Renaissance Diary ELP

My renaissance Diary.

Entry One.

I have a Sharp nose, round and blue eyes, blonde hair, a beard, light eyebrows, pinched lips, crooked teeth, dimples, a strong chin, very muscular, and I am tall.

My name is Charles Pontidrague. I am 37 years old. I live in England. I was born on September 11th 1567. I am a Writer. I have 7 children, which gives me a busy-no-breaks life so I am always tired. But my dear wife helps me through the care taking of the family. I write in my spare time, very little of that. Since I have so little time, I haven't published many books, but my books don’t have quantity with lack of quantity they have a lot of quality, which gets me very rich. So I have the money for a grand manor that I live in which consists of stonewalls, a chimney, a fireplace, four-poster beds, tapestries (made by my wife), a paved floor, wooden beams, glass windows, an outhouse, and a pump. My manor has two floors. My wife and I a room on the second and my children share two rooms that were connected through a small door that they can easily go through. We have a staircase going to the second floor. As well on the second floor we have an office that I work in when writing a book. On the bottom floor we have a kitchen and a dining room where we well, dine. There is a room that has a fireplace that connects to chimney that I mentioned earlier, as well as some sheepskins with wool on them to sit on and relax.

I am a very generous and kind man to everyone; I am an all-around good person. But the only feature of a great person that I lack is the skill of a renaissance man.

I only dislike one person, but the whole town dislikes this person. His name is Arthur Storm-cloak. He rubs his success of being a favorite of the king in everyone’s faces when he comes back from his worldwide trips. He is an all-around renaissance man. Everybody in the town jokes behind Charles' and Arthurs' back about how it would be wonderful if Arthurs' success went with Charles' good nature and how much more wonderful England would be if Charles had that success.

Today I visited my friend John Smithers. He is a Muslim. The reason he is not dead is because of the time of rebirth being nicknamed the renaissance here in England because of the French people that live here.  The reason the renaissance is saving his life in a sense is because of the fact that the crusades have stopped and racism has been eliminated in a sense, also the church has less power so he is able to live in Europe.

How he got here you might ask. He got here because of his parents who fled from the crusades and on their journey to Asia they got captured. But when the crusades ended in a year they were set free and they moved to England to raise their child that John’s mother would soon bear. 

I went to him because I just felt like visiting him and I wanted to surprise my wife with a golden necklace, saying her name on it, Sarah Pontidrague. When we got there I requested him to make it so I could buy it. He sold it for a good price: 3 guineas. That was cheap for the normal price, 6. I watched him make it and when he got to the name part I spelt it out letter by letter for him, and after about 2 and a half hours he was done. He dipped it in the water for a few seconds and then sat it on the table and we chatted about life in general and how this country could be better. At one point he said Arthur was coming back to town.  For a while we discussed what everyone would do. Around 6 o’clock I went back home with the necklace.

I surprised her by sneaking up behind her when she was reading a book and slowly putting the necklace around her neck. She looked down with a smile when she saw the golden necklace and said “Thank you, my husband.”

After that we ate the dinner that she had prepared a little while ago. Pork, potatoes, and a salad. A good dinner. At dark we went to bed and slept through the night.

Entry 2

Today in the marketplace I saw on a poster that in London there was going to be a play called Hamlet (made by the famous Shakespeare, which ensures quality) tomorrow so I got my family some tickets as a treat. This was the first it would be performed for the public. I was really looking forward to the play because I heard it was a comedy, and I read other comedies like The Decameron by Boccaccio.

Today in the Church I saw Michelangelo’s sculpture of David. It was very odd to see a nude sculpture in the Church because it is well the Church. But that sculpture was only there for one day, I heard it was going around Europe, probably so that Michelangelo could get a better patron that paid a little more.

Now I am writing from the next day after the wonderful performance of Hamlet. Hamlet was a wonderful play, but that was not the highlight of my day, after the play and clapping and bowing, Shakespeare came up on stage and said, “One person and their family will be able to come with me and dine with me.”

He just randomly chose a family and he pointed directly at me. My family and I got up, and he brought us in a horse carriage and we rode to his home. When we got there, we saw a giant grand manor with 3 floors! His house was made of wood, and it was shaped in a circle.

When we got inside the house immediately we saw a giant table in the middle covered in food, chicken, potatoes, bread, salad, and fish, still more food. His wife came down a giant tile staircase and said, “Sit down and help your selves.” So we did, then Shakespeare came down and we chatted about our life.

When I brought up Arthur Storm-Cloak he said that everybody in the kingdom hates him. Except the queen. Shakespeare said that he wanted me to work with him as an assistant to help with his writing.

I agreed. After a few more hours of chitchat, we went back home. Shakespeare Told us to take his carriage and we did but his driver came with us and dropped us off.

Tomorrow I am going to start working with him. I am very excited because this will raise my career greatly. And maybe even get me a visit with the queen.

Renaissance Diary Entry 4

I woke up and thought, “I wish there was more land than just the territory of England to visit”.  Then I realized the value of explorers. That is just one reason out of many for why we should explore the world, which I believe is flat. The Church is lying, I can tell. A month ago I saw this one man he had an Italian accent and spoke of dreams to find a northwestern path to Asia. I think I recall that his name was John. Then his surname is something that starts with a “c”, wait CA. Oh I remember his name is John Cabot! I just sat around looking like I had no interest in it but honestly I was curious. Now I think he found a route! He founded Newfoundland if I remember correctly. I don’t understand how he was able to claim Asia if the eastern coast was completely populated according to the… Well Asians.

Once I got to work Shakespeare said that he was thinking about creating a play about exploring some of Asia, from inspiration of Marco Polo. Now that I think about it, Marco polo’s book really did change the world because of people wanting to be like him. Shakespeare said he wanted the explorer to explore the northern Asia and come across scary creatures and basically the tale of him getting problems, like food shortage, monsters, and overcoming them. We took ideas from Marcos book but in the end we decided to scrap the idea, but still Marco polo was important in all explorations because he was the original explorer of the renaissance.

I was escorted home using the horse carriage. When I got home my wife told me that she saw Marco’s book being sold, and John Cabot buying one, oh the irony. She said that john Cabot told her to say Hello from him; I guess I did make an impression on Cabot.

After a while I went to the haystack. Then slept.

Renaissance Diary Entry 5

Today I woke up to the sound of my son saying, “It’s snowing! It’s snowing!”

It is the last day of this year, December 31^st. 10 days after Christmas the city was still full of joy. Children were playing with the snow and everybody was celebrating a new year. I have the day off from work so I am writing this to remember the end of this year of development. There were many developments but the biggest ones were the development of: Humanism, Art, Literature, Science, and Exploration. For humanism it developed the world by making so that life isn’t all about religion now it is a little bit more about having fun and actually enjoying life. For Art a big development is that it is no longer just about the church. Now artists can draw ANYTHING. Also the addition of perspective made art more pleasing to the eye and backgrounds make it more interesting instead of just black. A big advance in literature is that now you can write in dry humor, which reminds me I should make a book of dry humor, we can also now write about politics and corruption like Machiavelli did. For science the biggest thing was well, the creation of the scientific method so you can do more science using the scientific method created by Francis Bacon. Another huge discovery id that Galileo proved the Heliocentric theory, which proved the church wrong, and also started a lot of controversy against the church.  The biggest advancement in Exploration was Marco Polo’s book. He was the first Renaissance explorer and his book influenced many others to explore as well.

I am now re-reading this about 5 years later and in retrospect the main thing is that religion no longer rules Europe.

-Charles