The Shakespeare Code

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….

 

Brothers and Sisters of The Shakespeare Code….

…..William Shakespeare’s Sonnets are the greatest poems known to Man…

…..or Cat….

(Well, in English, anyway….)

But they are written in LANGUAGE of ENORMOUS COMPLEXITY…

Because Shakespeare lived in TIMES of ENORMOUSLY COMPLEXITY….

It is the UTTER CONVICTION of The Shakespeare Code that…..

You CANNOT understand SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS without understanding SHAKESPEARE’S LIFE….

To that end, Your Cat now offers you….

 TRIXIE’S BACKGROUND JOTTINGS!!!

 A lightning tour of all you need to know….

To be IN the know….

About SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS…..

So, fasten your seat belts..….

●

 Queen Elizabeth…..

….also known as ‘The Moon’…

….was six years into her reign when William Shakespeare was born.

Elizabeth’s step-mother, Katherine Parr….

….had encouraged the young Princess to adopt the Protestant views of John Calvin….

So when Elizabeth became Queen, she was determined to rid England of ‘superstitious’ Roman Catholicism….

William Shakespeare, however, was born into a deeply Papist family…..

On his mother Mary’s side were the Ardens…..

One of the oldest, noblest, Catholic families in the land…

And his father, John….

……though of yeoman stock and unable to write…..

… ..put his sign on a Roman Catholic Testament of Faith that could have led to his death.

Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester….

…also known as ‘The Bear’….

…the most ferocious of beasts in the eyes of the Elizabethans…

…was Queen Elizabeth’s lover.

He had murdered and slept his way to the top….

…but had the audacity to proclaim himself the leader of the English Puritans…

He rebuilt KenilworthCastle…..

…..not half a day’s ride from Stratford-upon-Avon…

….and used it as the centre for his intrigues…

….sexual and political….

(He even stopped all the clocks whenever Queen Elizabeth came to call so The Bear and The Moon, undistracted by Time, could devote themselves to pleasure…)

The strait-laced Ardens were outraged….

Edward Arden, the Sheriff of Warwickshire….

…..refused to wear Leicester’s livery….

…..would not sell him any land….

…..denounced him as an adulterer and murderer…

…..and declined his invitation to attend a Kenilworth entertainment for the Queen…

So Leicester had Edward Arden hanged drawn and quartered….

….ostensibly for keeping a Catholic priest on his payroll….

The young William Shakespeare also clashed with one of Leicester’s agents….

….the sadistic Sir Thomas Lucy…..

….licensed to hunt down Catholics and destroy them…

Shakespeare poached hares and deer from Lucy’s estate as a Papist revenge…

Sir Thomas whipped him savagely and imprisoned him….

……so the lad was sent away, for his own safety, to Lancashire…..

….to an old Catholic family at Hoghton Hall….

 

……where he learnt to make himself indispensable…

 ….as a factotum, entertainer…

…. and generally nice person to have around.

But the Hoghton family in turn was persecuted for its faith….

….so Shakespeare had to return to Stratford….

…..where he wooed Anne Hathaway….

……a woman ten years his senior….

…..with a ballad that played on her family name…..

I hate from hate away she threw,

And saved my life, saying ‘not you’.

Shakespeare impregnated her….

…..but did the decent thing and married her….

He then returned to his attack on Sir Thomas…..

This time he wrote an obscene ballad abut him….

…….playing on his family name…..

Lucy is lousy….

Shakespeare performed it all over Stratford….

…..then stuck the lyrics on Sir Thomas’s gates….

Shakespeare had to get out of town….

…..so he fled to London…..

…. and shacked up with another ‘grammar school’ boy, ‘Sporting’ Thomas Kyd…..

Together they worked on pamphlets and plays…..

….and befriended the gay, louche, Cambridge graduate, Christopher Marlowe…

But two other university ‘wits’….

….Robert Greene….

…and Thomas Nashe….

