The answer is NO!!!

And that is why they are such a joy to write for…….

No sooner had the Agents released The Code’s Top Twenty Posts, but you were all clamouring for the……

TOP THIRTY!!!

So here they are……

In Thirtieth Position:

 The First Performance of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ in 1594.

In Twenty-Ninth Position:

 The Earl of Southampton and Trixie the Cat: Part Three.

In Twenty-Eight Position:

 The Earl of Southampton and Trixie the Cat: Part One.

In Twenty-Seventh Position:

 The Earl of Essex as Orsino.

In Twenty-Sixth Position:

 Queen Elizabeth, Incest and Sadism.

In Twenty-Fith Position

 Richard III: The Queen’s Men Revisited.

 In Twenty-Fourth Position:

  The Witches in ‘Macbeth’: Part One.

In Twenty-Third Position:

 The Earl of Southampton as Sir Andrew Aguecheek.

In Twenty-Second Position:

 ‘Macbeth’ Decoded: Shakespeare in Scotland.

In Twenty-First Position:

To find out which Posts made it to the TOP TWENTY……

……click: HERE!

And which to the TOP TEN…..

……click: HERE!

WE GIVE IN!!!

THE TOP FORTY WILL BE POSTED SOON!!!

……..famous for lying in bed in his Titchfield cottage……..

………….and dreaming he was looking up at the same oak-beams as Shakespeare….

See: 100,000th View on Shakespeare’s Birthday

…….. has been spinning another of his lines…….

………this time to the London Times.

Parroting the theory first put forward in Stewart Trotter’s 2002 book,  Love’s Labour’s Found…..

……the self-styled ’local historian’  is quoted as saying  (in the 8th April edition):

John Aubrey, a seventeenth century writer recorded that he was told by the son of one of Shakespeare’s contemporaries that he [Shakespeare] had been a schoolmaster in the country….[Titchfield]

On page 43 of Love’s Labour’s Found Stewart Trotter had written……

…… ELEVEN YEARS AGO!!!….

John Aubrey, after talking to the actor William Beeston, whose father Christopher had played with the Lord Chamberlain’s Men in 1598, wrote that Shakespeare had been in his younger years a schoolmaster in the country….[Titchfield]

Rustic Ken then has the nerve to add:

The theory has been extremely well known down here [Titchfield] for years……

Not to Ken it hasn’t!

On 15th February, 1999, Groves described the theory that Shakespeare was in Titchfield….

…..AT ALL….

……let alone as a schoolmaster….

….. as a…..

completely uncorroborated but pleasant legend……

Groves changed his mind after he met Stewart Trotter…..

……who gave him a manuscript copy of Love’s Labour’s Found…….

……which he had  in his possession for many months……

Groves now even gives ‘Shakespeare Walks’ round Titchfield…..

…..for a fee, of course…..

[To read The Shakespeare Code's AUTHORATATIVE account of Shakespeare as a Titchfield schoolmaster, please click: HERE!]

This Post is a continuation of the Series.

A GROATS-WORTH OF WITTE 

The Story thus far……

A Groats-worth of Witte was a pamphlet printed in 1592………

…….. which claimed to be …..

……..written before [its writer, Robert Greene's] death and published at his dying request…..

It was no such thing……

It was written by his University friend, Thomas Nashe……

……..who used the cover of the dead writer’s name to attack William Shakespeare as an……..

……..upstart crow, beautified with our feathers……

i.e. a plagiarist of other men’s work…..

……..INCLUDING NASHE’S OWN!!!

Nashe desperately wanted acknowledgment for his contribution to Shakespeare’s plays…..

…….acknowledgment that Shakespeare was clearly unwilling to give….

See: Shakespeare’s Destruction of Thomas Kyd Part Two 

The Story continues…..

‘Nashe-Greene’ writes…..

O that I might intreat your rare wits [Thomas Nashe, Christopher Marlowe’s and George Peele’s] to be employed in more profitable courses: and let those Apes [Thomas Kyd and Shakespeare] imitate your past excellence, and never more acquaint them with your admired invention [never share your brilliant ideas with them] Seek you better Masters: for it is pity men of such rare wits [like you, Nashe, Marlowe and Peele] should be subject to the pleasures of such rude grooms [Kyd and Shakespeare]

The ‘rude grooms’, had become ’Nashe-Greene’s’ ‘Masters’ because they now both enjoyed aristocratic patronage…..

Shakespeare was with the Southampton family at Titchfield…..

And Kyd with the Sussex family at Portsmouth….

ONLY TWELVE MILES APART!

See: Shakespeare’s Destruction of Thomas Kyd: Part Three.

Kyd and Shakespeare were now in a position to HIRE writers like Greene and Nashe to research and help write entertainments for them….

……entertainments which would appeal to their highly educated, sophisticated employers….

‘Nashe-Greene’, to avoid libel writs……

…… invents a character called ’Roberto’…….

…..who keeps changing his identity….

Sometimes ’Roberto’ is a character in a fairy story……

……..a scholarly young man who despises his father’s money-dealing….

