MACBETH
Video Summary of the Complete Story
THE TRAGIC PAIR
Monday, 11 June 2012
To Kill a Mockingbird- Summary of the complete story
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
Summary of the Complete Story
Thursday, 26 April 2012
Background to Macbeth -Tragedy
Tragedy
Tragedy
was written to instruct as well as to entertain. It taught audiences lessons
about ambition, duty, loyalty and treachery, virtues and vices that can be made
even more vivid and powerful in a high political context where fates of
nations, as well as individuals, are at stake. Tragedies were popular in
Shakespeare's England. They dramatised great civil disasters and falls from
power of kings, princes, and military leaders, which affected the fortunes of
states and nations. They contained assassination, bloodshed and revenge.
A
strong influence on the development of Elizabethan tragedy was the Roman
playright Seneca (4BC- AD65). Seneca's plays were enjoyed on the popular stage
for their theatre al qualities, and they influenced many playwrights, including
Shakespeare. The critica Bradley finds many parallels between Seneca and
Macbeth, especially in the languagevof Macbeth's speech in 'Will Neptune's
ocean... ' (Act 2 scene 2 line 63). Other features of Macbeth typically found
in Senecan tragedy include:
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soliloquy
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exaggerated
rhetoric
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ghosts, witches,
magic
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violent events
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wrong avenged
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moral statements
What was Shakespeare 's England like?
Like
all writers, Shakespeare reflected in his plays the world he knew. Audiences
watching Macbeth would recognise aspects of their own time and country.
Shakespeare was not concerned with strip historical accuracy and setting, and
Macbeth draws images from everyday experience, and from the customs and
peoccupationsof Jacobean England. Hearing them, Shakespeare 'se original
audiences could respond at different levels. Some critics believe that
Shakespeare wrote Macbeth partly as a tribute to King James, already King of
Scotland, who becamevking of England in 1603 after Queen Elizabeth's death.
Severas aspects of the play have been taken to support this view:
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King James made
a special student of witchcraft. His book, Demonologie, contains beliefs and
detailed practicas which also appear in Macbeth.
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In Act 4 the
witches show Macbeth a pageant of eight kings. blanqueo gestores to them as his
descendants. King James claimed direct descent from Banquo and to be the ninth
King.
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As a Protestant
King, James deplored Catholic practices. It is thought that the porter's talkof
an 'equivocator' refers to a Catholic priest, Henry Garnet, who was accused in
1606 of being involved in the Gunpowder Plot. he comitted perjury but claimed
the right to equivocate (to mislead the court without technically lying). In
Macbeth equivocation is associated with evil and is practised by the witches
and their 'masters'.
§
In 1605 King
James and Parliament escaped detruction when the Gunpowder plot was dicovered.
A medal was struck to commemorate the discovery ; it shower a snake concealed
by flowers. In their first scene Lady Macbeth urges her husband into deceitful
concealment: 'Look like the innocent flower but be the serpent under it'.
When
Macbeth was written, witchcraft was controversial, chiefly because of King
Jame's great interest in the issue. As noted above, Jame's published
Demonologie in 1597, prompted by disturbing experiences during a visit to
Denmark in 1589. He had gone there to bring his queen Anne back to Scotland,
but was delayed by storms, which he believed were stirred up by witches. He
came to believe that witches might be conspiring against the very person of the
King. Witchcraft this became associated with treason, and James began a
witches-hunt in Scotland that lasted for most of the 1590s. When James came to
London in 1603 he met more varied responses to witchcraft than he pundonor
Scotalnd. Nonetheless, the English were fascinanted by the occult: witches were
thought to fly, salí in a sieve, and bring darkness, fogs and storms. Each
worked through her 'familiar' -an animal, bird or reptile. Shakespeare uses such
beliefs in his witches' Language and practices. He showed the effects on the
man who is tempted by them, made Even more powerful by the fact that he was a
great military hero:
§
Macbeth becomes
'rapt' in trance.
§
He sees visions
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He is unable to
pray
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At first, he is
normal in sufferingfrom fear, but eventually he claims'i have almost forgotten
the taste of fears'.
Women
As the
preceding discussion of witchcraft shows, Shakespeare's England treated women
as inferiors. Women were thought to be inherently more susceptible to evil than
Men, as shown when Satan, disguised as a serpentee, first tempted Eve, who then
tempted Adam. Shakespeare recalls this original sin when Lady Macbeth uses her
sexual power over her husband, and persuades him to evil. She uses the image of
the serpent hiding beneath a flower to encourage him into a performance of
deceitful well come which will disarm Duncan. Such hypocrisy was more
associated with with women than with men.
