humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare

On Thu, 21 Feb 2008 12:12:02 -0800 (PST), Lyra
wrote:

>
>(quote)
>
>At Folger, England Emerges From the Myths of Time
>
>By Philip Kennicott
>
>Washington Post Staff Writer
>
>Wednesday, February 20, 2008; Page C01
>
>In 1588, the Spanish Armada that threatened Elizabethan England was
>undone by a storm. Seventeen years later, the infamous Gunpowder Plot,
>an effort by angry Catholics to blow up Parliament, failed when the
>conspirators panicked and were captured. These close calls with fate
>were rapidly put to good propaganda use by the rulers of England, and
>there emerged a persistent new theme in early 17th-century politics:
>Providence was looking out for Britain.

More than "close calls" were the disasters and calamities that came of
British attempts to successfully colonize the New World; they
disappeared from disease, starvation, and failure. Personally, I
think the on-going conflict with Spain was involved, at least in terms
of vying for leverage with natives, if not actual espionage of
colonies.

After all, Spain's gold from SA cities probably seemed like evidence
of God's Providence, and the English were taking their bounty from
them with the likes of Drake, Raleigh, and others; so when it came to
English establishing colonies in NA, wouldn't the Spanish have had an
attitude about that?

Maybe Tempest has some of that in its revenge plot as well? Prospero
acts like a monarch, overlooking acts of piracy and usurpation to
return home on a peaceful basis. In a sense, maybe the cloak he takes
off at the end was a military uniform; just the opposite of Carusoe in
DeFoe's Gulliver's Island, who kept his uniform ready for rescue, then
put it on. I assume the US version would be more like Gilligan's
Island. bookburn