE enters)

The Devil’s direful dress…..

Old Nick’s nasty night-gown…

Beelzebub’s…..

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

YOUNG SHAKESPEARE

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

(CROWLEY/BEESTON looks round at SHAKESPEARE)

CROWLEY/BEESTON

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

YOUNG SHAKESPEARE

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

CROWLEY/BEESTON

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

YOUNG SHAKESPEARE

But I AM poor!

CROWLEY/BEESTON

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

YOUNG SHAKESPEARE

Then the poor would give it back….

CROWLEY/BEESTON

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

YOUNG SHAKESPEARE

Of course….

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

CROWLEY/BEESTON

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

YOUNG SHAKESPEARE

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

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

BEESTON

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

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

BEESTON

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

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

MIDLANDS GENTLEMAN

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

(EXIT)

BEESTON

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

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

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

MARY

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

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

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

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

SHAKESPEARE

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

MARY (announcing)

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

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

MARY

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

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

TO READ EPISODE THREE, PLEASE CLICK: HERE.

It is with great pleasure that The Agents of The Shakespeare Code announce that on….

……12th November, 2012…..

…..The Code received its……..

70,000th VIEW!!!

FOUR New Countries have also taken The Code’s shilling……

They are…..

BARBADOS

MONACO

 SEYCHELLES

BAILIWICK OF JERSEY

This brings the number of participating countries to a stagggering……

ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-TWO!!!

IN VINCULIS INVICTUS

AN IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FROM TRIXIE THE CAT

Word has just reached Code Head Office  that WATERSTONES in Charing Cross, London….

…….has asked to stock The Chief Agent’s ‘sumptuous’ new book……..

……Tales from The Palace Theatre 1912-2012…..

……..of which Richard Anthony Baker wrote in the PRESTIGIOUS Stage newspaper…….

Tales from The Palace Theatre is an apt title for the book, since, besides being a thorough-going, intensely researched history, it includes a feast of anecdotes…..

So, Brothers and Sisters of The Code, you NOW HAVE CHOICE…..

You can order the book by e-mail (£25.99 inc. p&p) from the lovely Lisa Peacock at The Book Inn in historic Leigh-on-Sea…..

thebookinn@talktalkbusiness.net

……or by post from the equally lovely House Manager, Angela Perkins, at The Palace Theatre, 430, London Road, Southend-on-Sea, Essex, SS0 9LA….

….. also at £25.99 (inc. p&p) in a cheque payable to The Palace Theatre Club….

……OR you can hotfoot it down to WATERSTONES at Charing Cross in London…..

‘Bye, now..

 

STOP PRESS:STOP PRESS:STOP PRESS

Word is just in that the WORLD FAMOUS LONDON LIBRARY……

 

……. is CLAMOURING for a Copy of Tales from The Palace Theatre…..

……..so a CODE COURIER has just been dispatched to St. James’s Square…..

If you are lucky enough to be a member of this august body……

PUT YOUR NAME DOWN ON THE WAITING LIST IMMEDIATELY!!! 

To learn more about Tales from The Palace Theatre, please click:HERE.

by

TRIXIE THE CAT

 

……along with the mysterious ‘Thomas X’…….

(To find out more about ‘Tom’s’ involvement with Trixie the Cat, please click: HERE. )

So, if Kit Marlowe…….

….WASN’T the Rival Poet……

(See: Was Christopher Marlowe the Rival Poet?)

……then WHO WAS?

YOUR CAT WILL REVEAL ALL !!!

First, let’s look at the Sonnets themselves…..

…….Sonnets in which Shakespeare does EVERYTHING HE CAN to destroy the character of his Rival…

…..but which, to be effective, must contain an element of truth…..

(The Code has learnt much about Shakespeare  by analysing the attacks on him made by his enemies….)

In Sonnet 83 Shakespeare refers to…..

….the barren tender of a [Rival]Poet’s debt….. 

……implying that The Rival was hard up……

…..and so in need of Southampton’s Patronage…..

Shakespeare also implies, in Sonnets 21 and 23, that The Rival Poet was gay….

The Rival praises Harry’s beauty with his verse…

……And every fair with his [Harry’s] fair doth rehearse……

……..and also praises Harry’s beauty with HIS TONGUE…..

…….that more hath more expressed…..

i.e. that has praised Harry more fulsomely, and more often, than Shakespeare has done….

But with the mention of ‘tongue’ comes the wicked suggestion that The Rival has also been ‘expressing’ his love in decidely non-verbal ways….

Shakespeare admits, in Sonnet 78, that The Rival is better educated than he is……

…….and presents this as a shortcoming….

…….NOT, however, as a shortcoming on Shakespeare’s part…..

……but on THE RIVAL’S!

Shakespeare argues that Harry, by consenting to be The Rival’s ‘Muse’…..

……i.e. his source of inspiration….

…….. has simply…..

…added feathers to the learned’s wing….

i.e. he has only slightly enhanced a talent that was already there…..

Shakespeare, on the other hand knew NOTHING before Harry came on the scene…..

…….consequently Harry is…..

….all [Shakespeare’s] art and dost advance,

As high as learning [Shakespeare’s] rude ignorance…. [Sonnet 78]

Shakespeare even goes on to ATTACK The Rival Poet’s erudition….

It makes his writing artificial, overblown and  insincere…..

The Rival will…..

……make a couplement [comparison] of proud compare….

…..between Harry……

…..With sun and moon, with earth and sea’s rich gems;

With April’s first-born flowers and all things rare……

The sky, in The Rival’s pedantic hands, becomes….

…..heaven’s air……

……the earth a….

…..huge rondure

………and the stars….

…..gold candles fixed in heaven’s air..

These are, Shakespeare claims…..

…..strainéd touches….

…….which contrast unfavourably with Shakespeare’s……

…..true, plain words…[Sonnet 82]

……which serve…..

……to witness duty not to show [his] wit…[Sonnet 26]

Shakespeare admits he will sometimes be ‘dumb’ in Harry’s presence…..

…..but this silent devotion has much more integrity than The Rival’s…..

….breath of words…..[Sonnet 85]

……. in the same way that Cordelia’s great love for her father, King Lear…….

…….expressed in deeds rather than language….

……. is far superior to her wicked sisters’…..

…..glib and oily art….

To speak and purpose not….

Shakespeare claims that he….

……thinks good thoughts while others write good words….

….and demonstrates his love for Harry by WHAT HE DOES…..

Harry’s beauty, Shakespeare insists, is so sublime it CANNOT be captured by…..

…..a modern quill…..

Anyone who DOES dare to write about him is obliged to…..

…….bring forth

Eternal numbers to outlive long date…

i.e. write poetry which will last for ever….

….which Shakespeare claims he himself has done in the famous…..

……Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s day?…….

……Sonnet 18 in which he predicts…..

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this [Sonnet] and this gives life to thee….[Harry]

Shakespeare goes on to describe his Rival as a ship…..

of proudest sail…..

and…..

…of tall building and of goodly pride….

……while Shakespeaere is…..

…..a worthless boat…..

that…..

…..doth willfully [Will-fully] appear…..

…….on Harry’s……

…..broad main…

Shakespeare is admitting his Rival is more famous than he is….

But his praise is not entirely ingenuous…..

As a much bigger ship, The Rival displaces more water on Harry’s…..

……soundless deep….

….while Harry’s….…

….shallowest help will hold [Shakespeare] up afloat…..

i.e.The Rival, because of his celebrity status will be much more expensive for Harry to maintain than Shakespeare…..

…….who is cheap as chips.

Shakespeare also fires a warning shot……

If Harry ditches Shakespeare for a new, more loquacious lover……

…….the world will condemn Harry for being…..

…..fond on praise…..

So, we learn from Shakespeare’s attacks on the Rival Poet that he….

1. Needs a lot of money….

2. Wants to be Harry’s lover…..

3. Is adept at flattery….

4. Uses language in an affected way, and…..

5. Has an established reputation…..

This could be any any number of people in Queen Elizabeth’s England….

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

HE TALKS TO GHOSTS!!!

…..or rather, one particular…..

…..affable, familiar ghost……

i.e. a friendly spook…..

 

…….who…….

…….nightly gulls him with intelligence…..

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

The Rival Poet has been taught to write…..

……by spirits…..

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

STEP FORWARD GEORGE CHAPMAN!!!

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

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

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

That (in thy native air; and on the hill

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

With such a flood of soul……

Chapman translated Homer into English…….

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

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

But of even more significance is Chapman’s claim, put forward in the Third Sestiad of Hero and Leander, that he was in contact with……

……..THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE AS WELL!!!

Chapman writes:

Then thou most strangely-intellectual fire,

That proper to my soul hast power t’inspire

Her burning faculties, and with the wings

Of thy unsphered flame, visit’st the springs

Of spirits immortal; now (as swift as Time

Doth follow Motion) find the eternal clime

Of his free soul, whose living subject stood

Up to the chin in the Pirenian flood,

And drunk to me half this Musean story,

Inscribing it to deathless memory:

Confer with it, and make my pledge as deep,

That neither’s draught be consecrate to sleep.

