🚀 go-pugleaf

> If there is a subtext in the play The Two Gentlemen
> of Verona, it may concern the relation between art
> and power, Julia symbolizing art, Silvia power,
> Proteus the poet and playwright, and Valentine
> the one destined by virtue to exert power, Latin
> valere meaning 'to be worthy, having value, virtue'
> being present in the name Valentine. Proteus would
> then symbolize de Vere. Homer tells us about
> Proteus in book 4 of the Odyssey: an old man
> (de Vere began writing tragedies at a relatively high
> age), honest (the bard's motto pronounced in
> sonnet 105 is "Fair, kind, and true," being true an
> equivalent of being honest), of infallible lips (the
> bards claims the same in the sonnets), he sees
> and knows everything (and so does the playwright
> in his god-like position as the creator of his plays),
> he metamorphs into everything that walks on earth,
> but also into water and divine blazing fire, becomes
> a lion with a mane, a snake, a panther, liquid water,
> a tree of a towering crown (while the playwright
> can assume every guise in his plays), he knows
> the depths of all seas (he knows the depths of the
> human nature), his daughter is Eidothea, literally
> the goddess of pictures (and the bard creates
> living pictures on the illuminated stage), he knows
> what happens in the palace (and de Vere knew
> the court, having been raised in the care of the
> queen),  good or bad (the achievements and
> crimes of five-hundred years of history of the
> empire). De Vere matches Valentine with Silvia,
> and Proteus with Julia, not without pointing out
> a temporary aberration of Proteus who was
> seduced by power. De Vere elevates William
> Shakespeare in the guise of valiant Paris into
> the rank of a count. And the opening lines of
> the gory first play Titus Andronicus pose the
> question of who acceeds the throne directly.
> Saturninus
>
>   Plead my successive title with your swords
>   I am his (the late emperor's) first-born son
>
> Whereupon Bassianus
>
>   And suffer not dishonour to approach
>   Th' imperial seat, to virtue consecrate
>
> My claim: Titus Andronicus might be an allegory
> on five hundred years of British history, naming
> injustices that were the consequence of unworthy
> rulers who climbed the throne either by birth-right
> or by the help of protection. In later plays de Vere
> learned to convey his message in subtler and more
> pleasing ways, but he could only do so after he had
> made his point in all clarity.

Titus Andronicus might be a surrealist play avant la lettre,
a tragic satire, methodical insanity used in describing
a mad time, the natural order of the human cosmos
dissolving, held together for appearances by a stern
logic of violence, five hundred years ending in doom

1086 Domesday Book or Doomsday Book
1588 ? Titus Andronicus "This is our doom"

Titus Andronicus --- 'builder' of the English empire,
William the Conquerer and others including Henry VIII
as military leader

Bassianus --- Henry VIII as humanist

Saturninus --- Henry VIII as king

Lavinia --- Anne Boleyn

Lucius --- Elizabeth

Young Lucius --- Edward de Vere

Marcus Andronicus --- Arthur Golding / Lord Burghley

Tamoria, queen of Goths --- Mathilde, widow of the German
Keiser Heinrich V, imposed as queen of England by her father,
Saxon king Henry I, in 1127, her arrival in England in 1139
the begin of the age of anarchy (civil wars) / Mary Tudor
"Bloody Mary" supporting the German Keiser Karl V and
marrying Philipp II of Spain

Aaron the Moor --- Black Prince, waged war on France in
1369 / Philipp II of Spain, prosecutor of the Moriscos 'Moors'
and Maranos 'pigs' Jews, turned into a Moor of a Jewish
name in the fiction of the play, perhaps wearing a sign of
the Spanish king on the stage

The play, an allegory condensing five hundred years of
English history and focusing on then recent events, was real
enough to ban the audience and unreal enough to avoid
censorship. In all the mess of lost reality and upturned human
relations one thing becomes apparent: Edward de Vere's
political position. He welcomes the collapse of Karl's Reich,
indicated by the initial speech of Young Lucius demanding
the sacrifice of a Goth who must be dismembered before
being placed on the pyre, symbolizing the breaking apart
of Karl's empire. He supported the English empire,
indicated by the final speech of Young Lucius honoring
Titus Andronicus. And he welcomed the breaking up of
the Spanish hegemony, indicated by Lucius condemning
the Moor of a Jewish name, Philipp II as one of his own
victims ... What appeared to be racism before is now
a sharp satire used as weapon in defending the Moors
and Jews against the 'Christian' monster Philipp II,
bow and arrow of his biting wit, indicated by the two lines
of Horace written down in Act 4 Scene 2

  Integer vitae, scelerisque purus,
  Non eget Mauri jaculis, nec arcu.

by Young Lucius and handed over as weapon. A literary
weapon, the play itself. The promise of a new  order is
made in the two last lines of the play, delivered by
Queen Elizabeth in the guise of Lucius

  Then, afterwards, to order well the state,
  That like events never it ruinate.