…..made coded attacks on Shakespeare and Kyd in their own pamphlets and plays…

…..turning them into animals……

Kyd became the ‘kid’ in Aesop……

……and Shakespeare, famously, an….

upstart crow….

Greene and Nashe were deeply offended that mere ‘grammarians’ should set themselves up as writers….

As an M.P., Lucy was often in London…

To gain protection from him, Shakespeare cultivated the friendship of Robert Crowley…..

…..the radical Protestant vicar in charge of St. Giles’, Cripplegate….

…..where Sir Thomas worshipped….

Crowley believed in voluntary re-distribution of wealth…..

…..hated all affectation in language and behaviour…..

…..and loathed women who wore wigs and make-up….

…..even the Queen….

Crowley wrote and printed ballads to popularise Christianity…

…..and encouraged Shakespeare to write plays….

…. based on Biblical stories and Moralities….

Shakespeare set up his own acting company…

….and then toured the Midlands…..

But audiences got tired of this homely fare…..

…..and when the Spanish Armada attacked England…..

……there were no jobs in the theatre for anyone anyway.

Actors were despised as unmanly…

……. and unpatriotic.

Audeiences ripped the costumes off the actors’ backs to give to soldiers and sailors…

Christopher Marlowe joined Bess of Hardwick’s household as a tutor….

…..Thomas Kyd joined Lord Strange…..

…..and William Shakespeare joined the deeply Roman Catholic Southampton household in Titchfield….

….. in 1590…..

This was the year the young Third Earl of Southampton, Henry Wriothesley…..

…..pronounced ‘Ryosley’….

…..but known  as ‘Harry Southampton….

….reached the age of 17.

Harry’s father was dead….

….so Harry was the ward of Lord Burghley….

…..Queen Elizabeth’s Secretary of State….

…..nick-named ‘Old Saturnus’….

Burghley wanted Harry to marry his grand-daughter, Lady Elizabeth de Vere…..

…..the oldest daughter of Edward de Vere, the 17^th Earl of Oxford….

But Harry much preferred male company….

When Harry was six years old, his father, the 2nd Earl of Southampton, had accused his mother, Mary, 2nd Countess of Southampton….

….of adultery with ‘a common person’….

The 2nd Earl had snatched Harry away from his mother……

…..surrounded him with all-male company…..

….and proceeded to make his male servant….

….his wife…..

Two years later, the 2nd Earl died….

But by then Harry had been taught to hate all women…..

And his mother in particular…

….(who was distantly related to Shakespeare’s own mother)…

The Countess was now putting pressure on Harry to carry out Lord Burghley’s wishes…..

….as was her father, Sir Anthony Browne, Viscount Montague….

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

….and whose title Shakespeare was to use in Romeo and Juliet…

Lord Montague was an intimate friend of King Philip II of Spain…

Burghley had the legal right to insist that Harry marry a woman of his choice….

…..and was about to impose on the Southampton family a £5,000 fine….

….. £2-and-a-half million in our money.

So Shakespeare was given the job of writing seventeen Sonnets for Harry’s seventeenth birthday…..

…….to persuade him to marry and have a son….

The 14 line Sonnet form…..

…..(Sonnet means ‘little song’)….

……with its three quartrains of four lines……

….. and its concluding couplet of two lines…..

…..and its ‘volte’…..

…..its sudden change of mood or subject….

…… had been introduced from Italy early in the sixteenth century by Sir Thomas Wyatt, the Elder…

…and Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey….

Sir Philip Sidney…..

….the soldier, courtier and poet…

….had developed the Sonnet form at nearby Wilton….

In the 1580’s he had written a Sonnet sequence,  Astrophil and Stella, about his love for the married beauty, Lady Penelope Rich….

….the sister of Robert Devereux, the Second Earl of Essex…

….and had played on her married name, claiming she was….

……Rich in all beauties…..

And had only one misfortune…..

……that Rich she is…..

i.e. , married to Mr. Rich….

Samuel Daniel…..