Tell it how much his late desires I tender,

(If yet it know not) and to light surrender

My soul’s dark offspring, willing it should die

The ‘free spirit’ is the gay atheist Marlowe – killed in a tavern brawl in Deptford – who, when ‘living’ certainly stood ‘up to the chin in the Pirenian flood’…..

…….the Macedonian spring sacred to the Muses.

The ‘Musean story’ is a reference to to Museus, who penned the original Hero and Leander story……

…… and Chapman is implying, by pledging ‘half’ of that story to him, that the spirit of Marlowe is asking Chapman to complete the other half of the work himself.

That is Marlowe’s ‘late desire’.

Shakespeare also tells us in Sonnet 86 that the spirit who visits Chapman is…….

…..affable….

….and…..

…..familiar…..

This ties in with Thomas Nashe’s report in Have with Yout to Saffron Walden that Marlowe was…..

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

And Shakespeare’s own description of Marlowe in As You Like It as……

……the dead shepherd.

But what makes the identification of Chapman’s ghost certain is the line, also in Sonnet 86, which tells us that the spirit….

 ……nightly gulls……

…..Chapman….

……with intelligence.

In 1587 the Cambridge University authorities were hesitating about awarding Marlowe his degree on the grounds that he was a Catholic who had visited the Papist seminary at Rheims.

The Privy Council intervened, stating that Marlowe, in travelling to Europe….

…..had done her majesty good service…..

….and had been employed……

……in matters touching the benefit of his country…..

Marlowe had clearly been a spy…….

…..and that is why his spirit…..

…. gulls…….

…… Chapman by giving him false…..

 ……intelligence…..

As Brothers and Sisters of The Code well know……

[Trixie the Cat would like to thank ‘Tom’ for discovering that Chapman’s ghost was Christopher Marlowe]

…..Shakespeare sends up Chapman in Love’s Labour’s Lost …..

…..in the figure of the effeminate, lisping, sycophantic Lord Boyet……

 

(See: Boyet – Shakespeare’s Revenge on George Chapman.)

Boyet, on his first appearance,  tells the Princess of France to……

….summon up [her] dearest spirits….

….as though she were conducting a seance…..

….then goes on to flatter her outrageously:

Be now as prodigal of all dear grace

As Nature was in making graces dear

When she did starve the natural world beside,

And prodigally gave them all to you….

The Princess’s response to Boyet’s flattery is identical to Shakespeare’s response to Chapman’s flattery of Harry:

Good Lord Boyet, my beauty, though but mean,

Needs not the painted flourish of your praise:

Beauty is bought by judgement of the eye,

Not utter’d by base sale of  chapmen’s tongues….

……and with the phrase ‘base sale of chapmen’s tongues’ the Princess puns on George Chapman’s name….

…..in Shakespeare’s time, ‘chapmen’ were merchants….

The witty, worldly Berowne in the play……

……..who, The Code believes, was first played by the witty, worldly Shakespeare……

………picks up this mercantile imagery when he describes Boyet as…..

……wit’s pedlar who retails his wares

At wakes and wassails, meetings, markets fairs

Shakespeare uses the same idea…..

…….that Chapman = Tradesman….

……..in The Sonnets.

He writes:

That love is merchandised, whose rich esteeming

The owner’s tongue doth publish everywhere….[Sonnet 102]

And in Sonnet 21……

I will not praise, that purpose not to sell…..

Even Sonnet 86 which begins…..

Was it the proud full sail of his great verse,

Bound for the prize of all-too-precious you….

…..and which so many scholars have taken to be a reference to Marlowe’s ‘high’ style……

……contains its own pun…..

SAIL = SALE!!!

………as in The Princess’s…….

…..the base sale of chapmen’s tongues…..

So, Chapman, like The Rival Poet, was gay, was a flatterer, used language in an artificial way , was well-established and spoke to ghosts……

But WAS HE HARD UP?

The answer is a resounding YES!!!

He inherited from his father…….

…..wait for it…….

…..£100 and two silver spoons……

And spent his declining years in poverty and debt…..

‘Bye, now…..

© Trixie the Cat and ‘Thomas X’.

 

Paw-note: The first person to suggest that George Chapman was The Rival Poet (though not always for the same reasons as tabled above!) was William Minto…..

……in 1874….

A Scottish Man of Letters, he was  Professor of Logic and English at The University of Aberdeen….

●

To read ‘The Dedication to Shakespeare’s Sonnets Decoded’, please click: HERE

To read ‘Why did Shakespeare write The Sonnets?’, please click: HERE

To read ‘Trixie the Cat’s Guide to the Sonnets’. (1) Background Jottings, please click: HERE

To read ‘Trixie the Cat’s Guide to the Sonnets’. (2) The Birthday Sonnets, please click: HERE

To read ‘Trixie the Cat’s Guide to the Sonnets’. (3) Was Christopher Marlowe the Rival Poet? please click: HERE

A PRESS ROUND-UP FROM YOUR RESIDENT NEWS-HOUND………

TRIXIE THE CAT

Brothers and Sisters of The Shakespeare Code……

TALES FROM THE PALACE THEATRE 1912-2012……..

……..was published on 1st November…….

TO ECSTATIC REVIEWS!!!

THE STAGE newspaper…..

…..which has been on the streets since 1880……

…..and is still run by the Founders’s great grand-daughter….

…..has always had ONE GOLDEN RULE…….

IT NEVER PUBLISHES BOOK REVIEWS….

Quite right!

This saves……

 the weekly for the entertainment industry

…..from drowning in Celebrity…….

 GOSSFESS!!!

[‘GOSSFESS’ is Trixie Slanguage for ‘Gossip plus Confession’: © Trixie the Cat, 2012]

However, when  TALES FROM THE PALACE came along…….

….edited by Code Chief Agent, Stewart Trotter, F.S.C…..

…….and co-authored by Charles Sharman-Cox, F.S.C….

and Rachel On Brick Lane Lichtenstein….

THE STAGE newspaper took one look at it……

…..and simply…….

TORE UP THE RULE-BOOK!!!

It has devoted a WHOLE PAGE in its 1st November edition to what amounts to a FULL FEATURE on the book…..

……penned by DOYEN critic….

…….RICHARD ANTHONY BAKER…..

……who writes……

Over the years many people predicted the theatre [The Palace] would never last this long. There have been repeated financial crises – indeed, since 1969, The Palace has gone dark four times. But on each occasion, local theatregoers rallied round to ensure that it lived for another day.

Helen Mirren…..

…….who was educated in Westcliff, recognises this fighting spirit. In the foreword of A SUMPTUOUS NEW BOOK she writes…..

‘The theatre people and townspeople of this area love their grand old lady…….

…….and through their efforts, determination and sheer bloody-mindedness, brought her back to life.’

Mr. Baker then takes us expertly through The Theatre’s history…..

…..how it was first designed as an Opera House……

…..can you imagine it?…….

……..in Westcliff-on-Sea…..

……..ESSEX…….

AN OPERA HOUSE????

It opened, far more sensibly, as a Temperance Variety Theatre and Cinema ……

…..showing early silent movies in the interest of ‘Science’….

Mr. Baker describes The Theatre’s notorious steep-rake…..

……and the stars who attempted to negotiate it…….

…….including Albert Chevalier…..

……who reduced the audience to tears with his rendering of My Old Dutch…..

……and the saintly Dame Sybil Thorndike…..

Mr. Baker describes how the beautiful, elusive, actress-cum-entrpreneur, Gertude Mouillot …..

…gave The PalaceTheatre as a gift to the poeple of Southend-on-Sea during the Second World War……..

…….. on the condition that it was NEVER SOLD.

The great Dora Bryan……

……..was, along with Harold Pinter’s first wife, Vivien Merchant, one of the first performers to be presented at the Palace by its new manager, Harry Hanson.

Mr. Baker continues…..

Tales from The Palace Theatre is an apt title for the book, since, besides being a thorough-going, intensely researched history, it includes a feast of anecdotes.

Between 1965 and 1969, the stories flow endlessly. In those years, The Theatre was run by Alexander Bridge……

…..a talented fantasist who believed he was the re-incarnation of Novello. He frequently  starred his mother, Eileen Farrow…….……..

…..in his productions, billing her as one of Novello’s former leading ladies. She was nothing of the sort. Her only previous theatrical experience was with amateurs and her quaint, old-fashioned style delighted the chorus boys, who each night crowded in the wings to watch her.

One was the late Patrick Fyffe, who imitated her as Hilda Bracket of the peerless Hinge and Bracket…..

Bridge’s handsome leading man, Paul Greenhalgh……

……provided the book’s authors with some of its most hilarious passages…..

Note: If you would like to read extracts from ‘Paul’s Tale’, please click: HERE.

Mr. Baker goes on to describe how Bridge was succeeded by ‘the master farceur, Ray Cooney’ , Leslie Lawton (who cast Alfred Marks in John Osborne’s The Entertainer) then Chris Dunham who employed a young Irish actor, Pierce Brosnan……

………..who was to go on to play the lead in FOUR James Bond films……

Mr. Baker concludes:

Then of course there is the obligatory theatre ghost. But that is another story……

 As if this review wasn’t enough, there was another WONDERFUL piece from Features Editor of The Echo, the highly-repected wordsmith, TOM KING.

