The Life and Times of William Shakespeare

The Life and Times of William Shakespeare

Elizabethan England: Queen Elizabeth • Elizabeth I was 25 years old when she became Queen of England in 1558. • Her 45-year reign, which ended with her death in 1603, saw England's emergence as a nation of tremendous political power and unparalleled cultural achievement. • Because so much of this English renaissance is directly attributable to Elizabeth's personal character and influence (as well as to the unprecedented length of her reign), it is appropriate that the last half of the sixteenth century in England is identified as the Elizabethan Period.

In both intellect and temperament, Elizabeth was well-suited for the role of monarch. She was exceptionally well-educated, having been tutored at her father's court by Roger Ascham, one of the most outstanding scholars and thinkers of the age. Her intellectual interests were broad, ranging from history and science to art, literature, and philosophy, and she was a remarkably astute political strategist. • Not only did she return the country to internal political and religious stability in the wake of "Bloody Mary's" reign, she directed England's course as it became a powerful force among European nations. Both Spain and France felt the effects of England's growing strength and audacity under Elizabeth's rule. Furthermore, Elizabeth shrewdly perceived that great political advantage could be gained from her status as an unmarried monarch, and throughout her reign various political alliances via marriage were hinted at but never finalized.

Elizabeth was an enormously popular monarch, one of western civilization's first true cult figures. The following of "The Virgin Queen," or "Gloriana," as she was called, was extensive; according to many historians, every public appearance became an occasion for grand spectacle, great pageantry, and huge crowds. • Her love of music, drama, and poetry fostered an atmosphere in which many of England's greatest writers found encouragement and financial patronage. • Under Elizabeth's leadership, England experienced the true cultural reawakening or renaissance of thought, art, and vision which had begun in Italy a century earlier.

The greatest literature created during the Elizabethan Period falls into two categories: poetry and drama. • The pursuit of a literary life was viewed as an admirable and worthy endeavor, and poets shared their work with each other and at court, vying for the praise and patronage of the Queen and aristocracy. The Queen herself wrote both poetry and music.

Elizabethan England: Everyday Life • Peasant Life • The average person never traveled farther than half a day's walk for any reason other than yearly local fairs. All the necessities of life were available handmade and homemade in their own village. • People's wants were few: produce from neighborhood farms, drink from the village brewer, and firewood from local forests constituted the needs of daily life. • These needs were satisfied by barter, since money was scarce, and they could all be met without the dangers of travel on unknown roads and among strange companions.

The news of the country was orally given by peddlers, soldiers, and others who found it necessary to travel. • There was little transfer of property, and generations lived and died in the same homes and in the same circumstances. • Life was an early morning trudge to fields or sheep meadows, a few pints of ale, some cheese and bread at midday, and the evening's walk home. (Ale was drunk by everyone, even children, and regarded as a healthful beverage.)

The villages were quiet after sundown, with those who could afford candles and those who could only afford a single fire both spending their evening in talk and games. • Wealthier peasants might while away an evening reading the Bible, Book of Common Prayer, or some other tome: by Elizabeth's day it was clear that social mobility and commerce both required literacy, and perhaps half of the population could read at least a little. • Only on Sunday was there a break in the routine. The townsmen met for church in the morning, with free time for gossip, games and a few pints of ale after the service was over. Women worked communally at sewing or spinning while men bowled, played skittles or ball games, or enjoyed board games like nine man's morris, the ancient Saxon game known as hnaef, or draughts (now known as checkers).

Royal Life • Mostly one of leisure • Fox hunting and horseback riding were popular pastimes • Writing and needlework were seen as an honorable way for royalty, especially women, to pass the time • Leisure Time • In that time, musical literacy was expected in the upper class of society. Many Elizabethans made their own music. The laborers would sing while they worked, and the townspeople would sing or play music after meals. The lute, virginal, viola, recorder, bagpipe and the fiddle were favored instruments of that time.

Dancing was also a popular activity. The dances were mostly performed by couples. Dancing varied according to social class. • Drama was at the high peak of its cultural achievement , for all time, during this period. There were a variety of plays including action, humor, violence, and plays with musical interludes. • The actors creating theater often received rewards, became respectable and would slowly move up in social standing.

The brilliant actors were the Burbages (James, Richard and Cuthbert), Philip Henstoe and Edward Alleyn. • The brilliant playwrights included Christopher Marlow, William Shakespeare, and Ben Johnson. • The rise, maturity and decline of Elizabethan Theater coincided with Shakespeare's dramatic career. By the year of Shakespeare's death, there was a transition from plays to literature. • Elizabethan drama owed its strength and richness to the fusion of many elements. It was a mirror of the whole society.

