It was the year that Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet, the year he wrote his sonnets, and the year Shakespeare returned to London after he had fled the plague which killed over 20,000 people. It was the year that an English sailor called James Lancaster left the court of Queen Elizabeth of England not knowing he would return a year later, sunburnt and seaworn and bringing with him the richest, largest haul Queen Elizabeth of England would ever see. Gold and rubber and rubies and wood. Billions in today’s money. Taken from a port on the northeast coast of a Portuguese colony in the new world. A port called Recife adjacent to a bustling and wealthy settlement called Olinda.

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Shakespeare was writing in the time of empire and theft and genocide and slavery and this was when the world we know was built – and therefore you must understand its machinations and its magic.