He writes:

Like the 100-year-old Palace Theatre itself, the book which celebrates its Centenary has been built to last.

Months of research, dozens of interviews, three distinguished authors (plus guest author Dame Helen Mirren), the best quality paper and board money money can buy, and the sort of devotion money can’t buy, have gone into it.

‘We don’t imagine’, says co-author Charles Sharman-Cox ‘any other regional theatre across the country has a book to match this one.’

Initial research was placed in the hands of Rachel Lichtenstein, whose book on the history of Hatton Garden, Diamond  Street, has just been published.

It quickly became apparent The Palace story was about a lot more than just facts and dates. ‘One overwhelming thing emerged as the work went on’ says Charles. ‘The Palace story is a people story. So many people have loved it. We decided the story had to be told through their eyes and voices.’

One person who shares that love is co-author Stewart Trotter.

As a stage director, Stewart worked with Sir Peter Hall……..

……. and was responsible for one of the first plays staged at The Cottesloe Theatre. He started English Touring Opera and inspired a scene in Monty Python among other achievements…

‘Theatrically speaking,’ says Charles, Stewart and I go back to Southend High School. We both worked on a production of King Lear.

Back then the pair found a second home in The Palace Theatre. Their love of the place and a sense of gratitude remains undiluted. It is fair to say that debt was repaid through the writing of the book.

‘Stewart mostly looked after the writing . I concentrated on the interviews,’ Charles said.

The launch sees The Palace  in perhaps the finest fettle it has ever been in all its 100 years. The book is full of fond reminiscence of The Palace Past, but ends in a different tense…..

The final interview is with Ellen McPhillips, director of HQ Theatres…….

She concludes: ‘There is no shadow over The Palace’s future at all.’

At which point, job done, the authors sign off their history. They do so conventionally with the words: ‘The End’.

Then they add ‘And a new beginning’.

●

Tales from The Palace Theatre is published by Guild. It costs £25.99 , including postage and packing in Great Britain, and can be obtained either by e-mailing the lovely LISA PEACOCK at thebookinn@talktalkbusiness.net

…..or by sending a cheque made payable to The Place Theatre Club to the equally lovely  GEORGIE PERKINS, House Manager, The Palace Theatre, 430, London Road, Southend-on-Sea, Essex SSO 9LA.

Tell them that another lovely Essex Girl sent you……

Trixie the Cat!

‘Bye, now…..

Don’t forget – all proceeds will go The Palace Theatre Club for the upkeep of ‘The Grand Old Lady’….

 

 

The Southampton family was, for many years, William Shakespeare’s meal ticket…..

….says TRIXIE THE CAT…..

In 1590, when the defeat of the Spanish Armada had made acting unfashionable, Mary, 2nd Countess of Southampton……

…..employed ‘Cousin Will’  as a ‘fac totum’ in her household at Titchfield……

…..and as the schoolmaster for the local boys….

…..and as as tutor and companion to her gay, wayward, teenage son, Henry Wriothesley…..

…..who signed himself…….

Harry Southampton.

Mary commissioned Shakespeare to write seventeen sonnets for Harry’s seventeenth birthday in a desperate attempt to get her son interested in girls….

See: The Birthday Sonnets.

At this point the widowed Mary had control of the family purse strings……

……and control them she did!

Shakespeare makes fun of her stinginess to her son in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Mary played Hippolyta in the premiere of the play at Copped Hall……

 ……and Theseus, played by her bridegroom, Sir Thomas Heneage……..

……says to her:

But o! methinks how slow this old moon wanes

She lingers my desires, like to a step-dame or a dowager,

Long withering out a young man’s revenue.

But on 6th October, 1594, Harry came of age and was in control of his own finances……

Or rather his debts…..

He had to pay £5,000 (£2 and a half million)  to Lord Burghley, his guardian…….

……for refusing to marry his grand-daughter……

But Harry had lands and property he could sell off…..

…..so he was able to give Shakespeare a present of £1,000 (£500,000)

The earliest written source for this story is Nicholas Rowe…….

…..who, in his 1709 Some Account of the Life &c. of Mr. William Shakespear [sic], writes:

There is one incidence so singular in the Magnificence of this Patron of Shakespeare’s, [Southampton]that if I had not been assur’d that the Story was handed down by Sir William D’Avenant…….

……..who was probably very well acquainted with his affairs, I should not have ventur’d 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…

[Davenant, on good authority, claimed to be Shakespeare’s bastard son.]

So it is not surprising that another penniless poet had his eyes on Harry’s money……

……a man whom Shakespeare attacks in his Sonnets……

…..and who has become known as…..

The Rival Poet

●

There were no royalties for writers at this time…..

…..and, unlike her father, King Henry VIII, Queen Elizabeth’s budget for the arts was pitiful….

In fact, her Court was known as the most barbarous in Europe……

So unless you found a Patron, you starved……

……as Robert Greene……..

…….. one of Shakespeare’s early collaborators, found to his cost….

He was taken in by a kindly cobbler and his wife who found him bankrupt and dying in the streets of London…

Shakespeare claimed Harry’s Patronage for himself in his Dedication to Venus and Adonis…..

I know not how I shall offend in dedicating my unpolished lines to your Lordship, nor how the world will censure me for choosing so strong a prop to support so weak a burden….

He next claimed Harry’s love for himself  in his Dedication to Lucrece…..

The love I dedicate to your Lordship is without end…..What I have done is yours, what I have to do is yours…..

However, the Rival Poet was determined to replace Shakespeare on Harry’s payroll…..

……and in Harry’s heart…..

…….by writing poems which flatterred Harry even more than Shakespeare had done.

Shakespeare set out to destroy this Rival….

He claimed that the Rival’s affection for Harry was based entirely on artifice….

……that his love was inspired by a painting of Harry rather than by Harry himself….

……and that……

stirred by a painted beauty to his verse

……he used language and imagery which  was bogus and overblown…..

Who was he?

Many scholars put forward the name of Christopher Marlowe….

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 86 certainly begins……

Was it the proud full sail of his great verse,

Bound for the prize of all-too-precious you…..

…..which sounds as though Shakespeare is satirising…

…..what Ben Jonson described as….

Marlowe’s mighty line…..

Marlowe would have known Harry. 

Their dates crossed at Cambridge University……

……and both were attractive, out, gay men…..

Marlowe even went so far as to say……

They be mad that love not tobacco and boys…..

In his great, erotic, unfinished masterpiece, Hero and Leander, Marlowe describes how Leander nightly swims the Hellespont to sleep with his beloved Hero….

 But in Marlowe’s version of this story, the naked Leander is fondled, as he swims, by the lecherous old ‘sapphire-visaged’ King Neptune who…..

……clapped his [Leander’s] plump cheeks, with his tresses played,

And smiling wantonly, his love betrayed.

He watch’d his arms, and as they opened wide

At every stroke betwixt them would he slide

And steal a kiss, and then run out and dance….

Leander himself, in Marlowe’s description, is a dead ringer for Harry himself with….

His dangling tresses that were never shorn,

Had they been cut, and unto Colchos borne,

Would have allured the ven’trous youth of Greece

To hazard more than for the Golden Fleece….

Marlowe adds:

Some swore he was a maid in man’s attire,

For in his looks were all that men desire,

A pleasant smiling cheek, a speaking eye,

A brow for love to banquet royally;

And such as knew he was a man would say,

‘Leander, thou art made for amorous play:

Why art thou not in love, and loved of all?

Though thou be fair, yet be not thine own thrall…..

That Harry resembled a girl in drag is the theme of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 20……

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

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

And in Sonnet 53 Shakespeare writes….

On Helen’s [Helen of Troy] cheek all art of beauty set

And you in Grecian tires are painted new….

Also, Marlowe’s plea to Leander…..

……. that he fall in love with someone other than himself…..

……. exactly mirrors Shakespeare’s Birthday Sonnets to Harry…..

Countess Mary herself might have asked Marlowe to encourage Harry to go to bed with girls…

……as she had asked Shakespeare…..

But Marlowe CANNOT be the Rival Poet for FOUR reasons:

1. Marlowe died too early.

He was killed, in an argument over the bill (‘le reckenynge’), in a room in a house in Deptford, on 30th May, 1593. 

The Shakespeare Sonnets that were written to Harry run from 1590 to the Coronation of James in 1604….

…. and beyond.

The Rival Poet arrived on the scene when Shakespeare was beginning to tire of writing the praise which Harry so needed.

The Rival’s outpourings force Shakespeare to excuse his own ‘silence’ on the grounds that Harry’s ‘worth’ is self-evident…..

 …..so it does not need the praise of poetry….

Shakespeare acts out his love for Harry in his LIFE!

Indeed……

When others [the Rival Poet] would give life…..

….they in fact, Shakespeare claims….

bring a tomb….