….also based at Wilton, wrote his Delia Sonnet sequence, in praise of his employer, Sir Philip Sidney’s sister, Mary Herbert, the Countess of Pembroke…

In his Birthday Sonnets to Harry, Shakespeare calls him his….

rose…..

…….playing on  his family name……

…..Wriothesley/Ryosley….

…….but he failed to persuade Harry to marry…..

However,  he stayed in Titchfield as tutor and companion to Harry…..

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

He became acquainted with Harry’s aristocratic friends….

…Robert Devereux, the Second Earl of Essex….

…who was the Queen’s current lover….

….Charles Blount, pronounced ‘Blunt’, later 8^th Baron Mountjoy……

….who had been the Queen’s former lover….

(Elizabeth had ‘picked him up’ when he was a teenager)

….and Roger Manners, 5^th Earl of Rutland….

….who, it seems, was never a lover of anyone at all…

….well, not of women anyway…..

He never consummated his marriage with his wife…

Shakespeare couples the married name of Penelope Rich with the family name of Lord Mountjoy (Blount/Blunt)….

So am I as the rich whose blessed key

Can bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure,

The which he will not ev’ry hour survey

For blunting the fine edage of seldom pleasure….

And the family name of the Earl of Rutland (Manners)….

My tongue-tied Muse in manners holds her still,

While comments of your praise richly complied…

Shakespeare went on to write more Sonnets to Harry……

…..using them to send up Harry’s guardian, Lord Burghley (‘Old Saturnus’)…..

…..who, gout-ridden, walked slowly and painfully with the aid of a stick….

From you I have been absent in the spring,

When proud pied April (drest in all his train)

Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing

That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him….

Shakespeare also uses the Sonnets to praise Harry’s beauty….

……which, unlike women’s, has been…..

…..with Nature’s own hand painted…..

Shakespeare promises Harry immortality through his verse…

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

As he takes from thee, I engraft you new…

But though Harry wanted an affair with Shakespeare….

….(like his mother Mary, he had a taste for lower class men)…

….Shakespeare warded off Harry’s advances….

But since she [Dame Nature] prickt thee out for women’s pleasure,

Mine be thy love, and thy love’s use their treasure….

A liaison with Harry had never been part of his job description…..

And he didn’t want to offend mother Mary.

‘The Resolute’ John Florio…..

…..the translator of Montaigne and compiler of an Italian/English dictionary….

…..soon replaced Shakespeare as schoolmaster….

…..and became Harry’s Italian tutor….

‘Old Saturnus’ placed Florio in Titchfield to spy on the Southamptons….

……and to monitor their recusant activities…..

Mary, Countess of Southampton….

……with her old family friend, the schoolmaster Swithin Wells….

……later to be made a Saint…..

……would recruit ardent young Catholics….

……like Edmund Gennings….

…..(also later to be made a Saint)….

…..send them to the Continent of Europe to be trained as priests……

…..then bring them back to England…..

….. to suffer death as Catholic martyrs…

Gennings, on his return, was arrested for saying a Latin mass….

The authorities dressed him up in a fool’s outfit…..

….. which had been found in Wells’s house….

……then hanged, drew and quartered him in 1591….

This was the year Queen Elizabeth visited Titchfield….

In her entourage was the beautiful, dark-skinned Jewess, Emilia Bassano…..

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

…..and a professional musician…

….who played the clavichord…..

Her family had originated in Morocco….

…..(her nick-name was ‘The Moor’)…

…. and had lived in Venice as musicians to The Doge….

Emilia stayed on at Titchfield because a plague was raging in London

Shakespeare fell in love with her….

He decided that ‘Black was Beautiful’…

……and set out, in his Sonnets and plays, to prove it….

He particularly liked the fact that Emilia with…..

black wires

….on her head and a dark skin needed no wigs or make-up….

Shakespeare then wrote Love’s Labour’s Lost to satirise Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Hampshire….

And performed it with a Pro-Am cast…..

……including women…..

