© Gunnar Tómasson

19 September 2015.

The “First Rave Review“ of

Shakespeare

Francis Meres, one year younger than Shakespeare, described himself as „Maister of Arte of both Universities“; in 1598, Meres published a work which has proven most valuable in dating Shakespeare’s plays, for he mentions many of them, and in the most laudatory terms.

In Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury, Meres begins by praising Shakespeare’s poetry — the two narrative poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, and the Sonnets — then compares Shakespeare to Plautus in comedy and to Seneca in tragedy. (http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Foyer/citing/)

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I. Open text

29693 = As the soule of Euphorbus was thought to liue in Pythagoras:

29189 = So the sweete wittie soule of Ouid liues in mellifluous &

10860 = hony-tongued Shakespeare,

13942 = witnes his Venus and Adonis,

26624 = his Lucrece, his sugred Sonnets among his private friends,

      100 = & c.

110408 

I. Hidden text

105113 = Platonic World Soul [1]

5255 = Pythagoras

-6960 = Jarðlig skilning – Earthly understanding [2]

7000 = Microcosmos – Creation/Man in God’s Image  

110804                                 

II. Open text

18593 = As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best

15496 = for Comedy and Tragedy among the Latines:

12424 = so Shakespeare among y English

21891 = is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage;

24098 = for Comedy, witnes his Ge’tleme’ of Verona, his Errors,

22072 = his Love labors lost, his Love labours wonne,

21969 = his Midsummers night dreame, & his Merchant of Venice:

19872 – for Tragedy, his Richard the 2. Richard the 3. Henry the 4.         

23346 = King John, Titus Andronicus and his Romeo and Juliet.

179761

II. Hidden text

         7 = Man-Beast of Seventh Day

360 = Devil’s Circle

179294 = Shugborough Monument [3]

     100 = The End

179761

III. Open text

9412 = As Epius Stolo said,

26151 = that the Muses would speak with Plautus tongue,

15096 = if they would speak Latin: so I say

29618 = that the Muses would speak with Shakespeares fine filed phrase,

12778 = if they would speake English.

93055

III. Hidden text

       10 = Father/Ten-speaking Head

5321 = Romulus

3436 = Remus

14209 = Quintus Horatius Flaccus

12337 = Publius Virgilius Maro

11999 = Sextus Propertius

11249 = Publius Ovidius Naso

11359 = Snorri Sturluson

9814 = Sturla Þórðarson

5385 = Francis Bacon

7936 = Edward Oxenford

93055

I + II + III = 110408 + 179761 + 93055 = 383224

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Hidden text

Love labours wonne.

(Wikipedia)

Love’s Labour’s Won is a play written by William Shakespeare before 1598. The play appears to have been published by 1603, but no copies are known to have survived. One theory holds that it is a lost work, possibly a sequel to Love’s Labour’s Lost. Another theory is that the title is an alternative name for a known Shakespeare play.

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Open text I

383224 = I + II + III

57540 = Jesus Crucified [4]

34740 = Sword Sent by Jesus [5]

10284 = Love labours wonne

485788

Open text II

 4819 = Gylfaginning [2]

– 4000 = Man as Dark Sword

484969 = The Genius of Antiquity – Prince Hamlet as William Shakespeare [6]

485788

[1] The numerical value of Platonic World Soul, 105113, is the sum of 34 numerical values which are derived from the tonal scale according to the so-called Traditional Construction of the World Soul. See Plato´s Mathematical Imagination by Robert Brumbaugh – a book issued in 1954 and accessible on the Internet. See p. 229.

[2] In Preface to Edda, Snorri Sturluson distinguishes between Jarðlig skilning (Earthly understanding) and the “gift” of Andlig spekðin (Spiritul wisdom). Gylfaginning is a mythical account of how the “gift‘ is acquired by Gylfi, King of Sweden become Gangleri by metamorphosis.

[3] See Wikipedia on the Shugborough Hall Monument and Inscription. The Cipher Value of 179294 is that of the following poem which was read in Parliament in 1762 at the death og George Anson, a member of the family which raised the Shugborough Monument around 1748:

17361 = Upon that storied marble cast thine eye.

15188 = The scene commands a moralising sigh.

14189 = E’en in Arcadia’s bless’d Elysian plains,

22857 = Amidst the laughing nymphs and sportive swains,

18540 = See festal joy subside, with melting grace,

14427 = And pity visit the half-smiling face;

21938 = Where now the dance, the lute, the nuptial feast,

19696 = The passion throbbing in the lover’s breast,

16971 = Life’s emblem here, in youth and vernal bloom,

18127 = But reason’s finger pointing at the tomb.

179294

[4] Inscription on the Cross of Jesus in the Four Gospels of the New Testament in the King James Bible of 1611:

16777 = THIS IS IESVS THE KING OF THE IEWES (Matt. 27:37)

9442 = THE KING OF THE IEWES (Mark 15:26)

13383 = THIS IS THE KING OF THE IEWES (Luke 23:38)

17938 = IESVS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE IEWES (John 19:19)

57540

[5] Matt. 10:4

19148 = Thinke not that I am come to send peace on earth:

15592 = I came not to send peace, but a sword.

34740

[6] In 1598 an unknown author of considerable talent and great charm wrote a series of satires, which he called Scialetheia, or A Shadow of Truth. In his snapdragon verses he described the vanity of the times. Staying late after the play at the Curtain, he had the wit to see that the dark theatre, vast and secret, represented something unfathomably precious. (Robert Payne, By Me, William Shakespeare, 1980, p. 75):

13328 = The City is the map of vanities,

16587 = The mart of fools, the magazin of gulls,

20512 = The painter’s shop of Anticks: walk in Paul’s

18826 = And but observe the sundry kinds of shapes

21682 = Th’ wilt swear that London is as rich in apes

14080 = As Africa Tabraca. One wries his face.

20587 = This fellow’s wry neck is his better grace.

14586 = He coined in newer mint of fashion,

24232 = With the right Spanish shrug shows passion.

15935 = There comes on in a muffler of Cadiz beard,

19993 = Frowning as he would make the world afeard;

18479 = With him a troop all in gold-daubed suits,

19235 = Looking like Talbots, Percies, Montacutes,

21589 = As if their very countenances would swear

17842 = The Spaniard should conclude a peace for fear:

17567 = But bring them to a charge, then see the luck,

23345 = Though but a false fire, they their plumes will duck.

21733 = What marvel, since life’s sweet? But see yonder,

14906 = One like the unfrequented Theatre

18199 = Walks in vast silence and dark solitude.

20492 = Suited to those black fancies which intrude

19795 = Upon possession of his troubled breast:

19151 = But for black’s sake he would look like a jest,

15724 = For he’s clean out of fashion: what he?

14513 = I think the Genius of antiquity,

14586 = Come to complain of our variety

   7465 = Of fickle fashions.

484969

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Calculator for converting letters to cipher values is at:

http://www.light-of-truth.com/ciphersaga.htm