8 WORLD HISTORY

TH
GRADE

VIRTUAL LECTURE # 25
William Shakespeare and the Renaissance

Shakespeare's Biography

For all his fame and celebration, William Shakespeare remains a mysterious
figure with regards to personal history. There are just two primary sources for
information on the Bard (the word 'bard' has lost its original meaning, although we
might use it ironically to refer to a friend or local person who writes poems. In
present-day usage the term 'bard' has become synonymous with a revered poet.
Given the reverence in which Shakespeare is held worldwide, and given that the
original bard's tale was of great deeds, great events, and the great themes of
heroism, love, war and death, it seems indisputable that Shakespeare is entitled to
the name, 'The Bard'. One of the reasons Shakespeare's plays have lasted and
grown even stronger in the worldwide public consciousness as time has passed is
that his stories are all filled with those ingredients. Some explore war, some death,
and some love; and some explore them all in one play) his works, and various legal
and church documents that have survived from Elizabethan times. Naturally, there
are many gaps in this body of information, which tells us little about Shakespeare
the man.
William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, allegedly on April 23,
1564. Church records from Holy Trinity Church indicate that he was baptized there
on April 26, 1564. Young William was born of John Shakespeare, a glover and
leather merchant, and Mary Arden, a landed heiress. William, according to the
www.upload.wikimedia.org
church register, was the third of eight children the Shakespeare household—three
of whom died in childhood. John Shakespeare had a remarkable run of success as a merchant, and later as an alderman
and high bailiff of Stratford, during William's early childhood. His fortunes declined, however, in the 1570s.
There is great conjecture about Shakespeare's childhood years, especially regarding his education. It is surmised by
scholars that Shakespeare attended the free grammar school in Stratford, which at the time had a reputation to rival Eton.
While there are no records extant to prove this claim, Shakespeare's knowledge of Latin and Classical Greek would tend to
support this theory. In addition, Shakespeare's first biographer, Nicholas Rowe, wrote that John Shakespeare had placed
William "for some time in a free school." John Shakespeare, as a Stratford official, would have been granted a waiver of
tuition for his son. As the records do not exist, we do not know how long William attended the school, but certainly the
literary quality of his works suggest a solid education. What is certain is that William Shakespeare never proceeded to
university schooling, which has stirred some of the debate concerning the authorship of his works.
The next documented event in Shakespeare's life is his marriage to Anne Hathaway on November 28, 1582. William was
18 at the time, and Anne was 26—and pregnant. Their first daughter, Susanna, was born on May 26, 1583. The couple later
had twins, Hamnet and Judith, born February 2, 1585 and christened at Holy Trinity. Hamnet died in childhood at the age of
11, on August 11, 1596.
For seven years, William Shakespeare effectively disappears from all records, turning up in London circa 1592. This has
sparked as much controversy about Shakepeare's life as any period. Rowe notes that young Shakespeare was quite fond
of poaching, and may have had to flee Stratford after an incident with Sir Thomas Lucy, whose lands he allegedly hunted.
There is also rumor of Shakespeare working as an assistant schoolmaster in Lancashire for a time, though this is
circumstantial at best. It is estimated that Shakespeare arrived in London around 1588 and began to establish himself as
an actor and playwright. Evidently, Shakespeare garnered envy early on for his talent, as related by the critical attack of
Robert Greene, a London playwright, in 1592: "...an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tiger's heart
wrapped in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and being an
absolute Johannes fac totum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country."
Greene's bombast notwithstanding, Shakespeare must have shown considerable promise. By 1594, he was not only
acting and writing for the Lord Chamberlain's Men (called the King's Men after the ascension of James I in 1603), but was a
managing partner in the operation as well. With Will Kempe, a master comedian, and Richard Burbage, a leading tragic
actor of the day, the Lord Chamberlain's Men became a favorite London troupe, patronized by royalty and made popular by
the theatre-going public. When the plague forced theater closings in the mid-1590s, Shakespeare and his company made
plans for the Globe Theater in the Bankside district, which was across the river from London proper.
Shakespeare's success is apparent when studied against other playwrights of this age. His company was the most
successful in London in his day. He had plays published and sold in octavo editions, or "penny-copies" to the more literate
of his audiences. It is noted that never before had a playwright enjoyed sufficient acclaim to see his works published and
sold as popular literature in the midst of his career. While Shakespeare could not be accounted wealthy, by London
standards, his success allowed him to purchase New House and retire in comfort to Stratford in 1611. 1-4
William Shakespeare wrote his will in 1611, bequeathing his properties to his daughter Susanna (married in 1607 to Dr.
John Hall). To his surviving daughter Judith, he left £300, and to his wife Anne left "my second best bed." William
Shakespeare allegedly died on his birthday, April 23, 1616. This is probably more of a romantic myth than reality, but
Shakespeare was interred at Holy Trinity in Stratford on April 25. In 1623, two working companions of Shakespeare from
the Lord Chamberlain's Men, John Heminges and Henry Condell, printed the First Folio edition of the Collected Works, of
which half the plays contained therein were previously unpublished. The First Folio also contained Shakespeare's
sonnets.
William Shakespeare's legacy is a body of work that will never again be equaled in Western civilization. His words have
endured for 400 years, and still reach across the centuries as powerfully as ever. Even in death, he leaves a final piece of
verse as his epitaph:

