English 214
Class Materials
Overhead Transparencies


This file contains information discussed on overhead transparencies during the progress of the course.

Time Line
Facts
Views of History
History Plays
Ideologies
Humours
Vagrancy Laws
Revenge
Pastoral
Stage Devices in The Merry Wives
Courtly Love
Honor
Equivocation
Irony

Time Line

1558 ............................1603  Elizabeth's reign
1603.............................1625  James I's reign
1564.............................1616  Shakespeare's Life

Shakespeare lived during the reigns of two rulers, writing most of his works from the late 1580s until his retirement shortly before his death in 1616.

Facts about Early Modern England

London was the 3rd largest city in Europe with a population of 200,000 in 1603 and a literacy rate of 60%.

Literacy Rate (1600) Child Mortality Rate
Common Elizabethan Views of History Shakespeare’s History Plays

1st Tetralogy
Focus: Tudor Myth & War of the Roses
Henry VI parts 1, 2, & 3
Richard III
2nd Tetralogy
Focus: Tudor Myth & Hundred Years War
Richard II
Henry IV, I & 2
Henry V

Popular Genre: 70 + history plays exist from the Elizabethan period

Ideology & Governance

"Ideologies are systems of representations that encourage people to "see" their place in a social formation as "natural" and "obvious." (James Kavanaugh)
Implicit Ideology  ………… Explicit Ideology

  • Order/Chaos
  • Hierarchy
    • Ideologies apply to the ways we participate in and define the following institutions::
  • Government
  • Religion
  • Education
  • Family
    • Because we are born into these systems, we perpetuate them through our own actions and beliefs. Many historians and cultural critics view these ideologies as political because they have an impact on the way dominant groups think about and control or govern less dominant groups.

    Examples of Elizabethan cultural "mindsets" or ideologies
    Most, not all, Elizabethans held these wide spread beliefs:

    Critics debate whether Shakespeare:
    Cardinal Humours
    Most Elizabethans believed humans to be a microcosm (a miniature version) which corresponds to the macrocosm (larger version) of the world. As the world is composed of four elements (fire, air, earth, and water), humans are composed of four humours ( blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile). Physicians, philosophers, and scholars applied this theory to the workings of the body and the mind..
    Medical:
    Ancient medical theory - from Hippocrates (460-370 B.C.) to 1800. The dominant belief held that the human body was
    composed of four fluids which maintained a balance in a healthy human. Sick people had an imbalance of one or more kinds of fluids. Character:
    Galen (130-200 A.D.) adapted this medical theory to account for human behavior. He categorized people as having these personality types: On Stage:
    On the stage this theory frequently contributed to stereotypes who dressed, behaved, and spoke as
    one dimensional examples of a "melancholic man" or a " phlegmatic woman."

    Vagrancy Laws

    Four Royal Proclamations issued between 1596-1601 tried to regulate unlawful assembly of "masterless men" -- unemployed veterans and displaced farmers and workers who were not attached to noble households or out of work apprentices who were not attached to trade guilds. This group was largely the result of social conditions, poor farming practices, weather conditions, and political events such as:

  • enclosures of private and public lands (fencing of formerly public lands used for gardening and livestock grazing)
  • crop failures
  • inflation
  • war veterans
    • The remedies for this social problem prescribed in the proclamations were:
  • imprison some
  • return others to their county of origin where local churches and authorities could provide for them
  • execute (hang) those who after being warned will not work or who will not return to their birth places
    • Elizabethan Ideas of Revenge

    Revenge is "a kind of wild justice." ( Francis Bacon ).  Revenge occurs when an individual, family member, or collective (their representative) seeks vengeance for a perceived wrong. In the Early Modern period revenge changed as people believed personal wrongs to be offenses against king and state; modern legal theory presupposes the existence of a State which inflicts punishment based on public law, not on a private sense of wrong.

    Legally:
    Chief Justice Coke's definition of "murder":

    "An act of a man of sound memory and of age of discretion; who unlawfully
    kills another with malice aforethought; so that the person wounded or hurt
    dies within a year and a day."
    Malice must be continual; it cannot be interrupted; if it is, then the crime is manslaughter. Therefore revenge is malice prepense (aforethought) and has no place in Elizabethan England.

    Spiritually:
    During the 16th century a shift occurs from Old Testament to New Testament interpretations of vengeance, as the emphasis moves from Mosaic Law --"an eye or an eye," of former generations to New Testament, "Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord." According to Elizabethans, avengers strip themselves of God's protection. From their perspective, revenge brought disgrace, not honor, because it reflects anger, hatred, jealousy, envy, pride, and ambition -- all spiritual sins.

    Dramatically:
    On stage, sentiment is usually on the side of the avenger who attracts our attention, much as vengeful characters played by Stallone or Schwarzenegger capture our sympathies today.

