At the Q. and A. session after The Shakespeare Code’s talk to the Titchfield History Society, there was one question on everybody’s lips…..
How could Titchfield – and the Earl of Southampton – have been so airbrushed from The Rise of a Genius – the BBC T.V. biography of Shakespeare?
Why was there no mention of the man to whom Will had dedicated, in respectful and loving terrms, two, long, narrative poems?
Several theories were put forward…..
The first was power. Stratford-upon-Avon was in no mood to yield its supremacy in the Shakespeare story.
The Code’s Chief Agent revealed that Melvyn Bragg…..
……..had written a letter to him (at the start of the century!) which said:
‘Watch out, Stratford-upon-Avon!’.
Also there are two modern assumptions which blinded the BBC to the truth:
(1) A genius is a lone figure producing masterpieces in solitude.
What the Titchfield Theory offers is the idea of a collective genius – a group of people coming together with like aims and ambitions – one of whom, at least, is very talented……
……and one of whom, at least, is very rich!
(2) Good art will always make money.
You only have to run a theatre, as The Code’s Chief Agent has done, to realise this is simply not true. The public are reluctant to attend anything that’s new or strange – and writers producing challenging scripts needs all the financial aid they can muster.
Southampton not only supplied Shakespeare with £1,000 – he provided him with an appreciative, intelligent, educated and daring public….
….the Elizabethan…..
…….and Jacobbean…….
…….royalty and aristocracy.
But there is another factor – which we have named ‘Swift Syndrome’.
Johnathan Swift…….
…….wrote:
‘When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him’.
We have observed, in our research for this talk, this phenomenon occurring time after time.
For example….
In 1709 Nicholas Rowe sleuths out two great stories about Shakespeare….
1. He poached deer from Sir Thomas Lucy’s park.
2. Harry gave him a gift of £1,000.
Edmond Malone – who never once visits Stratford – comes along seventy years later and rubbishes these discoveries.
Scholars then parrot what Malone said for the next 150 years!
Dover Wilson – linking literature with history – posits the theory in the 1920s and 30s that Will was a tutor to Harry at Titchfield, got involved in the Essex Rebellion and travelled to Scotland to persuade King James to invade England.
Dover Wilson’s nemesis, W.W. Greg, the editor of the Malone Society no less, describes Dover Wilson’s theories as…..
‘the careerings of a not too captive balloon in a high wind.’
Sadly, Dover Wilson, a sensitive man, takes this criticism to heart, and rescinds many of his theories.
He even follows fashion by declaring that ‘the lovely boy’ is in fact William Herbert.
This fashion comes largely from E. K. Chambers…….
…..(the first President of the Malone Society) who had originally thought ‘the lovely boy’ was Harry – but changes his mind in 1930 and names him as William Herbert, the Third Earl of Pembroke.
Many of the scholar-lemmings follow.
As late as 2010, Katharine Duncan-Jones – in her updated Arden edition of the Sonnets – writes:
‘Dover Wilson’s speculations are attractive. He suggested that the Countess of Pembroke ‘asked [Shakespeare] to meet the young lord at Wilton, on his seventeenth birthday’ and commissioned him to compose an appropriate number of pro-marriage sonnets for the occassion’. This would locate sonnets 1-17 in April 1597.’
But the Herbert Theory can be demolished in a second…..
In Sonnet 13 Will writes to the young man:
You had a father – let your son say so.
William Herbert’s father, though ill, was still alive in 1597.
Harry Southampton’s father in 1590 – the year of Harry’s seventeenth birthday – had been dead for nearly a decade!
[The Second Earl of Southampton – Photo Ross Underwood]
The Shakespeare Code sincerely hopes that it will hear no more about William Herbert as ‘the lovely boy’.
He was clearly Harry Southampton!
To return to ‘Swift Syndrome’….
The distinguished Cornish historian, A. L. Rowse….
……discovers in 1973 that the Dark Lady of the Sonnets was Amelia Bassano/Lanyer.
She fits the role to perfection – down to her musicianship, her flirtations and even the way she ‘rolls’ her eyes….
Rowse writes an article for The Times, makes a couple of unimportant technical mistakes and Stanley Wells rubbishes the whole theory on BBC radio…..
……..putting back Shakespeare Studies by at least fifty years.
Prof. Roger Prior – who believes, along with the Shakespeare Code, that Amelia was the Dark Lady and Harry the ‘lovely boy’ and that Will visited Italy in 1593 – puts Wells’s response down partly to the ‘New Criticism’ – a movement that came from America in the 1920s and 30s – which….
‘…removes the author from the text.The author’s thoughts and intentions, it is claimed, can never be known, and are in any case quite irrelevant to our understanding of his work. A Shakespeare sonnet may seem to be addressed to the Earl of Southampton, but this may be no more than a clever fictional trope…the literary work of art has nothing to do with the world…..’
This movement was inspired by an essay written by T.S. Eliot….
…..over a hundred yhears ago!
He wrote:
‘The more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates; the more perfectly will the mind digest and transmute the passions which are its material.’
The reason Eliot wrote this is that he was afraid that when people discovered how appalling he was in his private life, they would shun his poetry.
But F. R. Leavis – a Cambridge, bicycling don…..
…….was flattered by Eliot’s attention – and taken in by him – even if his wife Queenie wasn’t.
So Eliot’s beliefs swamped the whole of Academic life in Britain and America – up to Rowse’s ‘Dark Lady’ discovery in 1973.
But Stanley Wells is still everywhere….
Even the Code’s Chief Agent has been attacked by him!
He wrote Love’s Labour’s Found in 2000…
…….and appeared in a Meridian TV documentary – developing Dover Wilson’s theory that Love’s Labour’s Lost was first performed at Titchfield.
Wells – now the Director of the Shakespeare Birthplace Institute no less – describes the book as….
……’charming’….
…..but finally dismisses the book as….
‘semi-fiction’.
At least Stanley used the word ‘semi’!
He promised to write his own book on Will and Harry – but it has never seen the light of day.
*********
On the way back to West London on the train, Stewart shared an amazing coincidence with Your Cat.
His mother had been a talented tailoress – and had worked in the rag trade at Malone’s old house in London W1.
She managed to get a flat round the corner for her son – where he lived for seven years.
Now the extraordinary thing is that Malone’s house was in Langham Street –
….which was on property once owned by the Earl of Southampton…..
(It’s best to read Parts One and Two first. The Story continues…)
Mary Southampton summons Will…..
She has found out about the liaison between Will and Harry and is furious. But Will reminds her that her own love once crossed barriers of class.
Can’t she give her blessing to one that crosses barriers of sex?
She does – and Harry and Will travel to Europe in 1593 – as spies for the Earl of Essex and to celebrate their love.
In Spain Will and Harry see Titian’s paintings of Venus and Adonis...….
…..and The Rape of Lucrece..
They then travel on to Rome – where they see the newly erected obelisk in front of St. Peter’s…..
……and buy Italian novellas that Will transforms into plays.
When Harry and Will return to England, they find that Marlowe has been killed in a gay brawl – and that Kyd, under torture, has betrayed Marlowe’s atheism to the authorities. Mary Southampton commissions a narrative poem from Will based on Titian’sVenus and Adonis – and he uses the same colours in his verse that the artist does in his painting.