“GOOD FREND FOR JESUS SAKE FORBEARE TO

DIGG THE DUST ENCLOASED HEARE.
BLEST BE YE MAN YT SPARES THES STONES AND
CURST BE HE YT MOVES MY BONES”

Taken from the following link:

http://www.poemhunter.com/william-shakespeare/biography/

Renaissance Life in England with Shakespeare

What we normally refer to as the Renaissance in Western European history marks a break or transition from the medieval
period and leads toward our modern era. The Renaissance embraces a series of religious, economic, and political
changes which ripple into areas of science, literature, and philosophy. Naturally one does not see these changes along
clearly demarcated lines, but looking at the period as a whole, we are aware of a climate or culture which has, if not
promoted change, or at least tolerated it.
In Shakespeare's time some of the changes had already taken place and he was feeling their effects; others were actually
taking place during his lifetime and still others were yet to come. For instance, the great religious upheaval, the Protestant
Reformation, had occurred well before Shakespeare was born when first in 1517 Martin Luther in Wittenberg, Germany
declared his independence from the Catholic Church, and later in 1536 when Henry VIII declared England's independence
from Rome. In his plays, Shakespeare has little to say about religion, but this in itself is notable. Had he been writing 100
years earlier, it is barely conceivable that his work would not have strong traditional Christian overtones. Perhaps because
there was so much religious ferment in Europe that had resulted in extraordinary persecution and bloodshed on all sides,
Shakespeare opted, like his contemporary, Montaigne, in France, to stay out of the controversy not taking dogmatic
positions on religious issues. Shakespeare does in Twelfth Night, poke fun at the growing puritan movement in England.
Likewise in Loves's Labour's Lost and Measure for Measure, he finds newly reformed individuals who have "seen the light"
a source of great humor. However, Shakespeare's themes and indeed the existence of his plays may have more to do with
economic change than religious upheaval.
The Renaissance marks the beginning of capitalism through the
formation of capital holding companies that engaged in expensive and
risky trade with Russia, the Far East, and other remote trading sites.
The Muscovy Company, the East India Company and the West India
Company all, from time to time, provided handsome profits for their
investors. Shakespeare was a direct and indirect beneficiary of this
activity. Directly, he himself invested in the newly built Globe Theater
and realized income from the profits of the theater. Although the Globe
was more of a partnership than a stock holding company, it
nevertheless represented profit generated not from land, as would
have been the case in the medieval period, but from joint investment in
a business enterprise. Indirectly, he benefited from the general
prosperity of London, a center for trade with its direct but protected
access to the English Channel via the Thames River, on whose south www.biografiasyvidas.com

