The context

This post starts with a Warrington U3A Science visit to Norton Priory in Cheshire several weeks ago. Among the many facts the guide there told us was that the dissolution of the monasteries didn’t just destroy the physical structures. It devastated whole communities. I then watched Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch’S Henry VIII’s Enforcer: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Cromwell , Lucy Worsley’s Six Wives , and BBC 4’s Shakespeare, The Rise of a Genius. In the midst of this I went to an utterly entertaining and fascinating talk by Rob Eastaway on Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Numbers, held at the Pendulum Hotel, Manchester. It was arranged by Manchester’s Literary and Philosophical Society. [Well worth reading Rob’s book ].

A  different world

It is tempting to say that the world of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I and Shakespeare was completely different form ours. One apparently obvious difference is that we no longer go round chopping off the heads of those who displease us, as they did then in the life and death battles between Protestants and Catholics. At least most of us don’t, Putin and Trump notwithstanding.

Non Sanz Droict

But what intrigued me most was how Will Shakespeare handled the conflicts surrounding him: by writing and acting in plays. Hence his fame as a playwright. Note, not playwrite but playwright. One of the facts that emerged during this journey was that Shakespeare added a spear to the coat of arms he inherited from his father. Not too surprising perhaps! What did surprise me, was his coat of arms motto. The motto, Non Sanz Droict runs along a ribbon underneath the Arms. For those who don’t read Old French it is translated as Not Without Right!

Given the logo of this website I checked his use of the four /raIt/s in his plays. All four (rite, write, right, wright) are there although it’s no surprise to discover that wright occurs in compound words e.g. shipwright. But I loved the fact that Shakespeare’s essence is summed up in his motto Not Without Right