William Shakespeare and His Time Elizabethan Era (1558–1603)

London in the E.A. Largest city in Europe Center of trade and social life because of the Thames

Negative Aspects of London

Shakespeare’s Time Conditions in London—BAD! Trees used up for fuel So many migrants because of Thames and trade, jobs were scarce Poverty

Living Conditions No running water Chamber Pots Thames River polluted with raw sewage Streets filled with rotting garbage Animals permitted to defecate anywhere

Pollution City ditches were used as toilets Butchers threw dead carcasses in the street Garbage was thrown in river Mass graves for the poor

High Drinking Rate Beer was cheap, so people drank a lot of it to escape their problems Many deaths by drunkenness

Lack of Personal and Public Hygiene Neither rich nor poor bathed very often, it’s considered dangersous Common to have strong body odor, bad breath, rotting teeth, constant stomach aches, and scabs or sores

Sickness and Disease 3 Main Diseases: Bubonic Plague Small pox Tuberculosis

Lack of Medical Knowledge They made no connection between illness and the horrible living conditions Children often died before 5 years

Example of home- made recipes to cure Bubonic Plague: "Take yarrow, tansy, featherfew, of each a handful, bruise them well together, let the sick urinate on the herbs, strain them, and drink the mixture."

Life Expectancy Adult male: 47 years London: 35 years (wealthy), 25 years if poor 40% died before middle teenage years

Marriage The “age of consent” was 12 for a girl, 14 for a boy Early Marriage=undesirable Average age of marriage 25 for women, 27 for men – a bit younger for aristocracy

Schools Were expensive, so most students were upper class boys. Only girls were from the very high aristocracy Taught Latin grammar and classical literature Girls who could afford education were given a domestic education instead of an academic one—spinning, cooking, preserving fruit, weaving, and anything that could make the home life more pleasant

Women

Clothes One set used all year long, rarely washed Underclothing slept in, infrequently changed Clothes handed down from rich to poor All wore high heels to avoid the sewage Peasants Wealthy

Clothing Clothing Acts: laws that said who could wear what People had to dress their social class No purple for example

Women Married women lost all control of their property, even clothing, to their husbands When a husband died, the most the woman could inherit was 1/3 of his property

Queen Elizabeth Bastard daughter of King Henry VIII And Ann Boleyn (2nd of 6 wives) Henry had Ann beheaded for “treason” Younger sister of “Bloody Mary.” = Catholics vs Protestants “Virgin Queen”?

Elizabethan Period The Elizabethan Period was the age of the Renaissance, of new ideas and new thinking. The introduction of the printing press during the Renaissance, one of the greatest tools in increasing knowledge and learning, was responsible for the interest in the different sciences and inventions.

Wheel of Fortune or Fate

Superstitions Elizabethans were very superstitious; many had charms and such in their houses They relied heavily on astrology and the stars

Elizabethan Ghosts 1.Were gruesome—usually looked as they did when they died 2.Visible only to person they are haunting 3.Came back for a specific mission: proper burial, revenge, or a warning

The Globe

External structure of Elizabethan theaters Circular Open-air Awning over gallery seating Larger theaters seated approx. 2,000 – 3,000 spectators

The Theater Plays produced for the general public No artificial lighting

The Globe The sign over the entrance shows Hercules (or possibly Atlas) carrying the globe on his shoulders -- an allusion to the name of the house as well as to the Elizabethan theater's claim to present a mirror image of the world Basic entrance fee is a penny, entitling the spectator to use the standing room in the open 'Yard'.

Internal structure of Elizabethan theaters The wealthy patrons sat on benches in the gallery The common people stood around the stage in “the pit”; they were called groundlings

Spectators All but wealthy were uneducated/illiterate Much more interaction than today

Staging Areas “Heavens”> angelic beings

Internal structure of Elizabethan theaters The area above the stage housed machines that could lower people onto the stage – called “heaven” A trap door in the stage allowed actors to come up from below – called “hell”

Internal structure of Elizabethan theaters Tiring house gallery The “pit” & groundlings stage “heaven”

Differences No scenery Settings > references in dialogue Elaborate costumes Plenty of props Fast-paced, colorful>2 hours!

Actors Only men and boys Young boys whose voices had not changed play women’s roles Would have been considered indecent for a woman to appear on stage

Shakespeare “The Bard” Widely regarded as the greatest writer in English Literature Stratford-on-Avon, England wrote 37 plays about 154 sonnets Writing: intellectual AND bawdy The word ‘bard’ means poet.

Shakespeare wrote: Comedies Histories Tragedies

Language and Shakespeare The audiences represented a broad cross-section of English society, so successful writers like Shakespeare had to write on at least two levels: they had to appeal to the best—and least—educated people in the audience; they had to know how to use both rude’n’crude humor and refined classical allusions. Allusions are a sort of literary ‘name-dropping’; you mention a name from Greek mythology or a phrase from a famous poem, and the truly refined reader ‘gets’ it.

Three Cool Things About Shakespeare’s English 1.When Shakespeare began his career; the English language was flexible and still developing. Shakespeare made the most of the situation, displaying dazzling innovations like a great jazz improviser: Shakespeare turns nouns into verbs, links adjectives together to form new combinations, and borrows words from other languages.

2 nd Cool Thing About Shakespeare’s English Shakespeare’s vocabulary is big; 21,000 words plus. Not only can’t a modern audience ‘understand’ every word, Shakespeare’s audience couldn’t understand every word! Shakespeare often chose his words to take advantage of their newness, to make us look at a new situation in a new way, and to get the meaning from the context. In other words, he wants you to loosen up and follow him, not sit on each line with a dictionary.

3 rd Cool Thing About Shakespeare’s English Shakespeare often uses what poets call personification—giving human characteristics to non-humans. In Shakespeare, a tree may be angry, the moon may blush, the morning may have eyes…in most cases, that is not meant to be taken literally—it is as if the moon blushed, or as if the morning had eyes.

OK, maybe he was cool, but he is still hard to understand. Why do teachers make us read Shakespeare? On Quoting Shakespeare Timeless themes Literary Devices

Couple's embrace survives 5,000 years They died young and, by the looks of it, in love. Two 5,000-year-old skeletons were found locked in an embrace outside Mantua, 25 miles south of Verona, the city of Shakespeare's star- crossed tale of "Romeo and Juliet." Buried between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago, the prehistoric pair have sparked theories that the remains of a far more ancient love story have been found. The Neolithic period remains are believed to be a man and a woman who died young, because their teeth were found intact.

Elizabethan Words an,and: if anon:soon aye: yes but:except for ere:before e’en:even e’er: ever

QE1 Words (contin.) haply:perhaps happy:fortunate hence:away, from her hie:hurry thence:from there or that circumstance thither:to or toward there

QE1 Words (contin.) whence:where wilt:will, will you withal:in addition to would:wish WHEREFORE:why