bank the Globe stood providing entertainment to city traders and to not a few sailors.Shakespeare himself came from
common origins. His father was not of the aristocracy or even the landed gentry, but a successful glover who had a shop in
Stratford. In an earlier time Shakespeare would have followed his father's trade, and no doubt there was strong pressure
for him to do so in the late part of the sixteenth century; however, other opportunities presented themselves during this time
of growth and expansion. In the late 1580's or early 90's Shakespeare found himself in London, a city that was expanding
in size and was developing new businesses.
During the sixteenth century London approximately doubled its size to 200,000 inhabitants, which by today's standards
seems small. During the Renaissance most of the English population resided in rural areas. Cities were crowded,
considered dirty, and often dangerous. The greatest problem was public hygiene. There were, of course, no sanitary
sewers or a purified source of fresh water. Dung carts, which passed through the streets daily, attempted to remove
the bulk of human and other animal waste. 2-4
Wells were dug at convenient places through the city, but there was no means to monitor the quality of the water. (The
discovery of chlorine, a central chemical in water purification was still nearly 200 years away.) Thus typhoid fever,
dysentery, cholera, and a variety of other water born diseases were always a threat to residents. There was also no
organized police force as we would conceive it today. Shakespeare has numerous funny scenes that involve Renaissance
law enforcement officers, sometimes called constables or members of the watch. They are nearly always the dumbest
characters in the play. Most often they would not recognize a criminal if he had the word tattooed on his forehead; yet, in his
gentle way, Shakespeare usually arranges for these officers, despite themselves, to triumph in the end. One of the best
examples of these figures is Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing.
The plague, which visited cities throughout Europe on a more or less regular basis, was
also the result of uncleanliness and the absence of an effective central authority to
monitor the infestation of vermin and rodents. In 1592 there was a particularly persistent
outbreak of plague in London which resulted in the theaters and other places of public
gathering being closed, and the population dispersing to the country. In our time Aids has
come closest to resembling "the plague" in that, in its earlier years, physicians were really
helpless to arrest the course of the disease once it was contracted by a victim. However,
in the case of Aids, the means of transmitting the disease was quickly determined,
whereas the spread of the plague in Shakespeare's time was a complete mystery and the
subject of wide speculation among physicians and scientists in the sixteenth century. The
closing of theaters is important to students of Shakespeare because it marked a period of
time when Shakespeare wrote most of his non-dramatic poetry including Venus and
Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece and probably most of his sonnets.
The Renaissance is also marked by numerous advancements in what we would call
technology. The most important, the invention of printing, took place in 1455, over one
hundred years before Shakespeare was born, and first came to England in 1475, when
William Caxton set up a printing press in Westminster near Westminster Abbey. The
effects of printing were widespread but not as rapid as we might suppose. The
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percentage of people who could read and write slowly grew as books became less
expensive and more available. The English language which had been in flux for centuries stabilized near the end of the
fifteenth century and evolved into modern English in the sixteenth century. Although you may at first find Shakespeare
difficult to read, his language is modern English and except for immature readers, need not be "translated." The stability of
our language is largely owing to standardized printing practices, and not to English teachers as one might have thought. It
was the printers who gradually regularized spelling, capitalization, and punctuation so that books and later pamphlets
would have the same look about them. Many of Shakespeare's plays were printed during his lifetime in individual editions
called quartos, and some came out in as many as five separate quarto editions. The most notable printing of
Shakespeare's plays, however, came seven years after he died when two of his friends and colleagues collected the thirty-
six plays attributed to him along with his poetry and printed this complete works in a folio now referred to as Shakespeare's
First Folio(1624).
The other technological innovations were in sailing. These changes were largely incremental and not attributable to a
single inventor. Improvements in navigation led to improved maps and charts. Improvements in sailing ships led to faster
and safer travel. In particular the improvement of keels and moveable sails allowed ships to sail more closely to the wind
making the ships more maneuverable and providing a wider variety of directions the ship could take. As a result of these
combined improvements, captains began pushing their ships to more distant lands. New trading routes were secured
which led to increased competition in trade and wider availability of exotic products. However, these gains were made with
considerable risk. Shipwrecks were numerous, individual sailors were marooned in distant locations, many who left
London, Greenwich, or Plymouth with great hopes, never returned. I believe we see the influence of this travel and
adventure in several Shakespearean plays. The most notable is The Tempest, where the hero, Prospero and his daughter
Miranda have been marooned on an island for over ten years. But other plays such as The Comedy of Errors and Twelfth
Night feature ship wrecks. In Hamlet we recall Hamlet's brush with pirates on his way from the continent to England. And
there are many other plays which allude to the dangers of travel.
England had come late to the exploration and exploitation party following Portugal, Spain, and France. However, when Sir
Francis Drake, sailing out of Plymouth in 1582 circumnavigated the world, following roughly the same route Magellan had
taken sixty years earlier, he was the first captain to complete the journey and live to tell about it. Moreover, because he
