Author: Ian Mortimer
From the page cover: "Welcome to Elizabethan England. This is your guide to the sceptered isle, a handbook for the intrepid tourist that covers everything from what to wear and where to eat to navigating the complex and contradictory Elizabethan attitudes toward violence, class, sex, and religion."
A masterful piece of work! Full of details gleaned from historical documents about life in Elizabethan England. Some of my favorite bits of insight follow:
1. Although the total size of the population is rapidly increasing, its structure is hardly any different from that of the Middle Ages....There are five times as many children in relation to old people as there are in the modern [21st century] world. The effect on the social makeup is striking: the median age is twenty-two years...in the modern world, the median age is almost forty. What is more, the men look younger too: the age at which beards naturally begin to grow is considerably later than in the modern world--most men have no more than a few hairs by the age of twenty-two. Men look more like boys and behave more like reckless youths--with all the greater energy, violence, eagerness, and selfishness that you would expect. (26-27)
2. The one area in which some women can claim a degree of parity [with men] is in literature. The educated ladies of Elizabethan England are making their biggest impression through translations, for noble and gentry families choose to educate their daughters in languages and music above all other things.....The fullest exposition of this new female freedom to write and publish is to be found in poetry...Women are starting to use their position as published writers to rail against against their secondary status in society. It will take another three hundred years to make any significant progress against patriarchy, but the roots of feminism can be found in the public voice that women acquire in the reign of Queen Elizabeth....Even though Elizabeth herself does nothing directly to advance the cause of women, she clearly inspires her female contemporaries. (57-59)
3. It is precisely the level to which Elizabethans do question their place in the world that sets them apart from their medieval forebears...In Elizabethan England, the focus begins to shift to the individual: the responsibility for a man's achievements is increasingly attributed to the person himself. God is more of a facilitator than the architect of his successes and failures. One of the clearest manifestations of how this growing individualism permeates the lives of ordinary people can be found in personal writing. There is practically no such thing as a diary in 1500; people write chronicles about major events, which are structured predominantly to reflect the will of God. But by 1558 the old tradtion of the chronicle is beginning to way to a new literary genre. (78-79)
4. Another character trait that will strike you is the depth of people's courage. (79)
5. Violence and cruelty permeate all areas of life in Elizabethan England.... Some of the extreme cruelty that we usually associate with the medieval world is in reality more common in Elizabeth's reign....You do occasionally come across official acts of mercy, but they are rare. (80-81)
6. ...the increasing availability of books in English encourages many people to teach themselves to read, including women....Printing is often described as one of the greatest inventions in human history. It certainly sets the Elizabethan world apart from the medieval. But it is the mass production of books in English that prompts the shift to a more literary culture, not printing itself. (84-85)
7. Elizabethan people have a heightened awareness of their place in history, unlike their medieval forebears....Anyone in England can see that the old way of life has gone. The great abbeys are in ruins; farmers now pile their grain in monastic granges; and merchants stock their goods in the empty halls of the friaries....Society's conception of itself develops over the course of Elizabeth's reign--and its character changes accordingly. At the end it is still violent and charitable, corrupt and courageous, racist and proud. But it has seen that it has broken away from its medieval roots and that there is no going back. And with that sense of being different from the past comes a vision that things will be different in the future....The poets working at the end of the reign also understand the uniqueness of their position in time, referring to "the age" in which they live as distinct from other ages. That self-consciousness is one of the most striking features of the Elizabethan character, made more so to the time traveler by its absence in earlier generations. (107-109)
This book is a fascinating and absorbing read. I like that the author provides great detail about all varieties of people, living conditions, activities, and environments. The perspective he brings to all these aspects helps the "time traveler" to get the sense of being 'in the time period but not of it'.
-18Aug13
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