Elizabethan Beliefs

1
Elizabethan Beliefs

• The Great Chain of Being
• Divine Right of Kings
• Primogeniture
• Ghosts
• Machiavelli

Elizabeth I
1558 - 1603
2
The Great Chain Concept
God

• One chain without branches links the universe
• A chain link determines your distance from God
• English society is based on the idea that
  everyone and everything has a place
• If you leave your place, you disrupt the chain
  (rebellion and discord happen)
• If passion controls your reason or if you take
  anothers spot, you get knocked down the chain
• Nature will reflect any disorders in the chain

3
The Elizabethan View

• There were three levels of attachment within
  the great chain
• Macrocosm
• Mesocosm
• Microcosm

4
The Great Chain of Being
Macrocosm

• God
• Angels
• People
• Animals
• Lion
• Dog
• Plants
• Inanimate
• Gold
• Dirt

Mesocosm (Earthly) (3 groups in red)
Microcosm
the
Individual

• Church Pope
  Archbishops
  Bishops
  Priests
• Laity or those not of the clergy

Family
Husband


Wife


Son


Servants
The State
King
Dukes
Earls, etc.
Knights Middle
Class

• Spirit (reason)
• Passion

5
The English Class System
The Nobility The King Dukes
Marquises Earls
Viscounts Barons
The Gentry Baronets
Knights Esquires
Gentlemen
Commonalty (1) Middle People
Citizens Burgesses Yeomen
Professionals Merchants
Lawyers Administrators
Clergy
Commonalty (2) Small merchants or retailers
Day-laborers, husbandmen, artisans
The poor, infirm, and unemployed
Everyone has a place and harmony is everyone in
his place Nature will reflect any disharmony in
this chain
6
King James

• Shakespeare was a great entertainer who knew
  his audience, and the primary audience member for
  Macbeth was King James I. This young and
  energetic King of Scotland took the English
  throne in 1603, and Shakespeares company was
  renamed the Kings Men that year in honor of
  James (Caraway, Amanda. Whats A Thane to Do?
  The Story of A Thane to Placate a King.).

7

• Macbeth is set in Scotland during the reigns of
  Duncan and Macbeth, who were kings of Scotland
  between 1037 and 57 C.E. Shakespeare alters the
  historical accounts in order to write a story
  that will flatter King James. The Chronicles of
  Holinshed, Shakespeares primary source for
  Macbeth, links Banquo to the Stuart line of
  Kings, from which James I is descended (Evans, G.
  Blakemore, The Riverside Shakespeare, 2nd edition
  Boston, New York Houghton Mifflin Company,
  1997, 1356).

8
King James

• James thought of himself as a fighter of evil
  and a true man of God with the Divine Right to
  Rule. He is remembered for ordering a new
  translation of the Bible, known as the King James
  Version of the Bible. He considered himself to be
  a scholar of witches and witchcraft (Garber,
  Marjorie B, Shakespeare After All, 1st ed. New
  York Pantheon Books, 2004, 697).

9
Divine Right of Kings
"the figure of God's majesty, His captain,
steward, deputy-elect, Anointed, crowned,"
(Richard II, 4.1) The theory of the Divine
Right of Kings aimed at instilling obedience by
explaining why all social ranks were religiously
and morally obliged to obey their
government. Monarchs ruled because they were
chosen by God to do so and these kings were
accountable to no person except God. They were
considered to be divinely chosen.
10
Primogeniture

• Families transferred their right to rule by this
  practice of inheritance
• The eldest son of the ruling family inherits all
  power, titles and lands of the family

11
Ghosts!

• Elizabethans, like people today, had mixed
  beliefs in their existence.
• However, everyone then knew that a murdered
  persons ghost would have no rest until the
  murderer was brought to justice!
• This idea resulted from the chain of being in
  that nature reflected the disorder created by
  murder. Hamlet and Julius Caesar play upon this
  belief.

Hamlet seeing his murdered fathers ghost
12
Machiavelli (1469 1527)

• He writes The Prince in 1513
• He concludes that some virtues will lead to a
  princes destruction whereas some vices will
  allow him to survive.
• His ultimate conclusion for keeping power is that
  the end justifies the means.

13
Shakespeares Plays Question Machiavelli

• His histories and tragedies ask who is the
  rightful ruler and why
• Does the end truly justify the means?