Friday, May 25, 2012

Francis Bacon and Robert Cecil

I know that history is a very subjective thing, however, Margaret Irwin in her biography "That Great Lucifer: a portrait of Sir Walter Raleigh," makes some pretty good points.  It seemed that Raleigh was a person who preferred to trust, and it seemed that Bacon and Cecil were the type to betray trust.  I mean, just think of this. Robert Cecil sends his sickly son to the Raleigh's to be taken care of. They raise Will with their own Wat until he's healthy.  Then, later, when James takes the throne, Robert Cecil sells Raleigh to James as a traitor.

Bacon was no better. After Raleigh is released after thirteen years of imprisonment in the Tower, the King (James) gives him permission to go find gold (some mine located of the Orinoco), but he won't rescind the death sentence on his head.  Raleigh is concern about this, so he talks to his friend, Francis Bacon, who says 'don't worry, the King made you an Admiral!'  Well, James betrays Raleigh to the Spanish by sending them the expedition's plans, Wat (Raleigh's son is killed), and the expedition ruined.  When Raleigh returns home, Jame's wants his head. So, to make the king happy Francis Bacon informs the King he can kill Raleigh any time, since the decade old death sentence was never removed. Result, Raleigh is killed, and the Elizabethan age is at an end.

So, do you think this double dealing, two-bit snake wrote as Shakespeare?

Thursday, May 3, 2012

Elizabethan Murder Mystery

I've been doing a lot of reading about what we call the Elizabethan era.  Seems to be a very smelly time, and that includes the judicial and the political system.  I've also, much to my delight, found out that there were a lot of colourful characters: Dr. Dee, the queen's astrologer, Thomas Harriot (who was mapping the moon before Galileo), Christopher Marlowe (Anthony Burgess believes he was gay), I'm not so convinced.  A couple lines in a poem, or play doesn't mean a person is homosexual. Then, there's the 'School of Night,' or the 'School of Atheism,' ran by Walter Raleigh. Both terms are inaccurate, and were coined by his enemies, set at bringing him down.  It was more like a group of men who wanted to talk about anything interesting and new and intelligent. No doubt Raleigh and Lord Strange and the gang listen to Marlowe discussing atheism, but that didn't mean they were all atheists. Anything I've read about Raleigh seems to indicate the man had a love of knowledge. He once said "He'd rather kill a man than a good book."  And that charge of Atheism that the Privy Council had hit Marlowe with...The Baine's report hangs on a lot of hear say, and some document they managed to take from Thomas Kyd. Listen, if a bunch of scary dudes break into my place, find a piece of paper that could get me drawn and quartered, I might be tempted to say Marlowe wrote it.  Even after that they still tortured Kyd, and they weren't kidding. So, fertile ground to write a murder mystery, very fertile.