An essay on
poetical logic, Nineteen plays by Edward de Vere alias William Shakespeare / © 2010/14/15/16 by Franz
Gnaedinger
When a
man’s verses cannot be understood, a good wit not seconded by the forward child
Understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little
room. Edward
de Vere in the guise of the clown Touchstone, As You Like It
Kurt
Kreiler, in his book Der Mann, der
Shakespeare erfand
The Man
who Invented Shakespeare, convincingly shows that Edward de Vere, 17th
Earl of Oxford
wrote the plays that sail under the name of
William Shakespeare, pen name of the earl, alluding to quaint Bellona (Philip Spenser) viz. Pallas Athene who sprang in
full armor from the head of Zeus / Jupiter, wielding her lance, shaking her
spear, Shake-Speare, as war goddess
protecting the polis, also worshiped as goddess of art and wisdom … From the
end of February till May 2010 read and interpreted seventeen plays, in this
order: Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Two Gentlemen of
Verona, Titus Andronicus, The Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, Cymbeline, The
Winter’s Tale, The Tempest, As You Like It, The Taming of the Shrew, King Lear,
Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure, Love’s Labour’s Lost, All’s Well That Ends
Well, and the Comedy of Errors, always looking out for the playwright, finding
him in many guises, a veritable Proteus … I published my messages online. Here
is a worked over version, the seventeen plays in the same order, dating partly
according to Kurt Kreiler. Appendix: The Adventures of Master F.I. –
young Edward de Vere meeting Pierre de Ronsard.
Romeo and Juliet 1581-82
Romeo is
first mentioned in Act 1 Scene 1, here in the version of the First Folio from
1623
O where
is Romeo ?
Considering
the Norman origin of the name de Vere, pronounced something like dö Wör, we can
read the question as an exclamation
O Vere
is Romeo !
The
opposite joke occurs in The Merry Wives of Windsor, where the French physician
Caius calls out for his knave in Act 1 Scene 4
Vere is that knave
Edward
de Vere signed a couple of early poems E.O. for Earl of Oxenford, also Edward
Oxenford. Now the letters EO, pronounced in the English way, yield io, and
this, read in the Italian way, means I, me. The letters EO are present in the
name of Rom-eo, signing the play ever so clandestinely at the very end
For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and Romeo.
If Romeo
mirrors young Edward de Vere, the Tybalt incident may allude to the Thomas
Brincknell accident, Thomas Brincknell, T.B. Ty-Balt.
On a
sublevel of the play, Romeo personifies the playwright, Edward de Vere, Earl of
Oxford. His beloved Juliet personifies the audience – perhaps inspired by
Anne Vavasour, with whom Edward de Vere had a secret affair in 1580; and
finally Paris personifies the actor, “valiant Paris” – “gentle Paris”
– “a flower; in faith, a very flower” – “By heaven, I love thee
better than myself” (the latter said by Romeo, alter ego de Vere’s).
Romeo
and Paris are also rivals: both loving Juliet – playwright and actor love
the audience and want to be loved by her.
In those
days, a nobleman who wrote plays had to stage them under a pseudonym. In the
case of Edward de Vere, raised from the age of 12 years onward at the court of
Queen Elizabeth, one might envision a further reason for the obligation to use
an alias: the Queen loved him well, protecting him whenever possible, but she
must have feared the scandals he caused and therefore obliged him to veil his
authorship in the plays and poems. One such scandal might have been the Thomas
Brincknell incident; another the secret affair of the married earl with Anna
Vavasour in 1580, revealed when she gave birth to a son in 1581. The Queen,
angry, put both in the Tower (where he might have written a draft of his famous
play).
Now let
us have a look at the sonnets by William Shake-Speare, pen name of Edward de
Vere. The beautiful young man of the sonnets 1-126 is Henry Wriothesley, Earl
of Southampton; the rival poet of the sonnets 80-89 Robert Devereux, Earl of
Essex (Peter P. Moore); and the dark lady of the sonnets 127-154 Elizabeth
Trentham, Edward de Vere’s second wife (Kurt Kreiler). However, some of the
sonnets might be ambiguous. Number 20 may also address Queen Elizabeth,
combining high praise with mild chiding (the too hot summer days referring to
her power and some hard decisions she has to make). Number 83 could again
address not only Henry but also the Queen. If so, the following line is
meaningful
This silence for my sin you did impute
indicating
a sin as reason for the obligation to hide his true name as author of the plays
and poems, perhaps the affair with Anna Vavasour while he was married to Anne
Cecil? Sonnet 83 ends on these lines
There lives more life in one of your
fair eyes
Than both your poets can in praise
devise.
When
Henry is meant, “both your poets” are de Vere and Devereux, and when the Queen
is meant, “both your poets” are the playwright and his actors who cooperate in
shaping the play, making it in the sense of Greek poieo ‘I make’ and poiaesis,
English poetry and poet.
On the
sublevel, Romeo is the playwright and Paris the actor: valiant Paris, gentle
Paris, a flower, in faith, a very flower, whom Romeo loves better than himself.
The actors help him develop the play, bring it to life and make it bloom. On
the other hand, playwright and actors are rivals for the love of the audience.
What’s a name! that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title:–Romeo, doff thy name;
And for that name, which is no part of
thee,
Take all myself.
The
poet’s name doesn’t count, important are his plays, and the audience loves
them, is all for him to take. Romeo replies
… I take thee at thy word
Call me but love and I’ll be new baptized;
Henceforth I never will be Romeo.
Edward
de Vere abandons his name and adopts a new one
…never will … -ver will … Vere Will-I-am
Henceforth I never will
Henceforth I n.e.ver will
Henceforth I n. E. Ver Will
Henceforth I not Edward de Vere, Will I am
William who shakes the spear, William
Shake-Speare
And
then, perhaps in 1589, he found a young country fellow of a similar name,
engaged him for the Chamberlain’s Men, whose cashier he was in 1594, and gave
him minor roles, the best one being the ghost in Hamlet … Kurt Kreiler
identified the country fellow William from Arden in Act 5 Scene 1 of the play
As You Like It with William Shakspere
from Stratford-upon-Avon, son of Mary Arden whose father was the landowner
Robert Arden of Wilmscote. Romeo – Juliet – Paris of the tragedy
from 1581/82 get parodied in the clownish trio Touchstone – Audrey
– William of the romantic comedy As You Like It from 1593 (first version).
Everybody is made fun of in this play, also the author who exaggerates his own
diction in Touchstone’s tumble of words, but still, the way this one menaces
William proves that Edward de Vere hated the obligation to hide his name and
authorship. While he loved his actors, calling Paris “gentle
But the mild glance that sly Ulysses lent
Show’d deep regard and smiling government.
giving
us a hint at how de Vere directed his plays, not openly (being obliged to hide
his authorship), but by showing deep regard for the actors and rewarding the
right understanding of his intention with an encouraging smile. Joining the
audience, he may have observed many a young lady laughing and weeping while the
fancies of his mind unfolded on the stage. Also observing the audience from
close up must have helped him shape his plays, a practice revealed by Hamlet
who observes his uncle during a play staged within the play, especially during
an inserted speech. We shall encounter an inoculated satire of a similar sort
later on, when discussing the second version of the play As You Like It from
1600.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Romeo and Juliet, a wider interpretation from
2014
In the spring and summer of 2010 I interpreted a
series of plays by Edward de Vere alias William Shakespeare, beginning with
Romeo and Juliet seen as playwright and his audience. Now, a good four years
later, I widen my interpretation.
Juliet may be a more complex symbol than the
audience of a play - poetry mediating between nature and a lively audience.
In Act 2 Scene 1 Romeo compares Juliet in her
window to the sun rising in the east. Later on, in the same monologue, Romeo
looking up to her
See, how
she leans her cheek on her hand!
O, that
I were a glove upon that hand,
That I
might touch that cheek!
Sigh of a lover and poetological program in one.
Genuine poetry emerges from the unconscious and quasi writes itself - her cheek
held by her own hand - while the conscious ego of the poet is but a glove upon
that metaphorical hand
O,
that I were a glove upon that hand
I,
Vere, a glove upon that hand
Here again the key equation from 2010
Edward de Vere (12 letters)
bound
by one letter E...e
O,
where is Romeo?
O,
Vere is Romeo (12 letters)
bound
by one letter O...o
Earl
of Oxford (12 letters)
Romeo
-eo E.O.
above
binding letters
Expanding the key equation
O
gentle Romeo (12 letters)
bound by one letter O...o
Why,
where the devil should Romeo be?
Vere
the devil (12 letters)
O, I
am fortune's fool!
fortune's fool (12 letters)
Young Edward de Vere stabbed another young man
in the leg, so very unfortunately that this one died. Only a little to the side
and he would have survived. This incident, on top of other minor ones, would
have been the reason why Queen Elizabeth obliged Edward de Vere to use a
pseudonym - banishing Romeo, as it were, taking him away from his one true love
Juliet. Having slain Tybalt, Romeo calls himself a fool of fortune; later on he
confesses that he murdered Tybalt. We may assume that also Edward de Vere had
mixed emotions, feeling guilty and being fortune's fool. But he held out. Bravely
looking into the depths of his own soul he would have becomne the great poet
and playwright.
Prince Escalus, ruler of Verona, would stand for
Queen Elizabeth fearing the escalation between young Edward de Vere in her care
and his opponents. Maybe the charming dare-devil called her Lady Verona? Allow
me a pun
Vere,
o no! Vere o no Verona
Edward de Vere's mother
Lady Montague, mother of Romeo, speaks up in the
opening scene of the play
Thou
shalt not stir one foot to seek a foe.
Her Mosaic line is followed and contrasted by an
edict in the language of the court, given by Prince Escalus, alter ego of Queen
Elizabeth. Also Edward de Vere whose alter ego in the play is Romeo acquired
court speak, but he avoided empty formalism, his language remained basically
simple, its amazing richness and complexity own to a lively mind, plenty
interwoven thoughts, feelings and images - the formula of all great works being
simple yet complex.
Lady Montague says two more lines, also in the
opening scene of the play
O
where is Romeo?--saw you him today?
Right
glad I am he was not at this fray.
Here we have two puns
O,
Vere is Romeo
- a mother knows her child
I am
he
- referring to early pregnancy when he was part
of her, transformed into motherly care, while the short line, semantically
broken up, still held together, became an archetypical sigh of a mother
I am
he
Right
glad I am he was not at this fray
Lady Montague speaks only the three above lines,
in the entire play. One line plus two lines. Prolong the pattern by doubling
and doubling the numbers and soon you get more lines than in the complete works
of Edward de Vere alias William Shakespeare. A similar progression leads from
zygote to foetus and child in the womb of a pregnant woman and expectant
mother.
Lady Montague, barely speaking, unobtrusive,
makes me think of the camouflage of a brood animal or dam protecting her young.
From all this we may glean that John de Vere's
wife in the guise of Lady Montague was Edward's real mother (not a foster
mother), a pious woman, her language simple and direct, however, she loved a
good pun, and she cared for her son Edward.
Lady Montague and Prince Escalus
What I call the Mosaic line by Lady Montague
Thou shalt
not stir one foot to seek a foe
is followed by an edict of twenty-three lines in
the language of the court, given by Prince Escalus, wordy equivalent of the
single line by Lady Montague, mother of Romeo
Lady
Montague 1 line (1.1.76)
Prince
Escalus 23 lines (1.1.77-99)
together 24 lines
The 24 lines of Lady Mantague and Prince Escalus
have a parallel in the 24 letters of Edward's name and title combined
Edward de Vere 12 letters
Earl
of Oxford 12 letters
together 24 letters
The 24 letters correspond to the 24 hours in a
day and the 24 letters of the classical Greek alphabet - 'alpha and omega'
(from alpha to omega) being a formula of completeness.
The language of Lady Montague, alter ego of his
mother, and the one of Prince Escalus, alter ego of Queen Elizabeth, are
combined in the powerful language of the great poet and playwright who packed
the whole world into the nutshell of his work and became, as Ben Jonson said,
the soul of his age.
structure of the play
Word language can be seen as a triangle of the
corners
life
with needs and wishes
mathematics as logic of building and maintaining
based
on the formula a = a
art
as human measure in a technical world
based
on Goethe's world formula and ever turning key
all
is equal, all unequal ...
The roles of life and art in the language of
Edward de Vere alias William Shakespeare are obvious. What about mathematics?
We found the number 12 in word plays, doubled in the number 24 of completeness,
and the implicit numerical progression 1 2 (4 8 16 32 64 ...). What about a
mathematical structure of the entire play?
The first half of the play is rising action, the
second half is falling action, suggesting an equilateral triangle as underlying
geometrical model.
The play has 5 acts and 5 5 5 5 3 sum 23 scenes.
In the middle we find Act 3 Scene 2, and the 3 middle lines of that scene
(3.2.71-73) are spoken by Juliet (J) and her nurse (N)
(J) O God, did Romeo's hand shed
Tybalt's blood?
(N) It did, it did, alas the day,
it did.
(J) O serpent heart, hid within a
flowering face!
Middle word of middle line of middle scene:
alas. The play itself is a big alas, "an exclamation to express sorrow,
grief, pity, concern, or apprehension of evil" (Webster's).
The corners of the equilateral triangle are then
the prologue mentioning an ancient grudge that breaks into new mutiny; the
three lines in the middle of the middle scene, middle word alas; and the last
lines ending the woeful story with a ray of hope, the ancient grudge is gone,
the feud overcome by the love of "Juliet and her Romeo."
The 23 scenes of the play correspond to the
edict of 23 lines given by Prince Escalus in the opening scene while the basis
of the equilateral triangle would correspond to what I call the Mosaic line by
Lady Montague, mother of Romeo - in all 24 lines, number of completeness, alpha
and omega.
a stepped bridge
Remember the equilateral triangle. You may lay
it out with pebbles or coins, 3 for the corners, 10 and 10 and 10 in between,
sum 33 pebbles or coins, 23 for the 23 scenes of the play, also for the 23
lines of the edict given by Prince Escalus, 10 for the 10 commandements in the
Bible, alluded to by the Mosaic line given by Lady Montague. Replace the 10
pebbles of the basis by a stick and you have in all 24 elements forming the
equilateral triangle, the ascending side and descending side counting 12
pebbles each, the pebble at the top counted twice, marking both the end of the
ascending and beginning of the descending side.
