William Shakespeare and His Time

Elizabethan Era

(1558–1603)

London in the E.A.

•Largest city in Europe

•Center of trade and social life because of the Thames

Negative Aspects of

London

Shakespeare’s Time

• Conditions in London—BAD!

• Trees used up for fuel

• So many migrants because of Thames and trade, jobs were scarce

• Poverty

Living Conditions• No running water

• Chamber Pots• Thames River polluted

with raw sewage• Streets filled with rotting

garbage• Animals permitted to

defecate anywhere

Pollution• City ditches were

used as toilets• Butchers threw dead

carcasses in the street• Garbage was thrown

in river• Mass graves for the

poor

High Drinking Rate•Beer was cheap, so people drank a lot of it to escape their problems

•Many deaths by drunkenness

Lack of Personal and Public Hygiene• Neither rich nor poor bathed

very often, it’s considered dangersous

• Common to have strong body odor, bad breath, rotting teeth, constant stomach aches, and scabs or sores

Sickness and Disease

3 Main Diseases:•Bubonic Plague•Small pox•Tuberculosis

Lack of Medical Knowledge

•They made no connection between illness and the horrible living conditions

•Children often died before 5 years

Example of home-made

recipes to cure Bubonic Plague:

"Take yarrow, tansy, featherfew, of each a handful, bruise them well together, let the sick urinate on the

herbs, strain them, and drink the mixture."

Life Expectancy

• Adult male: 47 years

• London: 35 years (wealthy), 25 years if poor

• 40% died before middle teenage years

Marriage• The “age of

consent” was 12 for a girl, 14 for a boy

• Early Marriage=undesirable

• Average age of marriage 25 for women, 27 for men – a bit younger for aristocracy

Schools• Were expensive, so most

students were upper class boys.

• Only girls were from the very high aristocracy

• Taught Latin grammar and classical literature

• Girls who could afford education were given a domestic education instead of an academic one—spinning, cooking, preserving fruit, weaving, and anything that could make the home life more pleasant

Women

Clothes

• One set used all year long, rarely washed

• Underclothing slept in, infrequently changed

• Clothes handed down from rich to poor• All wore high heels to avoid the sewage

PeasantsWealthy

Clothing•Clothing Acts:

laws that said who could wear what

•People had to dress their social class

•No purple for example

Women• Married women lost all

control of their property, even clothing, to their husbands

• When a husband died, the most the woman could inherit was 1/3 of his property

Queen Elizabeth• Bastard daughter of

King Henry VIII• And Ann Boleyn (2nd

of 6 wives)• Henry had Ann

beheaded for “treason”

• Younger sister of “Bloody Mary.” = Catholics vs Protestants

• “Virgin Queen”?

Elizabethan Period

The Elizabethan Period was the age of the Renaissance, of new ideas and new thinking.  The introduction of the printing press during the Renaissance, one of the greatest tools in increasing knowledge and learning, was responsible for the interest in the different sciences and inventions.

Wheel of Fortune or

Fate

Superstitions•Elizabethans were very superstitious; many had charms and such in their houses

•They relied heavily on astrology and the stars

Elizabethan Ghosts1.Were gruesome—

usually looked as they did when they died

2.Visible only to person they are haunting

3.Came back for a specific mission: proper burial, revenge, or a warning

The Globe

External structure of

Elizabethan theaters• Circular• Open-air• Awning over

gallery seating• Larger

theaters seated approx. 2,000 – 3,000 spectators

The Theater• Plays

produced for the general public

• No artificial lighting

The Globe• The sign over the

entrance shows Hercules (or possibly Atlas) carrying the globe on his shoulders -- an allusion to the name of the house as well as to the Elizabethan theater's claim to present a mirror image of the world

• Basic entrance fee is a penny, entitling the spectator to use the standing room in the open 'Yard'.

Internal structure of Elizabethan theaters

• The wealthy patrons sat on benches in the gallery

• The common people stood around the stage in “the pit”; they were called groundlings

Spectators• All but wealthy

were uneducated/illiterate

• Much more interaction than today

Staging Areas• “Heavens”>

angelic beings

Internal structure of Elizabethan theaters

• The area above the stage housed machines that could lower people onto the stage – called “heaven”

• A trap door in the stage allowed actors to come up from below – called “hell”

Internal structure of

Elizabethan theaters

Tiring house

gallery

The “pit” & groundlings

stage

“heaven”

Differences•No scenery•Settings > references in dialogue

•Elaborate costumes•Plenty of props•Fast-paced, colorful>2 hours!

Actors•Only men and boys•Young boys whose voices had not changed play women’s roles

•Would have been considered indecent for a woman to appear on stage

Shakespeare “The Bard”• Widely regarded as

the greatest writer in English Literature

• 1563-1616• Stratford-on-Avon,

England• wrote 37 plays• about 154 sonnets• Writing: intellectual

AND bawdy

The word ‘bard’ means poet.

Shakespeare wrote:

•Comedies•Histories•Tragedies

Language and Shakespeare

• The audiences represented a broad cross-section of English society, so successful writers like Shakespeare had to write on at least two levels: they had to appeal to the best—and least—educated people in the audience; they had to know how to use both rude’n’crude humor and refined classical allusions.

• Allusions are a sort of literary ‘name-dropping’; you mention a name from Greek mythology or a phrase from a famous poem,

and the truly refined reader ‘gets’ it.

Three Cool Things About Shakespeare’s English

1. When Shakespeare began his career; the English language was flexible and still developing. Shakespeare made the most of the situation, displaying dazzling innovations like a great jazz improviser: Shakespeare turns nouns into verbs, links adjectives together to form new combinations, and borrows words from other languages.

2nd Cool Thing About Shakespeare’s English

• Shakespeare’s vocabulary is big; 21,000 words plus. Not only can’t a modern audience ‘understand’ every word, Shakespeare’s audience couldn’t understand every word! Shakespeare often chose his words to take advantage of their newness, to make us look at a new situation in a new way, and to get the meaning from the context. In other words, he wants you to loosen up and follow him, not sit on each line with a dictionary.

3rd Cool Thing About Shakespeare’s English

• Shakespeare often uses what poets call personification—giving human characteristics to non-humans. In Shakespeare, a tree may be angry, the moon may blush, the morning may have eyes…in most cases, that is not meant to be taken literally—it is as if the moon blushed, or as if the morning had eyes.

OK, maybe he was cool, but he is still hard to understand.

Why do teachers make us read Shakespeare?

• On Quoting Shakespeare• Timeless themes• Literary Devices

Couple's embrace survives 5,000 years• They died young and, by the looks of it,

in love. • Two 5,000-year-old skeletons were

found locked in an embrace outside Mantua, 25 miles south of Verona, the city of Shakespeare's star- crossed tale of "Romeo and Juliet."

• Buried between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago, the prehistoric pair have sparked theories that the remains of a far more ancient love story have been found.

• The Neolithic period remains are believed to be a man and a woman who died young, because their teeth were found intact.

Elizabethan Words•an,and: if•anon: soon•aye: yes•but: except for•ere: before•e’en: even•e’er: ever

QE1 Words (contin.)•haply: perhaps

•happy: fortunate•hence: away, from her•hie: hurry•thence: from there or that circumstance•thither: to or toward there

QE1 Words (contin.)•whence: where

•wilt: will, will you•withal: in addition to•would: wish•WHEREFORE: why