The poem has gay undertows – but basically celebrates the idea of heterosexual love – which remains unfulfilled.
Mary still hopes that her son will one day marry.
Harry is nominated for the Order of the Garter and Will warns him to be careful about his promiscuity with lower class young men, as this could be used against him politically – as indeed it was at his trial after the Essex Rebellion in 1601.
In 1594 – as we have seen – Harry commissions a poem from Will based on The Rape of Lucrece.
This is a massive chance for Will to write a serious poem – and he retires to Stratford to write it – again drawing on Titian’s original colours. But he neglects to write love-sonnets to Harry.
George Chapman…..
…….an older, impoverished poet – seizes his chance and starts to write poems to Harry that out-flatter even Will’s.
Will is desperate as he sees his source of income drying up – but Mary Southampton comes to his aid.
She commissions Will to write A Midsummer Night’s Dream to celebrate her wedding, in 1594, to Sir Thomas Heneage, at Copt Hall in Essex.
Despite the terrible summer weather, this play is such a triumph that Harry dumps Chapman and gives Will the famous present of £1,000. Will and Harry resume their affair – with lapses, it must be admitted, on both sides.
But Will finds it disturbing that Harry never shows any signs of guilt on his face…
In August 1596 Will’s son, Hamnet, dies. Will, ironically, is working on a new version of Hamlet at the Swan Theatre and has no time to mourn properly. He goes off the rails and is bound over to keep the peace – along with a bunch of low-lifers and prostitutes – after threatening violence to one William Wayte.
As a result Harry cannot be seen with Will – but in time, the two men resume their liaison, and Harry becomes Will’s surrogate son as well as his lover.
But finally Harry does fall in love with a woman – Elizabeth Vernon……
……a poor cousin of the Earl of Essex and lady-in-waiting to the Queen. Harry asks Will’s help to gain her favours by writing a love-play they can perform at Titchfield – Romeo and Juliet’
Will is ambivalent about this – and creates the disturbed figure of Mercutio for himself to play. But in the end he realises that he still has a spiritual relationship with Harry – ‘the marriage of true minds’.
Politics now take over from love. Both the Earl of Essex and Harry want to depose Queen Elizabeth because she will not name her successor – and they fear a civil war will ensue. Also Elizabeth refuses to give freedom of worship to Catholics – a cause Essex supports, though he is a Protestant.
Will is recruited into the plot – and is sent to Scotland in 1599 to persuade King James to invade England by performing Macbeth. This play prophesies – through the Three Witches – that the Stuart line will take over the throne of England as well as Scotland.
It also condemns the Macbeths for killing their royal guest – in the way Elizabeth has beheaded James’s mother, Mary Queen of Scots, when she sought refuge in England.
Will, though, realises that the rebellion is lost when Essex fails to quell an uprising in Ireland. He writes Julius Caesar to show how badly rebellions can go – but Essex and Harry go ahead with theirs and have the Chamberlain’s Men put on Richard II – a play about the deposition of a King – on the eve of the Essex rebellion.
Queen Elizabeth famously says: ‘I am Richard – know ye not that?’
Will flees to Scotland in a state of suicidal despair. Essex is beheaded – but Harry’s death sentence is commuted to life imprisonment in the Tower, where he becomes so ill people fear he will die.
But Elizabeth herself dies in 1603 and everything turns round. Will comes back to London and writes sonnets to his friend King James, imploring him to release Harry from the Tower: they are sent with a ‘wooing’ portrait of Harry…
…..depicting him with his hair loose, like a bride’s, and offering his left hand to the King.
Will writes:
Ah wherefore with infection should he live
And with his presence grace impiety,
That sin by him advantage should achieve
And lace itself with his society?
[Why should Harry still be locked up in the Tower of London, living with ‘infection’: (1) The literal infection of the Tower with its vermin (2) The moral infection of being imprisoned with criminals and (3) The infection of his own illness – his arm is still in a sling. And why should he give the grace of his being to sinful fellow convicts and allow them to hobnob with him as equals?]
The Sonnets do the trick – and on 5th April, James VI and I writes to the Privy Council:
‘Because the place is unwholesome and dolorous to him to whose body and mind we would give present comfort, intending unto him much further grace and favour, we have written to the Lieutenant of the Tower to deliver him out of prison presently.’
Harry is released from the Tower on 9th April, 1603 and Will writes a sonnet of pure joy.
Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
Of the wide world, dreaming on things to come,
Can yet the lease of my true love control,
Suppos’d as forfeit to a confin’d doom.
[Neither my own anxieties nor the predictions of everybody else about the future can stop the release from the Tower of my lover – whom everyone thought would die in prison]
The mortal Moon hath her eclipse indur’d,
And the sad Augurs mock their own presage;
Incertainties now crown them-selves assur’d,
And peace proclaims Olives of endless age.
[Queen Elizabeth – the Moon-Goddess – has proved to be a human being after all. She has died – and those who predicted strife and civil war at her death have been proved wrong and laugh at what they themselves prophesied. Anxieties have given way to confidence, and the peace that has greeted the accession of King James promises peace for all time].
Now with the drops of this most balmy time,
My love looks fresh and death to me subscribes,
Since spite of him I’ll live in this poor rime,
While he insults ore dull and speechless tribes;
[The accession of King James has been like a healing balm to my beloved Harry, who now looks young and well. Even death now supports my writing since I will live on in this, my second-rate verse, while death triumphs over whole swathes of dim-witted and inarticulate people].
And thou in this shalt find thy monument,
When tyrants’ crests and tombs of brass are spent.
[And this poem, Harry, will be your monument – when the crests and brass tombs of tyrants like Queen Elizabeth will be in ruins].
‘Crests’ is a coded dig at Elizabeth. She once described herself as ‘cloven and not crested.’ Here Will gives her a crest and turns her into a man – a rumour about Elizabeth that had circulated for years. But even her crest – her honorary penis – will crumble into dust.
Will had met Harry in the summer of 1590. Their relationship – with all its infidelities and ups and downs – had lasted a full thirteen years.
The pasteboard obelisks set up on James’s coronation route were blown down by the wind….
– but they reminded Will of the genuine obelisk he and Harry had seen in Rome – and Will compared his love with Harry to the eternity of its stone.
But their affair was soon to end. It had survived Harry’s marriage to Elizabeth Vernon – which proved a very happy one – and had survived the birth of daughters to the couple. But in 1605 everything changed. Elizabeth produced a son.
Harry, by this time, had grown disenchanted with the gay world of James’s Court. He had hoped to become the King’s favourite – but, although only thirty, he was too old for James. The younger sons of the Countess of Pembroke – William and Philip Herbert – became the King’s favourites. Harry was marginalised.
Harry, alienated by events, wanted his son – named James after the King – to become a brave and masculine soldier.
Will, the Old Player, had to go.
So, not only had Will lost his real son – he had now lost his surrogate son as well.
He responds by writing Harry a sonnet of pure poison: the phrase ‘lovely boy’ is bitter and sarcastic.
O thou my lovely Boy who in thy power
Dost hold time’s fickle glass, his sickle’s hour:
Who hast by waning grown, and therein show’st
Thy lover’s withering, as thy sweet self grow’st;
[Harry, you seem to have complete control of Father Time’s hour-glass and his sickle – with which he cuts life away. You have enacted the miracle of growing bigger by diminishing: you have waned but your other ‘self’ – your baby son – has waxed. But as your baby grows – and is given all your attention – I, your lover, am withering away from your neglect].
