Real William Shakespeare Chapter 3

A DISRUPTIVE PUPIL

WHEN THE VICAR at Stratford christened William, probably on the 26th April 1564, he would have no idea that William would have a great wit when he grew up, unless the baby did something in his font! Yet Ben Jonson would describe him as a man with a fantastic sense of humour in the Works published in 1623. It is hard to imagine that William didn't show signs of this from an early age, added to this being very talented and possibly showing an acting ability too. David Bellamy (the botanist) has commented that from his Works you can see an interest in plants and the countryside, suggesting that William might have been a gardener. We also know that when he left the stage for a home in Stratford, this house had a garden, where he planted a Mulberry tree. Horticulture too may have been an interest to the young William. You can also tell from the Works there is an obsession with Kings and Queens. Which may have been there from his youth, fostered, if not started by the reading of books adding the tales of Roman and Greek legends? These may have been given as New Year presents which then was shortly before his birthday! Rather like we give Christmas gifts. The Court did give New Year gifts to one another, oddly on the 25th March (this is when the year began then) so the custom must have common for those even with less money. What would have been cheaper surely, to give the young William, rather then books with words printed in them, are plain paper books. People often used blank paper (bound) volumes for writing things in, such as diaries, sales ledgers and the like. With such a book he could have recorded his thoughts and the events of his life, easing the need to store tons of knowledge in his brain. Many years later in 1599 Richard Quiney’s son asks his father to get him some blank paper books from London. If the present idea sounds fanciful, then a plain paper book intended for schoolwork, only not being used for that, may appeal. He must have put something in that ‘satchel’ mentioned in As You Like It. However what is not in the grey matter is his writing abilities.
I don't disagree with Stanley Wells’ conclusion that William would have gone to Stratford Grammar School, because William did learn to write, although he had to be able to do that before he entered the school at seven years of age. Some form of early education was thus needed and Stratford had an elementary school as well. Each boy in this type of school (there were no girls allowed) had a hornbook, which had the alphabet printed on it. It looked like a hand mirror and to loose it would entail severe punishment. The school and their hornbooks would leave an impression on the young Will and it can be found in various plays.
With all the above on the young William's brain, school would seem like a prison sentence to him. The day at the grammar school long, nearly 12 hours from 6 o’clock in the morning, Monday to Saturday! Little wonder he refers to a schoolboy reluctantly going to school in the above-mentioned play. An active mind would not have made him popular with his teachers either, with that sense of humour or his acting ability, despite the fact that drama was taught. Teachers then were nothing like the people most of us are familiar with today. Neither were children, as they were treated like young adults, in the sense that they were just smaller than adults were. Once language was grasped they would have been like midgets of their parents. Many would still behave like children now and they played games or whatever. Yet that’s when

they were only (say) eight years plus, by twelve they could well be married off! Combine this with what has been deduced already and our William could have been a handful! From one of his plays you can extract what might have occurred at elementary school. The master would have been trying to teach a younger boy (than William) the letters B and A backwards or Ba. The schoolmaster repeats the word ‘ba’ several times and then says to the boy who has not taken it in “look at your horn.” Will then said “Ba a silly sheep with horn.” He was thus poking fun at the boy and master and he wouldn't have got away with it though! Grammar school was no better and no doubt he deliberately mispronounced his Latin words and clearly, if Ben Jonson is right, picked up only a little Latin and less Greek, as he stood on tables and benches performing in character. One can imagine if this happened to be a king the master would have been lucky, if a horned animal not so, for we have the young Bard acting the goat here! Other times he must have sat looking out of the window watching the seasons pass and wondering how the wild animals are doing in the woods he spent his leisure time in, or daydreaming in other words. A child psychologist's would have classed him with something and be filling him up with mood altering drugs, these days. Though if we all had to sit for 12 hours speaking Latin and reading out Shakespeare and other poetry for 6 days a week, we would have to be on drugs! Nor was this education free, though there were no fees.
Whether his father's circumstances had changed or not he wouldn't have been at Stratford Grammar School long under these conditions. I doubt if he went regular at all, preferring to go to the local woods, plus with his disruption, may have been expelled from the school. Regular arguments with the parents, especially his father over the cost of this education: books, pens, paper and the clothes and William’s waste of it would have been insured. Many parents now have faced the summing to school over their child, with the familiar words- ‘when he is here he disrupts the whole class’. Few parents told that would think that their child would become a god! There’s another side to this education, the school should have had empathies on the Protestant faith, due to that being the official faith, yet as his father John was more than likely Catholic in his ways, would have led to something being said about that. Only the curriculum consisted of debating skills, that we know William picked up (from his plays) and the young lad would answer back to his father on that, with William arguing that the Catholic ways were based on superstition, even if he didn’t believe it!
When he was there though, he did pick up Latin, mostly because it was drummed into the boys by endless repetition. It is incorrect to say that it was the source of his memory as this is a biological function of the body. Even more so if he had a notebook! The one thing not in dispute is he went to church. The Tyndale Bible and its phrases are scattered about his writing like Lennon & McCartney lyrics in music today. But precisely what form of religion, the young lad is getting, is not too clear to most historians. Some seem to think that if a teacher was Catholic then they would be teaching it. Nevertheless what a teacher teaches is not what pupils learn sometimes. If William is like most children, then he will reverse what a teacher says, also change it to fit in with their own theories. Rather like historians do with facts. Just because there’s is a lot of Ovid references in William’s work does not mean he was enthused by Ovid, being taught by the (Catholic background of his) teachers. Because something happens later that destroys this idea.

A crack at education

That Shakespeare did not go to College or a University may have been a blessing. One of his school pupils did, which proves William could have gone if he had the ability or has I believe a different temperament. This chap also called William, only Smith went to Exeter College, Oxford and later becomes a Schoolmaster. It may be this William who Shakespeare gets mistaken for, when later historians went hunting for clues about Shakespeare's early life in Stratford. As William Smith only became a schoolmaster, despite going to Oxford and William Shakespeare became a great playwright, one wonder's about the merits of a University Education! Shakespeare certainly did in my opinion. His plays and his colleagues’ works suggest that William was quite hostile to education in general. This was perhaps not just verbal insults or parodies in his drama. For William Beeston may have told the historian Aubrey the story of Will being a schoolmaster from what his father Christopher knew yet may have got it muddled up. What Christopher Beeston may have really said was that Shakespeare had in his younger years beaten up a schoolmaster in the country! Maybe it was William Smith!
In any case the English dictionary would have been a lot lighter if Shakespeare had gone to University. For playwrights who did go use less new English than Will does, even Marlowe! One side effect of this schooling or reading books, might have been that a lot of his Warwickshire accent disappeared when he spook. I can personally testify, that many people who live in my locality, just to do with the way I talk, don’t think I was born there! So also many might have thought that about Shakespeare. Conversely, I can use my accent and understand those with a broader based one, so we find in the plays, words with Warwickshire origins. Indeed we will find out later that he perhaps sounded like he had been to University, for he comes into contact with high up aristocrats and holds his own with them. Plus as he does become an actor, some even think a top class one and you don’t get to be one of them speaking any accent people have problems understanding. Common sense really! What he sounded like then, you must be asking. I think he would sound most like Jasper Carrot!
One fellow pupil and had to be William's friend, was Richard Field. An altogether wonderful stroke of luck or fate brought these two men back together, if they had parted, which may have been the case. Field was apprenticed to George Bishop in 1579 for seven years. The first six years he was to work with Thomas Vautrollier and both men lived in London. The spot of luck or fate for William was that Richard's Master George was a stationer and Thomas, a Huguenot printer! Richard Field advanced well in the publishing field and even married Vautrollier's wife, after his death. Although other boys were apprenticed out to printers and the like from Stratford School, a chance meeting between Richard and William in London would bring these back together when Richard published Venus and Adonis in 1593.
I don't think that William was apprenticed out, though it would have been the logical thing after being expelled from school. As to any references to glove making and the like in the plays, he would know about his father's trade anyway. Simply being around the shop and if his father was in trouble financial; William getting money elsewhere would have been better. Shakespeare’s mother might have more say in William’s career than his father. Rather like D. H. Lawrence’s mother, Mary Arden was better educated than her husband John was. However all this can be put aside, fate would intervene first!

That Royal touch

It is known that when Shakespeare was eight years old, Queen Elizabeth was in the area of Stratford. Rather like Royal visits today, Queen Elizabeth attracted the common people to her like a magnet. Unlike modern Royals they saw more of her, slow moving carriages, went at walking speed, she would also walk more than Elizabeth II and see more of those that came, due to the smaller population. Touching the Queen’s hand would have been somebody’s highlight of the day. People believed you could be cured of certain sickness by touch of the Queen. You would be proud and you wouldn’t forget it. The young William would have gone to see her perhaps with the entire family, or one maybe two of them. He may have been in the area when she passed by or gone on his own, perhaps with friends. If the school didn’t let him out, then it was another of his truants from school! The way Elizabeth talks in her speeches and her love of the people, might have even meant that she singled out Shakespeare and praised him, as part of a speech directed to those gathered, as one of her beloved children of England. Imagine what that would have done to the boy’s ego!
One thing is certain he did meet her when he was young. Shakespeare's plays and poems are defiantly in code. However this is not a cipher code, based on letters and the positioning of them, nor by someone else either. William also did not deliberately put the code in and yet it's there. Once a person accepts various concepts about William, the coded bits appear that answers our questions on Shakespeare’s life. This is the case with his youth, and as I have already explained he knows Queen Elizabeth in his latter life, so we need only to search for their meeting in his works. Sure enough it's there in the Passionate Pilgrim No.9.
In this verse the second line has been removed, with purpose I might add. It was written in respective, maybe around 1590 and so introduces love to the first meeting, which would not have been the case to the young Will. The seventh line says ‘silly queen’ and must give us a clue to the missing second line. It may have even said ‘Elizabeth’ in it!
The verse is amusing as most of Shakespeare’s works are, and yet does furnish us with that first meeting between William and Elizabeth. For starters we know that Elizabeth went hunting regular and she often had a pale complexion. What appears to have happened to the young William in this verse is that he came across Queen Elizabeth on a hunt. Came across is not really how it would have happened! For Will would have been out walking in the countryside ‘proud and wild’ to quote the poem, when horn and hounds came right upon him and he would have to have taken flight! Running to safety he passed by the hunting stand where the Queen was. Scared half out of his wits no doubt, he nearly ran into a dangerous piece of land, before the Queen stopped him. Liz then explained how she did the same thing when she was young and showed him the injury she had received from a wild boar and saying thus "See in my thigh, here is the sore". As she did so she lifted her skirts up and Will was pretty embarrassed by what he saw!! In truth according to the poem he ran off! More or less scarred stiff by meeting the Queen face to face, one imagines.

