The true identity of Shakespeare: Reason for the Play The Merry wives of Windsor
By Joeseph Atwill
Finally, in her plays The Merry Wives of Windsor and As You like it, Emilia Bassano, a covert Jewish woman, documented her view of the murder of Christopher Marlowe, as well as her love for him. Marlowe was a poet/playwright who was killed for his religious views. One such view helped his assassination by saying:
“…Christians…were never thought upon till Titus and Vespassian conquered us (jews)…”-The Jews of Malta, Act II, Scene III By Christopher Marlowe .
Shakespeare was just a playwright broker and Emilia Bassano ghost wrote the majority of the plays is well documented in Shakespeare’s Dark Lady By John Hudson. Back in those days women did not attend the Theater unless they were whores or adulterous and this contributed to her hiding her identity
The Jews of Malta opens with his Charater barabas counting his vast wealth, and explaining the value of private secrets in accumulating such estates.
And thus methinks should men of judgment frame
Their means of traffic from the vulgar trade,
And, their wealth increaseth, so inclose
Infinite riches in a little room (I, I)-Christopher Marlowe
Realizing that the details of Marlowe’s execution had been falsely described in the Coroner’s Report Emelia Bassano built on Marlowe’s verse in order to record the truth for posterity. Here is her statement, which is a model of brevity and discretion, and yet speaks volumes:
When a man’s verses cannot be understood, nor a man’s good wit
Be seconded by the forward child, understanding, it strikes a man
More dead than a great reckoning in a little room” (As you like it, III, 3)-By Emelia Bassano
She echoed the expression “The Reckoning”, given in the Coroner’s Inquest as the cause of Marlowe’s death, adding that the event occurred in a ‘little room’ so that no one could mistake that she was referring to the poet who so tellingly used that phrase and others in The Jews of Malta. Furthermore, she was also playing with Marlowe’s double entendre, and referring to his ‘ reckoning that Christianity had been invented by Gentile nobles(Three tramps Vespassian, Titus and Domitian), so that tey could rule over the masses. And , in the genius of a triple entendre, she hinted at the deeper meaning of the word “reckoning”-understanding-to create a more honest description as to why she believed Marlowe was murdered: that is, he was killed because of what he had understood about Christianity.
Emilia, (Shakespeare’s ghost writer) wanted to record the fact that his verse should be “understood” and his wit “seconded” . With the Shakespearean literature she would make certain that Marlowe would not die “a second death” because she would second his work in a covert manner instead of his overt way that got him killed. It is interesting to consider that the Shakespearean literature began as Emilia’s homage and tribute to Marlowe.
The surface meaning of this passage is also, ironically, expressing deep sadness about readers who are too dense to understand a man’s verses, or to laugh at his “good wit”. For such readers, Marlowe remains as a dead man; and so also, “Shakespeare” depends on those of us who are alive, to understand what she is trying to tell us and spread the good news to the curious.
Emilia also placed her testimony in The Merry Wives of Windsor. As the play begins, Shallow and Slender are discussing turning Falstaff abuse of them into a “Star Chamber” matter. The Star Chamber was the institution that dealt with matters of heresy and was the English equivalent of the Holy Roman Inquisition. As I will show, this should be read as an allegory of Christopher Marlowe’s situation: at the time of his murder Marlowe was also under investigation by the Star Chamber for the crime of Heresy and it was responsible for his murder.
Shallow describes himself as “Custalourum” and Rato-lorum, words that are based upon the keeper of the judicial archives. This is a reference to not only the keeping of the records of the crimes of Titus and his religion against the Jews, but to the legal archive concerning Marlowe that Shallow in his passages.
Slender seemingly confuses “successor with “ancestor” but is simply referring to Falstaff as both Titus and the character in the play, which would have been Emilia’s position concerning the Christian nobility. In her eyes, they were the heirs to Titus and like Falstaff, an iteration of his evil. They have both fresh and old fish on their coats because the “fishers of men”-that is “Christian Cannibals”- have been at it since the start of the religion and are still as the play begins.
The playwright repeats the possibility of taking the matter of Falstaff abuse to the “council or “Privy Council”, an arm of the Star Chamber. Evans points out that the council wants only to hear “the fear of Got-God-not a riot. This was, of course, the position of the Christian state. They wanted their subjects to “fear Got” and thereby accept the “Divine right” of the nobility. They certainly did not want “a riot”, which would have occurred if Marlowe’s book against scripture had been made public. Though the Playwrights meaning here is veiled in allegory.