raided Spanish ports on the western coast of South and Central America, and captured unsuspecting Spanish ships
stealing their valuable cargoes regardless of the fact that England and Spain were not at war, he returned to England with
The Golden Hind full of gold, spices, and precious fabrics much of which he gave to Queen Elizabeth, who in return made
him a peer of the realm. Drake's famous expedition took place at a time when Shakespeare's whereabouts are unrecorded
and unknown. Not surprisingly, some students of Shakespeare have speculated that the future playwright may have
actually been on Drake's famous voyage. But such conjecture is just that as there is no record of what Shakespeare was
doing at the time.
In part because of Drake and other overt acts of piracy by the English against the Spanish, Spain mounted a major assault
against the English in an attempt to seriously damage their shipping and stop the piracy. In 1588 the Spanish Armada
sailed up the English Channel to attack Holland and England, but they were badly defeated losing numerous ships,
sailors, and soldiers. Part of the loss came from a bad turn in the weather, but the English victory should not be 3-4
minimized.
 English ships were smaller and more easily maneuverable. At the same time they were more lightly armed, but this
disadvantage seems to have been more than compensated for by more agile ships. The result of the defeat of the Spanish
Armada was a period of relative peace for the next twenty years; a period of peace that almost directly coincides with
Shakespeare's dramatic career.
England was, of course, a monarchy. Elizabeth I came to the throne at the age of 25 on the death of her half-sister, Mary, in
1558. Elizabeth reigned until 1603, when upon her death her cousin, James I, who was also king of Scotland, was
coronated. James ruled until 1625 and was succeeded by his son Charles I. Both Elizabeth and James were relatively
good monarchs. Elizabeth is often regarded as rather brilliant. She had a quick mind, was not extravagant, and recognized
that her throne was not as secure as her counselors might lead her to believe. She was strong and certainly capable of
making hard and difficult decisions; however, perhaps because she was a woman, she was less functionally arrogant than
most of her contemporary monarchs. It is in fact Elizabeth's wariness that sets her apart and allowed her to have such a
successful reign. Although she was Queen of England, she shared some of her rule with Parliament, a body made of men
chosen to represent the various areas of England. There was voting for these members; however, suffrage was
dramatically limited. Women, of course, could not vote, but neither could most men. Property was the main consideration
and individual home ownership, small farms, etc were very rare, for nearly all of the property was in the hands of the
aristocracy and the landed gentry. The Queen herself was, and still is, the largest land owner in England. The point is that
Parliament was not an early example of democracy at work. The illiterate "folk" were not consulted for direction of the state.
Moreover, even the members of Parliament were not free to take up any issues they thought important. For instance, as
Puritanism became popular, some MPs wanted to debate religious issues. in 1586 Elizabeth had Peter Wentworth thrown
into the Tower (prison) for insisting on debate regarding the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. Nor can we point to
Shakespeare as an early proponent of free speech and democracy. Rather, Shakespeare seems to be fairly supple with
his politics and does not use the stage as a campaign soapbox or a pulpit. In his Roman plays, particularly Coriolanus and
Julius Caesar, he has his characters say quite cruel words about the proletariat, the common
people: "You blocks, you stones, you less than senseless things!" But these are the words of
characters who are among the losers by the end of the play. In his English history plays,
Shakespeare is well aware of the relationship of the present monarch to those of the past
whom he writes about. Thus, Richard III is an arch villain who well deserved being slain on
the field of battle by Elizabeth's grandfather. Would the reader or the audience at the time
expect anything different? Henry V, on the other hand, is a great hero who triumphed over the
French at Agincourt and whose early and untimely death unfortunately led to the War of the
Roses. Richard II is more problematic. Being forced to abdicate by Henry IV, Shakespeare
presents us with a man who seems not to have been made to rule. As dramatized, Richard is
clearly the wrong man for the wrong job. Moody and depressed, Richard's fate was sealed by
his personality not his ideology. Shakespeare is an imaginative writer not a philosopher or an
ideologue. He is much more interested in people than abstract ideas. Perhaps because of
censorship restrictions he expressed himself through interesting and complex people whom
he visualized, indeed whom he created to provide us with lively and thoughtful entertainment.
www.independent.co.uk
Taken from the following link:
http://www.uh.edu/~djudkins/life_in_renaissance_england.htm

HOMEWORK:

Each student according to their list number will have to read one of the following stories. If you have list number 1 you
should read the story of the tempest, if you are list number 7 you should read the merchant of Venice and so forth. If there
are more than 20 student's number 21 will pair up with number one, 22 with number 2 and so forth. Read these stories
thoroughly for the activity in the next class. Bring a sheet of paper with a drawing of all the characters from your story to be
explained in the next class. Try to think of what these stories can teach us. Follow the link found below to the web page
where you will find your story on the right side of the page under the word INDEX and preface in red.

SHAKESPEARES TALES FOR CHILDREN

http://www.shakespeare-literature.com/Tales_From_Shakespeare_(For_Children)/

1. The Tempest. 11. All's Well that Ends Well.

2. A Midsummer Night's Dream. 12. Taming of the Shrew.
3. Winter's Tale. 13. The Comedy of Errors.
4. Much Ado About Nothing. 14. Measure for Measure.
5. As You Like It. 15. Twelfth Night.
6. Two Gentlemen of Verona. 16. Timon of Athens.
7. Merchant of Venice. 17. Romeo and Juliet.
8. Cymbeline. 18. Hamlet.
9. King Lear. 19. Othello.
10. Macbeth. 20. Pericles. 4-4