Civilization 3nd Year

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Discuss the main features of the Elizabethan Age with
references to the works of Marlow and Shakespeare as
Examples!

Although the Renaissance arrived in England in the mid-1500s, almost two

centuries after it began in Italy, some of its greatest achievements occurred on

these shores, particularly in literature. Courtier-poets such as Sir Thomas

Wyatt, Sir Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser transformed Italian forms into

richly flexible English verse, while composers including Thomas Tallis, William

Byrd and Orlando Gibbons learned from the harmonic experiments being

conducted in mainland Europe to forge a harmonic language uniquely their own.

The Renaissance affected culture in innumerable ways. In painting,

sculpture and architecture, Italian artists such as Leonardo, Michelangelo and

Raphael experimented with naturalism and perspective, and pushed visual form to

more expressive heights than had ever been witnessed. Writers such as

Boccaccio, Petrarch and Montaigne used insights gleaned from Latin and Greek

texts to develop literature that had the polish and elegance of classical authors,

yet was more intensely personal than ever before. Composers including Palestrina,

Lassus, Victoria and Gabrieli experimented with interweaving polyphony and richly

coloured harmonies, far more formally complex than their medieval antecedents.

Political thinkers such as Machiavelli honed a statecraft based on realpolitik,

while thinkers such as Galileo and Francis Bacon stressed the importance of

science based on real-world experiment and observation. The fact that so many

of these people were polymaths – skilled in music as well as art, writing as well as

science – is itself testament to Renaissance attitudes to life and learning.

Shakespeare, Marlowe, Spenser, Jonson, Bacon: almost every major British

Renaissance intellectual one can name received a humanist education.

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Shakespeare’s plays and poems are steeped in writers he encountered at school –

the magical transformations of Ovid’s poetry infiltrate the worlds of A

Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest, his Roman histories are cribbed

from the Greek historian Plutarch, The Comedy of Errors is modelled closely on a

Greek drama by Plautus, while Hamlet includes an entire section – the Player’s

account of the death of Priam – borrowed from Virgil’s Aeneid.

The Beginning of Drama

Drama begins in ritual. The mass and other ceremonial observance of the

Christian church contain many of the basic elements of drama: color, movement

costume, and audience ….etc. In order to bring biblical stories to the public

illiterate people, the church began to use the dumb- show scenes from the Old

Testament stories, so the Christian church which ended the Roman Drama in the

16th century, was at the same time, the motive force behind the rebirth: or as it

was said: "it’s the step mother of modern drama."

When the drama broke out of the confines of the church, the spectacles

were still religious and called “mystery or Miracle plays“, but the production and

acting of them passed on the unions of skilled craftsmen.

Often one set of craftsmen would be responsible for one biblical story,

perhaps because the story seemed to be related to their skills: thus at “York” the

shipwright undertook, “The Building of the Ark”, the fisher and mariners “Noah

and the Flood “.

The medieval dramatic scene was completed by the jugglers, dancers and

mimes on the fringe of society. By the period of the early morality plays will begin

to get evidence of small companies of players, some attached to great families or

some traveling.

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The Moralities at first sight seem a small step forward in the gradual liberation

of the drama from its religious and didactic straightjacket. They convey moral

and spiritual instruction through dialogue between actors who represent abstract

qualities rather than characters. Gradually the dramatists and players

emancipated themselves from the narrow didacticism and began writing pieces

called interludes with stronger plots of an exclusive secular kind.

It is important to remember that there was no progression from Miracle

plays via Morality and the interlude to the drama we know. The Miracle plays

survived the reformation and they were still being played when Marlow was

writing his first plays.

Renaissance Learning had resulted in a rediscovery of classical models. In

addition, the earlier history of England was being rediscovered and reinterpreted

part of a general mood of recovered self-confidence. Around 1533 were

performed Ralph Roister Doister , a comedy full of characters that were

repeated over and over in later comedies ,and Grammar Curton’s Needle , a rustic

comedy, but well-construed. In 1540 John Bale had written “ King John “ , a half

history , half morality which contains both virtues and vices and also historical

characters who was against the corruption of the king to defend the protestant

hero .

The Theatre:

The Theatre was built in 1576. Within months another famous theatre called

the “Curtain“ was built and by the 1590 there were three or four theatres in

London . Their construction was simple and convenient. The typical Elizabethan

theatre consisted of octagonal building, surrounding a central acting area open to

the sky.

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The building in part included covered galleries for the better off and in the

front of the stage, stood the poor or the “groundlings”. The stage was a large,

bare platform. Here was acted out the major portions of the play.