The following lines are among the most important and poignant in all the Shakespearean plays and are a description of the fate of Christopher Marlowe. Slender asks about Page’s “Fallow Greyhound” that was “outrun on Cotsall”. The word “cotsall” here is a reference to the Cotsall games that took place on the seventh Sunday following Easter, usually on May 30 or 31. The playwright is using symbolism here to describe Marlowe’s fate. Marlowe was “fallow”-had yellowish brown hair-and was “outrun”-caught and murdered-on the Cotsall that is May 30. He could not be judge because a public trial would expose the information the Star Chamber was trying to conceal-Marlowe’s understanding of the satire in the New Testament.
The lines regarding “confessing” and fault are, I suspect, regarding Marlowe’s refusal to confess to the Star chamber who he was working with, and the “fault” Emilia felt over Marlowe’s fate. The playwrights helps the reader understand that the play, and therefore key passages is regarding Marlowe by including both a number of references to his plays in The Merry Wives of Windsor and by the creation of another, more obvious, homage to him.
Marlowe is described as “good and fair”, this description links to Sonnet 105 that states that until the “fair boy” that Fair, kind and true have never “kept seat in one”. This supports the premise that Marlowe was Emilia’s inspiration for Shakespeare: the “fair boy” of the sonnets.
Falstaff enters with his men. Shallow accused him of breaking into his “lodge”, symbolically indicating Jerusalem, and again states he will take the matter to the council. Falstaff replies that the information would be better held “in counsel”, that is in private, because the Council will laugh at him if he tries to make them tell the truth of Christianity. The playwright makes certain the reader understands that the play is in a “Marlovian” context: the very next line following the discussion mentions Mephistopheles, the devil’s name from Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus. As I interpret the passage, therefore, it is suggesting that Marlowe tried to inform the Star Chamber and the English nobility of the truth of the origins of Christianity but was laughed at and executed. This is why Emilia continued with the “in counsel” representation of the Flavian Christianity (Vespasian, Titus, & Domitian) through the Shakespearean satires.
The following passage from the play confirms its subtext is about Marlowe’s murder and is perhaps the saddest and most personal in all the plays. First, for clarification, here is the beginning of Marlowe’s poem: “From a Passionate Shepard to his Love”:
COME live with me and be my love
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and Valleys, dale and field,
And all the craggy mountains yield
There will we sit upon the rocks
And see the Shepherds feed their flocks,
By Shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.
There will I make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers and a kirtle
Embroider’d all with leaves of myrtle.
Marlowe’s poem was the basis for the following passage in The Merry Wives of Windsor:
Sir Hugh Sings:
To Shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sings madrigals;
There will we make our peds of roses,
And a thousand fragrant posies
To Shallow-
Mercy on me! I have a great disposition to cry (III, I)
After stating that the song makes the character feel like crying, Emilia then creates her own verse to the poem by inserting a phrase from the beginning of Psalm 137. In doing so she changes the theme from a description of the False Jesus-The Shepard-to that of Hebrew vengeance.
Melodious birds sing madrigals-
When as I sat in Pabylon-
And a thousand vagram posies.
To shallow-
By inserting the beginning of Psalm 137 into Marlowe’s poem, Emilia brought into play the fiercest piece of Hebrew revenge literature in the bible. The psalm graphically describes her desires to destroy the Gentiles-The Children of Edom-who had killed Marlowe. The passage is important in that it also conveys the intensity of the emotion Emilia held for Marlowe: the very mention of his poem bringing her character to tears of crying. The Psalm is given below:
Psalm 137
1 By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion.2 There on the poplars we hung our harps,3 for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
4 How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land?5 If I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill.6 May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy.
7 Remember, Lord, what the Edomites did on the day Jerusalem fell. “Tear it down,” they cried, “tear it down to its foundations!”8 Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is the one who repays you according to what you have done to us.9 Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.
The premise that Emilia and Marlowe had been lovers is supported by another passage from As You Like It that uses the same technique as above-the blending in of quotes from Marlowe’s work with Shakespeare’s verse. In that play a lovesick woman describes Marlowe as a “dead Shepherd” and states he had a “saw of might”, in other words that she found his insights to be powerful. She then quotes perhaps Marlowe’s most famous line about love, from the poem of the same name: Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?”, which, in context that it conccurs-a statement by a lovesick woman-is almost certainly a comment on the actual relationship between “Kit” Marlowe and Emilia.