Sometimes he is ‘Shakespeare’…….

……..especially when he gets involved with the courtesan ‘Lamilia’

[Code for 'Amelia Basanno', Shakespeare's 'Dark Lady' of the Sonnets]

Sometimes he is Robert Greene himself……

…….as he most certainly is by the end of the pamphlet……

………where ‘Nashe-Greene’ writes:

Here gentlemen break I off Roberto’s speech; whose life in most part agreeing with mine, [Shakespeare Code italics] found one self punishment as I have done. Hereafter suppose me the same Roberto…..

Long before this statement, though, the ‘reader-in-the-know’ would have recognised that ‘Roberto’ is often Greene himself…..

……..especially in the episode where ‘Roberto’, the scholar, is shown bewailing his poverty…..

……. and is overheard by a smartly dressed ‘Gentleman’….

……who offers either to….

…….procure [Greene] profit……

[Greene was always hard-up]

……..or bring [him] pleasure……

[Greene was a NOTORIOUS drunk and womaniser who had died after a surfeit of 'Rhenish' (white) wine and pickled herring]

…..the rather for that suppose you are a scholar, and pity it is men of learning should live in lack….

[It was taken for granted that scholars were poor]

The Gentleman offers Roberto [Greene] a way out for…….

 ………men of my profession get by scholars their whole living…..

He then confesses…

……..I am a player……

THE ‘GENTLEMAN’ IS WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE!!!

Roberto [Greene] says:

I took you rather for a Gentleman of great living, for if by outward habit men should be censured, I tell you, you would be taken for a substantial man….

[Mary, Countess of Southampton, had taken a shine to Shakespeare and given him smart clothes to wear as part of the Southampton entourage.....

Later in in 1592, Nashe was again to satirise Shakespeare in EXACTLY THE SAME WAY as the......

...... very richly attired.....

.......Sol - the Sun -in Sommer's Last Will and Testament.......

......a saucy upstart Jack......

......who nightly.....

......descends to Thetis lap......

Thetis was a sea-nymph......

.......and is code for the beautiful Mary, Countess of Southampton........

.......whose stately home in Titchfield was near a river .......

.......and only three miles away from the sea itself.....

 After Sol's......

 ......scapes in Thetis lap.....

....doubled is the swelling of his looks.....

.....as he.....

.....overloads his car with orient gems

And reins his fiery horses with rich pearls......

[i.e. rips off the Countess of Southampton as a reward for sleeping with her]

He terms himself the God of Poetry…..

The Countess of Southampton’s son, Henry Wriothesley, was to take over where his mother left off.

He gave Shakespeare a staggering love-gift of £1,000]

See: Just how gay was the Third Earl of Southampton?

The Player in Groats-worth of Witte confirms that he is indeed a man of substance and…..

 …….where I dwell…….

…..[in Titchfield]

….reputed able at my proper cost to build a Windmill….

[A reference to the play The Fair Em in which Valingford, played by Shakespeare, falls in love with Em, the beautiful Maid of the Mill.]

The Gentleman/Player/Shakespeare then goes on to explain that he was once a humble touring actor…

What though the world once went hard with me, when I was fain to carry my playing fardle [luggage] on footback….

[i.e. when he toured the Midlands, playing with his acting company, under the protection of Ferdinando, Lord Strange]

The Player continues….

……it is otherwise now; for my very share in playing apparel will not be sold for two hundred pounds….

[£1,000 in our money]

Truly (said Roberto) [Greene] ‘tis strange that you should so prosper in that vain practice [acting] for that it seems to me your voice is nothing gracious….

[Another reference to Shakespeare's Midlands accent......

 ......which to Southern ears can sound flat and nasal........

.......and to Shakespeare's performance in Edmund Ironside as......

........ the fatal crow......

........the villain Edricus, with his.......

.......horrid voice........]

The Player ripostes:

 ’I mislike your judgement: why I am as famous for Delphrigus and the King of Fairies, as ever was any of my time…

[Another reference by Nashe to the part of Delphrigus, in which Shakespeare enjoyed success.......

.......and the proto-Oberon 'Fairy King' role in which Shakespeare also distinguished himself........

......but which Nashe claimed was created by Greene]

See: Shakespeare’s Destruction of Thomas Kyd: Part One.

The Player continues…..

…….The twelve labours of Hercules have I terribly thundered on the stage……..

[Just as Bottom intends to do when he offers to play......

 .......Ercles rarely or a part to tear a cat in....]

…….. played three scenes of the Devil on the High Way to Heaven….

[A religious play, inspired by Shakespeare's mentor at St. Giles, Cripplegate, the Revd Robert Crowley]

Have ye so? (said Roberto [Greene]) then I pray you pardon me.

Nay more (quoth the Player [Shakespeare]) for ‘twas I that penned the Moral of Man’s Wit……

[A morality play, inspired again by Crowley]

…….the Dialogue of Dives…….

[A parable play, inspired yet again by Crowley. Dives, according to Christ, was the rich man who went to Hell and Lazarus was the poor man who went to Heaven]

…..I can serve to make a pretty speech, for I was a country Author….

