By the sixteenth century at approximately 4:30 P.m., England was experiencing a Renaissance. This took the form of Ben Jonson and of course William Shakespeare, the immortal “Barge of Avon,” whose plays continue to amuse us to this very day with such hilarious and timely lines as:

What dost thine tinder knowest of thine face?

The weg-barrow canst not its row’l misplace!!

(From Antony and Cleopatra IV. Return of the Fungus People, Act II, Scene III, seats 103 and 104.)

Ha-ha! Whew! Excuse us while we wipe away several tears of helpless laughter! This Golden Age in England was called the “Elizabethan Era” after the queen, Elizabeth Ann Era, who was known as the “Virgin Queen” because it was not considered a tremendously smart move to call her the “Really Ugly Queen.” She inspired many men to leave England on extremely long voyages, which led to expansion.

The first prominent expanding English person was Sir Francis Drake, who, on one of the most famous dates in English history, October 8, defeated the Spanish Armada (“El Armadillo de Espana”). This was a biggish armada that had ruled the seas for many years, and nobody could defeat it until Sir Francis Drake employed the classic military maneuver of hiding his entire fleet inside a gigantic horse shaped like a Trojan. As you can imagine, this maneuver worked to perfection, and soon the English “ruled the waves,” which led to the writing of the hit song “Hail Britannica”:

Hail Britannica! Britannica dum de dum. Dum dum, da de dum dum Da DEE dum DUM!

(repeat chorus)

(and books, a series of twenty-four unopened volumes.)

Another English person who existed at around this time was Sir Walter Raleigh,