There might also be a curtained of inner stage for certain scenes and also

the upper balconies behind the stage might be used for certain sorts of scenes,

The balcony scene in “Romeo and Juliet “ is an obvious example. Although the

theatre could hold up to ‫ يتح ّمل‬two or three thousand people, it’s estimated ‫يق ّدر‬

that the distance from the actor to the spectator was never very great.

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 Christopher Marlowe:

Marlowe was one of the most outstanding writers during the Elizabethan

Theatre as he was born only few weeks before Shakespeare. Like all the

“University Wits”, Marlowe had a wild reputation as he was an atheist, involved

with thieves and savages. As a dramatist, he produced five plays; “Tamburlaine,

Doctor Faustus, The Jew of Malta, Edward II and Dido”. In his plays, we can see

the first true spirit of the Renaissance with its new learning, new freedom and

the worship of man more than gods. We can see the new beginning of the English

Literature with no limitation of knowledge. The world is opening and the ships are

sailing to the new lands of wealth and prosperity.

T.S Eliot in his essay on Marlowe, talks about the caricature in his writings not

for a humorous effects, but for the effects of horror. But in his masterpiece,

“Doctor Faustus”, there is no caricature. The story tells about a learned man who

has known all arts and science and finds nothing in the world to study. As a result,

he turns to the supernatural. He makes a deal or bargain with the servant of satin.

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He obtains 24 years of absolute power in exchange of his soul. At the end of the

story, Faustus is dragged to hell by the demons amid thunder and lightning.

Marlowe’s achievements are very important. If he hadn’t been killed in the

tavern in London, he would have been greater than Shakespeare himself. There is

no body like Christopher Marlowe.

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Shakespeare

Shakespeare’s life:

What we know about Shakespeare is nothing only his

birth date on 23 April in 1564. His father was a glover.

He attended the Start Ford Grammar School and when he

was 18 he married Anne Hathaway who was older than him,

and already pregnant.

He had a son who died in the age of eleven. From that time we lost sight for

many years, but he reappeared in London arousing the admiration of important

people. He both acted and wrote for the “Lord Chamberlain’s Company later known

as “King’s man“. He died on his supposed birthday in 1616 after a shadowy life.

Shakespeare’s Dramatic Works :

Shakespeare’s dramatic works were the year of the Spanish Armada and

its aftermath. They were the plays of young man done for young theatre. He was

genius on expressing the horror of Macbeth and King Lear .He wrote the history

of Henry VI for the theatre leading us to the apotheosis of the villain in the

early reign of Richard III . In this play Shakespeare took the bogey-man figure

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of Richard III as he was presented on Tudor and created a dramatic figure

fascination which attracts his readers and audiences .

Shakespeare’s Verse technique:

On the other hand, Shakespeare’s verse technique takes on a new variety and

eloquence. It gains individuality and became the means of presenting imagined

characters. We can say that in the two part of King Henry IV, Shakespeare’s

scope widened .

The Feature of Shakespeare’s Comedy:

In comedy Shakespeare’s art made a great success in his first decade as a

playwright .The early comedies towards playable farce . In the “ Taming of Shrew

“ for example , verve and energy have compensated for a subject which many

people will find it distasteful. The most outstanding of these comedies, “Loves

Labors last“ which talks about a young man in love with language and it’s

possibilities.

The most important comedies which capture the stage today are:

* As you like it * Twelfth Night * Much Ado about Nothing.

1- As you like it: exploits the appeal of the pastoral mode the

impulse is to escape from the complexities of life to simpler mode.

2- Twelfth Night : it talks about a girl disguising herself as a boy .

3- Much Ado about nothing: Looks forward to the Restoration comedies of

manners. We have the “Witty Couple“ whose love leads them to marriage.

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Shakespeare’s Tragedy:

The first year of the 17th century was the crowing ones in Shakespeare’s

career. Shakespeare’s first mature tragedy “Romeo & Joliet“ had been written

around 1596. It expresses the character passionate and pathetic as the two

lovers suffer from their fate and social circumstances, so their death is a result

of accident.

“Julius Caesar“ is a tragedy that never receives it’s praise perhaps because

the student have had to study it for examination , the tragic hero of the play

isn’t Caesar himself , but Brutus who sees Caesar with his desire to be crowned

emperor as a threat to Roman Democracy .

"Hamlet" also is regarded as his masterpiece. Generally it agreed to be the

top of modern tragedies. "Macbeth" was written as a sort of compliment to the

new King, James IV. Macbeth is a very different kind of tragic hero to Othello.

The tragic flow in this play is that Macbeth is more an evil rather than a

weakness.

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