Thomas Seymour in The Rape of Lucrece

  

An Interpretation of Page 37 (lines 666-686) of The Rape of Lucrece

This paper presents an interpretation of page 37 (lines 666-686) of Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucrece that presents possible hidden meanings of the lines.¹ The interpretation relies primarily on translating certain key words into Latin and, in a few cases, French, and by tracing the etymology of words. The exercise of translating words into Latin and French is not intended to produce an accurate word-for-word, line-by-line translation of the poem into those languages. In fact, if that were done, the translation would obscure the hidden meaning buried in the poem. The translation exercise simply treats each word to be translated as single isolated words, and no attempt is made to conjugate or determine declensions. Often the translation results need to be combined in various ways to achieve meaning.

This method presupposes that the reader/decipher has some general knowledge of the hidden messages concealed in the poem. In other words, it the messages are meant for someone “in the know.” Specifically, the reader/decipher is presumed to understand that poem hides the fact that Lady Elizabeth Tudor (later Queen Elizabeth) had an illicit sexual relationship with Thomas Seymour, 1^st Baron Seymour of Sudeley, Lord High Admiral, and that that relationship produced a child who became Edward de Vere, 17^th Earl of Oxford. The method of interpretation is that the reader/decipher is supposed to transform words, primarily into Latin, to arrive at a meaning that fits the presupposed expectation. Of course, a criticism of this is that the interpretation “cherry-picks” Latin translations to fit a presupposed meaning. The rebuttal to that criticism is “yes, that’s how it works.”

This interpretation presupposes that messages are hidden in the poem, essentially through steganography (i.e., hiding information in plain sight), with the general message known but veiled for plausible deniability by the author and reader. The interpretation is not meant to be a proof of a rigorously applied set of rules for decipherment. The method is not objective. The only evidentiary weight that can be given to the method presented in this paper is to the extent that it reveals a convincing, coherent hidden alternative narrative that fits with the hypothesis that Lady Elizabeth Tutor and Thomas Seymour had a sexual relationship that produced Edward de Vere. Whether the method reveals such a coherent alternative narrative would benefit by application of the method to the entirety of the poem, which is not the purpose of this paper. Since the analysis of just one page of the poem requires many pages, an analysis of the entire poem would be a daunting task that must wait for another time. Even if the task were to be completed, it is doubtful that the results would be considered sufficient evidence convince anyone in the different factions in the very acrimonious Shakespeare authorship battle. So, it is ultimately up to the reader of this paper to decide if the interpretation has any merit.

With that, on to the interpretation.

The name Seymour, referring to Thomas Seymour, 1^st Baron Seymour of Sudeley, is hidden at lines 666-668 of the poem. The name begins at line 666, which is the number of the Antichrist

in the Book of Revelation, so it seems that Thomas Seymour is being compared to the Devil, as is Tarquin later in the poem (see line 847 of the poem, not shown).

The name Seymour can be found in these lines:

So let thy thoughts low vassals to thy state,

No more quoth he, by Heauen I will not heare thee.

Yeeld to my loue, if not inforced hate,

In steed of loues coy tutch shall rudelie teare thee.

 

In particular, the hidden name is centered on these letters:

The word “No” can be translated into Latin as nullus (null).² In classical cryptography, a null is an extra character intended to confuse the cryptanalyst. One needs to discard null characters to decrypt the message.³ Therefore, if the word “No” is meant to be read as a null character for decryption, then it can be ignored. (A cancel symbol is shown over the word “No” in the image above to indicate it should be ignored.) When the word is removed, the message reads:

The solution can be further modified to arrive at the correct spelling of Seymour. The instructions to modify the solution are found in the lines –

So let thy thoughts low vassals to thy state,

No more quoth he, by Heauen I will not heare thee.

Yeeld to my loue, if not inforced hate,

In steed of loues coy tutch shall rudelie teare thee.

The word “love” is amour in French and amor in Latin. If the word “Yeeld” (yield⁴), in “Yeeld to my love,” is read as an instruction for decipherment and is given the meaning “to give up one’s place to another,” then it allows a word meaning “love,” specifically the French word amour, to be inserted into the decryption, in place of the word “more,” so that the solution becomes—

a Seymour

It might also be possible to include the name Thomas into the solution if the letter Y in “Yeeld” is read as a thorn. A “thorn” can refer to the runic letter þ, used in Old English, Middle English, and Old Norse manuscripts to represent both the voiceless sound (th) of Modern English thin and the voiced sound (th) of Modern English this.⁵ In Elizabethan times, the capital letter Y was used to represent a thorn (th). For example, “Ye olde bookshop” is read as “The old bookshop.” Thus, the letters may conceal the name Thomas to reveal the name Thomas Seymour–

S

amour Thomas

Th

Regarding “thornes, it is useful to take a brief detour in the poem. “Thornes” are mentioned in lines 491-494 of the poem:

I see what crosses my attempt will bring,

I know what thornes the growing rose defends,

I thinke the honie garded with a sting,

All this before-hand counsell comprehends.

(Emphasis added.)

The first thing to note is that lines include the words “rose” and “cross.” This is probably a reference to the Rosicricians or the Brotherhood of the Rose Cross. It seems that Edward de Vere was associated with this secret society. Furthermore, the name Seymour is hidden here in the words “I see … sting.” The word “sting” can be translated into Latin as morsus (to sting, bite),⁶ and when that is combined with “see,” it reveals “see-morsus, a nonsense word that sounds like Seymour. Also, the three capital letter I’s at the beginning of the first three lines look like a Roman numeral three, and the letter C is the third letter of the alphabet, thus C-morsus (Seymour) can be found again. Perhaps the lines are alluding to the fact that the secret of Elizabeth’s (the Tudor Rose) true relationship with Thomas Seymour is being hidden, sub rosa, by Edward de Vere and the Rosicrucian Brotherhood, behind wordplay and symbols like “thornes” in the poem and other works.

1 The page numbering shown (page 37), includes the four introductory pages — title page, blank, dedication, and “The Argument” — in the count. In other words, the first page of the poem is numbered page 5.

2 Charlton T. Lewis, Charles Short,  A Latin Dictionary, nullus. (n.d.). https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0059:entry=nullus.

3 Wikipedia contributors. (2024b, November 29). Null cipher. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_cipher.

4 In the plain meaning of the poem, yield means “to surrender or submit.” Another meaning of yield is “to give forth or supply (a product, result, etc), esp by cultivation, labour, etc; produce or bear.” Therefore, the word yield may allude to producing or bearing a child, specifically Edward de Vere.

5 thorn. (n.d.). In TheFreeDictionary.com. https://www.thefreedictionary.com/thorn.

6 morsus - Wiktionary, the free dictionary. (n.d.). Wiktionary. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/morsus.