[This refers BOTH to Shakespeare's home town, Stratford-upon-Avon AND Shakespeare's fascination with sex. 'Nashe-Greene' is employing the same 'cunt-ry' pun that Hamlet uses with Ophelia:

...Do you think I meant country matters?]

The Player continues……

…… for seven years space [ i.e. from 1583] [I] was absolute interpreter [writer and director] to the puppets [actors]. But now my almanac is out of date…..

['I, and my Crowley-inspired plays, have become unfashionable.'.......

.......ALL plays and ALL actors became unfashionable at the time of the time of the  Armada Invasion.]

The Player,  like Posthast in Histrio-Mastix….

…….like Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream…

…..AND like Shakespeare with his friends in the Bear Tavern in Stratford upon Avon….

…..goes on to improvise some lines of verse…

The people make no estimation

Of moral’s teaching education’

Was not this pretty for a plain rhyme extempore? If ye will ye shall have more. 

Roberto replies:

Nay it’s enough.….but how mean ye to use me?

‘Why sir, in making plays’, said the other [Shakespeare] ‘for which ye shall be well paid, if you will take the pains.

[Well paid with the Countess of Southampton's money!]

Roberto [Greene] perceiving no remedy, thought best in respect of his present necessity, to try his wit and went with him willingly: who lodged him at the Town’s end in a house of retail….

[Posbrook Farm….

…..... just outside Titchfield, owned by William Beeston, Nashe's 'Mr. Apis-Lapis'.......

.........which was as famous for 'retailing' girls as it was for retailing cheese and cider]

There, by conversing with bad company…..

[Beeston's three 'maids']

 ……he [Roberto] grew A Malo in peius, [from bad to worse] falling from one vice to another….

It was at Posbrook Farm – now called Great Posbrook Farm –  that Greene, Nashe, Shakespeare and Kyd collaborated on the Henry VI trilogy……

…….when they weren’t otherwise engaged…..

(See: The Strange Case of Mr. Apis Lapis)

●

Nashe fooled nobody……

EVERYONE knew he was the real author of Greene’s Groats-worth of Witte…..

Shakespeare fell into a fury…….

……..as did Marlowe……

Nashe published an immediate denial:

A scald, trivial, lying pamphlet, called Greene’s Groats-worth of Witte is given out to be of my doing. God never have care of my soul, but utterly renounce me, if the least word or syllable in it proceeded from my pen or if I were any way privy to the writing or printing of it. I am the plague’s prisoner in the country as yet…[Titchfield]

Even the publisher of the pamphlet, Henry Chettle, followed suit in December:

With neither of them that take offence [Marlowe and Shakespeare] was I acquainted, and with one of them [Marlowe] I care not if I ever be: the other [Shakespeare] whom at that time I did not so much spare, as since I wish I had, for that I have moderated the heat of living writers, and might have used my own discretion (especially in such a case, the Author being dead), that I did not, I am as sorry , as if the original fault had been my own fault, because my self have seen his [Shakespeare's] demeanour  no less civil than he excellent in the qualities he professes…….

Chettle then goes on to explain the real reason he is apologising to Shakespeare…..

Besides, divers of worship [The Countess and Earl of Southampton] have reported his uprightness of dealing which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing, which approves his art.

Shakespeare had clearly been pulling his aristocratic strings…..

But Shakespeare needed Nashe as much as Nashe needed Shakespeare…..

By March of the following year (1593) a reconciliation had been forged……..

………and Shakespeare, Nashe and Southampton made a secret visit to Europe as spies for the Earl of Essex…..

………who had just been appointed to the Privy Council….

See: Shakespeare in Italy.

[Note: Prof. Roger Pryor also argues that Shakespeare was in Italy in 1593, using entirely different criteria]

But the three men returned to England…….

……..utterly changed……

……..to find an England utterly changed as well……

To discover how, stay tuned to The Shakespeare Code…….

…….YOUR STATION OF THE STARS……

To read more ‘Background’ Posts to A Midsummer Night’s Dream…..

….please click: HERE

The Top Ten is all very well…….

…….cry Brothers and Sisters of The Code……..

…… from the four corners of the globe……

……..we want THE TOP TWENTY!!!

The Shakespeare Code will ALWAYS listen intently to the requests of its fans……

…..so here are THE TOP TWENTY POSTS OF ALL TIME!!!

(as recorded on St. George’s day, 23rd April, 2013)

In Twentieth Position:

 ‘Macbeth’ Conclusion and Witch Finale

In Nineteenth Position:

 Shakespeare the Movie: II

In Eighteenth Position:

 The Dedication to Shakespeare’s Sonnets Decoded

In Seventeenth Position:

 Stewart Trotter’s Biography

In Sixteenth Position

 ‘Twelfth Night Decoded: Olivia as Queen Elizabeth

In Fifteenth Position:

 Shakespeare the Movie: III

In Fourteenth Position:

 ‘Richard III’ Decoded: All the Queen’s Men

In Thirteenth Position:

 ‘Twelfth Night Decoded: Sir Toby Belch as George, Lord Hunsdon 

In Twelfth Position

 Viola’s ‘Willow Cabin’ Speech Decoded

In Eleventh Position:

 Shakespeare the Movie: I

For the TOP TEN POSTS…..

