The performance of plays was under the jurisdiction and mindful monitoring of the Lord Chamberlain and the Master of the Revels. No play could be performed publically in the capital or elsewhere without their explicit knowledge and approval. Their role was to censor or remove any seditious or embarrassing material from the text or theContinue reading “The Elizabethan Festival Cycle”
Category Archives: Rural calendar
The Month of November
November the 5th is traditionally the most popular celebration of the thwarting of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605, supposedly planned and partly executed by the Catholic insurgent Guido Fawkes. Other tenuous influences involve the presentation of Shakespeare’s play Macbeth, a dramatic horror story derived from George Buchanan’s “Rerum Scoticarum Historia” (1582) and Matthew Gwynne’s LatinContinue reading “The Month of November“
The Month of October
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,From this day to the ending of the world,But we in it shall be remember’d;We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;For he to-day that sheds his blood with meShall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,This day shall gentle his condition:And gentlemen in England now a-bedShallContinue reading “The Month of October“
The Month of September
We all no doubt recall the well-known rhyme that helps us to remember the number of days in each month: Thirty days hath September,April, June and November;February has twenty eight aloneAll the rest have thirty-oneExcept in Leap Year, that’s the timeWhen February’s Days are twenty-nine. Like many other months in our year September derives itsContinue reading “The Month of September“
“Beware the Ides of March”
When writing the play “Julius Caesar”, William Shakespeare must have been aware that the Roman Empire, as it then stood, had already reached the zenith of its expansion east and west and was actually in the process of decline. From the internal wrangling of internecine conflicts portrayed in Julius Caesar the scene switches in AnthonyContinue reading ““Beware the Ides of March””
“Saturnalia”, the Month of December
“Yeah, Santa Claus is coming to town, tonight!” In writing this series of monthly accounts describing the customs and traditions of the British Isles I had hoped to emphasise the eternal, cyclic nature of time as opposed to the immutable projection of time as a linear illusion. In this sense, like Spike Milligan; “I’m walkingContinue reading ““Saturnalia”, the Month of December”
Qudos Academy 