Elizabethan and Puritan Age

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Data:	09.07.2001
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Elizabethan literary language, especially with professionals writers like Shakespeare was addressed to a mixed public more trained in listening than in reading and more accustomed to group life than privacy. These factors explain why drama was the main form of Elizabethan art.
The origins of drama lie in classical Greece: Aeschilus, Euripides, Sophocles established the forms of tragedy and comedy which still maintain their strength and appeal since today.
In ancient Greece, drama was a collective and ritual phenomenon: the world theatre means to watch and it referred to the group of spectator gathered for religious ceremonies and the rites to honour Dionisus.
ELEMENTS OF DRAMA ARE:
a playwright: the addresser
a written text: message
actors directors, designer, musicians: the performance
audience: the addressee
The world tragedy comes from the Greek world tragos, meaning goat.
The goat was sacrificed by the ancient who intended obtain purification.
The main features of the classical tragedies such as the PROLOGUE, the CHORUS, the concept of CATHARSIS were adopted during the Elizabethan Age.
Tragedy has a solemn style. The characters are never common people but kings, princes and warriors. They are not free and everything is dominated by the fate, they are guilty of some action which they must expiate through suicide, suffering, madness or death.
A play consist of a number of acts divided into scenes. All Shakespearean plays for example are made up on 5 acts.
ACT I: introductions
ACT II: development
ACT III: crisis or turning point
ACT IV: complications
ACT V: denouement
Elizabethan tragedies are generally introduced by a prologue spoken by the chorus; the prologue provides information about the main characters or the subject of the play.
Dialogue create the action, provides details about the characters and their relationships, show what a character think about another.
-soliloquy: the character is alone on the stage, there are others characters but the speakers ignores them.
These devices let the audience know:
-character’s thoughts about a specific problem
-character’s plans for future
-character’s feeling and reactions
-Asides are shorts comments made by a character for the audience
Language of drama is particular intense and variegated because it can share the features of everyday speech, poetry or prose.
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
He was born in Canterbury in 1564. He went to Cambridge university where he established a reputation for frre thinking and atheism. His death is still surrounded by mystery: some critics suggested that is a result of his political activities he may simply have known too much.
His plays are concentrating on a man opposed to God. The main themes are: lust for power, desire to surpass the old restrictions of the church, limitation of knowledge.
This place is between humanism and idea of predestination of medieval time. The man sells his souls to the devil in exchange for 24 years of absolute knowledge, he knows what he is going to do, he acts with weariness his action. He knows that his souls will be damned for ever but he is still decided to sign the fatal pact. Faustus reflects the ambition of the renaissance man, who is still linked to medieval culture but wants to be the maker of his own destiny. His ambition go beyond the limit of man. There’s something eroic in his decision to renounce at heaven for knowledge.
OTHELLO
Te main theme is the way in which a jealous villain succeeds in infecting a noble man. Othello’s and Desdemona’s love triumphs over their cultural and racial differences.
AGONIST (Othello)-ANTAGONIST (Jago)

At the beginning of the tragedy he is the champion of honesty and a perfect christian. Othello feels emotions, sensations, true and absolute passions. Othello is a linear character. When his order is shattered by Desdemona’s adultery, when his armony is destroyed by chaos, he must re-establish order by eliminating the destructive element, Desdemona. Later when he understand he has killed an innocent woman, breaking the order he wanted to re-establish, committing a murder.
The contrast between Iago and Othello is underlined by the use of 2 different languages: Othello uses the typical renaissance language full of mythological images.
However it is the unnatural language of a foreigner who loads his language with great worlds and hyperbole. At the end Othello speaks and almost becomes like Iago, losing his identity. The prose of Iago: his voice is intellectual, controlled, cynical, brutal, and full of litotes.

