The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 26.096  Monday, 2 March 2015

 

From:        Arnie Perlstein <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

Date:         March 2, 2015 at 2:28:00 AM EST

Subject:    The Secret Code Word Shakespeare Devilishly Hid in Plain Sight in Romeo & Juliet that Shakespeare Uncovered DIDN’T Uncover—but John Milton (and then I) did!

 

“Romeo and Juliet with Joseph Fiennes”, Episode 5 of the PBS series, Shakespeare Uncovered, recently aired, and those who missed it can still watch it and the other 5 episodes online:

 

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/shakespeare-uncovered/uncategorized/romeo-juliet-joseph-fiennes-full-episode/

 

It’s excellent, as you’d expect. It provides both (i) a thorough basic factual and critical grounding in /Romeo & Juliet/ for anyone unfamiliar with it, AND (ii) supplementary intellectual treats for the cognoscenti, “with rare perspectives on Shakespeare’s early and beloved tragedy”. And what Shakespeare lover wouldn’t enjoy taking scholarly “potions” from “apothecaries” like actors Joseph Fiennes and Orlando Bloom, scholars Marjorie Garber and Jonathan Bate, and other knowledgeable folks, as your guides, with generous on location visuals from the Globe and a Verona balcony or two, to boot!

 

One of those exotic segments (starting 12+ minutes into Episode 5) was a clip from a recent staging of RomeUS and Juliet—that’s NOT a typo—that is the actual title of the poem by the otherwise unknown versifier Arthur Brooke written in 1562, two years before Shakespeare was born-it’s the poem which was Shakespeare’s primary source. Sorry to burst the bubble of those who (like me till 10 years ago) didn’t know that Stoppard’s version of Shakespeare’s composition of Romeo & Juliet  in Shakespeare in Love was flamboyantly contrary to historical fact. I.e., there never /was/ a plotline being invented from scratch by the Bard, with a working title of Romeo & Ethel the Pirate’s Daughter! But, of course I, like everyone else, still love the film, because it so wittily, brilliantly, and passionately captures and recreates the spirit of Shakespeare.

 

But back to Brooke. As the PBS show accurately reported, it’s been common scholarly knowledge for centuries that Brooke’s poem was Shakespeare’s primary source—not only because of the virtual repetition of the title, but even down (as Episode 5 cleverly enacted) to Shakespeare stealing specific lines of poetry from Brooke, and tweaking them into altered, but still recognizably similar, lines in his play. And, with some exceptions, including the change of moral tone noted in Episode 5, the vast majority of plot and character details in Brooke’s poem are closely tracked in Shakespeare’s play. But, of course, the PBS show, and a thousand other scholars, have also pointed out, that we only know of Brooke and his poem today (he is believed to have died in a shipwreck—a sly joke in Stoppard’s ending!—not long after composing the poem), because Brooke mined, from Italian sources, the literary dross that Shakespeare’s literary alchemy turned into pure gold.

 

Well, as I will now demonstrate to you, Brooke’s been getting a raw deal for 400 years on one important point that’s never been noticed before. All of the above is merely prologue to the existence of a secret code word borrowed by Shakespeare from Brooke’s poem which is beyond anything than has been dreamt of in the philosophy of scholarly interpretation of Romeo & Juliet (and also, for that matter, Romeus & Juliet and Paradise Lost). Sounds crazy—sounds VERY crazy—but it’s true, and I will prove it, in this very post! It’s a borrowing I discovered 7 months ago while reading Romeo & Juliet for another reason entirely, and then I went back into Brooke’s poem and found the source there. And then I realized, from something I had learned during my earlier research on Paradise Lost, that John Milton may have beaten me to the sleuthing punch by 350 years, as he coded his discovery into his epic poem!

 

I’m breaking the story today, a bit sooner than I had planned, because I could not resist the serendipity of the airing today of Episode 5, with its excerpt about Brooke’s poem, which I hope has resulted in a lot of Shakespeare lovers having Romeo & Juliet temporarily on their (your) minds. And so it’s my goal to blow that part of your mind! Please bear with me till I get to my punch line, which is a single code word that appears in all three passages. I promise it will be worth your attention!

 

If I’ve piqued your curiosity, please click here to read the full post at my blog (most of it consists of the quoted passages):

 

tinyurl.com/mlap3d <http://t.co/LLGAvCvDhn>

 

I welcome any comments you may have, and if you think my argument is worth passing on to any other scholars who are interested in Shakespeare and/or Milton, please feel free to do so.

 

Thanks!

 

Arnie

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

 

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