Fleas, Flies, and Friars: Children’s Poetry from the Middle Ages by Nicholas Orme
Fleas, Flies, and Friars: Children’s Poetry from the Middle Ages by Nicholas Orme (to be published March 2012, Cornell University Press) is something completely different from my normal reading, but I enjoyed it very much. It is part anthology of poetry that children learned and recited from 1200-1500 CE (translated from Middle English or Latin) and part a description (annotation) of how children lived and learned during those years.
At just over 100 pages, it is obviously just a brief glimpse into medieval children’s poetry and society. Yet, because the annotations are written with an informative but friendly tone, it was a pleasant read for me, a curious historian and admirer of poetry in general. Children in the Middle Ages learned standards of behavior from poetry, as well as experienced the to-be-expected pleasures of lullabies and nonsense rhymes. Poetic stories of Robin Hood were immensely popular, and poetic reminders of school learning (Latin grammar, for example) helped the young child study.
Although the volume is slim and I was not a reader familiar with the status or literature of children in the Middle Ages, I highly enjoyed it. In some respects, it reminded me how some things really haven’t changed. Given the songs I learned in elementary school for learning the parts of speech, the nonsense poetry ridiculing silly teachers, and the poetic stories I still read in picture books, I’m simply pleased poetry has continued to define childhood and that there is a lot more of it to enjoy!
Read as a digital review copy from the publisher via netgalley.
For the casual reader interested in knowing a little bit about the Bard, including knowing just how much we don’t know, Shakespeare: The World as Stage will probably satisfy. In less than 200 pages, one gets a general overview of the possibilities for how Shakespeare’s life panned out, for some possible reasons he knew what he was writing about, and some of the controversies and influences his writing made on the culture of the world. It was a very quick and easy read and to be honest, I love the idea of reading more brief biographies in the Eminent Lives series. Those 600+ page biographies really take a long time to get through.
I really love to sink in to a deep, many-hundred-page biography about a fascinating person, but I don’t always have time to do so. Jane Smiley’s biography of Charles Dickens (a part of the Penguin Lives series) is the opposite of a deep biography: it’s a succinct but relevant overview of Dickens’ life by looking at the works he created and his correspondence with associates.
I wish I could finish off my series of posts on Henry VI with as much enthusiasm as I had for the 
But by focusing on the fragility of power, Shakespeare manages to poignantly touch on the pointlessness of greed and power. Although I disliked King Henry VI in the previous two plays, in this play, his steadfastness is the most enjoyable aspect. He remarks on his life and the pointlessness of war, and the scenes in which he does so are the most memorable of the play. So, while the play does for the majority of the moving action illustrated the ultimate chaos that comes from power and greed, it also draws the other parallel in its quieter, more subtle scenes: the pointlessness of war, the danger with leadership being an inherited calling, and the tragedies associated with betrayal. 
Although a slim volume, Shakespeare and his Contemporaries by Charles Nicholl (published by the British National Portrait Gallery 2005) accomplishes it’s purpose. As the title indicates, the volume illustrates the various persons, distinguished and not, that Shakespeare was familiar with during the years of his life. Some of these people were associates of the Bard: fellow writers, patrons, and actors. Others were higher class gentlemen and ladies, such as the queen and her ladies in waiting. All were people who were alive during Shakespeare’s writing years, and he probably was familiar with them.
