HISTORICALLY ACCURATE
Reviews
03/26/11
I like where you are going with this, but I hope you will take this as constructive criticism: it isn't historically accurate, sorry. Though the British slave trade began in her reign, Eliizabeth I was actually totally against enslaving Africans against their will. She found the idea of enslaving these people by force an abomination, though she did object to more blacks coming into England, it was in the exact same way that many of today's conservatives in America object to more Hispanics or Middle Eastern people coming to America. Slavery wasn't just a black issue. Whites could just as easily be enslaved during Elisabeth I's reign, yet slavery was actually on its way out, by this time period, as was becoming actually rather rare, on English soil. There were relatively few black or white slaves at this time. Blacks--or "blackamoors" were actually considered a bit of a novelty, like the Native Americans Raleigh introduced, and were just as likely to be admired, as scoffed at. The treatment portrayed of Martha was probably quite accurate, actually, people would likely have been more curious of her color, than hating her for it. This is an excellent article on the subject: http://www.odu.edu/ao/instadv/quest/Shakespeare.html Like where you were going with this, and hope you will work on the general ideas expressed in this piece some more, just please do more research before announcing that something is "historically accurate?" As an amateur historian, I admit to being a bit anal about accuracy...but, it's fiction, and I suppose you can do what you want with it, as long as you do the research that backs up the "accurate" bit. Thanks for your contributions to this site. Cheers!
Nancy G
Chapter 1