Please click: HERE!!!

For the TOP THIRTY POSTS…..

Please click: HERE!!!

A PLEA FROM TRIXIE THE CAT

Brothers and Sisters of The Code,

For many months, the story of my ENTIRELY INNOCENT relationship with Henry Wriothesley, the Third Earl of Southampton……..

……headed the polls of The Shakespeare Code….

But there has been RUMOUR-MONGERING in the Village of Tirchfield……

RUSTIC CATOPHOBES have been implying there was……..

…… SOMETHING UNHEALTHY……..

 ……..in my relationship with GAY YOUNG HARRY….

So our story has quietly slipped out of the Top Twenty…….

I urge all fair-minded Brothers and Sisters of The Code….

READ THE STORY OF OUR FRIENDSHIP……

….. AND JUDGE FOR YOURSELVES…..

by clicking: HERE!

‘Bye, now……

In ‘The Destruction of Thomas Kyd. Part Two’ The Shakespeare Code posed the question:

If, between 1590 and 1592, William Shakespeare and Thomas Kyd were working for separate ‘Lords’, how could they have collaborated on Arden of Feversham and Edward III?

This Post will provide the answer…….

ANOTHER FIRST FOR THE SHAKESPEARE CODE……

……often imitated…..

……sometimes plagiarised…..

BUT NEVER EQUALLED!!!

The Shakespeare Code admits, with some shame, that up to now……..

……….on one subject……..

IT HAS FOLLOWED THE OPINION OF MODERN SCHOLARS!!!

Up to now it had accepted the theory that Thomas Kyd’s ‘Lord’ and patron was…….

…..almost certainly Ferdinando, Lord Strange…….

 .

…..as Charles Nicholl……..

………writes in the new Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

 But, following Sir Brian Vickers’ brilliant new work with computers…

 ……..the Agents of The Code now believe………

……..along with older scholars like Frederick Boas and Arthur Freeman…..

……..that Kyd’s ‘certain lord’  was……

 ……..Henry Radclyffe, 4^th Earl of Sussex…..

 ……Warden and Captain of the town, castle and isle of Portsmouth…….

The first evidence of a link between Kyd and the Sussex family can be found in 1586….

In August of that year, Henry, Lord Sussex was busy rooting out a Catholic conspiracy against Elizabeth in the Portsmouth area….

….including the off-shore waters…..

The Southampton Papist, Chiddiock Tychbourne……..

…….was hanged drawn and quartered the following month….

……a spectacle which even revolted an Elizabethan crowd…..

[The Queen was disappointed, though......

She had asked her Privy Council to dream up an even more painful death for Tychbourne.

Lord Burghley had opined that hanging, drawing and quartering was quite painful enough.....]

Kyd supported Henry Sussex’s campaign against the Hampshire Papists by composing his Verses of Praise and Joy written upon Her Majesty’s Preservation…….

 In this he ‘answers’ Tychbourne’s poem, written on the eve of his execution….

My prime of youth is but a frost of cares,

My feast of joy is but a dish of pain….

…..with….

Thy prime of youth is frozen with thy faults,

Thy feast of joy is finished with thy fall….

This support of an unpopular execution suggests a link between Kyd and the Earl of Sussex…..

Henry’s dead brother, Thomas, the third Earl of Sussex……

……had been Lord Chamberlain, in charge of the entertainment at Elizabeth’s court……

….. and the Sussex family had first given their name to a group of players in 1572.

Thomas Sussex had been the bitter enemy of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester…..

……a.k.a. ‘The Bear’……

……of whom Sussex said when he was dying in 1583…..

…..no-one knows the beast as I do….

The hatred between the two men had been high-lighted by their patronage of rival playing companies….

Leicester’s Men got the upper hand at Court as Leicester had the ear…….

 …….and more…….

……..of the Queen…….

Sussex’s Men became famous for touring…….

……..with a circuit that covered the whole South of England and the Midlands and Norfolk……

Leicester’s Men inevitably presented plays that favoured the status quo…..

…..after all, Leicester WAS the status quo…

…….and the plays were ear-marked for performance before Elizabeth.

The plays of Sussex’s Men were aimed at the general public….

…..so had to be more adventurous and popular……..

……and often featured murders, suicides and rapes…

Kyd’s plays – like King Leir - were sometimes  patriotic…….

…….but there was a dark, anarchic, existential side to him……

…….a side which resonated with popular taste….

In the early 1580’s Kyd was in his twenties……..

 ……..and The Code believes he cut his dramatic teeth on touring plays for the Sussex Men…..

When Thomas Sussex died, Elizabeth seized her chance….

She did not appoint his brother, Henry, as Lord Chancellor…….

……. but, with the aid of spy-master, Sir Francis Walsingham –

……..formed the Queen’s Men….

………twelve of them in number – the largest company in the land……

………who were to be paid more than any other actors…….