Women
had few rights and were expected to be obedient first to their father and then
to their husband. Their proper sphere was the home, whist men worked,
travelled, engaged in society and politics and made the majoy decisions that
affected the family.
Lady
Macbeth defies such conventional and submissive stereotyping. Her independence
and strength of purpose was uncommon on the Elizabethan stage, even though
Jacobean plays included women who asserted themselves at the expense of men,
taking men´s roles and assuming some masculine qualities.
Lady
Macbeth´s sexuality is strange and paradoxical. She clearly has a strong hold
over her husband. But just before his arrival in Act 1 Scene 5, she urges the
powers of darkness to remove her womanly nature. She wishes her blood to become
abnormal, and that her monthly menstrual flow may stop. She also demads that
her milk be turned to gall. Her appeal denies the two womanly instincts of
giving birth and of suckling her child.
¨Milk¨and
¨blood¨convey strong meanings throughout the play, in particular the
distinction between the female and the male. Lady Macbeth deplores ¨the milk of
human kindness¨in Macbeth. Although he is used to blood on the battlefield, she
feels he has too much of the femenine in him to shed Duncan´s blood in the
bedchamber. She orders the spirits to possess her with masculine qualities in
order to compensate for his weakness.
The succession to the throne
Shakespeare´s
contemporaries believed in primogeniture-
that the eldest son (o, failing that, daughter) should inherit the father’s
title. However, the issue of succession to the throne became increasingly
controversial in Queen Elizabeth’s reign, and in 1572 the Second Treasons Act
forbade any debate about it. Nonetheless, in the 1590’s, with the queen ageing
and childless, there was widespread concern about who would succeed her. James
was the son of her Catholic enemy, Mary, Queen of Scots, and although he could
claim legitimate right to the throne deriving from Henry VII, this did not
silence controversy, which resolved around three crucial questions:
§
On what grounds
should the crown pass from one king to another?
§
Should
Parliament and the people have a voice in the succession?
§
Is it ever right
to depose a monarch?
Religious
disputes complicated the issue. Some Catholics supported Jame’s claim to the
throne, believing that, though he was avowedly a Protestant, he would bring his
mother’s Catholicism to England.
In Macbeth the issue of succession is
complicated, but the same three questions still have telling urgency. The
established Scottish principle was tanistry
(election from a small group of kinsmen). This often led to assassination
when a potencial successor to the throne chose a favourable moment to make
himself prominent. Historically, Macbeth had a good claim to the crown, and
Holinshed records that Macbeth’s thoughts of killing Duncan became serious only
when Duncan provocately broke with tradition by appointing Malcolm as Prince of
Cumberland. By tradition Malcolm had no more right to the throne than Macbeth,
who (if there were to be an election) would have the advantage of being a
successful military leader at a time of great crisis. By altering his source
material in this respect, Shakespeare makes Macbeth a usurper.
Glossary of Poetic Terms
Glossary of Poetic Terms
| Allegory A symbolic narrative in which the surface details imply a secondary meaning. Allegory often takes the form of a story in which the characters represent moral qualities. The most famous example in English is John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, in which the name of the central character, Pilgrim, epitomizes the book's allegorical nature. Kay Boyle's story "Astronomer's Wife" and Christina Rossetti's poem "Up-Hill" both contain allegorical elements. Alliteration The repetition of consonant sounds, especially at the beginning of words. Example: "Fetched fresh, as I suppose, off some sweet wood." Hopkins, "In the Valley of the Elwy." Anapest Two unaccented syllables followed by an accented one, as in com-pre-HEND or in-ter-VENE. An anapestic meter rises to the accented beat as in Byron's lines from "The Destruction of Sennacherib": "And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, / When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee." Antagonist A character or force against which another character struggles. Creon is Antigone's antagonist in Sophocles' play Antigone; Teiresias is the antagonist of Oedipus in Sophocles' Oedipus the King. Assonance The repetition of similar vowel sounds in a sentence or a line of poetry or prose, as in "I rose and told him of my woe." Whitman's "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" contains assonantal "I's" in the following lines: "How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, / Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself." Ballad A narrative poem written in four-line stanzas, characterized by swift action and narrated in a direct style. The Anonymous medieval ballad, "Barbara Allan," exemplifies the genre. Blank verse A line of poetry or prose in unrhymed iambic pentameter. Shakespeare's sonnets, Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost, and Robert Frost's meditative poems such as "Birches" include many lines of blank verse. Here are the opening blank verse lines of "Birches": When I see birches bend to left and right / Across the lines of straighter darker trees, / I like to think some boy's been swinging them. Caesura A strong pause within a line of verse. The following stanza from Hardy's "The Man He Killed" contains caesuras in the middle two lines: Off-hand-like--just as I-- Was out of work-had sold his traps-- No