An Overview

 Time for heroes—Men were:
 Witty, eloquent
 Examined own nature
 Adventurers, fencers, poets, conversationalists
• Women had lower social status, despite nation being run by a Queen

 Great Chain of Being (social structure)
•
 Royalty, nobility, peasantry considered different species from each other
Upset in Great Chain portended (warned) by signs and nature
 Weather, unusual animal behavior, etc.
 Divine Rule of Kings
 Reigning monarch was God’s agent
 Rebelling against monarch = rebelling against God; upset of the great chain

 England in a succession crisis
 Queen Elizabeth left no heirs, refused to marry
 People feared another War of the Roses (long bloody battle-rival families fighting for crown)
 British people very concerned about this problem
• Shakespeare could not comment directly on England’s political affairs; did so indirectly in theater

 1599 very important year


Globe Theater completed
Julius Caesar first performed
• Caesar very popular subject
 Writers saw numerous similarities to England’s situation

Political uncertainty due to lack of heir

First attempts at colonization (Roanoke 1585)

 Primary source for information on Caesar
 Plutarch’s Lives of Noble Grecians and Romans
• Written in blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter)
• Often shifts from poetry to prose
 Create mood, establish the status of a character, etc.

 Play begins in medias res (in the middle of something)
 Figurative language
 Simile
 Metaphor
 Irony
 Dramatic Irony: audience knows something characters do not


Situational Irony: when what happens is different than what is expected
Verbal Irony: speaker says something but means another

 Aristotle’s definition
 A god, demi-god, hero, high-ranking official
 Rises to high position then falls from position, usually to utter desolation or death
• Two forces equally powerful in classic tragedy
- Hero’s tragic flaw (hamartia)
- Fate

 During Renaissance, people felt less like pawns, more in charge of their destinies
 Elizabethan tragic hero responsible for own downfall, rather than fate
 “Waste of human potential” tragic to Elizabethans
 Contrast between destiny and free will recurring theme in play