Do you have a burning passion to be forced into engagements you never wanted? Do you long and yearn for confining gowns with layers of petticoats and undergarments? Or are you simply fed up in the hectic swirling of your day to day life and wish all these worries could fly away to be replaced by the governing commands of a husband or father? Then not only do I understand the pain of your unfair treatment in the modern world, but I also see a way that this whining and pining could soon stop. Now from the creators of Toys R Us and Babies R Us comes an incredible solution for this dilemma. Times R Us © is a new company that has an amazing offer just for you. Any person willing to pay a minimal fee of $300,000,000 will now be transported by our comfortable and roomy XX2000 time machine to a location of his or her choosing in Elizabethan England. This is the perfect gift for a wedding, birthday or even a funeral. Now, some might not think that this is a brilliant idea for a gift. They will fiercely protest that the current era is the best time for strong women to live and thrive, but this is just a hotheaded excuse, and in reality it could be condensed to the stupid naive argument of “I think I am better than anyone else”. Considering yourself or your time as better than any other does not seem like a great rationale for avoiding a decision that could turn your life from a slimy banana peel to a six layer wedding cake. On the other hand, it is easy to see the advantages of this blast to the past.
One of the main rewards of Elizabethan society is that women were able to obtain an almost property like status, especially when it came to marriage. Now some people may assume that this would be a disadvantage, but it is in fact one of the greatest advantages of the Elizabethan era. Almost everyone has had one of those moments where they are sitting there in a fancy restaurant, holding a menu in one hand and scrolling up and down looking through the thousands and thousands of options, uncertain what to choose. As the waiter’s approach looms ominously above her, she frantically tries to decide what to eat, wishing that the person sitting next to her would simply command her to pick this or that option off the menu. Any fool knows that these same problems occur in daily life. If it is nearly impossible to decide what type of salad to order for one meal, who would ever want the responsibility and ordeal of choosing the man she will live the rest of her life with? It would be much easier and less stressful if this decision could instead be made by someone else. Soaring back in time gives you this option! In the Elizabethan era this cumbersome problem was eliminated because, a girl’s father would make all of her important decisions. Whether it was choosing her husband or deciding where and when the wedding was to take place, a girl could just sit back and relax while her father organized her endeavors. In a wedding, the future bride would not even have to venture her opinion. This would be far too confusing. Instead the father simply chose whom he wanted and relied on the word of the proposed man. Even if this contradicted the girls pleas that she hated the man she was about to marry the father may still side with the other man. Now an unlucky few had wishy-washy fathers who would be under the strange assumption that girls actually desire “rights” such as choosing a husband. Why force the poor girl to offer her opinion about the man she weds? Fathers like this consider themselves kind, but who are they kidding? They are just lazy bums who could not even be bothered to make their own decisions. Why would a girl ever want to decide their own future?
Some people stupidly claim that not being “allowed” to choose one’s husband would be a nightmare, but they are simply trying to prevent the creation of a barren empty modern landscape caused by thousands of young girls returning to the past. Their argument is that when fathers choose their daughters’ husbands, woman were practically bought and sold like slaves to the highest bidder; the dowry almost functioning like the price tag in a two way bidding war between father and prospective husband. The more the father had, the more the husband must also have. These people snidely remark that fathers may not even know the man they choose, but simply listen to lists of possession of two suitors and pick the one that will fork over the most gold. Idiotically they claim that some fathers may want so deeply to rid themselves of their daughters that they will give them away to the first man who pops his head her way, never knowing if she loves him or if he will treat her well. Attempting to defend themselves, theses critics claim that the man the father chooses and barely knows might deny his new wife of common provisions. Even if he claimed to be doing this for the good of his wife, a man could easily slap food from his wives mouth and let her starve. Snap decisions, where you meet one day and then marry the following Saturday, obviously cater to this sort of abuse. Also the flash wedding thrown together in a matter of days for these events can lead to grooms who would not pay a cent to make the wedding the most incredible day in their brides lives. Because of this, instead of looking like the bride and groom statuettes on a cheap wedding cake, the groom looks more like he came out of Oliver Twist in a rainbow of rags. But why would a man act this forward his future bride? Most of the human race means well. Any man will care for his bride. What makes one think that a man who marries a girl in three days is a sleaze-ball? Seriously. Who cares what this man is like? Does it actually matter if he was only chosen for his dough? Money is all people want anyway. So why would any girl care that she was unable to plan her own life?
