Elizabethan England, called a golden age. By some. There were those on the inside, and out. Militarily turbulent times (Spanish Armada, after all) plus a lot more industrial, technological and social groundbreaking than we’ve time for here. A hell of a mess for the Island Kingdom. 

Sound at all familiar? Even a little, that is if one sees challenging opportunity instead of woeful woe a weeping. 

Instead of Virgin Queen we have Felonious King. Francis Walsingham modernized to Cash Hotel and Lord Burleigh become Lard Barley, universal stand in for any form of ripe, wealthy, potent potentate we groundlings care to target with jibes, jeers and soured victuals. 

The groundlings were an unruly lot of tipsy smokers (New World tobacco providing a drug-buzz in its day) keen to outperform the betters in the boxes elevated ‘round the unashamedly rotund Globe. 
But what good any of that possible potential without an inspired Wil to crank it up to dramatic, poetic and lyric heights? 

Being a moment annoyingly honest, neither I nor my Twain alter-side personally hold the cluck from Stratford as remotely a candidate for the slot called Bard of Avon. 

Far as I’m concerned a person would stand a better chance convincing me Katherine The Great was Kleopatra’s cousin once removed. Mr. Shake Spear, Speare, Shake Spur was no Avon grammar school lad magically well versed (verse, get it) in the latest (rare and damn expensive) translation of Ovid. 

Someone, not the Avon lad, knew Ovid, the layout of Italian cities and courtly details. Someone with skill and background not hinted in the least in Avon’s will bequeathing some furnishings but not a single book. Not one. Not one copy of Ovid’s Metamorphosis or Cremona tourists’ street guide. 

Whoever the Elizabethan Age’s famed writer is, they lived at a time when conflict and chaos brought the social pot to rolling, roiling boil. It possible we’re as favored, fortunate and blessed? 

Some readers may know Anonymous, interesting film ‘bout Shakespeare’s times. I’ll not speak for it, as non-recommendation may be better for you. But I will pass along one of my favorite-of-all-time scenes and lines where Ben Johnson (quite competent writer) complains of his literary “voice” being misused only to have the Earl of Oxford clip him the side of his head with “I chose you because you don’t have a voice.” Good scene. Worth seeing. 

 Trying to bore and weary you to extinction with golden age Elizabethan musings (or puking if you prefer), I have to point out that great gobs of potential material are not in themselves enough to drive achievement, not if all we do with or make of them is a great big tear down. 

A creative process is difficult. The wrecker’s ball does not build. The value of an artist and thinker such as Shakespeare isn’t an ability to be sarcastic or nasty or judgmental. Instead, I suspect, there’s a deeper skill able to look inside and hint at understanding some of the inner workings that underlie characters, all characters, ours not excepted. 

The Elizabethan era saw (orchestrated in part as state policy by the Cecil family) very serious acts of reprisal and suppression. Being jailed typically meant getting tortured. Imagine, for those among us keen on imagined sufferings, the actual pain of being disfigured, beaten so your facial features are altered. Seems to me that is somewhat worse than current practice, real or alleged. All eras had critics, some measured, others loud and obnoxious. Those with an impact beyond the gripes of the day looked at friend and foe with a thought, seems to me, to reconcile and shed light on the good and bad found in all. 

The value, in plain terms, of a clever critic is limited to time and place. I’m reminded of one of those things credited to Einstein quipping on the difference between genius and stupidity. “Genius has limits.” 

 Might we say our golden times are golden in terms of stress, conflict, challenge, difficulty and so on. Golden ages are not necessarily times of ease. The work of individual growth is neither faced nor accomplished soaking eight hours daily in warm baths aided by the ease of chemical assists and erotic pleasures. The adolescent may desire it so and the adult strive to find it, but maybe each encounters resolution in struggle laced with disappointment. 

Not easy to be alive. Life tests us. Life presents joys and achievements while also carrying unavoidable pain. 

In earlier days I worked with sincere folk who embraced the goal of providing more fun in student learning. Not for me to say, not definitively, but I suspected a too-strong amount of laziness in the dear hearts and gentle spirits. Seemed to maladapted me that fun was the least of human goals, the base line of the non-imaginative, ease seeking and otherwise aimless. 

But yes, I speak too Ill of dedicated teachers, the classic stuck-in-the-muds of things in the unchanging past. (Was it Ford who said “History is bunk!” Someone else said “Education is history.’) 

Any (as in ANY and ALL) stripe thinking humanity, the future, progress, goodness and the ways in which we might view or understand those or other important things can be summed in a meme or slogan, chant or icon will be rolled over and pushed aside along with the15 seconds given them in the Warhol prophesy. 

If fortune favored, a few seconds is all one has to leave a mark or make a difference. What, then should it be? Tell me. 

Can you name a single personage from dark Elizabethan times who railed anti-Christ, papist or heathen at a supposed enemy. None amounts to nothing consequential, same as does caterwauling Nazi, commie or dupe in our day. 

Tagging opponents with villain titles replicates but one passing thing same in function as a dog lifting leg to mark turf. A worthy skill if one’s head is kept low enough and is attuned to mystery scents in canine urine. 

But as for me, no. I’ll rather puzzle over what’s base and what’s not in our time of wondrous complexity. If you won’t be Wil S then remember what happened to Kit Marlowe.