……… and wear the Queen’s prestigious red livery….

But…….

……and this was a big ‘but’……..

……their brief was to present plays that  promoted the greatness of Elizabeth….

……EVEN IN PLAYS THAT WERE SET BEFORE HER REIGN!!!…..

(They solved the problem by endowing some of the characters with miraculous gifts of prophecy)

See: All the Queen’s Men.

Elizabeth also stole the Sussex Men’s big star, Richard Tarleton……

…..a stand-up comic who made the Queen cry with laughter……..

…. and from whose wit no courtier, however powerful, was safe….

Sir Walter Raleigh……

…….with his vanity and ruthless ambition….

……was a particular butt of Tarleton’s jokes….

By the second half of the 1580’s, William Shakespeare……..

……..Kyd’s ‘lodging-mate’ and friend…….

……..was touring the Midlands with Lord Strange’s Men…..

We know from the satirical play Histrio-Mastix that Kyd the…….

….stately scrivener…….

……had helped………

……tie up a knot of knaves together……

i.e. helped Shakespeare set up  a touring acting company……

……..The Politician Players……

But, when ‘Caesar’ Shakespeare was running a company, there was only room for one boss…..

So Kyd needed another platform….

He needed Henry, 4^th Earl of Sussex, to revive the fortunes of his dead brother’s ‘Men’…..

Hence Kyd’s support for Henry Sussex when he was chasing South Coast Catholics…

So when EVERYONE’s theatrical fortunes drooped after Armada…….

(see: Shakespeare the Movie.)

…….Kyd joined the Sussex household…..

……where Earl Henry had a seventeen year old son, Robert……

…….who was in need of a tutor……

Just as Shakespeare joined the Southampton household…..

……. where Countess Mary ALSO had a seventeen year old son, Harry…..

…..who was ALSO in need of a tutor……

The Southampton family was based in Titchfield……

And the Sussex family was based in Portsmouth……

Titchfield is only twelve miles away from Portsmouth….

……less than half a day’s ride….

So Kyd and Shakespeare continued their collaboration…..

…..in Hampshire…..

…..from 1590 – 1592…

….and produced, as we have seen, Arden of Feversham and Edward III…..

AND MUCH, MUCH MORE!!!

●

In its next Post………

……..’Shakespeare’s Destruction of Thomas Kyd. Part Four’…….

………The Code will continue to decode the pamphlet, A Groatsworth of Witte…..

TO ASTOUNDING EFFECT!!!

THIS PAMPHLET IS PROBABLY THE GREATEST KEY TO THE STORY OF SHAKESPEARE’S LIFE.

TO READ IT, PLEASE CLICK: HERE!

……in an act of sublime……

……..other-worldly…….

….. synchronicity…..

…at 4.45 p.m…..

……..on this 23rd April, 2013……….

……St. George’s Day…..

…….traditionally Shakespeare’s Birthday………

……..we have just received our……

ONE HUNDRED THOUSANDTH VIEW!!!

To Celebrate, we shall now announce our Top Ten Posts….

OF ALL TIME!!!

In Tenth Position:

Prophesies made by Stewart Trotter which have come true!

In Ninth Position:

The Appointment of Poet Eddie Linden, F.S.C. to a Code Fellowship. 

In Eight Position:

The Macbeths as Queen Elizabeth I. 

In Seventh Position:

Malvolio as Sir Walter Raleigh.

In Sixth Position:

Macbeth: the Political Backdrop.

In Fifth Position:

Macbeth: The Witches.

In Fourth Position:

A Midsummer Night’s Dream Decoded.

In Third Position:

The Appointment of Maggie Ollerenshaw, F.S.C. to a Code Fellowship.

In Second Position:

Shakespeare in Titchfield: a Summary of the Evidence.

And The Shakespeare Code’s All Time Favourite…….

In the Number One Position…..

Just how Gay was Henry Wriothesley, the Third Earl of Southampton?

The Numbers for this last Post were considerably helped by the great Stephen Fry….

He tweeted Mr. Ken Groves, who lives in the  ’Old Schoolhouse’ in Titchfield…….

………saying:

V. keen we know of Bard’s gay affair….

This resulted in 3997 Views of this Post…..

….. in a SINGLE DAY!!!

Thanks, Stephen…

And Thank You, Brothers and Sisters of The Code…..

…….who will know that the ideas for this blog were first advanced in……..

…….Stewart Trotter’s 2002 book,  Love’s Labour’s Found…..

…….including the theory that Shakespeare was a schoolmaster in Titchfield….

(See Chapters Five and Six of the book: ‘Saints and Sinners’ and ‘The Place Where’)

or,

 Shakespeare was a schoolmaster in the country: Titchfield!

‘Local historian’ Groves…….

…….who in 1999 dismissed the whole idea of Shakespeare in Titchfield as…

a completely uncorroborated but pleasant legend

 …….has been corroborating the ’schoolmaster’ idea in the National Press…..

However, in the MailOnline he adds a romantic fantasy all of his own making…..

Sometimes when I’m lying in bed I look up and think how marvellous it is to see the same beams as Shakespeare…..