Another illustration is a double stairway, the
basis representing the Mosaic line by Lady Montague, mother of Romeo, 12 steps
leading upward, 12 steps downward, the top counted twice again, height of the
stairway 12, numerical signature of the poet and playwright
Edward de Vere 12 letters
Earl
of Oxford 12 letters
as Romeo in the play the son of
Lady
Montague 12 letters
The woeful story of Romeo and Juliet ended the
feud between the Montagues and Capulets. Imagine their love as a stepped bridge
from the bank of one family to the bank of the other family.
Verona is near Venice where the famous stepped
bridge Ponte di Rialto was constructed of marble in 1590. I date 'Romeo and
Juliet' in the version of Quarto 1 to 1581/82. If the Ponte di Rialto should
have inspired the underlying geometry of the more elaborate version of the play
in Quarto 2, the second version would have been written some ten years later,
when the playwright reached the height of his art.
the more I give the more I have
6 1 6 marble arches of the Ponte di Rialto frame
the view on the Canal Grande and Venice (on either side of the bridge). 11 1 11
scenes frame the love story of Romeo and Juliet in a firm and shiny language.
My
bounty is boundless as the sea,
My
love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The
more I have, for both are infinite.
Venice owed her riches or boundless bounty to
seafaring, to sailing across the wide and deep sea, while the Ponte di Rialto
has a counterpart in a verbal bridge connecting a pair of lines
the
more I give to thee the more I have
Many people go over the bridge, many people come
over the bridge, ever more go and come, come and go, so many that one can
hardly count them. Venice and the Ponte Rialto may well have inspired the
beautiful love metaphor given by Juliet in the version of Quarto 2, Act 2 Scene
1 lines 176-8.
to hide, alas, I am laid
Another partition of the 23 scenes
5 1 5
1 5 1 5 1 5
yields a small triangle
2.1
and 3.2 and 4.3 or 6 12 18
with a couple of correspondences along the
principle of equal unequal
2.1
Romeo separating himself,
Juliet compared to the rising sun,
night
toward morning
3.2
day, sun traveling across the sky
4.3
Juliet separating herself,
setting sun, sleeping potion,
evening toward night
Looking out for the middle words in 2.1 and 3.2
and 4.3 I found a meaningful message.
2.1 has 235 lines, ergo the one in the middle is
line 118
I
have night's cloak to hide me from their eyes
from which I take the middle words
...
to hide ...
3.2 has 143 lines, ergo the one in the middle is
line 72
It did,
it did, alas the day, it did
from which I take the middle word (middle word
of middle
line of middle scene)
...
alas ...
4.3 has 57 lines, ergo the one in the middle is
line 29
How
if, when I am laid into the tomb
from which I take again the middle words
... I
am laid ...
and combine them with the previous ones
to
hide, alas, I am laid
My Webster's Unabridged gives the second meaning
of lay laid as follows: "to knock or beat down, as from an erect position;
strike or beat down to the ground: One punch laid him low." A further
meaning is to impose as a penalty. So we'd have
to
hide (behind a pseudonym)
alas
(I am obliged, being
punched punished banished,
knocked down, laid low)
I am laid
(for all my dear life)
Edward de Vere, laid low, humbled (a further
meaning of laid), hid his authorship in the play Romeo and Juliet, and in the
entire work sailing under the name of William Shakespeare
to
hide
alas
I am
laid
The participle of lay was also given as layd, in
that case we almost have a rhyme
to
hide
alas
I am
layd
However, he didn't really lie low, as we can
glean from his pseudonym
William
will
I am
a
strong will personified
Shakespeare
shaking my spear
wielding my sword
which
is my word
my
elegant and powerful word
owing the queen
The word of the playwright can be sharp as the
blade of a sword or point of a spear (Shakespeare), shine like polished marble
(Ponte di Rialto inspiring the second version of the play), or chime like bells
rich in overtones
Romeo O Rome Omero
The names Romeo and Juliet evoke Rome and Julius
Caesar whose family traced themselves back to the Roman love goddess Venus,
born from the sea, her name akin to Veneti, dwellers of the Veneto, Verona in
its western tip, and to Venexia Venetia
Venezia Venice, marvel of a town that rose from the sea, Rosaline, gossip Venus
(2.1), the Ponte di Rialto having been a market place where, me may imagine,
also gossip was exchanged, perhaps near a pair of marble statues of Mars and
Venus adorning the bridge?
Edward de Vere alias William Shakespeare may
have seen himself as literary version of Julius Caesar who conquered Rome then
the world, and as heir of Homer, Italian Omero, Juliet being loved by both
Romeo and Paris, the latter in Homer a prince of Troy, husband of the abducted
beauty Helen.
Edward de Vere in the guise of William
Shakespeare is no less wily than Odysseus hiding in a wooden horse.
Athene, wise Athene, in Homer the symbol of
history, guided and protected Odysseus. Edward de Vere found his mentor in
Queen Elizabeth. She handled him well, considering the rough time and the many
dangers awaiting a free spirit like his. We owe her.
Whetstone of witte
Romeo and Juliet have an echo in Touchstone and
Audrey in the play As You Like It - he the playwright and she his audience
(Audrey audire audience).
Robert Recorde, in his algebra book Whetstone of
witte, London 1557, chapter The Arte, introduces the equality sign as a pair of
long parallel lines ====== "bicause noe.2.thynges, can be moare
equalle." Edward de Vere may have read it as a teenager (in the later
1560s) and may have told himself: Nothing is really equal, not even twins are.
One line is above, the other below. I can find something unequal in everything
that is equal, and something equal in everything unequal. And nothing remains
unchanged forever - panta rhei. With my writing talent I might become a poet
and playwright. If so, my work shall be an alternative Whetstone of witte: full
of symbols and personifications, metaphors, analogies and similes, many layers
of meaning woven together, overtones and undertones, word playing, ambiguities
and contradictions, metamorphoses, transformations and changing identities, in
short an algebra of life based on the equation of my life.
Queen Elizabeth compelled him to use a pseudonym
for his and her own safety. He loathed being restricted in his ambition (to
hide, alas), feeling knocked down, laid low, humbled (I am laid). However, he
obliged - and took revenge by making a colossal joke. First he chose a telling
nom de plume
William
will
I am
a strong will personified
Shakespeare
shaking my spear
wielding my sword
which
is my word
my
elegant and powerful word
Then he looked out for a young analphabet of a
similar name and appointed him the official author of his work!
Touchstone and Audrey meet William in the forest
of Arden (5.1)
Then
learn from me:--to have, is to have (poetic talent);
for
it is a figure in rhetoric that drink, being poured
out of
a cup into a glass (plays ascribed to someone else)
by
filling the one doth empty the other; for all your writers
consent that ipse is he: now, you are not ipse (the author),
for I
am he.
And then in sonnet 76
almost every word does tell my name
Only he can write in such a way.
business and literature
The Merchant of Venice 1.3
...
he hath an argosy bound to Tripolis,
another to the Indies; I understand, moreover,
on
the Rialto, he hath a third at Mexico,
a fourth
for England,--and other ventures he hath,
spander'd abroad.
What
news on the Rialto?
Back to Romeo and Juliet. 'Gossip' has then the
meaning of business rumors, while Rosaline of the red lips may refer to
courtesans accompanying wealthy merchants, 'gossip Venus' hinting at their
possible involvement in spreading rumors and weaving intrigues.
The play has many levels of meaning. On one of
them Rosaline quickly abandoned for Juliet may symbolize an early business
vocation soon abandoned for literature.
I didn't read the historical plays. However, the
associative link to Rome and Julius Caesar made me look up the first pages of
that play (Julius Caesar). The opening scene struck me as a possible satire on
the literary circle of contemporary England transferred to Ancient Rome, Edward
de Vere alias William Shakespeare flying (writing) on
Caesar's wing
the cobbler another playwright, and the feathers
plucked from the wing imitations of Shakespeare
These
growing feather pluckt from Caesar's wing
No biographical traces of the 'bard' whereas
Edward de Vere is omnipresent once we open the doors. I won't go on reading the
play, nor will I read the other historical plays (fearing to find more and be
occupied for the rest of my life). Now it's your turn. I gave you the keys.
The Oxford Shakespeare
Remember the partition 5 5 5 5 3 transformed
into 5 1 5 1 5 1 5 and the concealed message composed from the middle words of
2.1 and 3.2 and 4.3
to
hide, alas, I am laid
The interwoven sigh would confirm the enlarged
version of the play as presented in The Oxford Shakespeare (edited by Jill L.
Levenson 2000 reissued 2008) on which my interpretation relies. 'Romeo and
Juliet' would have been a key play, at least on the autobiographical level,
copied with such care and diligence that the secret 'watermark' was preserved.
August Wilhelm Schlegel used a different
partition in his German translation, 5 6 5 5 3, splitting 2.1 into a short
scene (Mercutio speaking about Rosaline) and a long one (so-called balcony
scene) while omitting several vulgar passages. He is wrong in splitting up 2.1.
Rosaline and Juliet belong in the same scene, as a deliberate contrast,
Rosaline personifying Venice that rose from the saline (lagoon), business and
rumors on the Rialto, gossip Venus, with her scarlet lips a courtesan (harlot)
accompanying wealthy merchants, furthermore an early business vocation of young
Edward de Vere, soon abandoned for his true love Juliet personifying poetry.
Moreover, 2.1 is mirrored in 4.3 insofar as Romeo separates himself from his
friends and Juliet separates herself from her mother and her nurse at the
beginning of the respective scene.
I trust the play in the version of The Oxford
Shakespeare and thank generations of scholars for their excellent work.
divine love
Is there a parallel of a numerical 'watermark' ?
Yes, possibly in the cycle of 154 sonnets.
Wilhelm Pötters made a connection between the
medieval formula
Deus
est sphaera
God
is present in the perfect shape of the divine sphere
and the fixed form of the Italian sonetto
invented by Giacomo da Lentini. Picture a circle of diameter 14 as projection
of the divine sphere. The rectangle 14 by 11 has practically the same area
(22/7 for pi) and provides the metric pattern for the sonetto, 14 lines of 11
pronounced syllables each, in all 154 pronounced syllables (also the ideal of
the English sonnet, only that lines of 11 pronounced syllables are easily found
in the melodic Italian, less easy in English).
Now let us visualize the cycle of 154 sonnets by
Edward de Vere alias William Shakespeare as a circle of the circumference 154
(number of pronounced syllables in the sonetto). How long is the circumference?
49, partition 24 1 24, middle number 25.
Sonnet 25, here in my interpretation, can be
seen as core message of the entire cycle (both in the center and on the
circumference of the imaginary circle). Edward de Vere mourns his fate, still
Fortune's fool, obliged to hide behind a pseudonym, deprived from enjoying
fame, however, he finds joy in the divine miracle of love, in loving and being
loved, and where he can't remove and be removed from his juvenile guilt, which
is the reason why he must hide, the reason why he had to adopt a pseudonym he
can't remove nor be removed from, he can neither be removed from his place,
being the actual author of his beloved work
Then
happy I, that love and am beloved
Where
I may not remove and be removed.
The poet seeks and finds redemption by the
divine gift of love, pagan version of God's love prevailing over the original
sin.
love thrives in freedom
Out of curiosity I looked for a numerical
'watermark' in the love poem Venus and Adonis, 199 verses of 6 lines each, in
all 1194 lines. Consider them the circumference of a circle. How long is the
diameter? 380. Line 380 or verse 63 line 2
'Give
me my heart,' saith she, 'and thou shalt have it(')
Venus lost her heart to young Adonis, but he,
having other things on his mind, is not ready for love. She wishes that she
were the man and he the woman, so that he would understand her desire, and
takes his hand. He, unwilling, wants it back. She replies that he can have back
his hand if she gets back her heart ...
Now picture that we had only that one line, as
tiny fragment of a lost poem. In this case the final 'it' would refer to 'my
heart' and we'd have a psychological puzzle
Give
me my heart, and you shall have it
What can this mean? A woman speaking, so
apparently her heart had been stolen. She wants it back, and if she can decide
in freedom, she will give her heart gladly - don't force me to love you, don't
cage me, don't steal my heart, set me free, give back my heart, and you shall
have it really ...
Line 380 in the alternative reading, in many
ways contrary to the actual meaning, evokes the love formula in Romeo and
Juliet
...
the more I give to thee, The more I have
Love is a beautiful paradox. The more we give
the more we have. Let freedom be the bond.
Maybe I go too far? Line 380 in the alternative
reading might be a poetic misunderstanding (often invited by real poesy) and
the numbers a mere coincidence. Yet if the alternative and contrary meaning was
intended as a psychological pun and a humanistic message (with more impact in
the negative version of Othello) the number game supporting the word play can
be justified.
Wilhelm Pötters found the number pi not only
in the forma fissa of the Italian sonetto (Nascita del sonetto, Metrica e
matematica nel tempo di Federico II, Longo Editore Ravenna 1998) but also in
the works of Petrarca and Dante where it has theological, philosophical and
cosmological implications. He contacted me (via a colleague who found me
online) and asked for advice regarding early calculating methods. I told him
about additive number patterns and sequences - universal tool of pre-Greek
mathematics, still used in the Renaissance - including a pair of pi sequences
that now also apply in our case
4/1 (plus 3/1) 7/2
10/3 13/4 16/5
19/6 22/7 25/8
3/1 (plus 22/7) 25/8
47/15 ... 311/99
... 377/120
... 597/190 doubled
1194/380 used in Venus and Adonis
Edward de Vere may have learned about
Renaissance art and poetology including the numerical aspects on an Italian
journey. Remember that also mathematics belongs to the triangle of word
language: life with needs and wishes, mathematics as logic of building and
maintaining, art as human measure in a technical word.
flower springing from Adonis' blood
In the poem A Lover's Complaint a woman aged
from sorrow accuses her false lover, easily recognizable as the author praising
and mocking himself, while she may personify a play - each time he writes a
play he cares for it as his one and only great love, and once in a lifetime
romance, yet when the play is finished he leaves it for to write a new play,
having another affair ... She would fall for him again, and really, this
happened when he wrote the second version of Romeo and Juliet, inspired by
Renaissance art, Italian poetology, and the audacious Ponte di Rialto at
Venice.
