The All-New Shakespeare ABC starts today!

A is for Aaron.

This is the best way to start a Shakespearean ABC especially as this one has a double-A beginning. So who was this Aaron - one of the relatively few Biblical names used by WS in his plays? (Other Biblical names he used were, Adam, Eve, Laban, Hagar, Noah, Jael, Deborah, Samson, Goliath, David, Achitopel, Solomon, Jezebel, Jephthah, Lazarus, the prodigal son etc.)

Aaron is a Moor who, in Titus Andronicus is brought to Rome and is beloved by Queen Tamora. He is a really nasty character and checks a quarrel between Tamora's sons over Titus Andronicus' daughter, Lavinia, "Rome's rich ornament." He encourages her sons to rape and mutilate Lavinia and then organises the murder of Bassianus, Saturnius' honest brother. Aaron then frames Titus' sons, Quintus and Martius with this murder  and they are executed for having committed this crime.

                                                   Anthony Quale as Aaron

Aaron then tells Titus that he can save his other sons if he chops off his right hand and send it to him as evidence of his good faith. In the meanwhile, Tamora bears Aaron's illegitimate child and this threatens to expose his treachery. However, he refuses to get rid of the evidence, i.e. have the child killed which shows us that he isn't 100% evil. (Like Lady Macbeth who, when the time comes, cannot murder King Duncan as "Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done't")

Aaron is captured by Lucius' (son of Titus) army while trying to smuggle the baby out of Rome and confesses to his crimes when Lucius agrees to spare his child. In the end Aaron learns that evil does not pay as he is condemned to be set 'breast-deep' in the ground and starved to death.

Titus Andronicus was one of WS's first plays, (1592-4) and Aaron is the prototype of several evil characters in the Bard's later plays. Further developments of such a man include Iago in Othello (1603-4) and Richard III. They all share a common scorn for "honest men."  

In Who's Who in Shakespeare, Peter Quennel and Hamish Johnson say that Aaron is a mixture of three Elizabethan theatrical types: Barabus in Marlowe's The Jew of Malta, Muley Hamet in Peele's The Battle of Alcazar and the typical stage devil of Elizabethan theatre, the natural follow-on of the Vice character of the earlier medieval morality plays.

         The author of the Shakespeare ABC at the WS exhibition,    

                                    London February 2016.   

Shakespeare's murky past: Two more Dark Ladies

As promised, last time I said I was going to write about another possible candidate for the Dark Lady award. This time, her name is Lucy Morgan (alias Lucy Parker). She was born in 1579 and according to my mother, she didn't have a very long innings as she died in 1600. She was one of Queen Elizabeth's gentlewomen and on three occasions was given dresses by Her Majesty. Apparently she was a popular lass at court and was also known as Lucy Negro due to her dark complexion.

In 1595, she, or a lady with a similar name was in trouble with the law for running a brothel in St. John Street, Clerkenwell and had to appear before the Queen's bench. She was found guilty and was sentenced to spend some time in the notorious Bridewell jail.

               Is this our William thinking about his next 
                                 tryst with the Dark Lady?

According to an article in the U.K. Independent newspaper 
(27 Aug. 2012), Dr. Duncan Salkeld, reader in WS studies at the University of Chichester, says that "she is the foremost candidate for the dubious role of the Dark Lady." This lady was referred to in Sonnets 127-154 as a "temptress" and "my female evil" and "my bad angel." 

Salkeld finds links between Morgan and Gilbert East, another brothel-owner in Clerkenwell and Philip Henslowe, the theatre-owner of the "Rose" theatre, a rival to the "Globe." There are also several family connections involved here and Salkeld also suggests that there was a link with a Matthew Shakespeare who was married to Isabel Peele and whose dramatist brother, G may have collaborated with our William on Titus Andronicus, one of his first plays.

All of the above is not true according to another academic. Dr. Aubrey Burl of the Society of Antiquaries states that the Dark Lady was called Aline Florio, the wife of an Italian translator who lived in London. In an article in The Telegraph UK newspaper, (8 Jan. 2013), Hannah Furness quotes Dr. Burl who says that WS loved this lady "for her own gratification" while he indulged in "temptation and callously self-satisfied betrayal of her husband."

John/Giovanni Florio, Italian translator and possible friend of Shakespeare. Did our William lead his wife astray, or was it the    
                                       other way round?

