Sultana Isabel of England employed an international spy called Adam Amen who wrote plays, poetry and speeches under the pseudonym of William Shakespeare.
Yet another conspiracy theory? No, an allegorical flight of fancy.
Often much truth is embedded in fiction. Sultan Ahmed Al-Mansur of Morocco, a very rich and powerful state in the 16th century, gave Elizabeth I the name of Sultana Isabel before he sent his ambassador Abd al-Wahid bin Muhammad al-Annuri to London to forge an Anglo-Moroccan alliance against Spain, Elizabeth's bitterest enemy.
The Pope had excommunicated Elizabeth I in 1570. There were cordial relations between England with advanced Islam from Morocco to Syria, Istanbul and Persia.
Shakespeare was many men in one man, meant to horde of things to diverse people.
'William Shakespeare' was Elizabeth's spindoctor, business partner and a military adviser. In the Chandos Portrait he looks like a courtier and a Don Juan. We can only imagine who he has, for we know next to nothing about Shakespeare the writer.
He was well-connected with the rich world mighty Catholic Spain, Morocco, Venice, Istanbul, Syria and Persia. His grandfather, a graduate of Magdalen College Oxford, migrated to Spain around 1495 to seek his fortune.
He became wealthy and powerful through spying for Elizabeth I.
Shakespeare mentions Tunis and Carthage, Morocco and Algeria favourably, but he makes Shylock in the Merchant of Venice an ugly Jew. The settlement of Jews in Venice during the Renaissance produced the work Ghetto. Some say he had Jewish blood in him.
John's daughter Anna bore the natural son of Emir(Prince) Ali in Toledo in Spain. She was persuaded to return home to Penzance in Cornwall, which had good trade connections with Spain, Venice and the Muslim world. Adam Amen grew up as a Cornish boy and went to Oxford.
His father was an Arab prince was kept as a family secret. The perception of an Arab prince as romantic was alive till about 50 years ago.
Shakespeare's was a long snaking multinational ancestry. In his veins flowed Chinese-Malay-Persian-Turkish-Arab-English blood.
Adam's far distant grandmother was beautiful Chinese coutesan Li who was stranded in Malacca in the 15th Century. She had sailed with Admiral Cheng Ho to Malacca from whence she would sail in an Arab ship to Madras and thence to the great Shah's Harem in Isfahan, Persia.
She was two weeks pregnant when she set sail for the Persian Court. The biological father of the child was a Malay Prince of Malacca.
The child was born in Persia as a Persian Prince. When he grew up, the prince went as a trader to Macedonia. In 1505 he settled in Istanbul as a very prosperous merchant dealing in gold, silk, coffee and spices with wealthy Venice. His trade extended to Spain, the Barbary Coast and England.
Emir Adam Amen born in New Jerusalem, Toledo in Spain, was a descendant of this Persian Prince who claimed to be an Arab. He had a swarthy skin and generally the appearance of an Arab, a Jew, an Italian or a Spaniard.
'Shakespeare' the elder had been recruited to join Elizabeth's Secret Service.
Shakespeare, or Adam Amen, wrote plays to promote the Tudors' legitimacy.
Besides small Greek and less Latine, he was thoroughly conversant with Eastern religions and civilisations. He was a universal man. His teaming brain saw Cortes' Pacific Ocean, fabled Cathay and spices galore in the Far East.
In particular, it was not the Protestant wind that defeat the Spanish Armada in 1588. Sir Francis Drake and the myriad spies in the employ of Elizabeth, had spooked the Spanish ships. Also bribery played a key role in the defeat. Not one ship made landfall.
Now Shakespeare became a man most wanted by Spain. But who was Shakespeare?Indubitably not the actor.
The writer had several different signatures, all different from the signature on the Will of the actor. None knew who he was or where he lived.
He concealed his identity, vast wealth and powerful connections with Venice and the Muslim world and his own illegitimacy. His reclusivity produced plays and poems beyond compare. He seemed to have had so many different names. The only thing we know about him is that he was a genius with pen and the English Language.
The epitaph on Shakespeare's grave in Holy Trinity Church in Stratfor-upon -Avon forbids us to dig up his grave or his past. Shakespeare the actor,had a little to hide, but Prince Amen did have a lot to hide. His shallow grave and cause of death remain a mystery.
Good friend for Jesus sake forbeare,
To dig the dust enclosed here.
Blessed be the man that spares these stones
And cursed be he that moves my bones.
If Shakespeare was a woman, the Elizabeth I herself could well have been the writer. Shakespeare's sexual orientation is ambivalent.
Long before his death, in Sonnet Number 71, he declared that he wished to remain anonymous foa all time. To protect his family and wealth, he wanted to vanish into thin air (to use his own words).
The shallow three-feet deep grave in Holy Trinity Church is that of the actor, not the writer. Perhaps the writer is buried in New Jerusalem in Toledo, or not far from St Sophia in Istanbul or in Venice.
Here is the sonnet:
No longer mourn for me when I am dead
Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
Give warning to the world that I am fled
From this vile world with vildest worms to dwell;
Nay, if you read this line, remember not
The hand that writ it, for I love you so,
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
If thinking on me then should make you woe.
O if (I say) you look upon this verse,
When I (perhaps) compounded am with clay,
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse,
But let your love even with my life decay
Lest the wise world should look into your moan.
And mock you with me after I am gone.
The actor William Shakespeare worked for Queen Elizabeth's Secret Service. He was well paid and required to say he wrote the plays and poems. He was a ghost writer in reverse. But he was forbidden to publish most of the plays in his life time, apart from the sonnets in 1509. The 'foul papers', remnant copies of actor's scripts, were collected and published 1623 as the first Folio.
Shakespeare's story has myriad possibilities for the imagination based on facts.
So many different bloods run in everyone's veins. 'Shakespeare' was no exception. His life was the Tempest. Eve is in all of us. Life, a Tempest, has its sound and fury soon reduced to nothing, but a walking shadow. The President of the Mortals sooner or later finishes his sport with us all. His last play Henry VIII predicted Elizabeth I would crown each day with a great deed, a description which befits out own Elizabeth II.
He had a unique intellect which developed and fully exploited the nascent English Languages. Traditionally he shares his birth and death anniversaries with Shakespeare the Actor, but he was much older than the Actor.
His life was full of magic, alchemy, goblins, caliban from Algeria. Life, a tempest, has its sound and fury but in the end it is but a walking shadow,a brief candle.
Shakespeare the actor had to make scripts in his own handwriting,hence inconsistencies in the plays.
The signature on his will is different from his other signatures.
Could they be the signatures of the writer? A hand-writing expert could shed light on this.
Ben Johnson a fellow dramatist and spy, addressed Shakespeare as 'Mr. Shakespeare' but his reference was to the actor, and not to his fellow spy. Like Captain Blood, the stealer of the Crown Jewels, Ben Johnson must have been a spy.
Shakespeare's death was also his re-birth. In the end was his beginning. The Great Bard was born when Shakespeare the actor died.
Happy Birthday, Great Prince!
And so to bed
Dy Raiss
Email:dyraiss@hotmail.com