If Nature (sovereign mistress over wrack)
As thou goest onwards still will pluck thee back,
She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill
May time disgrace, and wretched minutes kill.
[If Dame Nature – who is the supreme controlling mistress of decay – keeps you unnaturally young – by preserving your ‘loveliness’ and giving you a son – her motive for doing this is to humiliate Father Time and destroy his pitiful minutes.]
Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure;
She may detain, but not still keep her treasure!
Her Audit(though delayed) answer’d must be,
And her Quietus is to render thee.
[But be very frightened of your mistress, Dame Nature – you plaything of her lust. She can hold on to objects that she values – but can’t keep them. Her final invoice to Father Time must be honoured – and when she settles her bill she will ‘render’ you in two ways. (1) By giving you back to time – and (2) by breaking your body down like meat.]
This Sonnet is NOT even a Sonnet. It is only twelve lines long – and where there should be a clinching couplet, Will has put two pairs of brackets.
I
It looks like a grave – yawning open for Harry’s body.
Will wants his old lover dead.
Will was clearly going through a crisis – a break-down even – and it led on to some of his darkest, most nihilistic plays – the bleakest being King Lear. He smashes down the play’s original happy ending – and finally mourns for his son through Lear’s grief for his dead daughter.
And he took his revenge on Harry four years later by publishing all his intimate sonnets to him.
He gets his publisher, T. T. – Thomas Thorpe – to wish Harry ‘All Happiness’ – as Will does, as we have seen, in his dedication to Lucrece– and Thorpe – by describing himself as ‘the well-wishing adventurer’ who is ‘setting forth’ – references Harry’s ship – ‘The Sea Adventure’ – which left Plymouth for Virginia on 2nd June 1609 – a fortnight after the Sonnets had been published.
But in what I believe is Will’s final sonnet – 146 – he resolves to enter on a spiritual path away from worldly excess, and, in his words….
……..feed on death
In The Tempest Prospero says: ‘Every third thought shall be my grave’– and in his final plays, Will seems to have come to accept the way things are.
William Davenant describes how, when he was a boy, Will would ‘cover his face with a hundred kisses’ when he visited him in Oxford, so perhaps Davenant had come to replace both Hamnet and Harry in Will’s heart, mind – and soul.
With the Sonnets, Will included a narrative poem ‘A Lover’s Complaint’. In this he splits himself into two – and has a conversation with himself. One half of Will is a young woman who has fallen in love with a psychotic young man whose‘browny locks hung in crooked curls’– not unlike Harry Southampton’s.
And, very much like Harry he…..
did in the general bosom reign
Of young, of old; and sexes both enchanted.
His other persona is….
A reverend man that grazed his cattle nigh– Sometime a blusterer, that the ruffle knew Of court, of city…
The O.E.D. guesses ‘blusterer’ means ‘boaster’ – but it could equally be a bombastic actor who ‘struts and frets his hour upon the stage.’
The young woman tells the older man how, like others, she fell besotted with the young man and…
Threw my affections in his charmed power, Reserved the stalk and gave him all my flower.
But the young woman finally wises up….
For, lo, his passion, but an art of craft, E’en there resolved my reason into tears; There my white stole of chastity I daff’d, Shook off my sober guards and civil fears; Appear to him, as he to me appears, All melting; though our drops this difference bore, His poison’d me, and mine did him restore.
[His passion was an artful, bogus one that transformed my rational mind into tears. There I took off my white dress of chastity, shook off my ‘sober guards’ – my moral protection and abstention – and ‘civil fears’ – fear of abandoning propriety and even the law itself – and appeared to him in same ‘melting’ – weeping and ejaculating state – as he appeared to me – with this difference: his ‘drops’ – tears and semen – poisoned me while mine made him better.]
But the Young Woman comes to a most surprising conclusion…
O, that infected moisture of his eye, O, that false fire which in his cheek so glow’d, O, that forced thunder from his heart did fly, O, that sad breath his spongy lungs bestow’d, O, all that borrow’d motion seeming owed… Would yet again betray the fore-betray’d, And new pervert a reconciled maid!
If she had her time over, she would do it all again!
At the end of the day, Will was glad he had met Harry….
********
At the end of Stewart’s talk – ‘When Will met Harry’ – there was a lively and provactive Q. and A. session – which Your Cat will report on soon in a ‘Trixie Special’.
(It’s best to read ‘When Will met Harry – a Riposte to the B.B.C’ – first.)
John Aubrey………
….. got his information about Will being country schoolmaster from the actor William Beeston – whom John Dryden described as ‘the chronicle of the age’. William in turn got the information from his father Christopher Beeston – who had been apprenticed to the actor Augustine Phillips, and who later acted with Will in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men.
We know that there is a schoolhouse at the gates of Titchfield Abbey…..
The question is: did Will teach there?
There was an earlier William Beeston – who became part of the Southampton entourage – who died in Posbrook Farm in 1638.
The question is – was he related to Christopher Beeston? The almost universal cry has been ‘No’ – but let’s briefly examine the timeline for October 1638:
On 4th October Christopher Beeston – writing he is ‘sick and weak in body’, has ‘many great debts’ and is ‘engaged for great sums of money’ – completes his will – but signs it:
‘Christopher Hutchinson’.
7th October: Christopher Beeston/Hutchinson writes a codicil to his will.
Two days later – on 9th October – William Beeston of Posbrook Farm – stating he is ‘weak in body’ and bequeathing ‘to every child that God hath sent me five shillings a piece for their portions’ signs his will.
Seven days later – on 17th October – Christopher Beeston/Hutchinson is buried in St. Giles-in-the-Fields in London.
Seven weeks later, on 3rd December, William Beeston of Posbrook Farm is buried at St. Peter’s, Titchfield.
Either this is a coincidence of cosmic proportions or there is a link of some sort between the two men….
Let The Shakespeare Code propose one!
Christopher Beeston had an alternative name ‘Hutchinson’ – which suggests he might have been illegitimate. William Beeston of Posbrook Farm writes about the children ‘that God hath sent him’ which sounds to us like a euphemism for children born out of wedlock.
William Beeston of Posbrook fathers Christopher out of wedlock. Christopher studies at the Titchfield Grammar School and is briefly taught by Will, who encourages him to become the boy actor known as Kitt.
William Beeston of Posbrook becomes respectable because of his association with the Southampton family. He even marries a much younger wife in the 1630s, fathers legitimate children and 1637 even acquires a Coat of Arms.
Christopher, on the other hand, after acting with Will in The Chamberlain’s Men, gets wilder and wilder – he runs a brothel, gets accused of rape and sometimes uses an alias – ‘Christopher Hutchinson’.
William Beeston of Posbrook disowns him. But Christopher gets very ill and begs his natural father to visit him – and he does so out of humanity.
Christopher, completely impoverished, asks his father to help his son, named William after him, financially – but William Beeston of Posbrook – who by now has his own little William – refuses. Christopher cuts himself off completely from his father by using his Christopher Hutchinson name when he signs his will, and even refers to his son as ‘William Hutchinson’. William Beeston of Posbrook gives five shillings to all his children – legitimate and otherwise – as a blocking bequest to stop them from claiming any more. He leaves everything to his wife.