This would fit in well for her behaviour as the dumb blonde type, and even William called her ‘silly’! William is once again called Adonis in this poem, but the Queen isn't referred to as a Goddess name is this one, as she is in others. As the Passionate Pilgrim verses was not done in any kind of order numbers 4 and 6 appear to be connected to number 9, number 6 thus being the logical successor to it. So our story continues with after Will has run off. He has got so hot running he needs to cool off. One of his favourite spots in this part of the country (where I don't know) was an Osier tree growing by a brook, he must have come across it and as the poem implies he used it often to bathe in. Meanwhile Elizabeth who was more upset probably than forlorn, had gone after the young lad on her horse (though it does not mention it) to see if he was all right. As she approached the tree, William was about to jump in, after taking all his clothes off, presumably laying them on the ground. Something made him look around, perhaps the sound of her horse, and William stood there naked, in front of the Queen! The result was more embarrassment, which either caused him to fall in the brook, or jump in, with hilarious results for Elizabeth. I am sure this last line was added to the verse with later hindsight: "O jove quoth she why was not I a flood."


Again the word 'Queen' is mentioned, but this time Elizabeth is referred to as ‘Cytherea’ something she is called by other writers and poets as well.

The other verse suggests that these events happened when he was about 12 or more (1575/6). The brook is mentioned again and so would appear to link the events to together. Elizabeth must, after she had stopped laughing, have helped William out of the brook and helped him dress. Now at this age Liz was 43 and she wouldn't get to see many young lads, you can imply what you like from that! She was well educated and could easily tell him things to delight his ear. She was VERY affectionate and was in her nature to behave the why the verse suggests; however nothing came of it, because Will just smiled and cracked jokes! He was a bit too young and definitely got the wrong idea when she fell on her back, exhausted by the heat and don't forget all those clothes would not have helped. So once again he ran off! Perhaps he was not too young to understand anyway? Strangely the verse finishes with the words: "ah! fool too froward". Which one of them wrote that we wonder?
It's worth considering verse 5 as it could be one of the things she delighted his ear with. I mention this only in the context as it speaks of Osier trees, a good link with the other verses. We cannot judge this episode in Shakespeare's life on the morals and laws of modern society, which would put the whole business down to a lusty old woman after a young boy. For the Elizabethan’s marriage was not uncommon at the age of 12 and sex would therefore be permitted. Having said that the lusty writing of them was done by an older William to a woman he loved.

The Royal talent spotter

We do find for the first time some poems in this group of 20 that are not by William or Elizabeth. This is because when William Jaggard printed the Passionate Pilgrim, he got into a lot of trouble from the other poets. Numbers 17 to 20 are not Will’s work or the Queen’s and should not really be included. The other 16 regardless of claims that some are dubious are definitely his work. Indeed there are more references to these events in the plays themselves. Even some of the sonnets might have sprung into being at this very meeting. Remember the note book possibility? If he had it with him, the Queen could have picked up of the ground and read it (perhaps it was in that satchel). Maybe the odd Sonnet was in it, she thought they were good and wrote even altered some! If so William has a new and highly educated teacher, plus the best connection he needs. The Queen loved poetry, as you can be certain it would remind her of what Anne Bolyn clearly loved, for she would have seen the poetry that Thomas Wyatt had sent to her mother. Elizabeth translated books even rare ones, that puzzled academics have wondered how Shakespeare even got hold of! She was so good at the classical education she had received that the top tutors of the land thought she was better than them at it.
Let’s just reflect on what might have been the topic of conversation after she saw poems in the lad’s bag. One of the things that many historians believe is that Shakespeare was a big fan of Ovid. Yet Protestants see this as being a sort of Catholic book. If academics can see Ovid in his works how then does it get away with it? The answer is simple enough, he wasn’t the one who was nuts about Ovid, but Elizabeth was! They quote a line from Titus Andronicus believing it was Mary Shakespeare who gave William the Ovid book. Not so, for the line was spoken by the Queen and Catherine Parr was the mother who gave it her. That’s why the correct translation is given in one of the plays, because Elizabeth was much better than Arthur Golding at translation. Thus was one of the topics the merits of Ovid, which William might have just as easily said he was crap!
There is one last piece of evidence that we know happened for certain. The Queen did visit Kenilworth castle in the summer of 1575. So he had a very strong association with the right person, as they say. The next piece of information shows how wrong you can go. The historian Nicholas Rowe tried to piece William's early life together from various sources, yet Rowe's occupation with Shakespeare centres on whether he was by 18th Century standards a gentleman. He however picked up a tale that Shakespeare stole deer from Thomas Lucy’s park at Charlcote. The story was untrue in two respects, first is that the park seems to have been made in 1618. Moreover the family might well have been on friendly terms with William, as they where with Ben Jonson and players. Justice Shallow (from the plays) and the rest were his merry jests at friends. Even so there might have been some truth in the tale. He may have been out walking through the grounds of Charlcote, doing what the young William like to do. Then a new grounds man arrested William for poaching, taking Will to see Thomas Lucy. Of course Thomas would have herd tales of how young William travelled around the Warwickshire countryside and they would have had a good laugh about the episode! Yet there is a much stronger connection. Lucy was a sidekick of Robert Dudley and as the Queen was visiting Robert’s home in 1575, there’s another man who was out with the Queen the day she bumped into the young Bard. Robert thus knew William well.
And for those who do like cipher coded stuff, this connection quickly brought William to court and gossiping members soon thought that the young William wasn’t a country lad at all.

Bacon and Dodds

The cipher story starts with somebody who thinks that Shakespeare is a nobody. Yes it’s one of our friends from “I know who wrote...” This time it’s a Baconite! Alfred Dodd is obviously a complete twit at times. But at least he does question the Shakespeare lobby who do not look for anything that doesn’t fit in with their explanation of how the Bard did things. Dodd’s not much better, for he just accepts the Shakespeare lobby point of view as well. There rule that William doesn’t turn up in London and the court before 1587 gives the Bacon and Marlowe and Oxford camps scope. But this rule is simply because they can’t find him anyway! And in all Shakespeare biographies the time becomes known as the ‘LOST YEARS’. Dodd did, well at least he knows someone...A YOUTH... is in the court earlier than that date. It came to pass in Francis Bacon’s Personal Life-Story. Alfred Dodd in that book thinks its Bacon. It’s not! Anyway back to the cipher. Dodd reports that a woman called Mrs Gallup was made a laughing stock in the Times and the academic world, when she decoded a silly story about Elizabeth having a son. Dodd firmly believed that this story was true and of course the son was Francis Bacon. Dodd and the rest of the establishment at that time were brought up on good manners and Victorian ways. You know absolutely no sense of humour. This they applied to the past as well. Cipher codes as Dodd points out where part of the secret service world and used in wars. They can also be used to play tricks and jokes on people. This never occurs to Dodd, although he points out that Bacon tells jokes. So here’s the real joke...
The young William Shakespeare is at the court and Queen Elizabeth is making a lot of fuss about him. People in the court start commenting on his resemblance to both the Queen (his lips) and Robert Dudley. Rumours spread that William is there son and the joke is born when Elizabeth catches Lady-in-waiting Lady Scales laughing about it. Confronted she tells the Queen and probably remarks on the Queen’s inability to produce a child. This the Queen never takes well, even though she always says she wants to be a virgin and as a result slaps the woman. Shakespeare enters at this point and stops her. Elizabeth then throws in the catchphrase. “You are my own born son, but because you have taken sides against your mother to champion a graceless wench, I bar you from the Succession.”
300 years to decode a silly joke and nobody understood it or knew it was only a joke, when they did! Poor Dodd, he worked out correctly that Francis Bacon wasn’t Nicholas Bacon’s son, yet believed that he was Dudley’s and the Queen. This to him was proof of the connection and proof that Bacon knew the Queen was his mum! Unfortunately for Dodd, Bacon later presses his suit to Queen Elizabeth. Dodd couldn’t find out what this “suit” was about. Yes we all do! Sir Francis Bacon wanted to marry Elizabeth. Dodd states categorically that young men chasing after or being in love with older women is disgusting or words to that affect. So I don’t think he would have been pleased about incest. The Bard was never going to be considered for the throne and nobody else (who had a claim) was taken seriously by the Queen if she did say it. Bacon knew Shakespeare well as Dodd well help us prove later. Bacon himself was of course the son of Anne Bacon (nee Cooke), who his real father was, is therefore not known. It’s not Nicholas Bacon, Dodd’s right about that as he left Francis nothing in his will. The Queen also made a joke about Nicholas which Dodd did get... “his soul is well lodged.... in fat!”