Sports played a major role in the leisure time of the Elizabethan Age. Some of the indoor games included dice, chess, checkers and a variety of card games. The card games included primero, trump, gleek, new cut and many others. If the cards and dice were too passive for the men, wrestling was an alternative for them. With wrestling, however, came injuries like broken ribs, internal injuries, broken necks and more.

Elizabethan England: Fashion • Women • In the early stages of the Elizabethan era women generally wore clothes that covered them completely. The bodice or the top part of the gown was generally tight fitting with square shoulders. The yoke was usually of a dark color, and there was often some type of high collar. The collar would extend all the way to the chin and usually would ruffle at the top. • Women wanted as small and petite waist as possible, so they did anything to make their waists small or appear smaller than the actual size. Women in the Elizabethan days wore ruffles to show status in society. Sleeves of women's gowns had a certain appearance of being puffy.

Men • The men's style of clothing was also very distinct during the beginning of this great period. The men wore embroidered vest-like shirts called jerkins, which had square shoulders and buttons down the front. The sleeves were often decorated and loose- fitting all the way to the wrists. The pants were loose-fitting and extended to about three to four inches above the knee. They were padded with horse-hair and slashed in order to show the knitted silk stockings underneath. • The shoes of the men were generally made with the finest of leather. They contained a small leather heel and were often decorated with slashes. The headgear was either a small flat hat made of velvet or silk or a tall crown hat that was covered by fine fabric or feathers. Some of the more distinguished men wore small capes with big-edged collars.

Elizabethan England: Medicine D. Pedro: Sigh for the tooth-ache? Leon: Where is but a humour of a worm?Through all thy veins shall runA cold and drowsy humour.This is undation of mistemper'dhumourRests by you only to be qualified;Then pause not; for the present time's so sick,That present medicine must be minister'd. • These lines from Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing give a brief glimpse into the world of Elizabethan medicine.

One of the most common beliefs during this time concerned the humours. • It was believed that four humours or fluids entered into the composition of a man: blood, phlegm, choler (or yellow bile), and melancholy ( or black bile). • According to this belief, the predominance of one humour over the others determined a person's temperament as sanguine (cheerful), phlegmatic (indifferent), choleric (ambitious), or melancholic (sad). • Furthermore, they believed that too much of any of them caused disease, and that the cure lay in purging or avoiding the peccanthumour, as by reducing the amount of blood by cupping or reducing the bile by means of drugs.

Epidemic diseases became more common in the sixteenth century. Among them were typhus, smallpox, diphtheria and measles. Scurvy also increased in frequency. • In children there were epidemics of plague, measles, smallpox, scarlet fever, chicken pox, and diphtheria. Many children were abandoned, especially infants with syphilis (it was feared they would pass it on ). Dental disease sometimes caused death, and congenital and acquired blindness were also common for the children.

Elizabethan medical treatments were quite varied. • For an earache, a common remedy was to put a roasted onion in the ear. To cure a stye, a person was supposed to rub his eye with the tail of a black tomcat. • For mental illness, doctors extended the new technique of transfusing blood to the treatment of mental patients. When arterial blood of lambs was injected into the venous system, the patients seemed to recover. This method was stopped when a patient died. • Ambroise Pare, an army physician, discovered the effectiveness of hygiene on wound healing. One night after treating many gunshot wounds with boiling oil, he ran out of oil. Many soldiers' wounds were uncared for, so Pare simply cleaned and dressed their wounds and went to bed. The next day he awoke to see that the wounded treated with oil were feverish and in pain, while the ones cleaned and dressed were sleeping and doing well. Boiling oil was eventually no longer used on the battlefield.

Shakespeare • William Shakespeare was born in April of 1564. There is no specific date of birth because at that time the only date of importance was the date of baptism, though infants often were baptized when they were three days old. Shakespeare's baptismal date was April 26, 1564. • Shakespeare was born in the village of Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire. • At the time of his birth, the village had a population of 1500 people, and only 200 houses.

Shakespeare's father, John Shakespeare, came from a family of yeomen, and he gained many prestigious positions in the community. Shakespeare's mother, Mary Arden, came from an ancient family of landed gentry. The whole family was Anglican. • The family's financial situation was well off. • Not much information is known about Shakespeare's youth, although undoubtedly he was educated in the local school, where he studied Latin and Greek, among other subjects, during a school day that often lasted from dawn to dusk.