When Charles I succeeded his father the question as to who, between king and Parliament, should hold the control of power.
Charles father had always avoided direct confrontations with the Puritan party.
This party, whose members mainly belonged to the middle classes held a considerable majority in Parliament.
Puritans wanted a true balance of power between King and Parliament but Charles I firmly believed he was king by divine right.
His reign was troubled by the continuous clash with Parliament which denied him the large amount of money he needed for his affairs.
After costly failures the Parliament wrote the Petition of Right.
This document denied the king the right to:
1-impose taxes without Parliament's consent
2-imprison his subjects without reason
3-introduce martial laws in peace time
Charles did agree to petition but in 1629 he dissolved Parliament again and ruled the country without it for 11 years.
He decided to finance his Government with a tax called "ship money".
Other reasons for the clash with Parliament had been Charles marriage to Henriette Marie the catholic daughter of the King of France Henry IV.
In 1640 Charles had to summon Parliament again in order to obtain resources to subdue a rebellion in Scotland.
First session (3 weeks) was called short Parliament
Second session was called Long Parliament
The civil war broke out in 1642
During the Civil War forces were divided into Royalist and supporters of Parliaments.
The first were known as "Cavaliers" the latter were called "Roundheads".
A gentleman named Oliver Cromwell was a brilliant leader in raising and training cavalry composed of soldiers who fought strongly.
The king was made prisoner and Cromwell took control of London.
After Charles's execution, monarchy was abolished and the country was ruled as a republic, known by the name of Commonwealth.
Cromwell crushed a rebellion in Ireland and Scotland.
He was appointed "Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland".
After his death the protectorate collapsed. His son, Richard Cromwell, was unable to hold control of the army. A commander of the northern Commonwealth troops summoned a new parliament. The parliament invited Charles II to return his kingdom from his exile. Republic was over.
The Restoration of monarchy was greeted with a sign of relief by most Englishmen, who had felt oppressed by the strict rules of the Puritans.
The Restoration of the monarchy of 1660 marked the end of ages of fanatism.
Charles II was easy-going, witty, pleasure-loving and perhaps his court was the most immoral in English history. He managed to reign in comfort for 25 years.
In this period there were 2 catastrophes which the Puritans interpreted as a God's punishment for the King's immorality. London was struck in 1665 by an outbreak of bubonic plague, during which more than 100.000 people died and a year later, a fire destroyed most of the city in 4 days.
The best expression of the new spirit of time was comedy, which found a fertile ground in the optimism and superficiality of the age.
It reflected the dissolute life of the Court and its main targets were middle-classes virtues and ideals.
Earliest plays were distinguished by "having adultery and fornication ,a liberal use of prophane swearing and cursing, atheistic, blasphemous and execrable opinions".
Restoration comedy was strongly influenced by Moliere, who showed dramatists how to develop characters, by Calderon de la Barca, who taught them how to multiply incidents, by the Italian Commedia dell'Arte which introduced some farcical elements.
The characters were quite different from those of Elizabethan comedy, the restoration playwrights focused their attention on the way they behaved.
A new type of male character was created, the "fop", opposed to the gallant or fortunate lover, usually the hero of the play, elegant and witty but cynical.
Restoration comedies were written in prose, one of those most frequently attacked was marriage.
As the plot mostly exploited amorous themes, marriage was one of the main ingredients for creating intrigue, piquant situations or simply a conventional happy ending to the play.

WILLIAM CONGREVE
Congreve's fame rests above all on one play, The way of the world.
Plot: The young libertine Mirabell is in love with the beautiful and witty Millamant, whose aunt, will not consent their marriage.
Mirabell succeed in winning Lady Whishfort's consents because he saves her from the blackmail of a false friend.
Characters: Both Millamant and Mirabell are unconventional, frank, independent, sarcastic, witty.
Language: Expressive of character and creating atmosphere. All the characters, including servants, are capable of witty remarks.
Themes: investigation of the relation between passion and social conventions.

When the theatres reopened, new buildings were needed and Sir Christopher Wren was asked to design 2 new theatres for the only 2 companies of the time.
The two theatres he built were both indoor ones and much smaller than most Elizabethan playhouses.
The Elizabethan platform stage, setting out into the audience, was eliminated.
Only 2 stages remained, the back stage and the front stage. Painted scenery began to be used.
The scenery was usually paint in perspective, and could be changed under the audience's eyes by means of machinery hidden behind the proscenium.
The audience now sat in the dark separated from the stage.
The restoration actors played only one role at a time.
In 1660 Charles II issued patents to only 2 companies of players, the DUKE'S COMPANY and the KING'S COMPANY.
In the same year, was staged Otello, with Mrs Hughes as Desdemona.
This was probably the first professional performance by a woman on an english public stage.
Mainly characteristics of new theatre:
1-elimination of Elizabethan platform stage
2-painted scenery(with perspective)
3-audience set in the dark separated from the stage
4-actors(only one role a time)