The Renaissance and

Elizabethan Age
AMIN AL-SOLEL
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
FACULTY OF ARTS, THAMAR UNIVERSITY
Renaissance
 "Renaissance" literally means "rebirth." It refers
especially to the rebirth of learning that began in
Italy in the fourteenth century, spread to the north,
including England, by the sixteenth century, and
ended in the north in the mid-seventeenth century
(it ended earlier in Italy).
 Th the medieval society of scholasticism, feudalism, and chivalry
was to be made over into what we call the modern world.
 Italy, like the rest of the Roman Empire, had been overrun and
conquered in the fifth century by the barbarian Teutonic tribes, but
the devastation had been less complete there than in the more
northern lands.
 By the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, further, the Italians had become
intellectually one of the keenest races whom the world has ever known and the
movement for a much fuller and freer intellectual life had begun.
 The Renaissance movement first received definite direction from the rediscovery
and study of Greek literature.
 Another historical turning point in the West was the taking of Constantinople by
the Turks in 1453.
 Aristotle was again vitalized, and Plato's noble idealistic philosophy was once
more appreciatively studied and understood.
 The Renaissance, penetrating northward, past first from Italy to France, but as
early as the middle of the fifteenth century English students were frequenting the
Italian universities. Soon the study of Greek was introduced into England.
 While Greek was speaking so powerfully to the cultivated class, other forces
were contributing to revolutionize life as a whole and people’s outlook upon it
such as:
 The invention of the printing press.
 the vast expansion of the physical world through geographical exploration.
Renaissance most
intellectual issues
The values of classical antiquity

 Renaissance thinkers strongly associated themselves with the

values of classical antiquity, particularly as expressed in the newly
rediscovered classics of literature, history, and moral philosophy.
 Conversely, they tended to dissociate themselves from works
written in the Middle Ages, a historical period they looked upon
rather negatively.
 According to them, the Middle Ages were set in the "middle" of
two much more valuable historical periods, antiquity and their own.
The Great Chain of Being

• Its major premise was that every existing thing in the universe had its "place" in
a divinely planned hierarchical order, which was pictured as a chain vertically
extended.
• An object's "place" depended on the relative proportion of "spirit" and "matter" it
contained--the less "spirit" and the more "matter," the lower down it stood i.e.,
(inanimate – plant- animals – human beings – angles – God).
• Besides universal orderliness, there was universal interdependence. Renaissance
thinkers viewed a human being as a microcosm ( a little world).
• According to the chain of being concept, all existing things have their precise
place and function in the universe, and to depart from one's proper place was to
betray one's nature.
 According to the chain of being concept, all existing things have their precise
place and function in the universe, and to depart from one's proper place was to
betray one's nature.
 Human beings, for example, were pictured as placed between the beasts and the
angels. To act against human nature by not allowing reason to rule the emotions--
was to descend to the level of the beasts. In the other direction, to attempt to go
above one's proper place, as Eve did when she was tempted by Satan, was to court
disaster.
Political Implications of the Chain of
Being
 The proscription against trying to rise beyond one's place was of course useful to
political rulers, for it helped to reinforce their authority.
 The implication was that civil rebellion caused the chain to be broken, and
according to the doctrine of correspondences, this would have dire consequences
in other realms. It was a sin against God, at least wherever rulers claimed to rule
by "Divine Right.”
 The need for strong political rule was in fact very significant, for the Renaissance
had brought an end for the most part to feudalism, the medieval form of political
organization.
Humanism

• Other ideals and values that were represented in the literature were even more
significant. It was the intellectual movement known as Humanism that may have
expressed most fully the values of the Renaissance and made a lasting
contribution to our own culture.
• The word 'human,' indeed, became the chosen motto of the Renaissance scholars;
'humanists' was the title which they applied to themselves as to men for whom
'nothing human was without appeal.'
 THE REFORMATION

