London Continued

Tuesday May 17th: 
Today was a pretty mellow day. I went  to classes this morning from 10am -100pm.  In my Shakespeare class we learned the following about Queen Elizabeth I:
-Queen Elizabeth spoke Spanish, Italian, English, French, and she read Latin (She was fluent in 6 languages total... I do not recall the other two. 

-When she became Queen, Elizabeth inherited a debt of 250lbs – in her time it was a problem and a large amount. She reduced the debt w/her budget, kept taxation low, sold off crown land and she plowed then off to pay the government. This made the Netherlands give her a high credit rate – even higher than Spain’s. She was fiscally responsible. There was money for schools, the arts, etc. after this.

-She freed land from enclosure – this was a problem for the rich people but helped the poor so they could farm.

-She created a welfare system by requiring the rich to donate through their parishes

-She required people to eat fish on Friday and Wednesday

-She Instituted systems of Justices of the Peace that had lapsed during the Medieval times – local courts – leading to a rise of local government and hired sheriffs to enforce the law. 

We also discussed the beginnings of acting companies:

-Putting on plays for money – pretty new concept

-New technology that allows this to happen: take the existing technology and combine them to create new one.

·      gaming arenas/bear baiting arenas – big flat pieces of woods set in a circle so that you can look into it.

·      Medieval Drama used a Plataea – toke those and created the stage in the arena

-How do they form a company?

·      You need a sponsor – Hundson was the Lord Chamberlain and when he died the title was passed on

·      The sponsor gives you money and a name – w/o this you couldn’t have a guild

·      Guilds – the union and management, determined wages, product, everything

·      Burbidge decided to create a theatre guild – you may stay that all your life, bring in boys to apprentice – because girls didn’t apprentice, have work for hire actors, Masters (actors w/money) became shareholder, they make profit and risk in the success or not of the production

·      No other theatre did as well as the Lord Chamberlin’s – they did very well with just putting on plays – other companies had to put on other things such as bear baiting, etc.

·      Plays written between 1592 and 1616 – more plays put on than anytime before that.

·      This was the start – taking the existing (guilds) using it to create theatre companies.

·      Nobody else was doing theatre like England so foreigners were in awe. 

After class I went my flat took a much needed nap, woke up went for a walk through Kensington Gardens - its huge! I probably only walked less than a 1/3 of the park but I walked out on the other side and wondered around. Much to my delight I found an Asian Supermarket where I was able to buy some actual soy sauce and they also had Siracha - two very important ingredients for proper ramen noodles  :-)