Unfortunately Posbrook Beeston catches the plague from his son and dies soon afterwards.
We cannot (at the moment at least) prove this theory – but The Code believes that forming a credible story from the known facts is a legitimate way of investigating the truth.
What we know for certain is that Harry Southampton graduated from St. John’s College, Cambridge, in 1589 and was in residence in Titchfield in 1590. He was to turn 17 that year and massive pressure was being put on him by his guardian, Lord Burghley……
…….Queen Elizabeth’s Secretary of State – to marry his grand-daughter Elizabeth de Vere.
Harry was refusing – so his family faced an enormous £5,000 fine.
But Harry wasn’t interested in girls. His father, the Second Earl of Southampton…..
[Photo by Ross Underwood]
…..had accused his mother, Mary, of adultery with ‘a commonperson’ and had snatched his son away from her at the age of 6. In the words of Mary, the Second Earl ‘made his manservant hiswife’ and surrounded himself with….
‘a whole troupe of at least a hundred well-mounted gentlemen and yeomen and tall goodly fellows that kept a constant pace.’
The Second Earl had died when Harry was eight – and Harry became part of Lord Burghley’s household where he met the young Earl of Essex…..
….who had also lost his father.
Greene’s famous attack on Will suggests he did much more for the Southampton household than simply tutor Harry. Greene described him as….
‘an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his tiger’s heart wrapped in a Players hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of us: and being an absolute Iohannes factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.’
A word of warning. It is highly unlikely Greene wrote these words. Nashe claimed to have found the manuscript in Greene’s garret after he died – but many people – including Will – thought that Nashe himself had written the libel, passing it off as off as Greene’s dying curse.
Nashe swore his innocence, but ‘divers of worship’ – most likely the Southampton family – complained to the publisher of the pamphlet, Henry Chettle, who issued a grovelling retraction and described Will’s…
‘uprightness of dealing which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing, which approves his art’.
To add to the complication, Nashe might well have been in Titchfield at the time – collaborating with Will when he wasn’t stabbing him in the back.
Intriguingly, Nashe dedicated his pamphlet ‘Strange Newes’ to a Mr. William Apis-Lapis.
‘Apis’ is Latin for ‘Bee’ and ‘Lapis’ Latin for ‘Stone’. Bee Stone. Mr William Bee-Stone – Mr. William Beeston. Posbrook Beeston even had bees on his coat of arms!
But back to the other Will…
As a ‘fac totum’ Will might well have taught the local schoolboys – and an American hand-writing expert – Charles Hamilton – discovered a letter signed by Harry that he believes to be in Will’s hand.
But Will was also the Southampton family poet. We know this for certain because of the Dedication of his two narrative poems to the Earl of Southampton – neither of which is mentioned by the B.B.C.’s ‘Rise of a Genius’.
The one to Venus and Adonis in 1593 is formal and tentative: this is because Harry’s mother had commissioned it. Harry had not yet come of age:
‘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’.
But the next dedication – to Lucrece – was written in 1594 when Harry was in full control of his finances . Will let’s his feelings fly:
‘THE love I dedicate to your lordship is without end; whereof this pamphlet, without beginning, is but a superfluous moiety. The warrant I have of your honourable disposition, not the worth of my untutored lines, makes it assured of acceptance. What I have done is yours; what I have to do is yours; being part in all I have, devoted yours. Were my worth greater, my duty would show greater; meantime, as it is, it is bound to your lordship, to whom I wish long life, still lengthened with all happiness’.
This outpouring of love for Harry brings us naturally to Will’s Sonnets…
There are 154 of them. Some of them are letters, some of them reflections, some of them flatter, some of them insult, some of them seduce, some of them reject, some of them glory in life, some of them despair of it. In short, Will reveals there is not a single emotion that characters go through in his plays that he has not gone through himself.
We might say we know more about him than any man who has ever lived were it not for one thing. Will – when he published the Sonnets in 1609 – did not print them in chronological order – rather in two piles – ‘to him’ and ‘to her’. The ‘to him’ pile is much, much bigger than the ‘to her’ pile.
Using a data base built up over the years, The Shakespeare Code has put all the poems into chronological order – and we believe a tremendous story emerges which involves a Lovely Boy, a Dark Lady and a Rival Poet.
Can we assume, for the moment, that Nathan Drake was right in 1817 and Dover Wilson in 1932 when they named Harry as the Lovely Boy?
And can we also assume, for the moment, that A. L. Rowse was right in 1973 when he named Amelia Lanyer, nee Basanno, as the Dark Lady?
Can we also assume that the Rival Poet was the Spirit Medium George Chapman….
…..who would summon up the ghost of Christopher Marlowe at the drop of a hat.
So here is the story – drawing on history and anecdote, along with Will’s plays and sonnets.
Mary Southampton commissions Will to write seventeen sonnets to celebrate Harry’s seventeenth birthday in 1590 – urging him to marry and have a son. She chooses the fourteen-line sonnet form because it has been perfected by the late Sir Philip Sidney……
….who lived at Wilton – a day’s horse-ride away – whom young Harry worships because of his bravery and chivalry.
Will argues that a son will give Harry another ‘self’ – his son – who will ‘wax’ like the moon while he himself ‘wanes’.
But Will – stepping way outside his brief – hints that he could also make Harry immortal by the power of his verse alone.
But these seventeen sonnets have the reverse effect of what Mary intended. Harry becomes attracted to his tutor – and though Will has been introduced to same-sex love by Marlowe in London, and admits to finding Harry, with his shoulder length hair, even more attractive than a woman, denies any physical interest in the boy. Will wants their love to be platonic.
In 1591 Queen Elizabeth arrives on her progress to Cowdray and Titchfield. In her entourage is the Basanno family – dark-skinned Sephardic Jews who are renowned for their music making. Among them is the beautiful young clavichord player, Amelia Basanno, who is the mistress of the Queen’s cousin – old Lord Hunsdon…….
Plague is raging in the city – so Amelia stays in Titchfield as an entertainer and companion to Mary Southampton. Will falls desperately in love with Amelia – and writes the part of the dark-skinned Rosaline for her in Love’s Labour’s Lost – a play which satirises Queen Elizabeth and which Harry and his aristocratic friends perform in the Park of Place House at Whitsun in 1592.
Will attempts to seduce Amelia by playing Rosaline’s lover, Berowne, and sending her sonnets which flatter her and tease her. But Amelia has no interest in the balding, prematurely aged, playwright. In desperation, Will asks Harry to plead his case with Amelia – but Amelia takes the opportunity to seduce young Harry – and Harry plays along because it will upset Will.
Will, indeed, is distraught – and goes on tour with Lord Strange’s Men. As he thinks about things, he realises that he is more in love with the boy than the girl. Amelia gets pregnant and is married off to a minstrel. Will returns to Titchfield and declares his love for Harry in Sonnet 18 – one of the greatest poems ever written….
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
[Do you want me to compare you to a summer’s day as other poets might? You are much more beautiful and even-keeled than that! In England even in May harsh winds can shake the buds of the flowers and summer is so quickly over- like a short lease on a property.]