Shakespeare was married to Anne Hathaway in 1582, when he was 18; she was 26, eight years his senior. The exact wedding date is uncertain, but the marriage certificate was issued on November 27,1582. • Anne was the daughter of a respected yeoman (free man; could be a servant in a noble household) farmer. • William and Anne had their first child, Susanna, in May of 1583. This was followed by the birth of twins, Hamnet and Judith, in January of 1585. • Most historians believe that Shakespeare was not often around his family in Stratford after that because historical records show him in London during the following years.

We know very little about Shakespeare's life during two major spans of time, commonly referred to as the "lost years." The lost years fall into two periods: 1578-82 and 1585-92. • The first period covers the time after Shakespeare left grammar school until his marriage to Anne Hathaway in November of 1582. • The second period covers the seven years of Shakespeare's life in which he must have been perfecting his dramatic skills and collecting sources for the plots of his plays.

Shakespeare returned to the theatre in 1594, and became a leading member of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, formally known as Lord Strange's Men. • Shakespeare performed with the Chamberlain's Men before Elizabeth I on several occasions. As payment for their performance the actors each received 10 pounds. • During his time with the Chamberlain's Men Shakespeare wrote many plays, including Romeo and Juliet, Richard II, King John, and Love's Labour's Lost. • During the years Shakespeare performed with the Chamberlain's Men, before their purchase of the Globe in 1599, they played primarily at the well-established theatres like the Swan, the Curtain, and the Theatre.

Some important events in Shakespeare's personal life also take place during this time period. The Shakespeares finally received a coat of arms 1596 • On August 11 of the same year, Shakespeare's son, Hamnet, died at the age of eleven. Shakespeare no doubt returned to Stratford for the burial, although we have no documented proof. • In 1597, Shakespeare purchased the second largest house in Stratford: New Place. • Shakespeare died in 1616 at the age of 52; how he died is still a mystery. • We do know, however, that in a world where plague, syphilis, typhus, scurvy, tuberculosis, smallpox, malaria, dysentery and toothaches shortened a Londoner’s life expectancy to 35 years, Shakespeare fared quite well, leading a relatively long and healthy life.

Throughout his career, Shakespeare coined over 20,000 new words which were added to the English dictionary. • Examples of some of the words Shakespeare added to the English language: • Advertising • Courtship • Critic • Frugal • Majestic • Moonbeam • Puking • Worthless

The Works of Shakespeare • While we cannot be certain of the timeline, scholars have generally come to a consensus as to the general placing of his writing in history. • His works can be broken up into comedies, histories, tragedies, romances, and poems. • First work: A Comedy of Errors – written 1589-1594, first published 1623 • Romeo and Juliet – written 1594, published 1597 • Hamlet – written 1600, published 1603 • Macbeth – 1606, published 1623 • Final work: Henry VIII – written 1613, published 1623

Many of Shakespeare’s stories would not have been new to the Elizabethan audience. They were mostly reworking of old tales. • The story of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, for example, where a man takes revenge for the murder of his father, would not have been a new story for the Elizabethans. • Shakespeare's main source for Hamlet was probably the Third Book of GestaDanorum (which was also called HistoriaDanica) by Saxo Grammaticus. The story was retold by François de Belleforest in HistoiresTragiques. • It is also possible that a play reputedly by Thomas Kyd (1558-1594) called Ur-Hamlet was used. Interestingly, the term "Ur" means original and due to the total confusion in relation to the publication of any Elizabethan literature there is a theory that Ur-Hamlet was actually written by William Shakespeare as a draft for the final version of Hamlet.

The Globe Theatre • Built during 1599 • The theater that Cuthbert Burbage built for the Chamberlain's Men had a total capacity of between 2,000 and 3,000 spectators. • Because there was no lighting, all performances at the Globe were conducted, weather permitting, during the day (probably most often in the mid-afternoon span between 2 P.M. and 5 P.M.).

Because most of the Globe and all of its stage was open air, acoustics were poor and the actors were compelled by circumstances to shout their lines, stress their enunciation, and engage in exaggerated theatrical gestures. • Productions staged at the Globe were completely devoid of background scenery. Although costumes and props were utilized, changes of scene in Shakespeare's plays were not conducted by stagehands during brief curtain closings. • Changes of scene were indicated explicitly or implicitly in the speeches and narrative situations that Shakespeare wrote into the text of the plays.