King Arthur the fool

Still Elizabeth gets taken to seriously at times. Another heir joke crops up with the incredibly stupid Arthur Dudley. He seems to have fallen for the tale of being the son of Robert Dudley and the Queen. Only he was the son of Robert, just not the Queen. His tale comes about because Robert couldn’t keep his breeches on with the ladies of the court around! He was just too good looking to them. Elizabeth accepts this flaw in him, because he is a man. Going back to the Sonnets and her “all men are bad,” remember. However she loves children and wouldn’t let them be blamed for the sins of their parents. So Arthur is given special treatment, when she finds out, protecting Robert as well. So she loves him okay. In 1587 the young man turns up in Spanish hands and tells this stupid story with facts. Englefield, questioning Arthur, however still doesn’t think it’s true, even though he asks key questions that are correctly answered. He resolves that Arthur is a spy and the story was invented by the Queen herself to squash and divide Catholic support. I think that Arthur was probably really stupid and was played a trick on by his father and the Queen, hearing that he had turned Catholic. Though he was not as stupid as Engelfield! There are a lot of Worcester connections in the tale, including a schoolmaster called Smith, could William be in on it?
Of course there’s something missing from our teenage years of Shakespeare, his first wife. If Shakespeare married Anne Whateley around 1578 he presumably wouldn’t be at school during this period. Will’s relationships with females certainly blossoms, after his nervous episodes with the Queen. We may find that he has more women friends than the Queen would approve of. He needs that more for his career than anything. The final proof of the need for a strong connection with Elizabeth comes from an Act of Parliament of 1572.

A PDF of this chapter will be upload soon.

Real William Shakespeare Chapter 2

Chapter 2

A TALE OF TWO ANNE’S

If you have ever been to Stratford you will know that the house of Shakespeare's wife still exists. What you may not have been told is that this woman, Anne Hathaway, is our other mystery ghost writer in the works and his second wife. Indeed most people and writers believe that he only had one wife and she never helped him at all. Literature big wigs ignore documentation to the contrary, or make this proof, of another wife, fit Anne Hathaway. Not surprising when the evidence itself, of this other wife, is pretty slim and consists of one document with a date that is the date before his marriage to Hathaway. This previous wife was also called Anne.

This confusion comes from the state of historical records of births, marriages and deaths. However this shouldn’t be an excuse to let the literature people off. I don’t intend to either. For the rest of us, I’ll set about explaining what they hide or fail to mention. Like the system that was used in William's time, hadn't been working long, plus the charges of the system and operator failure. The result! The vast majority of these records are a nightmare. They all resulted in the Bard’s case in a ghastly mess! Point One. Nobody can tell you that for certain he was born on Saint George’s day. Those that celebrate his birthday on that day are perpetuating a myth! Or a dam good guess!!

The person who wrote the christening in the Stratford register, Richard Bifield, the minister, added no baptisms in March, despite that in most months there were at least four! He thought that the year started between February 28 and April 3.Which it did! He was on the old system of dating, very similar to the year system that Mr Taxman uses in England, which incidentally, Mr Taxman won’t give up, because of the loss of revenue that would happen. Our 16th Century vicar might have put April instead of March! So he was either baptised on 26 April 1564 or the 26 of March! Err no! Maybe!! I can tell you that Bifield was the one who put the entry in, because his and other church officials placed their names on the bottom of this page. One major problem now occurs here! For this vicar did not take up his post till 1597. Nor did he baptise the infant Shakespeare. Who did, plus why didn’t that vicar put the text in the book? Well John Bretchgirdle was the vicar in 1564, plus the year/month before and he did write it in the parish register. Just not the one you see today. Basically the Archbishop of Canterbury is responsible for all this confusion, accepting the year. We will also see that this same man, when he was a humble bishop, has foxed university people for ages. Somebody had been messing around with the pages of the later register anyway, for three letters ‘x’ have been added to the end of the Shakespeare’s entry. These may have been added at a much later date, as the ink is thick and heavy, compared to all the entries, who are clearly in the same hand as Richard’s signing his name and position. This chaos is during the bard’s life! So to expect anyone to trace people hundreds of years later is quite an achievement. Yet historians found William Shakespeare, in record books belonging to Worcester. Point Two. They appear to show that maybe at Stratford, he married Anne Hathaway and at Worcester, Ann Whateley perhaps both at Worcester, to some historians, who haven’t ruled out Shakespeare having two wives.

The dates of these two events have linked the two Anne's together to most experts, because one is the 27 November 1582 (Whateley) and the other 28 November 1582 (Hathaway). It would be easy to see that these entries are the same woman, if it wasn’t for a different surname and that is the crux of the matter. In addition the two names of Shakespeare are also spelt varyingly; leading people to think these are not the same man. Other professional historians, who thought it was the same man, know that clerks who made these entries out, made mistakes and spelled the same person’s name differently. This explains why there are so many different spellings of the name Smith. Indeed historians have also found 57 different spellings of Shakespeare. Okay, but in this case the clerk did not! Before I make clear why I know that is the case and is the same man, it is necessary to look at how church records began. These came in very simply enough at the start, however got more complicated as changes were made to them for various reasons. We kick off with Elizabeth's father Henry VIII and his marriage to her mother Anne Bolyn. As well known, Henry broke away from the Roman Church and Pope, by marrying her. This left him in charge of the church. Now whether he wanted to do this or not, does not concern us, but needless to say he passed authority to another person, one Thomas Cromwell. In the year of 1538, he issued the following instruction to the church. Namely that each one had to keep a Book or Register and record each wedding, christening and burial and include where all the names of those who undertook each ceremony. So this was quite a simple thing to do and would give a permanent record for future generations, this was the intention, for a chest with two locks was to be provided for the book.

Some parishes were using books already to do this; thus Cromwell picked up on this practice and made it law. This strange system even happens today in the political world! This would have furnished a rich wealth of family history (it does to some extent) where it not for human beings. The first mistake was by Cromwell himself, for the instructions stated that these entries had to be written down each Sunday! Great, the clergy had to remember all what they had done all week, on the busiest day of the week for them! Cromwell knew this might be an excuse and fined them 3 shillings and 4 pence for each missed entry. Though he avoided the problem of collecting them money himself, by saying it could go to the repair of the church. How it was to be checked was left to the Bishops and how they knew of a few entries missing is anyone's guess! They did check though and if some church records are anything to go by, the Parish would soon have been able to build a new church! Today however you'll find that most church registers did not start till Elizabeth was on the throne in 1558. Nevertheless the instructions had changed only, since 1538, in the form of the fine going to the Poor Box as well as church repairs. Now most people have assumed that putting entries in a register is quite a simple thing to do. This belief is arrived at from a decent education for everybody. The trouble is that there was far from a decent education system in Shakespeare' day that would have provided this simple task. Of course this was never going to be an easy task in some parishes anyway, with the religious problems, still it wasn’t merely that. All denominations had trouble and did not make out the registers properly. Undeniably it shows! They even knew it!! For in 1562 even the House of Commons said that a great deal of abuse and neglect in the system could be found. Naturally they decided to fix the problems, which of course made it even worse! As most politicians now, seem to think that introducing payments solves problems, their Elizabethan counterparts behaved no different and of course these were based on the ability to pay. So a penny was charged, with the curious charge of two pennies for a man burying his wife! Not only that you were charged for looking through the books and another charge if you wanted a copy. Sometime during Shakespeare’s life the Archbishop of Canterbury also told the clergy to transfer the entries to parchment books, for those who had been using paper registry books.
The Stratford baptism register was paper; this meant that it had to be copied to parchment, in line with the instruction, from church head office. The vicar did this around 1600, simply because that date is on its front cover. Faults occurred, despite the churchwardens, who were supposed to check the vicar’s script. Few however would have told the minister he had made a mistake, most would have said let’s get on with it and signed each page, as instructed by the Archbishop. Needless to say this haphazard way of doing things applied to the Stratford book, as well as elsewhere, also the abuse continued. More natural problems with fire or plague and later the Civil Wars put an end to many registers. For after all, we are not just talking about something that was written 10 years ago, we are talking 300 years plus of abuse to some books! The Acts say the register should have all 3 types of ceremony in them. In practice, these tended to start at different times, baptisms being more recorded and burials the least. So working out the population and so on, is a major problem. Recent evidence also suggest that some people then, saw these registers as the removal of civil liberties, and would not co-operate with them, especially those still under Catholic ways of thinking. These are typical events to registers and there contents: Common names of the Parish omitted, boys names for girls and vice verse, bills and other writing entered, registers sold, cut up for other uses. Let's not forget the church mouse, rats, and leaky roofs or flooding from the Avon in Stratford’s case. Generally the clergy's attitude to the registering process left a lot to be desired. The clerks regarded them solely for the money they got for extracts; sometimes they'd rip out the entry! Often they would do them when they had the time or not at all, with gaps of up to 80 years! Long gaps (such as the previous) were explained by the vicar being old, or in one ‘A long vacation’. Even when entered the entries where sometimes useless to anyone, apart from telling that one of the three events had taken place. Baptisms for example would only say “A boy / girl" burials "a man / woman” and even marriages had no names at times, just a date!
At the other end of the scale the vicar (if you are lucky doing family research) would sometimes enter loads of other information, such as astrological data, the weather, and pass social comments, even quite rude remarks. If you don't believe me here is a real entry of marriage from a register: “John Housden widower, a gape-mouthed lazy fellow and Hannah Matthews, hot-opon't old toothless wriggling hag.”
Of course you can now see that to take any entry at face value in a parish register is asking for trouble. Yet with the registers which contain Shakespeare's two wives, historians have leapt in at the deep end getting them into even deeper trouble. This time the reason is that the two entries are different, and quite simply this was often overlooked when comparing them.

