Elizabethan England

1
Elizabethan England
2
Elizabeth (1533-1603)

• Became queen 1558
• Creatively handled problems

3
Acceptance Problems

• Ascension confusion/dispute
• Legitimacy
• Personal image (turned liabilities to assets)
• Young (25)
• Out of power stream during Mary Tudor's reign
• Female
• Virgin
• Coronation
• Visits to the Lords
• "Good Queen Bess"

4
Money Problems

• Lords support Elizabeth's visits
• Stopped the wars
• Promoted industry and trade
• Privateers

5
Religious Problems

• Protestant versus Catholic division
• Reaction to undo all of Mary's acts
• Parliament dissolved ties to Catholicism
• Puritan zealousness

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French Problems

• England at war with France
• Instigated by Mary Tudor
• Elizabeth didn't worry about pride issue
• Complication Mary, Queen of Scots married to
  French king

7
Scottish Problems

• Independent (since 1314) and resentful Scotland
• Mary Queen of Scots
• John Knoxs religious movement
• Husband, French king, dies and she returns to
  Scotland
• Not well liked in Scotland (exiled Knox and
  others)
• Married Darnley and had a son and then Darnley
  killed
• Mary forced to abdicate (refuge in England)
• James VI of Scotland

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Spanish Problems

• Rivalry with England
• Philip II interference
• Privateers
• Battle with Spanish Armada (1588)

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English Problems

• Vision for the country
• Merchants
• Seafarers
• Promotion of the Golden Age
• Prosperity and leisure
• Arts
• Language
• Drama

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Shakespeare (1564-1616)

• Born in Stratford-on-Avon
• Married, 2 daughters
• Moved to London
• The Chamberlain's Men

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Shakespeares Major Plays
1599 - Julius Caesar1599-1600 - As You Like
It1600-02 - Twelfth Night1600-O1 -
Hamlet1597-1601 - The Merry Wives of
Windsor1600-O1 - "The Phoenix and the
Turtle"1601-02 - Troilus and Cressida1602-04
- All's Well That Ends Well1603-04 -
Othello1604 - Measure for Measure1604-09 -
Timon of Athens1605-06 - King Lear1605-06 -
Macbeth1606-07 - Antony and Cleopatra1607-09 -
Coriolanus1608-09 - Pericles1609-1O -
Cymbeline161O-1I - The Winter's Tale161I - The
Tempest1612-13 - Henry VIII1613 - The Two Noble
Kinsmen

• 1588-93 - The Comedy of Errors1588-92 - Henry
  VI (three parts)1592-93 - Richard III1592-94 -
  Titus Andronicus1593-94 - The Taming of the
  Shrew1593-94 - The Two Gentlemen of
  Verona1593-94 - "The Rape of
  Lucrece"1593-1600 - "Sonnets"1588-95 - Love's
  Labor's Lost1594-96 - Romeo and Juliet1595 -
  Richard II1594-96 - A Midsummer Night's
  Dream1590-97 - King John1592 - "Venus and
  Adonis"1596-97 - The Merchant of Venice1597 -
  Henry IV (Part I)1597-98 - Henry IV (Part
  II)1598-1600 - Much Ado About Nothing1598-99
  - Henry V

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Globe Playhouse, London
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Shakespeare

• Wrote 37 plays between 1588 and 1613
• About 1.5 per year
• Directed and starred in the plays
• Wrote 154 sonnets

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New Words

• Solidified the English language
• Dante did the same for Italian
• Luther and Goethe did the same for German
• Used nouns as verbs
• Over 2000 new words
• critical, aggravate, assassination
• monumental, castigate, countless
• Obscene, forefathers, frugal, hurry
• Majestic, homicide, summit, reliance
• Coined Phrases

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• "Shakespeare had a huge vocabulary. In the
  collected editions of his works--the first folio
  that was published seven years after his
  death--there are 27,000 different, individual
  words. In the King James translation of the
  Bible, which was published twelve years earlier,
  there are 7,000 words."
• --Excerpt from Professor Peter Saccio's course
  "Shakespeare The Word and The Action"