The stage of the Globe was a level platform about 43 feet in width some 27 or 28 feet deep that was raised about five feet off the ground. • The stage was fitted with a number of mechanisms (trap doors in its floor for instance), and distinct sections (e.g., a sub-stage space toward its back lip for parallel action) that were creatively utilized by Shakespeare in his stage directions. • It was surrounded on three sides by the "pit" in which "one-penny" spectators stood and, at a setback, by an amphitheater three stories high, each having a gallery and seating for "two-penny" theatergoers. While the galleries of the two-penny section may have been partially covered, the stage and the pit were open air. • On the fourth side of the stage was an adjacent "tiring" house, where costumes changes were made. It was capped by a small turret structure, from which a flag and a trumpeter would announce the day's performances.

The original structure of the Globe Theatre stood until 29 June, 1613, when its thatched roof was set ablaze by a cannon fired in a performance of Henry VIII and the Globe burned to the ground. • By this time, Shakespeare was in semi-retirement at Stratford-on-Avon where he would die three years later at the age of fifty-two. • The Globe was reconstructed in 1614, with tiles replacing flammable straw on its partial roof. • In 1642, however, a quarter-century after Shakespeare's death, a new, Puritanical and decidedly anti-theater regime assumed power in England and closed down all of the country's theaters. • Two years later, Cromwell's round heads tore down the Globe, leveled the site and constructed tenement housing upon it.

http://virtual.clemson.edu/caah/shakespr/VRGLOBE/VRGlobe.php

Classical Tragedy • Only four artists can truly be called tragic artists in the entire history of human letters • Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides (wrote during the “Golden Age of Athens” – 461-380 BC) • Shakespeare – 1591-1603 AD • Only a poet can write tragedy because tragedy is PAIN TRANSMUTED INTO EXAULTATION BY THE ALCHEMY OF POETRY • There is an intensity of emotion because of the compact connotation and imagery that poets are force d to employ.

Classical tragedy can best be defined as the agony and often death of a soul made great by its capacity to suffer whilst still maintaining its human dignity • In Shakespeare such a soul always dies at the end of the play; in the Greeks, death of the main character may or may not occur. • Tragedy has been intensely produced in only two great periods of history, both short: the Athens of Pericles (fewer than 80 years), and Elizabethan England (about 10 years)

Battle of Marathon – 490 BC • 20 miles outside of Athens • During this battle, the Athenian army, with superior training, equipment, and leadership, defeated an invading Persian army of more than twice the Greek numbers • In ancient warfare, the number of men on each side would usually determine who would win

The unprecedented Greek victory was nothing short of miraculous • It saved the city and all its inhabitants from death (men and male children) and slavery (women and female children) • When the city heard the news (from the first “marathoner”), despair and anguish changed to joy and exhaultation • The Persians lost 6400 men and 7 ships while the Greeks lost only 192 men.

The Defeat of the Spanish Armada – 1588 • In the English Channel • “Armada” is the name applied to the great Spanish invasion fleet that was defeated by the English • The English were so outnumbered and their ships were so small that all hope seemed lost • However, English superior tactics saved them • Tactics in sea warfare to this point involved fighting at close range, with ships lying alongside each other, allowing marines and infantry to board the enemy decks • The English guns, though lighter, were longer ranged, and Sir Francis Drake refused to play the “game” • He kept his ships too far away to be boarded and pounded the Armada into helpless hulks • The Spanish lost well over half their ships and were forced to withdraw

The victory not only saved England from an invasion, it also opened the way for the colonial expansion of England, Holland, and France, by breaking the hold of the Spanish-Portuguese Empire • As with the Greeks, the reaction of the people changed from anguish and hopeless despair to joy and wonder at their salvation

Bibliography • http://www.saintives.com/essays/peasantlife.htm • http://www.springfield.k12.il.us/schools/springfield/eliz/elizabethanengland.html • http://images.google.ca/images?hl=en&q=elizabethan&gbv=2 • http://shakespeare.about.com/od/studentresources/f/faqshowhedied.htmhttp://shakespeare.about.com/od/studentresources/f/faqshowhedied.htm • http://shakespeare.about.com/od/faqshakespeareslife/f/vocabshk.htm • http://www.william-shakespeare.info/shakespeare-play-hamlet.htm • http://shakespeare.about.com/library/weekly/aa042400a.htm • http://www.bardweb.net/plays/timeline.html • http://www.enotes.com/william-shakespeare/shakespeares-globe-theater/ • Mabillard, Amanda. "William Shakespeare of Stratford." Shakespeare Online. 20 Aug. 2000. (October 21, 2008) < http://www.shakespeare-online.com/biography >.

The Life and Times of William Shakespeare