L'Inghilterra nel periodo 1485-1785

Yet most of the greatest Renaissance writers used it to extraordinary effect.

Shakespeare along with other poets of his time contrives to fill the small and tight formal

constraints of the sonnet (fourteen lines of rhymed iambic pentameter) with remarkable emotional

intensity, psychological nuance, and imagistic complexity → the effect is what Marlowe called

“infinite riches in a little room”.

Elizabethans were certainly capable of admiring plainness of speech: in King Lear Shakespeare

contrasts the severe directness of Cordelia to the “glib -raffazzonato- and oily art” of her sisters.

In the sixteenth century madrigals along with hymns, popular ballads and other forms of song,

enjoyed immense popularity, not only in the royal court but also in less exalted social circles.

There was evidence of an impressively widespread musical literacy (lute, viol, harp) and musical

skill was regarded as an important accomplishment. Many sixteenth-century poems were written to

be set to music and in poetry just like in music Elizabethans had a taste for elaborate, intricate,

perfectly regular designs.

The Elizabethan theatre

Philip Sydney condemned the conjunction of high and low characters in tragicomedies and

defended the neoclassical advocacy of the “three dramatic unities”. The irony is that he anticipates

by a few years the stupendous achievements of Marlowe and Shakespeare, whose plays break every

rule that Sydney thought to be essential.

A permanent, freestanding public theatre in England dates only from Shakespeare's own lifetime.

James Burbage's playhouse The Theatre was built in 1576, but there was a rich and vital theatrical

tradition in England stretching back for centuries. In late medieval England there were elaborate

cycles of plays (“mystery plays”) depicting the great biblical stories; the cycles continued to be

performed into the reign of Elizabeth, but their close links to Catholicism led Protestant authorities

in the later sixteenth century to suppress them.

Performers of the early english theatre acted in town halls, halls of guilds, aristocratic mansions, on

scaffolds (impalcature) in town squares and marketplaces or on pageant wagons.

There were organized companies of players traveling under noble patronage that earned a

precarious living providing amusement while enhancing the prestige of the patron.

Actors without a patron could have been classified as vagabonds → professional acting companies

attached themselves to a nobleman even though virtually all their time was devoted to entertaining

the public from whom most of their income derived.

Before the construction of the public theatres, playing companies performed short plays called

“interludes” → staged dialogues on religious, moral and political themes. The structure of such

plays reflects the training in argumentation that students received in Tudor schools. Some of

Shakespeare's amazing ability to look at critical issues from multiple prospectives may be traced

back to this practice.

Another major form of theatre that flourished in England in the fifteenth century was the “morality

plays”, a dramatization of the spiritual struggle of the christian soul. As Everyman demonstrates,

these dramas derived their power from the terror of an individual's encounter with death

supplemented by the extraordinary comic vitality of the evil character, the Vice.

The church was a profoundly different institution from the theatre, but they shared some of the

same rhetorical skills. The players understood their craft as relating to sermons with an uneasy

blend of emulation and rivalry.

By the later sixteenth century many churchmen especially those with Puritan leanings were strongly

opposed to the theatre. Thomas Norton, who with Thomas Sackville wrote the first English tragedy

in blank verse, Gorboduk (1561), was a protestant.

The five-act tragedy, a grim vision of Britain descending into civil war, was acted before the Queen.

Gorboduk was modelled on the works of Seneca and Senecan influence (violent plots, rhetorical

speeches) remained pervasive in the Elizabethan theatre, giving rise to the subgenre of “revenge

tragedy”. Examples: Spanish tragedy, 1592, Thomas Kyd and Shakespeare's Hamlet.

“villain tragedy” → they neglected the classic rules by Aristotle (no wicked heroes)

tragedies that concern “overreachers” → Tamburlaine,Marlowe. They are heroes who challenge the

limits of human possibility.

“history play” → dramatists staged the great events of the nation and tend to circle back to the

killing of a king.

From the classical models English playwrights derived some elements of structure and content:

plots based on intrigue, division into acts and scenes, type characters (Falstaff is a miles gloriosus)

Around 1590 Marlowe brings about an extraordinary change in the english drama with his theatrical

language: unrhymed iambic pentameter, or blank verse.

Playhouses in the mid-sixteenth century (including Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, opened in 1599)

each accommodated 2000 spectators, they were oval in shape, with an unroofed yard in the centre

where stood the groundlings and three floors for richer people. A large platform stage in the yard

was surrounded on three sides by spectators.

