Ashley Holt September 22, 2005 Sixteenth Century England: A masterpiece of the Renaissance The Queen of England needed all her skills in dealing with Parliament and the English people after the overthrow of Catholicism in 1535. It was the religious dissension following the usurpation of King Henry VIII and the throne that led the Church of England to accept Protestantism as the official religion of England in the late 1600s. Above all matters in the political government, the monarchy placed into question the authority of a king as the head of state. Could a monarch declare Catholicism an archaic practice in the kingdom? Could the monarch attempt to divorce a queen? It was within a challenged monarchy and feuding church authority that Queen Elizabeth established secular drama. When the queen succeeded her half-sister, Anne Boleyn, in 1558, she reset the country‟s official religion to Protestantism. Her sanctions criticized the religious plays and, for majority of the late sixteenth century, the monarchy forbade all religious plays. This drastically changed the nature of comedy, romance, and tragedy in theater. Plays delved into the significant issues of the Elizabethan age: murder, madness, revenge, love, the court, alchemy, science, war, and romance. Collectively known as the Renaissance, the Elizabethan era was a period or rich cultural growth, characterized by imagination, perseverance, free will, and contemplation. Rooted in the classical world of Athens and Rome, this epoch of English literature inspired a radical „rebirth‟ of ancient theory. The arcane notions of militant heroes, once lost in the ancient scrolls of classical Rome, appeared on stage in intricate and complex plots. Caesar, Prince Henry, and even, Hamlet, articulate the unspoken
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Ashley Holt September 22, 2005 words of the classical world and its military expeditions. In addition, the plays‟ themes combined the issues of the English monarchy in the seventeenth century: corrupt kingdoms, alchemy, militant warfare, and the courtyard romances of princes, barons, earls, dukes, and ruffians—such as the Montague affection of Capulet‟s only daughter in Shakespeare‟s Romeo and Juliet, and ultimately, death. Shakespeare‟s plays antagonized the issues of the monarchy, prompting Queen Elizabeth to action whenever possible—though she avoided Parliament and foreign interference. England was in somewhat of a “limited” monarchy; Parliament claimed prerogatives and exerted their own power, gaining experience and power over the monarchy. For example, the House of Commons continued to levy taxes on the English state; the legislation intended to coerce the queen to name a successor to the throne. Elizabeth needed all her diplomatic skills to maintain her position as monarchy, and as a result she remained single all her life. As the ruling monarch of a grand kingdom, with scientific invention, nautical exploration, economic prosperity, and dramatic arts, Queen Elizabeth commanded on two continents during her reign from 1558-1603. Elizabeth‟s reign was an age of absolutism rather than political despotism. Though she rescinded all medieval performances of religious drama, she instituted new social models and reformed the English commonwealth. At the time, the nobility sponsored performance troupes and multicultural dramas, which fostered skeptical opinion, improved literacy, and enhanced the arts. Drama sought to broaden the monarchy‟s introspection in foreign affairs and to construct universal modes of social
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Ashley Holt September 22, 2005 behavior. The play is no longer just a social outlet; the play is also a form of imitation and parody. Even after centuries of performance, actors continue to imitate and parody Shakespeare‟s original forms for the stage. Why his work is distinguished above all other playwrights in history is the culmination of three intervening structures in the Elizabethan play: the play‟s intricate design, its competing context, and the amusing dialogue of its leading characters. The play speaks the „unspeakable;‟ the script places into form the motives of all human action; the theme collaborates with the special knowledge of the classical world. Clearly, Shakespeare was a master of neoclassicism
and the courtly manner of an English gentleman. One of the especially appealing performances of Elizabethan drama is the revenge tragedy. The Renaissance concept of tragedy originated in two theatrical commonplaces: the „wheel of fortune‟ and the „fall of princes.‟ The succession of rebirth and its counterpart, decay, are recurrent motifs in the play and antagonize the „wheel of fortune,” as it defines the power complex within the Danish court. Most often, the ruling monarch is the individual that controls the court‟s sentiments in a variety of venues, such as diplomacy, marriage, madness, or revenge. The „wheel of fortune‟ is a euphemism that describes the succession of power in the monarchy. Gaining force within the rising action and suspense, the title of „king‟ is loosely associated with the actual monarch. In fact, as Hamlet proves in dramatic performance, the title of king offered little protection in Denmark, as each king or prince is subject to imminent death,
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Ashley Holt September 22, 2005 corruption, and disillusionment. These events contribute to a second recurrent motif in revenge tragedy, the „fall of princes.‟ It is interesting to examine the history of the play, Hamlet. As a story, Hamlet is a revenge tragedy. As a genre, revenge tragedy debates the political turmoil of retaliation, murder, and intrigue. It calls upon the supernatural phenomenon of muses, apparitions, and alchemy. After his father‟s suspicious death, Hamlet‟s actions as a prince may be interpreted in one of many ways. It is his interpretation that the audience overhears— not the doting relationship of a queen and her new husband. And Hamlet is a cunning and bloody resolute eavesdropper upon the account of the Danish monarchy. Without a verbal qualm in the company of many, Hamlet antagonizes the reconciliation of the royal state with a feigned madness—just short of sedition, treason, and slander. While he was at the University of Wittenberg, Denmark rose as an aristocratic monarchy. When Hamlet returns to Denmark, he finds his father murdered, his mother married to his father‟s brother, and his hope of succession ultimately futile. As a result, he storms upon the castle at Elsinore with verbal force, condones the monarchy, sets fire upon the royal manor, entices several fair maidens then leaves them in an ambiguous series of notes, and assaults several members of the nobility. He even goes so far as to claim his rightful inheritance as a monarch. He claims there is no logistics or continuity in the king‟s political action; in truth, many of the characters take matters into their own hands in the secrecy of the royal bedchambers. All these actions are rash, the product of moral incertitude, and commanded by the superstition of ghosts.