Dream on, Ken!

Shakespeare  died in 1616….

IN VINCULIS INVICTUS!!!

To read The Shakespeare Code’s TOP TWENTY POSTS….

….please click: HERE!

One of the late Margaret Thatcher’s most famous statements was:

U turn if you want to. The Lady’s not for turning……

As Brothers and Sisters of The Shakespeare Code well now, The Lady’s Not for Burning is the title of a play by Christopher Fry – a play which our Chief Agent, Stewart Trotter, directed when he was Artistic Director of  The Northcott Theatre in Exeter….

John Gielgud in the original production.

But of greater interest is the fact that the man who wrote Thatcher’s speeches, Sir Ronald  Millar……

……was a playwright himself…….

……one of whose shows, Robert and Elizabeth…

 …….a preposterous musical version about the love affair between Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett……

…….Stewart had directed at the prestigious Chichester Festival……

Stewart helped Sir Ronald revise the work over several days at the High Tory Whites Club in St. James…..

……..a club that started off as a coffee and gambling house…….

……..and is now the home of The Conservative Party…..

In the course of  working and eating together, Sir Ronald told Stewart (who is yet to be knighted) the following amazing story……

●

When I started out as a writer…..

……I was very left-wing.  But, like everyone else, I became disillusioned with the Labour Party…..

……and especially disillusioned with the shifty Harold Wilson…..

……who only smoked his pipe when he was being photographed

……(he was a closet cigar and brandy man)

One night I got drunk as a guest at Whites……

…….and lambasted the Tory M.P.s……

You’re hopeless you lot! Hopeless! You CANNOT COMMUNICATE!

The following day I got a call from Tory H.Q……

……inviting me to…..

 show them how to do it…..

I was so touched by their modesty that I went to see them……

……and was introduced to Ted Heath…..

Initially I loathed him…..

His first comment was…..

So what’s it to be today?  Care and compassion?

And he rocked with mocking laughter…..

……his shoulders famously shaking…….

But I decided to give it a go and started writing his speeches…..

BUT  NEVER , EVER FOR MONEY…..

That way, I could stay independent….

But Margaret brought Ted down…..

She was the only one who would tell him, to his face, where to get off…..

So people rallied behind her……,

…….even though she wasn’t – in those days at least – a powerful speaker in the Commons.

When she became Leader of the Party I assumed it would be curtains for me…..

Margaret and Ted couldn’t stand one another…..

But I was in my Notting Hill flat one morning when the phone rang….

It was the Deputy Leader, Willie Whitelaw….

What are you doing now Ronnie?

I’m just about to go out….

No you’re not. I’m coming over….

And come he did, with a sheath of papers in his hands…..

Now sit down and read this. It’s Margaret’s first speech to conference tomorrow.

So I sat down and read the whole thing…..

What do you think?’

It’s dreadful! Who wrote it?

She did. Now you’re going to.

But I hardly know her…..

Doesn’t matter….

Does she know you’re here?

No.

But she might not want to do it….

Oh she’ll do it, Ronnie. We’ll see to that….

So I spent the rest of the day at the typewriter………

…….turning myself into Margaret Thatcher…..

…….and turning Margaret Thatcher into me….

Then a taxi called for me. Then a helicopter….

Then by the evening Willie was ushering me into Margaret’s hotel suite…….

She and Denis……

……..were sitting on the sofa.

She clearly had no idea what was about to happen.

Willie told her straight that her speech was no good and that she must deliver mine.

Margaret looked aghast as Willie handed her my speech…..

But she read each page carefully, then handed it to Denis, who read it after her.

When she came to the end she said:

I’ve no idea which one to do…..

You must do Ronnie’s’, said Denis.

And that was that….

I directed her for several hours….

……as though she was an actress in one of my plays…..

Then she went to bed to grab a few hours of sleep….

The next morning I called on her. 

She was wearing a stunning blue dress……

……..and standing up.

She clearly didn’t want to crease the dress by sitting down.

She asked me to sit down and put the speech in my lap……

She had a couple of questions, she said, about delivery.

Then she knelt by my side and pointed to words in the script……

It was one of the most thrilling experiences I have ever had….

The woman had an energy about her that electrified you….

Then she got up, impatient for it all to begin.

I knew it would be a triumph….

She was behaving like a Diva….

●

 Stewart has his own Thatcher story to tell……

A couple of years after Robert and Elizabeth I had another brush with the Tory party.

A charming grandee…….

……..whose father had produced Ivor Novello shows, ice-shows, and Ivor Novello on Ice shows…..

……..bought the rights to my rock version of Carmen,  Carmen Latina……

www.carmenlatina.com

………which has just finished a run in Poland…..

………and is now again available for production world-wide.

In the course of trying to set a West End run of the show, he showed me a secret tape……

………..and made me promise I would never reveal the contents……..

……….of Margaret Thatcher rehearsing a speech!

But as she has now passed on, I feel I can lift the embargo……

She had been over to America to see her great pal, Ronald Reagan…..

……….and he had shown her his new toy……

A plastic lectern you could see through…..