other reason why. An imaginary person that inhabits a literary work. Literary characters may be major or minor, static (unchanging) or dynamic (capable of change). In Shakespeare's Othello, Desdemona is a major character, but one who is static, like the minor character Bianca. Othello is a major character who is dynamic, exhibiting an ability to change. Characterization The means by which writers present and reveal character. Although techniques of characterization are complex, writers typically reveal characters through their speech, dress, manner, and actions. Readers come to understand the character Miss Emily in Faulkner's story "A Rose for Emily" through what she says, how she lives, and what she does. Climax The turning point of the action in the plot of a play or story. The climax represents the point of greatest tension in the work. The climax of John Updike's "A&P," for example, occurs when Sammy quits his job as a cashier. Closed form A type of form or structure in poetry characterized by regularity and consistency in such elements as rhyme, line length, andmetrical pattern. Frost's "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" provides one of many examples. A single stanzaillustrates some of the features of closed form: His house is in the village though. He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. An intensification of the conflict in a story or play. Complication builds up, accumulates, and develops the primary or central conflict in a literary work. Frank O'Connor's story "Guests of the Nation" provides a striking example, as does Ralph Ellison's "Battle Royal." Conflict A struggle between opposing forces in a story or play, usually resolved by the end of the work. The conflict may occur within a character as well as between characters. Lady Gregory's one-act play The Rising of the Moon exemplifies both types of conflict as the Policeman wrestles with his conscience in an inner conflict and confronts an antagonist in the person of the ballad singer. Connotation The associations called up by a word that goes beyond its dictionary meaning. Poets, especially, tend to use words rich in connotation. Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" includes intensely connotative language, as in these lines: "Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright / Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, / Rage, rage against the dying of the light." Convention A customary feature of a literary work, such as the use of a chorus in Greek tragedy, the inclusion of an explicit moral in afable, or the use of a particular rhyme scheme in a villanelle. Literary conventions are defining features of particular literary genres, such as novel, short story, ballad, sonnet, and play. Couplet A pair of rhymed lines that may or may not constitute a separate stanza in a poem. Shakespeare's sonnets end in rhymed couplets, as in "For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings / That then I scorn to change my state with kings." Dactyl A stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones, as in FLUT-ter-ing or BLUE-ber-ry. The following playful lines illustrate double dactyls, two dactyls per line: Emily Dickinson Gibbering, jabbering. The dictionary meaning of a word. Writers typically play off a word's denotative meaning against its connotations, or suggested and implied associational implications. In the following lines from Peter Meinke's "Advice to My Son" the references to flowers and fruit, bread and wine denote specific things, but also suggest something beyond the literal, dictionary meanings of the words: Plant squash and spinach, turnips and tomatoes; Beauty is nectar and nectar, in a desert, saves-- ... and always serve bread with your wine. But, son, always serve wine. The resolution of the plot of a literary work. The denouement of Hamlet takes place after the catastrophe, with the stage littered with corpses. During the denouement Fortinbras makes an entrance and a speech, and Horatio speaks his sweet lines in praise of Hamlet. Dialogue The conversation of characters in a literary work. In fiction, dialogue is typically enclosed within quotation marks. In plays, characters' speech is preceded by their names. Diction The selection of words in a literary work. A work's diction forms one of its centrally important literary elements, as writers use words to convey action, reveal character, imply attitudes, identify themes, and suggest values. We can speak of the diction particular to a character, as in Iago's and Desdemona's very different ways of speaking in Othello. We can also refer to a poet's diction as represented over the body of his or her work, as in Donne's or Hughes's diction. Elegy A lyric poem that laments the dead. Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays" is elegiac in tone. A more explicitly identified elegy is W.H. Auden's "In Memory of William Butler Yeats" and his "Funeral Blues." Elision The omission of an unstressed vowel or syllable to preserve the meter of a line of poetry. Alexander uses elision in "Sound and Sense": "Flies o'er th' unbending corn...." Enjambment A run-on line of poetry in which logical and grammatical sense carries over from one line into the next. An enjambed line differs from an end-stopped line in which the grammatical and logical sense is completed within the line. In the opening lines of Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess," for example, the first line is end-stopped and the second enjambed: Looking as if she were alive. I call That piece a wonder, now.... A long narrative poem that records the adventures of a hero. Epics typically chronicle the origins of a civilization and embody its central