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English Renaissance Page

English Renaissance

Article Index

I. Articles/Essays
II. Letters
III. Reviews


I. Articles/Essays:

  • Zombie Apocalypse & Trick-or-Treating: Halloween through History. October 30, 2019. “Looking closely, however, we see that this Shakespeare quote has moved the “puling” (which it was actually called) back one day to Hallowmas, All Hallows Day, rather than All Souls.  Far more important, he has actually referred to puling as a special kind of speech spoken by beggars on Hallowmas Day.”
  • Why the Wait for Halloween Seems to Last 7000 Years. October 21, 2019. “The accounts written in the monasteries beginning in the late 7th century are a fascinating resource telling us as much about the scribes as the  purported events they wrote about.”
  • Get Thee to the Mop.  September 30, 2019.  ‘The most curious name by far, and the most persistent, it having become the popular name for such fairs, was the “mop fair,” or “the mop” for short.’
  • Feast of St. Michael, September 29: Beginning of the English Year. September 29, 2019. "In the 19th century it was commonly claimed that Queen Elizabeth I heard about the defeat of the Spanish Armada while she was eating her Michaelmas feast which just happened to feature goose.  She declared that she would eat goose each year for the annual feast in commemoration of her greatest victory." 
  • Who Saved Southampton from the Ax? September 2, 2019.  “One of the popular mysteries of the final years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I is why the Queen executed her favorite, the Earl of Essex, for treason, and left his accomplice, the Earl of Southampton, to languish as a prisoner in The Tower until King James I ascended the throne.”
  • The Secret Correspondence of Robert Cecil and James I. August 25, 2019.  ‘As he was planning an armed attempt to “secure the person of the Queen,” after having returned from the country, in disgrace, and to force her to dismiss ministers who did not satisfy him, he was waiting for a return letter from King James VI of Scotland.’
  • The Essex Rebellion and the Earl of Southampton.  August 18, 2019.  “When Elizabeth appointed the heroic Essex to bring fractious Ireland into submission to her crown, he marched off, to the applause of all of London, oblivious to the enormous difficulty of the task.”
  • A Brief Introduction to Poisoning a Nobleman.  August 4, 2019. “As those who read the primary accounts whenever possible know, never were vagaries so vague as in the Middle Ages.”
  • What Color Were Shakespeare’s Potatoes? July 27, 2019. “By the year 1599-1600, when Shakespeare’s play would seem to have been written, the potato was available in London.  It was considered a delectable treat and an aphrodisiac.”
  • The Journey from Gaufridus to Shakespeare.  July 22, 2019.  “After the Miracle, Geoffrey’s chambers caught fire and the copes and his books went up in  flames.”
  • The Fascinating Itinerary of the Gelosi Troupe, 1576.  June 10, 2019.  “The Spanish soldiers had not been paid and unpaid soldiers tend to rob and loot.  The citizens were prepared to give them a fight.  Violent flare ups were occurring everywhere.”
  • A Thousand Years of English Terms.  June 2, 2019.  ‘One person did not say to another, “Meet you at three o’clock”.    There was no clock to be o’.  But the church bell rang the hour of Nones and you arranged to meet “upon the Nones bell”.’
  • The Medieval Chimney: Not What You Might Think.  May 19, 2019.  “The famous Royal antiquary, John Leland, source of a great deal of detailed information about the towns and countryside of England during the reign of Henry VIII, stood awestruck before a full-length vertical chimney as if he were standing before the Hagia Sophia.”
  • A Most Curious Account of the Funeral of Queen Elizabeth I: April 28, 1603.  April 28, 2019.  “Once it was clear that James I would face no serious challenges, Cecil and the others could begin to give attention to the matter of the Queen’s funeral.”
  • Queen Elizabeth I’s Heart and the French Ambassador.  April 3, 2019.  “…the Queen of England, with the permission of her physicians, has been able to come out of her private chamber, she has permitted me… to see her…”
  • Lady Southwell on the Final Days of Queen Elizabeth I.  March 24, 2019.  “her majesty told [Lady Scrope] (commanding her to conceal the same ) that she saw, one night, in her bed, her body exceeding lean, and fearful in a light of fire.”
  • Office of The Lord Great Chamberlain and the Earls of Oxford.  March 10, 2019.  "Edward de Vere Earl of Oxford, asks that as he is Great Chamberlain of England,… that it should please the King..." 
  • Shakespeare’s Barnacles.  March 3, 2019.  “Prospero will wake, he fears, before they can murder him, and will cast a spell on them.”