The poem A Lover's Complaint has 47 verses (of
seven lines each), the one of Venus and Adonis 199 verses (of six lines each),
numbers from a golden sequence
1 3 4
7 11 18
29 47 76
123 199 ...
Consider a circle of the circumference 47. How
long is the diameter? 15, according to an early value of the pi sequence a
later value of which led to the hidden paradox of love in Venus and Adonis
3/1 (plus 22/7) 25/8
47/15 ... 597/190 or 1194/380
Verse 15 reveals a double aspect of the author.
He can be like a sweet maiden, writing mellifluous love lyrics, or he can be a
storm, writing sharp satires and harsh polemic, sometimes veiled as comedy.
However, he doesn't spare himself, bravely looking into the depths of his own
soul. In himself he finds the human measure to shape the world with, genuine
task of an artist.
Maybe the two aspects are mirrored in the two
relations of Adonis, one to Venus, the poet writing love lyrics, and one to the
boar, the playwright coping with the world? Love is ambivalent, as we read
close to the end of the long poem. However, there are moments of freedom in
love worth living for. Line 380 in the alternative reading may then be the
flower springing from Adonis' blood, cherished by Venus, kept in her bosom,
near her heart - freedom in love and in art being the legacy of this poet and
playwright. Give me my heart and you shall have it. Set me free and you shall
have my very best.
achieving the best in freedom
The poem A Lover's Complaint uses the pi value
47/15 in marking verse 15, and the long poem Venus and Adonis the value 597/190
in singling out line 380. Both values are provided by the same pi sequence
3/1 (plus 22/7) 25/8
... 355/113 ...
597/190
Moreover, the numbers 47 and 199 of verses
belong to the so-called Lucas sequence 1 3 4 7 11 18 29 47 76 123 199 252 ...,
counterpart of the so-called Fibonacci sequence 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144
..., both part of a very ancient number column approximating the square root of
5, the first lines being 1 1 5, 2 6 10, 1 3 5, 4 8 20, 2 4 10, 1 2 5, 3 7 15,
10 22 50, 5 11 25, 16 36 80, 8 18 40, 4 9 20 ..., based on the model of the
number column approximating the square root of 2, first lines 1 1 2, 2 3 4, 5 7
10, 12 17 24, 29 41 58, 70 99 140 ...
Now let us combine the above pi values 47/15 and
597/190 by adding the nominators and denominators. We obtain the better value
644/205, and if we add the value 22/7 of the sonetto and cycle of sonnets in
the form of 66/21 analogously we obtain the still better value 355/113 that
belongs as the best value to the above sequence.
Building the Ponte di Rialto of white marble on
a single arch across the wide Canal Grande was a daring enterprise requiring a
lot of careful calculations. Why shouldn't also one or another complex and
many-layered poetic work rely on a numerical structure?
Pi, the number we call pi (from Greek peri-)
held symbolic meaning for the Italian school of poetry, most notably Francesco
Petrarca (Petrarch) and Dante Alighieri. We can approximate the mysterious
little number, getting close and closer, with more and ever more effort, never
coming to an end. We will never know the complete truth, all of nature's laws,
God's mind. Yet we came far, achieving the best in freedom.
Rialto Bridge
The former bridge across the most narrow passage
of the Canal Grande was made of wood and nicknamed Ponte di Moneta, Money
Bridge. Michelangelo proposed a stone bridge. Palladio, Sansovino and others
took part in a later competition for a stone bridge that may replace the old
wooden structure. The competition was won by the Swiss engineer Antonio da
Ponte who surprised with an audacious plan, a single span bridge of white
marble. The work was begun in 1588 and proceeded slowly because of the soft
underground. The new Ponte di Rialto was opened in 1591. Most people found the
marble arch and superposed triangle of small arches ugly. And it will crumble
... But no, it stood the test of time and became a romantic icon, a must for a
visitor of Venice.
Along the Canal Grande one can see beautiful façades of prestigious houses and
palazzi rise from the water, among them rose-colored ones, a further facet in
the name of Rosaline who personifies the rich town that rose from the sea, from
the lagoon, from the saline, rose (color) rose (verb) saline (lagoon) Rosaline,
also personifying a hypothetical early business vocation of Edward de Vere
(that would explain his ample knowledge in matters of the law), soon abandoned
for his true love, poesy and plays, a world of words, or rather a verbal bridge
between human nature and the world we live in.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A Midsummer Night’s Dream 1584-87
The
tragedy Romeo and Juliet was followed
by a poetical farce, A Midsummer Night’s
Dream, where Romeo turned into jealous Oberon, and Juliet into proud
Titania, king and queen of the fairies, Titania symbolizes the general audience
preferring popular plays of a mechanical sort Edward de Vere apparently
despised, and so he gave a parody of that sort of theater: the mechanicals
Peter Quince and his actors stage a classical tragedy, interfere unknowingly
with the fairies, turn things upside down, doing harm and well at the same
time, bringing one true couple of lovers apart, another together, and, to the
big delight of Oberon, his wife Titania falls in love with an ass, Peter
Qunice’s leading actor Bottom wearing the head of an ass [“translated” into an
ass], of which Titania will soon be ashamed and return to her husband Oberon,
as audience personified realizing that those popular mechanical plays are not
the real thing. Edward de Vere gives the audience a pedagogical lesson in form
of a funny, highly poetical and fantastic play, without any pedagogy at all.
The Two Gentlemen of
If there
is a subtext in the play The Two Gentlemen of Verona, it may concern the
relation between art and power, Julia symbolizing art, Silvia power, Proteus
the poet and playwright, and Valentine the one destined by virtue to exert
power, Latin valere meaning ‘to be worthy, having value, virtue’ being present
in the name Valentine. Proteus would then symbolize de Vere. Homer tells us
about Proteus in book 4 of the Odyssey: an old man (de Vere relying on a very
long tradition), honest (the poet’s motto pronounced in sonnet 105 is “Fair,
kind, and true,” being true an equivalent of being honest), of infallible lips
(the poet claims the same in the sonnets), he sees and knows everything (and so
does the playwright in his god-like position as creator of his plays), he metamorphoses
into everything that walks on earth, but also into water and divine blazing
fire, becomes a lion with a mane, a snake, a panther, liquid water, a tree of a
towering crown (while the playwright can assume every guise in his plays), he
knows the depths of all seas (he knows the depths of human nature), his
daughter is Eidothea, literally the goddess of pictures (while the playwright
creates living pictures on the illuminated stage), he knows what happens in the
palace (while de Vere knew the court, having been raised in the care of the
Queen), good or bad (the achievements and crimes of five hundred years of the
empire’s history). De Vere matches Valentine with Silvia and Proteus with
Julia, not without pointing out a temporary aberration of Proteus who was
seduced by power.
Titus Andronicus first
version 1573, second version 1588
Titus
Andronicus might be a surrealist play avant
la lettre, a tragic satire, methodical insanity used in describing a mad
time, the natural order of the human cosmos dissolving, held together for
appearances by a stern logic of violence, five hundred years ending in doom
1086 Domesday Book
or Doomsday Book
1588 second version of Titus Andronicus “This is our doom”
Titus
Andronicus --- ‘builders’ of the English empire, William the Conqueror, the
Earls of Oxford, others, Henry VIII as military leader
Bassianus
--- Henry VIII as humanist
Saturninus
--- Henry VIII as king
Lavinia
--- Anne Boleyn
Lucius
--- Queen Elizabeth
Young
Lucius --- Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford
Marcus
Antonius --- Arthur Golding / Lord Burghley (John Golding was the half-brother
of Edward de Vere’s mother Margery Golding, young Edward helped his uncle John
translate Ovid’s metamorphoses / William Cecil, Lord Burghley, helped Elizabeth
to the throne, was her minister of finance, raised young Edward de Vere at the
court, and was the father of Anne Cecil, first wife Edward’s; Anne died in 1588
and was praised as angel in euloges)
Tamora,
queen of Goths --- Mathilde, widow of the German Kaiser Heinrich V, imposed as
queen of England by her father, Saxon king Henry I, in 1127, her arrival in
England in 1139 the begin of the age of anarchy (civil wars) / Mary Tudor
“Bloody Mary” supporting the German Kaiser Karl V and marrying Philip II of
Spain
Aaron
the Moor --- Black Prince, waged war on France in 1369 / Philip II of Spain,
prosecutor of the Moriscos ‘Moors and Maranos ‘pigs’ Jews, turned into a Moor
of a Jewish name in the fiction of the play (turning persons around is a means
of satire; according to Kurt Kreiler, John ‘false stuff’ Falstaff is a turned
around puritan, Martin Marprelate, see my interpretation of As You Like It
below)
The
play, – a political allegory, condensing five hundred years of English
history and focusing on then recent events – was real enough to ban the
audience and unreal enough to avoid censorship. In all the mess of lost reality
and upturned human relations one aspect becomes apparent: Edward de Vere’s
political position. He welcomed the collapse of Karl’s Reich, indicated by the
initial speech of Young Lucius, demanding the sacrifice of a Goth who must be
dismembered before being placed on the pyre, symbolizing the breaking apart of
Karl’s empire. He supported the English empire, indicated by the final speech
of Young Lucius, honoring Titus Andronicus. And he welcomed the breaking up of
the Spanish hegemony, indicated by Lucius condemning the Moor of a Jewish name,
Philip II as one of his own victims … What appeared to be racism before is now
a sharp satire used as weapon in defending the Moors and Jews against the
‘Christian’ monster Philip II, bow and arrow of his biting wit, indicated by
the two lines of Horace written down in Act 4 Scene 2
Integer vitae, scelerisque purus,
Non eget Mauri jaculus, nec arcu
by Young
Lucius and handed over as weapon. A literary weapon, the play itself. The verse
means: Those integer of life and free of stains don’t need the arc and arrows
of the Moors – here the Moor is Philip II turned into one of his own
victims. The promise of a new order is given in the two last lines of the play,
delivered by Queen Elizabeth in the guise of Lucius
Then, afterwards, to order well the state,
That like events never it ruinate.
The Merchant of
What
about Shylock? Isn’t he evidence for a latent anti-Semitism in the playwright?
Bassianus
in the play Titus Andronicus represented Henry VIII as humanist, while we have
a close Italian version of Latin Bassianus, namely Bassanio in the play The
Merchant of Venice, and accordingly Bassanio proposes a humanist view, for
example when he speaks about law and religion in Act 3 Scene 2
In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt,
But, being season’d with a gracious voice,
Obscures the show of evil? In religion,
What damned error, but some sober brow
Will bless it, and approve it with a beat,
Hiding the grossness with fair ornament?
When I
read the convoluted second sentence I was baffled by the grammatical pun
religion, what damned error
If the
sentence is parsed correctly it proposes a humanist view, so I believe that
‘Christian’ in the play, when used in a positive sense, means Humanist.
Jessica, daughter of Shylock, converts to Christendom, but really she remains a
Jew, a humanist one. Shylock is sentenced to lose all his money, but he keeps
it and reinstalls Jessica as his heir; he is also sentenced to become a Christ,
but, we may infer, he remains a Jew, now a humane one, a humanist … In the
poet’s opinion a truly humanist society has to give equal rights to women. In
the play a woman, Portia, wife of Bassanio – the two married on their
word, no priest and church involved – turns the play around and solves
the dire conflict by telling Shylock that he is not allowed to shed one single
drop of Christian blood. Now Christian blood is a nonsense term, Christians and
Jews having the very same blood, human blood, so the word Christian has the
meaning of human, humane, humanist … I see a variety of humanist messages
enfolded in the play, in the dialectical way this poet loved so much.
Cymbeline 1603
Cymbeline
and the Queen ---
Imogen
--- Queen Elizabeth
Posthumus
Leonatus, introduced as a poor but worthy gentleman, a former playfellow of
Imogen, called a base thing and a beggar by Cymbeline, an eagle and a luster to
the court by Imogen ---Edward de Vere, raised at the court of Queen Elizabeth,
wood by her as he claimed, begged her for an annuity, she remained without
husband, in the memory of time the Queen and her poet belong together, the name
Posthumus Leonatus would anticipate the posthumous fate of Leo- ‘the lion’
–natus ‘born (again)’ into a second life of literary fame …
The
introduction as “a poor but worthy gentleman” provides another pun, wor-thy
– Vere-thy – thy Vere – thy worthy de Vere …
I dare
say that Cymbeline is a late play, destined to be staged posthumously. Scholars
wonder why de Vere wrote no poem as eulogy on the passing away of his Queen in
1603. Well, he wrote an entire play.
Act 1
Scene 5, characterizations of Posthumus Leonatus
the Briton reveler / the
jolly Briton
He sits amongst men like a descended god;
He hath a kind of honour sets him off,
More than a mortal, seeming
The poet
and playwright anticipating posthumous fame. In Act 2 Scene 2 he is
contradicted
Leonatus! A banished rascal
Banished
in a second sense means obliged to hide his name and authorship in the plays
and poems. The second Lord, in his asides, retorts to the accusations, and in
his speech at the end of Act 2 Scene 2 defends the legacy of Queen Elizabeth
(Imogen) and Edward de Vere (her banished lord)
… Alas, poor princess,
Thou divine Imogen, what thou endurest
… The heavens hold firm
The walls of thy dear honour, keep
unshaked
That temple, thy fair mind, that thou
mayst stand
T’enjoy thy banisht lord and this great
land!
The
final words of the play – “this great land” – make clear what the
play is about:
Toward
the end of Act 2 Scene 2
Though this is a heavenly angel, hell is
here
The
heavenly angel is Queen Elizabeth, and hell the political situation of her
time. Act 3 Scene 2, Imogen is called
More goddess-like than wife-like
Act 3
Scene 5, more praise for her
… from everyone
The
best she hath, and she, of all compounded,
Outsells them all
Posthumus
Leonatus is called “most true” while the Oxford motto VERO NIHIL VERIUS,
nothing truer than truth, is another pun on the family name de Vere and reminds
of the triple formula “Fair, kind, and true” of sonnet 105. The coat of arms of
Edward de Vere, by the way, show two lions on their hind legs, while the name
Leonatus is explained toward the end of the play, Leo-natus, born a lion whelp,
a born lion, born again into a second life of literary fame, as the king of
poets, the lion being a royal animal, and so is the eagle, Imogen’s epithet of
Leonatus.