……….and so the audience could see you……..

……….onto which a speech could be projected which was visible to the speaker……

……….but invisible to the audience…..

Thatcher was wild to try it out……

And the grandee’s tape was of the technical rehearsal…….

Now ‘technicals’, as they are called in the theatre, are calculated to bring out the worst in even the most pleasant of performers….

The attention is on machines and other people rather than you……

And there are long, long waits…..

Thatcher stood behind the magic lantern……

And waited and waited and waited.

Not for a second did she show any annoyance…….

And spoke to the technicians throughout with utter courtesy and utter respect……

So her staff adored her…….

And so did Ronnie…….

The one time I went to his very dusty flat…….

(he had clearly taken to heart Quentin Crisps’s advice that you should never sweep your floors)

…….I saw a bottle of champagne in pride of place……….

……..unopened, and as dusty as everything else……

The reason?

Propped up against it was a card with a hand-written message……

From Margaret…..

●

‘Bye now…..

© Stewart Trotter and Trixie the Cat, 12th April, 2013

Give a man a mask…….

…….wrote Oscar Wilde…..

…….and he will tell you the truth…..

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

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

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

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

……(the aptly-named ‘Stubbs’)…..

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

The Queen had watched the whole thing…….

……. (according to Jesuit Sources)…….

……..from her bedroom window…

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

So Nashe……

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

……his unwillingness to credit his collaborators……

……and his ruthless ambition…..

……had to cover his tracks expertly….

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

……let’s call him ‘Nashe-Greene’….

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

This came easily to Nashe……..

…….even though he was known as a…..

…..biting satirist…..

…….and the English…..

……Juvenal

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

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

‘Nashe-Greene’ writes…….

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

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

He talks about how God…..

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

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

…..OR EVEN WORSE!!!

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

They worked together on…..

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

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

………NASHE HAD TO ATTACK HIMSELF!!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

QUESTION:

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

ANSWERS:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…….sweet gentlemen…..

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

…….have…..

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

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

……..for those ‘in the know’……

●

The anonymous history play Edmund Ironside….

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

……..of sea-shore fame…….

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But Edmund Ironside……..

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

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

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

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

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

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

…….but not to overthrow her completely……

…….(well not yet, anyway)…..

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

…….and Thames Estuary intellectual……..

………Eric Sams……

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

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

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

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

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

Edricus completely disowns his plebeian family……

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

…….it would…

………make my peacock’s plumes fall down

If one such abject thought possess my mind….

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

Base Edricus, thou wert the fatal crow

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

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

Oh what a grief it is to noble blood

to see each base-born groom promoted up

each dunghill brat arreared to dignity

each flatterer esteemed virtuous

when the true, noble, virtuous gentlemen

are scorned, disgraced and held in obloquy…..

The words could come straight from Nashe….

……..because……..

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

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

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

●

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

……..third Earl of Southampton…..

……..in which Shakespeare vows…..

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Prof. Brian Vickers………..

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

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

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

……..were collaborations by Shakespeare and Kyd.

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

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

……….1592……

……….a year of The Plague……

●

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…… and has all his grand guignol characteristics……

……poisoned portraits, poisoned crucifixes……

……desecrated prayer-books, multiple stabbings……

…….buckets of blood…..

…….and gory footprints in the snow….

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

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

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

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

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

The two murderers are called Black Will and Shakebag….

…….(Loosebag in real life)……

Shakebag…….

……stern in bloody stratgem…..

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

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

Black night hath hid the pleasures of the day

And cheating darkness overhangs the earth

And with the black fold of her cloudy robe 

Obscures us from the eyesight of the world

In which sweet silence such as we triumph.

The lazy minutes linger on their time

As loathe to give due audit to the hour….

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

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

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

……..and the last three by Kyd…….

The Code concurs……..

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

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

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

The affair began in the spring of 1592…..

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

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

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

……..so no-one could leave….

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

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

Mostly he slept with lower class young men…..

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

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

…….especially if they were male…..

…….and NOT Shakespeare….

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

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

Hath power to take thy honour;

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

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

…….but warns her:

The freshest summer’s day doth soonest taint

The loathed carrion that it seems to kiss:

Deep are the blows made with a mighty Axe:

That sin doth ten times aggravate it self,

That is committed in a holy place:

An evil deed, done by authority,

Is sin and subornation: Deck an Ape

In tissueand the beauty of the robe

Adds but the greater scorn unto the beast.

A spatious field of reasons could I urge

Between his glory, daughter, and thy shame:

That poison shews worst in a golden cup;

Dark night seems darker by the lightning flash…..

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unmoved, cold and to temptation slow,

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

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

They are the lords and owners of their faces

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

Others but stewards of their excellence…..

The summer’s flower is to the summer sweet

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

But if that flower with base infection meets

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

The basest weed outbraves his dignity.

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

For his conclusion to the Sonnet……

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

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

Warwick says:

Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds….

AND SO DOES WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE!!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

.Purple the Sea, whose channel filled as fast

With streaming gore, that from the maimed fell,

As did her gushing moisture break into

The crannied cleftures of the through shot planks.

