I'll return to the excerpt from Sir Thomas More tomorrow, but for today, the following seems more timely.

In preparing for my upcoming lectures on Henry IV, Part One, I found the following elucidation of the thematic content of the "popinjay" scene (1.3) in Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare. It's a scene usually considered no more than an aside, or at best an amusing anecdote that helps in the delineation of Hotspur's character. In its essence, it's an excuse offered up by Harry Percy (Hotspur) to Henry IV, as to why he has not sent his prisoners to the king (the ransom of named captives was, of course, one of the most lucrative spoils of war), and it centers around the messenger who was to pick them up on behalf of the king. This messenger offends Hotspur with his appearance and chat, neither of which, in Hotspur's opinion, becomes the battlefield. (The speech should be read in its entirety, so here's a link: http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/play_view.php?WorkID=henry4p1&Act=1&Scene=3&Scope=scene.)

But the timely part arrives toward the end of the tirade when Hotspur describes the perfumed lord expressing anger over the extraction of salt-petre (one of the three ingredients of gunpowder, along with charcoal and sulfur) from the earth. Asimov describes the significance of the moment this way:

"Prior to 1400, castle walls were invulnerable to anything but a long siege, and armored knights could fight freely in battle without much fear of being killed (except once in a while by another armored knight - and even then capture and subsequent ransom was the usual procedure). The nobility was safe, in other words, and could well afford to be brave and to despise the lowborn, who were not trained in the complicated use of arms, did not own horses to bestride, and had to fight poorly armored and afoot, so that they were killed in droves.

But then came gunpowder. Now cannon, fired by lowborn men, beat down the castle walls. What's more, a gun in the hand of a cobbler or a peasant could send its bullet through the armor of the best knight in the land long before that knight's lance or sword could reach the gunner... Gunpowder made knights and castles obsolete, and it was that, more than anything else, that ended the feudal system... Obviously, the aristocracy, longing for the good old days, would sigh for a time when gunpowder had not been invented to put the lowborn on a par with the highborn, and the fop expresses that view..."

I think you might see what I'm getting at: The internet is the gunpowder of this time and the changes that are going to be its results are just starting to play themselves out. And so, today's post is dedicated to the good people of Egypt.