The play
Cymbeline is the missing eulogy on Queen Elizabeth. Act 3 Scene 5
By Jupiter, an angel! Or, if not, an
earthly paragon!
Act 4
Scene 2
O sweetest, fairest lily!
Act 5
Scene 1, Posthumus Leonatus speaking
… Let me make men know
More valour in me than my habits show
Edward
de Vere correcting his reputation.
Imogen
dies as Fidele, is mourned, and wakes up again – Queen Elizabeth died in
1603, is mourned in moving lines of the play, and wakes up to posthumous fame
owing to her poet. Also he dies, as Posthumus Leonatus, and wakes up again to a
posthumous life of literary fame. While he sleeps – dies, actually
– Jupiter himself descends on his eagle and holds a speech, Act 5 Scene 4
Whom best I love I cross, to make my gift,
The more delay’d, the more delighted.
Be content;
Your low-laid son your godhead will
uplift:
His comforts thrive, his trials well
are spent.
Our Jovial star reigned at his birth, and
in
Our temple he was married.
‘Married’
to Queen Elizabeth, ideal union of the Queen and her poet in the Elizabethan
legacy.
When
Edward de Vere was born in 1550, an astrologer predicted the fall of the
earldom in the earl’s lifetime. Now, toward the end of Cymbeline, a soothsayer
names the concern of the play: “
The play
is unreal enough to avoid “censure rash” (Act 4 Scene 2) “And Art made
tongue-tied by Authority” (sonnet 66) but real enough to move the audience. The
moving moments for me are those that praise and mourn
… O Imogen!
My queen, my life, my wife! O Imogen,
Imogen, Imogen!
Edward
de Vere mourning the Queen, speaking right from his heart.
Hamlet 1585-86
Act 2
Scene 2
O God, I would be bounded in a nut-shell,
and count myself a king of infinite space,
were it not that I have bad dreams.
What is
that mysterious nut-shell? The human brain resembles a walnut, so the nut-shell
is the human skull. With our eyes we behold the world, and our rational mind, a
king of infinite space, imposes one or another system on the sensual
impressions, be it religion or philosophy or science or the law, yet every
closed system raises problems at the margin that cause bad dreams.
Do you see that, O God?
How can
a good God allow so much suffering in the world, and why does an almighty God
not end it? Religion as a closed system that claims to know all answers has
caused another bad dream in form of the Malleus Malificarum and the Unholy
Inquisition.
Edward
de Vere pleads for an open mind in two famous lines of the play, Act 1 Scene 5
There are more things in heaven and earth,
Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
For
example the unconscious, (re)discovered by Freud. Hamlet, Freud says,
reproaches his uncle for doing what he wishes to do unconsciously. The
unconscious has a logic of its own. A peculiar logic is found in the dream
dialog of Hamlet which may be understood as follows. We behold the world with
our eyes and apprehend it with our mind “in god-like manner.” By night, when we
close our eyes and sleep, we may dream. Our dreams are but shadows of the real
world we see by day. Now the word dream also has the meaning of something we
desire, as in the case of the famous dream of Martin Luther King. Ambition, the
poet says, is the shadow of such a dream. By equating both dreams, the shadow
of the world and the sun of our ambition, he comes to the conclusion that
ambition is the shadow of a shadow. Now the world, in the view of the ancient
ones – a belief still cherished in the Renaissance – is the
macro-cosmos, while a living being is a micro-cosmos, a mirror-image of the
world, yet while the world is self-sufficient we are depending in many ways,
and so we are not really mirror images of the universe but shadows – the
body is a beggar, the poet says, full of desires, and desire is expressed in
dreams, so we have the world, below it shadow and dream and body. Now the
shadow of a dream is ambition, as explained above. The fiercest ambition lives
in a king, so the king is the shadow of a beggar … what is highest becomes
lowest, everyday logic doesn’t work anymore, the conscious mind fails,
something else takes over, and if it is madness it has nevertheless method, as
another famous line of the play states.
While
mathematical logic – the logic of building and maintaining – is
based on the equation
a = a
the
logic of the play anticipates Goethe’s ever turning key
All is equal, all unequal …
Edward
de Vere is Hamlet not Hamlet who is himself and not himself and loves Ophelia
loves her not loves her more than everybody else. (More on this logic in my
interpretation of the play As You Like It.)
The Winter’s Tale 1603/4
Leontes,
king of Sicily --- playwright, Edward de Vere, close to the end of his carrier
and life, Sicily a reference to the birthplace of Italian poetry, Giacomo da
Lentini’s invention of the Italian sonnet at the court of Frederick II in
Palermo (while Henry Howard, an uncle Edward de Vere’s, invented the English
sonnet)
Hermione,
his wife, a former Russian princess --- art personified; in early Italian poems
(Lentini, Petrarca, Dante) the worshiped woman also personifies love and
transcendence, an icon, really, therefore the reference to
Maximilian,
son to Leontes and Hermione, dies --- the poet has no heir; being a singular
genius he remains without a real successor
Pauline,
a woman, but also an old turtle, and has wings --- life personified, moving in
water, on earth, and in the air
Pauline’s
accusation of Leontes --- the poet gained insight into human nature, often by
watching people suffer, and he contributed to some of their suffering himself
Perdita
‘the lost one’ --- the plays and poems, in danger of being lost, also lost in a
second sense, known under the name of William Shakespeare, this a reason for
Leontes to be jealous
Polixenes,
king of
Florizel,
falls in love with Perdita, his father doesn’t approve of the liaison, and so
the loving couple elopes --- while the poet, being a singular figure, has no
real successor, the leading actor has many successors, ever new generations of
brilliant actors who shine in the roles and fill them differently, which may
make the previous generation jealous, not approving of the new ways of
interpreting a role, yet every generation has a right to see and give a play in
a fresh manner, and highlight other aspects of the multi-faced gem, making the
plays bloom, so to say, indicated by the name Florizel, Latin flor floris
‘flower’ (remember Paris in Romeo and Juliet, actor personified, called “a
flower, in faith; a real flower”)
Camillo
--- perhaps a reference to a scribe who helped Edward de Vere to note his quick
flowing verse in the last years, encouraging him to go on, hindering him from
burning his work when seized by a bad temper and the futility of his attempts;
may have carried away the sheets in order to save them
Antigonus,
husband of Pauline, deposits Perdita on the shore of Bohemia, is then followed
by a bear and devoured by this one --- the human struggle to save the cultural
achievements, and the sacrifices we bring in doing so (a modern term for the
bear would be entropy, Antigonus our struggle against entropy)
The
poet, near the end of his life, reveals himself as a jealous tyrant, in the
play and via the oracle of Apollo, while everybody around him is true and full
of the best intentions, trying to save his work (the actors save them, having
them written down, laid down, so to say). The name Leontes reminds of Posthumus
Leonatus. In the play Cymbeline, the poet – effecting his own apotheosis
via Posthumus Leonatus – makes himself shine in bright colors. Now, in
The Winter’s Tale, he shows his dark colors, in amazing honesty (though veiled
in the subtext of the play), perhaps feeling that his apotheosis and a second
life of literary fame require full sincerity.
The
second part of the play, sixteen years later, would anticipate the years
1619/20. The First Folio was published in 1623, under the name of William
Shakespeare. The playwright’s work was saved for good, but belongs now to the
actors who perform the plays in their own way. Saved for good by well meaning
people who forgave the jealous tyrant for the beauty of his work, for his
gentle praise, and for his honest confession – “Fair, kind, and true”
(sonnet 105).
The Tempest 1604
Prospero
in The Tempest symbolizes cultural progress that makes the world prosper, art
and science, the poet and playwright again; Prospero being from Milan perhaps
an allusion to Leonardo da Vinci who spent many years at the court of the
Sforza in Milan); Miranda his admirable work; Ferdinand political power (King
James; also a reference to the Sforza of Milan, Italian sforzo meaning effort,
and forza power) that shall make good and not overhasty use of the “rich gift”
(Act 4 Scene 1); Ferdinand playing at chess with Miranda indicating an always
complicated relation between political power on the one side, art and science
on the other side; the island seems to be far away, in the West Indies, but is
very close, the stage of the Globe, the cell of the poet and the workshop of a
painter or a scientist, even the memory of language; the hag reminding of the
goddess of old, for example Circe in Homer’s Odyssee; Caliban being a chthonic
god, also the animal nature of ourselves, and a simpler life of early times;
Ariel the spirit, Latin spiritus Greek pneuma Hebrew ru-ach, the eternal spirit
who serves the poet in the guise of Prospero for a while and is released when
all is brought back to a good order so the land may prosper and its dwellers
forgive the shortcomings and flaws of the poet and playwright
Let your indulgence set me free.
The
beauty of Miranda is the dazzling, enchanting beauty of the language of this
play. Act 4 Scene 1, Iris calling out for Ceres, Roman version of Greek
Demeter, emanation of the goddess of old, the hag of the play restored to her
ancient glory
Ceres, most bounteous lady, thy rich leas
Of wheat, rye, barley, vetches, oats, and
peas,
Thy turfy mountains, where live nibbling
sheep,
And flat meads thatch’d with stover them
to keep,
Thy banks with pioned and twilled brims,
Which spongy April at thy best betrims,
To
make old nymphs chaste crowns, and thy broom groves
Whose shadow the dismissed bachelor loves,
Being lass-lorn; thy pole-clipt vineyard;
And thy sea-marge, sterile and rocky-hard,
Where thou thyself dost air;--the queen
o’the sky,
Whose watery arch and messenger am I,
Bids thee leave these, and with her
sovereign grace,
Here on this grass-plot, in this very
place,
To come and sport:--her peacocks fly
amain;
Approach, rich Ceres, her to entertain.
As You Like It first
version 1593, second version 1600
“When a
man’s verses cannot be understood, a good wit not seconded by the forward child
Understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little
room.” Edward de Vere in the guise of the
clown Touchstone, As You Like It
Touchstone,
a clown, fool, motley, called a whetstone by Celia, rhymes, compares himself
among the goats to Ovid among the Goths --- Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, “a
motley to the view” (while Celia might echo the Queen’s voice). Touchstone as
whetstone reminds of Recorde’s mathematical treatise Whetstone of witte,
Audrey,
loved by Touchstone who fondly calls her a foul slut --- audience [a modern
equivalent being Peggy in the sitcom Married with Children, watching TV all day
long … the first seasons are hilarious, and full of allusions – how many
of them would still be understood in the year 2400?]
Oliver
Martext, village vicar, engaged to wed Audrey and Touchstone in a mock ceremony
--- Martin Marprelate (pseudonym), a puritan zealot who published vitriolic
pamphlets in 1588/89, rather the parody of a puritan (Kristen Poole), had the
paradox effect of making theater production flourish
William,
a country fellow, from
The
clownish trio Touchstone – Audrey – William parodies Romeo –
Juliet –
A first
version of the play may stem from the early 1590s, while the second version,
the one of the First Folio from 1623, would have been written for the jubilee
of the Queen’s enthronization on November 17, 1600, with an inoculated satire
out of an impending reason: Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, former chief of the
secret service, rival and enemy of Edward de Vere, had been banned from the
court but now hoped to get back and gave the Queen a painting of his wife that
was shown to the public on the same November 17, 1600. the now famous painting
of Frances Walshingham as Mysterious Lady or Persian Lady
Rosalind
--- on the level of the inoculated satire from 1600 Frances Walshingham as the
Mysterious or Persian Lady, pregnant, wearing a long flower-decorated gown,
standing before a proud walnut tree, embracing a weeping stag whose antlers are
multiplied by branches of the tree, from which, on the other side, a nut is
falling toward a framed poem written by Devereux who makes his wife speak and
complain that she gets the rind while others get the fruit … Edward de Vere in
the guise of the clown Touchstone turns her lament around, saying her husband
is the rind and she the fruit
Sweetest nut has the sourest rind
Such a nut is Rosalind
Orlando,
a son of Rowland de Boys, writes sentimental love poems and hangs them on trees
--- on the level of the inoculated satire from 1600 Robert Devereux, Earl of
Essex, compared to “a worm-eaten nut” by Edward de Vere in the guise of
Touchstone, Devereux véreux ‘worm-eaten’ versus de Vere veritas ‘truth’. Edward
de Vere was jealous, because Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, who had an
affair with his second wife, Elizabeth Trentham, left him for the admired
Devereux, and so de Vere insinuates that Frances might be pregnant by Henry:
“many a man has good horns and knows no end of them” (just one of many such
remarks). Robert Devereux is the rival poet of the sonnets, while Henry
Wriothesley is the beautiful young man. Now I believe that some of the poems are
ambiguous, for example sonnet 20 that can also be read as high praise and mild
chiding of Queen Elizabeth, or sonnet 83 mentioning “both your poets” –
in one case de Vere and Devereux, in the other case the playwright and his
actors who make the play together in the sense of Greek poieo ‘I make’ and
poiaesis, wherefrom English poetry and poet. Edward de Vere in the guise of a
clown warns the Queen of the treacherous man: “O, that’s a brave man, he writes
brave verses, speaks brave words, swears brave oaths, and breaks them bravely
…” And he justifies the use of satire. Touchstone. “The more pity that fools
may not speak wisely what wise men do foolishly.” Celia: “By my troth, thou
sayest true, for since that little wit that fools have was silenced, the little
foolery that wise men have makes a great show.” The satire was a warning.
Devereux ignored it and went on organizing his rebellion. One year later he was
beheaded for treason. His follower Henry, also condemned to the block, was
saved in an extraordinary act of mercy, own, we may assume, to an intervention
of Edward de Vere begging the Queen for the life of the still young man.
