Tea at Trianon: Exploring Shakespeare's Sonnets

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Exploring Shakespeare's Sonnets

Historical novelist Stephanie Cowell ponders the riddle of the "Dark Lady" and other mysteries.

Popular choices for the Dark Lady (so called because of her dark hair and dusky skin) have been Mary Fitton (a promiscuous lady-in-waiting who evoked the wrath of her mistress Queen Elizabeth) or Emilia Bassano Lanier from the well-known family of Italian musicians popular in the musical Elizabethan court (as claimed by Dr. A.L. Rowse). Dr. Duncan Salkeld claims the Dark Lady may have been a notorious prostitute called ‘Lucy Negro’ or ‘Black Luce’ who ran a brothel in Clerkenwell, London. And Dr Aubrey Burl, a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, now believes she can be revealed as Aline Florio, the wife of an Italian translator. Indeed, with a period of six months, two different London newspapers ran articles about the last two scholars with headlines saying the identity of the lady was revealed at last! (Read entire post.)