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair, from fair, sometime declines
By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimm’d:
[Sometimes the sun is too hot and often it is covered with clouds – and everything beautiful on a summer’s day will at some point lose its beauty – either by chance events or simply the unaided workings of nature.]
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wandr’st in his shade
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
[But you will not be subject to this change – nor will you fade as the summer flowers fade, nor will you lose your beauty. Nor will you even die. Your summer will be an eternal because I am writing about you in verse.]
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
[This poem will survive as long as men are still alive to recite it or read it – and this will give you eternal life.]
Will has started off with praise of Harry – but ends up with lashings of praise for himself!
Mother Mary…..
…….finds out about Harry’s liaison with Will.
And mother Mary isn’t pleased….
*****
To find out what happened next, read When Will met Harry – Part Three…
To be published, Deo Volente, at midnight (G.M.T.) on Monday, 8th January, 2024.
All at Code Headquarters in West London wish you a Very Happy 2024!
Just before Christmas, the Shakespeare Code’s Chief Agent – Stewart Trotter – accompanied by Your Faithful Cat – travelled down to Titchfield in Hampshire to address a packed meeting of the august Titchfield History Society….
Here is Stewart’s talk…
Your Cat read the quotes!
‘Bye, now!
***
The BBC has just televised a three part, three hour, life of William Shakespeare – titled…
The Rise of a Genius.
It makes no mention at all of Titchfield – or even Henry Rosely, the Third Earl of Southampton.
I pronounce his surname ‘Rosely’ because that’s how the aristocratic branch of the Wriothesley family is named in the local Parish Register. The non-aristocratic branch called themselves Risley – and even spelt their surname Risley.
The Third Earl of Southampton called himself ‘Harry’ in his letters and Shakespeare called himself ‘Will’ in his Sonnets. So let’s call them ‘Harry and Will’.
For the last quarter of a century I have taken Will’s link with Titchfield and the Southampton family as a truth universally acknowledged. But clearly it isn’t. Or not by the BBC anyway. So I thought the best thing to do for this talk was to take a fresh look at the evidence to see if it really does stack up.
What it boils down to is this:
Do we believe what Nicholas Rowe says in his ‘Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespear’ – …..the first ever biography of Will published in 1709?
It must be admitted, for a start, that Rowe spells ‘Shakespeare’ without the final ‘e’. Not a good sign.
Rowe writes:
‘What grace so ever the Queen conferred upon Shakespeare it was not to her only he owed the fortune which the reputation of his wit made. He had the honour to meet with many great and uncommon marks of favour and friendship from the Earl of Southampton, famous in the histories of that time for his friendship to the unfortunate Earl of Essex. It was to that noble Lord that he dedicated his Venus and Adonis, the only piece of his poetry which he ever published himself.‘
Rowe forgets that Will had also dedicated Lucreceto Harry – and in 1709 Will’s Sonnets had just been printed. Rowe had a copy – but hadn’t read them. Not a good sign either.
Rowe continues:
‘There is one incidence so singular in the magnificence of this patron of Shakespeare’s, that if I had not been assured that the story was handed down by Sir William D’Avenant, who was probably very well acquainted with his affairs, I should not have ventured to have inserted, that my Lord Southampton, at one time, gave him [Will] a thousand pounds to enable him to go through with a purchase which he heard he had a mind to. A bounty very great and very rare at any time, and almost equal to that profuse generosity the present age has shown to French dancers and Italian eunuchs.’
£1,000 is thought by some to be worth half a million pounds in today’s money – or even a million.
Can we rely on this story? Rowe was a playwright himself – and had just edited an edition of Shakespeare’s plays. He got his information from Thomas Betterton…
….a hugely admired actor, famous for his Hamlet…
…..who had visited Stratford-upon-Avon toward the end of his life to gather information.
Betterton had acted for Davenant – who John Aubrey tells us – believed he was Will’s illegitimate son. Will had certainly been Davenant’s Godfather – and the teenage Davenant had written an ode on Will’s death.
Davenant also knew ‘old Mr. Lowen’ who had been directed by Will – so the story has a provenance going back to the Bard himself.
And in 1806, R.B. Wheeler provided back up evidence. He wrote in his ‘History and Antiquities of Stratford upon Avon….’
‘the unanimous tradition of this neighbourhood is that by the uncommon bounty of the Earl of Southampton, Shakespeare was enabled to purchase houses and land in Stratford’.
But Edmond Malone…..
– an Irish ex-barrister with inherited wealth – was having none of it.
In 1770 he wrote:
‘that Lord Southampton gave Shakespeare a thousand pounds in order that he might complete a purchase is totally unworthy of credit since no such extensive a purchase ever appears to be made by him as will be seen when we come to make an estimate of the property which he possessed.’
Malone never even visited Stratford – but since his time, Shakespeare Scholars have simply repeated what he wrote.
Up to 2011, that is. A finance director turned academic called David Fallow wrote a Ph D for Exeter University in which he showed that purchases Will made between 1597 and 1614 cost him £1,400 – far in excess of the maximum of £60 a year he could have made in the theatre.
He must have had another source of money.
Now it has to be said that Dr. Fallow has other ideas about where the money came from. However, the facts fit Rowe’s account.
But how did Will come to meet Harry? Why did he leave Stratford in the first place?
The BBC series suggests it was simply an ambition to be a writer: but in the reign of Elizabeth that would have been suicidal.
Robert Greene…..
……whom the BBC presents as the successful ‘University Wit’ who gave Will his first writing break – ended up in the garret of a kind-hearted cobbler who found him dying of starvation in the street.
Rowe has a far more convincing story. He states that Will, on leaving school, joined the family business – butchery and gloving:
‘In this kind of settlement he continued for some time, till an extravagance that he was guilty of, forced him both out of his country and his way of living which he had taken up, and though it seemed at first to be a blemish on his good manners, and a misfortune to him, yet it afterwards happily proved the occasion of exerting one of the greatest Genius’s that ever was known in dramatic poetry.
He had by a misfortune common enough to young fellows, fallen into ill company; and amongst them, some that made a frequent practice of deer-stealing, engaged with them more than once in robbing a park that belonged to Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote, near Stratford.
For this he was prosecuted by that Gentleman, as he thought, somewhat too severely; and in order to revenge that ill usage, he made a ballad upon him.
And though this, probably the first essay of his poetry, be lost, yet it is said to have been so very bitter, that it redoubled the prosecution against him to that degree, that he was obliged to leave his business and family in Warwickshire, for some time, and shelter himself in London.‘
Malone, again, dismisses this story: but it is backed up by three different sources that pre-date Rowe – including a man called Thomas Jones – born in neighbouring Tarbick three years before Will died. He not only remembered the story – but remembered the ballad as well, which he sang way into his nineties! It has a refrain of:
‘Lucy is lousy’.
Joshua Barnes, a Cambridge don, reported, in the 1680s, he had heard the words of the ballad sung by his hostess at a Stratford inn – and in 1688 Richard Davies – an Oxford man – inherited notes about Will from a Gloucester clergyman called William Fullman. Davies records:
‘Shakespeare was much given to all unluckiness in stealing venison and rabbits, particularly from Sir — Lucy who oft had him whipped and sometimes imprisoned and at last made him fly his native country to his great advancement’.
