NEWS: Shakespeare: Political Rebel?

Far from being an ambitious entertainer who played down his Catholic roots under a repressive Elizabethan regime, Shakespeare took deliberate risks each time he took up his quill, according to Clare Asquith's new book Shadowplay. She argues that the plays and poems are a network of crossword puzzle-like clues to his strong Catholic beliefs and his fears for England's future. Aside from being the first to spot this daring Shakespearean code, Asquith also claims to be the first to have cracked it.

'It has not been picked up on before because people have not had the complete context,' she explained this weekend. 'I am braced for flak, but we now know we have had the history from that period wrong for a long time because we have seen it through the eyes of the Protestant, Whig ascendancy who, after all, have written the history.'

[...]

Shakespeare, she claims, adopted some of the more general Catholic code terms that were current, such as the use of the words 'tempest' or 'storm' to signify England's troubles, but he also used new cyphers. Asquith argues, for example, that his obsession with the theme of romantic love was much more than a crowd pleaser.

Constancy in love was Shakespeare's way of alluding to the importance of a true faith in the 'old religion', she says. More specifically, his puns and metaphors often circled around certain key phrases. For instance, to be 'sunburned' or 'tanned', as are his heroines Viola, Imogen and Portia, was to be close to God and so understood as a true Catholic.

[...]

[T]he new book also makes the startling suggestion that Shakespeare studied covertly at an Oxford University college in order to gain such a wide-ranging literary knowledge.

This suggestion goes against the work of earlier scholars who have explained away the poet's extraordinary learning as simply the product of a rigorous Elizabethan grammar school education.

'You do get new insights into his life if you look at the code,' she said. 'He must have gone up to Oxford, as many Catholics did at the time, by finding a sympathetic college, such as Hertford, but not officially signing on.' To join as an undergraduate would have meant having to forswear his religion officially, Asquith added.

'Words, words, words,' said Shakespeare's Hamlet. But the words used by the subversive Shakespeare in his plays and poems disguised a hidden pro-Catholic message, according to controversial new research.

Sunburn: The sun represented divinity, and so sunburn denotes closeness to God. Shakespeare described himself as 'tanned' in Sonnet 62.

Turtle dove: A traditional image for the apostles, used to signify those who remained faithful in the face of persecution.

Nightingale: The story of Philomela, who was turned into a nightingale, was an image of the desecrated church and its covert protests.

Red rose: A term used by Catholics for their 'old, beautiful' religion.

Dark: The new, Protestant religion, associated with black print and sober dress.

Five: Devotion to the five wounds of Christ led to patterned emblems on the banners borne against the new regime. Shakespeare uses it in the form of flowers, birthmarks or heraldic blazons as a marker of Catholicism.

fpkk said:
"Robert Langdon flicked the worn pages of the lost folio. His amazement growing as the fresh words of the long dead bard of Avon were laid before his eyes.

"'Why, with this lost play by Shakespeare,' he said breathlessly. 'I could spin this dull pot-boiler out for at least 300 pages. Not to mention the injections of pseudo history just begging to be thinly disguised as dialogue.'"

~ Excerpt, The Shakespeare Code by Ban Drown.

fpkk said:
"Robert Langdon flicked the worn pages of the lost folio. His amazement growing as the fresh words of the long dead bard of Avon were laid before his eyes.

"'Why, with this lost play by Shakespeare,' he said breathlessly. 'I could spin this dull pot-boiler out for at least 300 pages. Not to mention the injections of pseudo history just begging to be thinly disguised as dialogue.'"

~ Excerpt, The Shakespeare Code by Ban Drown.

RandomNerd said:
I'm not a scholarly man, but given those examples, I think she's really reaching.
Even if it were true... no one got the joke for almost Four Hundred years. A little too clever of good William.