The More One Reads Shakespeare, the Moor One Knows
Joe Alwyn (here with Margot Robbie as Queen Elizabeth) plays Robert Dudley in the film “Mary Queen of Scots.”
Shakespeare mirrored contemporaries in his plays, often in unflattering ways. He reserved a particularly sharp pen for Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester.
The Eyes Have It
From the start of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, Leicester enjoyed her favor, achieving power approaching that of a king. She appointed him to her privy council and made him Master of the Horse. He led the Crown’s army against Spain in the Netherlands and commanded its forces during the Spanish Armada.
Leicester was handsome. As Alison Weir has written, he “was almost six feet tall and very attractive; his skin was so dark as to earn him the nickname of ‘the Gypsy,’ a name used by some to refer to his moral character rather than his face.”
As English troops awaited the Spanish Armada, Leicester wrote a letter to Elizabeth, signing it, “your most faythfull & most obedient R. Leycester” with “Eyes” above his signature.
Elizabeth’s nickname for Leicester was “Eyes.” He signed letters to her with ‘ ôô ’ to symbolize the nickname. She also called him “Sweet Robin.” The two spent a lot of time together alone. Commentators agree that if Elizabeth had taken a husband, it would have been Leicester.
The problem was, Sweet Robin already had a wife.
Bird Of Prey
In 1584, Leicester’s enemies published Leicester’s Commonwealth, a book in which they accused Leicester of many evil-doings, including adultery and murder. The book even listed the people he had poisoned.
Leicester’s wife had been found dead at the bottom of a staircase with her neck broken. Leicester’s Commonwealth claimed the earl had hired someone to murder her and make it look like an accident, which would then allow him to marry Elizabeth.
Few could rival Leicester as the realm’s number one domestic villain. Shakespeare would not have been alone in his hatred for the Gypsy.
Beware the Gypsy . . . and the Moor
The Middle English word gypsy, derived from the Greek word for Egyptian, was based on the mistaken belief, prevalent in the Middle Ages, that “gypsies” were nomadic Egyptians. In fact, the Romani people originated in India.
In contrast, the term “Moor” was first applied to indigenous Muslims in Morocco, and later to Arabs and North Africans.
Elizabethans thought of gypsies and Moors as dark and evil. Shakespeare was no exception.
Eyes, Claudius
Scholars since 1898 have viewed Leicester as the model for Claudius in Hamlet.
In his lust for power, Claudius poisons his brother, King Hamlet, and quickly marries the king’s widow, Queen Gertrude, to become King of Denmark, setting the stage for Shakespeare’s great drama. Prince Hamlet, robbed of his kingdom, berates Gertrude, his mother, for marrying Claudius:
“Have you eyes? Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed,
And batten [gorge] on this moor? Ha! have you eyes
You cannot call it love […]”
To paint the dark face of Elizabeth’s favorite, Shakespeare uses two “eyes,” one on each side of “moor.” “Moor” is a homonym for “Moor,” whose middle letters resemble eyes and suggest dark, “gypsy”-like skin.
In Hamlet, Claudius ends up (accidentally?) poisoning his own wife, the Queen. Conceivably, Shakespeare was warning Elizabeth of the same danger if she married Leicester.
It’s no surprise that Hamlet appeared in print only after the deaths of Elizabeth and Leicester. Because the play mirrors members of Elizabeth’s court—and the queen herself, as Gertrude—I have argued that the play was banned during her lifetime.
Moor sweetness
If Shakespeare, as many did, despised Leicester, why stop at Hamlet in dissing him?
The principal villain in Titus Andronicus is Aaron the Moor who, as Leicester was reputed to be, is an adulterer and murderer.
Like Claudius, Aaron engages in an illicit relationship with the Queen. In Titus, her name is Tamora, who invites Aaron to make love to her in a cave, something she says “Dido once enjoy’d.” Dido was the Queen of Carthage in Virgil’s Aeneid. In some sources, Dido is known as “Elissa,” a subtle but clear link to Elizabeth.
Queen Tamora gushes to her lover Aaron: “Ah, my sweet Moor, sweeter to me than life.” Like a pair of eyes, the words “sweet” and “sweeter” surround “Moor” and echo “Sweet Robin.” Aaron himself refers to his own “charming eyes.”
The protagonist in Titus labels Aaron a would-be poisoner:
“Give me thy knife, I will insult on him;
Flattering myself, as if it were the Moor
Come hither purposely to poison me.”
As a slam at Leicester, making Aaron a “gypsy” would have been too obvious. Instead, Shakespeare chose the synonymous disparagement, Moor, which, when accompanied with “charming eyes,” the reference to poison, and the name of the Queen (Tamora aka Elissa), does the job as a marker for Leicester.
Unlike Hamlet, Titus Andronicus was printed and sold while Elizabeth was alive, albeit anonymously. Why did the publishers omit Shakespeare’s celebrated name? The reflection of Leicester and Elizabeth as the sinners Aaron and Tamora offers a plausible explanation.
. . . and Moor poison
In The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice, Othello commits the same act committed by Claudius and Aaron—premeditated murder—and poison is in the picture.
While Shakespeare makes Claudius an actual poisoner who poisons King Hamlet and Gertrude, he initially makes Othello a poisoner in a figurative sense.
One character drills Othello about how he won Desdemona’s heart, asking him, “Did you by indirect and forced courses subdue and poison this young maid’s affections?”
Later in the play, Shakespeare extends this theme by making Othello an actual, would-be poisoner, a further possible warning to Elizabeth about Leicester.
In his state of extreme jealousy and anger, Othello rattles off different ways he could kill Desdemona, settling on poison. He tells Iago, “Get me some poison.” But with no explanation, Iago says, “Do it not with poison, strangle her in her bed.”
If Leicester did murder his wife, poisoning her would have been far too incriminating, which needs no explanation given his reputation as a poisoner.
Iago, whose machinations lead Othello to murder Desdemona and then commit suicide, says:
“The Moor already changes with my poison:
Dangerous conceits are, in their natures, poisons.
Which at the first are scarce found to distaste,
But with a little act upon the blood,
Burn like the mines of Sulphur.”
In the end, Othello is a victim of poison in a figurative sense as much as Claudius is in a literal one. [Indeed, subtext in Henry VI, Part Two suggests Leicester got some of his own medicine and died of poisoning, which is the subject of another blog post.]
Leicester “the Gypsy” was an army general. In that sense, his reflection as the military commander Othello is sharper than his reflection as Claudius and Aaron. All three “Moors” display the disturbing profile of a poisoner (or would-be poisoner), or adulterer, or both, and in all cases a murderer, a profile that matches the description of Leicester in Leicester’s Commonwealth.
Looking into Shakespeare’s mirrors . . . and into the future
As time goes on, researchers likely will continue to identify in Shakespeare’s works further reflections of his contemporaries and events of his day, corroborating Charles Beauclerk’s observation that the plays are “highly political documents” that have significant ramifications for understanding the history of the Elizabethan era.
Studying Shakespeare’s methods for mirroring real people will also enhance the appreciation of his art and the understanding of his plays. It will also advance the Shakespeare authorship debate, giving context to the issue of who was in the best position to create those mirrors—a grain merchant from Stratford-upon-Avon with no court connections, or a courtier who wrote plays and was on intimate terms with Queen Elizabeth?