Queen Elizabeth: Wo-man?

It is not as outlandish as it seems to view Queen Elizabeth I as both male and female. In a time when the female sexual organs were viewed as the inverse of the male, it was not beyond the realm of possibility that a woman could become a man through vigorous exercise. In fact there is the tale of the shepherdess who in mid leap (she was leaping over a fence) became a man. Although this was more possible with girls than with women. It was a concern for men, if their wives were engaged in 'man's' work, that they would come home only to be greeted at the door by a man. This not only threatened the hierarchy of things, but also the fundamental power structure. Perhaps, through vigorous exercise, Queen Elizabeth was able to keep Lord Burghley from constantly insisting that she marry. Obviously it takes more than vigorous exercise to make a woman into a man, but that's not the point. The point is that to the Elizabethan mind, this was indeed possible.

"Veiled Lady," research power point

The Veiled Lady

Pre orders and Characters

Until December 28th I'm encouraging pre orders for my new book: "The Veiled Lady: A Miao Juzheng, George Silver Elizabethan Adventure."

These pre orders will be available through: Barnes & Noble, Kobo and Apples Ibooks.

What I'll be doing until that release date is blogging about a lot of the research that went into the creation of the book.

The first thing that I did was pick the Characters that I could form the nucleus of a story around. The Heroine had to be different, had to be exceptional...not unlike Queen Elizabeth. And I found that character in the creation of Miao Juzheng, a young woman from the Middle Kingdom. That alone is unique because Chinese slaves were a rarity in Europe at the time, but a young woman with albinism who has special powers of foresight...

The above picture is of my daughter, who is also from the Middle Kingdom and also has albinism. I took the picture in Black and White, because while the iris looks clear, sometimes 'pinkish' in colour, it is actually is a very clear blue.

The Wall

Driving away from Tel Aviv airport towards Jerusalem I learned two things. I learned, through observation, that Israel is an armed camp and that the favourite saying of our Palestinian driver was ‘no problem, no problem.’ The wall around the West Bank is an amazing architectural structure, most walls are. Their purpose is often more sinister. Hadrian ’s Wall was designed to keep my ancestors (the ravening Celts) out of Roman controlled Britain: the great wall of China, to keep the Mongols at bay. So, what was the wall around the West Bank keeping out? When we went to Bethlehem it didn’t seem to be keeping much out. Traffic was flowing easily between the two states, yet there was the feeling that that could change at a moment’s notice.

Maybe to help understand the difficulties behind this was a conversation I overheard while eating at the Austrian Hospice in Old Jerusalem along the Via Dolorosa. The woman, in an animated discussion, was describing the population dynamics of Jerusalem. Out of the one million inhabitants of Jerusalem, two hundred and fifty thousand are Palestinian. Out of that number one hundred thousand have chosen to reject Israeli citizenship; they refuse to recognize Israel as a state. This has created a problem confining these people to Jerusalem. 

So, back to the wall: what is it keeping out? Well, the occurrence of suicide bombings have gone down since the wall went up, but tensions still simmer just below the surface. Everyone seems to tolerate each other by pretending they aren’t there. The Palestinians pretend the Jews aren’t there, the Jews pretend the Palestinians aren’t there and the Christians are just tourists. Then something happens and people start paying attention. For example during a traffic altercation the police responded, supported by several IDF (Israel Defence Force) soldiers. Watching everything was a large circle of young Palestinian men.  It was like circles within circle with everyone watching each other…and waiting.

I hope that the Jews, being the children of Abraham, and the Palestinians, also being the children of Abraham, can settle this centuries old dispute over inheritance without killing each other. Unfortunately Jerusalem is the mother of much tragedy and much dispossession.    

Citrus in Jerusalem

Upon visiting some place new, senses are heightened and the mind is working overtime trying to store as much information as possible. The one thing I noticed on arriving at The National Hotel in Jerusalem was the smell: Citrus, everything smelled of citrus. The next day, on entering the Old City through Herod’s Gate into the Arab Quarter we noticed the preponderance of oranges, bananas and pomegranates. The citrus smell that I had put down to some cleaning product was everywhere. After a few days I realized that it was coming from my own pours. I began to smell like citrus. Of course I had been imbibing in frequent juice breaks of freshly squeezed orange and pomegranates. As far as nutrition goes the vitamins in citrus fruit deteriorates from the point of picking, but this was so fresh it tasted like nothing I had ever tasted. My favourite drink was pomegranate. I found it expensive in the grocery store back home, but here, in Jerusalem it was relatively inexpensive and beyond worth. After walking a number of hours in the crowded streets it was delightful to sit and drink fresh juice and become one with the smell of citrus, which everyone else smelt of.