To reach this conclusion, Dr. Burl spent years studying this topic and narrowed his list down to eight possible candidates. These included a courtesan, a wig-maker's wife, a landlady and various other beautiful women. In the end, Mistress Florio came out on top.

WS and this Dark Lady would meet at the Bard's patron's house (the Earl of Southampton) at Titchfield and also at her house in Shoe Lane near the River Fleet.

But whoever she was, Lucy Morgan, Aline Florio, Mary Fitton or Emilia Bassano-Lanier, we will probably never know. Andthe final question on this topic is: Does it really matter? As the man himself wrote,"The play's the thing." This is what should really interest us, not who he was having a bit of hanky-panky with on the side as his good lady-wife was back in Stratford looking after his parents and his kids.

Next time I'm going to start an ABC of plays, places and people connected with Shakespeare, so tell all your literary and other friends and family to watch this space.  

WHO REALLY WROTE SHAKESPEARE? My latest publication!

In this blog I was going to write about another of WS Dark Ladies, Black Lucy Morgan. However, she will have to wait for a few days as I tell you about by latest WS book, no, it's actually an e-book, called: (sounds of roll of drums and fanfare of trumpets!)... WHO REALLY WROTE SHAKESPEARE?

This book is about Daniel Ryhope, an English lit. lecturer in a northern England university who, after hearing another lecturer call WS a "con man and a fake" sets out on a quest to see if WS really wrote WS. He is joined by his wife, Beth, and two other friends and academics who begin their search to see if England's, if not the world's most famous writer really deserved this title.

Using the university library's resources as well as Google and journeys to various WS sites in England, such as Stratford-upon-Avon, they work their way through the list of possible contenders for the title. These include: Marlowe, the Lords of Oxford, Derby and Rutland, Sir Francis Bacon, Sir Henry Neville and Fulke Greville. They also check out some of the ladies, such as: Lady Mary Sidney, Queen Elizabeth I, Emilia Lanier-Bassano (I said she was a very literate lady!) and even the Bard's wife herself,  Mistress Anne Hathaway!

They also see if WS could have written his works as a member of a team which may have included some of the following: Ben Jonson, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Middleton, John Fletcher and Francis Beaumont. Why a team? You must remember that in the days of the Virgin Queen, plays did not run for weeks or months at a time. 

The population of London was about 200,000 and the theatre owners wanted a super-fast turnover of material to keep their audiences returning. As the old adage goes: Bums on seats is money in pockets and also,WS was a shareholder in the Globe theatre. Therefore it would have been impossible for one man to churn out enough plays to meet the ever-increasing demand - hence the need for team-writing.

So after many academic adventures and 290 pages, our academic sleuths while meeting in WS's birth-place come up with an answer to the SAC (Shakespeare Authorship Controversy).

Their conclusion is... ah, but I'm not going to tell you for that would spoil the fun. Incidentally, they also ask a few questions about Marlowe's sudden demise and WS's rise to fame. Is this a coincidence they ask? 

Professor Joseph Lo Bianco of the Language and Literary Education Dept. of the University of Melbourne wrote the following review about my novel:

D. Lawrence-Young takes the often pompous and frequently silly "SAC" and turns it into a fast-paced and page-turning detective story. All the nooks and crannies of rival candidates and claims are traversed in interesting locations and often funny encounters. The SAC has got under the Shakespeare-loving and teaching David Lawrence-Young's skin and he has turned this irritant into a pleasure to read and from which there is much to learn. 

This e-book is now available on Amazon and elsewhere and was very recently published by Troubador/Matador Publishing, Leicester, UK.

You may also be able to read it as it appeared under its original printed book title: Will the Real William Shakespeare Please Step Forward?

Shakespeare's Literate Dark Lady, Part 3

Last time I wrote about Emilia Lanier-Bassano, one of the candidates for the title: Shakespeare's Dark Lady. This time I'm going to write about what she wrote about. Her major piece of work was Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum - 'Hail God, King of the Jews' which was first published in 1611. 

This is a collection of eleven poems which was dedicated to Queen Elizabeth I and various other well-known ladies of the time. It also includes 'The Description of Cooke-ham,' a 'country-house' poem which praises a wealthy patron through his country home. Other poems in this collection are addressed to All Vertuous Ladies in General and Eve's Apology in Defence of Women.