To be or not to be my first wife

Our ancestors knew future generations would read the registers and wanted names recorded for prosperity. This being a reason (of many) that they were introduced. They also knew that one book could be destroyed, lost, or stolen. So they authorised copies to be made, which became known as Bishops Transcripts. There was no copying technology then, apart from a person with a pen. Once again the flaws of this system don't need to be restated. However these transcripts are far from complete in Worcester, with just over half the total parishes returning them. To make matters worse for the Shakespearian historians the transcripts needed only to be sent once a year to the Diocese in Worcester and that’s after they were officially introduced. It looks to me that it is a transcript that historians have got their hands on and assumed that it is a Stratford or Worcester true register, or even one in a proper register.

Anne Hathaway's marriage to William could be an actual entry done at, or around the 28th of November depending when the entry was placed in the book.... Well sort of! More on this later, however the entry on the 27th is not and is a record of a marriage licence already being issued. We can say for certain that this licence was not issued on the 27th. Some writers believe that William was married at Worcester on one of these dates. They once again have not read the Latin text of the 27th day entry. It's quite clear you need the previous entries in the book before this begins to sort out where William married Anne Whateley, after reading the Latin text.
This is what I think it says translated (properly) into English: "Likewise / Also to the same place (and) day, similar (it) became known (a) license between William Shakespeare and Anna Whateley of Temple Grafton".


Thought to be a portrait of Anna Whateley

What this shows is the clerk at Worcester copying into the register records passed to him, collected from other parishes and the 27th day may have been when he wrote the entries down. Clearly this is a Transcript and these records, including Wills' marriage to Whateley, could have been originally recorded long before the date we see today. The key words are, I think, ‘became known’ (emanavit). These certainly point to the fact the license had been issued. It would appear that Transcripts had not yet started in this part of England at this time, if you follow official sources. So this may have been good practice at that time. There’s nothing to stop this licence being a couple of years old when it went into the book. The place where it was issued would be in the previous entries if these exist, however other historians where not interested in them and they need checking to find the exact place.  (See new note at the end). It's not terribly important to confirming that Will did marry Whateley, though they probably married at Temple Grafton, because the Vicar John Frith could be fooled into the marriage. The reason for this is that Will was only 18 in 1582 and 17 (if the marriage was the year before). Pretty young, but he could have been 14! Young marriages were not illegal. Frith had a number of complaints from the church hierarchy about him and if they knew that, then the locals would have cottoned to his ways. The boss of Frith was the Bishop of Worcester, John Whitgift (whose records contain Will's marriages) and who historian Nicholas Fogg says 'had a strict ecclesiastical regime'.

This would of course explain the good practice of keeping Transcripts, before legally needing to do so. You can add to this, with the benefit of hindsight, the knowledge that Whitgift became the Archbishop of Canterbury; this promotion comes the following year! The same man who gives prayers to the dying Queen. I’m sure you don’t get to be Archbishop keeping lousy records or turning a blind eye to bad vicars. The Queen also later considered his judgement more important the William Cecil’s. More to the point we know later on he hates Catholics and you can bet he didn’t like them as a bishop. Apparently even as a student he considered that the pope was the Antichrist, so he sent his officers to see Frith in 1580, for precisely these reasons. In that Frith (described as old and unsound in religion) was performing illegal marriages. Frith gave his bond, but he didn't keep it if he performed Will's marriage later, but Frith was also a Catholic, which fits in with William's father religion and why the bishop is getting his records. Our future Canterbury man seems to have his hands full with many of the Warwickshire clergy. Rooting out the old religion might have caused him to chase these clergy, trying to get hold of records. Temple Grafton by the way is about 4 miles from Stratford and has (needless to say) not one Whateley recorded. Yet we do not need to look far for the name, because in the Street where Shakespeare was born, was George Whateley a native of Henley in Arden, and bailiff when he was born. He too was Catholic, keeping a woollen-draper's shop not far from the birthplace of Will and John Shakespeare also dealt in wool. There is no proof that George had a daughter named Anne and not a soul has found any connection between Anne and George. This does not mean that she wasn't related to George, if she was however, it would fit with a theory of a slightly dubious wedding between the two of them. Several writers have commented on the use by William in his plays of arranged marriages. Speculating that his marriage to Anne Hathaway was one of these ‘arranged’ by Will’s father (John) and Richard Hathaway, the historians made an error, forgetting the circumstances of that wedding. It would fit better with Anne Whateley though. Because if she was a relation to George, the consent factor doesn't apply and their were strong links, in that the family’s were Catholic and connected with wool, plus a possible link with the place Arden, Shakespeare’ mothers’ maiden name. This also means that the spellings in the records could be ignored. But why did Shakespeare marry this woman and go along with the Catholic marriage when he was more inclined to the opposite faith? There’s only one explanation - he loved her!

Anne Hathaway would have known both Will and George, if not Anne Whateley as well, although she lived just outside Stratford at Shottery, her father was a prominent man of the town as was Will’s. Incidentally, Temple Grafton is only 2 or 3 miles further down the road from Shottery and William or Anne could easily pass the Hathaway’s house on the way to and from Stratford. This means that William defiantly did not marry two women at the same time. This leads us on to what happened to Anne Whateley after the marriage to William. The only thing we can safely assume is she died before the 28th November 1582. We can completely rule out divorce as there would have been a lot of documents in that and there is nothing about her. We may have a different burial entry. Yet no one can tell if it is just entered as ‘wife’ or ‘a woman’. Although the possibility is strong that no records of burial were kept, there might not have been a body to bury. Fires were very common then and drowning can’t be rule out with the Avon chief candidate. She could have been murdered, with the body never found and no clues to what happened! Other causes of death, more common then, were disease - the dreaded plague - were bodies just went in the ground with no records of whom died, or childbirth. It may well be referred to however in a Shakespeare play, as a tragic death would be good source material for any writer looking for ideas, as you will see in later chapters. Yet it must have been a great shock for the man, maybe he clamed up tight about it. The only Anne Shakespeare we know was buried at around 1582 is one of his sisters, yet she is dated to April 1579. Which makes it that William was married at 15, if by some chance she is listed as just Anne Shakespeare and not as the daughter of John? This would mean historians are wrong again about his sister dying at eight years of age. Mind you they were not looking for Anne Shakespeare dying in 1579, when they believed he married her in 1582. At the time of writing this, I did check to see if she is listed as the daughter of John. So far I have found that the bells were paid to be rung for her. This was considered special or a status symbol. The tragic death of a young wife would be special of course, but so would the young daughter of the former mayor. The records do indeed suggest that she was his daughter. In spite of everything that’s written, that still doesn’t mean that she is the young child. All we have is the register entry; we don’t know what happened in the church that day. Technically speaking when Ann Whateley did marry John’s son, she would have become his daughter anyway. As I believe this marriage was supported by the Shakespeare family, John would have had no problems calling her his daughter. Nevertheless the vicar of Stratford might well have had a problem with Ann being William’s wife. After all he didn’t perform the wedding, in his opinion, who was to say they were married in the first place? The other thing that could suggest the vicars’ reluctance to burry her as William’s wife was the absence of the husband. A very quick death after the marriage would almost certainly see William in a deep shock. Unable to attend her funeral, meanwhile at that the vicar starts saying he can’t burry her. In these circumstances John had little option but to agree to say she could be buried as ‘his’ daughter.
This might be stretching the truth for some historians, but who’s to say the historical records might mean exactly this scenario? Of course there is still the problem of what therefore happened to his sister Anne, yet historians were not looking for a sister called Anne marrying later. So she might well have done, for all we know. So you can see there could well have been a wife for William Shakespeare called Anne Whateley before Anne Hathaway!
Ironically the man that is responsible for keeping these records and confusing future historians hardly gets a mention in most biographies of Shakespeare. John Whitgift later as Archbishop was probably responsible for the order to send transcripts to Bishops, something he developed while as bishop. Then, as I have said before, Academics can be confused by their own members and top ones too. For Whitgift was Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge! Worse still Shakespeare and Whitgift would have disliked one-another. Whitgift, had burnt many plays as Archbishop and hated the theatre. He would have not liked the idea that he would play a part in keeping the records of the bard alive for future generations.

Not so sweet Ophelia

There happens to be another woman who Shakespeare took an interest in, maybe sufficient enough to incorporate her in one of his plays. I mentioned drowning in the Avon, a short while ago, as it turns out a female did drown there in 1580. It’s not his wife as the girl who drowns is called Katherine. Her family seem to have gone to great lengths to make sure she is given a Christian burial, in the churchyard, which they are granted. The play that our drowning victim appears in is Hamlet. But if William is right then she would not have got the service she got. Most historians have seen the connection with Katherine’s death and the play, but nobody has grasped the reality of the story. Hamlet of course spurned Ophelia in the play, who then commits suicide by drowning herself. The parallel with Katherine is clear, however not William spurning her, probably because nobody sees that like Hamlet, Shakespeare himself is grief stricken. Certainly if Ann died in 1579, William would reject this girl’s advances to him, on the grounds of being in mourning. Again is this taking the play to literally? I don’t think so, because Shakespeare clearly believed that Katherine drowned herself after he rejected her. There’s no-doubt in my mind that he thought that, for why would he name the play after her? For Katherine is Katherine Hamlet!
Guilt was therefore his motive to write about her, as well as a big ego! No-wonder he is interested in tragedy; it surrounds him from an early age, with that being so, perhaps it was clouding his judgement on the real cause of Katherine’s suicide?
I think we can draw a conclusion about the young William here, one that would come as quite a shock even to Shakespeare. That being that the females where he lived considered him to be really ‘HOT’! He must have had the sex appeal of pop stars and actors. Well he did become an actor! Yet at this stage in his life he wasn’t popular enough to attract that kind of female attention. He seems to have had sex appeal anyway. Was it attracting rivalry among the local women? This can lead to them doing terrible things. We’re back to guilt again, this time Katherine’s. What if she and Shakespeare’s first wife had words together? Strong heated words that nobody else, not even William, knew about? Katherine may have been resentful of Ann marrying him, extremely jealous, maybe Will dumped Katherine for Ann! Emotions like these, can lead to violent actions. So did Katherine Hamlet murder Ann Shakespeare? If she did, it brought her no closer to the man she loved. Less than a year later, the guilt and failure of her actions, presumably hints at why she ends up floating (like Ophelia) in the Avon.

