Word: 1500s
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Plagiarism-detection software was created with lazy, sneaky college students in mind - not the likes of William Shakespeare. Yet the software may have settled a centuries-old mystery over the authorship of an unattributed play from the late 1500s called The Reign of Edward III. Literature scholars have long debated whether the play was written by Shakespeare - some bits are incredibly Bard-like, but others don't resemble his style at all. The verdict, according to one expert: the play is likely a collaboration between Shakespeare and Thomas Kyd, another popular playwright of his time. (See TIME's photo-essay...
...Venice in the 1500s was a splendid and self-regarding republic on the cusp of a long decline, in its last years as a genuine regional power but arriving at its supreme moment as a center of the Western imagination. The first flowering of the Renaissance had taken place in Florence and then Rome, by way of art that emphasized clear drawing and firmly contoured forms - disegno, as the theorists of the day called it. But by the first decades of the 16th century, Venice had developed a mighty alternative, under the shorthand term colorito, building forms through a multitude...
...established tactic. In the early 1500s, Pope Leo X underwrote his lavish lifestyle in part by taxing licensed prostitutes, and Peter the Great preyed on Russian vanity two centuries later by charging men who grew beards. In the Federalist papers, American patriot Alexander Hamilton proposed an excise tax on alcohol to boost revenues and curb consumption. The measure, enacted in 1791, sparked the Whiskey Rebellion, in which federal authorities were forced to quash an uprising by livid Pennsylvania settlers...
...Indulgences (no relation here to bubble baths or truffles) have been part of Catholic doctrine since the Crusades. When the Church offered them for sale in the 1500s - call it mercy for money - religious reformer Martin Luther protested. These days, they can't be bought. "How does that MasterCard ad go?" muses Sister Mary Ann Walsh, spokeswoman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. "Some things are priceless." (See pictures of Pope Benedict XVI visiting...
...January is national tea month. To celebrate, peruse Tea Culture of Japan: Chanoyu Past and Present at the Yale University Art Gallery. Brought to Japan from China in the 9th century, it took a few hundred years for tea to catch on, but by the 1500s it was all the rage in Japan to have tea masters prepare powdered tea in elaborately choreographed ceremonies. About 100 objects, including kettles, bamboo tea scoops and ceramic tea bowls are on display through April 26. 1111 Chapel Street, at York Street, New Haven...