values. Examples from western literature include Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, and Milton's Paradise Lost. Epigram A brief witty poem, often satirical. Alexander Pope's "Epigram Engraved on the Collar of a Dog" exemplifies the genre: Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you? The first stage of a fictional or dramatic plot, in which necessary background information is provided. Ibsen's A Doll's House, for instance, begins with a conversation between the two central characters, a dialogue that fills the audience in on events that occurred before the action of the play begins, but which are important in the development of its plot. Falling action In the plot of a story or play, the action following the climax of the work that moves it towards its denouement or resolution. The falling action of Othello begins after Othello realizes that Iago is responsible for plotting against him by spurring him on to murder his wife, Desdemona. Falling meter Poetic meters such as trochaic and dactylic that move or fall from a stressed to an unstressed syllable. The nonsense line, "Higgledy, piggledy," is dactylic, with the accent on the first syllable and the two syllables following falling off from that accent in each word. Trochaic meter is represented by this line: "Hip-hop, be-bop, treetop--freedom." Fiction An imagined story, whether in prose, poetry, or drama. Ibsen's Nora is fictional, a "make-believe" character in a play, as are Hamlet and Othello. Characters like Robert Browning's Duke and Duchess from his poem "My Last Duchess" are fictional as well, though they may be based on actual historical individuals. And, of course, characters in stories and novels are fictional, though they, too, may be based, in some way, on real people. The important thing to remember is that writers embellish and embroider and alter actual life when they use real life as the basis for their work. They fictionalize facts, and deviate from real-life situations as they "make things up." Figurative language A form of language use in which writers and speakers convey something other than the literal meaning of their words. Examples include hyperbole or exaggeration, litotes or understatement, simile and metaphor, which employ comparison, and synecdoche and metonymy, in which a part of a thing stands for the whole. Flashback An interruption of a work's chronology to describe or present an incident that occurred prior to the main time frame of a work's action. Writers use flashbacks to complicate the sense of chronology in the plot of their works and to convey the richness of the experience of human time. Faulkner's story "A Rose for Emily" includes flashbacks. Foil A character who contrasts and parallels the main character in a play or story. Laertes, in Hamlet, is a foil for the main character; in Othello, Emilia and Bianca are foils for Desdemona. Foot A metrical unit composed of stressed and unstressed syllables. For example, an iamb or iambic foot is represented by ˘', that is, an unaccented syllable followed by an accented one. Frost's line "Whose woods these are I think I know" contains four iambs, and is thus an iambic foot. Foreshadowing Hints of what is to come in the action of a play or a story. Ibsen's A Doll's House includes foreshadowing as does Synge'sRiders to the Sea. So, too, do Poe's "Cask of Amontillado" and Chopin's "Story of an Hour." Free verse Poetry without a regular pattern of meter or rhyme. The verse is "free" in not being bound by earlier poetic conventions requiring poems to adhere to an explicit and identifiable meter and rhyme scheme in a form such as the sonnet or ballad. Modern and contemporary poets of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries often employ free verse. Williams's "This Is Just to Say" is one of many examples. Hyperbole A figure of speech involving exaggeration. John Donne uses hyperbole in his poem: "Song: Go and Catch a Falling Star." Iamb An unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one, as in to-DAY. See Foot. Image A concrete representation of a sense impression, a feeling, or an idea. Imagery refers to the pattern of related details in a work. In some works one image predominates either by recurring throughout the work or by appearing at a critical point in the plot. Often writers use multiple images throughout a work to suggest states of feeling and to convey implications of thought and action. Some modern poets, such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams, write poems that lack discursive explanation entirely and include only images. Among the most famous examples is Pound's poem "In a Station of the Metro": Petals on a wet, black bough. The pattern of related comparative aspects of language, particularly of images, in a literary work. Imagery of light and darkness pervade James Joyce's stories "Araby," "The Boarding House," and "The Dead." So, too, does religious imagery. Irony A contrast or discrepancy between what is said and what is meant or between what happens and what is expected to happen in life and in literature. In verbal irony, characters say the opposite of what they mean. In irony of circumstance or situation, the opposite of what is expected occurs. In dramatic irony, a character speaks in ignorance of a situation or event known to the audience or to the other characters. Flannery O'Connor's short stories employ all these forms of irony, as does Poe's "Cask of Amontillado." Literal language A form of language in which writers and speakers mean exactly what their words denote. See Figurative language, Denotation, and Connotation. Lyric poem A type of poem characterized by brevity, compression, and the expression of feeling. Most