Growing up I had always had in an
interest in the Elizabethan Era, largely due to the fact that my mother had
always been very taken away with Queen Elizabeth. This quarter was an amazing
journey through the era that I had heard and seen so much about but never fully
immersed myself in. Going to the
Renaissance Pleasure Faire has always been fun for me but going in with the eye
of Liberal Studies scholar gave me a new outlook on everything I had previously
been exposed too. The Faire is an amazing place to go to experience handcrafted
skills, great battles, royal courts, wonderful food, and just plain old fun.
Mortimer said that the past was easily forgotten because “We concentrate on the historic event as something that has happened and in so doing we ignore
it as a moment which, at the time, is
happening” (Mortimer xv). The Renaissance Faire allows us to break past
these events and step in to the moment of the Renaissance.
Three experiences at
the Faire that I enjoyed most was the evidence of commerce all around us at
every moment, The Joust, and The Queen with her people. I will take these events and further look
into them from the Liberal Studies scholar point of view. Focusing on
Humanities, Social Sciences, Science, and Mathematics turned out to be much
more of an easier task then I thought it would be because all were very
apparent in the people’s lives every day in this era. The White Horse Tavern was a place that scholars would go to debate things that the church would deem on the lines of heresy. I will use this White Horse to mull over the experience of the Faire as scholar of this era.