The Taming of the Shrew 1579
The
Taming of the Shrew may be considered a paradox intervention. Relations are
turned around. A drunken tinker is made lord, a boy his wife, Lucentio calls
himself Cambio ‘Change’, his servant becomes the master, a pedant Lucentio’s
father, Petruchio a fool, the sun the moon, an old man a young girl, the shrew
Katherine a gentle woman, and the drunkard Christopher Sly, anti-hero of the
Induction and a brief insertion near the begin, disappears and becomes the
mirror image of the shrew Katherine, namely the Christopher Slys in the
audience. You are the lord of your household? you got a shrew for a wife? you
wish her tamed as Katherine on the stage, in the play we perform for you?
gentle, kind, loving and subdued? Well then, prove yourself worth of the praise
of men Katherine pronounced in her final speech! If you are sly, which I hope
you are, you’ll get the hidden meaning. Carry your wife on your shoulders,
metaphorically speaking, like Saint Christopher carried the infant Christ
across the river, wading through the water. Then she will consider you her lord
and master, place her hand under your foot, support you in her way, that is.
Kurt
Kreiler dates the play to 1579. I agree.
On a
sublevel, the playwright as author of comedies and serious plays may be present
in the ‘brothers’ Petruchio and Lucentio, and the audience in the sisters
Katharina Katherine Kate and Bianca, while the turning of a drunken tinker into
a lord, called “the veriest antick in the world,” anticipates the elevation of
the illiterate William Shaksper from Stratford-Upon-Avon to the playwright
maybe in 1589. Lucentio pretends that he has to change his name because he
killed a man. This would anticipate the Tybalt incident in the play Romeo and
Juliet from 1581/82, Romeo on the sublevel being the playwright, and his
beloved Juliet the audience. And the Tybalt incident may reflect the Thomas
Brincknell accident from 1567.
King Lear
Also the
play King Lear might be self-referential, reflecting on the necessity of
serious plays, pondering what would happen if such plays were forbidden, the
theaters closed. Here you are with my guesses
King
Lear – symbol of
Goneril
– political power, finance
Regan
– military power, army
Cordelia
– theater, the French anagram cordiale meaning heartily, from the heart
Gloster
– audience, losing his eyes meaning the audience has no more plays to
watch if theaters are closed
Edgar
– serious plays
Edmund
– plays that flatter power
Fool
– finding the difference in what is equal, and the equal in what is
different (remember Goethe’s formula All is equal, all unequal …)
The
tragedy begins with Cordelia saying that she loves the king according to her
bond, after her sisters Goneril and Regan had made big and wordy confessions of
their love. This means on the level of the subtext: politicians and military
leaders are great in making patriotic statements, while art, being more
critical, proves a deeper love. The play shows what happens if art were
forbidden, and theaters closed. (For our time: what would happen if the media
were forbidden in the free west?) The play opens with
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to
say.
Near the
begin
See better, Lear; and let me still remain
The true blank of thine eye.
Lear,
mourning Cordelia, utters his last words
… Look on her,--look, her lips,--
Look there, look there !-- [Dies
No more
breath comes from her lips, Cordelia died, and now the king dies. Edward de
Vere defends the theater by writing one of the most marvelous plays ever,
resembling the sound of a bell, rich in overtones, resounding on many levels of
meaning. The play being self-referential – a play reflecting on the role
of plays – does not narrow its range of meanings, for also life itself is
self-referential, the meaning of life being life according to Sigmund Freud.
Twelfth Night
turn of year 1589/90
Maria,
Olivia’s woman, writes a fake love letter to Malvolio, steward to Oilivia,
encoding the name of Olivia’s ‘darling’ in the letters M, O, A, I, which
Malvolio recognizes as letters of his own name
M-alvolio M
first letter
Malvoli-O O
last letter
m-A-lvolio A
second letter
malvol-I-o I
second to last letter
By
applying the same pattern to the name Vere we obtain
V-ere
V first letter
Ver-E
E last letter
v-E-re
E second letter
ve-R-e
R second to last letter
V, E, E,
R, or veer, to change direction or turn
about or aside; shift, turn, or change from one course, position, inclination,
etc., to another (Webster’s) – the very program of the Twelfth Night,
indicating the turn of year, namely the twelfth night following the earliest
midwinter day (winter solstice on December 20 or 21 or 22 or 23, earliest
midwinter day Dec 20, first night 20/21, second night 21/22, third night 22/23,
fourth night 23/24, fifth night 24/25, sixth night 25/26, seventh night 26/27,
eighth night 27/28, ninth night 28/29, tenth night 29/30, eleventh night 30/31,
twelfth night between December 31 and January 1). Orsino loves Olivia who falls
in love with Cesario who loves Orsino – an amorous merry-go-round
symbolized by the ring Olivia sends to Cesario/Viola … Veer as anagram of Vere,
a fine engrained signature, precisely encoded, the very program of the play.
Clown:
“Nothing that is so is so.” The Clown in the guise of Sir Topas the curate:
“Bonos dies, Sir Toby: for, as the old hermit of Prague, that never saw pen and
ink, very wittily said to a niece of king Gorboduc, ‘That that is is;’ so I,
being master parson, am master parson; for, what is that but that, and is but
is?”
The
Clown makes fun of dogmatism. He calls himself a corrupter of words, melting
frozen concepts and views and opinions, anticipating, once more, Goethe’s ever
turning key
All is equal, all unequal …
The name
of Sir Topas alludes to the mineral, crystal and gem topaz, highly appreciated
for the remarkable variety of colors, from colorless and perfectly translucent
to gray, green, red, honey-yellow, brown, orange, rose, violet, blue,
aquamarine and azure (consider that a clown was called a motley, and Edward de
Vere called himself “a motley to the view”). Also the sizes vary, from polished
pingos de agua ‘water drops’ in river beds to perfectly formed crystals
weighing over 150 kilograms (
Just
before ‘bad meaning’ Malvolio (Italian male ‘bad’, voglio pronounced vollio ‘I
want’) enters the stage, the Clown says
‘Better a witty fool than a foolish wit’
Malvolio
offends the Clown, whereupon the Clown tries to drive the devil out of Malvolio
Out, hyperbolical fiend!
Malvolio
might stand for Martin Marprelate and his fellow puritans who tried to close
the theaters and deprive the world of colors, as it were. If so, the play might
have been written for the turn of year 1588/89, when Martin Marprelate was
active, more precisely for New Years Eve – a hilarious comedy around a
serious problem.
‘Puritan’,
in the begin, was a derogatory term, and was preceded by the name
‘Precisionist’, for those rather extreme reformers of the faith knew precisely
what is right and wrong, defining and confining everything in a pedantic way,
so that they were also called ‘sticklers’ – That that is is, for what is
that but that, and is but is? The word Precisionist goes back to French précis
Latin praecisius praecidere ‘to cut off’ prae-caedere ‘to cut’. Now consider
the steward Malvolio examining the fake love letter allegedly sent to him by
his mistress Olivia: “By my life, this is my lady’s hand; these are her very
C’s, her U’s, and her T’s; and thus makes she her great P’s. It is, in contempt
of question, her hand.” Whereupon Sir Andrew Aguecheek: “Her C’s, her U’s, and
her T’s, why that?” Because they yield CUT, the meaning of prae-caedere at the
base of Precisionist, which term or name is indicated by the great P –
those who know exactly what is right and what is wrong in the name of their
precise belief … Precisionist and puritan pastors undertook exorcisms for
demonic possession. In the play, the Clown performs a mock exorcism on Malvolio
– “Out, hyperbolical fiend!” – and defines the dark house in which
Malvolio is kept in an absurdly precise manner: “Why, it hath bay windows transparent
as barricadoes, and the clearstories are as lustrous as ebony; and yet
complainest thou of obstruction?
Traditionally,
the twelfth night was the twelfth night following Christmas, December 25,
namely the night between January 5 and January 6, Epiphany of Christ. The play
makes mention of midsummer, and of the twelfth night in December, so I believe
that the night of this play is New Year’s Eve, the night between December 31
and January 1, the turn of year, according to the M A O I pattern Vere verE
vEre veRe yielding VEER ‘to turn and shift’, programmatic anagram of the
playwright’s family name. Jove is mentioned several times in the play, and may
be a reference to the Roman Saturnalia that survive in modest form in our New
Year’s Eve. The Saturnalia were the seven days preceding the winter solstice,
beginning on December 17. During the Saturnalia, human relations were turned
around, master became slave, and slave master. A steward (Malvolio) believing
that his mistress (Olivia) could have sent him a love letter is only imaginable
during the Saturnalia, when everything was turned around, or then at New Year’s
Eve as modest heir of the Roman Saturnalia.
Measure for Measure
The Duke
in Measure for Measure symbolizes government – not a person but a task;
Isabella, “having the truth of honor in her,” Queen Elizabeth, Isabella Isabel-
Elisab- Elizabeth; and Angelo, a hypocrite, is another Malvolio. The playwright
tells the Queen that she should listen to her own heart, and not to those who
make big words they can’t live by. Good government is present in the
allegorical marriage of the wily Duke and honest Isabella who knows her inner
pattern, has grace to stand, and virtue go (qualities in a ruler demanded by
the Duke in his programmatic speech in Act 3 Scene 2). Martin Marprelate
– Malvolio of the Twelfth Night, Angelo in Measure for Measure –
was active in 1588 and 89. The prank on Malvolio is staged by Maria, while
Angelo would rather die than marry his former fiancée Mariana, but he must take
her for his wife. This means the playwright, pointing out the antagonism of
Papists and Precisionists (Marian exiles) or Puritans in one play, forcing them
together in the other play, is highlighting the religious conflict in one play,
and ending it in a satirical way in the other play. The Twelfth Night would
have been written for the turn of year 1588/89, and Measure for Measure, full
of praise for the Queen, for the 30th anniversary of her crowning on
January 17. She was crowned on
Love’s Labour’s Lost late 1570s
Love’s
Labour’s Lost, a play full of puns, might be a self-ironic poetology, and a
contest between English, French, and Spanish literature, Edward de Vere being
present in Fer-dinand, King of Na-var-re, in Lord Ber-owne, in the schoolmaster
Holo-fer-nes, and in Ver the Spring of the closing song, while the princess of
France may symbolize French poetry, her lady Rosaline perhaps Ronsard, and Don
Adriano de Armado, a fantastical Spaniard, Spanish romances of chivalry. Edward
de Vere places French poetry above and Spanish literature below him. As King
Fer-dinand he seeks fame, as Lord Ber-owne he loves life, and as Holo-fer-nes
he reveals his own “fickle mind” in Act 4 Scene 2: “This is a gift that I have,
simple, simple; a foolish extravagant spirit, full of forms, figures, shapes,
objects, ideas, apprehensions, motions, revolutions: these are begot in the
ventricule of memory, nourisht in the womb of pia mater, and delivered upon the mellowing of occasion. But the
gift is good in those in whom it is acute, and I am thankful for it.” (Bob
Dylan said he always felt like a matchbox of too many matches.) The song of Ver
the Spring at the end of the play indicates the late 1570s, when Edward de Vere
believed his wife had betrayed him. The playwright is measuring his art with
French poetry and hopes that he will reach the same level in a year and a day.
Narvarre
might be a reference to Beringia of Navarra, who, as wife of Richard Lionheart,
became Queen of England (note the similarity of Beringie and Berowne), while
the persiflage on Spanish romances of chivalry might have inspired Miguel
Cervantes to his famous novel, first part 1605, second part 1615. We have then
these correspondences: knight, on a mission to rescue the (enchanted) princess
– Don Adriano de Armado, a fantastic Spaniard – Don Quixote //
knave – page Moth – Sancho Panza // (enchanted) princess –
Jaquenetta, a country wench – Dulcinea // horse – dancing horse
– Rosinante (see the long dialogue between Armado and Moth in Act 1 Scene
2).
All’s Well That Ends Well 1599 or 1600
Edward
de Vere as Ber-tram follows Robert Devereux as Parolles in a military campaign
to Ireland, the geography veiled by a change of direction, instead of from
London to Ireland from Paris to Florence, leaving his task of writing plays and
thus caring for the health of the kingdom, so to say, as Bertram abandoning his
wife Helena who cured the king. The play contains sharp attacks on Robert
Devereux, Earl of Essex, whose failed campaign in
… a
wife
Whose beauty did astonish the survey
Of richest eyes; whose words all ears took
captive;
Whose dear perfection hearts that scorned
to serve
Humbly called mistress.
(Juliet,
symbol of the audience, praised Romeo, another symbol of the playwright, for
his “dear perfection”)
I’ll love her dearly, ever, ever, dearly
Dearly
ever ever dearly * ever dearly
* e.ver d-earl-y
* E.Ver –Earl-y
* Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford,
Earle of Oxenforde, finally reconciled with his proper task of writing plays.
Comedy of Errors 1574 or 75,
update 1593 or 94
Conspicuous
in the Comedy of Errors are the many names beginning on A – Adriana and
Aemilia of Ephesus, Aegon of Syracuse, Antipholus of Ephesus and Antipholus of
Syracuse, Aemilia as Abbess, and Angelo … Ancient Ephesus was the city of the
powerful goddess Artemis, her Roman equivalent being Diana, encoded in Adriana
Ardiana ArDiana Artemis/Diana, while her kitchen wench , round as a globe, all
countries on her body, evokes Gaia, earth personified, another mighty goddess.
Am I in earth, in heaven, or in hell?
Sleeping or waking? Mad or well advised?
Known unto these, and to myself disguised!
I’ll say as they say, and persever so,
And in this mist at all adventures go.
He falls
in love with Luciana, the rational and rationalizing sister of Adriana, her
name containing Latin lux ‘light’, anticipating the age of enlightment, but
also the ambiguous moral of Protestantism. The early play would have been
written in 1574 or 75, while the litigating heirs of
The Adventures of Master F.I. – Young Edward de Vere meeting Pierre de
Ronsard before 1573
The
first edition of the anthology A Hundreth sundrie Flowres bounde vp in one
small Poesie – containing, embedded in other contributions, the first
English novel, The Adventures of Master F. I., followed by forty-seven poems
under the title Divers excellent devises for sundrie Gentlemen – was published anonymously in
1572 (old calendar) or 1573 (our modern calendar). An altered version followed
in 1576 under the name of George Gascoigne, a soldier poet and friend of young
Edward de Vere; fifty remaining copies of the second edition were confiscated.
