Fruit that is bred primarily for sweetness at the expense of complexity of flavour

Gala is the apple that always seemed to me to encapsulate the unfortunate shift in recent decades towards fruit that is bred primarily for sweetness at the expense of complexity of flavour. Of course it is an apple that is extremely successful due to its attractive appearance and colour, and as it is grown all over the world in both hemispheres it can be in the supermarkets all year round. So it has become the dominant variety.

R. Blanc, The lost orchard (2019), loc 1,530

England had been ruled by men whose competing priorities made an unstable compound

The problem was that ever since Ireton and Pride had purged Parliament in 1649 to push through the trial and execution of the King, in which Oliver Cromwell had acquiesced, England had been ruled by men whose competing priorities made an unstable compound. The desire for more powerful and active parliaments, for social reform and for a quite different form of religion from the old Church of England could not easily be satisfied in a single government. The representatives of the people did not want the wholesale religious reform that the victors of the civil wars felt must happen and were unconvinced about many ingredients of the programmes for social and political reform. That the regime, or various versions of it, had endured so long owed a great deal to Oliver Cromwell himself.

A. Keay, The restless republic (2022), loc. 5,036

The rise of the newspapers was itself an aspect of the explosion in publishing which took place in the mid-seventeenth century

The rise of the newspapers was itself an aspect of the explosion in publishing which took place in the mid-seventeenth century. In the year 1500 just over fifty books were printed in England, in 1600 the number was 300, come 1648 more than 2,300 titles poured off the presses in a single year. Perhaps 30 per cent of all men and 10 per cent of all women could read, and over double those percentages in the capital, a readership now offered an addictive weekly news fix that involved them as never before in the turbulent goings-on of their kingdom.

A. Keay, The restless republic (2022), loc. 2,044

The wages of the Derbys’ uncompromising royalism were death, but they were not destitution

The downfall of the nobility, even that part of it that had fought for Charles I, had never been the goal of the republican regime. The Committee for Compounding’s overwhelming concern was raising money, not meting out political or social retribution, and in spite of the seismic shifts of the decade there was much by 1652 that was stabilizing. The majority of major landowners had kept their heads down during the wars, prepared to root for the royalist cause, to send arms or plate, but not to risk their patrimony for it. Perhaps a quarter of aristocratic and gentry landowners – some 3,000 families – had had their lands sequestered, but most would pay the fines to regain their property.

...

The wages of the Derbys’ uncompromising royalism were death, but they were not destitution. The Commonwealth regime was proving to be remarkably unvindictive in its treatment of its adversaries; the need for unity and reconciliation, not least given the tiny numbers who had actively wished for a republic, was obvious to many in positions of power.

A. Keay, The restless republic (2022), loc. 1,918 & 1,946

And that if his Doggs would not eate himm hee would eate him himselfe

In interviewing informers Bradshaw [who presided over the trial of Charles I] was repeatedly confronted with the visceral fury that was felt towards him personally. A London grocer reported to the Council of State that he had heard a royalist vow that he ‘would cutt in peices the said Lord President and boyle him and after give him to his Dogges to eate; And that if his Doggs would not eate himm hee would eate him himselfe.’

A. Keay, The restless republic (2022), loc. 854

Oliver Cromwell’s daughter, Mary, and her husband Lord Fauconberg ... were popular figures at the late Stuart courts

Oliver Cromwell’s daughter, Mary, and her husband Lord Fauconberg, whose boisterous wedding party Oliver himself had hosted, were popular figures at the late Stuart courts; the Earl was ambassador to Venice, a friend of the Duke of Monmouth and, later, a prominent supporter of the Glorious Revolution. Well into the reign of Queen Anne the residents of Cheshunt in Hertfordshire would see an elderly man out riding with his dogs, or sketching landscapes, who was none other than Richard Cromwell, one-time Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland.

A. Keay, The restless republic (2022), loc. 235

Put up with so much architecture they detested

O beautiful, for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, has there ever been another place on earth where so many people of wealth and power have paid for and put up with so much architecture they detested as within thy blessed borders today?

T. Wolfe, From Bauhaus to our house (1981), 1

The great advances of civilization ... have never come from centralized government

The great advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science or literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government. Columbus did not set out to seek a new route to China in response to a majority directive of a parliament, though he was partly financed by an absolute monarch. Newton and Leibnitz; Einstein and Bohr; Shakespeare, Milton, and Pasternak; Whitney, McCormick, Edison, and Ford; Jane Addams, Florence Nightingale, and Albert Schweitzer; no one of these opened new frontiers in human knowledge and understanding, in literature, in technical possibilities, or in the relief of human misery in response to governmental directives. Their achievements were the product of individual genius, of strongly held minority views, of a social climate permitting variety and diversity.

M. Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (1962), loc. 403

In my view, this analysis of history, though exhilaratingly written, is nonsense, and in some cases factually wrong. This is not because free markets aren't good, they're just not the only way good things happen.

Of the many remarkable things about Hamlet perhaps the most extraordinary is its length

Of the many remarkable things about Hamlet perhaps the most extraordinary is its length. At roughly 4,000 lines, the Second Quarto – the closest thing we have to what Shakespeare wrote in late 1599 – could not have been performed uncut at the Globe. Nor could his revised version of the play, a couple of hundred lines shorter, which eventually appeared in the First Folio. Though the Elizabethan stage dispensed with time-consuming intermissions and changes in scenery, these versions of Hamlet would still have taken four hours to perform; even at top speed, actors couldn’t rattle off much more than a thousand lines of verse in an hour. With outdoor performances at the Globe beginning at two in the afternoon and the sun setting in late winter and early autumn around five o’clock, an uncut Hamlet staged in February or October would have left the actors stumbling about in the fading light by the Gravedigger scene; the fencing match, fought in the dark, could have been lethal.

J. Shapiro, 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare (2005), 339

He introduced around 600 words in Hamlet that he had never used before, two-thirds of which he would never use again

The roughly 4,000 lines in the play [Hamlet] ended up requiring nearly the same number of different words (for comparison’s sake, Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and The Jew of Malta each use only about half that number). Even the 14,000 or so different words or compounds that Shakespeare had already employed in his plays (by the end of his career that figure would reach about 18,000) proved insufficient. According to Alfred Hart, who painstakingly counted when and how Shakespeare introduced each word into his work, he introduced around 600 words in Hamlet that he had never used before, two-thirds of which he would never use again. This is an extraordinary number (King Lear, with 350, is the only one that comes close; in the spare Julius Caesar only seventy words appear that Shakespeare had not previously used).

J. Shapiro, 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare (2005), 320

The same ingredients, viewed from the perspective of musical comedy, make perfect sense

Shakespeare chose to write more songs – five in all, three sung by adults, two by boys – than he would in any other play. Thinking of As You Like It as an embryonic musical may help explain why critics have had such a hard time with its meagre, episodic plot, its rich vein of contemporary satire, its over-the-top climax where the god Hymen enters, and all its song and dance. The same ingredients, viewed from the perspective of musical comedy, make perfect sense.

J. Shapiro, 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare (2005), 251