The Gunshot Wedding or Anne 2?

Another woman with an eye on William thus gets her chance later on. Her we find in the other document, showing Will's second wife. As the baptism register at Stratford shows that Anne Shakespeare gave birth to a child less than nine months after than this document's date, it’s quite easy to see that a pressing reason for William and Anne to get married had occurred. The formalities of asking the banns three times had to be dropped to once and other assurances had to be given. Also the banns could not be asked after the 2nd of December and if the marriage were not solemnised, William would get into a load of trouble! However I do not think that the reason for these conditions was that Anne was with child already. I think it was to do with Will’s age and the Bishop of Worcester strict regime. Undoubtedly this document is the result of the Bishop being told by a credible member of the clergy of the intention of Will and Anne to marry, or requesting William to get a licence first. It’s plausible in Stratford the Vicar was concerned at solemnising a marriage of an under aged person, whereas the Vicar of Temple Grafton was not. Indeed this marriage if it did take place at Stratford was done in the Protestant way for this vicar was very much of that faith. This document does make it clear that the Bishop of Worcester was not going to be responsible, if someone found out that the marriage was illegal through some just cause or impediment. Hardly surprising for a Bishop with a mind to the future, as already stated William was to be held answerable in that case, this points to him and his age as being the cause again. There is no evidence to suggest that the marriage took place at Stratford and is not in its register. Stratford’s Register does contain some silly entries with men getting married to each other. The Will is gay lobby would have had a field day, if Will and been written into the register like that!
So with his first wife Anne Whateley dead, William began an affair or continued one, with Anne Hathaway the consequence of which lead to her becoming pregnant. On the other hand Anne could have consoled the young heartbroken Will, being close to him for sometime and without doubt in love. This ended as previously. Many writers don't think that William got on well with his wife; this appears to be based on the will of Shakespeare. This says that William leaves only his “second best bed” to his wife. Yet when compared with other wills as F.G. Emmison did, we find that this was a common term not referring to quality often, but age. He even found entries referring to "worst bed," commentating on what the William writers would have made of that! Having said that, things between a couple will and do change over the years.
Other writers/professionals have assumed that when William went to London, his wife stayed at home in Stratford. Yet we have no evidence of this. True there are children, but once William had found decent accommodation for them, what was stopping her going to that property. They didn't have any property in Stratford, although there are lots of relations there.
When you think about it, the likely outcome of Anne turning up in London unannounced, perhaps because he had not kept to his word to Anne on finding a place for them all, is a strong probability. She may have even heard that he did have a place for them to all stay and had not bothered to tell her. If Anne did just turn up, it would have put an end to his meetings with the Queen and maybe how Elizabeth found out!
As William and Nicholas Hilliard the painter HAD met one other, as Nicholas paints William numerous times, and as Nicholas knew of his association with the Queen, he must by definition have been a friend to Will. When his wife appears on the scene also, he must have kept his mouth shut, for both the Queen's sake and his friend’s sake. Even if Nicholas didn't like the Queen and the evidence is the reverse, I must say, then he would not liked to have lost her patronage of his art. So I think he met Anne and at some point painted her. Now the problem is he often does not put the name on his miniatures. So there is no picture with Anne Shakespeare on it. The only way we can tell who Anne might be is by general observations of married couples in general. Now this is not a scientific method and may be less than 50% accurate, but as there are no other options available to us! It's worth giving it a go. All right, the first most obvious facts on married couples is that they tend to have the same level of attractiveness. In other-words if one is ugly it's not very likely that other will be beautiful. It does happen, and that's why I said this method is far from perfect. Secondly, the partners’ face may have similar features or even look like the other partner. Indeed couples often have and look for familiar things, which helps them bond together.
Withal this information, I tried to track down her comparing the William - Man clasping hand - picture with any undated miniatures of unknown women. Only one matched, with any degree of certainty and yet as she was older by eight years, this one does not really look like she is in her thirties and the dress is quite elaborate. However looking rich was what it was about then, not how much money you had. Not paying the tailor or dressmaker was in fashion. Her age does bother me though, until I remembered that William was interested in older women who looked younger, as with the Queen. So I began to put two and two together and came up with the conclusion that Anne also looked younger than she really was! So I will stick my neck out again and say that this miniature is Anne Shakespeare!!

Further evidence can be found in the picture (to the left) of Mrs Mary Barker, her face looks like our mystery woman. Mary’s picture is still at her home where she lived in the 19th Century, being a descendent of the Hathaways, her home being the same house as Shakespeare’s wife.

Charlotte’s web of deceit

Yet our tale of two wives doesn’t stop there! For we have to add a third wife!! Worst still he was still married to his second wife!!!
I found this third wife in a book on Shakespeare’s descendants by Charlotte Carmichael Stopes (1841–1929), an extraordinary woman herself, but she did not pick up on the story itself. Charlotte managed to get the kind of education that only males were allowed at that time, achieving first class honours in a wide range of subjects. For some reason she became fascinated with Shakespeare and went to great lengths to prove the Stratford man wrote the plays, even in her first book on him The Bacon/Shakespeare Question, published in 1888. However it is the second book about William, that we find our hero is not such a hero as many think. For in Shakespeare’s Family published in 1901, Charlotte tracked down many records relating to all the Shakespeare’s in England. Her preface thanks the many vicars for her being allowed to see the registers. So it’s very clear she did a good job of tracking down the family. Now we know there were some other William Shakespeare's around at that time, so Charlotte assumes this one to be another William and not the writer of the plays. So on page 122 she just writes the entry she found in the parish register of Hatton in Warwickshire, with no reference to it being the playwright. However there’s a strong possibility that it was! Before we explore this, let’s see what she put in her book: “A William Shakespeare, of Hatton, married Barbara Stiffe in 1589”. So that’s just seven years after his second wife’s marriage. Several factors pinpoint to the Hatton man being the same, the first is the location of Hatton to Stratford. In fact they are just 8 miles apart! Also Hatton is very close to the Earl of Leicester home Kenilworth, which will in a later chapter play a part in the Shakespeare story. So what are the chances of two William Shakespeare's living 8 miles apart? However Charlotte adds more information which narrows the field down, in fact way down! She continues with the same sentence as before: “styled “gent.” At baptism of his daughter Susannah, 1596” (her italics on Susannah). Wow! Clues by the score there. First the cheek of naming the daughter after the one he’s got with another wife! And of course “gent”. By 1596 the poet had got his coat of arms, so could call himself “gent”. But not in 1589, so Barbra doesn’t marry William Shakespeare Gent in 1589, just the plain ordinary type! Of course their could be a coat of arms for this other William, but it’s not come out of the woodwork by the researches of the


Hatton Church

Bard. So I doubt there is one, for our Hatton guy. The conclusion thus is that it’s the Bard that married Barbara, for he was the only William Shakespeare allowed to call himself Gent!
Charlotte tracked down the supposedly Hatton man further as his loins bore more fruit! We find that Susannah was born on the 14 March 1596, only to be buried a year later, when she was baptised probably at the same time. Another daughter is registered as being baptised on the 23 July 1598. This time called Katherine, presumably she lived to adulthood. But the story comes to a stop until February 1610 when we learn that Barbra dies and is buried. What of is not known. However Charlotte makes no mention of the registration of Barbra’s husbands death. Which I find very odd indeed, as she has found so many Shakespeare’s. Yet again there wouldn’t be if our Stratford man and Hatton one are the same!

Footnote:
I did send two e-mails, one to Hatton Church and the other to The College of Arms. I asked the church if there was any evidence of the William Shakespeare 'Gent' burial. To the College of Arms I asked if another William Shakespeare was granted a Coat of Arms. Neither replied. If anyone lives near the church, perhaps they could check it out. Let we know if you do.   
New Footnote
Having done a bit more digging around about the Bishop of Worcester Register. It seems that it has not survived. And the entry about Shakespeare's marriage to Anne Whateley was cut out of the original register. The other part of the register is missing. Worcester Archives has the only piece left that of the marriage itself. It's in wooden frame with glass to protect it.  


a-tale-of-two-wives

You can download the above chapter, with references (not featured here) using the above link.


MY NEW VIDEO...
This video has been specially prepared by me to illustrate how Shakespeare managed to write the plays coming from a humble background. It's best to watch it in HD and full screen as you can see the notes better that illustrate the narrated text. Pause it if the notes go by too quick!   



Chapter 1 Real William Shakespeare

Chapter 1

The Sonnets and the Queen

WHEN I HAD COMPLETED my book Elizabeth I and Mary Stuart, (see this blog for the download) I began looking for other references to Queen Elizabeth's beauty. My first port of call, so to speak, was Elizabethan's who wrote. So this naturally led me to start with William Shakespeare. Modern and past writers once again, seemed unable to produce any major links between Liz and Will and this I found odd and disappointing. They did however suggest that Will wrote the Merry Wives of Windsor for her, or at her request. So I scrutinised my copies of the complete works for references to Elizabeth in that play. Using my knowledge gained from the fact-laden books I have read, plus my own endeavours, I found nothing of significance to show there were any obvious comments about Elizabeth in the play at this stage of my investigations. The same was not true for other parts of my Complete Works. I stared in amazement at the first few sonnets! There was Will talking about beauty and urging somebody to marry and have children. It didn’t need a degree to work out who he was referring to - Queen Elizabeth.

