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England of Shakespeare's day

During most of Shakespeare’s lifetime, England was ruled by Queen Elizabeth I. Her reign is often called the Elizabethan Age. Shakespeare’s works reflect the cultural, social, and political conditions of the Elizabethan Age. Knowledge of these conditions can provide greater understanding of Shakespeare’s plays and poems. For example, most Elizabethans believed in ghosts, witches, and magicians. No biographical evidence exists that Shakespeare held such beliefs, but he used them effectively in his works. Ghosts play an important part in Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, and Richard III. Witches are major characters in Macbeth. Prospero, the hero of The Tempest, is a magician.

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Shakespeare's London had grown from 120,000 inhabitants in 1550 to 200,000 by 1600. By 1650, London contained 375,000 people. This exceptional population growth is remarkable considering London’s high mortality rate. The crowded and unsanitary city often experienced outbreaks of plague that regularly reduced the population. Sewage flowed in open ditches that drained into the Thames, and overbuilding led to slum conditions in many parts of the city. However, London continued to grow as the result of a massive flow of migrants, like Shakespeare himself, from the English countryside.

The crowded streets helped give London an air of bustling activity. But other factors also made London an exciting city. It was the commercial and banking center of England and one of the world’s chief trading centers. London was also the capital of England. The queen and her court lived there for much of each year, adding to the color and excitement. The city’s importance attracted people from throughout England and from other countries. Artists, teachers, musicians, students, and writers all flocked to London to seek advancement.

Although large for its day, London was still small enough so that a person could be close to its cultural and political life. The wide range of knowledge that Shakespeare showed in his plays has amazed many of his admirers. Yet much of this knowledge was the kind that could be absorbed by being in the company of informed people. The range of Shakespeare’s learning and the variety of his characters owe something to his involvement in London life.

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Elizabethan society. It was once common to claim that in the late 1500’s, when Shakespeare first began to write his plays, the English people were experiencing a period of great optimism and patriotism. Under Elizabeth I, they enjoyed a long period of relative peace while continental Europe was burdened by war. In 1588, the English Navy defeated the Spanish Armada, an invasion fleet designed to return Protestant England to Catholicism. After this victory, many English writers declared that God had chosen England to play a special role in world history.

However, there were tensions beneath the surface in English life. England was still a Protestant country on the margins of a Europe dominated by Catholic forces. As the 1500’s drew to a close, the aged and childless Elizabeth refused to name a successor, leading to uncertainty about what would follow her death. The possibility of a succession crisis leading to a foreign invasion or civil war disturbed both the political powers and the common people.

The peaceful accession of James I in 1603 eased these anxieties, but the enormous expectations put upon the new king soon led to disappointment. Although initially met with enthusiasm, James quickly made enemies of a number of important parts of English society. The early 1600’s saw an increase in dramas portraying corrupt courts, though they were always represented as Italian. To many English people, the world appeared to be deteriorating and becoming, in Hamlet’s words, “an unweeded garden/That grows to seed.”

Certainly Shakespeare’s plays reveal a shift from optimism to pessimism. All his early plays, even the histories and the tragedy Romeo and Juliet, have an exuberance that sets them apart from the later works. After 1600, Shakespeare’s dramas show the confused, gloomy, and often bitter social attitudes of the time. During this period, he wrote his greatest tragedies. Even the comedies Measure for Measure and All’s Well That Ends Well have a bitter quality not found in his earlier comedies. A character in the tragedy King Lear cries out in despair, “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods./They kill us for their sport.” These lines reflect the uncertainties of the time.

Elizabethans were keenly aware of death and the brevity of life. They lived in constant fear of plague. When an epidemic struck, they saw victims carted off to common graves. Yet death and violence also fascinated many Elizabethans. Londoners flocked to public beheadings of traitors, whose heads were exhibited on poles. They also watched as criminals were hanged, and they saw the corpses dangle from the gallows for days. Crowds also flocked to such bloodthirsty sports as bearbaiting and bullbaiting, in which dogs attacked a bear or bull tied to a post.

Elizabethan literature mirrored the violence and death so characteristic of English life. Shakespeare’s tragedies, like other Elizabethan tragedies, involve the murder or suicide of many of the leading characters.

In spite of their tolerance of cruelty, Elizabethans were extremely sensitive to beauty and grace. They loved many forms of literature, including poetic drama, narrative and lyric poetry, prose fiction, and essays. People of all classes enjoyed music, and English composers rivaled the finest composers in all Europe.

Instrumental music, singing, and dancing are important in Elizabethan drama. Some of Shakespeare’s romantic comedies might almost be called “musical comedies.” Twelfth Night, for example, includes instrumental serenades and rousing drinking songs as well as other songs ranging from sad to comic. Dances form part of the action in The Tempest, The Winter’s Tale, and Romeo and Juliet.

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The English ruler. Shakespeare’s 10 history plays deal with English kings and nobility. Nine of the plays concern events from 1398 to the 1540’s. A knowledge of these events and of the Elizabethans’ attitude toward their own ruler can help a playgoer or reader understand Shakespeare’s histories.

During the 100 years before Elizabeth I became queen, violent political and religious conflicts had weakened the throne. From 1455 to the 1480's, a series of particularly bitter civil wars tore England apart. The wars centered on the efforts of two rival families—the House of Lancaster and the House of York—to control the throne. The wars are called the Wars of the Roses because Lancaster’s emblem was said to be a red rose and York’s a white rose. Four of Shakespeare’s historical plays deal with the Wars of the Roses. These plays, in historical order, are Henry VI, Parts I, II, and III; and Richard III. A second sequence of plays, Richard II, Henry IV, Parts I and II, and Henry V, deal with earlier events that led up to the Wars of the Roses. These eight plays together describe events leading up to the establishment of the Tudor dynasty (line of rulers) and form an extended and sophisticated meditation on a long and turbulent period in English history.

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Religion. The two history plays that are not part of the major sequence running from Richard II to Richard III are King John and Henry VIII. Both deal largely with the problem of religious conflict. King Henry VIII broke with the Roman Catholic Church and tentatively moved the English church toward Protestantism. His son, Edward IV, was fully committed to the Protestant cause and instituted sweeping reforms after he came to the throne in 1547. After Edward’s early death, his sister Mary succeeded in 1553 and returned England to the Catholic faith. Mary’s short reign was followed by the accession of Elizabeth, who reestablished Protestantism in 1558. Thus, from 1534, when Henry first declared independence from Rome, to 1558, when Elizabeth took the throne, every change in monarch was accompanied by a change in the official religion. A change in religion was always accompanied by attempts to suppress, often violently, those who remained loyal to the other faith.

As a result of the dynastic struggles of the 1400’s and the religious conflicts of the 1500’s, many Elizabethans came to believe that a strong but just ruler was necessary to keep social order. In seeing Shakespeare’s history plays, they would have understood his treatment of royal responsibilities as well as royal privileges. Elizabethans would have been aware of the dangers of a weak king—dangers that Shakespeare described in Richard II. They would also have been alert to the dangers of a cruel and unjust ruler, which Shakespeare portrayed in Richard III.

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