WOODING: Well, that’s a fascinating question. I think the scholarship that surrounds that play suggests that they were prepared to take her great speech as tongue-in-cheek. I think they thought that Shakespeare was having some fun with this whole debate about the role of women and whether a wife should be submissive or not.

Christopher Dyer, A Country Merchant 1495–1520: Trading and farming at the end of the middle ages (Oxford, 2012), 27. The giving and consumption of food underlines an important political point about Tudor England: namely, that the most important relationships were always understood as having a personal element. William Cecil, Lord Burghley, advising his son Robert on the rules of political life, told him how to maintain a friendship with anyone eminent: ‘Compliment him often with many, yet small, gifts, and of little charge. And if thou hast cause to bestow any great gratuity, let it be something which may be daily in sight.’ [26] The Lisle family in Calais maintained their links with Henry VIII by sending everything from boar’s head to sturgeon, as well as the quails that Jane Seymour craved while pregnant. [27] Their envoy in London could begin a letter by announcing that ‘I presented the King with the cherries in my lady’s name, which he was very glad of, and thanks you and her both for them.’ [28] The Lisles adopted a particularly familiar tone in their exchanges to underline the point that they really were family: Arthur, Lord Lisle, was Elizabeth of York’s illegitimate brother. Thomas Cromwell’s accounts record the rewards dispensed to those who brought gifts such as arti­chokes, quinces and porpoise; and Robert Dudley responded to tributes, including a brace of puffins from the earl of Derby. [29] The rarity of certain foodstuffs, or the fact that – like cherries – they were only briefly in season, heightened the value of the gift. Water and Beer Eileen M Hunt: Feminism vs Big Brother - Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life by Anna Funder; Julia by Sandra Newman My attention has just been drawn to Lucy Wooding's wonderfully engaged, thoughtful and most generous review of my Selling the Tudor Monarchy. I am most grateful for her succinct summation of some of the most important arguments and lucid presentation of what I was trying to do. I accept the criticisms which are helpful and well worth further reflection. Only on two points would I comment:WOODING: It’s been a very, sort of, powerful part of the stories that the English—later the British—like to tell about their own history. That Protestantism wasn’t, until very recently, understood in British culture to be a superior form of Christianity. And anti-Catholic prejudice has survived into the 21st century. It still, you know, affects the role of the Monarch today. I think the assumption always was that the pre-Reformation Church must have been a disaster, because Protestantism must have naturally been the reaction against that. So, you know, for generations we took the view that the late medieval church was unpopular and oppressive and that it alienated its congregations by worshiping only in Latin.

WOODING: Well, we have to be a little bit careful there because of course we’re still talking about an age in which literacy is limited. But, I think it goes further down society than some people might assume. David Gelber: Chancellors & Chancers - Austria Behind the Mask: Politics of a Nation since 1945 by Paul LendvaiBOGAEV: One major point that you make that has so much resonance with Shakespeare is, you say you can’t understand Tudor England without knowing about the land and the woods and the towns and the cities. That the landscape around Tudor men and women was full of meaning. What did Tudors believe about the landscape of their country that makes it so ripe with significance? WOODING: Well, because Britain became a Protestant country, because Protestantism became a big part of its identity, we assumed for many years that when Protestantism first arrived in England in the 1520s, that it was enthusiastically welcomed, endorsed by in a great sways of society. We used to think that by 1547, England was already fairly Protestant.

But you’ve got to remember that for the first sort of 20 years of his reign, he is very popular and very successful, I think, in the eyes of his subjects, and does a pretty good job of creating an image of the Renaissance prince who is godly, who is artistic, musical, who is good at the arts of war. He rises to playing that role and does so to good effect, I think. Fasting was a regular part of Tudor life, both before and after the Reformation. In the pre-Reformation period, everyone abstained from meat and dairy on Wednesdays and Fridays, on the eve of important saints’ days, and throughout Advent and Lent. One of Protestantism’s attractions was that it dispensed with these requirements. However, the threat to the fishing trade was such that Friday fasting was hastily restored during Edward VI’s reign – although it remained unpopular, as the attempts to regulate butchers’ sales on fast days indicate. [35] In later Protestant culture, it became common to mark times of mourning, or special intercession, with fast days. Public fasts might be held in parish, town or by the nation at large in response to a particular crisis, whilst the godly might keep private fasts, accompanied by prayer and almsgiving, in pursuit of greater personal sanctity. [36] The response to the terrible famines of the 1590s, after three consecutive harvests had failed, was to declare public fasts on Wednesdays and Fridays – with the pious objective of showing penitence to a providential God for the sins that had merited such punishment, and with the practical objective of giving the food saved to the starving poor. The Council interpreted God’s displeasure as a response to the ‘excesse in dyett’ and ‘nedeles waste and ryotous consumpcion’ prevalent throughout the kingdom. [37] In more private fashion, many dedicated Protestants resumed the medieval practice of fasting the night before receiving communion. [38] Growing Vegetables to Feed the Poor WOODING: Shakespeare didn’t take him on, did he? But then, I mean, I don’t think Shakespeare is interested in the kings who succeed, exactly. I mean, he’s more interested, isn’t he, in the turbulent era of the Wars of the Roses. From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited. I’m Michael Whitmore, the Folger director. Lucy Wooding teaches history at Oxford University and is the author of a biography of Henry VIII.BOGAEV: Yeah. It sounds as if it was a time of great income disparity, you know, prosperity as well as widespread poverty, or fear of poverty. It sounds very familiar actually, and I know you caution often against making great parallels between modern times and Tudor times. But between immigration and plague and political instability and income inequality, it’s hard not to. Now, within a church that might be within a statue, within a holy relic, something like that, but out in the countryside, you also see holy wells and holy trees and sights associated with saints and pilgrimage ways. So, the landscape is overlaid with a sort of network of spiritual, you know, indicators. BOGAEV: So, that’s why the education was focused so much on classic Greek and Roman history and writings. I guess the question is, what kind of Tudor adult did all of this classical education yield, besides William Shakespeare? Wooding’s book covers all the juicy drama of the Tudor nobility, but she argues there’s only so much you can learn about the period by following the ups and downs at court. To get a real sense of what life was like, you have to get out in the streets and in the fields. She opens her book with a chapter about the almost mystical connection Tudor people felt to the land that they inhabited. I mean, if you look at late 16 th-century culture more generally and the way that women are depicted in ballads, as well as in plays, as well as in poetry, you don’t really get the overriding impression that women were quiescent, submissive, and silent. Far from it.

Dive deep into the world’s largest Shakespeare collection and access primary sources from the early modern period. The story of the Tudor monarchs is as astounding as it was unexpected, but it was not the only one unfolding between 1485 and 1603. In cities, towns, and villages, families and communities lived their lives through times of great upheaval. In Tudor England: A History, Lucy Wooding lets their voices speak, exploring not just how monarchs ruled but also how men and women thought, wrote, lived, and died. Following the defeat of the Nazis in 1945, the idea took hold that Austria had been the first casualty of Hitler’s aggression when in 1938 it was incorporated into the Third Reich.’ Lucy Wooding is the Langford Fellow and Tutor in History at Lincoln College, Oxford University. Her book Tudor England: A History is published by Yale University Press.They felt that their riches, their land holdings were a blessing, and therefore, they very often—I mean obviously not universally, there were greedy people in the 16th century too—but very often they felt that their land came with an obligation to the people who farmed it, to the people who lived on or around their holdings. Tudor charity and Tudor philanthropy are quite an inspiring subject.