In 1593, when Marlowe died, Shakespeare was just beginning his affair with Harry……

…..and dashing off Sonnet after Sonnet to him….

No rival at that time could be described as expressing ‘more’ to Harry than Shakespeare was…

…..or expressing it  ‘more’ often….

…..as Shakespeare admits his Rival does in Sonnnet 21.

2. Shakespeare worshipped Marlowe……

….and so would never have criticised him as he criticises The Rival Poet….

Touchstone, in As You Like It, refers directly to Marlowe’s death when he addresses Audrey:

It strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room. Truly I would the Gods had made thee poetical.

And Phebe, in love with Rosalind dressed as a boy, refers to Marlowe as the…..

Dead Shepherd

…….equating him with Christ…..

 …..and quotes directly from Hero and Leander….

Whoever lov’d that lov’d not at first sight…..

At Leander’s first meeting with Hero, Marlowe describes how…..

He kneeled, but unto her devoutly prayed;

Chaste Hero to herself thus softly said:

‘Were I the saint he worships, I would hear him.

He started up, she blushed as one ashamed;

Wherewith Leander much more was inflamed.

He touch’d her hand, in touching it she trembled:

Love deeply grounded hardly is dissembled.

These lovers parléd by the touch of hands;

True love is mute, and oft amazéd stands….

Romeo’s first meeting with Juliet is identical:

He says:

If I profane with my unworthiest hand

This holy shrine……

……the gentle sin is this,

My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand

To smooth the rough touch with a gentle kiss…..

Juliet replies:

Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,

Which mannerly devotion shows in this;

For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,

And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss….

Indeed, in Sonnet 31, when Shakespeare, in his own voice, talks, Marlowe-like, about the

 holy and obsequious

……tears  which….

….dear religious love

……has stolen from his eyes  for dead friends….

…..Your Cat believes he had Kit Marlowe in mind….

3. Marlowe didn’t need Harry’s money.

Even as an undergraduate at Corpus Christi, Cambridge, Marlowe spent more in the bar than his contemporaries. 

He was paid by Lord Burghley to spy on Catholic activity at Rheims seminary…

After the Armada, when theatre work was hard to find, there is good evidence Marlowe was employed by Bess of Hardwick as a tutor to Arbella……

Just as Shakespeare was by the Countess of Southampton as tutor to Harry….

And Thomas Kyd by Lord Strange as tutor to his daughters….

And, at his death in 1593, Marlowe had his own patron……

….Thomas Walsingham…..

….whose father had been related to the great spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham….

Thomas Walsinham, a third son, had unexpectedly come into money in 1598 when he inherited the moated Scadbury Manor in Kent.

He was able to pay off his own debts……

….. and look after his friends…..

It was the year after The Armada when Marlowe, who was about the same age as Walsingham, would have been looking for support….

4. Marlowe didn’t need Harry’s love….

At his death, Marlowe was actually living with Walsingham at Scadbury, seven miles away from Deptford where he was killed…

…..a fact even known to the Privy Council who sent a messenger to Scadbury to find him…

He was by then notorious as a homosexual…..

…..and had also been accused of atheism by an enemy…..

Even the publisher and writer, Henry Chettle, writing of the ‘offence’ taken by both Shakespeare and Marlowe at the publication of A Groates-worthe of Witte,  states:

With neither of them was I acquainted and with one of them [Marlowe] I care not if I ever be…..

 According to Shakespeare’s publisher, Edward Blount……

……who dedicated the first printed version of Hero and Leander to Walsingham after Marlowe’s death….

……Walsingham had a completely different view of Marlowe. He….

…..bestowed many kind favours [on Marlowe] entertaining the parts of reckoning and worth which [he] found in him, with good countenance and liberal affection….

Blount also describes how, when the….

first issue of [Marlowe’s] brain should chance to come abroad….the first breath it should take might be the gentle air of [Walsingham’s] liking…..

Given this level of intimacy……

….and Marlowe’s militant gay advocacy….

…..this relationship between Patron and protégé must have included gay sex….

Indeed, gay sex (pace the Conspiracy Theorists) was the most likely cause of Marlowe’s death….

The Corononer’s Report – which the brilliant researcher, Leslie Hotson, discovered in 1925 – states that four men, including Marlowe, arrived at the widow Eleanor Bull’s house in Deptford at 10 a.m. on 30th May….

They had ‘dinner’ at 12 p.m., wandered in the garden ‘in quiet sort’ till 6 p.m. and then returned to their room and ate ‘supper’.

Afterwards Marlowe, who was lying on a bed in the room, got into an argument about the bill with one Ingram ffrysar, who was sitting with his back to Marlowe, between the other two men….

Marlowe – ‘moved with anger’ – seized ffrysar’s dagger – which was hanging behind his back and stabbed him ‘maliciously’ in the head. 

ffrysar, caught between the other two men, turned, seized the dagger from Marlowe and gave him a fatal wound above his right eye….

…..of the depth of two inches and the width of one inch……

So, a group of four men are together for at least NINE hours and consume TWO meals (presumably with alcohol) in a PRIVATE ROOM WHICH CONTAINS A BED…. 

It needs no Sherlock Holmes come from the grave……..

….. to detect gay goings-on….

….especially when we learn that one of the men, Nicholas Skeres, was part of the Earl of Essex’s brazenly bi-sexual entourage….

…..which counted Captain Pearse Edmones, Harry’s ‘rough-trade’ lover, amongst its numbers….

And that ffrysar himself, like Marlowe, was PART OF THOMAS WALSINGHAM’S ENTOURAGE….

……and so a possible love-rival……

……and cash-rival….

……to Kit Marlowe…..

And just in case you think Your Cat is going off her head….

…….just read the words of Francis Meres…..

……the literator, priest and gossip…..

…… witten in his Palladis Tamia a mere FIVE YEARS after the events in Deptford:

[Marlowe was] stabbed to death by a bawdy serving-man, a rival of his in his lewd love….

Your Cat’s case rests…..

‘Bye, now…..

TO DISCOVER THE TRUE IDENTITY OF THE RIVAL POET, PLEASE CLICK: here.

To read ‘The Dedication to Shakespeare’s Sonnets Decoded’, please click: HERE

To read ‘Why did Shakespeare write The Sonnets?’, please click: HERE

To read ‘Trixie the Cat’s Guide to the Sonnets’. (1) Background Jottings, please click: HERE

To read ‘Trixie the Cat’s Guide to the Sonnets’. (2) The Birthday Sonnets, please click: HERE

It is with great pleasure that the Agents of The Shakespeare Code announce that on Friday, 19th October, The Code received its…….

SIXTY-FIVE THOUSANDTH VIEW!!!

TWO NEW COUNTRIES joined……

AFGHANISTAN

and MOROCCO….

They are most welcome.

This brings the number of participating countries to a jaw-dropping……

ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY-EIGHT!!!

 To celebrate, The Agents have decided to induct PETER ACKROYD, C. B. E.

……..into their coveted ROLL OF HONOUR…….

Brothers and Sisters of The Code will need little reminding that Mr. Ackroyd is an eminent English poet, novelist, biographer and essayist……

In his MAGISTERIAL Shakespeare: The Biography……

……he writes:

He [Shakespeare] may have worked for the young nobleman [Henry Wriothesley, Third Earl of Southampton] at Southampton House along Chancery Lane, but there are many scholars who have found buried allusions to the family estate at Titchfield in Hampshire in the texts of the plays at this period……

Ackroyd here gives directions to an endnote which reads…..

See in particular Stewart Trotter – Love’s Labour’s Found…..

He continues…..

It would have been more sensible and appropriate to have have removed to the country at the time of the plague in London…..

The Shakespeare Code wishes to extend its thanks and good wishes to this distinguished Man of Letters…..

IN VINCULIS INVICTUS!!!

 A WARNING FROM TRIXIE THE CAT

Brothers and Sisters of The Code are advised NOT to buy copies of Love’s Labour’s Found from on-line dealers……

……some of whom are currently charging $199.96 for ONE USED COPY……

An ENTIRELY NEW version of the book is currently being prepared by The Chief Agent…..

It will be issued at a price WELL WITHIN THE MEANS of the world-wide Brother and Sisterhood of The Shakespeare Code…….

…..and contain COMPLETELY NEW RESEARCH!!!

And don’t forget, the OUTRAGEOUS TALES FROM THE PALACE THEATRE……

Click: HERE and HERE.

……is published on 1st November……

Order your lavishly illustrated, hardback copy NOW from the lovely Lisa Peacock at The Book Inn at Leigh-on-Sea  (01702-716614)…..

 thebookinn@talktalkbusiness.net

….and tell her Trixie the Cat sent you……

(The price is £20 plus Postage and Packing. All profits will go to The Palace Theatre Club for the maintenance of the fabric of The Theatre itself)

NO SELF-RESPECTING THEATRICAL COFFEE TABLE SHOULD BE WITHOUT ONE!!!

‘Bye, now…..