The public playhouses were all located outside the city since authorities were generally hostile to

dramatic spectacles. Reasons: plays drew large audiences → noise, public health, crime. The theater

was a well-known place for prostitutes and was believed to be a place for young maids to be

seduced and respectable matrons to be corrupted. Moreover plays drew away people from their

work and Puritans obsessively focused on transvestism on stage, charged to excite illicit sexual

desires, both hetero and homosexual.

Plays were performed without the scene breaks and intermissions, there was no scenery and few

props, costumes were usually elaborated.

The script remained property of the acting company, causing problems with the copyright → First

Folio, Shakespeare, 1623.

Surprised by time

By the end of the 1590's the long reign of Elizabeth was nearing its end → considerable anxiety, she

was childless and had refused to name a successor. It is plausible that, in her dying breath Elizabeth

designated James VI of Scotland her successor. He was welcomed by the people, who anyway

continued to look back on Elizabeth's reign as a magnificent high point in the history and culture of

their nation.

The early Seventeenth Century

After Elizabeth's death in 1603 worries over the succession could finally end: James already had

several children with his queen, Anne of Denmark. Nonetheless, there were grounds for disquiet.

James came from Scotland, a foreign land with a different church, customs, institutions of

government. His authoritarian theories of kingship were incompatible with the English tradition of

mixed government (monarch + parliament).

James liked to imagine himself as a modern version of Caesar and insisted on his closeness to

divinity; as god's specially chosen delegate he deserved his subjects' unconditional obedience.

The relationship between the monarch and his people and the relationship between England and

Scotland would be sources of friction throughout James' reign. He had hoped to unify his domains

as a single nation, “the empire of Britain”. But the two realms' legal and ecclesiastical systems

proved difficult to reconcile and the English Parliament manifested opposition.

After James died in 1625 and his son Charles I succeeded him, tensions persisted and intensified.

Charles attempted to rule without summoning the Parliament between 1629 and 1638.

By 1642 England was up in arms, in a civil war between the king's forces and the armies loyal to

the House of Commons. The conflict ended with Charles' defeat and beheading in 1649.

In the early 1650s the executive power relied upon a Lord protector, Oliver Cromwell, former

general of the parliamentary forces who was nearly as autocratic as Charles.

Upon Cromwell's death in 1658 the attempt to create a commonwealth without a monarch failed

and in 1660 the Parliament invited King Charles II to come home from exile.

State and Church, 1603 – 1640

In James' reign the most pressing difficulties were apparently financial: the crown's independent

income had declined during the sixteenth century as inflation eroded the value of land rents.

Moreover innovations in military technology and shipbuilding increased the expenses, and James

also had to maintain his queen's establishments and household.

His court was wasteful and he soon found himself deep in debt and was unable to convince the

Parliament to finance him further.

Particularly disturbing to many was James's tendency to bestow high offices upon favourites chosen

for good looks rather than for good judgement. (+ homosexuality rumours)

Despite all of this, James was politically astute and succeeded through cunningness rather than

through decisiveness. Cautious by temperament, he kept England out of the religious wars and his

peace treaty with Spain in 1604 made the Atlantic safe for English ships. The first english

settlements were established in North America (Jamestown, Plymouth) and in 1611 the East India

Company was founded.

Early seventeenth-century entrepreneurs undertook a wide variety of schemes for industrial and

agricultural improvement. In the north newly developed coal mines provided fuel for England's

growing cities and southern industries.

This gave rise to a new faith in technology as a means of improving human life → important

influences upon the scientific theories of Francis Bacon and his followers.

Economic growth in this period owed more to the initiative of individuals than to government,

encouraging the reevaluation of the role of business in the betterment of the community.

James had a catholic mother, Mary Queen of Scots, but his upbringing had been Protestant.

He was initially inclined to remove Elizabeth's sanctions against catholics but then hesitated when

he realized how consolidated was the opposition to toleration. So in 1605 a small group of hostile

Catholics packed a cellar adjacent to the Houses of Parliament with gunpowder, intending to

detonate it n the day that the king formally opened Parliament, with Prince Henry, the Houses of

Lords and Commons and the leading justices. The conspirators were arrested before they could

effect their plan; if the “Gunpowder Plot” had succeeded, it would have eliminated much of

England's ruling class in a single tremendous explosion, leaving the land vulnerable to invasion by a

foreign Catholic power → it increased anti-catholic paranoia.

James's policies continued along the lines of Elizabeth's: he appointed bishops of varying doctrinal

views restraining any faction from controlling the Church.

1611 → newly commissioned translation of the Bible → King's James Bible, whic