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• If you cannot understand my argument, and
  declare Its Greek to me, you are quoting
  Shakespeare if you claim to be more sinned
  against than sinning, you are quoting
  Shakespeare if you recall your salad days, you
  are quoting Shakespeare if you act more in
  sorrow than in anger, if your wish is farther to
  the thought, if your lost property has vanished
  into thin air, you are quoting Shakespeare if
  you have ever refused to budge an inch or
  suffered from green-eyed jealousy, if you have
  played fast and loose, if you have been
  tongue-tied, a tower of strength, hoodwinked or
  in a pickle, if you have knitted your brows, made
  a virtue of necessity, insisted on fair play,
  slept not one wink, stood on ceremony, danced
  attendance (on your lord and master), laughed
  yourself into stitches, had short shrift, cold
  comfort or too much of a good thing, if you have
  seen better days or lived in a fools paradise
  why, be that as it may, the more fool you, for it
  is a foregone conclusion that you are (as good
  luck would have it) quoting Shakespeare

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• if you think it is early days and clear out bag
  and baggage, if you think it is high time and
  that that is the long and short of it, if you
  believe that the game is up and that truth will
  out even if it involves your own flesh and blood,
  if you lie low till the crack of doom because you
  suspect foul play, if you have your teeth set on
  edge (at one fell swoop) without rhyme or reason,
  then to give the devil his due if the truth
  were known (for surely you have a tongue in your
  head), you are quoting Shakespeare even if you
  bid me good riddance and send me packing, if you
  wish I was dead as a door-nail, if you think I am
  an eyesore, a laughing stock, the devil
  incarnate, a stony-hearted villain, bloody-minded
  or blinking idiot, then by Jove! it is all one
  to me, for you are quoting Shakespeare.
• Bernard Levin in The History of English by
  McCrum, et al

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Hamlet

• Reality versus Perception
• Ghost
• Claudius and mousetrap
• His own self (philosophy major)

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Hamlet

• Motivations for action
• Obedience
• Revenge
• Duty
• What is a proper motivation?
• Compare Hamlet versus Nephi

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Hamlet

• Death

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Death in Hamlet

• "'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature,
  Hamlet, to give these mourning duties to your
  father But, you must know, your father lost a
  father That father lost his ...'tis unmanly
  grief it shows a will most incorrect to heaven
  a heart unfortified, a mind impatient an
  understanding simple and unschooled for what we
  know must be and is common as any the most vulgar
  thing to sense...Fie! 'Tis a fault to heaven, a
  fault against the dead, a fault to nature..."
• Claudius in Hamlet

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Death in Hamlet

• "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 heartache, and the
  thousand shocks that flesh is heir to, 'tis a
  consummation devoutly to be wished. 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...
• Hamlet

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Hamlet

• Death
• Nature of mankind

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Nature of Mankind in Hamlet

• "What a piece of work is a man! How noble in
  reason! How infinite in faculty! In form and
  moving, how express and admirable! In action, how
  like an angel! In apprehension, how like a god!
  The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals!
  And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of
  dust?"
• Hamlet

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Nature of Mankind in Hamlet

• "Use every man after his desert, and who should
  scape whipping? Use them after your own honour
  and dignity the less they deserve, the more
  merit is in your bounty."
• Hamlet

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Nature of mankind in Hamlet

• "What is a man, if his chief good and market of
  his time be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no
  more... Now, whether it be beastial oblivion, or
  some craven scruple of thinking too precisely on
  the event, a thought which, quartered, hath but
  one part wisdom and ever three parts coward, I do
  not know. Why yet I live to say, 'This thing's to
  do' sith since I have cause, and will, and
  strength, and means, to do't. Examples gross as
  earth exhort me... How stand I then, that have a
  father killed, a mother stained, excitements of
  my reason and my blood, and let all sleep while
  to my shame I see the imminent death of twenty
  thousand men that for a fantasy and trick of fame
  go to their graves like beds... O from this time
  forth my thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth."
  
• Hamlet

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Hamlet

• Death
• Nature of mankind
• Personal responsibility

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"Personal Responsibility"in Hamlet

• "Give me your pardon, sir I have done you wrong
  But pardon't as you are a gentleman... Let my
  disclaiming from a purposed evil free me so far
  in your most generous thoughts, that I have shot
  mine arrow o'er the house, and hurt my brother."
• Hamlet

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Character Development in Hamlet

• "How does Shakespeare create the roundness of
  character? By throwing light on new aspects of
  the person in successive relations. Polonius as
  a courtier is obsequious, as a royal adviser
  overconfident, as a father to his daughter
  callously blind, as a father to his son,
  endearingly wise. The grand result of this
  method, this multi-dimensional mapping, is that
  since Montaigne and Shakespeare, plays, novels,
  and biographies have filled the western mind with
  a galaxy of characters whom we know better than
  ourselves and our neighbors.
• Barzun, Jacques, From Dawn to Decadence,
  Perennial, 2000, p141.