Note: This Post follows directly on from: 60,000 VIEWS, 11 NEW COUNTRIES AND THE APPOINTMENT OF CHARLES SHARMAN-COX, F. S. C.

 Actor PAUL GREENHALGH ….

……. was only 24 when he encountered PETER ALEXANDER RITCHIE BRIDGE….

……….who ran The Palace Theatre , Westcliff, from 1965 to 1969.

Paul’s agent had fixed an audition for him at Mr. Bridge’s  flat in Notting Hill, London…

…..where Paul takes up the story…..

PAUL’S TALE

The flat was very strange and very dark…..

……..Peter used to pretend that he was into Satan and black magic….

He once said to me:

I woke up one morning and the wall was covered with blood.

But it was just a case of terrible damp when you went in to see it…..

…….just a big streak of wet wall which needed a damp course.

I loved Peter, but he was a terrible liar. 

He had a secretary called Hilary Clulow. When you went to meet him, he used to say:

Oh, Hilary, would you just get this contract off to Diana Dors…..

…..and….

Oh, take this contract off to Mandy Miller….

…….a famous child star then. It just happened that I knew Mandy Miller, so I rang her up.

Of course, she knew nothing about it…..

They called it Weekly Rep, but in reality you didn’t have a whole week to put on a play.

With Peter you started rehearsals on the Tuesday and you had two matinees during the week, Wednesday and Saturday. So those afternoons were gone because you finished rehearsing about twelve.

Peter had a very short attention span. He would be very keen on the first morning of rehearsals…….

………but by four o’clock in the afternoon he had totally lost interest……

He would be eating cream cakes in the foyer.

Peter directed one play – I think it was an Agatha Christie – which he hadn’t read.

He didn’t read half the things he directed….

Very often we didn’t even have a run through….

At the Dress Rehearsal on the Monday, you would go in and the set would be half up. Then about half past three you might start to vaguely go through it. Often we never even got to the end.

Sometimes they would drop the curtain and we would carry on doing the Dress Rehearsal while the audience was coming in…..

At times, Roz Elvyn [the Acting A.S.M.] would hide behind the sofa with a book in her hand, feeding me the lines. 

I do remember once there was a play with a lot of telephone calls. I would pick the phone up and say

 Hello

…..and I’d think:

Who is this? What am I supposed to say?

Michael Hyatt, the Stage Manager who sat in the prompt corner, would hold up cards telling me who was on the other end of the line….

On one first night Peter had a meeting to go to so he didn’t turn up. He never came to see the show during the week because he couldn’t be bothered. He had directed a show that he never saw….

We never read the stage directions in the plays.

We would simply wait for Peter to say:

You come on over there.

Then he would let you do what you liked…..

He would say:

Oh, I want you over here.

And then you’d have to find a way of getting there.

He did have a very good eye for things.  He was very good at making pictures on the stage….

I’m sure Peter fiddled the finances….

When he got big stars down, he always paid them in cash….

June Bronhill, for instance…….

.

…..got her money in a brown envelope. I think she thought:

If I don’t get it in cash, I’m never going to get it….

Peter, and this sounds terribly arrogant, was in love with me.  Everybody thought that we were lovers, everybody, and it was completely untrue.  He just, for some reason, loved me. He wanted to turn me into the ‘Star of Southend.’

I loved Peter. I absolutely loved him. I really did.  And although he was in love with me, he never tried to make a pass at me, ever.  But he did everything in his power to keep people away from me.  If he thought anybody was getting too close, he would sack them….

The other thing Peter used to do, and this is something we discovered quite early on, was cause trouble. He would go to everybody and say:

Oh, you know so-and-so says this about you.

And for a few weeks we all really didn’t like each other. ..

He had a deep, deep love of the theatre.  He loved everything about it and had a great knowledge of plays.  He would come up with some that I had never heard of.  And he knew all the authors and where they had been produced

Because he had this love of the theatre, his parents thought:

Oh, we’ll buy him one.

Norman, his dad, was extremely wealthy and his mother, Eileen Farrow……..

…….was a dreadful contralto who always sang as though she had a pound of plums in her mouth. 

She was like Hyacinth Bucket.  She had this posh voice which she would drop out of at times.

She kept bees in her garden and would say:

 Oh, I’m going ’ome to get the ’oney……

Then, as she was leaving, she would turn around and say:

Good neet.

Once, in the middle of a performance of Robert and Elizabeth, Peter was having trouble with a scene change. He sent ‘Mother’ out to cover by singing……

She chose a song from Show Boat – which had nothing to do with the show – but sang…..

Birds gotta swim, fish gotta fly…..

When the mistake was later pointed out to her, she didn’t turn a hair.

She thought no-one had noticed.

Norman was in charge of the finances and had his office at The Theatre. I loved Norman. He was absolutely adorable….

But I came in one day during the first week of the pantomime rehearsals and found the Stage Manager and the ASM sitting on the stairs, crying with laughter. 

And I said:

What’s the matter?

And they replied: ‘

We’ve just gone to Norman for money for props for the pantomime and he’s given us a pound.

A pound to prop the entire panto! 

Peter, on the other hand, was the complete opposite….. 

He would say things like:

Oh, we need a horse here.

And, lo and behold!, someone would turn up with a horse. We had one in Adventure Story – a play about Alexander the Great…….

As Alexander, I had to come on riding Bucephalus, who was famously white. But they couldn’t get a white horse so I had to make do with a brown one….

Alexander also always wore a red cloak, but they couldn’t get a red cloak either. So I had a white one.

……And the horse came on, led by a man in a costume which didn’t reach the floor, so you could see his trainers.

On the first night, the horse shat and pissed everywhere, which summed up the production.

To be honest, it wasn’t that bad…..

All the costumes were from the film of Antony and Cleopatra. I had all Richard Burton’s outfits. This was a great idea, but none of them fitted me.

All the old ladies at the matinees would applaud when I came on with these wonderful outfits……..

…….but I couldn’t turn my back to them because I was all held together with safety pins….

Peter wanted to be Diaghilev and that’s what he looked like. He used to wear black coats down to the ground. But he couldn’t quite carry it off. He was like a twelve year old.

For instance, he brought down Elsie Randolph, a Musical Star…….

…….to play in Hay Fever. We actually managed to do a run through of this production, but at the end she went forward to ask Peter for notes……

He was lying in the second row with his feet up, fast asleep… 

Peter did manage to get audiences for his productions…..

…… and he would get stars to play in them.

I remember one day he said:

Oh, I want to do A Taste of Honey.

He always chose plays that had a good part for me.

We asked:

So who is going to play the girl?

He was getting frustrated with us, so blurted out:

 Una Stubbs.

And we thought,

Yes I bet. Una Stubbs.

And, lo and behold, who turned up on the Monday  morning but Una Stubbs!

He had employed Oriel Ross……

…… who was Max Reinhardt’s leading lady. I don’t know how she had been his leading lady because she was just a piss-artist, drunk most of the time…..

She would always make her entrance through the fireplace – because she couldn’t get the idea that it wasn’t a door.  So in the end Peter just let her do it. Every night she would come on, carrying a basket of flowers, through this huge stone fireplace. 

Jessie Matthews and Wee Georgie Wood came down to do Palace of Varieties.  Some of these stars were absolutely delightful and some of them weren’t. 

Jessie Matthews wasn’t particularly nice….

Chili Bouchier was a Film Star in the 40’s and she came down to do Gigi. I didn’t like her very much either. 

She was one of those actresses who, when she acted, looked at the top of your head. ….

She never, ever looked you in the eye. I was doing a scene with her and the set was very dark.

Peter suddenly said:

Oh, Chili, I think we will have a lime on you here.

And she replied:

Oh, how lovely.

I was even more in darkness than she was, so I said:

What about my effing lime? 

She looked as if she could have killed me…. 

So for the rest of the show, there was Chili Bouchier in a limelight…..

 ……..a hissing stick of sodium which burnt so brightly it almost blinded you…..

………while all the rest of us were dancing around in the dark…..

When Peter did My Fair Lady I went to The Theatre to see a rehearsal. The poor man playing Professor Higgins was in a terrible state….

Peter had said to him:

Step forward here and the cloth will come down behind you. Then you do your song in front of the cloth.

When it came to the Dress Rehearsal, the cloth wasn’t there.

Peter said:

Come on, come forward.

And the actor replied: ‘

I thought you said the cloth was coming down behind me?

And Peter said: ‘

Can you see it up there?

And the actor replied:

No.

So Peter said:

 Well it won’t be coming down then, will it?…..

I loved Clarkson Rose, the great pantomime dame……..

…….and he loved me……..

I was no threat to him.  He had worked with all those incredible principal boys, Norman Wisdom and people like that, who had stolen the show from him. Of course, I didn’t. 

I just did exactly what I was told…. 

I had this wonderful letter from him saying:

You are the best Principal Boy I have ever worked with.….

When people took against Peter, they really hated him; but I never knew how anyone could hate him, even when he was being a monster….

And believe it or not, he would write his own reviews for the local paper.  I don’t know how he got them in there, but they were always glowing, especially about me and Mother.