Today there are only four complete copies in existence as well as two incomplete copies in the British Library. London and in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

Salva Deus Rex Judaeorum is a long and very tightly structured poem which consists of 310 eight-line verses. Each verse sticks rigidly to an ABABABCC rhyme scheme, a scheme known as 'Ottova rima.'  This scheme was of Italian origin and was a suitable choice by the poet as it was often used for long and/or 'heroic' poems.

                   The second verse of "Salve Deus." Note the Ottova rima rhyme scheme.

Emilia Lanier's magnum opus was dedicated to a well-known literary patroness of the time, Lady Anne Clifford, Countess Dowager of Dorset.

The importance of this collection of poems is that it was one of the first to be published by a woman in a very masculine dominated world. These poems have been seen by critics as an exploration of the way women have contributed in promoting Christian values throughout history. Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum has also been understood as one of the early feminist poems, i.e. it relates to the events from the Last Supper to the final Crucifixtion from the female point of view - through the eyes of Pontius Pilate's wife.

In addition, according to several critics this was one of the first religious poems that was written by a woman which gave women a higher religious authority than men.

Next time I will talk about another possible Dark Lady who was more bawdy than literate: Black Lucy Morgan.

For comments, please email me at: dlwhy08@gmail.com  

Shakespeare's Dark Lady Part 2 - Was she Jewish?

Now I'm back after a trip to London (my wife's 70th birthday present for me). There I saw a fascinating exhibition of documents relating to WS including the most famous will (very punny) in the world at Somerset House.

If, as noted in my last blog, Mary Fitton, one of Queen Elizabeth I's maids-of-honour was not the Dark Lady, could this person have been Emilia Bassano-Lanier, a past mistress of the queen's cousin Lord Hunsdon?

One of the first people to put this idea forward was A.L. Rowse in 1973 in Shakespeare the Man.If Rowse was correct, who was thus elusive and mysterious lady? Here are the facts.

                                          A possible portrait of Emilia on a locket.

Emilia Bassano was born in London in 1569 and was the daughter of Baptiste Bassano, a court musician originally from Venice. This gentleman was (possibly) Jewish and if you take that into account together with the fact that he came from southern Europe, this may account for his daughter's dark complexion, i.e. she was no typical fair English rose. Despite this possible Jewish background, Emilia was baptised in St. Botolph's Church, Bishopsgate and this may have been done to hide her and her family's background. Jews were not officially allowed to live in England since Edward I had exiled them in 1290. (Cromwell would allow them to return in 1656.)

Baptiste Bassano died in 1576 and young Emilia was sent off to live with the Countess of Kent, Susan Bertie, who gave her a good education which included Latin. Eleven years later, in 1578, Emilia's mother died and the 18 year old Emilia found herself living with the Countess of Cumberland, Margaret Clifford.

Soon after this, our heroine became the mistress of Henry Carey, Baron Hunsdon, who was the queen's cousin. He was 45 years older than her and according to Simon Forman, a contemporary  doctor and astrologer, Hunsdon gave her 40 pounds p.a (over 10,000 pounds in today's money). Emilia had a good life with him but this came to an end in 1592 when now pregnant with his child, he paid her off. She was then married to her first cousin, Alphonse Lanier, who was also a court musician.

According to Forman, this was not a happy marriage but it lasted for 21 years. It ended in 1613 with Alphonse's death. During this period Emilia had two children, Henry and Odillya but the latter died when she was only 10 months old.

Now on her own, Emilia opened a school but this was not altogether a successful venture. It involved court-cases etc. to obtain fees and she also had financial problems with her dead husband's brother, Clement.

After the late 1630s we hear no more about her except that she died as a 'pensioner' aged 76 in 1645 and was buried at Clerkenwell, London. When I went to visit her grave I found that time and the weather had eroded all the details from the gravestones preventing me from knowing which one was hers.

                           Emelia is possibly buried somewhere near here in Clerkenwell.

Next time I'll say more about this lady as a writer in her own right. She was also the first published poetess in England. In the meanwhile, if you wish to read a fictional account of how she was involved with our William, then read my novel, "Welcome to London, Mr. Shakespeare."(Obtainable from Amazon)