Research was needed and sure enough I found that I was not the first to see that the sonnets are about Liz. George Chalmers in 1790 made the connection. Much later in 1956 George Elliot Sweet jumped to an even bigger conclusion that Elizabeth had written the entire lot and plays as well, all from reading the epilogue of the play Henry VIII. (All is True). In spite of that the idea to most writers, historians, seems ludicrous and the subject matter of the poems on further examination doesn’t fit in with them being solely about Elizabeth. We can not be certain they even are about William or wrote by him, say some writers. This is of course complete nonsense. True the sonnets are not completely about the Queen; nevertheless she can not be dismissed at this stage.

This seems to be the excepted story of the 154 sonnets:

1. There are 3 or 4 people involved: a poet, a friend (to the poet), a handsome young man, and the mistress' of the poet (a dark lady).

2. The poet urges the young man to marry and have children.

3. The friend steels the poet's mistress.

Some believe the handsome man and the friend are the same person. Others also think that the friend is a 'rival poet'.

Why this explanation of the sonnets has come about is anyone's guess! Though with the academic lobby it doesn’t surprise me why they can’t get past it. For it does not stand up even though a long list of names, all very plausible, probably why the professors love it, now exists for each of the people. This is why the sonnets baffle us. We are lead to believe the sonnets tell a story or are biographical. Therefore writers have to invent the characters to tell the story or in other words a self fore-filling tale, the literally equivalent of perpetual motion. But do they tell a story? Or tell us of William's life? Or are they just one of statements or a series of statements? Certainly some have themes and yet it is evident to myself that no story is told. If they are about is life, it's more likely his love life. What I have noticed about them is some are negative and some are positive in the way they express what is being said in each. Sometimes the last two lines appear to contradict the other lines of the stanza.

In my view they are statements, but don't take my word for it let's break the stupid story idea by simply reading the end lines of sonnet 42:

"But here's the joy: my friend and I are one.

Sweet flattery! Then she loves but me alone!"

So you can see there is no friend or rival poet, just the poet writer in a curious double play on himself. Similarly the Dark Lady or mistress are also double play allusions and are connected to the negative sonnets I mentioned earlier. It's as so the writer of these sonnets is putting themselves down, as in 130 with the exception of the last two lines and especially the last line which reads:

"As any she belied with false compare."

This line is extraordinary! As it suggest that the verse above was written by a woman and not only that, but by a woman who thinks she is ugly or is putting herself down. This means the sonnets could have been written by a woman! Well not Mary Queen of Scots, when did she ever put herself down or some other woman then? Indeed, yet not all of them, for the sonnets NAME whom the man is.

Sonnet 136 last line: "And then thou lov'st me, for my name is Will."

So we know that William Shakespeare wrote some of the sonnets and the rest of the above sonnet, plus several others furthermore refer to Will, with the original title and volume, being printed with his name on. Pure Shakespeare fans reckon he could have written these feminine verses, yet surely he would have needed a split-personality and would be incredibly vain to write everything? Realistically the vast amount of small detail, which William is unlikely to know, from his background, puts an end to this idea. This is why the believers of other candidates jump on their bandwagon. Paradoxically these small details can help us prove the Shakespeare connection, but not as a sole writer of the sonnets.

The handsome young man or boy, as he is sometimes referred to in the sonnets, you might be asking, who's he? With careful checks of the sonnets I can suggest to you that there are only two people involved, being that we have dismissed two from the story theory, just leaving a woman, and the other William himself. With that the only conclusion to be drawn is that William is the handsome lad, being referred to by the woman. Now that just leaves us to work out who that woman was!

Before we delve further it’s interesting that the Sonnets seem to be Shakespeare’s Holy Grail. In that if you prove they were written by somebody else then the Bard didn’t write them. A clear distinction is made between Sonnets and plays. For example even Stratfordians will allow saying that the Bard can work in collaboration on some plays, but never on Sonnets, it’s that simple. Therefore with this background you can’t have TWO writers on the Sonnets, so what I’m writing hear is heresy.

Onwards we go with the heresy then. Scanning through the poems does not reveal her name. It

might have been in once according to sonnet 81 line 5, though an early sonnet (17) insinuates no one would believe him (William) of her beauty. I know the feeling William! Whoever she was she was very beautiful and the most famous lines Shakespeare wrote follow on in the next stanzas, starting with the words "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"

To go through the list of candidates that university people have come up with for the Dark Lady seems pointless to me, especially when they have created one of the biggest frauds about Shakespeare that anyone can come up with. In their efforts to go along with political correctness, which was clearly based on University ideas in the first place, students came to unfounded conclusions based on the sonnets. Once again I can debunk these ideas.

The Wilde Thing

If you think that only one person (the Bard) wrote all the sonnets things become ludicrous. The sonnets as a whole have suggested that William might be gay to some writers; this is of course the academic world at its most stupid level. Take away the sole writer and they suggest, if the women who wrote sonnet 2 is anything to go by, that William was the 'toy boy' of a much older women - 40 years or so older to be precise. The Will is gay lobby get very mixed up with their arguments, though if a man reads all the sonnets out loud, in particular the ‘boy’ verses you could convince anyone. So far I have not been able to track down the person or persons who suggest that William is gay to the rest of the world, though clearly it’s not a recent argument. Oscar Wilde tried to use them in his defence in court. Courts of the past don’t tend to get things

right in modern eyes, though the dismissal of this evidence turned out to be correct, by accident then judgement! Sonnets are the only thing to ‘suggest’ gayness in Shakespeare. However the sonnets can suggest other conditions or states of mind.

For instance the ‘old’ verses for me give the game away! Because 130 alludes to a woman, this also means she is old, as William certainly was not! The other thing is that this woman was not married and believed that William was also not married. We know that William was married to Anne Hathaway (which rules out her as the woman of the sonnets, plus she was not that old) and so was deceiving this woman and his wife, assuming that they were written after 1582. This adds up to some pretty convincing evidence the sonnets had to be vague about who is involved and why. There is also an indication in number 36 to show that honour is important and other lines in this stanza have a bearing on this, more on this later. Back to Oscar for a tick, he should have realised that what Shakespeare had produced was a private script, which somebody printed anyway. Yet then he had his own agenda, as those presumably gay, academics do when they still see them as gay writings.

With the gay Shakespeare put in the bin of absurdity, we can continue to search for the woman of the Sonnets. They do give us loads of clues to this female’s identity. It would be needless to say all of them when one is sufficient. Have you ever wondered why the sonnets are full of illusions and direct references to roses? As in line 3 No.95 "Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name!" Yes 'budding name'. Well there you go! Enter Elizabeth Tudor, The Tudor Rose, to quote Will, “A rose by any other name.”

Now the older woman, when William was 18 the Queen was nearly 50, so that ties in. He married Anne at 18 as well, this would be quite an achievement if he was seeing the Queen also, but we can not go much pass that date because of the 'youth' and 'boy' in the poems. Actually we can, in view of the Elizabethan's used the term youth right into a person’s twenties. In 1590 for example Liz was 57 and to her a 26 year old man may have been just a boy. Alternatively it might have been her affectionate way. Many of her letters have the word love sprinkled through out them, even very important ones. Of course you may now be saying that she would have known about Will being married. However Robert Dudley kept his marriage to a lady in waiting secret from her, although she did find out eventually. William's marriage was no big secret and he might have augured that if nobody asked about it he wasn't going to say. Anne was back at Stratford, Will in London could do as he liked and nobody was going to tell anyone in Stratford of his doings, because transport was poor. I dare say gossip never reached Stratford, in deed they don't seemed to have known much about William's fame in Stratford, till after his death. There’s no reason to assume too that they were all written at the same time, even year. The adultery angle doesn’t come in if some where written before, say 1580 or earlier.

A Strong Blond

This leaves the beautiful woman. In Elizabeth I and Mary Stuart, I argued that Queen Elizabeth was a beautiful blond. During her early reign she never reportedly had any accurate paintings painted, or any that I could confirm as being spot on, however when she was in her fifties the artist Nicholas Hilliard returned from France. Lots of small miniatures were produced of her. The academic writer Roy Strong has shown these to be part of a cult. Saying her features had been ‘Transformed into the face of a 16 year old girl.’

You won’t be surprised to hear that I totally disagree with this conclusion. It’s clearly based on a belief, which can not be supported by evidence. She looks nothing like a 16-year-old. My belief is that Hilliard produced the nearest thing we have to a photo of her. Unlike Strong, I can sight this as picture as evidence. You can see wrinkles and evidence of aging. I am not arguing that Liz has the body of a 16 year old, yet what I will say is that it is possibly for a woman to look 30 years younger say than she is. There are many women alive now that look much younger and if they do young men will consequentially chase after them. This could be certainly true of Elizabeth and is nothing to do with flattery or power. Young men or old were not rewarded for just being at court. Indeed you had to do something brave or a real achievement to get an honour from the Queen. Statistically only 878 people were knighted in her entire reign. Everyone in the court would have known that by her middle age and anyone trying to gain anything through flattery would soon loose a lot. Our Queen Elizabeth gives out more honours and nobody flatters her!

The cult idea does not stand up either under investigation. Indeed a beautiful woman would likely keep her good looks through her life. Not always yet why disbelieve people from that time? It is true that they used allegory and yet to see it in everything and link unconnected items together is perhaps taking things too far. As Roy says there is a basis of truth in many poems, paintings of the Queen. Might not this truth be that at sixty plus Elizabeth was still beautiful?

To establish if she was indeed extremely attractive, in the 1590's, for the sonnets that could have been written at later dates, we need independent witnesses. These by definition must not be English, poets or painters, as these could link us back to the cult idea and prove it true. There are such persons whose comments on the Queen were recorded. The first, Monsieur de Maisse, who saw her in 1597, is too neutral as it can be read by us to mean one of two things.

These are his words...

“When anyone speaks of her beauty she says that she never was beautiful, although she had that reputation thirty years ago. Nevertheless, she speaks of her beauty as often as she can.”

