SHAKESPEARE AND PURITANISM

1. SHAKESPEAREAND PURITANISM

2. WHAT DOES PURITANISM MEAN?

3. PURITANISM: Puritanism is the set of beliefs that were held by the Puritans. Out of Puritanism came the intense work ethic. disapproval Puritanism is behaviour or beliefs that are based on strict moral or religious principles, especially the principle that people should avoid physical pleasures. the tight-lipped puritanism of the Scottish literary world.

4. ACCORDING TO SHEAKSPARE PURITANISM;

5. Shakespeare used comedy to defeat the noxious influences of his day. • Shakespeare language is a distinct higher realm with a literal magic of its own. He creates a palpable medium with language within which operate his characters, his mood-tones, his ideas, and his inimitable ways of affecting us as hearers and readers. We realize that with Shakespeare, words are not mere denotations of "things." Words take on a life of their own and at times we suddenly recognize, unaware, that Shakespeare is playing word games or creating a word-image or moving us to feel in most surprising ways.

6. As in our present day, Shakespeare also lived in a time when political and religious forces were trying to destroy human intelligence and sensibility. Puritanism was Shakespeare's life-long enemy, and he struggled against it brilliantly, with humor as one of his most potent weapons. Puritanism nursed a deadly animus against the theatre and all dramatic art, viewing them as Satan's hotbed of temptation. Shakespeare recognized that he was in what he called in Love's Labour's Lost, a "civil war of wits.

7. Shakespeare used humor to put things into their rightful place in the scale of human value. He undermines Puritanism by creating the immortal figure of Malvolio in Twelfth Night.

8. In describing Malvolio, Maria expressly calls him "a kind of puritan." Malvolio brings the conspiracy of Maria and the others on himself. We see clearly his self-righteousness and pomposity in his own behavior and words, and Sir Toby denounces him, "Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?" Malvolio--as the personification of Puritanism--is the sworn enemy of merriment and high spirit, so wit will have its day.

9. SHEAKSPARE USED PURITANISM IN HİS PLAYS !..

10. In the character of Malvolio we see the clear visage of the spoil-sport, the over-fastidious, and the pretender to virtue. Olivia pierces through to his true nature: "O! you are sick of self-love, Malvolio," she accuses him, "and taste with a distempered appetite to be generous, guiltless, and of free disposition, is to take those things for bird-bolts that you deem cannon-bullets. There is no slander in an allowed fool, though he do nothing but rail; nor no railing in a known discreet man, though he do nothing but reprove."

11. THIS IS THE PICTURE OF PURITANISM BELIEF. 

12. With his rapier-sharp wit, Shakespeare exposes Malvolio's puritanical arrogance and pretentiousness as pomposity and grandiosity. Yet Shakespeare's humour never stoops to mere character assassination but a levelling out of seemingly unequal conditions. In an interesting psychic twist, we are made to feel somewhat ashamed at the excess to which Malvolio's tormentors go, and he becomes in the end merely an unfortunate dunce.

13. ALSOTHIS PICTURE SHOWSTHE PURITANISM, TOO . 

14.  Through his creative use of humor, Shakespeare allows us to see things as they really are. When we discern their true images mirrored by the elemental power of humor, we recognise their actual importance--and unimportance. His humor helps us to realign our priorities and place things in their true perspective, to understand our scene in a larger drama and how to play our role as is becoming and proper in the momentary theater of history. And this, in the end, is our primary task: keeping clearly in mind the higher realities in the face of evil and corruption.

15. PURITANISM

16. THANKS FOR YOUR LISTENING… Gülsel Aladağ PREP-B /187