Shakespeare
Just found out from this article in the London Observer newspaper that Claire Asquith has a new book on Shakespeare coming out soon and entitled Shadowplay
Although I haven’t read it yet (added to my Amazon Wishlist hint, hint!) it seems like a fascinating read. As I understand it, the main thesis is that Shakespeare was left specific hidden codes in his works and that these codes (which Asquith claims to have deciphered) point to the fact that Shakespeare was a Catholic and was signaling to others through the means of this cipher of his works.
I have long been a student of the Shakespeare Authorship issue and although I cannot comment (yet) on Asquith’s research it is good to see someone addressing the issue in a solid, rational and academic manner. I would probably take issue with some of the conclusions - it seems highly likely, for example, that the ‘William Shakespeare’ of Stratford is not the ‘William Shakespeare’ who wrote the plays and there is much evidence to support this. Imo, there was no sole ‘Shakespeare’ as such but a group of writers. all skilled in separate disciplines, who published under his name with his agreement.
Certainly the character of the Stratford man (the actor) would bear this out: he was essentially a loan shark, was cited for threatening behaviour on numerous occasions as well as for demanding money with menaces and his last will and Testament was a masterpiece of petty small-mindedness that did not include one single published book of any nature, written notes or manuscript of his own plays. Nor do these exist anywhere - no such notes or original MS have ever been found.
For those interested in an overview, perhaps the classic statement and enumeration of the problems surrounding Shakespeare’s authorship of the plays published under his name is Mark Twains’s Is Shakespeare Dead? which is published online here.
I would also probably dispute the nature of the ciphers and whether they are not ‘red-herrings’. My personal view (as the alert reader will no doubt have guessed) is that the ‘Shakespeare Group’ was in fact an esoteric school working under the influence of a Master schooled in Middle Eastern customs - hence the ‘Sheikh Pir’ (both pir and Sheikh are titles used by Sufi groups to refer to their teachers) and also many of the plays draw on earlier Sufi prototypes and stories to some degree. Clearly some of the code-words in the Observer article cited above could equally reference this as reference Catholicism: in fact the terms mentioned such as ‘dark’. ‘red rose’, ‘nightingale’ and ‘tanned’ are all in common usage as metaphors and ciphers themselves in Sufi literature - particularly Persian.
But there are undoubtedly codes hidden in Shakespeare and also in other key-texts elsewhere. As a ‘taster’ of this mystery, consider the following:
Shakespeare was born and died on the same day: April 23rd. This is known as England’s National Day: St George’s Day.
St George, as I have discussed in another post, is not only England’s patron saint, he is synonymous also with Khidr, the patron saint of the Sufis and he is also associated with the ‘Order of the Garter’ which has many Sufic parallels.
Another curious coincidence is the Psalm 46 conundrum. Briefly this revolves around the fact that the King James version of the Bible was revised and finished when Shakespeare was 46 years old and is said by some to have involved 46 redactors on the translation panel. In this version, the 46th word from the beginning of the Psalm is “shake” and the 46th word from the end of the Psalm is “spear” - interesting, but no-one as yet has ascribed it any significance.