At the end of his account Davies writes:
‘He died a Papiste’.
This hits the crux. Robert Dudley, the First Earl of Leicester……
……moved to Kennilworth – a dozen miles from Stratford – when Will was twelve years old. Leicester – an intimate of Queen Elizabeth – claimed to be England’s leading Puritan and terrorised Roman Catholics. Thomas Lucy was his agent.
We know Will’s father, John, was also a Catholic because he signed a Testament of Faith which he hid in the walls of his house. The authenticity of this document was, of course, challenged by Malone. But other Testaments were later found in other places with exactly the same wording.
John Shakespeare had once been the Bailiff of Stratford and so rich he actually lent money to the Council. But his recusancy led him into direct conflict with the authorities and this ruined his business. He had to take Will out of school – but it seems a Catholic network was at hand to help.
John Cottom – a Lancashire Catholic who came to teach at Stratford – recognised Will’s talent and managed to get him a position as children’s entertainer with the Catholic Hoghton family at Hoghton Tower.
But Hoghton died, and Leicester’s thugs were circling, so Will had to return Stratford.
He wooed Anne Hathaway…..
…..eight years his senior – with ballads and songs – one of which we still have – and married her when she became pregnant. It was at this period – around 1582 – that Will began poaching Lucy’s deer – first to help feed his family, but later to take a Catholic revenge.
Leicester had accused Will’s aristocratic cousin, Edward Arden……
…….of plotting to assassinate Queen Elizabeth – and had him hanged, drawn and quartered in 1583.
When Will wrote his scandalous poem about Lucy – and according to Betterton hung it on the gates of Charlecote Park…….
……..Will had to flee. Again the Catholic network, it seems, was there to help him. It engineered a collaboration with Thomas Kyd……
…..not a University Wit as the BBC series asserted, but a fellow grammar school boy – a ‘grammarian’- from a Catholic family.
Evidence for this can be found in the pamphlets of the University Wits Robert Greene…..
…and Thomas Nashe……
…..who describe Will and Kyd as:
‘deep read Grammarians, who having no more art in their brain, than was nourished in a serving-man’s idleness, will take upon them to be the ironic censors of all, when God and poetry doth know, they are the simplest of all.’
According to the Wits, Will and Kyd, had day jobs in Westminster as ‘noverints’ – that is to say, solicitors’ clerks – which was the profession Kyd’s father followed. They would write by candlelight at night. And then….
‘for recreation, after their candle stuff, having starched their beards most curiously, make a peripatetical path into the inner parts of the City…‘
…..where Elizabethan gentlemen got up to no good.
To make sure readers knew who the grammarians were, the Wits quote the ‘kidin Aesop’ and Will’s ‘killcow conceit’ – a reference to Will’s former profession as a butcher and glover.
Will was the junior collaborator to Kyd, who was already established. Computer analysis suggests that Kyd produced early versions of Hamlet, King Lear, King John, Henry V, and The Taming of the Shrew or The Taming of a Shrew as it was then called.
According to a coded poem by Ben Jonson…..
…..Will Shakespeare….
……‘the poet-ape who would be thought our chief’…..
…..bought the rights to these plays when Kyd died in 1594 and developed them into the masterpieces they became. In the BBC series there was hardly a mention of Will’s extensive collaborations – or the fact he lifted the vast majority of his plots from other men’s work.
Richard Simpson – an Anglican priest in Queen Victoria’s reign who converted to Rome – was the first person in modern times to suggest that Will was a Catholic. But Simpson also traced – through the coded satires of Greene and Nashe – a massive influence on Will of a radical Anglican priest, poet and printer, Robert Crowley, the Rector of St. Giles Without Cripplegate.
Greene writes:
‘If they [Kyd and Will] come to publish anything, it is either distilled out of ballads or borrowed of theological poets and he that cannot write true English without the help of clerks of Parish Churches will need make himself father of interludes…in charity be it spoken, I am persuaded the sexton of St. Giles without Cripplegate would have been ashamed of such blasphemous rhetoric.
And Nashe writes:
‘I must needs send such idle wits [Kyd and Will] to shrift to the Vicar of St. Fooles….their ghostly father.’
Crowley believed that all wealth should be voluntarily re-distributed – and gave his own stipend to the poor. He believed that everything should be shared – and that everything should be simple and natural. He hated artifice in language and artifice in adornment. He hated wigs and he hated make-up. These are the massive themes of Will’s Sonnets – and the great, later plays.
But how did Will – a committed Catholic – come to meet Crowley – a priest so Protestant he refused to wear a surplice?
St. Giles without Cripplegate was the Church Sir Thomas Lucy used when he was in London. His second daughter, Margaret, who died at around 19 is buried there – and there is a memorial to his granddaughter, Constance Whjitney. It would only be natural for Will to try to enlist the priest’s support in his ongoing battle with Lucy. In return Will wrote the quasi-Biblical play The Fair Em to please Crowley – and toured the Midlands with it in Lord Strange’s Company.
So, if Rowe was right about Lucy, it could well mean that he was right about Harry and the £1,000 as well.
The Spanish Armada in 1588 spelt the death – for a time – of the theatre. The public were engaged in their own drama with Spain – and actors were seen as shirkers. Kyd joined Lord Strange’s household and Christopher Marlowe……
– whom Kyd and Will had befriended in London – joined Bess of Hardwick’s.
What happened to Will?
The great Shakespeare scholar, John Dover Wilson…..
……believed that Will joined Mary Southampton’s household in Titchfield as tutor to her teenage son, Harry – another indication that there was a Catholic network at work as the Southampton family were ardent followers of the Old Faith.
John Aubrey also states that Will…
‘understood Latin pretty well because he had been in his younger years a schoolmaster in the country’.
But was the country Hampshire?
****
To find out read ‘When Will met Harry: Part Two’!!!
It is with great sadness that The Shakespeare Code records the passing of one of its most distinguished Fellows – the great Glaswegian poet – Eddie Linden. Here is his photo, rightly placed in the National Portrait Gallery of London.
And here is his most celebrated poem about Glasgow – ‘City of Razors’:
‘Cobbled streets, littered with broken milk bottles,
Reeking chimneys and dirty tenement buildings,
Walls scrawled with FUCK THE POPE and blue-lettered
Words GOD BLESS THE RANGERS.
An old woman at the corner, arms folded, babe in pram,
A drunk man’s voice from the other pavement,
And out come the Catholics from evening confessional;
They have managed to persuade the Ecclesiastical Authorities to let them open the Southampton Family Vault….
…..and they presented their findings last night to a packed and excited audience in St. Peter’s Church, Titchfield, Hampshire.
A slide show was part of the presentation, but because of the sensitive nature of the material – many dead bodies – photography was forbidden.
So Your Cat will have to fall back on her descriptive powers….
Now the fact is that most of what The Tomb Raiders discovered is actually in the public domain.
But legend has long shrouded the truth – and the truth really did set us free, last night, in a shocking way.
The tomb was last opened in the 1950s when a Visiting Preacher fell through the floor – and the whole structure of the Church had to be stabilised.
The Vicar of St. Peter’s at the time – Norman Miller – gave an honest account of what he saw in the vault:
Fifteen to twenty great lead coffins, piled one on top of each other, the lower ones being in a poor state of preservation.
