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@Rubsy requested this be uploaded, we have some ideas about Shakespeare that we may create across the forum soon.

[kFoyauextlH]

Awesome, please do!

[Rubsy]

Okay I would like to describe my new found revived interest in Shakespeare. So after watching a few documentaries on Elizabeth the first, coming to it with this ideal that she was the first intellectual monarch misunderstood but determined, the normal potrayl given in the films. She had the body of a woman but the heart of a man etc, she sacraficed her normal womanhood for her country etc etc. I thought wow Elizabeth is a great feminist icon.
I looked up some books on her reign and found they were quite disparaging. I thought how could they be so about this Great Queen that even Thatcher tried to emulate. I of course on the youtube search engine was linked to Shakespeare.  I found his life and times documentary from thee BBC to be a great eye opener about the life for ordinary folk in this time. What was shocking was the parallels with this time, ie leading to a police state under Lord Cecil’s control. Even the Great Marlowe playright of Dr Faustus was coopted into being a spy for Elizabeth and England. This was a time where Catholic art in churches eere confiscated by the Crown and muriels were white washed , pagan festivals banned. The coming together and the meeting places were taken away in the name of being pure. Common lands were take away in Warickshire, protesters were just mowed down, ketts rebellion 1601 and 1549. The executioners built on their skills for keeping people alive whilst they ripped their guts out and chopped their limbs off.  Imagine what it was like coming from a stable peasant society, with all the art and comunity places taken away, white washed and forced into the cities to trade in illegal wool, with every second person being a spy for the Crown.
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[video=youtube]https://youtu.be/0_CsyUpMlvY[/video]

[kFoyauextlH]

History often gets lots of rosey retrospection, also in the interest of National Pride.

It was not a very good time or safe or healthy time for the people of England.

Monarchy was very bad, and the world has been improving in many ways, as well as becoming more disturbing in others. The best part of any day is what you can get away with and achieve, the worst part of any day is what you can’t get away with or are restricted from achieving.

Today I can go around saying things unrepentantly that would have gotten me killed back then. The problem with today are still things that will now get me threatened or killed today.

Dangerous power to kill or harm or constrain the people over thoughts or ideas has often been the major issue making periods good or bad politically.

[Rubsy]

This was a time that I suppose I would like to live in, but what is interesting about it is that it is a time of major transition and upheaval. I can’t find the quote but Elizabeth the first remarked at the change in people becoming more clever or less direct. Most likely they were more defensive because of the politics. They became less naive, it was the death of the medieval mind so to speak.  Shakespeare is a good reflection of this as many of his characters were not either goodies or badies, they were men women who you could identify with who were led by circumstance to tragic outcomes. He left the audience to judge. Guilt was unavoidable as Kauffman begins.  Even Shylock in the Merchant of Venice had the wonderful speech of when you cut me do I not bleed and you can understand why he has asked for his pound of flesh, it is pure resentament.

[kFoyauextlH]

Yeah! That is very true, very complex thinking was introduced for public consumption during this period and with the printing press as well. It, like the internet, was or became increasingly unregulated and controlled. What differs especially today is the toothless now have their say and are increasingly able to spread their ideas there in the past there was less writing ability and even less ability to reach others with ideas or spread them widely.

Its very possible that great minds in the past were simply lost due to having no likelihood of their ideas being preserved.

Though Shakespeare appears skilled, it also just seems like luck, and that he had the right placement and resources and the Nationalistic folks wanted something properly local to represent their people and it all fit well together where some wise farmer with a certain amazing thought might have been left abandoned.

Now we stand a chance, and our enemy becomes complacency, being overcome by others in various ways, and having to play by certain rules still to get what we can out of the womb and through school and into the workforce lol as a metaphor.

[Rubsy]

That time is very similar to now. A great change caused by a land grab fro the Monarchs against the church. That’s what I think is Protestantusm in Englabd. A top down change, which opened up grammar schools and thus educated a mass of people intended to work for the state. These expectations were not fulfilled as there were non of these jobs to go to. Elizabeth was also alienating the nobles by picking her favorites and ending long lines of established family. She used the newly educated class like Cecil to become her ultra loyal state officers. They kept records on everyone and created the secret service. Trade deals with foreign powers were established.
Shakespeare probably co authored a lot of his plays. He also did rewrites of established plays which are lost to us now. I am not saying he wasn’t a genius, just that his genius seems more monumental because hardly any of the plays performed around this time made it to print in the l7 century,  with the advent of the printing press. The time that shakespeare was writing paper was a very precious comodity and was often reused, so hardly any plays survive. As you say there were probably tales and myths from the medieval times that informed him and are losr to us now.

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