……in a private performance, at Titchfield…

He sent up Florio as the pedantic schoolmaster, Holofernes…

…..Sir Walter Raleigh….

…as the sonneteering Spanish braggart, Don Armado….

Shakespeare also plays on the Walter/Water sound similarity in the Sonnets….

Love’s fire heats water, water cools not love….

(Sir Walter had a thick Devon accent all his life: and Queen Elizabeth used to send him up by saying ‘I thirst for Water…..’)

Shakespeare sends up George Chapman…..

….as the gossipy, grinning, lisping, effeminate sycophant, Boyet….

He even uses Chapman’s name……

The Princess of France says:

Good Lord Boyet, my beauty, though but mean,

Needs not the painted flourish of your praise.

Beauty is bought by judement of the eye,

Not uttered by base sale of chapmen’s tongues…..

Both Raleigh and Chapman were friends of the Wizard Earl…..

….Henry Percy, 9^th Earl of Northumberland, who lived at nearby Petworth…

The Petworth ‘set’ was attacked by the Jesuits as ‘The School of Atheism’….

And by Shakespeare as ‘The School of Night’…

….Chapman even claimed to have raised the spirit of Homer, an….

….affable, familiar ghost….

….to help him translate his verse…

Shakespeare cast Emilia as the dark-skinned Rosaline…..

…..and then proceeded to woo her, very publicly, in the character of Berowne…

…..a play on Countess Mary’s family name, ‘Browne’.

Penelope Rich played the Princess of France….

….and Shakespeare played on her married name ‘Rich’…..

….. as Sidney had done in his Sonnet sequence…

Sweet hearts, we shall be rich ere we depart….

(The word ‘rich’ appears FIVE more times in the same scene….)

Emilia, though, played hard to get….

So Shakespeare asked Harry to plead his love-suit for him….

Emilia seized her chance….

She seduced Harry….

….and Harry allowed himself to be seduced….

….in order to hurt Shakespeare…

Shakespeare was forced to admit that he was more in love with Harry than he was with Emilia….

He left Titchfield and went on tour again…..

…..but continued his Sonnet correspondence with Harry…

…..and finally, in the great Sonnet…….

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

 ………told him that he loved him…

Emilia became pregnant…..

……converted to Chrisitanity….

…. and was married off to a ‘minstrel’ called Lanier ‘for colour’.

Shakespeare makes two  joking references to ‘The Moor’s’ pregnancy in The Merchant of Venice…

Lorenzo says…..

I shall answer that better to the commonwealth than you can the getting up of the negro’s belly: the Moor is by child with you Launcelot.

….and Launcelot Gobbo says….

It is much that the Moor should be more than reason: But if she be less than an honest woman, she is indeed more than I took her for….

Shakespeare uses a variation of her name ‘Bassano’ in the same play as ‘Bassanio’…..

And in Titus Andronicus invents two characters called ‘Aemelius’ and ‘Bassianus….’

In Titus Shakespeare also plays on Burghley’s nick-name, Old Saturnus, by naming a character ‘Saturninus’.

He plays the same trick in the Sonnets:

From you [Harry] I have been absent in the spring

When proud, pied April (drest in all his trim)

Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing:

That heavy Saturn  laught and lept with him

(The gout-ridden Burghley walked slowly and painfully with the aid of a stick: sometimes he was carried round in a chair….)

Shakespeare returned to Titchfield…..

…..and, with the Countess’s blessing,…

…..began an affair with Harry that was to last sixteen years…..

There were to be infidelities on both sides….

…..and Shakespeare worried about Harry’s taste for lower class men….

He thought, correctly, that it would be used against him….

But why thy odour matcheth not thy show

The soil is this, that thou doth common grow…

But the relationship was strong enough to resist advances on Harry from George Chapman….

……the so-called ‘rival poet’….

Chapman wanted to replace Shakespeare in Harry’s affections….

…..and payroll.

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

Sometimes Shakespeare’s bisexual orientation distressed him – as it distresses Antonio in The Merchant of Venice who describes himself as….

the tainted wether of the flock….