This does make her appear vain somewhat, Yet again that is what expert lobby have jumped to. I can however look at this simple statement two ways. Like the ‘Strong’s’ of this world or alternatively that the man is perplexed by her denials, when he can clearly see she is attractive. However he does not say she is admirable and if she did use the word ‘reputation’ she must have a distorted view on beauty. Why? Because it is very difficult to be regarded as beautiful, you either are or are not. People decide if you are, with the exception if they have not seen the person. Therefore someone can then have a reputation of being beautiful under those circumstances, which in Elizabeth’s case doesn’t apply.

I believe that if Elizabeth were shown to be attractive at her age many modern historians would be seen as ageist! Another term invented by them. So that's what I will now do, with the help of the second independent witness.

Paul Hentzner was a German traveller and saw the Queen in 1598. She was going to the chapel, at Greenwich, one Sunday morning. Despite being in a procession, Paul could see quite clearly, enough for him to see her eyes in his complete description of her.

Unfortunately he wrote in Latin, so the document needs translating. Latin is taught very little today. I need a Latin to English Dictionary to be able to read it. A lot of the academics should use one too. Instead they relied on a translation printed in 1757 written by Richard Bentley which was edited into a book by Horace Walpole. Sadly, I, for the various reasons given in my previous book, have not been able to see either the original document or this translation. Roy Strong used the translated version in one of his books. In a book by Mary Edmond, she put some of the Latin words and the translated versions in side by side. I decide to check them. Mary by the way accepted the translated words as gospel, like Roy seems to have done. Some of the words checked out, using my Dictionary, like: labiis compressis - lips narrow, the way she spoke: blanda & humanissima - pleasant & very gracious. Others were totally wrong: fulvum - red (hair), face candida - fair.

In my book 'fulvum' for the colour of her hair translates as yellow or gold or sandy and definitely not red! In Latin the word for Red hair is rufus!

The next word confirms that she was a breath-taking attractive woman at the age of 65. ‘Candida’ does not translate as fair, but white and beautiful. I believe it has also become a female name with the same meaning. Fans of seventies pop, will recall the group ‘Dawn’ had a hit with a song called that. Hentzner also states she is very majestic and one word which should not need translation - magnifica.

He does show signs of her age, but the overall impression is one of a very beautiful woman and stately Queen. He also has no axe to grind and therefore convinces me. If there are some that are still not convinced an Envoy of the Duke of Wurttemberg, in 1592, said she could compete with a maiden of 16 in grace and beauty! These three statements attack the cult idea, as it depends on the basis that Elizabeth was not attractive in her later years. No games were played, so if men go around professing love for her than, more often than not they do.

The Queen of the Greeks

With the cult gone, I believe this opens up the floodgates to all the other Elizabethan writers and painters, who saw the Queen as beautiful. Edmund Spenser dedicated his book the Faerie Queen to her and helps create the ‘Gloriana’ image of Liz. Now we know why. To them she was a sort of goddess, like the classical ones such as: Diana, Helen, Venus and countless other Greek and Roman Gods, together with their properties: ageless, immensely powerful, beautiful and un-spoilt by men (a virgin). Elizabeth was, after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, supported by the one true God, in their eyes. She would become known to the world as ‘Good Queen Bess.’ Children even sing her praises today. Many people rose to greatness during her reign. Great houses were built and wealth was created. Thomas Dekker sums it all up: “Brought up a nation that was almost begotten and born under her.” In what has become known as her ‘Golden Speech.’ She addressed her people as loving subjects and said “you will never have a more loving prince.” It looks like (if we are honest with ourselves) she was right even up to the present day. Historians of our times only see the problems of her latter years. Well even I know she wasn’t a god! Back then if you didn’t have a problem with her, then she wasn’t far off being one. Little wonder that William Shakespeare was very much in love with her. In the sonnets he begs us to compare her with a summer's day, which he then criticises for not being as good as Liz. Yet in number 18, the same one, his own confidence declares that while anyone is alive she can live in his lines. Liz read this and followed it with the next sonnet (19) copying what Will thought about his words. The 'long-lived phoenix' she refers to is of course herself, telling time to 'burn' it. This is a classic Elizabeth, where she puts herself down in the verse, widely seen throughout the sonnets. The last line of the same stanza, starting with the words 'My love,' poses an awkward question? Was Elizabeth really in love with William Shakespeare? The problem is that she is so affectionate that she uses the word love too much. The sonnets also solve the problem for in number 21 she spells out the kind of love she means. It starts negative and critical of Will's sonnet 18. I suppose we should accept this from her by now. William didn't and added the last two lines, sort of dismissive if you read it alone and not linked to the above stanza. Yet she changes the style of the verse with the words 'true in love'. Again in 22 she starts and he finishes the last two lines. Now we learn they have swapped hearts, a sure sign of love. We become also involved in the intimate details of the two lovers. Which being love and lovers often makes no sense! Who says love should? To continue, apparently his heart in her is now dead! Her heart in Will is alive and he isn't going to give it back to her. Why is his heart dead? We could guess all right lets! He is upset over her criticism of verse 18, or perhaps her hatred of herself. Hearts can not live without love or self-love, hence hers being alive in William's body. There I told you love makes no sense!!

In sonnet 23 Elizabeth reveals one of her great weakness, her 'fear of trust' and it is she who describes herself as an 'unperfect actor on the stage,' not William.

Knowing the Last Lines

You may be wondering why I believe that the last two lines of some sonnets are written by Will or Liz and may even think its nonsense! Well the sonnets answer that one easily. Numbers 100 to 102 are one-writer sonnets and negative, however 103, reading them in order, is critical of the previous sonnets. It starts "Alack, what poverty my Muse brings forth," and reveals "hath my added praise beside." This is why I believe last lines are added and 103 are by William and 100 to 102 are Elizabeth's. Unfortunately working out which one of them wrote each sonnet is not always easy. Although I can find no proof, I think some lines, in some stanzas are mixed, as in numbers: 3,4,41,42,61 and 96.

I'll show you what I mean with 3 & 4. These are experiments in verse, as number 1 is clearly all William's work and number 2 all Elizabeth's. Presumably one of them said let's make them different whilst keeping to the correct structure of the stanzas. Like this:

Sonnet 3

William

"Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest

Now is the time that face should form another,

Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest."

Elizabeth

"Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.

For where is she so fair whose unear'd womb

Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?"

William

"Or who is he so fond will be the tomb...."

The rest of the stanza is all William' work.

Sonnet 4 is the same style, with the almost backbiting comments at one another. This time only lines 5 & 6 are by Liz:

"Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse

The bounteous largess given thee to give?"

'Niggard' appears to be a comment aimed at Shakespeare by Liz. Yet I don't believe he was mean, and it refers back to William's first Sonnet where he had used the word and called her ill bred. Will hit back with the phrase "profitless usurer". Today we call ‘usury’ interest. The use of that word was in this context is quite an insult. There was at this time a ten- percent limit on usury (interest) before some form of punishment was imposed. Even then if you were caught giving money and charging any amount for it you'd be in big trouble. For one man, not convicted I might add, was told to read the 15th psalm, plead guilty, and give 5 shillings to the poor! Still, Will did add profitless, going somewhat to play the insult down. Another sign of true love I'm afraid!

Because there are only a few sonnets mixed, they must have agreed that these stanzas didn't work. On the whole they seem to have gone with a stanza by one and the two last lines by the other, or whole stanzas each. A quick not accurate count reveals that they seem to have written 125 sonnets each.

Metaphorically speaking

Proof of Elizabeth writing her 125 sonnets can be found in her use of metaphors, which she was using at the early age of 13 to her brother Edward. Such as this: ‘Like as the richman that daily gathereth riches to riches, and to one bag of money layeth a great store til it come to infinite, so methinks your Majesty....’

This is so like the sonnets as to be unbelievable! No. 60 'Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore...' and No.118 'Like as, to make our appetites more keen....' Also these are Liz's own work as well! At one point she even uses her own Latin motto, translated into English, for the benefit of William, in Sonnet 76. Clues such as this few writers not alone Shakespeare would have known.

Remember the "Dark Lady"? Well it’s actually Elizabeth in a way. All right Peter Jones, I know it’s a “preposterous” idea, however in No. 127 (by William) it says 'now is black beauty's successive heir And beauty slandered with a bastard shame...’ Okay it is poetry, but as Elizabeth was declared illegitimate and she was heir of Anne Bolyn, who reportedly had black hair, as the first line says (Anne) was in the ‘old age’ not seen as a beautiful woman, all the history fits together like a jigsaw. If you use Mr Jones’ theories on Shakespeare on himself, you might be able to prove his ideas are from Mars or some other silly place! Carrying on the theme of black in the Sonnets, connecting 130 to 131 works, as 131 says that “In nothing art though black”. Or in other words in nothing is Liz black, apart from her ‘acts’ (deeds) and this nasty bit she will write next. Which is precisely what I think William intended, nevertheless this does not fit in with 127, as far as the context of order is concerned. The mistress in this refers to a double of Liz (imaginary) like the rival poet is the double of Shakespeare. Its creation stems from 130. So for Will to start using it in reference to the Queen before is odd, thus contradicting 131 too soon. For that is clearly his desire in 127. In this he fights, in words, to get Elizabeth ‘crowned’ as the Queen of Beauties, using her own words as his weapons. Not an easy task, as Liz as such a low opinion of herself. William gets right to the point on sonnet 1, “Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.”

Then later in number 9 he goes into what I call ‘Freud Mode’ as he tries to work out why she is like this. William resolves on it being fear that she may die before any husband, then he returns to the theme of having children to keep beauty alive. Liz would have none of it and declares, ‘No love toward others in that bosom sits’ (hers).

Shakespeare is shocked to say the least and reply's in No. 10:"For Shame deny that thou bear'st love to any, Who for thyself art so unprovident!"

