The ****** Mary's smile still clasped in his hand.
*
Inspired by JAMES SHAPIRO'S COMPELLING 1599 - A YEAR IN THE LIFE OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
The 'theft" of their former theatre,The Theatre, which dismantled would become the famous wooden O. And Will watching( possibly ) when all of seven. . .the stained glass windows of his 'right goodly chapel" been smashed by a glazier who was paid 23 shillings and 8 pence for his smashing. These two images are what burned on in my mind.
I have often stood in that chapel and seen what remains of the whitewashed paintings now brought back to life. His dad had to order this whitewashing months before Will was born but by 7 Will could have been witness to the death of the coloured glass and all that was to be beheld there.
So this Midsummer's Day madness of 1571 really stated with me and forced the poem upon me.
"Popery may creep in at a glass window as well as at a door" as one William Prynne put it. The English Reformation going about its daily task to the dismay of the common folk who had to put up with the religion changing hands and changing hands yet again all in the little time of just over a quarter of a century.
Being a great lover of stained glass and its beauty this was what got me the most!
The title is from Will's Sonnet no. 5:
Those Hours that with gentle work did frame
"Beauty o'er --snowed, and bareness everywhere. Then were not summer's distillation left A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass, "
***
Inspired by JAMES SHAPIRO'S COMPELLING 1599 - A YEAR IN THE LIFE OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
The 'theft" of their former theatre,The Theatre, which dismantled would become the famous wooden O. And Will watching( possibly ) when all of seven. . .the stained glass windows of his 'right goodly chapel" been smashed by a glazier who was paid 23 shillings and 8 pence for his smashing. These two images are what burned on in my mind.
I have often stood in that chapel and seen what remains of the whitewashed paintings now brought back to life. His dad had to order this whitewashing months before Will was born but by 7 Will could have been witness to the death of the coloured glass and all that was to be beheld there.
So this Midsummer's Day madness of 1571 really stated with me and forced the poem upon me.
"Popery may creep in at a glass window as well as at a door" as one William Prynne put it. The English Reformation going about its daily task to the dismay of the common folk who had to put up with the religion changing hands and changing hands yet again all in the little time of just over a quarter of a century.
Being a great lover of stained glass and its beauty this was what got me the most!
The title is from Will's Sonnet no. 5:
Those Hours that with gentle work did frame
"Beauty o'er --snowed, and bareness everywhere. Then were not summer's distillation left A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass, "