  • Shakespeare as Burleigh's Guest at Castle Hedingham?  February 4, 2019.  “Like the once popular game in which a large circle of people is formed and a message whispered in the ear of the first person, who whispers it in the ear of the next, and so on, around the entire group, we do not know what exactly was the original message but only that the message we hear from the last person is strangely suggestive.”
  • Edward de Vere Changes the Course of History: Christmas, 1580. September 17, 2018. “First Secretary to the Queen, Sir Francis Walsingham, had been pressing the Queen since at least the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, in France, in 1573, to recognize that Catholicism was, by its nature, unalterably inimical to her person and her throne.”
  • Why Did Queen Elizabeth Fear Richard II So? September 10, 2018.  ‘Interestingly, the infamous “deposition scene” in the play, in which Richard concedes his unfitness for the crown, did not appear in the 1597 first quarto.  It did not appear until after Queen Elizabeth’s  death when the third quarto was published in 1608.’
  • Shakespeare on Gravity. August 26, 2018. “So carelessly does Shakespeare throw out such an extraordinary divination. His achievement in thus, as it were, rivalling Newton may seem in a certain sense even more extraordinary than Goethe's botanical and osteological discoveries;…”
  • Shakespeare On Blood-Flow. August 19, 2018, “For all of the obvious examples, such as Hamlet’s mention of the supernova that held the attention of all the world, in 1572, and the description of St. Elmo’s Fire in The Tempest, however, the answer lies much more quietly woven into the text of the poems and plays as a whole.”
  • Johannis Sturmius's Winding Path to Impress the English. April 29, 2018. “Thirty years later, Sturmius would be in their employ.  Many members of the English Court would avail themselves of the scholar’s hospitality as would Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford.” 
  • Bayle's Dictionary Entry on Johannes Sturmius.  April 15, 2018.  “Diligence makes clear that his reputation as a cloak-and-dagger English spy is without basis.  He did pass along information he thought might be of interest from his correspondence with many contacts throughout Europe to William Cecil and Francis Walsingham.”
  • The Cecil-Penn Correspondence Regarding Charles Chester. March 05, 2018.  “Your silence in answering me, as though you scorned me for dealing friendly with you, and your privy intelligence with him since his apprehension, I can assure you must be answered.”
  • Introduction to The Cecil-Penn Correspondence Regarding Charles Chester.  March 05, 2018. “It was at that time that Mrs. Penn wrote her infamous letter to the Earl demanding he and/or Thomas Churchyard pay the back bills one or both of them owed to her.”
  • Juliana Penn, Robert Cecil and the Silver Bell, &c.  February 25, 2018.  “You know my Lord you had anything in my house whatsoever you or your men would demand, if it were in my house; if it had been a thousand times more, I would have been glad to pleasure your lordship withall.”
  • Juliana Penn! Robert Cecil! Who Knew?  February 11, 2018.  “…there was not, nor is, the least suspicion conceaved of any privity of yours to any ill of his who is now a prisoner in the Gate-house.”
  • A Poem by Mr. W.H. August 27, 2017. "We haue no newes but that there is a misfortune befiallen Mistris Fitton,‘ for she is proved with chyld, and the E. of Pembrooke beinge examyned confesseth a ffact, but vtterly renounceth all marriage."
  • Falstaff's Sack. August 7, 2017.  'The question Mr. Hart addresses is “Just what is sack?”.  This is not the first time the question has been addressed but his is a particularly thorough attempt at an answer.'
  • John Donne's "Nocturnal upon St. Lucy's Day".  December 13, 2016.  "Today, December 13, is Saint Lucy’s Day.  In John Donne’s time, when the old calendar was still in use, it fell upon (and was, therefore, the feast of) the winter solstice."
  • Sir Anthony Bacon: a Life in the Shadows. January 25, 2016.  "Somehow Sir Anthony had the habit of ingratiating himself in circles of the highest historical interest and most questionable mores."
  • Mermaid Series on Thomas Dekker.  October 6, 2015.  "I have been a priest in Apollo's Temple many years, my voice is decaying with my age..." 
  • Biographical Information on Thomas Dekker. May 19, 2015.
  • Discovered: A New Shakespeare Sonnet: the Experience.  May 11, 2015.  "I was hot on the trail of something, it appeared, but I barely knew what until I was on top of it and then it just seemed impossible that the very best I could hope for had somehow actually come to pass."
  • Shakesper's Second Best Bed: the (almost) final chapter.  November 10, 2014.


II. Letters



III. Related Reviews


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