And Shakespeare, in his own voice in the Sonnets, writes:

When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes

I all alone beweep my outcast state

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries

And look upon myself and curse my fate….

But at other times Shakespeare positively exults in his sexuality:

I am that I am and those that level at my abuses

Reckon up their own…

Harry and Shakespeare visited Europe, in secret, in 1593…..

…..as amateur spies for the Earl of Essex…

They travelled to Madrid to visit King Philip II of Spain……

Here Shakespeare saw Titian’s paintings Venus and Adonis….

…..and The Rape of Lucrece…

…..which inspired him to write his two narrative poems…

….and even to use the same perspectives and colours in his verse as Titian does in his paintings…

Harry and Shakespeare also visited ‘The Eternal City’,  Rome….

….where they saw the famous obelisk that Pope Sextus V had placed in front of St. Peter’s Basilica seven years before….

It was a holy object to Catholics….

…..the last thing St. Peter saw before he was crucified in Rome….

Harry and Shakespeare also saw the famous gilt orb which had been on the top of the obelisk….

…..once rumoured to contain the ashes of Julius Caesar….

….and which had been shot at and damaged by Protestants during the ‘Sack of Rome’ in 1527…

….brass eternal slave to mortal rage….

Harry and Shakespeare returned to England…

 They found that Marlowe had been killed in a tavern brawl in Deptford….

….and Kyd tortured by the State on suspicion of atheism…

Harry came of age…..

So Countess Mary had to leave Titchfield….

…..(she and Harry had never got on)…

….and married Sir Thomas Heneage….

….yet another of the Queen’s old lovers…

Mary commissioned Shakespeare to write A Midsummer Night’s Dream to celebrate the marriage….

…which was performed at Copped Hall in Essex…

The long-legged Penelope Rich played Helena….

…..and Emilia Bassano/Lanier, the dark-skinned little minx, Hermia….

The love triangle with Harry, Shakespeare and Emilia, started all over again….

…..with Emilia’s….

….bed-vow [marriage-vow] broke and new faith [Christianity] torn….

Suddenly, though, Hamnet, Shakespeare’s eleven year old son, died….

Shakespeare……

Made lame by fortune’s dearest spite…..

….. went right off the rails…

He drank, he gambled, he visited prostitutes…

He was even bound over by a London magistrate to keep the peace….

…..a scandal so great that, for a time, Shakespeare had to avoid Harry’s company…

But in the end, Harry became Shakespeare’s surrogate son…

And then surprised everyone…..

 He fell in love with the Earl of Essex’s cousin, the lovely Elizabeth Vernon….

….one of Queen Elizabeth’s Ladies-in-waiting…

Shakespeare, though he favoured the marriage…

….(he was, after all, married himself with children)….

….was worried that, though he would love Harry to the end of time he might be side-lined in Harry’s affections…

Love is not love which alters

When it alteration finds…

But his affair with Harry continued unabated….

….even after Elizabeth  had a little baby girl….

But The Queen was furious….

She had not been consulted about the marriage…

And she was notoriously jealous of her young Ladies -in-Waiting

Shakespeare anticipated ‘The Moon’s’ fury in Romeo and Juliet….

But soft, what light from yonder window breaks?

It is the East and Juliet is the sun!

Arise fair sun and kill the envious moon

Who is already sick and pale with grief

That thou her maid art far more fair than she…..

Harry was out of favour with the Queen….

….and Elizabeth was also growing tired of Essex…

Essex and Harry formed a plot to topple Elizabeth….

….or at least force her to name her successor as King James VI of Scotland…

Shakespeare, initially, was in favour of this plan…

He wanted tolerance for Catholics…

….and, like everyone else……

….was worried civil war would break out at Elizabeth’s death…

Essex was sent to quell the rebellion in Ireland…

…. but the Irish, led by the canny rebel, Hugh O’Neill, the Earl of Tyrone….

