EARLY ENGLAND

Hokitika Guardian, 21 June 1929, Page 5

EARLY ENGLAND

WHEN SHAKESPEARE LIVED. “The State of England and Europe in Shakespeare’s Time,” was the title of an interesting lecture which was given to a large audience by Mr W. T. G. Airey. It was the first of a series of lectures to be given in the college hall on “Shakespeare and His Time” under the auspices of the Auckland University College Council., Mr Airey said that the Shakespearean period was really the dawn of the modern age, marked by the develops ment of modern ideas in government, and self-expression and the breaking down of the old feudal system which had ruled western civilisation for so long. In Shakespeare’s time the Tudors practically deposed the feudal barons, and they were the first rulers to exercise consistent authority over the whole of England, which, for, the first time, became a consolidated State. The speaker quoted the words which Bernard Shaw, in his play, attributes to Joan of Are expressive of the ideal of England for the English and France for the French. In Shaw’s words, Joan of Arc was “the first nationalist and the first Protestant.” Her aim was definitely at the destruction of the feudal system. The dawn of the modern age saw the growth of absolute sovereignty as compared with absolute monarchy. It also saw the rise of the middle class. Even with the growth of democracy in more recent times, the absolute sovereignty of the State had been maintained and only in our own time was there a tendency to replace nationalism by internationalism.