This tallies with a description by William Pavey in 1719 – when the vault was still being used….
[The bodies are] in lead coffins or wrapped in lead with inscribed plates indicating their identities and dates of death.
The last internment was made in 1737 and the tomb was sealed. Around 1899 the vault was opened by the Victorians, who had no qualms in taking of the lids of the coffins and reporting that the bodies had been embalmed.
This lead to a journalistic caprice in 1950.
Our Chief Agent, Stewart Trotter, came across a 1950 newspaper article stored in the Winchester Record Office, describing how the lids of the coffins had been taken off – and the bodies found swimming in the purest honey – perfectly preserved.
This story turned into fact – and was included in Church Literature and Guides.
So you can imagine the consternation last night which followed Laura’s photo of the contents of the vault…
….lumpen lead coffins, falling apart, imploding, thrust, higgledy-piggledy and disrespected, into the left corner of the vault.
If the vault had been in this condition when Mary Browne died she wouldn’t have asked to be placed ‘as near as may be’ to her beloved husband: she would have asked to be thrown in his general direction.
And there is evidence that the vault was always a touch chaotic. It seems to have been a general, public vault, commandeered by the Southampton family.
They built their memorial ‘tomb’ away from the East Wall……
– and, under a slab of stone in front of the tomb, built a stairway and brick passsageway which led to the old vault which may or may not have contained bodies from other families.
Rev. Norman Miller bricked up the entry to the old vault and removed the Tudor steps down to the crypt. He must have thought that was that.
But it certainly wasn’t. The Tomb Raiders now want to identify the bodies. They have smashed down Miller’s brick wall and re-built the steps.
But DNA tests have been forbidden by the Authorities, so only two bodies have been ‘confirmed’:
Elizabeth Vernon….
….who became the wife of Henry Wriothesley, Third Earl of Southampton….
2. James Wriothesley, Lord Wriothesley, the son of the Third Earl, who died of dysentery at the age of nineteen, five days before his father. They were onn a military campaign in the Lowlands.
The Tomb Raiders have not identified any remains yet of Mary Browne….
……BUT they do have one the ‘inscribed plates’ William Pavey described in 1719 with Mary’s name on it.
So it seems that her son DID respect her dying wish and allowed her into the family vault.
BUT we don’t know if she or her coffin are still there.
So, as Your Cat said at the beginning…..
Mary Browne’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave. And doesn’t.
Just a couple of days to Lord Montagu’s talk on the Southampton tomb on Monday!
For Your Cat, the big question is whether Mary Southampton’s coffin was placed ‘as near as may be’ near to her first husband, the Second Earl of Southampton.
Her son, Henry, Third Earl of Southamton. was busy in Titchfield at the time trying to establish industry in the area – and he had never got on with his mother.
In fact Mary went as far as to say that her son ‘never was kind to me’ – and that he had been ‘unnatural and undutiful’.
Mary had married Thomas Heneage in 1594 – but he had died soon afterwards. She went on to a third marriage with William Harvey – who was little older than her son – and the third Earl was furious that she intended to go ahead with the ceremony while he was in jail, for angering the Queen with his own marriage to Elizabeth Vernon.
Mary – when she made her plea in her will to be interred near her first husband – made Harry a gift of sixteen loose diamonds to be set into a George of gold for him to wear in memory of her – and the ‘best’ part of her goods – if not the ‘most’ which she left to her new husband.
Your Cat brings you the most important news for Shakespeare Scholarship this Century!
In September 2021, Lord Montagu, Fourth Baron of Beaulieu….
…was given permission to open the spectatcular tomb of the Southampton family in St. Peter’s Church, Titchfield!
In attendance was the Revd Susan Allman….
….who had been Priest-in-Charge at St. Peter’s Church…..
…..and returned to bless the proceedings.
The Shakespeare Southampton Legacy Trust reported that:
The Southampton monument is supported by a vaulted Tudor passage running its entire length to the north. Access to the Wriothesley vault was re-established through the original acces point on the chapel floor near the organ. Access involved lifting one stone slab that was fully re-instated upon completion.
There are three recumbent figures in alabaster on the tomb.
On the top is Jane, first Countess of Southampton….
[Photo: Ross Underwood]
To her right lies her husband Thomas Wriothesley, First Earl of Southampton…
[Photo: Ross Underwood]
…..and to her left her handsome son, Henry, Second Earl of Southampton….
[Photo: Ross Underwood]
Henry was married to Mary, Second Countess of Southampton, née Browne….
…..who was daughter of Anthony Browne, First Viscount Montagu…..
…….England’s leading Roman Catholic.
On the side of the tomb is depicted, kneeling in prayer, the young Henry Wriothesley – Third Earl of Southampton….
…..known as ‘Harry Southampton’ – the son of Mary, Second Countess of Southampton and Henry, Second Earl of Southampton.
A St. Peter’s Church tomb was commissioned by Henry, Second Earl. But when he died in 1581, his orders were not carried out by his widow.
He wanted a tomb for his father Thomas and mother Jane – and a tomb for himself…..
A SINGLE TOMB!
This was intended to be a direct insult to his wife Mary – who he believed had commited adultery with a lower-class person – a charge she swore in a letter to her father, Viscount Montague – was untrue.
But she added:
He may blame me of folly, but never justly condemn me of fault.
The ‘folly’ The Shakespeare Code believes, was to fall in love.
Mary disregarded her husband’s wishes – and ordered a single tomb – the one we have now – thirteen years later in 1594.
That was also the year her son – Harry Southampton – came of age and might have his own ideas about the family tomb….
For the Second Earl had snatched little Harry at the age of six away from his mother – and taught him to hate her – and, it seems to hate all women.
Mary confessed to her father her husband had made her so unhappy that she wanted to die…..
…..but in a way she was glad he had been so horrible to her because it meant she could forget him all the sooner.
BUT….
…in her will she asked to be interred…..
as near as may be unto the body of my honorable and dearly beloved Lord and Husband, the Late Earl of Southampton.
So what had happened?
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE!
We believe at The Shakespeare Code that in 1590 Shakespeare took up residence in Titchfield – as part of the Southampton family entourage.
Among his duties was tutoring Harry Southampton and Mary Southampton commissioned Shakespeare to write 17 sonnets on Harry’s seventeenth birthday to persuade him to get married.
However, the sonnets had the reverse effect……
Harry and Shakespeare became long-term lovers.
In 1594 Mary Southamton also re-married, and we believe she commissioned Shakespeare to write an entertainment to celebrate the wedding…
But Shakespeare – a Roman Catholic like Mary and her son – and indeed her dead husband the Second Earl – believed that the spiritual discord of Mary’s first marriage needed to be healed before the second could prosper.
For Elizabethan Catholics, the Fairy World – with its blessing,benedictions and enchantments – had become a substitute for Roman Catholicism….
…indeed, Bishop Richard Corbett – who would have been twelve years old when the play was written – went so far as to observe that, though Fairies had been seen in the reign of Queen Mary, they had not been seen in the reigns of Elizabeth or James….
By which we note that fairies were of the old profession/Their songs were Ave Maries/Their dances were procession.
The ‘old profession’ was the ‘Old Faith’.
With all this in mind, Shakespeare set about writing….