Kurt Kreiler ascribes the novel and the following forty-seven poems to young
Edward de Vere who used a lot of pseudonyms: Master F. I., Fortunatus Infoelix,
Freeman Jones, Ferdinando Ieronimi, H. W. (editor), G. T. (commentator), A. B.
(printer), Meritum petere grave, Si fortunatus infoelix, Spraeta tamen vivunt,
Ferenda natura, Ball, Content, Phaeton, My lucke is losse, then also E. O. and
Therle of Ox., and later, inspired by George Cascoigne, poet of the spear and
pen, pushed by his adversary Gabriel Harvey and teased by his admirer Philip
Spenser, William Shakespeare. Having read the novel, I noticed parallels to the
play Love's Labour's Lost and dare propose the following key of symbols
Lady
Elynor -- Queen Elizabeth, her husband -- her office
Lady
Frances -- Poetry, also an admirer of Pierre de Ronsard and a mentor of young
Edward de Vere, also Pierre de Ronsard himself (Rosaline of Love’s Labour’s
Lost)
Master
F. I., Fortunatus Infoelix alias Freeman Jones aka Ferdinando Ieronimi -- young
Edward de Vere
The
novel and the forty-seven subsequent poems, I dare say, report a meeting of
Queen Elizabeth and Pierre de Ronsard, the French prince of poetry who got
gifts also from Queen Elizabeth and Mary Queen of Scots, and young Edward de
Vere in allegorical form, while Love's Labour's Lost renders the same
hypothetical meeting as a play, in form of a self-ironic comedy.
The Rose
of France (a fable inspired by the novel The Advenrures of Master F. I., and by
the play Love's Labour's Lost) A lady at the court of Queen Elizabeth and mentor
of young Edward de Vere was very fond of the flower and rose poems of the
immensely popular French 'prince of poetry' Pierre de Ronsard. Young Edward,
inspired by these poems, wrote a couple of love poems himself, emulating
Ronsard. His elegant and lively verses amazed his lady mentor to such a degree
that she sent copies to
A flirt
with power and the return to poetry is the veiled topic of the play The Two
Gentlemen of Verona, while the evaluation of young Edward de Vere's place in
literature is the hidden topic of Love's Labour's Lost from the late 1570s,
featuring Ronsard, French prince of poetry, in the guise of the Princess of
France and of Lady Rosaline (alluding to the famous rose poems), young Edward
de Vere in the guise of Ferdinand (Ferdinando Ieronimi) King of Navarre
(birthplace of Queen Beringia of England, also referring to the college Navarre
in Paris where young Ronsard was educated from age of nine onward) and of Lord
Berowne (alluding to Beringia, wife of Richard Lionheart) and of the
schoolmaster Holifernes (Divers excellent devises, poem 46: "I
Holyfernes") and of Ver the Spring (poem 24: "The lustie Ver ...
Springs now elsewhere"), while the fantastical Spaniard Don Arnoldo de
Armado stands for the Spanish romances of chivalry. Don Arnoldo de Armado may
have inspired Miguel Cervantes de Saavedra to his Alonso Quixano alias Don Quixote
(Arnoldo A-o-o Alonso, Armado means armed and wearing an armor, while Quixote
means the great Quixano and also names the part of an armor that covers the
thighs). The plot of a lost play by Edward de Vere, The History of Cardenio,
perhaps from 1580, is rendered in Cardenio's tale in the same novel Don Quixote
(part 1, 1605).
Sonnets in
the light of Italian poetology (commemorating the lovers who had
blessed his life) and Pericles (looking back
on a literary life, honoring Pierre de Ronsard, Thomas Sackville, and William
Shaksper) 1601/02
What makes the plays by Edward de Vere alias William
Shakespeare so very attractive? They are veritable organisms of meaning,
although large parts of meaning are veiled, hidden and concealed, but then,
also most organs are invisible, hidden inside the body, but we can guess that
they work well from the well-functioning body mirrored in a well-functioning
play.
The poems he published under his name or title may may
imitate or compete with Pierre de Ronsard, prince of poets, admired by the
queen, and possibly his idol as a young aspiring poet, whereas using the
pseudonym William Shakespeare
William
will I am
a strong
will personified
Shakespeare
shaking my
spear
wielding my
sword
which is my
word
my elegant
and powerful word
he developed a freer style that may be characterized
as fluent grammatical architecture, so
That every
word doth almost tell my name (sonnet
76)
Now let us have a look at the cycle of 154 sonnets
from the perspective of Italian poetology.
(part 1)
Prof. Dr. Wilhelm Pötters relies on the medieval formula
Deus est
sphaera
God is
present in the perfect shape of the sphere
in explaining the origin of the Italian sonetto
invented by Giacomo da Lentini. The projection of a sphere on a plain is a
circle. Imagine a circle of diameter 14. Using 22/7 for pi, the area is 154 and
can be turned into a rectangle of the height 14 (same as diameter) and width
11. Now these are the numbers of the original sonetto: 14 lines of 11
pronounced syllables each.
Italian poetry speaks of a double love, erotic and
divine, consider Laura in Petrarca and Beatrice in Dante.
The cycle of 154 (!) sonnets by Edward de Vere alias
William Shakespeare might even talk on three levels: of a human lover, of
poetry, and of divine love.
Picture a circle of the circumference 154 (number
corresponding to the area of the original circle of the sonetto, number of
pronounced syllables in the original sonetto, number of sonnets by
Shakespeare). Using 22/7 for pi again we have a diameter of 49. Subtract 49
from 154 and you get 105 (a number game in the spirit of Wilhelm Pötters' literary studies).
Now let us look at the sonnets 49 and 105. Opening lines of sonnet 49
Against
that time, if ever that time come,
When I
shall see thee frown on my defects
A young lover is addressed, but maybe also a young
audience of the plays: we in our time who find out who the author of the famous
work really is, Edward de Vere, heavily attacked by several critics.
Five lines of sonnet 105
Kind is my
love to-day, to-morrow kind,
Still
constant in a wondrous excellence;
Therefore
my verse to constancy defined,
One thing
expressing, leaves out difference.
Fair, kind,
and true, is all my argument
The motto "Fair, kind, and true" appears
three times in sonnet 105. Here we find absolute love, seen from a divine
perspective, where the equal unequal of human affairs converge in a single
picture, a glimpse of which the author finds in his love of poetry and his
"wondrous excellence" as a poet and playwright.
Reading Shakespeare as a modern author we often forget
his background in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
(part
2)
Having
searched for a signature in letters, I finally found a strange coincidence of
numbers that might be a signature in time.
While
the original sonetto had 14 lines of 11 pronounced syllables each, in all 154
pronounced syllables, the 154 Shakespearean sonnets have 14 lines of 10
pronounced syllables each: a single poem 140, the whole cycle 21,560.
Now
this may be an astronomical number denoting time. 21,560 days are practically
730 lunations or 59 years (exact numbers 730.090... and 59.0293...
respectively).
Edward
de Vere was born in 1550, and the sonnets were published in 1609 ––
59 years later! Did he fix the year of publication in a secret will? He died in
1604. The posthumous publisher called himself The Well-Wishing Adventvrer In
Setting Forth. A good friend on a clandestine mission?
Time
is a recurrent topic in the sonnets, addressed as Devouring Time in the opening
of sonnet 19, while the final lines
Yet, do thy worst, old Time: despite thy
wrong,
My love shall in my verse ever live young
have
an echo in the publisher's dedication to
OVR.EVER-LIVING.POET
A
quote from sonnet 116
Love's not Time's fool
Love
can overcome everything, even time.
(part
3)
Wilhelm
Pötters discovered a model cosmos
in Dante Alighieri's Divina Commedia, encoded in a mysterious number, a high
number given as a phrase. In a letter from the late 1990s he asked me for help
with early mathematics: how could Dante have approximated the cube root of 10 ?
I told him how to generate good values from a poor and a mediocre one, and
excellent values from a mediocre and a good one. Here two pi sequences that
explain the principle and may speak for themselves
4/1
(plus 3/1) 7/2 10/3
13/4 16/5 19/6
22/7 25/8
3/1
(plus 22/7) 25/8 47/5
... 311/99 333/106
355/113 377/120
Additive
number patterns and sequences came in great variety and were also used for
astronomical purposes. Let us check on the 59 years or 730 lunations or 21,560
days insinuated by the sonnets - 154 poems of 14 lines of 10 pronounced
syllables each, in all 21,560 pronounced syllables, as days covering the time
between the birth of Edward de Vere in 1550 and his literary rebirth in 1609,
when the sonnets were published by a complice.
How
many lunations are in 59 years? This problem can be solved with another
additive number sequence that relates lunations or synodic months (l) and years
(y)
l/y
37/3 99/8 136/11
235/19 371/30
59
or 30 19 19 minus 3 3 3
371 235 235 minus 37 37 37 or 730
59
years are practically 730 lunations.
How
many days are 730 lunations or synodic months?
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ... lunations
30 29 30 29 30 29 30 29 30 ... days
30 59 89 118 148 177 207 236 266 ... days
17 lunations counted that way are 502 days
15 lunations counted that way are 443 days
17 15 17 15 17 lunations
17 32 40 64 81 lunations
502 443 502 443 502 days
502 945 1447 1890 2392 days
9 lunations are 266 days
64 lunations are 1,890 days
73 lunations are 2,156 days
730 lunations are 21,560 days
There
is a whole mathematical cosmos below the level of Greek mathematics (including
a systematic method of calculating the circle on the basis of the Sacred
Triangle 3-4-5), a forgotten treasure of simple yet clever additive methods.
Ample indirect evidence shows that they were still known to and used by Italian
mathematicians, architects, artists and poets, among them Leonardo Fibonacci
and Leon Battista Alberti, Petrarca and Dante.
Edward
de Vere may have learned about those methods when in Italy, how to handle them,
and apply them in a work of poetry.
Mathematics,
logic of building and maintaining, can also be a help in constructing and
organizing a literary cosmos.
(part 4)
"Then in
the number let me pass untold" (sonnet 136). Here I do the contrary, make
the numbers tell about the author.
27 sonnets
have 3,780 pronounced syllables, while 3,780 days are 128.002... or practically
128 lunations, a whole number of synodic months, in this case from empty moon
to empty moon (German Leermond). A quote from sonnet 27
Looking on darkness which the blind
do see:
Save that my soul's imaginary sight
Presents thy shadow to my sightless
view,
Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly
night,
Makes black night beautous, and her
old face new.
Here we have
a moonless night, a whole number of lunations being over, while the memory of
the full moon hanging like a jewel in the night sky evokes the face of the
absent lover.
60 sonnets
have 8,400 pronounced syllables, while 8,400 days are 22.998... or practically
23 years. A long solar period comes to a close, 23 years. In sonnet 60 we read
of "our minutes" that "haste to an end" and of time's
"cruel hand"
And yet, to time in hope my verse
shall stand
Not all
numbers are meaningful, but some are, having inspired the poet and given the
cycle of sonnets a structure.
Dante
Alighieri finished each canto of the Divina Commedia with a line of marvellous
beauty. However, the very last line is missing. One more line, and the sum of
all the lines would have been the number of the diameter of the so-called
Emporio, the outmost sphere holding the universe, the realm where the divine
messenger comes from. Only God or the messenger of divine love could pronounce
the final line of absolute beauty, truth, and perfection.
In the
sonnets we have a parallele in the shorter lines of sonnet 145 with 8 8 8 8 8 8
8 8 8 8 8 9 8 8 pronounced syllables, in all 113, 27 short of the regular 140.
If I calculated correctly, the pronounced syllable in the very center is the
word 'new' in sonnet 76, evoking a new life in poetry, a second literary life
For as the sun is daily new and old
So is my love still telling what is
told.
The lunar and
solar cycles are not really commensurable, nor are we in love. Sonnet 145 of
the missing syllables is about ambiguity, resolved in a humoristic manner, but
not really overcome. We can only ever get a glimpse of divine love, precious
enough to make life worthwhile.
All 154
sonnets cover the years from the birth of Edward de Vere in 1550 to the
publication of the sonnets in 1609. The later sonnets may be consulted as a
linear calendar. Did he get ill in 1600 ? Mourning is a topic of sonnet 132.
Did he expect to die in around 1605 ? The syllables are missing in sonnet 145.
Did he write the sonnets against "Devouring Time" in 1601/02 ? The
Will sonnets 135 and 136 play around his alias William, "will of
mine" perhaps Will's last will of having the sonnets published in 1609.
Facing the
end as a black moonless night, he commemorates the lovers who had blessed his
life.
Does
beautiful sonnet 18 honor his wife Anne Burghley? If so, he married her as a
pretty young woman of a warm nature and a mild temper.
(part 5)
A word on sonnet 18, in my opinion the most beautiful
poem in the whole cycle.
May I
compare thee to a summer's day?
Edward de Vere, looking back on his first wife Anne
Cecile Burghley in 1601 - a young woman who had loved him and who had died
early – compares her to a summer's day, indicating a warm natured girl
and young woman. Summer can sometimes be too hot – maybe she loved him
more than he deserved? And summer can be short. Her summer was, for she died
prematurely, but she shall live on in his verse.
However, the poet, being honest, mentions ambivalence.
His marriage was not a stormy love affair, indicated by the line
Rough winds
do shake the darling buds of May
In his poem Fond Desire he sees desire
In pride
and pomp of May
The poem is the more conventional version of the first
part of the story of Benedick and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing. Benedick
compares Beatrice to "the first of May." Considering the opening
words of sonnet 18
May I
we might have a pun: May I, May One, the first of May
- also Edward de Vere a stormy lover of the May variety, shaking the darling
buds of May, and perhaps confessing to extramarital love affairs.
It has been said that Edward de Vere married Anne
Cecile Burghley out of mercenary reasons. This might partly be true, and they
apparently were of different natures, but judging by the loving lines of sonnet
18 we can find real and deep affection for his first wife who died early but
lives on in his most beautiful poem.
(part 6)
The calendar works for
higher numbers.
Which sonnet corresponds
to the year 1587 ?