Dead Shepherd, now I find thy saw of might
Whoever loved that loved not at first sight? (III, 5, 82-83)
By Joeseph Atwill
Finally, in her plays The Merry Wives of Windsor and As You like it, Emilia Bassano, a covert Jewish woman, documented her view of the murder of Christopher Marlowe, as well as her love for him. Marlowe was a poet/playwright who was killed for his religious views. One such view helped his assassination by saying:
“…Christians…were never thought upon till Titus and Vespassian conquered us (jews)…”-The Jews of Malta, Act II, Scene III By Christopher Marlowe .
Shakespeare was just a playwright broker and Emilia Bassano ghost wrote the majority of the plays is well documented in Shakespeare’s Dark Lady By John Hudson. Back in those days women did not attend the Theater unless they were whores or adulterous and this contributed to her hiding her identity
The Jews of Malta opens with his Charater barabas counting his vast wealth, and explaining the value of private secrets in accumulating such estates.
And thus methinks should men of judgment frame
Their means of traffic from the vulgar trade,
And, their wealth increaseth, so inclose
Infinite riches in a little room (I, I)-Christopher Marlowe
Realizing that the details of Marlowe’s execution had been falsely described in the Coroner’s Report Emelia Bassano built on Marlowe’s verse in order to record the truth for posterity. Here is her statement, which is a model of brevity and discretion, and yet speaks volumes:
When a man’s verses cannot be understood, nor a man’s good wit
Be seconded by the forward child, understanding, it strikes a man
More dead than a great reckoning in a little room” (As you like it, III, 3)-By Emelia Bassano
She echoed the expression “The Reckoning”, given in the Coroner’s Inquest as the cause of Marlowe’s death, adding that the event occurred in a ‘little room’ so that no one could mistake that she was referring to the poet who so tellingly used that phrase and others in The Jews of Malta. Furthermore, she was also playing with Marlowe’s double entendre, and referring to his ‘ reckoning that Christianity had been invented by Gentile nobles(Three tramps Vespassian, Titus and Domitian), so that tey could rule over the masses. And , in the genius of a triple entendre, she hinted at the deeper meaning of the word “reckoning”-understanding-to create a more honest description as to why she believed Marlowe was murdered: that is, he was killed because of what he had understood about Christianity.
Emilia, (Shakespeare’s ghost writer) wanted to record the fact that his verse should be “understood” and his wit “seconded” . With the Shakespearean literature she would make certain that Marlowe would not die “a second death” because she would second his work in a covert manner instead of his overt way that got him killed. It is interesting to consider that the Shakespearean literature began as Emilia’s homage and tribute to Marlowe.
The surface meaning of this passage is also, ironically, expressing deep sadness about readers who are too dense to understand a man’s verses, or to laugh at his “good wit”. For such readers, Marlowe remains as a dead man; and so also, “Shakespeare” depends on those of us who are alive, to understand what she is trying to tell us and spread the good news to the curious.
Emilia also placed her testimony in The Merry Wives of Windsor. As the play begins, Shallow and Slender are discussing turning Falstaff abuse of them into a “Star Chamber” matter. The Star Chamber was the institution that dealt with matters of heresy and was the English equivalent of the Holy Roman Inquisition. As I will show, this should be read as an allegory of Christopher Marlowe’s situation: at the time of his murder Marlowe was also under investigation by the Star Chamber for the crime of Heresy and it was responsible for his murder.
Shallow describes himself as “Custalourum” and Rato-lorum, words that are based upon the keeper of the judicial archives. This is a reference to not only the keeping of the records of the crimes of Titus and his religion against the Jews, but to the legal archive concerning Marlowe that Shallow in his passages.
Slender seemingly confuses “successor with “ancestor” but is simply referring to Falstaff as both Titus and the character in the play, which would have been Emilia’s position concerning the Christian nobility. In her eyes, they were the heirs to Titus and like Falstaff, an iteration of his evil. They have both fresh and old fish on their coats because the “fishers of men”-that is “Christian Cannibals”- have been at it since the start of the religion and are still as the play begins.
The playwright repeats the possibility of taking the matter of Falstaff abuse to the “council or “Privy Council”, an arm of the Star Chamber. Evans points out that the council wants only to hear “the fear of Got-God-not a riot. This was, of course, the position of the Christian state. They wanted their subjects to “fear Got” and thereby accept the “Divine right” of the nobility. They certainly did not want “a riot”, which would have occurred if Marlowe’s book against scripture had been made public. Though the Playwrights meaning here is veiled in allegory.
