PRESENTATION

BY CALIDA R.D’SOUZA

THE AGE OF SHAKESPEARE

Characteristics of this Age

• The Age of Shakespeare is known as the Golden Age of Literature.

• It was an era of peace, of economic prosperity, of stability, of liberty and great explorations.

• Drama was very prominent in this era.

• Political peace and stability: Elizabeth was a wise Queen who followed the policy of balance and moderation both inside and outside the country.

• She successfully established peace in disturbed borders.

• Social contentment: there was rapid increase in industries it gave people jobs. Wealthy people were taxed on order to help the poor.

• Religious tolerance: At Queen’s Elizabeth's rule people were given full religious freedom. She established the Anglican church.

• The Queen’s popularity and upsurge of Patriotism: She was brilliant and became popular. She was Spenser’s Gloriana, Raleigh's Cynthia and Shakespeare’s fair vestal throned by the people. She inspired England. She loved England and greatness. People respected her.

• Expansion: The expansion was both mental and geographical horizons. It is an age of great thought and great action, an age which appeals to the eye.

• Great voyages like Drake ,Forbisher brought treasure from east and the west. The spirit of action and adventure fired the imagination of writers.

• Foreign Travels and fashions; Italy fascinated the Elizabethans. People were influenced not only Italian literatures but also of the morals and manners.

• The Elizabethan literature was immensely influenced by contemporary activities.

• Backwardness of the Age: It was an age of great diversity and contradictions. It was an age of light and darkness, the age of reason and unreason ,the age of wisdom and foolishness, Though there were development there were bloodshed, disorder and violence. It is even portrayed in Henry IV,Part 1.

• The barbarity of the age is seen in such brutal sports as bear baiting,cock fighting and bull fighting. People still believed in superstitions,ghosts,fairies,charms etc.

• Conclusion: In spite of ignorance and superstition,violemce and brutality,” The Age of Elizabeth was a period rarely equalled for exuberance, courage and accomplishment..

• The Elizabethans felt that the world was an oyster and they held the knife to open it. It was the age of in which “ men lived the intensely, thought intensely and wrote intensely.”

Influence of Renaissance on English Literature

• Influence of Humanism: It had a profound impact on the ideals of life. it liberated Human thinking from the irrational and inhuman restrictions of medieval times.

• The cramping influences of medievalism with its religious piety and asceticism became dead letters.

• Marlow,Shakespeare,Spenser and all other poets and writers were great humanists because their writings are suffused with glorification of man and human life.

• Shakespeare’s hamlet explains : “ What a piece of work is man!”

• During this era it was said:

“ Glory to the man in the highest

For man is the crown of things.”

• Humanism gave birth to individualism and worldliness. The ancient Hellenic view was centred on this present world rather than on some future one.

• It was an individualistic view, which is expressed in ancient Greek Literature.

• The result of this individualism was that the Renaissance men cared not at all for the authority. They were free in making their own decisions and this freedom found expression in the plays of Marlowe.

• The writers directed their gaze inwards, and became deeply interested in the problems of human personality.

• During the Elizabethan period, under the influence of Humanism, the stress was laid on the qualities which distinguished human beings from one another, and give anindiuality and uniqueness to human personality.

• One of the most important works during Renaissance was Machiavelli's Prince, which immensely influenced the thought of this period and strengthened the expression of individualism.

• Renaissance is attacked as “ lacking in spirituality”, as “ being grossly sensual and human”.

• This opinion is hardly tenable because Renaissance represented a change conception of morality. Lyly wrote Euphues not merely as an exercise in a new kind of prose, but with the serious purpose of inculcating righteousness of living based self on self control.

• Sydney wrote his Arcadia in the form of fiction in order to expound an ideal of moral excellence.

• Influence of the spirit of Discovery and Adventure on Renaissance Literature:

• During Elizabethan England action and imagination went hand in hand. The dramatists and poets held the mirror to the voyagers. The cult of the sea is the oldest note in literature.

• The stories of the voyagers, who in their trade went to different lands and saw strange monsters and savages which the poets added to fairies, dwarfs and giants of the Romances.

• The voyagers themselves wrote down the account of their adventures, and to of these accounts proved very popular- that of Hakluyt’s Voyages and Discoveries and Purchas’ Pilgrimage.

• The spirit of adventure provided figures of speech, metaphors and symbols to dramatists. The Merchant of Venice, Othello, The Twelfth Night and The Tempest testify to his accessibility to its spirit.

• Milton is full of allusions to it.

• Influence of the revival of classical Learning: The classical revival of learning influenced the content, style and technique of literature. Rediscovery of Plato was a gift to Renaissance from Greece. It influenced Spenser’s Hymn to Intellectual beauty.

• The sonnet and blank verse are the two important meters which were used with artistic adroitness and excellence in Elizabethan Literature.

• Pastorals,epicscomedies,tragedies, lyrics of every kind of prose romances ,criticism, history and philosophy were skillfully attempted.

• The Renaissance Spirit of Rational and Scientific Quest: It fostered the reason of questioning, of rational and scientific quest for truth. Reason had been put forth as the best guidance factor in human life. Make an appeal to the reason was the theme of many writers.

• Bacon is the high priest of this attitude. Ben Johnson represents the rational and free approach. The theme of the Paradise Lost in the fall of man due to his refusal to obey reason.

• Renaissance and Reformation: Reformation is briefly explained as the religious movement arising out of the revolt Martin Luther against Pope’s supermacy.It encouraged writing of theological prose which influenced the development of English prose.

• William Tyndale’s Translation of the New Testament was due to reformation that the bible became a common property and the language glided into theological writing and gave it a literary tone.

• Conclusion: The Age of Shakespeare in which renaissance finds is highest and most spontaneous expression marks the real beginning of very high order of English.