I liked the comment on the city being it’s greatest threat… Nice twist!

Much bigger than your Running of the Bulls is something that almost no one knows about…namely…Cervantes himself describing the interior of the Ciudadela in Pamplona in precise detail in “Love’s Labors Lost”

The Pamplona web-site used to show the Citadel from the top in the Street Map…but now it doesn’t…so my readers will have to take it on faith that Adriano de Armada (the Armada only fought once in the Adriatic…at the Battle of Lepanto)is Cervantes desccribing the Ciudadela. Could you send me an overview of this King’s Garden.

Thank you, David Yuhas

*******************

Here we continue with some pertinent, & grown-up Shakespeare.

By way of introduction let me present two passages from my book, “The Shakespeare-Cervantes Code…that deal with the most mind-bending of Shakespearean plays, “Love’s Labor’s Lost”

Like a “Hidden Image Stereogram” “LLL” presents itself as one thing…an onslaught of verbal pyrotechnics…that have prompted critics, who don’t know what to make of it, as “an immature, early work” & a “failed comedy”.

Hidden in deep cover, however, is a work of such towering majesty that it stands up to the Mahabarata…which even the most uncomprehending Academic is not going to describe as a “failed comedy”

Armado’s description of a park-like garden is a case in point…

A GARDEN IN NAVARRE

In Act One, Scene One of Shakespeare’s “Love’s Labors Lost”, there is a report of an incident in the king’s garden…”yclept” or “called” the king’s “park”.

The incident is reported to have taken place “north-north-east & by east, from the west corner of thy curious-knotted garden”.

A garden, to be called a “park”, to begin with, must be a very large garden. It could not merely be a garden in a courtyard. A garden with a “west corner”, moreover, is one in a thousand…it suggests a square laid out diagonally. In this case, however, the garden would not have a north-north-eastern side…it would have a north-eastern side.

To have a north-north-east-running side, the garden would have to have more sides than four. The incident being reported was that of a couple seen romantically involved in the king’s garden, for some reason “by east” of the “north-north-eastern” side of thegarden…an unnecessary touch, it would seem, by an author not given to throwaway lines. Academe has always assumed this garden to be a figment of theauthor’s imagination, located in French Navarre, ruled by the witty, erudite & famous, King Henry of Navarre, called “Ferdinand” for the purpose of the play.

There are, however, a number of problems identifying Henry with “Ferdinand”.

“Ferdinand”, to begin with, typically, is the name of a Spanish, not a Navarrese royal. The king’s father, moreover, is identified as”Charles”…while Henry’s dad was an “Anthony”.

“Ferdinand”, on all of four occasions, is called “the Duke”…& Henry of Navarre was never anything but a King of Navarre. The reader who is a keen Shakespearean may agree with me when I say that if there is one area where the author never errs it is on matters of royal protocol. During the Elizabethan era, there were, infact, two Navarres, the kingdom on the French side ofthe Pyrenees & a something like duchy on the Spanish side.

Original Navarre, Navarre proper, formerly called “Pamplona” & before that “Pompaelo”, as it was founded as a Roman fortress by Pompey the Great in 69 BC, was annexed by King Ferdinand of Spain & ruled by a Viceroy until 1833. The King of Spain during most of the Elizabethan era was Philip II, whose father was indeed a “Charles”, Charles V, & who, when in Navarre, might well have been called “the Duke”.

The garden in “LLL” is almost certainly the garden enclosed by the pentagonal “Citadel” in Pamplona, Spanish Navarre…a structure built by Philip II in 1570. A thirty meter-wide military road running between the garden & the wall would explain very well why the lovers in the play would drift “by east” of the north-north-eastern road. If this is so obvious then,why does Academe seem so clueless?

My “Arden” copy of “LLL” has a bibliography containing 157 entries,none with any objection to Navarre’s garden being imaginary. The problem here, I submit, is the man identified as the author, “William Shakespeare”.

Not only is the garden described a real garden, but theauthor is letting the tuned-in reader in on a little secret. A pentagon with a “west” corner will not have a “north”, “south”, or “east” corner. A “west” corner, inthis case, is a unique compass point. Between 1587 &1604, Spain & England were at war…& “LLL” was published in 1598.

Setting this bittersweet, romantic comedy inside a major, enemy, military installation, not to mention a royal residence, is wonderfully wicked! Clearly, only someone who had been inside the Citadel could have written “LLL”.

Now Stratford Will, 1564-1616 (the illiterate identified by Harvard & Yale as the author of “LLL”), or any other English author for that matter, would have had to have seen the inside of the Citadel in Pamplona between 1572, when the fortress,with its garden, was first in place….& 1587, at the outbreak of the war. In 1572, Stratford Will was a mere eight years old…& it would not be until 1590 that the butcher’s apprentice ever left Stratford.

“Hmmmm”, you may say. Exactly!

To see what Academe has been missing during the past 400 years, try the web site “www.pamplona.net”…click on “street plan” or “Plano Callejero”…..activate the “hand” icon on the right…place your cursor on the lower left of the plan & drag it to the upper right…& there you are…the Garden in “LLL”.

(Something has happened to the Pamplona web-site since I wrote my book…& while there is still a link to the street plan, I have not been able to bring it up. They do show an aerial view of the Citadel with its walls…but you would have to take my word for it that Armado’s description of the King’s Garden is EXACTLY that of the Ciudadela…& I don’t want you to have to do that)

*******************