We received rave reviews, week after week after week. I don’t know who they thought he was, unless, of course, he was paying somebody.

He called himself Peter Quartermain…..

The Palace has the most fantastic stage to act on. It’s what you imagine a real theatre should be, beautiful and really, really intimate. You feel as though you are wearing it when you are performing. There isn’t a dead seat in the house.

All the Fans used to come and sit in the Gallery……

Towards the end Peter had got a terrible reputation in Southend.  A lot of people were out to get him. 

The Council didn’t get their rent and that was probably the trouble…..

Peter’s Dad had also run out of money and just couldn’t continue….

Peter’s last production was a Palace of Varieties called The Last Laugh.

I kept in touch with Peter and did tours of Novello musicals for him……..

…….He thought I was the re-incarnation of  the body of Ivor……

…..while he had inherited the soul……

The dates, of course, don’t tally at all…..

I’m not particularly proud of the productions I did for Peter. But I’m proud of the fact that we went through it all and survived.

If you got a group of people together now and said:

Right, we are going to put Adventure Story on by next Monday…

…..I mean, you wouldn’t even dream of it……

I went to Peter’s funeral. Mother……

……. had banned everyone from the service who had fallen out with him. ….

She believed everything Peter said, you, see.  As far as she was concerned, Peter could do no wrong.

Peter should have stayed the rich boy who directed all the amateurs. 

That’s what he should have done.

He would have been great at that.

●

Tales from The Palace Theatre (ISBN 978-0-9574075-0-3) ………

…..is now available at £25.99 a copy….

…..which includes postage and packing in Great Britain…..

All profits from this lavishly illustrated book will go directly to THE PALACE THEATRE CLUB…..

…….for the upkeep of the fabric of the GRADE II LISTED BUILDING…..

…….The Palace Theatre Westcliff…..

The book is on sale at The Palace Theatre…..

Please send a cheque made payable to The Palace Theatre Club to the lovely GEORGIE PERKINS,

The House  Manager, The Palace Theatre, 430, London Road, Southend-on-Sea, Essex SSO 9LA

The book is also available from the equally lovely LISA PEACOCK at:

The Book Inn,

49, Broadway West,

Leigh-on-Sea,

SS9 2BX

England

Telephone: 01702-716614

For on-line orders: thebookinn@talktalkbusiness.net

Tell them Trixie the Cat sent you!!!

‘Bye, now….

Michael Hyatt writes:

Dear Trixie,

I was in Alexander (Peter) Bridge’s first season at Westcliff and was there again for the latter half of his second.I arrived at the same time as Marilyn Chenney, who has added a very funny comment here.  We were both ASM’s and spent the week before rehearsal started washing down the dressing room walls.Paul Greenhalgh has remained one of my closest friends and there is hardly a time when we are together that Westcliff is not mentioned.   Mounting 25 productions in as many weeks without a single day off was very hard work  but, I would not have missed it for the world.  All the permanent company got on so well and regardless of the hard work we did have lots and lots of laughs.   We did some very good things despite the fact that everything had to be done in a week.  The productions always looked good thanks to the talent and ingenuity of our set designer John Page. At the start of rehearsals one week John went to father, NormanBridge, to ask for money for curtains, ‘What do you want new curtains for?’ Norman replied.  ‘You had new curtains last week’. Without the professionalism and respect we had for each other we would not have survived.  Everything I learned at Westcliff carried me through the rest of my theatre career.

Marilyn Aslani (Cheney) writes:

Dear Trixie,

I’ve cried laughing at Paul’s stories. I joined Alexander Bridge in 1965 as an ASM for the first six months, then found myself playing leading roles, such as Irma La Douce and Corrie in Barefoot in the Park. Meeting stars like, Hetty King, Ronnie Shiner, Gladys Henson and Sandy Powell was a weekly occurrence. When I was in charge of props Peter would send me off to find, numerous live animals, including a horse, a St Bernard, an Afghan Hound and a goat. The latter would eat scripts left on the props table and butt everyone on it’s way to the stage. When it shat on stage, the rake sent it’s pellets bouncing down to the footlights, which they bounced off of and launched into the orchestra pit and the laps of the front row punters! I’ll never forget ‘Mother Bridge’ rapping on the piano in rehearsal, to halt our singing. In her best Hinge and Bracket voice she announced, “Just a minute, someone is singing different from like what I am”! God bless them all for some of the happiest years of my life.

To read what The Critics have to say about Tales from The Palace Theatre please click: HERE.

The Agents of The Shakespeare Code are delighted to report that….

……at Mid-day on Tuesday, 25th September, 2012….

…The Code received its……

SIXTY-THOUSANDTH VIEW!!!

ELEVEN new Countries also joined The Code……

ENTIRELY OF THEIR OWN VOLITION….

These happy lands and isles are:

MALAWI

SAINT LUCIA

CAYMAN ISLANDS

THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA

UGANDA

BOLIVIA

OMAN

THE CO-OPERATIVE REPUBLIC OF GUYANA

ISLE OF MAN

MARTINIQUE

ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA

This brings the number of participating countries to…..

ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY SIX!!!

To celebrate, the Agents of The Shakespeare Code have decided to award a new Fellowship……

….. to the distinguished writer, director, producer, sportsman and gentleman…..

CHARLES SHARMAN-COX

 ……who now enjoys the INALIENABLE RIGHT to append the letters ‘F.S.C.’ (Fellow of The Shakespeare Code) to his name…

Charles…….

…….known affectionately as ‘Charlie’…….

…….is an Alumnus of the celebrated Southend High School for Boys……

…..whose Old Boys include The Kursaal Flyers, the guy who wrote A Whiter Shade of Pale, the Wimbledon Tennis Umpire who told John McEnroe where to get off and Code Chief Agent Stewart Trotter…..

Southend-on-Sea is a sea-side town on the Thames Estuary in Essex, England, once famous for its Pier……

……… and its punch-ups………

Charlie  began his theatrical career, filling every conceivable post, at the ravishingly beautiful Palace Theatre at Westcliff…..

……another Estuary town next door to Southend….

……but a bit grander…..

Charlie has since triumphed in all three media of stage, film and  television…..

 …..with works as diverse as Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray, Bill Bryson’s The Lost Continent……

……. and Catherine Muschamps The Mother of the Pride.

His  hauntingly bittersweet Los Angeles film, Take Me With You…..

….. has received an ‘Accolade Award for Excellence in Film-making’ at the Honolulu International Film Festival……

…… and was nominated for best short film in the LGBT category at the Swansea Film Festival. 

Charlie was also one of the founding members of The Palace Theatre Guild which was formed in 2005…….

……..when the Southend Council, for no good reason, closed the Palace Theatre…..

The Guild’s aim was a simple one……

………to get it open again….

Dame Helen Mirren became The Guild’s Patron….

……a local Westcliff girl who, even as a schoolgirl at St. Bernard’s Convent…..

……was famed for her talent and beauty….

Indeed , her Cleopatra for the National Youth Theatre in 1965….

…..was admired at every level by Stewart Trotter, then a schoolboy….

Charlie raised THOUSANDS of pounds for The Guild by staging a concert version of A Christmas Carol ……

…..and The Guild finally triumphed…..

The Palace Theatre is now open again for business…..

…….and likely to remain so for many years to come…..

This year is also The Theatre’s Centenary…..

1912-2012….

…….so, to celebrate, Charlie (along with Rachel Lichtenstein and Stewart Trotter) has compiled a book entitled…..

TALES FROM THE PALACE THEATRE

………which LIFTS THE LID on theatre politics…..

……..in a way that NO OTHER BOOK HAS DONE BEFORE!!!

This is because Charles Sharman-Cox, F. S. C., has……

…….COAXED THE TRUTH….. 

……..from everyone he spoke to…..

Indeed, the resulting manuscript was SO EXPLOSIVE it had to be vetted by a team of top show-biz lawyers…

In recognition of this…….

….STUPENDOUS ACHIEVEMENT…..

…..The Agents of The Code sent Trixie the Cat down to Westcliff …….

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

…….in conditions of the UTMOST SECRECY……..

TRIXIE’S TAIL

Brothers and Sisters of The Code……

If you think Charles looks sexy and smouldering in his photographs…..

YOU SHOULD SEE HIM IN REAL LIFE!!!

HE CYCLES UP THE PYRENEES!!!

 

I called on him at his beautiful home in Westcliff…..

…….which contrives to be both BOHEMIAN and IMMACULATE….

……where he was in the middle of hosting an ELEGANT fish and chip supper….

……with guests composed of writers, artists, intellectuals, potters, architects, lawyers and a Bishop of the Church of England ….

…..the crême de la crême of the Southend seafront.

I persuaded Charlie to take a turn with me in his garden……

…… while his guests tucked into some of the best fish batter Your Cat has EVER tasted…..

……..and offered him his Fellowship….

Charlie stopped dead in his tracks.

A Fellowship?

……he whispered….

…..from The Code?’

I waggled my ears…

He slumped into a garden seat…..

For a moment I thought we had lost him….

I jumped into his lap…..

He slowly revived….

