Elizabeth I, the People's Queen: Her Life and Times, 21 Activities
PREFACE The World's a Stage IN DECEMBER 1599 all was aflutter at the court of Eliz abeth I the queen of England Her Majesty was look ing forward to a quiet Christmas Day followed by a dozen days of merrymaking with the lords and ladies who spent winter with her at Whitehall Palace on the Thames River In these dark days of December and January when there were only eight hours of day light everyone liked to party Elizabeth's Lord Chamberlain who oversaw the queen's giant household of 300 courtiers political friends and allies and assorted hangers on who attended the queen and 1 200 servants had orders to hire musicians and entertainers for the court's rev els There were 12 nights to think of and he needed to plan for music and dancing and plays He met with an actors group the Lord Chamberlain's Men to talk about an assignment They were to write and perform a play to entertain Elizabeth and her guest an Italian duke The performance would take place on January 6 the Feast of the Epiphany when Christians honored the visit of the Wise Men to the baby Jesus Elizabeth and her court also celebrated this date as Twelfth Night the final night of fun that capped the Twelve
Days of Christmas The actors got together making haste as they set their plans Dame Fortune good luck smiled on them One of the actors was a gifted playwright a man from Stratford named William Shakespeare With just a few days to go before Christmas Shakespeare sat down at a wooden table with his quill pen ink and a sheaf of papers in front of him There he wrote Twelfth Night a comedy about mixed up people living in a fantasy world One of the char acters took his name from the queen's Italian visitor William Shakespeare went on to become the Eng lish language's best known playwright Shakespeare understood how people think and act as they live their lives and he wrote about human nature in his plays and poems As he said in his play As You Like It Queen Elizabeth I and her court enjoyed Shakespeare's plays in the Globe Theatre iStockphoto HultonArchive All the world sa
