{"id":100628,"date":"2023-06-23T07:04:14","date_gmt":"2023-06-23T13:04:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=100628"},"modified":"2023-06-24T15:33:05","modified_gmt":"2023-06-24T21:33:05","slug":"its-my-history-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2023\/06\/its-my-history-too.html","title":{"rendered":"It’s my history, too."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>
This man, one Will Shakspear of the old white European town called Stratford-upon-Avon, is traditionally regarded as the author of such Elizabethan-period white male poems and dramas as \u201cHamlet,\u201d \u201cOthello,\u201d \u201cKing Lear,\u201d \u201cJulius Caesar,\u201d \u201cRomeo and Juliet,\u201d \u201cMacbeth,\u201d \u201cA Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream,\u201d \u201cThe Tempest,\u201d \u201cThe Merchant of Venice,\u201d \u201cRichard III,\u201d \u201cHenry V,\u201d and the \u201cSonnets.\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

For a long time, I thought of the history of England, Scotland, and Wales as their<\/em> history, the history of a foreign country or countries.\u00a0 And, of course, in a very real and obvious sense it is<\/em> the history of foreign places, relative to me.\u00a0 In another sense, though, it is my own history.\u00a0 Elements of my maternal family lines first appeared in the New World in the late 1600s; most are much more recent than that.\u00a0 In other words, prior to the second half of the nineteenth century most of my maternal ancestry was living in what is now the United Kingdom.\u00a0 Robert the Bruce, Edward II, Richard III, Henry VIII, Mary Queen of Scots, \u201cBloody Mary,\u201d Elizabeth I, James I of England (aka James VI of Scotland), William and Mary, and even Queen Victoria were their<\/em> monarchs, not rulers of some distant foreign land.\u00a0 The subjects of those kings and queens are just as much my progenitors as they are of modern Brits.\u00a0 Shakespeare wasn\u2019t merely the fellow countryman of the ancestors of today\u2019s British, he was the fellow countryman of my maternal forebears, too.\u00a0 In fact, astonishingly, I seem to have ancestors buried just a few feet away from the Bard\u2019s tomb in Stratford-upon-Avon\u2019s Holy Trinity Church.\u00a0 They were contemporaries of his, and they seem to have known him or, at least, to have been aware of them:\u00a0 One of their sons bore the personal name Shakespeare<\/em>, while a second bore the name Hamlet<\/em>.\u00a0 Thus, while I\u2019m open to the possibility that Stratford\u2019s Will Shakespeare wasn\u2019t actually the author of the sonnets and the plays \u2014 my recently departed sister-in-law was an ardent \u201cOxfordian,\u201d believing that the actual writer of \u201cthe Works\u201d was Edward de Vere, the seventeenth earl of Oxford, who simply used the actor Will Shakespeare as a front for his playwriting \u2014 I actually have a personal stake in Shakespeare<\/em> being the real author:\u00a0 He may represent my family line\u2019s one real chance at a brush with greatness.<\/p>\n

Incidentally, while visiting Stratford a week or two ago, the plot of a far-fetched murder mystery occurred to me.\u00a0 I\u2019ll never write it, so I offer it to the world:\u00a0 Somebody appears \u2014 make it, if you will, a member of the faculty at nearby Oxford University \u2014 who is about to publish definitive proof that it was, say, Edward de Vere who wrote Hamlet<\/em> and King Lear<\/em> and Othello<\/em> and A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream<\/em> and The Tempest<\/em> and The Merchant of Venice<\/em> and Romeo and Juliet<\/em> and and Macbeth<\/em> and Sonnet 29 and all the rest \u2014 just beginning to list<\/em> such works puts me in renewed awe of their sheer genius! \u2014 rather than William Shakespeare.\u00a0 Shortly before publication of her evidence is to have occurred, though, she is murdered and her ostensible evidence disappears.\u00a0 An investigation is launched to solve the mystery of the homicide.\u00a0 Who done it?\u00a0 The Stratford Chamber of Commerce, of course!\u00a0 Plenty of motive.\u00a0 What would the city become if Shakespeare and his wife, Anne Hathaway, were to be regarded as mere ordinary mortals?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"St.<\/a>
At St John\u2019s College, University of Oxford
(Wikimedia Commons)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

A complete change of pace:\u00a0 Many years ago, there was a period when my speaking engagements on behalf of the old FARMS \u2014 the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, predecessor to the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship and, organizationally, to BYU\u2019s new-direction Maxwell Institute \u2014 got a bit out of hand. \u00a0I was being sent out at least once a month, often to one of the coasts and, once or twice, first to one coast and then immediately, on the same weekend, to the other coast, to speak to sometimes rather small groups. \u00a0It was wreaking havoc with my family and with my personal academic work.<\/p>\n

On one such occasion, the father of the woman who had organized a fireside in\u00a0a middle-sized eastern city\u00a0at which I was to speak\u00a0picked me up at the local airport. \u00a0As it happened, she wasn\u2019t even in town, the fireside had received virtually no publicity (and only about thirty people showed up when it happened), and her father plainly resented being obliged to take time to deal with me. \u00a0(It was right after this trip that I finally put my foot down. \u00a0I didn\u2019t want to be a prima donna<\/em>, I said, but I was also tired of flying across the continent sometimes twice a month in order to speak to only politely-interested groups of two or three dozen.)<\/p>\n

Anyway, the fellow who fetched me at the airport was distinctly sullen about having to do so as we drove the considerable distance to where I would be staying. \u00a0But I\u2019ve always remembered that drive quite positively. \u00a0Why? \u00a0Because, for some reason or another, the topic of near-death experiences came up. \u00a0(I can\u2019t for the life of me remember how or why.)<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve had one of those, he said. \u00a0I replied, Tell me about it!<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a paraphrase of his account:<\/p>\n

Once, in his late teens, he was driving at night along one of the densely forested rural roads in that state. \u00a0Suddenly, without warning, he was t-boned at an intersection and found himself floating a least a hundred feet above the accident, looking down on the two vehicles.<\/p>\n

From his vantage point above the tree tops, he saw the flashing lights of police cars and an ambulance coming from a distance\u00a0toward the scene of the accident. \u00a0He watched as the medics worked on his body, trying to revive him. \u00a0He tried to tell them not to worry, that he felt perfectly fine \u2014 better, in fact, than he could ever remember feeling before. \u00a0But he couldn\u2019t make himself seen or heard. \u00a0Then, without warning, he felt himself reenter his body and, he recalled, \u201cit hurt like hell.\u201d<\/p>\n

That story has stayed with me for years. \u00a0It\u2019s astonishing how often, when the subject of near-death experiences comes up, someone in the group will say that she or somebody close to her has had one.<\/p>\n

Anyway, with that as a lengthy preface, you\u2019ll understand why this story, which I read a while back, struck me:<\/p>\n

A young man lost control of his car during an evening snow storm. \u00a0He crashed and left his body as icy-cold water began to flow into the vehicle he had been driving.<\/p>\n

I saw the ambulance coming, and I saw the people trying to help me, get me out of the car and to the hospital. \u00a0At that time I was no longer in my body. \u00a0I had left my body. \u00a0I was probably a hundred or two hundred feet up and to the south of the accident, and I felt the warmth and the kindness of the people trying to help me. \u00a0<\/span>(Reported in Nancy Evans Bush, Dancing Past the Dark: Distressing Near-Death Experiences<\/em> [n.p.: Nancy Evans Bush, 2012].)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n

Posted from London, England<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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