The Dissolution Of The Monasteries

[poliphilo]

"Dissolution"- a curiously mild word- as if the monasteries had just melted away. The reality was theft, murder and the obliteration of a thousand year old culture. The English have always been a little cagey about talking about it.  Henry VIII?- oh, he was the man who had trouble with his wives. Where is the art that deals with this national crime? There isn't any. Shakespeare, who lived as close to the events as my generation does to WWII, slips in the odd reference- "bare ruined choirs where once the sweet birds sang"- but you sense him being careful. The new ruling class didn't want people talking about how they'd come by  their nice new houses and estates. 

Comments

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

If, as some folk do say, Shakespeare was a recusant, he may have had extra cause for reticence.

But I agree that there are many blank periods in our national consciousness, and for the cause you identify: "Treason doth never prosper - what's the reason? For if it prosper, none dares call it treason." Not too much medieval poetry about the harrying of the north, for example - William's own genocide.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I like to think William was visited on his deathbed- like Shakespeare's Richard- by the ghosts of his victims, but I don't suppose he was.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

It would have taken too long, I think. 100,000 died in the harrying alone (out of a total population of 2.25 million).