Page 94 - All About History - Issue 53-17

HISTORY ANSWERS

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Was Shakespeare’s
A Midsummer

Night’s Dream
first performed at

Midsummer?
Nadia Gold
Almost certainly not. The first performance we definitely
know of was on 1 January 1605 at the court of Queen
Elizabeth I, but the quarto edition of the play printed in 1600,
states that it had already been publicly performed several
times before then. One possibility is that the play was written
for the wedding of Elizabeth Carey, a Tudor noblewoman
and goddaughter of Queen Elizabeth. The play has several
wedding motifs and contains an allusion to Edmund Spenser’s
wedding poem, Epithalamion. Most experts believe that
A Midsummer Night’s
Dream was written in
1595 or early 1596, and ELIZABETH CAREY
Elizabeth Carey was Nationality: English
Detail from a 14th century tapestry married on 19 February Born-died: 24 May 1576 –
by Flemish artist Jean Bondol, showing 23 April 1635
the fall of the Babylonian empire 1596. The play was
probably transferred Elizabeth married
to the stage several
What caused the Late months later and there Brief Sir Thomas Berkeley
at the age of 19 and
Bio
are small differences in
became Lady Berkeley.
She was a patron of
Bronze Age collapse? later versions that hint at the arts, and Thomas Nashe’s
an adaptation from the
pamphlet, The Terrors of the
more intimate audience
Night, is dedicated to her. Her
Joe Denker These disasters also occurred at a time when of a wedding party to a first husband died at the age
public theatre, such as
In the Eastern Mediterranean region, the population levels were rising and bronze was an extra epilogue by the of 37 and she remarried – to
another Sir Thomas!
Bronze Age ran from around 4000-1200 becoming much more widely available. It was character of Puck.
BCE. Then, over the next 100 years, the five harder for kings to control access to bronze
major civilisations of the Hittite, Mycenaean, weapons and easier for peasants to rise up.
Egyptian, Assyrian and Babylonian kingdoms Previously, kingdoms had mostly been toppled
all collapsed. In the past, this has been blamed or absorbed by other kingdoms. What made the
on mysterious sea-faring marauders known Late Bronze Age collapse so unusual was that
only as the ‘Sea Peoples’, but more recent these empires simply imploded and weren’t
evidence seems to point to a perfect storm of replaced for several centuries. People still lived
calamities that arrived together. Natural climate in the region, but in smaller communities with
fluctuations led to prolonged drought that many local leaders. This makes the collapse
disrupted harvests; several large earthquakes seem more catastrophic than it actually was A Midsummer Night’s Dream
destroyed cities; and then invasions and internal because the archaeological cues of ancient texts was probably originally written
for a wedding celebration
rebellions overturned the existing hierarchies. and great building works largely disappear.
This day in history 22 June
217 BCE 1633 1783 1893

O Battle of Raphia O Galileo declared heretic O Volcanic smog O Victoria rammed
Pharaoh Ptolemy IV of Egypt The Inquisition finds the A cloud of sulphur dioxide The battleship HMS Victoria is
defeats Antiochus III of the astronomer Galileo Galilei from the Laki volcano in accidentally rammed by HMS
Seleucid Empire in one of the “vehemently suspected of Iceland reaches the French Camperdown. It occurred as a
largest battles of the ancient heresy” for arguing that the Earth port of Le Havre. The result of dangerous close-formation
world and the only one where travels around the Sun, rather smog is so thick that boats manoeuvres during a naval exercise,
both African and Indian than the other way around. He is cannot leave port and the 358 sailors are drowned, including
elephants are used. sentenced to house arrest for life. sun is “blood coloured”. Vice-Admiral Sir George Tryon.

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