….ran circles round Essex.

He rushed back to England, deserting his post….

….and, more important, rushed into Elizabeth’s bed-chamber….

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

… and before she had time to put on her wig….

Essex was finished…

…a pitiful thriver in [his] gazing spent….

And Shakespeare knew this…

But Essex and Southampton were determined to go ahead with their rebellion…

They put on a performance of Richard II to give themselves heart….

…..then rushed into the streets of London to rouse the citizens….

The citizens didn’t want to know….

Essex was beheaded and Southampton was locked in the Tower….

Shakespeare, once more, had to get out of town….

He left London, thinking he would never see Harry again…

However, two years later….

The mortal moon…..her eclipse endured….

Queen Elizabeth died….

King James VI of Scotland became King James I of England….

….and everything turned round.

Harry became a hero…

…..and hoped to be the new favourite of the King…

He commissioned a painting of himself to be sent to James….

…accompanied by two Sonnets by Shakespeare….

Shakespeare became a Groom of the Chamber….

…..and, dressed in red livery,….

…..held the canopy over James during his coronation…

…..an honour he thought worth nothing compared to his love for Harry…

The coronation route was lined with wooden obelisks….

….which reminded Shakespeare of the obelisk at Rome….

No! Time thous shalt not boast that I do change;

Thy pyramids [obelisks] built up with newer might

To me are nothing novel, nothing strange;

They are but dressings of a former sight….

But St. Peter’s obelisk was constructed of stone….

 …which, in its strength and permanence…..

….symbolised Shakespeare’s love for Harry…

It fears not policy, that heretic,

Which works on leases of short-numbered hours,

But all alone stands hugely politic,

That it nor grows with heat, nor drown with showers…

Shakespeare calls on…..

….. the fools of time……

……all the Catholic martyrs, like Edmund Gennings in his jester’s coat…

……to witness the validity of his love for Harry….

Shakespeare had profound respect for Catholicism…..

…. and employed religious imagery in describing his love….

….but he could never become a religious himself….

…..he was too attached to life…

Harry did not become James’s favourite…

King James  preferred younger, prettier men…

Harry, shut out from power, started to become homophobic…

Then his wife had a baby boy, James….

….who would need a manly father to look up to….

….not one in a relationship with an actor…

Shakespeare…..

….withering 

……as fast as little baby James (Harry’s ‘sweet self’ ) was growing…

…..had to go.

Shakespeare’s life and work entered its darkest phase

His grief for Hamnet came flooding back.

Now he had lost TWO sons…

He had promised immortality to Southampton….

….now he promised him the certainty of death….

Dame Nature’s audit….

….though delayed, answered must be.

And her Quietus [settlement] is to render thee….

Shakespeare took his revenge by publishing all his Sonnets…

…..dedicated to ‘Mr. W. H.’…..

….. code for ‘Mr. H. W’…..

…..’Mr. Henry Wriothesley’….

…..so the whole world would know the intimate details of his affair with Harry.

But even at this stage, Shakespeare was starting to take a more positive view of events….

With the Sonnets he published A Lover’s Complaint

A  young woman…..

…..i.e. Shakespeare….

….has been mistreated by a psychotic lover….

…..i.e Harry…..

But in the end she decideds that the whole experience has been so sublime…..

…..SHE WOULD GO THROUGH THE WHOLE AFFAIR AGAIN!!!

Besides, Shakespeare had already begun another liaison…..

But that, Brothers and Sisters of The Code…..

……is another story…..

‘Bye, now…..

If you were interested in Trixie’s Post, you might also be interested in: Why did William Shakespeare write the Sonnets?

and: The Dedication to Shakespeare’s Sonnets Decoded.

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

Yes, Brothers and Sisters, FIVE new countries have taken the Cat’s Shilling since last we spoke….

GIBRALTAR

LIBYAN ARAB JAMHIRYA

ZIMBABWE

VIRGIN ISLANDS (U.S.A.)

BAHAMAS

This brings the number of participating countries to…….

ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-FOUR!!!

Also, Your Cat would like it to be known that she has added VITAL NEW INFORMATION to her…..

‘JULIUS CAESAR DECODED’ POST.

1. The Ditchley Portrait of Queen Elizabeth……

In the Post Your Cat argues that the character of Julius Caesar is a satirical portrait of Queen Elizabeth.

When Cassius says of Caesar…..

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world

Like a Colossus, and we petty men

Walk under his huge legs and peep about

To find ourselves dishonourable graves…

…..Your Cat believes that those in the know would think of the Ditchley Portrait…..

(Shakespeare also refers to this painting in Love’s Labours’s Lost. See full ‘Julius Caesar Decoded’ Post.)

2. In the ‘Julius Caesar Decoded’ Post, Your Cat also shows how Shakespeare links the family names of Penelope Rich with Charles Blount, Eighth Baron Mountjoy, in Sonnet 37.

While researching for my upcoming Post……

‘Trixie the Cat’s Guide to the Sonnets of William Shakespeare’

…..Your Cat discovered that Shakespeare has done EXACTLY THE SAME THING with Penelope Rich and Roger Manners, the Fifth Earl of Rutland, in Sonnet 85…..

To read the full, revised, ‘Julius Caesar Decoded’ Post – and this Pawnote – please click: HERE.

‘Bye, now…..

It is with great joy that the Agents announce that on 22nd August, 2012, The Shakespeare Code received its….

55,000th VIEW!!!

It also admitted to the Brotherhood and Sisterhood of The Code….

SIX NEW COUNTRIES!!!

(No coercion was put, or has ever been put , NOR SHALL EVER BE PUT, on nations, however small, to join. The Shakespeare Code prides itself on being a TOTALLY VOLUNTARY organisation, devoted to the advancement of Shakespearean studies and the rights of cats.)

The nations who have nailed The Code’s colours to the mast are:

THE BAILIWICK  (‘Ballywick’) OF GUERNSEY

MACAO

NAMIBIA

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

GHANA

PAPUA NEW GUINEA

This brings the number of participating to countries to……

ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-NINE!!!

To watch a march-past of all the member nations……

PLEASE CLICK: HERE!

The Code will NEVER have favourites, but it is delighted to report that Papua New Guinea has joined up….

It was here, on the island of Samarai, that Chief Agent Stewart Trotter spent the happiest years of his childhood…

(See: Biography. )

Here he is preparing to climb a coocnut tree……

Indeed, he has been stuck up one tree or another all his life…

Here is where he lived…..

The tanks outside were for collecting rain-water from the roof….

The water was then purified through filters and drunk….

Perhaps it’s not surprising that Stewart came down with gastric malaria….

And here he is preparing to dive into the island’s primitive swimming pool…..

So primitive that one day he dived in and came face to face with a giant turtle….

The locals had caught it and put it in the swimming pool to keep it fresh…..

Before they ate it….

Now over to Trixie the Cat……

First, Brothers and Sisters, we all hope you like the new lay-out for The Code – with subjects for perusal laid out on the Home Page…..

Simply click on a bar and you’ll be off….

Second, can Your Cat reply to the HUNDREDS of questions that have been ended up on her desk at Head Office?

We were told that The Agents of The Code were training for the Heptathlon at the London Olympics…..’

…..you cry….

But when it came to it, they were nowhere to be seen…..

Some irate Brothers and Sisters have questioned the probity of The Code’s Agents…..

Some have even suggested that they might not exist AT ALL!

Well, Trixie the Cat’s real enough, isn’t she?

Let HER explain what happened…..

The Agents WERE picked for ‘Team G.B.’……

But they decided to yield their places to younger British athletes…….

…… to give them a chance….

Believe me, our Agents are not the sort of men to boast…..

……. or burst into tears on the podia….

They are filled with a gentlemanly modesty which forces Your Cat to speak on their behalf.

They do, however, have half an eye to Brazil…..

‘Bye now,