of the poems in this book are lyrics. The anonymous "Western Wind" epitomizes the genre: The small rain down can rain? Christ, if my love were in my arms And I in my bed again! A comparison between essentially unlike things without an explicitly comparative word such as like or as. An example is "My love is a red, red rose," From Burns's "A Red, Red Rose." Langston Hughes's "Dream Deferred" is built entirely of metaphors. Metaphor is one of the most important of literary uses of language. Shakespeare employs a wide range of metaphor in his sonnets and his plays, often in such density and profusion that readers are kept busy analyzing and interpreting and unraveling them. CompareSimile. Meter The measured pattern of rhythmic accents in poems. See Foot and Iamb. Metonymy A figure of speech in which a closely related term is substituted for an object or idea. An example: "We have always remained loyal to the crown." See Synecdoche. Narrative poem A poem that tells a story. See Ballad. Narrator The voice and implied speaker of a fictional work, to be distinguished from the actual living author. For example, the narrator of Joyce's "Araby" is not James Joyce himself, but a literary fictional character created expressly to tell the story. Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" contains a communal narrator, identified only as "we." See Point of view. Octave An eight-line unit, which may constitute a stanza; or a section of a poem, as in the octave of a sonnet. Ode A long, stately poem in stanzas of varied length, meter, and form. Usually a serious poem on an exalted subject, such as Horace's "Eheu fugaces," but sometimes a more lighthearted work, such as Neruda's "Ode to My Socks." Onomatopoeia The use of words to imitate the sounds they describe. Words such as buzz and crack are onomatopoetic. The following line from Pope's "Sound and Sense" onomatopoetically imitates in sound what it describes: The line too labors, and the words move slow. Open form A type of structure or form in poetry characterized by freedom from regularity and consistency in such elements as rhyme, line length, metrical pattern, and overall poetic structure. E.E. Cummings's "[Buffalo Bill's]" is one example. See also Free verse. Parody A humorous, mocking imitation of a literary work, sometimes sarcastic, but often playful and even respectful in its playful imitation. Examples include Bob McKenty's parody of Frost's "Dust of Snow" and Kenneth Koch's parody of Williams's "This is Just to Say." Personification The endowment of inanimate objects or abstract concepts with animate or living qualities. An example: "The yellow leaves flaunted their color gaily in the breeze." Wordsworth's "I wandered lonely as a cloud" includes personification. Plot The unified structure of incidents in a literary work. See Conflict, Climax, Denouement, andFlashback. Point of view The angle of vision from which a story is narrated. See Narrator. A work's point of view can be: first person, in which the narrator is a character or an observer, respectively; objective, in which the narrator knows or appears to know no more than the reader; omniscient, in which the narrator knows everything about the characters; and limited omniscient, which allows the narrator to know some things about the characters but not everything. Protagonist The main character of a literary work--Hamlet and Othello in the plays named after them, Gregor Samsa in Kafka'sMetamorphosis, Paul in Lawrence's "Rocking-Horse Winner." Pyrrhic A metrical foot with two unstressed syllables ("of the"). Quatrain A four-line stanza in a poem, the first four lines and the second four lines in a Petrachan sonnet. A Shakespearean sonnet contains three quatrains followed by a couplet. Recognition The point at which a character understands his or her situation as it really is. Sophocles' Oedipus comes to this point near the end of Oedipus the King; Othello comes to a similar understanding of his situation in Act V of Othello. Resolution The sorting out or unraveling of a plot at the end of a play, novel, or story. See Plot. Reversal The point at which the action of the plot turns in an unexpected direction for the protagonist. Oedipus's and Othello's recognitions are also reversals. They learn what they did not expect to learn. See Recognition and also Irony. Rhyme The matching of final vowel or consonant sounds in two or more words. The following stanza of "Richard Cory" employs alternate rhyme, with the third line rhyming with the first and the fourth with the second: We people on the pavement looked at him; He was a gentleman from sole to crown Clean favored and imperially slim. The recurrence of accent or stress in lines of verse. In the following lines from "Same in Blues" by Langston Hughes, the accented words and syllables are underlined: Baby take it slow.... Lulu said to Leonard I want a diamond ring A set of conflicts and crises that constitute the part of a play's or story's plot leading up to the climax. See Climax,Denouement, and Plot. Rising meter Poetic meters such as iambic and anapestic that move or ascend from an unstressed to a stressed syllable. See Anapest,Iamb, and Falling meter. Satire A literary work that criticizes human misconduct and ridicules vices, stupidities, and follies. Swift's Gulliver's Travels is a famous example. Chekhov's Marriage Proposal and O'Connor's "Everything That Rises Must Converge," have strong satirical elements. Sestet A six-line unit of verse constituting a stanza or section of a poem; the last six lines of an Italian sonnet. Examples: Petrarch's "If it is not love, then what is it that I feel," and Frost's "Design." Sestina A poem of thirty-nine lines and written in iambic pentameter. Its