• In 1517 Martin Luther, protesting against the unprincipled and flippant practices
that were disgracing religion, began the breach between Catholicism, with its
insistence on the supremacy of the Church, and Protestantism, asserting the
independence of the individual judgment.
• The actual course of the religious movement was determined largely by the
personal and political projects of Henry VIII.
• Conservative at the outset, Henry even attacked Luther in a pamphlet, which won
from the Pope for himself and his successors the title 'Defender of the Faith.' But
when the Pope finally refused Henry's demand for the divorce from Katharine of
Spain, which would make possible a marriage with Anne Boleyn, Henry angrily
threw off the papal authority and declared himself the Supreme Head of the
Church in England.
Drama
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

• Marlowe was born in 1564, the son of a shoemaker at Canterbury. Taking his
master's degree after seven years at Cambridge, in 1587.
• Much of Marlowe's strength lies in his powerful and beautiful use of blank verse.
• His famous plays are: “Tamburlaine the Great” and “The Tragical History of Dr.
Faustus”.
• He was killed in 1593 in a reckless and foolish brawl, before he had reached the
age of thirty.
Shakespeare
• William Shakespeare, by universal consent the greatest author of England, if not
of the world, occupies chronologically a central position in the Elizabethan drama.
• He was born in 1564 in the good−sized village of Stratford−on−Avon in
Warwickshire, near the middle of England, where the level but beautiful country
furnished full external stimulus for a poet's eye and heart.
• In the village 'grammar' school William Shakespeare had acquired the rudiments
of book−knowledge, consisting largely of Latin, but his chief education was from
Nature and experience.
• In his early manhood, apparently between 1586 and 1588, Shakespeare left
Stratford to seek his fortune in London.
• Shakspeare had been fascinated by the performances of traveling dramatic
companies at Stratford and by the Earl of Leicester's costly entertainment of
Queen Elizabeth in 1575 at the castle of Kenilworth, not many miles away.
• He enjoyed a substantial reputation as a playwright and a good, though not a
great, actor.
• His literary career can be divided into four major periods:
1- The experiment and preparation, from about 1588 to about 1593: 'Richard III’,
'Venus and Adonis,' and 'The Rape of Lucrece’.
2- The second period of Shakespeare's work, extending from about 1594 to about
1601, is occupied chiefly with chronicle−history plays and happy comedies: 'Henry
IV’, 'Midsummer Night's Dream’ and 'The Merchant of Venice’.
3- The third period, extending from about 1601 to about 1609, includes Shakespeare's
great tragedies and certain cynical plays: Macbeth, Hamlet …etc.
4- The noble and beautiful romance−comedies, 'Cymbeline,' 'The Winter's Tale,' and
'The Tempest,' suggest that men do best to forget what is painful and center their
attention on the pleasing and encouraging things in a world where there is at least an
inexhaustible store of beauty and goodness and delight.
 BEN JONSON

 Jonson, the posthumous son of an impoverished gentleman−clergyman, was born

in London in 1573.
 At Westminster School he received a permanent bent toward classical studies
from the headmaster, William Camden, who was one of the greatest scholars of
the time.
 He soon deserted it to enlist among the English soldiers who were helping the
Dutch to fight their Spanish oppressors.
 He became an actor (at which profession he failed) and a writer of plays.
 About 1598 he displayed his distinguishing realistic style in the comedy 'Every
Man in His Humour,' which was acted by Shakspeare's company.
 About 1598 he displayed his distinguishing realistic style in the comedy 'Every
Man in His Humour,' which was acted by Shakspere's company.
 Shortly after the accession of King James, Jonson, Chapman, and Marston
brought out a comedy, 'Eastward Hoe,' in which they offended the king by
satirical flings at the needy Scotsmen to whom James was freely awarding Court
positions. They were imprisoned and for a while, according to the barbarous
procedure of the time, were in danger of losing their ears and noses. At a banquet
celebrating their release, Jonson reports, his 'old mother' produced a paper of
poison which, if necessary, she had intended to administer to him to save him
from this disgrace.
 In 1603, Jonson had turned to tragedy and wrote 'Sejanus,' which marks the
beginning of his most important decade.
 His most significant dramatic works, on the whole, are his four great satirical
comedies. 'Volpone, or the Fox,' assails gross vice; 'Epicoene, the Silent Woman,'
ridicules various sorts of absurd persons; 'The Alchemist' castigates quackery and
its foolish encouragers; and 'Bartholomew Fair' is a coarse but overwhelming
broadside at Puritan hypocrisy.