Law and Social Norms in the Elizabethan Age
Theodora Jankowski argues that, until recently, literary and social-historical critics accepted the paradigm of the metempsychosis as a time of the "re pitch" of classical learning and culture, the "birth" of "man" as an individual, and the movement away from a religiously dominated to a secular life. However, she notes that this "essentialist humanist" view of the terminus has been ch each(prenominal)enged recently by many scholars. The new view is a very much more flexible notion of the period as a gap in history, "neither modern nor medieval, but a space between two more massive periods where superstar can see acted out a jolt of paradigms and ideologies, a playfulness with signifying systems, a self-reflexivity, and a self-consciousness virtu wholey the tenuous solidity of human identify." Rather than accepting a single view of a specific circumstance called "the Renaissance," critics are now open to the flexible nature of the period--caused by the combat between various para
Broude, Ronald, visit and Revenge Tragedy in Renaissance England. 28 Renaissance Quarterly 38 (1975).
Nonetheless, there is evidence that not all Elizabethans were as opposed to private revenge as Bacon's prove might suggest. Bowers states that "the ordinary sideman did not condemn revenge as such; it was only when the more treacherous and Italianate features were added or when accomplices were leased to revenge the deed that he considered revenge despicable." In addition, Elinor Bevan finds " tranquil revenge," when tied to the class code, was acceptable, although rash and hasty revenge was condemned. It seems probable, therefore, that all Elizabethans did not universally condemn revenge.
And the ambivalence in the literary productions concerning the practice demonstrates a considerable range of attitudes toward it.
William Shakespeare was an heir to this face-off of ideologies and this may be one of the reasons John Guy calls him one of the greatest influences on English literature and European drama. The tardily Elizabethan Age, during which Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet, was also a time of cultural transition. Talbert argues the Elizabethans believed the puzzle of political and social order call for the involvement of the masses, the aristocracy, and the ruler. In the Elizabethan age, the Parliament in addition to Queen Elizabeth herself, was in the main recognized as representing the force of the whole and was responsible for determine the succession of the state and the control of men's estates. These ruling factions were required to act in accordance with the conventional definition of the commonwealth, thus acting for the good of the whole and accepting what that commonwealth had open as its form and its law. However, as Shakespeare's work demonstrates, what these particular responsibilities entailed was much in question during Elizabethan times.
Edwards, Phillip, William Shakespeare, in An Outline of English Literature (P
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