six-line stanza repeat in an intricate and prescribed order the final word in each of the first six lines. After the sixth stanza, there is a three-line envoi, which uses the six repeating words, two per line. Setting The time and place of a literary work that establish its context. The stories of Sandra Cisneros are set in the American southwest in the mid to late 20th century, those of James Joyce in Dublin, Ireland in the early 20th century. Simile A figure of speech involving a comparison between unlike things using like, as, or as though. An example: "My love is like a red, red rose." Sonnet A fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter. The Shakespearean or English sonnet is arranged as three quatrains and a finalcouplet, rhyming abab cdcd efef gg. The Petrarchan or Italian sonnet divides into two parts: an eight-line octave and a six-line sestet, rhyming abba abba cde cde or abba abba cd cd cd. Spondee A metricalfoot represented by two stressed syllables, such as KNICK-KNACK. Stanza A division or unit of a poem that is repeated in the same form--either with similar or identical patterns or rhyme and meter, or with variations from one stanza to another. The stanzas of Gertrude Schnackenberg's "Signs" are regular; those of Rita Dove's "Canary" are irregular. Style The way an author chooses words, arranges them in sentences or in lines of dialogue or verse, and develops ideas and actions with description, imagery, and other literary techniques. See Connotation, Denotation, Diction, Figurative language,Image, Imagery, Irony, Metaphor, Narrator, Point of view, Syntax, and Tone. Subject What a story or play is about; to be distinguished from plot and theme. Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" is about the decline of a particular way of life endemic to the American south before the civil war. Its plot concerns how Faulkner describes and organizes the actions of the story's characters. Its theme is the overall meaning Faulkner conveys. Subplot A subsidiary or subordinate or parallel plot in a play or story that coexists with the main plot. The story of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern forms a subplot with the overall plot of Hamlet. Symbol An object or action in a literary work that means more than itself, that stands for something beyond itself. The glass unicorn in The Glass Menagerie, the rocking horse in "The Rocking-Horse Winner," the road in Frost's "The Road Not Taken"--all are symbols in this sense. Synecdoche A figure of speech in which a part is substituted for the whole. An example: "Lend me a hand." See Metonymy. Syntax The grammatical order of words in a sentence or line of verse or dialogue. The organization of words and phrases and clauses in sentences of prose, verse, and dialogue. In the following example, normal syntax (subject, verb, object order) is inverted: A three-line stanza, as the stanzas in Frost's "Acquainted With the Night" and Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind." The three-line stanzas or sections that together constitute the sestet of a Petrarchan or Italian sonnet. Theme The idea of a literary work abstracted from its details of language, character, and action, and cast in the form of a generalization. See discussion of Dickinson's "Crumbling is not an instant's Act." Tone The implied attitude of a writer toward the subject and characters of a work, as, for example, Flannery O'Connor's ironic tone in her "Good Country People." See Irony. Trochee An accented syllable followed by an unaccented one, as in FOOT-ball. Understatement A figure of speech in which a writer or speaker says less than what he or she means; the opposite of exaggeration. The last line of Frost's "Birches" illustrates this literary device: "One could do worse than be a swinger of birches." Villanelle A nineteen-line lyric poem that relies heavily on repetition. The first and third lines alternate throughout the poem, which is structured in six stanzas --five tercets and a concluding quatrain. Examples include Bishop's "One Art," Roethke's "The Waking," and Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night." |
Monday, 12 March 2012
Friday, 9 March 2012
Literary sources for Macbeth
SOURCES FOR MACBETH
Shakespeare's chief source for Macbeth was Holinshed's Chronicles (Macbeth), who based his account of Scotland's history, and Macbeth's in particular, on the Scotorum Historiae, written in 1527 by Hector Boece. Other minor sources contributed to Shakespeare's dramatic version of history, including Reginald Scot's Discovery of Witchcraft, and Daemonologie, written in 1599 by King James I. Macbeth's words on dogs and men in Act 3, scene 1, (91-100), likely came from Colloquia, the memoirs of Erasmus (edition circa 1500). The plays of Seneca seem to have had great influence on Shakespeare, and, although no direct similarities to the work of Seneca can be seen in Macbeth, the overall atmosphere of the play and the depiction of Lady Macbeth can be attributed to the Latin author.
An examination of Macbeth and Shakespeare’s sources lead us to formulate several conclusions concerning the motives behind the dramatists alterations. It can be argued that the changes serve three main purposes: the dramatic purpose of producing a more exciting story than is found in the sources; the thematic purpose of creating a more complex characterization of Macbeth; and the political purpose of catering to the beliefs of the reigning monarch, King James the First. And, in the grander scheme, Shakespeare’s alterations function to convey the sentiment echoed in many of his works – that there is a divine right of kings, and that to usurp the throne is a nefarious crime against all of humanity.