…….then started to stroke me…..

……and seemed to gain strength from that simple act….

Finally he spoke….

Trixie, over the years I have received some notable accolades….

……a Leaping Wolf badge from the Cubs, a Richmond Avenue Junior School certificate for swimming 25 yards, the Peggy Bachelor Cup for verse speaking…..

……but these awards  pale into insignificance when compared to becoming a Fellow of the Shakespeare Code….

He savoured his Honour…..

CSC FSC …..

It doesn’t get better than that….

Hot tears began to mingle with my fur…..

But suddenly Charlie arose….

……full of  purpose and resolve…….

……hurling Your Cat into the rhododendrons….

Trixie – I must attend to my guests…..I’m taking them to Cinema Night at The Palace Theatre….

Charlie, stop!

…I cried…..

Sensing the urgency of my tone…

……he obeyed….

You love The Palace Theatre very much, don’t you?

Charlie turned….

She’s made me the man I am today….

With that he was gone……

…..lost to Your Cat……..

….. in the swirl of the Estuary Glitterati……

●

Charlie’s first act as a Fellow has been a generous one indeed….

He has allowed The Shakespeare Code to publish a SNEAK PREVIEW of Tales from The Palace Theatre….

The Code will shortly be posting extracts from….

 PAUL’S TALE

……an OUTRAGEOUS account by……

PAUL GREENHALGH

  …….of his days as a Leading Man in WEEKLY REP……

…….. at The Palace Theatre in the 1960’s…..

But Your Cat doesn’t like the look of those dogs…..

So she’s signing off….

‘Bye, now…..

 

To read ‘Paul’s Tale’ please click: HERE.

A Warning from Trixie the Cat.

THIS POST MIGHT OFFEND PURITANS!!!

When William Shakespeare was writing……

….Puritanism was the new kid on the block…..

It taught that everything had been pre-determined by God….

….(even whether you were going to heaven or hell)…

….that all sex outside marriage was sinful….

….and that some sex WITHIN marriage was sinful….

…..if you enjoyed it too much…

Shakespeare hated Puritanism….

He came from the Old Catholic tradition of sin and repentance….

….where man was fallible and needed to be forgiven…..

….again and again and again….

Puritans in Shakespeare’s plays…..

…..like Angelo in Measure for Measure….

….come to sticky ends…

They are too good to be true….

Shakespeare’s work is filled with redemption….

Character after character in his plays finally sees the light….

….about himself and the situation he is in…..

….even if, in worldly terms……

….the light comes too late…..

Man, for Shakespeare, comes as a package:

As the First Lord says in All’s Well that Ends Well…

The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together. Our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not, and crimes would despair if they were not cherished by our virtues…

Shakespeare was also writing before the Industrial Revolution……

…..and before the prudery of Victorian England……

…..so he was more in touch with the natural world….

Anyone who had watched a bull mounting a cow……

…….couldn’t get too hot under the collar about human sex….

And anyone who had seen a cow mounting another cow….

….couldn’t get too hot under the collar about gay sex either…

Geoffrey Chaucer….

…..was the ENGLISH writer who most influenced Shakespeare…..

…..and Ovidius Naso…..

….Ovid….

……was the ROMAN one….

In fact , Francis Meres, writing in 1598, went so far as to say…..

…the sweet, witty soul of Ovid lives in the mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare…..

Both Chaucer and Ovid NOTORIOUSLY wrote about sex…..

Meres goes on to describe Shakespeare as:

one of the most passionate anong us to bewail and bemoan the perplexities of love

But, as we shall see, Brothers and Sisters of The Code, Shakespeare bewails and bemoans it in a way that is UTTERLY HIS OWN!!!

●

THE BIRTHDAY SONNETS

As we know from…..

Trixie the Cat’s Guide to The Sonnets: (1) Background Jottings

…..Mary Southampton, 2^nd Countess of Southampton……

…..commissioned Shakespeare to write seventeen Sonnets for her son, Henry Wriothesley –  Harry Southampton’s  – seventeenth birthday….

…….to convince him to get married.

The Countess Mary’s motive was largely political….

Harry’s guardian, Queen Elizabeth’s Secretary of State, Lord Burghley….

…..was threatening a £5,000 fine if Harry did not consent to marry his grand-daughter……

…..the Lady Elizabeth de Vere…..

SHAKESPEARE’S CHALLENGES

In carrying out Countess Mary’s commission, Shakespeare was faced with FOUR problems….

1. He had never written a Sonnet before!!!

Sonnets were all the rage at Wilton House………

….run by Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke……

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

The Countess’s brother, the late Sir Philip Sidney…….

……had developed the Sonnet form…..

…..brought into England from Italy by English aristocrats…..

…..in his Astrophil and Stella Sequence…….

…..in praise of Penelope Rich…….

Samuel Daniel……

…….the Countess’s protégé, had just produced his Delia Sequence….

…….in praise of the Countess of Pembroke….

So Shakespeare knew that his work would be judged by…..

THE HIGHEST POSSIBLE STANDARDS….

Also….

2. Shakespeare knew that his work would be read by a wide circle of aristocrats……

……AND ROYALTY!!!

Mary had commissioned Shakespeare to show Lord Burghley she was taking his side on the marriage proposal….

So she would send him a copy….

…….and he would show it to the Queen….

 

She wanted the long-haired Papist, Harry, married off to a nice Protestant girl…..

Mary Southampton would also be unable to resist the temptation of sending a copy to Mary Herbert……

….. to show that Titchfield had ‘out-Sonneted’ Wilton….

3.  Shakepeare was a social inferior to Harry…..

……..and wouled be forced to tell him…..

……THINGS HE DIDN’T WANT TO HEAR!!!

This brings us on to the fourth…..

…..and biggest problem for Shakespeare……

4.  HARRY DIDN’T LIKE GIRLS!!!

….even though he looked like one…

Shakespeare solved these problems……

IN A FLASH!!!

By using…..

FLATTERY,

CODE

and CHUTZPAH!!!

1. FLATTERY…..

The most important person to flatter was Mary, Countess of Southampton…..

So Shakespeare compliments her in Sonnet 3…..

Thou [Harry] art they mother’s glass, and she in thee

Calls back the lovely April of her prime……

Mary hated her dead husband, the 2nd Earl, but Harry adored him……

So the 2nd Earl gets a brief , neutral nod in the conclusion to Sonnet 13….

You [Harry] had a father; let your son say so….

But it was Harry who needed the most flattery….

Shakespeare couldn’t use the NORMAL argument used to persuade men to marry…

….the attractiveness of the opposite sex…

….because Harry WASN’T NORMAL!

So Shakespeare had to invert the argument…

Harry MUST get married…..

BECAUSE HE HIMSELF WAS SO ATTRACTIVE!!!

His beauty must NOT be allowed to go to waste…

…..and it goes to waste because Harry spends his time…..

….. either having gay sex….

…..or ‘abusing’ himself….

But how can Shakespeare address these issues in a Sonnet……

…..especially one that is going to be read by the Queen of England?

Answer?

He employs…..

2. CODE…

…..of which there are four rules…..

(a) Money can symbolise semen….

(b) Dying can symbolise orgasm…

(c) The face (and its features) can symbolise the genitals…

……..both male and female….

……..as can…..

(d) ANY EUPHEMISTIC SYMBOL drafted in for the purpose….

…..often in a witty way….

In the very first Sonnet, Shakespeare writes…

Thou [Harry] that art now the world’s fresh ornament,

And only herald to the gaudy spring,

Within thine own bud buriest thy content….

What is Harry’s ‘bud’?

How is he ‘burying his content’?

In the second line of the Sonnet, Shakespeare calls Harry…

beauty’s rose…

This is a reference to the heraldic roses of the City of Southampton….

…….whose freedom Southampton was about to be given….

It’s also a reference to the extraodinary way the aristocratic branch of the Wriothesley family pronounced its name…..

Wriothesley….

…became…

Ryosely

The cadet branch of the family made do with ‘Risley’….

‘Bud’ obviously picks up the rose imagery….

But, for Shakespeare’s well-educated readers…..

…….a rose would suggest something else as well.…

In the Medieval French The Romance of the Rose…..

……which Chaucer had translated…

……the lover enters a symbolic garden……

……to pluck a rose….

…….which symbolises his lover’s pudend…..

So ‘bud’ would be taken as a euphemism for Harry’s own penis…

This explains the paradox the Sonnet puts forward in its next line…..

And, tender churl, [Harry] makes waste in niggarding….

How can you make ‘waste’ by being ‘niggardly’ [mean]?

If money represents semen, then….

….the answer is……

by masturbating…

By emitting semen without utilising it…

….i.e. using it to impregnate a woman…..

….you ‘waste’ it….

Sonnet 4 develops this idea….

Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend

Upon thyself thy beauty’s legacy….

Shakespeare also makes another reference to Harry’s sex  organ….

…..with yet another euphemism….

Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse

The bounteous largesse given thee to give…

‘Bounteous largesse’ is a flattering, oblique reference to the size of Harry’s organ…

Shakespeare then goes on to imply that Harry masturbates excessively:

Profitless usurer [moneylender] why dost thou use

So great a sum of sums yet can’st not live….