Edward de Vere was born
in 1550, so in 1587 he was 37 years old. The cycle of 154 sonnets covers the
time from 1550 to 1609 when the sonnets were published, as planned beforehand
in Will’s will. Divide 37 (age of de Vere in 1587) by 59 (years from birth to
literary rebirth) and multiply the intermediate result by 154 (number of all
sonnets)
37 / 59 times 154 equals
about 96.5
Sonnet number 96
corresponds to the year 1587.
And which sonnet
corresponds to the year 1601 ?
In 1601, Edward de Vere
was 51 years old. Divide 51 by 59 and multiply the result by 154
51 / 59
times 154 equals about 133
Sonnet 133 corresponds
to the year 1601.
1587 and 1601 are
important years in the life of Queen Elizabeth and her supporter Edward de
Vere, as will be shown in the next part.
(part 7)
1587 and 1601 were
years of hardship for Queen Elizabeth.
She had her cousin Mary
Queen of Scots imprisoned for some fifteen years, and then beheaded for
political treason in 1587, which caused her great sorrow and made her suffer
for a long time. The year 1587 corresponds to sonnet 96 that speaks of a
“throned queen” and forgives her faults, as if consoling her. Middle lines
So are those errors that in thee are seen
To truths translated, and for true things
deem’d.
Her errors on the human
level are political necessities – wrong personally but true to the
kingdom.
In her later years the
queen fell in love with Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, rival of Edward de Vere
who ridiculed Essex and attacked him sharply in two plays. Finally, Devereux
was beheaded in early 1601, another political decision against her heart that
made the queen suffer and was the beginning of her end. Her pain also affected
Edward de Vere. 1601 corresponds to sonnet 133, perhaps the most tormented one,
speaking of three parties
Of him, myself, and thee, I am forsaken;
A torment thrice threefold thus to be
crossed.
Edward de Vere would
have written the sonnets in 1601/02, when the queen’s health was rapidly
declining. Supporting her in her last years may have been another major reason
to write the cycle of poems, telling her that she will live on in his verse. He
would have shown her the sonnets long before they were published. The queen
died in 1603, mourned by Edward de Vere as Imogen in Cymbeline. He died one
year later, in 1604, and the sonnets were published in 1609, literary rebirth
of the queen and her poet and the lovers who had made his life worth living.
(part 8)
Pericles =
Edward de Vere, looking back on his literary life in 1601/02 (the play complementing the sonnets, here interpreted
by a set of poetical equations, in a more
temporal order, contrary to the scenic order of the play)
Gower as Chorus = the
medieval English poet John Gower, dubbed “moral Gower” by Chaucer, wrote
religious, moral, historical and political allegories, among them the long poem
Confessio Amantis that revived an ancient tale and was adopted by Edward de
Vere
Simonides, good king of
Pentapolis = Pierre de Ronsard, prince of poets, here made a king, idol of
young Edward de Vere who emulated Ronsard in his early poems, and in the poems
he published under his real name and/or title (Love’s Labors Lost reports an
actual encounter of Pierre de Ronsard and young Edward de Vere at the court of
Queen Elizabeth); Penta- ‘five’ and -polis ‘town’ might refer to France that
has roughly the shape of a pentagon, while Ronsard resided at the royal court
in the capital Paris
Thaisa, daughter of
Simonides = poems by Pierre de Ronsard, inspiring young Edward de Vere
Thaisa marries Pericles
= Edward de Vere masters the classical style of Pierre de Ronsard
their daughter Marina
is born, silver-voiced Marina = Edward de Vere finds his own voice via Pierre
de Ronsard whose poems are personified by Thaisa, while Marina personifies the
poems and the lyric side of the plays by Edward de Vere, metaphorically born on
the high seas of life; a son of Thaisa and Pericles is mentioned in the
epilogue of the play, he would then personify the militant side of the plays by
Edward de Vere
changing language = the
language of the play changes when Marina is born; autobiographical reference:
early poems imitate Pierre de Ronsard, then he finds his own voice; early
scenes perhaps written in the style of George Wilkins, Edward de Vere parodying
himself as a young writer?
Lycorida, nurse of
Marina = Lycoris, a woman celebrated in the love-elegies of the Roman poet
Gallus (Webster’s Unabridged)
Marina got a good
education from Cleon = religious origin of poetry (consider the Biblical
imagery and language in many Bob Dylan songs)
Cleon in his later
years, his wife, and their daughter = puritans, their zealotry, and their
pamphlets (in the epilogue of the play we are briefly told that Cleon and his
wife died in their burning palace, meaning that zealotry can set the world on
fire but in the end devours itself)
Marina abducted by
Cleon = puritans fighting the theater, would have caused a writing crisis in
Edward de Vere, symbolized by the seeming death of Thaisa
pirates bring Marina to
Mytilene and place her in a brothel = bootleg versions of the plays by Edward
de Vere performed in cheap theaters, or inns (maybe the one of George Wilkins
that also was a brothel?)
Lysimachus, governor of
Mytilene, visiting the brothel, falls in love with Marina = young William
Shaksper from Stratford-upon-Avon comes to London, besotted with the theater,
watches bawdy plays, then discovers the plays by Edward de Vere and falls in
love with their language, Mytilene on Lesbos evoking Sappho whose lyric poems
are still fresh in tone millennia later, indicating again young Shakesper’s
love of lyrics
Helicanus, grave and
noble councillor, most wise in general, a figure of truth, of faith, of loyalty
= Thomas Sackville, brought to the attention of the Shakespeare community by
Sabrina Feldman; Helicanus referring to Mount Helicon in Greece, once believed
to be the abode of Apollo and the Muses, counterpart of the Parnassus
Helicanus and
Lysimachus lead Marina to Pericles = Thomas Sackville and young William
Shaksper reconcile Edward de Vere with his work and motivate him to write
again, perhaps helping him find his pseudonym William Shakespeare (Sack- Shak
sper, -ville Will iam) and proposing a first idea for a new theater that was
later realized as the Globe ? Lysimachus refers both to Lysimachia nummularia
‘moneywort, twopenny grass’ and Lysimachos, brother in arms of Alexander the
Great, indicating that young William Shakesper took over the finances and
helped Edward de Vere defend the theater against the puritan zealots
(Lysimachos, in his later life, became a tyrant who abused his authority, and
something similar would have happened with William Shaksper who was chided for
his transgression in As You Like It, where he, as dull William in the forest of
Arden, claims Audrey the audience, girlfriend of clown Touchstone, alias of
Edward de Vere, for himself, provoking a verbal outburst which inspired a
famous Monty Python sketch; but here, in Pericles, William Shaksper is praised
for his help and support)
Marina marries
Lysimachus = Edward de Vere allows young William Shaksper to care for his work,
as financial director of his thespian enterprise, and as a supporter against
the puritan zealots
Antiochus = Robert
Devereux, rival poet of the sonnets, leader of the disastrous Irish campaign
who let burn down fields and huts, later condemned for treason, too proud to
apologize, and executed; sought glory also as a poet: Me pompae provexit apex
‘the summit of glory led me on’ or ‘Desire of renown he does devise’ –
his poems, personified by his daughter, have the only purpose of satisfying his
desire for glory instead of engaging themselves in the world and for life, metaphorically
not allowing the young woman to get engaged with a fiancé; (Daniel books 7-9 in
the Bible refer to the Syrian kings by the name of Antiochus, appearing in a
vision as a beast of a morphing shape, in one case breathing fire on a fiery
throne, evoking Devereux in Ireland burning down fields and huts in the hope of
gaining the throne of England); ‘Antiochus’ was the name of ten Syrian kings,
and the logic of the play requires that he represents not only Devereux but
also earlier poets of the same sort who had just glory on their mind, one of
them for a while impressing young Edward de Vere
Pericles wearing a
rusty armor, on his shield painted a withering branch with green leaves at the
top, and written the motto of his labor: In hoc spe vivo ‘In this hope I live’
= a different understanding of poetry by the playwright whose armor got rusty
in the high seas of life: care for the green leaves, don’t let the whole branch
go dry and wither away completely, support what vigor is left in the fresh
green, nourish hope …
Edward de Vere would
have been almost incredibly productive in his last years, writing (and working
over) play for play for play and poem for poem, his “fyckle hed” and gift of
the gap and rich experience accelerating each other, holding up time, pushing
away the nearing end, overcoming time in blissful moments of a writer’s
achievement.
(part 9)
Now for the geography of the Pericles play:
Pericles governs Tyre, ancient Tyros, modern Sur in
the Lebanon, also the town of councilor Helicanus –
Antiochus governs Antioch, ancient Antiocheia on the
Orontes in Syria –
Cleon governs Tarsus, ancient Tarsos-Antiocheia in
Cilicia, southern central Anatolia –
Artemis/Diana had been worshipped in one of the seven
ancient world wonders, namely the most famous temple at Ephesos (larger than
the Parthenon), Ionia, western shore of Anatolia –
Lysimachos governs Mytilene on Lesbos –
Simonides governs Pentapolis in the Cyrenaica, Libya,
maybe ancient Apollonia near Cyrene –
– connect Tyre with both Mytilene and Ephesus
and the lines will cross the island of Cyprus (while the connecting line
Antiocheia-Apollonia marks the northern shore of Cyprus), island of the Greek
love goddess Aphrodite whose Roman equivalent is Venus. Aphrodite was born from
the sea (consider also Botticelli's Venus). Marina, born in a gale on the sea,
personifies the lyric side of the plays by Edward de Vere, her connection with
Aphrodite indicating love at the core of lyric poetry (Venus mentioned in the last
sonnets).
Lesbos was the island of Sappho, the great poetress.
Plutarch quoting Sarapion (Moralia, The Oracle at Delphi, Loeb Classical
Library): "Do you not see what grace the songs of Sappho have, charming
and bewitching all who listen to them?"
Apollonia would evoke Apollo, brother of Artemis at
Ephesus, god of classical beauty, playing the lyre, singing and dancing,
associated with the Muses, while good king Simonides, ruler of Pentapolis
(Apollonia?) – honoring Pierre de Ronsard, prince of poets, admired by
Queen Elizabeth, idol of young Edward de Vere – might have been named for
the distinguished lyric poet Simonides of Ceos (Keos, modern Kea, island off
the Attica, westernmost island of the Cyclades). Plato via Socrates: "It
is not easy to disbelieve Simonides, for he is a wise man and divinely
inspired." (High praise for Ronsard around the corner.) Plutarch:
"Simonides calls painting silent poetry and poetry painting that
speaks."
(part 10)
Searching for inconsistencies of my Pericles interpretation
I focused on Cleon and his wife, he personifying religion and she puritan
zealotry. Her name Dionyza evokes Dionysos and his ecstatic cult. How can
puritan zealotry and ecstasy go along? Here I have a problem.
Or do I ? Dionysos originally was a Phrygian
vegetation god. His cult emerged in the dark age that followed the collapse of
the Mycenaean culture and was mainly attended by women seeking temporary
relieve from their hard life. And then, more importantly, religious or
pseudo-religious zealotry can turn into an ecstasy of self-righteousness that
shocks even Cleon and makes him say
... Thou
art like the harpy,
Which to
betray, dost with thine angel's face,
Seize with
thy eagle's talons.
Dionyza tries to have Marina murdered. Pericles'
daughter Marina personifies the lyric side of the plays by Edward de Vere. The
attack on her symbolizes the puritans trying to close the Elizabethan theaters.
Pericles had once helped Cleon, meaning that religion
owes a lot to the arts. Now religion or rather puritan zealotry turns against
Pericles' daughter Marina, but she prevails, owing to her fine human qualities.
Religious or pseudo-religious zealotry is again a menace in our time, giving
the play relevance for the present.
(part 11)
Thaisa, wife of Pericles, evokes Thais, a courtesan,
mistress of Alexander the Great and Ptolemy. Young and beautiful courtesans at
Rome in the Renaissance had the status of pop stars, above all Imperia,
mistress of the zillionaire Agostino Chigi (a financial Alexander the Great, as
it were), favorite model of young Raphael who showed her as Sappho in the
corner of the lyrical poets on the Parnassus in a stanza of the Vatican, and as
the most lovely Galatea in Agostino Chigi's Villa Farnesina. Ptolemy on his
turn evokes Ptolemaean astronomy.
Cleon invoking sun and moon makes me think of the
calendar of the sonnets, a lunisolar calendar of 59 years or 730 lunations,
from the year 1550 when Edward de Vere was born to the prefixed year 1609 when
the sonnets were published, a calendar valid for the higher numbers of the
sonnets, for example sonnet 107 corresponding to the turn of year 1590/91
1550 plus
59 times 107/154 equals 1590.99...
Sonnet 107 mentions an eclipse of the moon that made
some false prophets announce the end of the world (as again in this year,
2015). Has there been a lunar eclipse around the end of 1590 and beginning of
1591? Or is the eclipse of the moon a symbol of something else?
Cleon personified religion, his wife puritan zealotry,
and their daughter for whom lovely Marina should die puritan pamphlets
attacking the theater – a metaphorical eclipse of the moon, a shadow
creeping over 'her' bright face, Mar-tin Mar-prelate casting his shadow over
Mar-ina ...
The mortal
moon hath her eclipse endured
Nothing happened, the kind face in the night sky was
fully restored, Marina returned to life, the theater blossomed again.
However, a certain ambiguity remains. While sonnet 107
claims that the poet and playwright won't waver in fear and love, the puritan
attack was such a big menace that it made Edward de Vere alias Pericles give up
on literature alias Marina, if only for a while.
(part 12)
Helicanus appears already in Gower's Confessio Amantis
that was adopted by Edward de Vere and required only few modifications.
Edward de Vere would have seen Thomas Sackville in
Gower's Helicanus, and may have smiled over a line in a Sackville poem
I never
drank from Parnassus spring
No, dear friend and collaborator, you are not from Parnassus
but from Helicon where you drank from Hippocrene, the spring of poetic
inspiration sacred to the Muses! I will make you Helicanus of my Pericles play,
good noble Lord Helicane, grave and noble councillor, most wise in general, a
figure of truth, of faith, of loyalty. How do you like that?