In Holinshed’s Chronicles, Macbeth is introduced as a valiant gentleman, and, as in Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth is sent by King Duncan to crush the rebellion led by Mackdonwald. However, to ensure Macbeth is viewed early in the play as extraordinarily courageous, Shakespeare changes Macbeth’s role in the demise of Mackdonwald as presented in the Chronicles:
. . . [Mackdonwald] slue his wife and children, and lastlie himself, least if he had yeelded simplie, he should have beene executed in most cruell wise for an example to other. Macbeth entering into the castell by the gates, found the carcasse of Mackdonwald lieng dead there amongst the residue of the slaine bodies, which when he beheld, remitting no peece of his cruell nature with that pitiful sight, he caused the head to be cut off, and set upon a poles end, and so sent it as a present to the king.
Contrasting with the above passage, in the drama Macbeth has not simply stumbled upon the body of the rebel, he has instead heroically killed Mackdonwald in battle:
Captain: . . . For brave Macbeth – well he
deserves that name – Disdaining Fortune, with his
brandish’d steel,
Which smok’d with bloody execution,
Like Valor’s minion carv’d out his passage
Till he faced the slave;
Which nev’r shook hands, nor bade farewell to him,
Till he unseam’d him from the nave to th’ chops,
And fix’d his head upon our battlements (I.i.15-23).
In addition to the dramatic effect of making the report from the Captain more exciting, enhancing the bravery of Macbeth by altering his part in the defeat of Mackdonwald aids Shakespeare’s construction of Macbeth as a tragic hero. Our first impression of Macbeth must be one of grandeur; he must command our attention at once for what occurs in the rest of the play to be significant. As a brave warrior and leader, Macbeth is capable of taking others’ burdens upon himself. Our awareness of the strength and assuredness Macbeth possesses early in the drama is important when we later witness his downfall and mental decay to the point where he is not capable of handling even his own burdens.
To assist in his more complex interpretation of Macbeth, Shakespeare had to move outside of Holinshed’s account which gives no real analysis of Macbeth’s character or motivation. Shakespeare turned to George Buchanan’s Rerum Scoticarum Historia, and to other previous passages in Holinshed’s own work. Buchanan relays the following:
Macbeth was a man of penetrating genius, a high spirit, unbounded ambition, and , if he had possessed moderation, was worthy of any command however great; but in punishing crimes he exercised a severity, which, exceeding the bounds of the laws, appeared apt to degenerate into cruelty.
Shakespeare’s Macbeth is indeed an intelligent man, ambitious and spirited. However, Shakespeare deviates from Buchanan’s depiction of Macbeth as a cruel, barbarous man, a notion also put forth by Holinshed. Despite the murders Macbeth will commit, Shakespeare presents him as a gentle, thoughtful man who can love wholeheartedly, as we see in his interactions with his wife. Lady Macbeth herself illustrates that Macbeth’s nature is ". . . too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness/To catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great,/Art not without ambition, but without/The illness should attend it.(1.5.15-19)
The probable source for Macbeth’s feelings of guilt after he has murdered King Duncan comes mere pages before Holinshed’s report of Duncan and Macbeth. Here Holinshed relates the story of King Kenneth, tormented by a guilty conscience after he has butchered his nephew:
[A voice heard by the King] ‘Think not Kenneth that the wicked slaughter of Malcolme Duffe by thee contrived, is kept secret from the knowledge of the eternall God: thou art he that didst conspire the innocents death . . . It shall therefore come to pass, that both thou thy self, and thy issue, through the just vengeance of almightie God, shall suffer woorthie punishment’ . . .The King with this voice being striken into great dred and terror, passed the night without any sleep coming in his eyes. (Holinshed, 247)
Also apparent in Shakespeare’s text are elements of Buchanan’s dramatization of the voice King Kenneth hears:
At last, whether in truth an audible voice from heaven addressed him, as is reported, or whether it were the suggestion of his own guilty mind, as often happens to the wicked, in the silent watches of the night. . .(Buchanan, 310)
Clearly, the two aforementioned depictions of Kenneth’s experience are recognizable in Shakespeare’s Macbeth who is also plagued by a guilty conscience:
Macbeth: Methought, I heard a voice cry, ‘Sleep no
more!
Macbeth doth murther Sleep,’ --the innocent Sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care . . .
Still it cried ‘Sleep no more!’ to all the
House;
‘Glamis hath murther’d sleep, and therefore Cawdor
Shall sleep no more: Macbeth shall sleep no more!’(II.II.32-41).
