Wednesday, 20 September 2017

TO SUM UP The Elizabethan Era

                                                               To Sum Up
To Sum Up the Elizabethan Era, I quote from a fantastic book called "The Time Traveller's Guide To Elizabethan England" by Ian Mortimer, and from where I have got most of my information about this Era :
"But in the 16th Century some individuals do change the course of society. We think immediately of the Queen. The shift to Protestantism is Elizabeth's doing, and the form of the new English religion is even more her personal design.She not only turns the tiller, she holds it firmly and never let's go, and shrugs off every hand placed on her shoulder. Elizabeth also deserves the credit for making herself splendidly visible to her people, even after the pope excommunicates her and puts her life at risk. It would be easy for her simply to hide away and keep herself safely; but then we would not have Gloriana, the regal symbol of English sovereign independence and national pride. She is loved by her people --- not all of them, certainly, but by the majority --- who have confidence in her as a God-chosen ruler. She decides not to marry, and while it is the correct political sacrifice: much of her later life is tinged with loneliness and sadness. So many responsibilities lie on her shoulders that one cannot see her alone in her palace, putting on her wig, without hearing a whisper from Shakespeare's Henry V : 'what infinite heart's ease must kings neglect that private men enjoy. And what have kings that privates have not too save ceremony, save general ceremony?' "
                                           Could I have lived in the Elizabethan Era ?

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