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The Age of Elizabeth
Thisstory is about the Age of Elizabeth.
My father always told me that it was impolite to talk about a lady’s age.
But I’m not going to tell you how old Elizabeth was, though she did live and reign a great many years.
I’m going to tell you some of the things that happened during her long life, for the time when she lived is what is called the Age of Elizabeth.
There was a young man named Raleigh living when Elizabeth became queen. One day when it was raining and the streets were muddy, Elizabeth was about to cross the street. Raleigh saw her and, to keep her from soiling her shoes, ran forward, took off his beautiful velvet cape, and threw it in the puddle where she was about to step, so that she might cross upon it as upon a carpet. The queen was greatly pleased with this thoughtful and gentlemanly act, and she made him a knight, so that he was then called Sir Walter Raleigh, and ever after that he was one of her special friends.
Sir Walter Raleigh was much interested in the new country of America. Cabot had claimed a great part of it for England almost a hundred years before, but England had done nothing about it. Raleigh thought something should be done about it; he thought English people should settle there, so that other countries like Spain, which had made so many settlements in America, would not get ahead of England. So Raleigh got together several companies of English people and sent them over to an island called Roanoke, which was just off the coast of the present State of North Carolina. At that time, however, almost the whole coast of the United States as far north as Canada was called Virginia. It had been named Virginia in honor of the Virgin Queen Elizabeth.
Some of these Roanoke colonists became discouraged with the hardships they had to suffer and so gave up and sailed back home again. Those who remained all disappeared. Where? No one knows. We think they must either have been killed by the Indians or have died of starvation. At any rate, not one was left to tell the tale. Among these Roanoke colonists was the first English child born in America—a girl, who had been named Virginia Dare, for the queen was very popular and a great many girls were named Virginia after her.
Some tobacco was brought back from Virginia, and Sir Walter Raleigh learned to smoke. This was such a strange and unknown thing at that time that one day while he was smoking a pipe a servant who saw smoke coming out of his mouth thought he was on fire and, running for a bucket of water, emptied it over his head.
Virginia is still famous for its tobacco. At first tobacco was supposed to be very healthful, for the Indians seemed to have very good health and they smoked a great deal. Afterward, however, in the next reign, King James so hated tobacco that he wrote a book against it and forbade it to be used.
After Queen Elizabeth had died, Raleigh was put in prison, for it was said he was plotting against the new king James, who came after Elizabeth. The prison where he was placed was the Tower of London, the old castle that William the Conqueror had built. Here Raleigh was kept for thirteen long years, and to pass the time away he wrote a “History of the World.” But at last he was put to death as many other great men were also.
During the reign of Queen Elizabeth, there lived the great writer of plays, the greatest writer the world has ever known. This man was William Shakspere.
Shakspere’s father could not write his name. Shakspere himself spent only six years at school. As a boy he was rather wild, and he was arrested for hunting deer in the forest of Sir Thomas Lucy at Stratford.
Shakspere reading to Elizabeth.
Shakspere reading to Elizabeth.
When still a boy Shakspere married a girl older than himself named Anne Hathaway. After he had been married a few years he left her and their three children, left the little town of Stratford, and went up to the great city of London to seek his fortune. There Shaksperegot a job working around a theater, holding the horses of those who came to see the plays. Then he got a chance to act in the theater, and he became an actor, but he did not become a very good one.
In those days the theaters had no scenery. A sign was put up to tell what the scene was supposed to be. For instance, instead of forest scenery, they would put up a sign saying, “This is a forest,” or instead of a room scene a sign saying “This is a room in an inn.” There were no actresses. Men and boys took the parts of both men and women.
Shakspere was asked to change some of the plays that had already been written, so that they could be better acted. He did this very well; then he started in to write plays himself. Usually he took old stories and made them into plays, but he did it so wonderfully well that they are better than any plays that have ever been written before or since.
Though Shakspere left school when only thirteen years old, he seems to have had a remarkable knowledge of almost everything under the sun. He shows in his plays that he knew about history and law and medicine, and he knew and used more words than almost any writer who has ever lived. Indeed, some people say that with the little education he had, hecould not possibly have written the plays himself, and so they have tried to prove that some one else must have written them. Some of the greatest of Shakspere’s plays are “Hamlet,” “The Merchant of Venice,” “Romeo and Juliet,” and “Julius Cæsar.”
Shakspere made a good deal of money for those times—almost a fortune. Then he left London and went back to live in the little town of Stratford where he was born. Here at last he died and was buried in the village church. People wanted to move his body to a greater and handsomer place, to a famous church in London. But some one, perhaps Shakspere himself, had written a verse which was carved on his tombstone. The last line of this verse said, “And curst be he who moves my bones”; so they never were moved, for no one dared to move them.