Here flew a head, dissevered from the trunk,

There mangled arms and legs were tossed aloft,

As when a whirl wind takes the Summer dust

And scatters it in middle of the air

●

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

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

…….out of……

……..fear of infection……

……..and is still…….

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

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

……….near the sea in Hampshire……

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

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

…….joining in with the…..

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

How could he be the servant of two masters?

How could he be in two places at once?

TO FIND OUT, CLICK: HERE!!!

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

…….or  Hieronimo is mad again…

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

The…..

……of its time…..

It went through TEN editions between 1592 and 1633……

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

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

…..a huge number for the time….

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

…..our best for Tragedy…

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

 ……industrious….

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

 ……famous….

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

 ……sporting…..

NEARLY THIRTY YEARS AFTER HIS DEATH!!!

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

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

What had happened?

Why does everyone remember Shakespeare but forget Kyd?

The answer is intriguing….

And disturbing….

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

……and the nature of William Shakespeare himself….

●

By decoding pamphlet attacks on Kyd and Shakespeare…..

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

…….and Thomas Nashe….

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

……..both Grammar School boys……

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

They even LODGED TOGETHER in London…

……where the teenage Shakespeare had fled……

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

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

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

(See: Shakespeare: The Movie. I)

Kyd was six years older than Shakespeare……

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

……so was very much the senior collaborator.

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

As, it seems, was Shakespeare…..

In Sommers’ Last Will and Testament…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They plod along when he is sad……………..

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

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

…… in a ‘secretary hand’……

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

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

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

……..similar to Shakespeare’s….

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

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

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

………as, it seems, was Shakespeare.

Nashe attacks Kyd and Shakespeare as……

……..buckram gentlemen……

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

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

……..not only his will……

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

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

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

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

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

……the Vicar of St. Giles, Cripplegate…

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

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

…….hated the use of make-up and wigs…

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

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

…….i.e. ballads and plays…

We know from another attack on Shakespeare…….

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

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

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

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

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

……shakes his furious spear…..)

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

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

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

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

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

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

……..clearly a reference to Kyd….

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

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

Posthast calls his company ‘Politician Players’….

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…….which started life as a ballad….

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

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

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

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

BOTH MEN WERE RIGHT!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But the other plot is about William the Conqueror….

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

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

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

Fair Em became a huge hit…..

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

But collaborations which turn into HUGE hits present HUGE problems…

Collaborators start to argue about who thought of what….

……especially if money is involved….

Greene grew jealous of Shakespeare…..

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

………which made Nashe all the more jealous…

 In his 1589 Preface to Greene’s Menaphon……

………pointedly dedicated……..

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

………Nashe attacks The Taming of a Shrew…

…….a collaboration between Kyd and Shakespeare….

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whiter than are the snowy Apenines

Or icy hair that grows on Boreas chin…

Nashe then goes on to attack Hamlet…

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

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

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

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

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

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

William Camden, the contemporary historian, describes how….

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

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

…….To be or not to be….

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

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

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

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

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

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

……..who became….

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

The newfangled fox is, of course, Shakespeare……

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

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

This is a coded attack  on The Spanish Tragedy….

Poets generally equate Elisium with Heaven…..

Not Kyd!

In The Spanish Tragedy he locates…

…. Fair Elisian Green…..

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

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

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

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

….. in inner city brothels…

….and catch venereal disease…..

……. TOGETHER!

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

…..declaring that….

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

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

……a proto-Oberon…..

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

….i.e. Shakespeare’s company…

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

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

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

…….parted in a very contemptuous manner….

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

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

One of them was certainly Shakespeare!!!

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

 He tries to pull rank on him by saying:

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

The Constable replies:

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

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

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

Actors……

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

……were no longer popular with the public…

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

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

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

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

……and deeply unchristian….

……attacks on their enemies…

……the Puritans….

This was no place for……

 …….pleasant Willy…..

……as Edmund Spenser………..

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

……The Teares of the Muses….

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

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

…..the schoolhouse and tollhouse in Titchfield……

…..with its fortified room….

……where Shakespeare worked as a schoolmaster…….

 …….in the country….

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

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

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

……a.k.a. ‘Harry Southampton’….

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

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

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

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

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

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

Even Christopher Marlowe……..

…… followed suit……

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

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

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

Just as Shakespeare had done…..

Shakespeare himself was getting closer to Harry Southampton…..

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

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

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

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

Especially on historical entertainments…..

And plays dependent on comic scenes…..

Like Posthast, Shakespeare was primarily a poet……

……from whose pen…….

Spenser writes……

Large streams of honey and sweet nectar flow……

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

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

……..at nearby Wilton……

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

……he wrote parts of it!

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

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

So he began to attack Shakespeare obliquely……

In the same pamphlet he warns Southampton…..

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

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

……..that…..

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nashe saw his chance…..

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

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

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

UNDER GREENE’S NAME!!!

TO READ THE NEXT POST IN THIS SERIES,

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

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‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ Decoded:

Shakespeare’s Destruction of Thomas Kyd……

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