Does any one know what influence Queen Elizabeth 1 had on Shakespeares writing?
I have your answer, my dear. Queen Elizabeth was a great patron of the arts, particulary plays and masques. The Puritans, or Protestant hardliners, once shut down all the theatres in London, claiming they were a major source of the plague. The real reason is that people were spending time going to plays instead of praying . The Queen retaliated by forming her own company of players, and quashed a bit of legislation aimed at shutting.down all the theatres. That’s just the beginning. William Shakespeare and Ben Johnson, another playwrite and contemporary of William’s, who incidentally did not like the Queen, staged plays at Elizabeth’s court quite often, at a cost of 400 pounds each, quite a bit of money in the sixteenth history. Legend has it that Elizabeth was so taken with the character of Falstaff in the The History of Henry IV, that she asked Shakespeare to write a play in which Falstaff falls in love, hence The Merry Wives of Windsor. Twelth Night was also written for her court. Th
