Inspirations: The Shakespeare Code

The Shakespeare Code is this year's Celebrity Historical. Its writer - Gareth Roberts - is a fan of Shakespeare and his contemporaries like Christopher Marlowe and Robert Greene, and had featured Greene in a Ninth Doctor DWM comic strip - A Groatsworth of Wit. (This was named after a tract written by Greene, published posthumously in 1592. It contains lines which are taken to be critical of Shakespeare - implying he is riding on the coat-tails of his elders and betters in the theatre business: "an upstart crow beautified with our feathers...").

The villains of this comic strip were the Shadeys, who were similar in appearance to the Carrionites, and one of whom was named Uncle Bloodfinger. The TV episode has a Mother Doomfinger and Mother Bloodtide.

It was only a matter of time before the Doctor met the Bard of Avon on screen. He had been telling us about meetings since his Fourth incarnation - proclaiming him a terrible actor (Planet of Evil), and physically writing out the first draft of Hamlet as the poet had sprained his wrist writing sonnets (City of Death).

These meetings must have happened with an older Shakespeare, as he clearly doesn't know the Doctor here.

Shakespeare had been seen once before - on the Time Space Visualiser in The Chase. The Doctor and companions had witnessed him speaking with Queen Elizabeth (who also makes her second on screen appearance here) about the character of Falstaff, then getting inspiration from Sir Francis Bacon to write Hamlet. In this instance it was History teacher Barbara who had shown interest in the poet rather than the Doctor himself.

The series' first Celebrity Historical had been The Unquiet Dead, in which the Doctor had met Charles Dickens. This episode had featured references to Dickens' work. The villains of the piece are the ghost-like Gelth, and Dickens was known for his ghost stories - most famously A Christmas Carol and The Signal Man, which are both specifically mentioned in dialogue.

The Shakespeare Code takes the same tack with its main subject. The villains this time are witch-like creatures - Carrionites - and Shakespeare wrote about witches in Macbeth (1606) and in The Tempest (1611).

The story is set in 1599, so neither of these plays has been written yet. Rather than the writer encounter creatures he is already familiar with, that spring from his own works, he is getting his initial inspiration to include them here.

In reality witches were included in Macbeth to please King James, who had a big thing about them - as a much later story will also cover. There are three "wyrd women" in the play - and there are three Carrionites in this episode.

The name "Carrionite" obviously derives from 'carrion' - the decaying flesh of dead animals. Scavengers feed on this, among them the Carrion Crow, and the Carrionites are given a black bird-like appearance in their natural form.

Shakespeare is presented as an Elizabethan rock star - Dean Lennox Kelly's performance based on Robbie Williams and Liam Gallagher.

When the Doctor and Martha first meet him he mentions that they can't be sketched with him - a joke about people getting 'selfies' with the famous.

Martha is described as coming from Freedonia - the fictitious country which features in the 1933 Marx Brothers comedy Duck Soup.

The script is full of Shakespeare play titles and lines - some already written, which the Bard recognises, and some he hasn't written yet - so is remembering these events later. There is also the odd line from a completely different poet - such as "Rage against the dying of the light..." which comes from Dylan Thomas' 1947 poem Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night; and the use of "Expelliarmus!" from the Harry Potter books. The Doctor mentions the seventh book of this series - but not its title, as it hadn't been published yet.

The episode begins on the night of a performance of Love's Labours Lost (first performed in 1597). Of course, Shakespeare's Globe plays were never performed at night - always in the afternoons.

Shakespeare then announces his next work to be a sequel - Love's Labours Won (a working title for this episode, which was also known as "Theatre of Doom" at one point - probably a nod towards the Vincent Price classic Theatre of Blood, which revolves around bizarre Shakespearean deaths).

Love's Labours Won is the famous 'lost' play, mentioned in a list of Shakespeare's comedies by his contemporary Francis Meres in 1598. It is mentioned again in a printer's list of 1603 as having been published.

One popular theory is that it is simply one of his known plays under a discarded title - The Taming of the Shrew, As You Like It or Much Ado About Nothing. It is known that the latter went under a different name for a time - "Benedick and Beatrice".

On finding a horse skull among the props, the Doctor says it reminds him of a Sycorax - as encountered in The Christmas Invasion. Shakespeare remembers this word and uses it for the witch who was Caliban's mother in The Tempest.

Shakespeare thinks "To be, or not to be..." rather pretentious. He will use it in Hamlet, of course, which was inspired in part by the death of his son Hamnet - the incident which lies behind the Carrionite influence over him.

The Sonnets have as their subject more than one person. The first 126 seem to be addressed to a young man ("Fair Youth") and it has long been thought that Shakespeare was either gay or bisexual. At different times he flirts with both Martha and the Doctor, prompting the Doctor to comment on these theories ("57 academics just punched the air...").

Martha is likened to the "Dark Lady" - another subject of the Sonnets (numbers 127 - 152).

He specifically quotes Sonnet 18 to her - "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day..." - which is actually addressed to the "Fair Youth".

The Doctor advises the poet not to rub his head too much - referring to the fact that images of Shakespeare depict him as bald.

He also gives him a ruff to act as a support collar for his sore neck - another distinctive part of the Shakespeare image.

The young man Wiggins wooing Lilith reminds us of Romeo and Juliet.

Shakespeare recognises the Doctor's cry of "Once more unto the breach..." from his own Henry V.

The Elephant Inn which appears here was mentioned in Twelfth Night as being in the southern suburbs - which would fit with the Southwark location of the Globe theatre.

William Kempe (c.1560 - c.1603) played comic parts in a number of Shakespeare's plays, such as Costard and Dogberry. He is said to have left the company in early 1599, for reasons unknown. One theory is that he was angry at being told to cut down on his improvisational comedy antics. He later danced all the way from London to Norfolk. That didn't kill him - but the plague did.

Richard Burbage (c.1567 - 1613) played the serious leading parts.

Peter Street (1553 - 1609) was a carpenter and builder involved in the building of several theatres, including the Globe. However, he died 10 years after the events depicted in this episode.

It should be remembered that the Globe was not a special build, as depicted here. The theatre was originally built in the north of the City. When the rent was greatly increased the owners dismantled it and moved it to Southwark - outwith the City's jurisdiction - and reassembled it, practically overnight.

The Master of Revels in 1599 was actually Edmund Tylney - who also survived into the next century (dying in 1610).

Lilith is named after a Mesopotamian demon. She mentions the Eternals - from 1983's Enlightenment.

There are two references to Silver Nemesis - the Doctor advising Martha to "walk as though you own the place" mirrors what he advised Ace to do at Windsor Castle, plus the TARDIS dematerialising with an arrow stuck in it.

The final lines of the lost play mention "Dravidian shores". Dravidians were an ethnic group who originated in Southern Asia (South India and Sri Lanka). The name was used for an unseen race mentioned in The Brain of Morbius. Solon's servant Condo had been rescued from a crashed Dravidian spaceship.

Burbage has the line: "The eye should have contentment where it rests...". This is actually a line from The Crusades, as spoken by Princess Joanna in reference to Vicki.