an old sorceress

Continuing with Medice’s reveal of his story.

“Medice. My lord, when I was young, being able-limb’d,
A captain of the gipsies entertain’d me,
And many years I liv’d a loose life with them;
At last I was so favour’d that they made me
The King of Gipsies; and being told my fortune
By an old sorceress that I should be great
In some great prince’s love, I took the treasure
Which all our company of gipsies had
In many years by several stealths collected;
And leaving them in wars, I liv’d abroad
With no less show than now; and my last wrong
I did to noblesse was in this high Court.

Alphonso. Never was heard so strange a counterfeit.”

An old sorceress, well that would be the Queen. I read ‘the treasure’ as taking credit for the plays. It’s important to note that there are three people involved here; Medice as Shakspere, a great prince as Vere, an old sorceress as Queen Elizabeth.  Now, when the Queen “tells” you your fortune, do you think she’s predicting the future?  Or is she telling him the way things are going to be?

Chapman’s allusion to the Shakespeare Authorship Question advocates certain conclusions. One is that the connection to William Shakspere was not an after-the-fact placement of the Stratford man’s name on the works. Rather, the Stratford man was present when the pen-name was created.  The allusion also involves  the Queens directly in the Authorship Question. It seems clear it is the Queen who tells her subjects how things are going to be.

Earlier in Act V, Strozza lets us know how he really feels about Medice.

“Strozza. Noblesse, my lord ? Set by your princely favour,
That gave the lustre to his painted state,
Who ever view’d him but with deep contempt,
As reading vileness in his very looks?
And if he prove not son of some base drudge,
Trimm’d up by Fortune, being dispos’d to jest. “(V, iv, 194-205)

Shakspere got his lustre from Vere’s princely favour of bestowing his name on the works.

Rambler has pointed out to me that Oxfordian GW Phillips in “The Tragic Story of Shakespeare” (1932) writes of Shakspere, “his name was his fortune.”  His good luck may have begun when Shakspere crossed path’s with the court’s Spear-shaker, Vere. The rest is history.  Or, the ‘jest’ may simply be the ridiculousness of putting the works in the name of an illiterate man. That joke is Shakesperian on its own!

We often here “Why did Oxford choose to….”   Oxford was the Queen’s subject. There are references in the work where the author implies he does not have control of his work. The Queen’s presence at that critical part of the story where Shakspere gains his fortune points to her direct involvement with the decision to Shakspere’s name on the works.

Duke responds to Medice’s story with.

“Never was heard so strange a counterfeit.”

A counterfeit is a ‘fake replica’ per OED.  Is there a better description of William Shakspere of Stratford than “fake replica?”

And there’s that word strange again. You have been reading, Rambler, right?