The following was originally written as a response to a classroom forum:
Forum 4: For credit, post a response (of approximately 200 words) to one of the topics above and to at least two other classmates of 100 words.
1. How does Elizabeth I, in her writing, define the age in which she ruled?
2. One of the reasons we all love Shakespeare is because he is the master at showing the multiple facets of human nature and how our strengths and weaknesses create our experience. Find evidence of this in this packet’s Shakespeare readings.
Expecting to find a lot of definition in the times in which Elizabeth lived through the review of her writings and speeches is much like having the expectation of finding definitions of the times we currently live in through reading any of todays blogs and journals on the Internet. Though there were many instances of her speaking of her current times, there isn’t much beyond her speaking of her life and the lives that interacted or depended upon her. We cannot find her giving description of the mundane and everyday things that she wouldn’t have given much consideration—the little things that we may want to know more of so that we may be able to paint a more accurate picture of the times. The same may be said of the varied writings of the average person we see online today; we may read one telling the tale of how there day had went, but we may not know the full details of how they dressed or how they traveled from point a to b and how their method of transport operates, etc. Instead we are left with the knowledge that the person is just another human experiencing events that they may seem as being somewhat normal.
From my reading of Elizabeth’s works, the only aspect of her life and times that stands out to me is the topic of religion. In her speech On Religion, delivered sometime in 1559 AD, we can see a bit on the connections between religion and political power. Elizabeth spoke wisely on the subject , saying that the basis of everything should take place in the matters of religion—or the morality thereof, at least—yet care must be given so as not to let religion take over as the last thing needed is a jihad. The speech continues to give a little description of the schism within the church and between the church and her monarchy. Elizabeth delivers another good take on the divide between the church and herself as well as her family in a response given in 1585 AD.
Though these speeches/writings give some decent description of the period, we can see that not much progress has been made in humanity since—do we not still have the struggles with church and state today? The times may have progressed, our world may have grown larger and the differences between political and religious activists may have changed, but a struggle between political and religious powers carry on.
One thought on “Elizabeth… the blogger?”