    Pastoral

    The pastoral convention is an idealized version of country life that draws on Greek, Roman, and Biblical examples. Pastoral praises the freedom and contemplative life absent of personal ambition, the power struggles of the court, and fortune's vagaries.  It is often linked to the myth of the Golden Age, which critiques the present by comparing it an idealized, nostalgic past.

    In a way, the pastoral adopts the opposite perspective from the Mirror of Magistrates, the conventional sub genre of literature that depicted the fall of kings and princes by emphasizing the dangers of Fortune's wheel and the effects of ambition and flattery at the court.

    Pastoral usually emphasizes:

  • the love affairs of shepherds who are not subject to the problems of wealth and power struggles of the court.
  • the irrationality of love
  • a simple and innocent life style

    • Stage Devices in The Merry Wives

    Intrigues:  An intrigue is a plot initiated by characters within a play against other characters for good or bad purposes

    Duping:  Duping or gulling occurs when a character is completely taken in and fooled by another character usually in some kind of intrigue. Disguises:  Notice how many kinds of disguises or deliberate changes of identity occur in Merry Wives. Shaming rituals:  Community rituals that publicly humiliate people who have transgressed community standards, corrects their behavior, and brings them back into the community; historically, these rituals were practiced in the past by villages and became part of the folk memory of Elizabethans.  The chivaree involved the community in a ritualized noisy celebration, often on a couple’s wedding night.  A skimmington was a boisterous public parade that impersonated and ridiculed an unfaithful spouse, a cuckolded husband or a shrewish wife.  Often an abusive husband was portrayed as being beaten by his wife with a skimming ladle.  Merry Wives draws heavily on shaming rituals for both Mr. Ford's and Falstaff’s humiliations. Notice that the chivaree and the skimmington are almost opposite sides of the same coin.


    Courtly Love

    Scholars believe the concept of courtly love originated in France during the Twelfth Century.  This medieval concept of love emphasized the relationship between a lady and her lover (knight), a relationship that resembled the relationship between lord and vassal.  Ideas of courtly love spread throughout the courts and literatures of Western Europe and England.

    Influences:

    Aspects of Courtly Love: In England the concept of courtly love developed into courtship rituals for marriage.


    Honor

    The concept of honor is a concept that changes over time as various cultures and periods construct it to fit their ideologies.

    Greeks --  Discussed by Aristotle, Greek honor was earned by a virtuous life, compsed of valor in battle, honesty, loyalty, magnanimity, and good citizenship. (The word "virtue" derives form the Latin word "vir" which means "man"). In a patriarchal society, a woman's virtue rested on chastity, faithfulness, and modesty.

    Romans -- By combining Greek and Christian ideas, the Romans argued that approval of one's actions and life should come from God alone, not from other men.

    Gothic/Medieval -- Honor beocmes martial glory and absolute fealty to one's lord.  The aristocracy rewarded men of honor by elevating them  in social status, which allowed them control of lands and its inhabitants.

    Renaissance Code of Honor -- The Renaissance combined all of the above but configured the concept to justify the actions and status of an inherited aristocracy. Honor was not necessarily related to actions, although it in any instances honorable actions were rewarded by those in power. A corruption of the Greek notion ofhonor, the Renaissance configuration of honor emphasized more the defense of honor and the revenge for slights of honor and slurs to reputation than on earning honor through one's actions and how one conducts his or her life.


    Equivocation

    Equivocation -- A theological term controversial among Catholics from 1660-1660 referring to morally acceptable perjury.  This doctrine upheld the morality of giving false or misleading testimony under oath.  Pope Innocent  XI condemned the practice in 1679.  During Shakespeare's time, the English Jesuit Henry Garnet, who often used the allias Mr. Farmer, equivocated during his trial for his role in the Gunpowder Plot to blow up Parliament.in 1605.  (Garnet apparently knew about
    the plot, but did not directly participate in it.  He claimed he learned of the plot during the confession of one of the conspirators, and he was bound by the seal of confession not to reveal this knowledge or warn the government).  Garnet was executed in 1606 for his part in the plot.

    In Macbeth Shakespeare alludes to this famous instance of equivocation in the Porter scene.  He also dramatizes the concept througout the play with the paradoxical language of the witches and Malcolm's self-description and his subsequent recantation of his statement to Macduff.


    Irony

    Irony -- A word, situation, or renactment in which the content and the context disagree; the incongruity between what is stated and what is meant or what is expected and what happens.  Irony is an acknowledegment of the difference between appearance and reality. Irony makes its point though indirection, suggesting complex meanings and a different perspective from that which is expected.

    Irony derives from a character in Greek comedy called the eiron, who spoke in understatement and pretended to be more ignorant than he was.  He triumphed over the alazon, who was a stupid, self-deceiving braggart.

    Three kinds of irony often discussed in literature are :

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    WES: 12/08/00