Mount Parnassus above Delphi in southern central
Greece was the abode of Apollo and the Muses. They had another abode in Mount
Helicon, Boeotia, above the Gulf of Corinth. On top of the mountain stood a
sanctuary with statues of the nine Muses, nearby was their dancing ground,
somewhere else their grove, and they played their games in Thespiai at the
eastern foot of the mountain, wherefrom the adjective thespian. While the
Parnassus watches over Delphi and its famous oracle, the first Sibyl was reared
by the Helicon Muses. Apollo loved her, and gave her the gifts of prophecy and
a long life. In a song of her own she says "that even after her death she
shall not cease from prophesying, but that she shall go round and round in the
moon, becoming what is called the face that appears in the moon" (Sarapion
quoted by Plutarch, Moralia, The Oracles at Delphi, Loeb Classical Library;
remember Mar-ina as face of the moon eclipsed by Mar-tin Mar-prelate). The
springs Aganippe and Hippocrene were sacred to the Helicon Muses. Pegasus, the
winged horse of poetry, once flew over the Helicon, kicked a rock, and thus
created the Hippocrene spring. So if Thomas Sackville didn't drink from
Parnassus spring, he surely drank from the Hippocrene spring on Mount Helicon,
and this made Edward de Vere smile when he made Thomas Sackville a figure in
his play.
Parnassus and Helicon are counterparts – maybe
mirrored in the relation of Edward de Vere and Thomas Sackville?
Edward de Vere is ‘bound by one letter’, and so is
Thomas Sackville according to Sabrina Feldman
Edward de
VerE EE
Thomas
Sackville, Lord BuckhursT TT
Funny that THE WELL-WISHING ADVENTVRER IN SETTING FORTH the sonnets calls himself T.T. Could he have been
Thomas Sackville, preparing the cycle of sonnets for their publication? And if
so, did he work over and finish some of the late plays by Edward de Vere?
(part 13)
If Edward de Vere alias Pericles corresponds to Mount
Parnassos, 2457 m, and Thomas Sackville to Mount Helicon, 1748 m, William
Shaksper might correspond to Lake Lysimacheia in Aetolia, part of a wide
draining system that may go along with William's care for the financial aspects
of the old boy group's thespian enterprise (Lysimacheia nummularia 'moneywort,
twopenny grass').
Parnassos, higher than Helicon, has a parallel in the
play. The men of Tyre wish to crown Helicanus, but this one orders them to wait
for Pericles, meaning the crown belongs to Edward de Vere.
As for the oracle at Delphi watched over by Parnassus,
the utterings of Pythia (Apollo speaking via his priestess) are more than
ambigous, and this may be mirrored in the 'knotted language' of the plays and
poems. Plutarch, Moralia, The E at Delphi (Loeb Classical Library): "It
seems that our beloved Apollo finds a remedy and a solution for the problems
connected with our life by the oracular responses which he gives to those who
consult him (... and are) by nature inclined to the love of knowledge, thus
creating in the soul a craving onward to the truth ..."
The letter E has many meanings in Plutarch: five, sun
god Apollo, if (only), thou art. E also is the letter binding the name of
Edward de VerE. Pentapolis, town of Simonides/Ronsard, contains penta- 'five'.
(Clusters of associations are the medium of the poetic mind.)
Most important in the above quote is the formula epi
taen alaetheian 'onward to the truth'. Nobody knows and owns the truth, but we
can approach it, slowly, by and by, step for step for step, never really
getting there.
Absolute Marina, godlike Marina, comes close to
perfection, but also she has her flaws, "a rough tongue and shrewd
knowledge of the world"(Hilary Spurling). Lucrece 853/4
But no perfection is so absolute,
That some
imperfection does not pollute.
Marina personifying the lyric side of the plays and
poems prevails over Philoten who personifies puritan pamphlets, her name a
corrupt form of Philotheos ‘God loving’. Religious fanaticism can be seen as a
betrayal of transcendence (we know exactly who God is and what He wants, He
wants what we want, He is our mighty henchman). Art pleads for a human measure,
longing for truth and perfection but knowing that we will never really reach
and achieve them.
The same lesson is conveyed by the mathematical
underpinnings of Italian literature, from Giacomo da Lentini via Francesco
Petrarca to Dante Alighieri. The last line of each canto in the Divina Commedia
is of a special beauty, while the very last line that would complete the cosmic
number of the long poem is missing, the line of the divine messenger.
(part 14)
Artemis was born on Mount Cynthos on Delos, ergo
Cynthia, her emblem the moon, eye of Cynthia, also the emblem of her Roman
alter ego Diana, in the play Queen Elizabeth, while the most famous temple at
Ephesus, one of the seven ancient world wonders, represents the court of
Elizabeth – and if the buildings of stone should crumble, the plays and
poems made of words will last, and be an eternal home for the queen
immortalized by the poet and playwright. Marina joining Diana means that Edward
de Vere’s poems and plays are dedicated to the queen.
Cerimon appears already in Gower’s Confessio Amantis,
where he is the husband of Thaisa. Edward de Vere made her the daughter of
Simonides and husband of Pericles. Cerimon calls Thaisa back into life. His
name evokes the tragic poet Chaeremon. Plutarch quotes a line by him
Wine mixes
with the manner of each guest
People understand an oracle (wine) along their
situation in life (mixing the wine), which can also be said of a poem or play.
Cerimon in the play of Pericles may be the guise of a poet who made young
Edward de Vere discover and love the poems by Pierre de Ronsard.
Timon of Athens
Timon of Athens might personify the genius of a
society based on an overall balance of give and get. Genius gives freely, being
most generous by nature, finding reward in itself, but still needs a basic
sustenance. Timon gives freely, but when he is in need himself he gets nothing
from his false friends. He turns bitter, retires to a cave, finds gold, and
pays general Alcibiades to sack Athens. Then he writes an epitaph on himself,
as inscription for the stone of his tomb by the sea, and writes it as an
oracle. His false friends are delivered to Alcibiades, who, then, spares
Athens. Meanwhile Timon died. Alcibiades reads the epitaph from a wax
impression taken by a soldier. It says that we should not ask for the man
buried here, and then calls his name, Timon. What is the sense of that? We
should not ask for the name but in the next line we are given the name ...
Apparently Timon is not just a man called Timon but an allegorical figure, in
my opinion the genius of a society based on the law of give and get, which is
blatantly violated by the false friends of Timon – but life's equation
finds a solution, if not a favorable one then one against us, and if it must
take a very long and weird and completely unpredictable detour, as in the case
of Timon and his false friends. Very close to the end, Alcibiades pronounces
what may be the key line of the play
Make war
breed peace, and peace stint war
Life's equation will be solved one way or another, so
better make it in favor of a society, along its genius. And then Alcibiades
mentions in the final lines "noble Timon: of whose memory / Hereafter
more." But nothing follows. The play ends. Apparently it was not finished.
Or was it? Aren't we thinking about society and its genius that makes it work?
Timon is an allegorical figure in a philosophical play
that might be a late answer to Solon who proposed (strongly simplified)
timocracy as rulership of golden souls that guarantees productivity. The lords
ruling Athens in the play are no golden souls, apart from noble Timon; however,
when he is abandoned by his false friends, leaves Athens and dwells in a cave,
his soul turns into gold that buys him timoria 'revenge'. Government was a main
concern of Greek philosophy. Edward de Vere alias William Shakespeare, as a
young man envisioning a career in business and law – symbolized by
Romeo's first love Rosaline, personification of the mercantile capital Venice
that rose from the saline (lagoon) -, then becoming a playwright, insinuates a
deep law holding society together: an overall balance of give and get as life's
equation that will be solved one way or another. Let us organize our societies
in such a way that a favorable solution can take over, also in the case of the
emerging global society.
Sir Walter Raleigh proposed a commonwealth of nobles
that may have been a revival of Solon’s timocracy, rulership of golden souls
who guarantee productivity. The play Timon of Athens reveals this concept of
rulership as naïve: none of the lords in the play has a golden soul, apart from
Timon, however, the metaphorical gold falls from him in the cave and buys him
revenge, Greek timoria – Timon timocracy timoria. We need institutions
that hold society together and make it work.
A hunch of evolution in around 1600 ? Herball, The Tempest, Voynich ms
The
rebus on the title page of The Herball or
Generall Historie of Plantes by Lord Burghley’s gardener John Gerarde,
London 1597 (google for "herball" and focus on the plinth of the
pillar on the right side), is an elaborate calligraphic composition of centered
elements: a long vertical arrow that can be seen as ideogram of a spear; its
top combined with 4E (unequal horizontal bars enhancing the right slope of the
arrowhead, ideogram of a spearhead); below OR; and below that a large W
combined with a large A (horizontal bar lacking).
A
couple of years ago Mark Griffiths explained the intricate Herbal rebus as
emblem of William Shakespeare from Stratford-upon-Avon. It can more easily be
read as emblem of Edward de Vere alias William Shakespeare.
The
following lines from a poem by John Marston
... Far fly thy fame,
Most, most of me beloved, whose silent
name
One letter bounds
have
been related to
E d w a r d d e
v e r E
4E
as four letters E can also refer to
E d w a r d d E
v E r E
The
large W may stand for Will, the long shaft of the arrow or spear may stand for
I, and the large A may stand for Am, together
Will I Am
*** William
holding or shaking a spear
William Shakespeare
Consider
the word plays around Will and will in the sonnets 135 and 136. 'William
Shakespeare' is a telling pseudonym
William
will I am
***
a strong will personified
Shakespeare
shaking my spear
wielding my sword
which is my word
my elegant and powerful word
In
all
Edward de Vere (of the four Es, by one letter bound)
or
(alias)
William Shakespeare
The
man on the right side, seen as William Shakespeare by Mark Griffiths, might be
an idealized representation of Edward de Vere, by then 47 years old, as a young
man. I'd say it goes along with the official portrait of Edward de Vere
The
Voynich ms, understood as Francis Bacon's fake report of a sailor who had gone
lost in the Southern Seas and arrived per chance on the shore of New Atlantis,
would date from 1605/6 and may somehow be connected with a play Edward de Vere
alias William Shakespeare, The Tempest, no later than 1604.
A
couple of years ago 'Dr. HotSalt' remarked in sci.lang that four words at the
top of Voynich 77r might name the four elements earth water air fire (which led
to my readable transliteration revealing a half-automatic writing in what I
call pseudo-Polynesian, Polynesia in the wide literal sense of Many Islands,
region of the many islands in the Southern Seas). Now the four elements are
also present in The Tempest. Caliban personifies water (via his fish
appearance) and earth (anagram cannibal indicating that the earth 'devours' the
creatures it produces and nourishes - from dust to dust). Ariel personifies air
(pneuma ruach spirit) and fire (St. Elmo's fire and Jupiter's lightning). On
the same key page 77r is a strange tree with an animal and a woman, symbol of
animals and human beings descending from the same tree of life? Caliban evolves
from fish via ape and savage to a wise man, still bound to nature, as we all
are.
The
Voynich abounds in drawings of herbs, while the island of Caliban, temporarily
taken over by Prospero, has a lush vegetation praised by Iris and Ceres in
lines of great beauty (beginning of 4:1). Moreover it seems that John Gerarde
secretly dedicated his Herball (1597) to Edward de Vere alias
WilliamShakespeare (consider the alternative reading of the rebus on the title
page). Could there be a hunch of evolution also in the Herball?
Prospero
honors Leonardo da Vinci as inventor, and human creativity per se that produces
ever more artificial things from the primeval elements = helped by Caliban and
Ariel. Miranda symbolizes art, and her lover Ferdinand politics - which is why
they play at chess, not really the occupation of young lovers on their
honeymoon, but appropriate for the relation of art and politics. (Bacon might
have seen himself in all three roles or fields of Prospero inventor, Miranda
art, and Ferdinand politics.)
Caveat.
A play has more levels than I can mention here. While mathematical logic is
based on the formula a = a the logic of art follows Goethe's
formula 'all is equal, all unequal
...' known to artists of all times. In
this logic a symbol can mean something and something else and again something
different. Caliban for example has more meanings than said above, and a
counterpart in the kitchen-wench in The Comedy of Errors 3:2, parody on the
Greek earth goddess Gaia.
'Ban, 'Ban, Ca-Caliban
The
syncopic line of drunken Caliban stammering his name could have been de Vere's
attempt at imitating a southern islander's native language combined with the
sound of a beaten tambourine
Ban Ban
-ban
and
thus a fine intuition about the etymology of English word German Wort as
combination of English fur Ancient Greek byrsa 'hide, fur, leather' and English
tone German Ton, here the sound made by the fur of a beaten tambourine. English
word is akin to Latin verbum that may combine byr- in the form of ver- with
onomatopoeic -bum analoguous to German Bumm and English boom, while
'tambourine' combines tam doubled in tam-tam Hindi tamtam with byr- in the form
of bour-, tambourines having accompanied the rhythmic and melodic singsong of
shamans and shamanesses ...
Bacon
would have tried to go back to early writing via half-automatic writing. Here a
sample of my transliteration, Voynich 87r, second paragraph
Pihuavihà ven ihuu senven ihan envà
àihuuus iukià kuaves akiuan kailia
luas iliuà ihavà kauuuukà s iavà vero
vero ihan ikuà aluan iuas aluua vero
ihas iuan iuas iliuà sero dailiuan vero
àquuas ihuan viuuan
Occasionally
one recognizes a word or has the illusion of a word: Italian vero 'true', Latin
aqua 'water', French vie 'life' – true water of life and rejuvenation.
Italian
or Latin vero appears frequently in the above transliteration of the Voynich.
Edward de Vere's family motto vero nihil
veritas ‘true nothing but the truth’
had been altered by him to vero nihil
verius ‘nothing truer than the truth’. Francis Bacon was Baron Verulam
Vere
vero veritas vero
verius Verulam vero
If
ver- in veritas vero verius derives from the same byr- then perhaps from a fur
showing its true colors, of from a fur indicating the rank of its bearer, for
example the royal cape of ermine, or from a fur bag containing a token of
someone's identity – in the case of Edward de Vere alias William
Shakespeare his leather-bound word that speaks for a courtier who had been
raised in a household with a big library. Sonnet 76
... every word doth almost tell my name