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The Influence of the Renaissance in Shakespeare's Work by Lee Jamieson Updated January 28, 2020 It’s very easy to think of Shakespeare as a unique genius with a singular perspective on the world around him. However, Shakespeare was very much a product of the radical cultural shifts that were occurring in Elizabethan England during his lifetime. When Shakespeare was working in the theater, the Renaissance movement in the arts was peaking in England. The new openness and humanism are reflected in Shakespeare’s plays. The Renaissance in Shakespeare's Time Broadly speaking, the Renaissance period is used to describe the era when Europeans moved away from the restrictive ideas of the Middle Ages. The ideology that dominated the Middle Ages was heavily focused on the absolute power of God and was enforced by the formidable Roman Catholic Church. From the 14th century onward, people started to break away from this idea. The artists and thinkers of the Renaissance did not necessarily reject the idea of God. In fact, Shakespeare himself may have been Catholic. The Renaissance cultural creators did, however, question humankind’s relationship to God. This questioning produced enormous upheaval in the accepted social hierarchy. And the new focus on humanity created new- found freedom for artists, writers, and philosophers to be
inquisitive about the world around them. They often drew on the more human-centered classical writing and art of ancient Greece and Rome for inspiration. Shakespeare, the Renaissance Man The Renaissance arrived in England rather late. Shakespeare was born toward the end of the broader Europe-wide Renaissance period, just as it was peaking in England. He was one of the first playwrights to bring the Renaissance’s core values to the theater. Shakespeare embraced the Renaissance in the following ways:
- Shakespeare updated the simplistic, two-dimensional writing style of pre-Renaissance drama. He focused on creating human characters with psychological complexity. Hamlet is perhaps the most famous example of this.
- The upheaval in social hierarchy allowed Shakespeare to explore the complexity and humanity of every character, regardless of their social position. Even monarchs were portrayed as having human emotions and were capable of making terrible mistakes. Consider King Lear and Macbeth.
- Shakespeare utilized his knowledge of Greek and Roman classics when writing his plays. Before the Renaissance, these texts had been suppressed by the Catholic Church.
Hamlet : A tragedy Play by William Shakespeare Royal Shakespeare Theatre, 1984 PLOT SYNOPSIS The ghost of the King of Denmark tells his son Hamlet to avenge his murder by killing the new king, Hamlet's uncle. Hamlet feigns madness, contemplates life and death, and seeks revenge. His uncle, fearing for his life, also devises plots to kill Hamlet. The play ends with a duel, during which the King, Queen, Hamlet's opponent and Hamlet himself are all killed.
Late at night, guards on the battlements of Denmark's Elsinore castle are met by Horatio, Prince Hamlet's friend from school. The guards describe a ghost they have seen that resembles Hamlet's father, the recently-deceased king. At that moment, the Ghost reappears, and the guards and Horatio decide to tell Hamlet. Claudius, Hamlet's uncle, married Hamlet's recently-widowed mother, becoming the new King of Denmark. Hamlet continues to mourn for his father's death and laments his mother's lack of loyalty. When Hamlet hears of the Ghost from Horatio, he wants to see it for himself. Elsewhere, the royal attendant Polonius says farewell to his son Laertes, who is departing for France. Laertes warns his sister, Ophelia, away from Hamlet and thinking too much of his attentions towards her. According to his plan, Hamlet begins to act strangely. He rejects Ophelia, while Claudius and Polonius, the royal attendant, spy on him. They had hoped to find the reason for Hamlet's sudden change in behaviour but could not. Claudius summons Guildenstern and Rosencrantz, old friends of Hamlet to find out what's got into him. Their arrival coincides with a group of travelling actors that Hamlet happens to know well. Hamlet writes a play which includes scenes that mimic the murder of Hamlet's father. During rehearsal, Hamlet and the actors plot to present Hamlet's play before the King and Queen. At the performance, Hamlet watches Claudius closely to see how he reacts. The play provokes Claudius, and he interrupts the action by storming out. He immediately resolves to send Hamlet
the poisoned cup and dies. Then both Laertes and Hamlet are wounded by the poisoned blade, and Laertes dies. Hamlet, in his death throes, kills Claudius. Hamlet dies, leaving only his friend Horatio to explain the truth to the new king, Fortinbras, as he returns in victory from the Polish wars. Source : https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/ shakespedia/shakespeares-plays/hamlet/ The Famous Soliloquy of Hamlet : " To Be or Not To Be " Hamlet's Soliloquy, Act 3. Scene I To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there's the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscovered country from whose bourn No traveler returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sickled o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action. Analysis of Hamlet's Soliloquy, Act 3. Scene I Hamlet's third soliloquy is the famous 'to be, or not to be' speech. Once again Hamlet is confused and contemplating death. He is wondering whether life or death is preferable; whether it is better to allow himself to be tormented by all the wrongs that he considers 'outrageous fortune' bestowed on him, or to arm himself and fight against them, bringing them to an end. If he were to die, he feels that his troubles, his 'heart-ache', would end. Death is still something that he finds appealing, 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished'. Yet, even death troubles him, as to die might mean to dream and he worries about the dreams he might have to endure, 'in that sleep of death what dreams may come'.
response to the play indicated guilt, Hamlet still does not know what the right thing to do is—right in the eyes of God, that is.
