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by
Will Durant
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July 26 - August 6, 2019
she wanted pounds without palaver.
they governed, but she ruled.
She knew how to ally herself with time, which dissolves more problems than men solve;
She discovered that in politics, as in love, he who does not hesitate is lost.
It was an unscrupulous policy, but Elizabeth believed with Machiavelli that scruples are not becoming in rulers responsible for states.
“If she were not a heretic,” said Pope Sixtus V, “she would be worth a whole world.”
The French ambassador complained that “the world had been made in six days, and she had already spent eighty days and was still undecided”; she artfully replied that the world “had been made by a greater artist than herself.”
Rarely has a woman derived so much advantage from barrenness, or so much pleasure from virginity.
Raleigh told her that she walked like Venus, hunted like Diana, rode like Alexander, sang like an angel, and played like Orpheus.
When an ambassador complimented her on her languages she remarked that “it was no marvel to teach a woman to talk; it were far harder to teach her to hold her tongue.”
She excelled in intelligence rather than intellect.
Protestantism in the sixteenth century had the feverish energy of a new idea fighting for the future; Catholicism had the strength of traditional beliefs and ways deeply rooted in the past.
latitudinarian contempt for theological dogmatism.”
Nevertheless she took it for granted, like almost all governments before 1789, that some religion, some supernatural source and sanction of morality, was indispensable to social order and the stability of the state.
She made her hesitations in religion, as in marriage, serve her political purposes; she kept potential enemies bemused and divided until she could face them with an accomplished fact.
All parties and governments in the sixteenth century agreed that theological dissent was a form of political revolt.
Toward 1564 they began to be called Puritans—as a term of abuse—because they demanded the purification of English Protestantism from all forms of faith and worship not found in the New Testament.
Hooker astonished his contemporaries by admitting that even a pope could be saved; he shocked the theologians by declaring that “the assurance of what we believe by the Word of God is to us not so certain as that which we perceive by sense”;87 man’s reasoning faculty is also a divine gift and revelation.
The nature of man confesses itself in the conduct of states, for these are but ourselves in gross, and behave, for the most part, as men presumably did before morals and laws were laid upon them by religion and force.
In 1567 she lent him her ship the Jesus; with this and four other vessels he sailed to Africa, captured all the Negroes his holds could stow, sold them in Spanish America at £160 a head, and was homeward bound with loot valued at £100,000 when a Spanish fleet caught him off the Mexican coast at San Juan de Ulúa, and destroyed all of his fleet but two small tenders, in which Hawkins, after a thousand perils, returned empty-handed to England (1569).
She asked Bishop Jewel whether she had a right to the Spanish treasure; he judged that God, being surely a Protestant, would be pleased to see the papists plundered.
Philip kept his temper. Elizabeth kept the money.
Even the Spaniards marveled at his audacity and seamanship, and said that “were it not that he was a Lutheran, there was not the like man in the world.”102
The defeat of the Armada affected almost everything in modern European civilization.
So wars determine theology and philosophy, and the ability to kill and destroy is a prerequisite for permission to live and build.
touched genius at every point, but never let the part become the whole.
“Whoever commands the sea commands the trade; whoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world, and consequently the world itself.”
His frail constitution drove him from sports to studies; his agile intellect grasped knowledge hungrily; soon his erudition was among the wonders of those “spacious times.”
I wax now somewhat ancient; one-and-thirty years is a great deal of sand in the hourglass … The meanness of my estate doth somewhat move me … I confess that I have as vast contemplative ends as I have moderate civil ends: for I have taken all knowledge to be my province … This, whether it be curiosity, or vainglory, or nature … is so fixed in my mind as it cannot be removed.
Samuel Burleigh liked this
Denied husband and child, she mothered England, loved it devotedly, and used herself up in serving it. She was the greatest ruler that England has ever known.
While wise men doubted, young men schemed.
Living on a volcano of Irish misery, Spenser’s life was every day near death.
To understand an Elizabethan play we must remember that audience: the sentiment that welcomed a love story, the hearty humor that wanted clowns with kings, the swagger that relished rhetoric, the rough vitality that enjoyed scenes of violence—and the nearness of the three-sided stage, inviting soliloquies and asides.
Once upon a time, when Burbage played Richard III, there was a citizen gone so far in liking with him that before she went from the play she appointed him to come that night unto her by the name of Richard III. Shakespeare, overhearing their conclusion, went before, was entertained and at his game before Burbage came. Then, message being brought that Richard III was at the door, Shakespeare caused return to be made that William the Conqueror was before Richard III.
“the first beginning of religion was only to keep men in awe … that Christ was a bastard … that if there be any good religion, then it is in the Papists, because the service of God is performed with more ceremonies … that all Protestants are hypocritical asses … that all the New Testament is filthily written.”
I count religion but a childish toy, And hold there is no sin but ignorance.
Cheryl and 1 other person liked this
Musaeus had told, in the fifth century, of the youth who swam the Hellespont to keep a tryst.
they were the casual labor of scattered days.
perhaps he had learned that our harassed species reserves its richest rewards for those who can distract it with laughter or imagination.
ways of keeping the herd in the pit and the wolf from the door.
The past is helpless in the hands of the present, which repeatedly remolds it to the hour’s whim.
The originality is in the language, the style, the imagination, the dramatic technique, the humor, the characters, and the philosophy.