Elizabethan Fashion

I’d like to discuss something of driving importance…the Elizabethan Ruff. I know that beheading was a popular norm in the time, Henry the VIII chopped off at least 3 of his 6 wives’ heads. He was at a 50% rate when he died, and may have upped that percentage had he lived longer. Was this need to cut peoples’ heads off caused by the Elizabethan Ruff? The Ruff had the effect of making a person’s head look as though it had all ready been detached from the body and presented on a platter. I don’t think there is any place in the world that still uses the Ruff in fashion, except the circus and adorning dogs who have and obsessive compulsion with scratching themselves bloody…well, that’s not really a Ruff is it, more a funnel.  

Another interesting Elizabethan devise was the Farthingale, or hooped skirt. The Spanish version know as the fertugado was brought to England by Catherine of Aragon (she lost her head). They were a rather modest, ‘A’ type structure that any engineer would envy. Then the French got hold of it and the next thing the Farthingale had more hoops than a Native American dancer. Even so the Farthingale for Queen Elizabeth wasn’t enough; she added the prefix “great” onto it. Dipping to the front, ridding up behind, the gown looked like a ship diving down into a trough in some tempestuous storm. It’s no wonder why palaces needed to be so big. Imagine a dance floor populated by an armada of Great Farthingales swirling about like out of control bumper cars. Now, I understand that Queen Elizabeth’s favourite dance was La Volta, where there was some lifting and jumping about involved. I know a bit about dance and find it hard to imagine how someone could possibly lift a woman dressed in a Great Farthingale and keep all their teeth.

The other interesting thing I’ve noticed about the Elizabethan dress was that it came in parts. There was a Roll, a Stomacher, a Petticoat, a Kirtle, a Forepart, a Partlet, a Gown, Separate Sleeves and the notorious Ruff. It’s no wonder you needed a cast of thousands to assemble a lady for society. Elizabeth had four ladies of the bed chamber to dress her and then a bevy of Elizabeth clones to keep her from running people over because a Great Farthingale did limit one’s visibility. King James, Elizabeth’s replacement, solved this problem by entirely dispensing with changing his clothes altogether. As the old ones dissolved he just clothed himself in new clothes. Shakespeare knew King Jame’s taste, that’s why he wrote ‘The Scottish Play.’

Clothing must have inhibited Elizabethan love making…or maybe that’s why the clothing came apart in pieces. Let me think about that. 

The Crazy Elizabethans

The thing I find interesting about doing research is how much we no longer know, and what we have to do to relearn what might have been. For example, how did Elizabethan's view the world? We can guess, but we will never really know, because the Elizabethans, unless you're channeling Dr. Dee, are long gone.

For example what is the mindset that enables a person to fight another person with a rapier, oh, let's see because you thought their ruff was a bit too big. I mean, you know, in a few seconds you most likely will have a yard of steel sticking out of your chest, or worse (if it can get worse) your eye.

Does this mean our mindset today is that of cowards, while the Elizabethan mindset was that of heroes?

Hmmm, let me think, and therein is the rub. We think. Yet, some of the best thinkers lived in Elizabethan times. Gascoigne, Raleigh, Walsingham, Bacon, Burghley, Tyndale (I'm not going to say Shakespeare, because the only Shakespeare I know of was a grain merchant in Stratford. I mean John Donne get's a stand-up memorial, while Willy gets a worked over effigy of him writing on a book. Listen, there is no way Shakespeare, the grain merchant, could have written a play on a bag of produce.) I digress.

That's the thing, isn't it. The Elizabethan's while great thinkers were also a bit loony. Didn't Ben Johnson kill someone in a duel. "Just wait a second, let me finish this line...and then I'm going to slice you open. (Some time later, the blood soaked Johnson returns to his writing.)

Shakes, or the man called Shakes (sounds like James, James Bond, doesn't it.) had a writ taken out against him because he threatened to kill someone. It wasn't a: 'you spilled my mead, I'm going to kill you.' (Remember this is a time when public killings were a time to gather with friend and family and enjoy a day out at the gore.) If someone was afraid of Shakespeare, or the man called Intrepid, there was probably good reason.