A Plague Year Diary, April 30, 2023
May 1, 2023
Between March 27 and April 3, Covid and I met somewhere between Nevada and Minneapolis. 'twas a courteous introduction, mild and unassuming except for a cough and fatigue. Medicinals and taking to my bed as if I were an aristocratic Victorian English woman helped to restore me. During this time, I tweeted Samuel Pepys-type vignettes to amuse myself, which inspired more musings.
Musing the first: King Charles II was restored to the English throne in 1660 and dead by 1685. Noteworthy moments during his reign fueled by the transatlantic enslavement and trafficking of African peoples:
*The Royal African Company (1660)
*Established North American colonies: the Carolinas, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York
*Expansion of English Caribbean stake hold (Jamaica, Barbados, Bermuda, St Kitts, Tortola, among others) by the end of the 17th century
Musing the second: Charles III
In the third year of the Covid pandemic, an English monarch will be crowned and invested with the fragments of what remains of the British empire, a hollow crown tainted by racism, colonialism, and a failure to learn from his distant relative Charles I's reign: the world of racial capitalism no longer needs monarchs—and yet they persist.
Musing the third: It's All Marlowe and Shakespeare's fault
I was a first-year transfer student, albeit an older one (27 years old), and fascinated by the course description enrolled in an upper-division Renaissance English literature course. I was over my head since there was a prerequisite I hadn't taken, but transfer students were given some latitude. My first essay "sucketh canal water" (my words, not the professor's). I had no idea how to write a research essay, and my rudimentary knowledge of early modern English history was singularly unimpressive. Encouraged to drop the course and retake it later, I declined (actually refused politely) and remained enrolled. I worked hard in that class, much harder than in my other classes. It was also the course where the professor planted the seed
that I should pursue a doctorate. It was the course where I came to love Kit Marlowe, John Donne, Edmund Spenser, and Mary Wroth. It was the course that made me an academic.
Fascinated by the power dynamics of Tudor England and, by extension, what was typecast as the Renaissance, I stayed the course and went to graduate school. I planned to use the job to support my romance fiction writing self. While day jobs won't stop the writer, they definitely are a pot/plot hole.
2022 saw the publication of my historical Black romance novel, Elizabethan Mischief. It is a story of Black Tudor London, the waning years of Elizabeth I's monarchy, and a production of my fav Shakespeare play, A Midsummer Night's Dream. It is a fictional depiction based on histories overlooked or marginalized. It isn't a story of enslavement, servitude, or degradation. I refuse. It is the story of twin Black English sisters, one of whom is white-presenting, who save Elizabeth's life and monarchy and fall in love without abandoning their family, community, or each other. You should get a copy of Elizabethan Mischief. I think you'll enjoy it.
As I observe the hype around Charles III's coronation, I realize there are none to save him and his monarchy from obsolescence. The age of English imperialism has passed. What lies in its wake is the dregs of white supremacy, white patriarchy, and the inability of racial capitalism to perpetuate itself as it once was.
This is historical materialism.
Musing Fini: Prince
With a group of Black Shakespeareans, I visited Paisley Park. I've always been fascinated by the construction of shrines and museums to house the dead, even if the physical embodiment of death (a corpse) is absent (i.e., buried, cremated, mummified, etc.). While as much as it is a "working music" studio, Paisley Park is also a shrine. Despite the over-zealous manner of the white female guide, which frequently lapsed into micro-aggressive racism or infantilism, the visit was reminiscent of my first time visiting Westminster Abbey. Surrounded by the dead (whether their bodies were interred or not) and the objectification of their demise.
Three hundred pairs of boots, no two identical. Prince's fedora was left on a piano exactly as he had placed it the night before his death. A ping pong table. Doves.
Memento mori
© 2024 Margo Hendricks