The following lines are among the most important and poignant in all the Shakespearean plays and are a description of the fate of Christopher Marlowe. Slender asks about Page’s “Fallow Greyhound” that was “outrun on Cotsall”. The word “cotsall” here is a reference to the Cotsall games that took place on the seventh Sunday following Easter, usually on May 30 or 31. The playwright is using symbolism here to describe Marlowe’s fate. Marlowe was “fallow”-had yellowish brown hair-and was “outrun”-caught and murdered-on the Cotsall that is May 30. He could not be judge because a public trial would expose the information the Star Chamber was trying to conceal-Marlowe’s understanding of the satire in the New Testament.
The lines regarding “confessing” and fault are, I suspect, regarding Marlowe’s refusal to confess to the Star chamber who he was working with, and the “fault” Emilia felt over Marlowe’s fate. The playwrights helps the reader understand that the play, and therefore key passages is regarding Marlowe by including both a number of references to his plays in The Merry Wives of Windsor and by the creation of another, more obvious, homage to him.
Marlowe is described as “good and fair”, this description links to Sonnet 105 that states that until the “fair boy” that Fair, kind and true have never “kept seat in one”. This supports the premise that Marlowe was Emilia’s inspiration for Shakespeare: the “fair boy” of the sonnets.
Falstaff enters with his men. Shallow accused him of breaking into his “lodge”, symbolically indicating Jerusalem, and again states he will take the matter to the council. Falstaff replies that the information would be better held “in counsel”, that is in private, because the Council will laugh at him if he tries to make them tell the truth of Christianity. The playwright makes certain the reader understands that the play is in a “Marlovian” context: the very next line following the discussion mentions Mephistopheles, the devil’s name from Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus. As I interpret the passage, therefore, it is suggesting that Marlowe tried to inform the Star Chamber and the English nobility of the truth of the origins of Christianity but was laughed at and executed. This is why Emilia continued with the “in counsel” representation of the Flavian Christianity (Vespasian, Titus, & Domitian) through the Shakespearean satires.
The following passage from the play confirms its subtext is about Marlowe’s murder and is perhaps the saddest and most personal in all the plays. First, for clarification, here is the beginning of Marlowe’s poem: “From a Passionate Shepard to his Love”:
COME live with me and be my love
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and Valleys, dale and field,
And all the craggy mountains yield
There will we sit upon the rocks
And see the Shepherds feed their flocks,
By Shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.
There will I make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers and a kirtle
Embroider’d all with leaves of myrtle.
Marlowe’s poem was the basis for the following passage in The Merry Wives of Windsor:
Sir Hugh Sings:
To Shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sings madrigals;
There will we make our peds of roses,
And a thousand fragrant posies
To Shallow-
Mercy on me! I have a great disposition to cry (III, I)
After stating that the song makes the character feel like crying, Emilia then creates her own verse to the poem by inserting a phrase from the beginning of Psalm 137. In doing so she changes the theme from a description of the False Jesus-The Shepard-to that of Hebrew vengeance.
Melodious birds sing madrigals-
When as I sat in Pabylon-
And a thousand vagram posies.
To shallow-
By inserting the beginning of Psalm 137 into Marlowe’s poem, Emilia brought into play the fiercest piece of Hebrew revenge literature in the bible. The psalm graphically describes her desires to destroy the Gentiles-The Children of Edom-who had killed Marlowe. The passage is important in that it also conveys the intensity of the emotion Emilia held for Marlowe: the very mention of his poem bringing her character to tears of crying. The Psalm is given below:
Psalm 137
1 By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion.2 There on the poplars we hung our harps,3 for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
4 How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land?5 If I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill.6 May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy.
7 Remember, Lord, what the Edomites did on the day Jerusalem fell. “Tear it down,” they cried, “tear it down to its foundations!”8 Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is the one who repays you according to what you have done to us.9 Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.
The premise that Emilia and Marlowe had been lovers is supported by another passage from As You Like It that uses the same technique as above-the blending in of quotes from Marlowe’s work with Shakespeare’s verse. In that play a lovesick woman describes Marlowe as a “dead Shepherd” and states he had a “saw of might”, in other words that she found his insights to be powerful. She then quotes perhaps Marlowe’s most famous line about love, from the poem of the same name: Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?”, which, in context that it conccurs-a statement by a lovesick woman-is almost certainly a comment on the actual relationship between “Kit” Marlowe and Emilia.
Dead Shepherd, now I find thy saw of might
Whoever loved that loved not at first sight? (III, 5, 82-83)