Shakespeare continues…

For having traffic with thyself alone

Thou of thyself, thy sweet self doth deceive….

The ‘sweet self’ here is a coded reference to the son that Harry might……

…….in other circumstances……

……father…..

And in Sonnet Three, Shakespeare starts to bring in parallels between orgasm and death…

Die single and thine image dies with thee….

‘Die single’ can literally mean ‘die alone’…..

……..but it can also mean ‘masturbate by yourself’.

Shakespeare also associates death with self-abuse in Sonnet 9:

No love towards others in that bosom sits

That on himself such murd’rous shame commits…

Shakespeare uses the vocabulary of ‘the face’ to symbolise the genitals in Sonnet 3:

Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest

Now is the time that face should form another.

Helena uses this secondary meaning of ‘face’ in All’s Well That Ends Well…..

She is in disguise……

…. when she says to the Old Widow of her husband, Bertram…

But by the ear, that hears most nobly of him:

His face I know not…

Commentators often say that Helena here is lying to keep up her disguise….

But in all her other dealings she is saintly in her honesty….

….so is not the sort of person who would lie directly…

She is, in fact, ‘equivocating’…..

She has not, at this stage, slept with Bertram …..

….who, ungallantly, fled from her….

So she is using ‘face’ to mean  ‘genitals’…

…..which she has genuinely never ‘known’.

The ‘face vocabulary’/genitals’ correspondence completely underpins Sonnet 7….

Lo, in the Orient when the gracious light

Lifts up his burning head, each under eye

Doth homage to his new appearing sight,

Serving with looks his sacred majesty….

This is a description of the sun rising…..

……but the ‘burning head’ can again represent the male organ starting to become erect….

And each ‘under eye’….

…. as well as people literally gazing at the sun…..

…..can also represents the testicles….

…..which move upwards as they are drawn upwards.…

Shakespeare continues…..

And having climbed the steep-up heavenly hill,

Resembling strong youth in his middle age,

Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,

Attending on his golden pilgrimage….

The ‘heavenly hill’ is a reference to the ‘mons Veneris’….

 …..the hill of Venus….

But when from high-most pitch with weary car

Like feeble age he reeleth from the day,

The eyes, fore-duteous, now converted are

From his low tract and look another way….

Shakespeare here describes both the setting of the sun….

…..and the detumescence after emission….

He concludes….

So thou, thyself out-going in thy noon,

Unlook’d on diest, unless thou get a son…

‘Noon’ was often used as a symbol of erection…..

……from the position of the hands of a clock at midday….

As Mercutio says to the Nurse….

The bawdy hand of the dial is now upon the prick of noon…

Again ‘diest’ at the end of the Sonnet suggests both ejaculation and death….

But there is a secondary political strand to this poem……

The notion that people turn their (literal) eyes away from a dying sun….

….and turn their eyes to a new one….

…..was an image that was being used about the aging Queen Elizabeth….

…..from whom people were beginning to turn their eyes….

…..to the new sun on the horizon…..

…..King James VI of Scotland………

John Harington, Queen Elizabeth’s godson, later sent James the New Year gift of a ‘dark lantern’ depicting a rising sun…..

And William Camden, the contemporary historian, records how ‘whispereings’ reached the Queen…..

that many of the nobility did by underhand letters and messengers seek to curry favour with the king of Scots, that they adored him as the rising sun, and neglected her as now being ready to set.

Even though Shakespeare KNEW Elizabeth would probably read the Sonnets….

…..he cannot stop himself from making coded attacks on her…..

In Sonnet 11 he advises Harry to have a son so that he can enjoy his son’s youth and energy as his own starts to decline…..

Herein lives wisdom, beauty and increase;

Without this, folly, age and cold decay.

If all were minded so….

….i.e. to live without having children…..

…….the times should cease,

And threescore year would make the world away…..

In 1590, Queen Elizabeth was approaching 60…..

…….and, as ‘The Virgin Queen’, had dedicated herself……

…….officially at least…..

…….to a single life.

Shakespeare then puts the knife in…..

Let those whom nature hath not made for store,

Harsh, feautureless and rude, barrenly perish….

He is wishing death on the ugly old queen…..

Now this is clearly a case of …..

3. CHUTZPAH……

……a characteristic Shakespeare displays as he introduces to these Sonnets another theme  quite contrary to his brief….

Having a son will make Harry immortal, he claims…..

BUT SO WILL SHAKESPEARE’S VERSE!!!

And all in war with Time for love of you [Harry]

As he [Time] takes from you, I engraft you new….

Here is Shakespeare……

…..still a tyro-poet with a….

 pupil pen…..

…..claiming……

…..along with Ovid…..

…. that his verse can defeat the process of time…

He realises he has over-stepped the mark…..

In the next Sonnet….

……in a bi-polar moment, typical of artists….

……he talks about his…..

barren rhyme…

However, he  concludes the whole sequence with a challenging compromise…..

…..Harry can achieve immortality BOTH by having a son….

….AND by being written about by Shakespeare….

But were some child of yours alive at that time

You should live twice: in it and in my rhyme….

Psycho-analytically inclined Brothers and Sisters, though, will have realised that Shakespeare has been contradicting Mary Southampton’s brief….

FROM THE VERY BEGINNING OF THE SEQUENCE!!!

 Mary wants Harry to take up an interest in girls….

But Shakespeare seems much more interested in Harry’s ‘manhood’….

You don’t have to be Sigmund Freud to realise that Shakespeare…..

……unconsciously perhaps…….

….. was in love with young Harry….

Indeed, in Sonnet 104 describes his FIRST meeting with Harry as the moment…..

When first your eye I eyed….

Your Cat’s case rests….

‘Bye, now…

If you liked Trixie’s Post, you might like….

To read ‘The Dedication to Shakespeare’s Sonnets Decoded’, please click: HERE

To read ‘Why did Shakespeare write The Sonnets?’, please click: HERE

To read ‘Trixie the Cat’s Guide to the Sonnets. (1) Background Jottings, please click: HERE

To read ‘Trixie the Cat’s Guide to the Sonnets. (3) Was Christopher Marlowe the Rival Poet?, please click: HERE.

To read ‘Trixie the Cat’s Guide to the Sonnets (4) The Rival Poet Revealed!’ please click: HERE.

To read ‘Amazing New Light on Sonnet 86’, please click: HERE.

To read ‘The Bath Sonnets Decoded’, please click: HERE.

To read ‘Sonnet 126 Decoded’, please click: HERE.

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

…..after MONTHS of negotiation…….

….. AT THE HIGHEST POSSIBLE LEVEL……

……with THE EMBASSY OF THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA in LONDON…..

The Code’s Chief Agent has secured the INALIENABLE RIGHT…..

…….of EVERY CITIZEN OF CHINA…..

……to follow TRIXIE THE CAT…..

At the beginning of September, 2012, The Shakespeare Code received…..

 ITS FIRST EVER VIEWS FROM CHINA!!!

…..they came silently, in the night…..

So it is with DELIRIOUS DELIGHT that The Code adds the Flag of China to its  serried ranks….

CHINA

…. bringing the number of participating countries to…..

ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-FIVE!!!

HOW HAS THIS MIRACLE COME ABOUT?

When the GREAT Chinese Prime Minister,  WEN JIABAO……

 ……came to England last year [2011], he visited Stratford-upon-Avon…..

…..and watched part of Hamlet being performed at John Shakespeare’s house…..

 

WEN JIABAO, who loves The Bard, said that Shakespeare was……

…a figure who belongs not only to the U.K. but to the world – a great man who belongs not just to his era but to entire history…..

THE SHAKESPEARE CODE CONCURRED  UTTERLY…..

….and to that end, wrote to the Honourable Minister Counsellors of The Cultural Section of the Chinese Embassy…..

…… in London’s imposing Portland Place…

For some time The Agents had been concerned, that, while there were plentiful VIEWS of The Shakespeare Code from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macao…….

….there were none from MAINLAND CHINA itself….

This situation has now been rectified…..

ANOTHER GLORIOUS REVOLUTION IN CHINESE THOUGHT!!!

The Code’s Chief Agent, Stewart Trotter, has the HIGHEST RESPECT for Chinese Culture……

As a child in Papua, New Guinea, he listened spell-bound to Crop Production Figures on Radio Peking…

…..as an undergraduate in Cambridge, Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book was his constant study…. 

….and he has practised CHINESE ACUPUNTURE in London (both privately and for the N.H.S.) for the last….

……TWENTY-TWO YEARS……

(See: www.stewarttrotter.com)

He also tells Fortunes for the Great and the Good by consulting the Classsic of Changes…..

……the sublime I Ching….

CHINA’S EMBRACE OF THE SHAKESPEARE CODE IS HIS GREATEST DAY YET!!!

A Tail-Piece from Trixie the Cat…

Well done, Stewart. I can see its going to be Beer Roasted Peking Duck all round at The Code tonight….

‘Bye, now….