PAINTING SIX
THIS ETERNAL BLAZON MUST NOT BE
This eternal blazon must not be, Oil on linen, 30 x 40 x 7/8 in (76.20 x 101.60 x 2.222 cm), Click on image for lightbox view.
Once a production has been fully rehearsed, the acting company will move from the rehearsal spaces into the theatre and begin rehearsing the production onstage. In these “technical” rehearsals, all of the design elements are seen together, in situ, for the first time. Costumes are worn and quick changes rehearsed, the scenery is moved about and checked for sight-lines and sound and lighting cues are timed with the dialogue and programmed into their systems. Once all of these elements have been choreographed into the framework of the play, the actors run the play multiple times, hopefully until all mistakes and timing issues are corrected, in preparation for the public performances.
The moment of the play portrayed in this painting is from Act I Scene V, Hamlet’s conversation with the Ghost of his father, the recently deceased king, in which he learns that Claudius killed him while he slept, by pouring poison in his ear, curdling the blood in his veins. De Vere’s own father died suddenly when he was twelve years old, having had no health problems previously. It was rumored at the time that he too may been killed by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester who was known to have a gift for poison making, having been suspected at court of other mysterious deaths. After his death, since Edward de Vere was only twelve years old and a ward of the crown, Queen Elizabeth gave Robert Dudley a considerable share of de Vere’s inherited lands outright, robbing him of his inheritance just as Hamlet was robbed of his throne.
The scenic design for this part of the play conflates the seaside landscape of Hamlet’s Kronborg Castle in Denmark - replete with the Northern Lights in the sky that would have been seen during this part of the year - with Castle Hedingham, the Oxford ancestral home, symbolizing Oxford and Hamlet’s compromised inheritance. The proscenium of the theatre space itself is a direct reproduction of the printers block used on the title page of Hamlet in the first folio which is rife with V’s. The sconce on the wall which also echos this ornament is capped on both ends by symbolic Earl’s coronets (with pearl tipped points).
Printers block decorative motif from title page of Hamlet in First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays 1623
The word blazon, in the title of the painting, is a heraldic term meaning the verbal description of a pictorial coat of arms, listed in a very specific order, using arcane words for colors, shapes and animals represented therein. Because of its relation to an inherited honor it is also a metaphor for legacy, fatherhood and ancestry - this is what the ghost means in this context - that this false narrative of him dying naturally “must not be”. That the truth of his death and Hamlet’s unjust disinheritance must be brought to light and avenged. The shaft of clear light coming from the lighting instrument represents this bringing the truth to light.
The other compositional elements of this painting also relate to father figures in de Vere’s intellectual life. Two of the books in the foreground are direct literary influences for many of Shakespeare’s plays: Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Beowulf. In Metamorphoses, Anna Perenna drowns herself in a river, as does Ophelia in Hamlet, and in Beowulf, the hero defeats Grendell a treacherous monster in Heorot (ancient Denmark), much as Hamlet defeats a treacherous Claudius, King of Denmark. Oxford’s uncle and his tutor during part of his wardship, Arthur Golding, translated the version of Metamorphoses that serves as Shakespeare’s inspiration. It is even postulated that Oxford himself translated Ovid as part of his Latin studies, reinforced by his being named as the English Ovid by multiple contemporaneous writers. And one of Oxford’s earlier tutors, Thomas Nowell, possessed the singular copy of Beowulf in all of England (his own handwritten translation).
The third book in the foreground is the first published edition of Shakespeare’s sonnets. It is agreed upon by Oxfordians and Stratfordians alike that the fair youth of the sonnets is Henry Wriothesly, 3rd Earl of Southhampton. The first grouping of sonnets written to the fair youth have a fatherly tone, and are encouraging him to have a child. The very first line of the sonnets even seems to suggest this: From fairest creatures we desire increase. It is speculated that this could have actually been a device on the author’s part, to ask Southampton to sire an offspring not for him (de Vere had been injured in a swordfight, and likely made sterile as a result). Thus the book is included here as an indicator of de Vere’s own experience in trying to produce a legitimate male heir or perhaps even writing to his own son about having a child of his own. Theories abound, but the paternal tone of many of the sonnets is undeniable.