Because she was Queen of England he follows that with the next line: "Grant if thou wilt, thou art belov'd of many".

Before returning to the self hate argument, he says it is “most evident” she loves no one, because she is out to destroy herself. Possessed with hate, she presumably could not love anyone fighting herself and William pleads with her to change her mind. "Shall hate be fairer lodged than gentle love?" He asks and then shows us how she appears on the surface: “gracious and kind” while self-hate boils underneath. You would think that something might have clicked inside her, alas no. She tells Will to make a child for love of me that beauty can live in his children, of course by another woman, and in the next sonnet she says his problem is youth and when he his her age he would have a different outlook on life. What a woman! Poor William he must have been a glutton for punishment from her and yet he continued. He would only question her beauty when summer itself became like winter (12). Elizabeth returns to same argument of Will getting married in the next. However he was married and had produced children already. He does not let on and answers in the last two lines: "You had a father; let your son say so."

At no point does he say daughter, possibly because like many of that time he wants a King, though it too could be no more then the sexist attitude of men at that period. Moreover it was also a belief then; that the female merely carried the child and all characteristics came from the male only.

Both William and Elizabeth would appear to have been interested in what we call astrology and astronomy. These now are virtually separate though as you can tell from No.14 are very mixed up then. Liz is known to have consulted astrologist and used their advice, she clearly told Will about it. Debates rage now if astrology works, yet people still use it, we’re told even top figures consult them!

Taking Liberties

Liz might well have been jealous of Will's youth and his looks, but she was no man. Yet we all know that Henry VIII was determined that she was a boy. This explains Sonnet 20, so Will puts this in by saying "And for a woman wert thou first created" then goes on to say that Nature messed up by not adding the male genital, which pleased William! The last two lines are sexually explicit. Unbelievably Will does not write them!

Line one "But since she PRICKED thee out for women's pleasure,"

My capitals on that word because apart from the pun on the word picked, the line clearly stands for the fact that nature put a penis on William, the next line is stronger still!

"Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure".

In other words I'm your lover and I will use what you have! At the extreme end of this, would imply sexual intercourse. I don't think this was intended, however these are Elizabeth's lines and there is little doubt that when she wanted to express her sexuality she did. No I think she never went all the way and as she said she would live and die a virgin. It’s not too far fetched an idea, as some people seem to think. After all we are acutely aware these days of the dangers of sexual intercourse. Many of us now practice Safe Sex, not involving intercourse, so why couldn't Elizabeth then?

As you will see the other side of the Queen (as opposed to the shy low self-esteem side) was flighty and raunchy. WOW did she have some lovers. She makes some comments on this in No. 31, when Shakespeare is metaphored as a 'grave' where her 'lovers trophies hang'. Which if you don't get the meaning is that Will looks like them all. Even Will had is share of lovers, in the royal palaces he must have encountered the ladies in waiting on the Queen. Will being good looking of course, would naturally attract their attention. Liz noticed this! So in the sonnets 40/41 Will has to tell the Queen "Take all my loves" and "those pretty wrongs that liberties commits" when of course he's away from the Queen. Yet Liz understands! She breaks in on 41 saying "Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assailed". Liz states that when a woman woos what man would leave! The verse then says "Aye me!" Yes William would and he wrote that. Liz then calls him a ‘straying youth’ and the last two lines rap Will - 'by being false to me'. So she did not let him off the hook for his straying.

Speaking of straying in the literal sense, both of them left one another for periods of time. Will mentions his absence in No 109. There are no specific details of where Will went and yet we do know that the theatre companies did tour because the money from royal performances was not great, but it is clear that the Queen went to different places on what have become her progressions. The following sonnet tells us how she often thought about her tours, which she seems to think that they made her looked down upon, when she uses phrases like "Motley to the view" and "Sold cheap what is most dear". It's as though these tours robbed her of her virtue. We know that she hated flattery too and in 114 she calls it "the monarch's plague". In the same sonnet there are lots of references to royalty, which you would expect from a Queen. What you wouldn't expect is for that Queen to call herself a 'mistress'. Nevertheless that is precisely what she does in the extremely negative 130. Will didn't allow her to get away with it and calls her 'tyrannous' in the next and in 132 Liz tones down the verse.

Shakespeare's sense of humour crops up 135 with an elaborate tongue-twister on his own name. Elizabeth's humour was no different and has a go at tongue-twisting in 136, still using William's name and she is also recorded as using nicknames for some of her friends/lovers, though I cannot detect any for Will here in the sonnets.

Which brings us to if there is any other proof that William and Elizabeth were lovers?

Take My Hand

Painting is the answer, some of the sonnets mention limning, made famous at that time by Hilliard and Isaac Oliver in their miniatures of the Queen and others. As I have already stated, I believe these to be fairly accurate. Mary Edmund in her book is practical certain that William met both painters, with London being so small. Leslie Hotson in 1977 identified Shakespeare in a 1588 picture by Hilliard, of a man clasping a hand. Shakespeare was 24 then and the hand in this picture certainly resembles the Queen's in other pictures by the artist. Of course he couldn’t conceive of a humble person breaching the class barrier. Not alone it was being reversed. Some experts have come to the conclusion that he is holding a god’s hand. Thus he is holding the hand of the patron of poets or something. The Latin motto is obscure and my translation of it may not be perfect, yet I think it fits in with them both. Remember the Latin spelling may have varied then, if you want to translate it yourself!

"Greek lovers therefore" or the original "Attici amoris ergo".

Shakespeare was of course interested in Greek writings, as was Liz. Both were into music also, which has Greek connections but the main suggestion, I think, is one of the Greek Gods and Goddess who were lovers. Interestingly enough the Sonnets end with Gods and Goddess, showing the connection between the Sonnets and Hilliard's miniature. Naturally this means that both William and Elizabeth saw each as gods. Poor me, I thought we only saw Shakespeare as a god. Maybe Hilliard pushed it to far for another miniature done in 1590 also shows William, but this one is much plainer, though it does not name him and puts his age at 27. In spite of that the features are similar and the Bard is recorded as only roughly knowing his age. This one was done by Oliver, who clearly did not know about William's connection with the Queen. Then again did he approve, of either the relationship, or the god connection? Having said that I don't think Isaac Oliver got on well with Elizabeth and they may have quarrelled over his paintings of her! His miniatures are more controversial then Hilliard's with his Ladies often painted with their hand on their breast. Perhaps it was William who didn’t like Hilliard’s motif! Chances are the Queen didn’t! I am also going to stick my neck out and say that the miniature of Henry, Prince of Wales (by Oliver) is actually a picture of William in stage costume playing Mark Anthony or Julius Caesar. But before we get carried away with ourselves, it’s worth mentioning that Roy Strong

thinks Hilliard’s painting is that of Thomas Howard the Earl of Suffolk. Curiously most writers have thought that William only played bit parts or none at all. I think this idea is total rubbish and even the printed pamphlets on plays list Shakespeare first in the cast list if you need more proof.

So, so much for no pictures of him, actually I think there are quiet a number as I will show you in later chapters.

 

 

The cat comes out the bag

Near the start of this chapter I said that honour was important to them both and it’s when you hit sonnet 121 that it really comes into play. This sonnet is all by Elizabeth, and is for me the worst in its language towards William. Remember his sonnets are for her and Liz's sonnets are for him, we should never forget that. For the sonnets were not meant for all to see! Cruelly it starts "Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed". Clearly something is on her mind. WE by now should know what it is when she uses "false adulterate eyes".

William has been gossiped about in the Queen's presence. She says "No, I am that I am, and they that level abuses at my abuses reckon up their own". A possibly indication of a personal attack on her by someone who was not Shakespeare, she goes on to say these people are 'bevel'. Surely this word means they are corrupt and may have been the same as our word 'bent' and she also says she is straight - not corrupt. "My deeds must not be shown" for her honour is a stake. In other words her duplicity is William's lie about his marital status and as this sonnet goes on, the 'evil' of the deed, as she saw it.

Finally Elizabeth sums up with the essence of her argument in this sonnet, which could give us an indication of why she stayed a virgin: "All men are bad and in their badness reign."

Perhaps it was just aimed at William Shakespeare instead. You would have thought that William would have commented on this, the rest of the sonnets don't though and Elizabeth doesn't stop writing them either, in the remaining one's. So it could be out of sequence and deliberately so, for it could give rise to who’s involved in these sonnets. It would make a dramatic end to them!

The last sonnet she writes in the order of them is 152. The truth is out HIS 'bed-vow broke' and the strange "new faith torn". She even knows Ann's maiden name, for in line four 'hate' is there! This line sole purpose is undoubtedly to convey that word, a pun on Hathaway. The effect of this truth on Elizabeth is devastating. She says "All my honest faith in thee is lost."

Shakespeare tries to redeem himself in the last two lines of 152, yet whom is he trying to kid when he finishes with: "To swear against the truth so foul a lie!"

Its here after 152 were I think sonnet 121 would be.

They don't end there for two poems, not a bit like the previous 152 sonnets, can be found. They are William's work and I think they and some others tell us how William first met Queen Elizabeth in a code of strange poetry. Why are they here at this point in the sonnets? Probably just the rejected poet turning back to the past to hide his true feelings of deep hurt. Nonetheless this does not destroy the Queen’s relationship with the poet and writer of plays. Such a powerful link is not easily severed, but honour was saved!

Well there you have academia's world ‘mystery’ of the sonnets solved. The answer being they are complex poems between a young man and an older woman, who just so happen to be William Shakespeare and Elizabeth Tudor. First bit solved, with the exception of the NEW FAITH TORN remark of the Queen.

You can download this chapter here. It also includes footnotes not shown here And you can see all 154 Sonnets showing which person wrote what in the PDF file below it.

sonnets-and-the-queen

All 154 Sonnets new