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM
The Fairy Protagonists – Oberon the King….
…..and Titania the Queen…..
…like Mary Southampton….
……and the Second Earl…..
…..are in a fight over a little boy……
….like the fight over the young Harry Southampton……
Also Titania suffers the ‘folly’ of falling in love with an ass…..
The contention between the Fairy King and Queen creates disorder in the seasons in the play….
…..and in real life the summer of 1594 was the coldest and wettest anyone could recall…
But order is restored when Oberon and Titania fall back in love…
…and dance together….
……and the fairies bless the house, not with holy water, but with field dew….
Shakespeare by writing the play has reconciled the souls of Mary and the Second Earl.
He has performed the role of a Priest.
Whether Mary’s wish was honoured – to be interred ‘as near as may be’ to the body of her dead first husband…..
…..or whether her body had even been interred in the tomb…..
……will be revealed by Lord Montagu in Titchfield on Monday night…..
He’s all my heart’s treasure, my joy, and my pleasure,
So justly, my love, my heart follows thee;
And I am resolved, in foul or fair weather,
To seek out my Blackbird, wherever he be.
This song was sung in Scotland both before the 1715 Jacobite Rebellion and after it – and as the Editor of ‘The Jacobite Songs and Ballads’ (1861) makes clear, ‘The Blackbird’ was the nick-name his friends gave to the Old Pretender – James Frances Edward Stuart.
He had a very dark complexion – a characteristic he shared with his father-in-law, Charles II, who was named ‘The Black Boy’ by his mother – and described as a ‘tall, black man’ on Wanted Posters after his escape by hiding in Boscobel Oak.
Both men probably inherited their dark skins from Charles II’s Spanish maternal grandmother, Marie de Medici…
‘Black Boy’ Taverns sprung up for people loyal to King Charles to drink in – and people later loyal to the Old Pretender did the same thing…
Rich Jacobites would also include black page-boys in the household to show their loyalty to the Stuart cause.
James Gibbs began his decoration of St. Mary le Strand after the failure of the 1715 Jacobite Rebellion – which was led by his Patron John Erskine, the Earl of Mar…
Gibbs worked as a secrent Jacobite agent for Mar – telling him about the loyalty and strength of the Jacobites in both England and Scotland – and used the language of architecture as a code.
‘Lodge’ for example didn’t mean a house or a villa – as historians used to think it meant. It signified a secret enclave of Jacobites, prepared to over-throw the monarchy.
Gibbs – as we have seen – used symbols to promote the Jacobite cause – symbols that could mean one thing or another.
The bird, for example in the apse…
……has been taken to represent the Holy Spirit that descended on Jesus…..
……and the dove returning to Noah on his ark, carrying an olive branch…..
But the problem is that the bird is not descending on Christ, neither does it have an olive branch in its beak…..
So what does it represnt?
The answer, strangely, lies in a parody William Hogarth made of William Kent’s altarpiece to the church neighbouring St. Mary le Strand, St. Clement Danes….
….which is a Christopher Wren Church – but the steeple of which Gibbs designed – under duress.
Gibbs HATED steeples!
William Kent – a Jacobite Freemason –
…….painted an altar-piece of Saint Cecilia for this church in 1725….
[The only remaining photograph, copied from Ricky Pound’s excellent article ‘Jacobite Symbolism at Chiswick House’]
The congregation rebelled because they thought – rightly – that ‘Saint Cecilia’ – on the right of the painting on the keyboard – was in fact the Old Pretender’s striking wife – Maria Clementina Sobieska….
In 1725 Sobieska had rowed with her husband about how Bonnie Prince Charlie should be educated in religion – and had taken shelter in the Nunnery di Santa Cecilia in Travestere in Rome.
She was to remain there for two years – watching the services at the adjoining Basilica from her room.
The congregation of St. Clement’s Dane were loyal to their new King George I – and demanded the painting was removed. It was stored in the Vestry of the Church – and hired out for clandestine Jacobite celebrations – until it was destroyed by enemy action in WWII.
William Hogarth had a satirical response to all this.
He issued his own version of the painting – with Sobieska, now an ‘angel’, off keyboards and playing a harp – in which he claimed it was NOT Sobieska and her children…
The statement at the bottom reads:
The Print is exactly Engrav’d after the celebrated Altar-Piece in St. Clement’s Church which has been taken down by order of the Lord Bishop of London as tis thought to prevent disputes and laying of wagers among the Parishoners about the artist’s meaning in it. For public satisfaction here is a particular explanation of it humbly offered to be writ under the original that it may be put up again by which means the parishes 60 pounds which they nicely gave for it may not be entirely lost. Tis not the Pretender’s Wife and Children as our weak brethren imagine – nor St. Cecilia as the Commoisseurs think, but a choir of angels playing in consort.
XXX
Hogarth’s denial, of course, re-inforces the idea that it IS Sobieska and her children.
But the really interesting thing about this parody is the upper section…
The flying bird and the Cherubs are nowhere to be seen on the original painting. Hogarth has added them. And they correspond completely to the apse of St. Mary le Strand…
…….with its cherubs….
……and its flying bird…..
If we look at the Hogarth parody again…..
….we can see that the flying bird is casting down its light and power on the Old Pretender’s wife and children….
It is my contention that the bird – although gold! – is in reality the Old Pretender – the ‘Blackbird himself!
The beloved King Over the Water – waiting to fly back to his land and his people – and siring Stuart heirs a-plenty – because it is the will of God.
The flying bird as a symbol of the Old Pretender also features on Jacobite drinking glasses.
But what are we to make of the Cherubs? Two of them are so stupid they are colliding together….
Could they possibly be what Alexander Pope calls ‘Dunce the First’ and ‘Dunce the Second’?
George I and George II who famously were ‘at loggerheads’.
The cherubs near to the viewers are attractive – and might even represent the young Bonnie Prince Charlie with his ostrich feathers as Prince of Wales….
The Cupids in St. Mary le Strand become more unprepossessing the higher up in the apse they are carved – and the further away from the viewers….
……and here’s one from the same group that looks positively demonic!
Gibbs had designed St. Mary le Strand to re-create the Temple of Solomon – so the inhabitors of the Holy of Holies should, strictly speaking, be Cherubim – NOT Cherubs!
Cherubim were second down to Seraphim in the ranking of angels – and although descriptions of them differ – they are meant to be adults with long wings – sometimes with faces that combine the human and the animal…
The other job of the Cherubim was to guard the Gates of Eden – hardly a job you’d leave to grumpy toddlers….
So what is going on? Johnathan Swift satirises George I as the King of Lilliput, wearing shoes with the lowest heels in the Kingdom and with….
….an Austrian lip and an arched nose…
Is Gibbs engaged in satire as well? Is he carrying on the fine old tradition of the Masons who built the Cathedrals – and carved caricatures of living people into the stonework?
Are the chubby cheeked Cherubs – with their prominent lips and noses – satires on an immature monarch who – when angry would throw his wig onto the fire?
Are the dozens of Cherubs dozens of satires on the hated monarch, George I?
His wife-to-be, Sophia, when shown a miniature of George, famously cfried: ‘I will not marry the pig snout’
Is this Cherub – high up in the corner of the ceiling – pig snout himself?
The Shakespeare Code 