Although the advantages of this era for girls seems quite clear, for men and those who are not running down the aisle anytime soon, this time machine trip still has many other extraordinary advantages. One of the most prominent of these is that you can be whoever you want to be. Not only in the theoretical “reach for the stars” kind of way that grade school teachers tell children today. Instead, in a practical way, you can choose your identify. Since there are no pictures or ways of identification so people have no clue whom you are. It is amazing to think that at Shakespeare’s time a person could simply utter, “Hi, I am Vincentio’s son,” and everyone will believe him and treat him as such. Like logging into a new RPG (role playing game), a person can be new character in each city he enters. In one town he can be Tranio a poor servant, in the next Lucentio, a young man from Pisa and in another Cambio, a music teacher. This way a poor servant could easily disguise as his rich master, create a fake father to back him up and fool a father into giving you his daughter’s hand in marriage when otherwise the father would never have approved the wedding. Or he can dress down to the role of a Latin teacher and court a young girl whose father did not want her to find a match. The best part about this RPG is that it is easy to escape the consequences of one’s actions. Switching from persona to persona can make anyone a superhero. This ability to disguise as another is not powered by krypton, but instead just by the incredible gift of ignorance due to the lack of pictures or any mode of identification. All information traveled by letters or word of mouth, so if you claimed to be someone, no one could prove you wrong. Immediately some people will suggest that lack of clear identification is not really an advantage, believing that if anyone could be a superhero, they could also be a super villain. They think these easy disguises could promote a rise in theft, rape, and murder, but this seems preposterous. Why would anyone want a black mask, when superman gets a red cape? In other words there is absolutely no danger in disguising as another person. It is just good old fashion fun and games. No one ever tries to do anything bad.
The incredible advantage of easy disguises has not convinced you to buy your ticket to Elizabethan England yet, there is still one more major advantage of this trip that I need to discuss. In Shakespeare’s time there was a strict human ladder that dictated the position of each individual person in society. This allowed people to treat others like scum. Everyone has had a terrible day at some time or another when they have felt that rush of hatred swirl up inside their soul. Feeling like it would release them from this day to day nightmare, they wish that they could grab someone’s head and flush it down the toilet. Nowadays it is necessary to endure the torturous drudgery of screaming into one’s pillow, blaming others, and just having a long hard cry. Although in Elizabethan times one cannot actually give a person a swirly since there are no toilets, anyone can whip his servant till their head spins simply to prove a point to their wife. Even if they have not made a mistake, anyone can hurt his servant for some clean cheap fun. The best part is that before the stupid human rights movement, no one even considered this wrong. The only argument anyone can possibly contrive against this advantage is, “well, what if that was you?” Who cares if that was you? It is not you!! If this does not sound like an amazing experience, you could always go down a very different path with your servants. Joke around with him and treat him as an equal, but then make him do what you tell him. If you tell him to disguise himself as you, then he had to figure out how to make that happen. You can control almost everyone. This final reason alone should be enough to convince a person of the great advantages of the Elizabethan era, but with the other reason, there is no real reason to stay here.
If you seriously still think that you would rather live the subpar life you have today, then that is all right. Not everyone wants to be happy and to have all they could ever want. Some people are masochistic. They are happy to be unhappy. If you are one of these people, then have fun staying in the twenty-first century, but if your head if screwed on the right way, call up your nearest Times R Us © or check out our website <http://www.timesrus.com> for exclusive offers and order forms. In just a click of a mouse or a dial of your phone you could be back at a time when none of today’s amenities exist. Welcome to the past!!