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Personal Responsibility

• "Give thy thoughts no tongue, nor any
  unproportioned thought his act. Be thou familiar,
  but by no means vulgar. The friends thou hast,
  and their adoption tried, grapple them to thy
  soul with hoops of steel but do not dull thy
  palm with entertainment of each new-hatched,
  unfledged comrade. Beware of entrance to a
  quarrel but, being in, bear 't that the opposed
  may beware of thee. Give every man thine ear, but
  few thy voice Take each man's censure, but
  reserve thy judgment. Costly thy habit as thy
  purse can buy, but not expressed in fancy rich,
  not gaudy for the apparel oft proclaims the
  man... neither a borrower or a lender be for
  loan oft loses both itself and friend, and
  borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. This
  above all to thine own self be true, and it must
  follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then
  be false to any man.
• Polonius in Hamlet

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Ophelia Syndrome
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Ophelia Syndrome

• The situation
• Ophelia was listening to advice from three
  conflicting sources
• Hamlet (her sweetheart)
• Laertes (her brother)
• Polonius (her father)
• The problem
• The advice she received was conflicting
• She decided to trust her father

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Ophelia Syndrome

• Polonius asked if she Ophelia believed
  Hamlet's affections were genuine, to which
  Ophelia respondd, I do not know my Lord, what
  should I think. Polonius answered, I'll teach
  you. Think yourself a baby.

34
Ophelia Syndrome

• What happens?
• Ophelia obeys her father and betrays Hamlet
• Hamlet breaks off their relationship
• Hamlet mistakenly kills her father
• Hamlet leaves for England
• Ophelia goes crazy and commits suicide

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Ophelia Syndrome

• The Ophelia Syndrome manifests itself in the
  university. The Ophelia writes copious notes in
  every class and memorizes them for
  examinations...The Ophelia wants to be a parrot,
  because it feels safe.... But eventually every
  discipline enters into the unknown, the
  uncertain, the theoretical, the hypothetical,
  where teachers can no longer tell students with
  certainty what they should think...."
• Thomas G. Plummer (BYU Professor in
  German/Slavic Languages)

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Ophelia Syndrome

• Teachers also become accustomed to their role as
  Polonius
• They focus on telling students how to think in a
  particular situation
• They give exam questions and other assignments
  that require memorized answers or are solutions
  to problems that have exact solutions

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Ophelia Syndrome

• Steps for overcoming the syndrome (for students)
• 1. Seek out and learn from great teachers,
  regardless of what they teach.
• 2. Dare to know and trust yourself.
• 3. Learn to live with uncertainty.
• 4. Practice dialectical looking for alternates
  thinking.
• 5. Foster idle thinking.
• 6. Plan to step out of bounds in thinking
  patterns. Thomas Plummer (BYU)

In other words, be creative!!
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• No one can make you feel inferior without your
  consent.
• Eleanor Roosevelt (quoted in Charles Chic
  Thompson, What a Great Idea, 1992, 29)

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Othello

• Honorable Man Destroyed by a Character Flaw and
  by an evil subordinate
• Ultimate Tragedy

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Other works by Shakespeare

• Macbeth
• Romeo and Juliet
• Henry V
• Julius Caesar
• Taming of the Shrew
• Sonnets

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Romeo and Juliet

• Romeo.
• To Juliet. If I profane with my unworthiest
  hand
• This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this,--
• My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
• To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
• Juliet.
• Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
• Which mannerly devotion shows in this
• For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do
  touch,
• And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.
• Romeo.
• Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?
• Juliet.
• Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in
  prayer.

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• Romeo.
• O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do
• They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to
  despair.
• Juliet.
• Saints do not move, though grant for prayers'
  sake.
• Romeo.
• Then move not while my prayer's effect I take.
• Thus from my lips, by thine my sin is purg'd.
• Kissing her.
• Juliet.
• Then have my lips the sin that they have took.
• Romeo.
• Sin from my lips? O trespass sweetly urg'd!
• Give me my sin again.

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Sonnet 29

• When in disgrace with fortune and mens eyes
• I, all alone, beweep my outcast state,
• And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
• And look upon myself and curse my fate,
• Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
• Featured like him, like him with friends
  possessed,
• Desiring this mans art and that mans scope,
• With what I most enjoy contented least.
• Yet in these thoughts, myself almost despising,
• Haply I think on thee, and then my state
• Like to the lark at break of day arising
• From sullen earth sings hymns at Heavens gate,
• For thy sweet love remembered such wealth
  brings,
• That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

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Sonnet 18

• Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
• Thou art more lovely and more temperate
• Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
• And summer's lease hath all too short a date
• Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
• And often is his gold complexion dimm'd
• And every fair from fair sometime declines,
• By chance, or nature's changing course untrimm'd
  
• But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
• Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st
• Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
  
• When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st
• So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
  
• So long lives this, and this gives life to
  thee.

