Romeo and Juliet

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Excerpt

SHAKESPEARE & ELIZABETHAN ENGLAND

Elizabethan England

• Known as the Early Modern period or the English Renaissance (rebirth)
• Queen Elizabeth I was an anomaly (strange, out of place) of the time period. She was strong, intelligent, & a well-respected ruler.
• Women during this time had little or no power & were seen as less than men, so her power was not typical.
• By refusing to marry throughout her 45 year reign as queen, she retained her own power & remained on good terms with other European nations at the same time
• Women, once married, had practically no rights. They could not work outside the home, & so were in charge of the “domestic sphere”
• During this time, many members of a family would live in a small home, often with 4-8 people living in one room
• There was no sanitation, no indoor plumbing, no concept of germs or sterilization
• The streets were literally filled with waste, both human & animal
• 2 outbreaks of the bubonic plague occurred during Shakespeare’s life, which forced the theaters to close because people thought the plague was spread from human to human, not by fleas or rats as we know now
• Modern medicine was virtually nonexistent, & people thought that nearly all health problems were the fault of the “humors”- 4 liquids in the body which corresponded to the 4 elements
• Blood (air), Phlegm (water), Yellow bile (fire), and Black bile (earth)
• Illnesses were treated by “balancing the humors.” If someone was diagnosed with too much blood, the physician would release some by applying leeches or cutting the skin
• Shakespeare often refers to the humors in his plays

WHO WAS SHAKESPEARE?

• B. 1564; D. 1616
• Not much is known about his early life; playwrights were not considered important people & so no biographies were written about him until many years after his death
• He was married in 1582, at the age of 18, to a 26 year-old woman named Anne Hathaway
• 37 plays are attributed to him, but there is great controversy over the authorship
• Some claim many authors wrote under one name, or another famous figure such as Elizabeth I used the pseudonym to publish works
• In Elizabethan England, one could spell their name any way they wished, including changing it from day to day, which led to much confusion.
• Shakespeare’s name has been spelled in over 80 different ways, including Shagspeare, Shaxpere, & Shakestaffe, just to name a few.
• You can see how this may cause confusion. Also, many people argue that the plays are so different in content & style that no one person could have written them all
• Whether it was one person or many, the fact remains that Shakespeare’s plays continue to be a dominant influence on our culture today.
• One can see references to Shakespeare in everything from music to movies.
• His early plays consisted mostly of histories, because of the politics of the time period.

About

A powerpoint designed as an introduction to William Shakespeare's life and England at the time.