Shakespeare 3 Essay, Research Paper
Metamorphosis
Prospero is busy reconceiving the Shakespeare Web. The fragments that follow are what still remains of his sometime domain.
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The infant William Shakespeare may have been born on this day in 1564. And since no other day seems a likelier candidate, we might as well celebrate. Enjoy!
Shakespeare was certainly baptized on April 26, 1564. With equal certainty he died on April 23, 1616, at the age of 53, and was buried two days later. Let’s all raise a glass to him today, whoever he may have been…and continues to be.
Her Majesty’s melancholy grows worse, and those about her are increasingly concerned she may never emerge from it.
Tonight, for example, Sir Robert Carey the Warden of the Marches was summoned to her presence on arriving at court. After kissing her hand, Sir Robert said that it was his chiefest happiness to see her in safety and in health, which he wished might long continue. Elizabeth took him by the hand and, wringing it hard, said, “No, Robin, I am not well.” She told him that her heart had been sad and heavy for ten or twelve days, fetching in the midst of her discourse some forty or fifty great sighs.
Courtiers offer various opinions on the cause of the Queen’s melancholy, some saying it comes from the violence of her sickness, others that it springs from the want of her onetime favorite the Earl of Essex (which his friends, of course, would like to believe).
Others say her Majesty hath heard whisperings that many of the nobility by underhand letters and messengers seek to curry favour with the King of Scots, as in truth they do so openly that they quarrel one with another about it.
Meantime the Privy Council hath today commanded the Lord Mayor and the Justices of Middlesex and Surrey to restrain stage plays till other directions be given. For it would be wrong to tolerate playing during a time of such deep sadness on the Queen and her loyal subjects’ part.
Because of late years coin, plate and bullion of silver and gold have been more abundantly conveyed out of this realm than in any former times by reason that the laws formerly made are not observed, her Majesty now commandeth that the mayor and bailiffs in seaports shall take oath of the merchants and masters of ships to prevent the continuation of this practice.