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Ashley Holt September 22, 2005 In another view of this revenge tragedy, Hamlet is the player of a Senecan tragedy. He is involved in a sensational murder scene, commanded by a Senecan ghost desiring revenge, and after hampered by court intrigue, resorts to feigned madness. Since apparitions are known to tell half-truths to deceive people, Hamlet is given instruction without a resolute plan. For majority of the play, he acts with passion and indecision and he proceeds with the ghost‟s wishes as his adversary allows. And, for the most part, only Claudius, Hamlet, and Horatio know the action of revenge. In addition, the causal relationship linking the king‟s death to Claudius and Gertrude‟s marriage is an effective venue of debate about the „fall of princes.‟ Hamlet senses that something is amiss when he returns to Denmark and finds his mother wed to his father‟s brother. This social engagement, an exertion of the nobility to maintain the heredity of the royal pedigree, was taboo in Elizabethan England. It parallels the marriage of a widower to his deceased wife‟s sister, long regarded as incestuous to the English. (Bevington 1060) The heredity of the royal lineage is a topic coupled with illegitimacy in AngloSaxon literature. In the sixteenth century, the honoraria of nobility extended only to members of the royal family. Aristocrats preserved the succession of the monarchy by forming marital relationships with other members of the nobility. This ensured that a member of the nobility would inherit the crown of England and the title of king or queen. As Elizabethan drama reached a decline in the early seventeenth century, the status of the monarchy became uncertain.
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Ashley Holt September 22, 2005 For more than thirty-five years, Queen Elizabeth ruled England as the last surviving Tudor monarch. Upon resignation, the kingdom would be subject to political turmoil if the queen did not name her successor. Could the expedient marriage of Gertrude and Claudius be an assertion of the social aristocracy to prompt marriage or abdication of the ruling monarch, Queen Elizabeth? Or is the overhasty marriage an allusion to low comedy, the incestuous marital affairs of the heretical lower classes? As a prince, the great reversal of fortune, an esteemed troupe of Anglo-Saxon literature, enables Hamlet to confront the tragic circumstance of his life with the understanding and conviction of the human spirit. That spirit is the triumph of Hamlet‟s legacy as a character in Shakespearean drama. It is in the moment of death, that he and others, such as Caesar, Prince Henry, and Cleopatra, overcome human mortality. What antagonizes the death of monarchs? Is it the disordered catharsis of an avenging son, acting to revenge his father‟s death? It is the corruptible and vile nature of a fatal drink within an apothecary‟s poison? Or is it the indiscretion of a king who willingly remains silent as his wife—the queen—drinks from a poisoned cup? Death in the castle of Elsinore is the culmination of passivity and posterity. Hamlet and Claudius place themselves to the power of an ultimate Providence; they are mere actors upon an eternal stage where circumstance governs the inevitable. At times, the divine justice of the king, as he confesses his guilt to the murder of Hamlet‟s father in the courtyard, is permissible to the audience because, unlike the other characters he genuinely repents of his crimes. Also, the series of events that call upon Hamlet to
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Ashley Holt September 22, 2005 avenge his father‟s death are permissible in that he is slow to action—an act that he must construct to admonish the „wheel of fortune,‟ his inevitable fate, and the untimely „fall of princes.‟ It is the complexity of Hamlet‟s rashness and ultimate passivity that ends in the play in a perfect model of obedience to divine will. Can justice be more provincial to a ruling monarch than the honor of death in action? As Fortinbras concludes the action of the play, “Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage/for he was likely, had he been put on/To have prov‟d most royal.” (Act V, lines 399-401). Hamlet is able to revenge his father‟s death without premeditated murder or the painful existence of suicide. In its proper course, passivity and rashness are fused in perfect union. Its ending is truly cathartic, for Hamlet dies, “not as one who has affirmed the tragic dignity of humanity and its grief.” (Bevington 1064)
Works Cited Bevington, David. “Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.” The Complete Works of Shakespeare. 4th ed. New York: Longman. 1997, pgs. 1060.
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Ashley Holt September 22, 2005
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