Anyway, Kara loves the Tudors, too, especially as told by Alison Weir. After this, I'm going to finally read my "Mary, Queen of Scots" by Antonia Fraser. I bought it at Lippincott Books in Bangor. Open the door carefully, as the cat may get out.
Once I'm done with that, I will move on to "A Man on a Donkey." This is a book that Sadie bought me for Christmas two years ago, after she read it. It is also an Elizabethan era book, but this one is fiction. It is, however, just like "Elizabeth" and "Mary" in that it is gargantuan in size.
As I read "Elizabeth", I keep thinking that it would be so much fun to write a sort of "Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" only have some Maine or Mass high schooler in Elizabethan Court.
I also wonder what I would be like if I were born then. What would I be? I'd want the freedom of a "barmaid" without the work obligations (wink, wink). How about being someone like Emma Thompson's character in "Howard's End," even though that was the beginning of the 20th century...that head maid position was around back then, wasn't it? Because I doubt I'd have been born into the upper class, simply because that population was so small. I like kids, so maybe I'd have been a wet nurse? Or a nanny? Without a middle class and without women's rights, I have no idea.
Unless I were born a dude, in which case I would clearly be from Stratford on Avon, born on April 23...
Did I just compare myself to Shakespeare?
This is an email from Kara, sent before I enabled comments:
ReplyDeleteFrank just bought me a new (to me anyways) Weir book. It's Queen Isabella. She' very interesting. Married at 12 to Edward II, who was gay, but they had a few kids together anyways. She left him, had an affair, and led a successful invasion of England against her husband to set up their son on the throne. When he died under suspicious circumstances, she has historically been blamed for poisoning him. In all, an interesting Queen, who probably has been more hated than anyone else, mostly for being such a strong figure. Not a Tudor Queen, but rather a Plantengagent, a hundred years or so after Elanor of Aquitaine.
Kisses.
Kara