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Sonnet 116

• Let me not to the marriage of true minds
• Admit impediments. Love is not love
• Which alters when it alteration finds,
• Nor bends with the remover to remove.
• O no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
• That looks on tempests and is never shaken
• It is the star to every wandering bark,
• Whose worth's unknown, although his height be
  taken.
• Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and
  cheeks
• Within his bending sickle's compass come
• Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
• But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
• If this be error and upon me proved,
• I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

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Shakespeares Environment and Motivation

• Earning a Living (Profit)
• Love of the Language/Drama
• Duty to Friends

47
King James Version of the Bible

• Helped in defining English language
• Wycliffe version (1378)
• Tyndale version (1526)
• King James version
• Translation method

48
Tyndale's Contributions

• Phrases
• The powers that be
• My brother's keeper
• The salt of the earth
• A law unto themselves
• Words invented
• Jehovah
• Passover
• Atonement
• Scapegoat

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• extracted The edition of the English New
  Testament published at Worms in 1526 by Tyndale
  must be regarded as a landmark in the history of
  the English Bible. Tyndale was influenced by the
  Luther version of the Bible in both concept and
  phrasing. Tyndale had to invent many religious
  words and phrases because no previous religious
  discussions and writings had been in English but,
  rather, were in Latin.
• McGrath, In the Beginning, 2002, 73-77

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• extracted Perhaps the most bizarre scheme
  devised by the English Catholic Church to
  stifle the new Tyndale translation involved a
  Bishop who met a book merchant in Antwerp and
  mentioned how anxious he (the Bishop) was to burn
  as many of Tyndale's New Testaments as possible.
  The merchant informed the Bishop that, for a
  price, he would be able to get hold of as many
  copies as the Bishop liked. The merchant then
  informed Tyndale of the deal. Tyndale printed an
  extra run of books which he sold to the merchant
  and the merchant sold to the Bishop. The deal
  worked. The Bishop burned the books and Tyndale
  got the profits so that he could print more
  books.
• From McGrath, In the Beginning, Anchor, 2002,
  84-86.

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Hebrew idioms were used in the King James Version
(and just translated literally)

• "to lick the dust" (Psalm 729)
• "to fall flat on his face" (Numbers 2231)
• "to pour out one's heart" (Psalm 628)
• "the land of the living" (Job 2813)
• "under the sun" (Ecclesiastes 13)
• "sour grapes" (Ezekiel 182)
• "from time to time" (Ezekiel 410)
• "pride goes before a fall" (Proverbs 1618)
• "the skin of my teeth" (Job 1920)
• "to stand in awe" (Psalm 44)
• "to put words in his mouth" (Exodus 415)
• "to go from strength to strength" (Psalm 847)
• "like a lamb to the slaughter" (Isaiah 537)

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Some Variations on Hebrew Idioms

• "rise and shine" (from Isaiah 601)
• "to see the writing on the wall" (from Daniel
  55)
• "a fly in the ointment" (from Ecclesiastes 101)

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Some Greek Influences

• "the salt of the earth" (Matthew 513)
• "a thorn in the flesh" (2 Corinthians 127)
• "the powers that be" (Romans 131)
• "and it came to pass" (Mark 19 and over 400
  others)
• "the scales fell from his eyes" (based on Acts
  918)

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Thank You
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Death in Hamlet

• "O that this too solid flesh would melt, thaw and
  resolve itself into a dew! Or that the
  Everlasting had not fixed his canon 'gainst
  self-slaughter! O God! O God! How weary, stale,
  flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of
  this world! Fie on 't! Ah, fie!"
• Hamlet

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Sonnet 12

• When I do count the clock that tells the time,
• And see the brave day sunk in hideous night
• When I behold the violet past prime,
• And sable curls, all silvered o'er with white
• When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,
• Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
• And summer's green all girded up in sheaves,
• Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,
• Then of thy beauty do I question make,
• That thou among the wastes of time must go,
• Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
• And die as fast as they see others grow
• And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make
  defence
• Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee
  hence.

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The conflict

• Should you think according to how you are taught
  to think?
• Or
• Should you think creative thoughts that are
  different from what you have been taught?

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The conflict in education

• The education system emphasizes learning by
  authority
• The education system emphasizes logics (linear
  thinking)
• The education system has killed imagination