The dramatic purposes served by Shakespeare’s unique portrait of a compassionate, tender Macbeth, and his adaptation of Kenneth’s eerie story are obvious – who would care to sit through the play if Macbeth were the static character found in Holinshed? Alien voices make for spine-tingling drama, capturing the attention of even the most apathetic audience. But the changes also enhance the thematic content of the play, blurring the line between the two extremes of good and evil within Macbeth himself. His commiseration in the play, and his intense feelings of guilt before and after the regicide clash with his ‘passion or infatuation beyond the reach of reason’ that propels him to commit the murder. By representing Macbeth’s nature in this way, Shakespeare ‘rescues Macbeth from the category of melodramatic villain, the kind of character we can dismiss with a snap moral judgment, and elevates him to that of tragic hero. . . toward whom we must exercise a most careful moral and human discrimination if we are to do him even partial justice.’ (Calderwood, 52)
The attention Shakespeare pays to Macbeth’s conscience would have been of particular interest to King James. In his book the Basilicon Doron, written to teach his son, Henry, the ways of morality and kingly duties, James discusses the human conscience at great length, beginning with the statement: "Conscience . . . it is nothing els but the light of knowledge that God hath planted in man; which choppeth him with a feeling that hee hath done wrong when ever he committeth any sinne . . ." (Basilicon Doron, 17). Certainly Shakespeare was well-acquainted with this short but popular didactic treatise, and, keeping in mind that Macbeth was specifically written as entertainment for the royal court, Shakespeare’s inclusion of Macbeth’s guilty conscience was a way in which he could both intrigue and compliment King James.
Notable changes are also made by Shakespeare in his depiction of Holinshed’s three weird sisters, and it is apparent that the alterations are implemented partially to instill trepidation in the audience. Holinshed’s sisters are ‘creatures of the elderwood . . . nymphs or fairies’ (Chronicles 268). Nymphs are generally regarded as goddesses of the mountains, forests, or waters, and they possess a great deal of youthful beauty. And similarly, fairies are defined as enchantresses, commonly taking a small and dainty human form. Holinshed’s illustration of the creatures Macbeth chances upon is far removed from the portrayal Shakespeare gives us through Banquo:
What are these,
So wither’d and so wild in their attire,
That look not like th’ inhabitants o’ th’ earth,
And yet are on’t? Live you? or are you aught
That man may question? . . .
By each one her choppy finger laying
Upon her skinny lips. You should be women,
And yet your beards forbid me to interpret
That you are so (I.III.39-46).
Shakespeare transforms the weird sisters into ugly, androgynous hags, and they distinctly take on a more sinister role than was assigned to them in Holinshed’s Chronicles. Shakespeare’s sisters are far more theatrically captivating than the nymphs found in Holinshed’s text, and as a guide, Shakespeare may have consulted Scot’s The Discoverie of Witchcraft. Although a skeptical work, the Discoverie contains a brilliant description of witches, and it is possible Shakespeare used it as a basis for purely dramatic reasons:
One sort of such said to bee witches, are women which be commonly old, lame . . . poor, sullen, superstitious . . . They are leane and deformed, shewing melancholie in their faces, to the horror of all that see them (Discoverie, Chapter 3).
Shakespeare’s hags, fascinating and frightening, appeal to our interest in the demonic supernatural. Most people do not believe in fairies, but many acknowledge the presence of evil in our world. A known believer in witchcraft during the time Shakespeare was writing Macbeth was King James himself. King James was so enthralled with contemporary necromancy that he wrote a book on the subject entitled Daemonology. As with the dramatist’s incorporation of the effects of the human conscience in Macbeth, it is probable that Shakespeare took into account his monarch’s position regarding witches when he altered the portrait of the weird sisters in Holinshed’s work, thus capitalizing on the opportunity to subtly acknowledge and please King James. In Deamonology, King James writes:
For where the Magicians, as allured by curiositie, in the most parte of their practices, seekes principallie the satisfying of the same, and to winne to themselves a popular honoure and estimation: These witches on the other patre, being intised either for the desire of revenge, or of worldly riches, their whole practices are either to hurte men and their gudes, or what they possesse... (Daemonology, Second Book, Chapter III)
Compare this to the actions of Shakespeare's weird sisters in Act I, scene iii:
1 Witch: Where has thou been, sister?
2 Witch: Killing swine.
3 Witch: Sister, Where thou?
1 Witch: A sailor's wife had chestnuts in her lap,
And mounch'd, and mounch'd, and mounch'd: 'Give me,'
quoth I:
'Aroint thee, witch!' the rump-fed ronyon cries.
[So they seek revenge]
1 Witch: And the very ports they blow,
And all the quarters that they know
I' th' shipman's card.
I'll drain him dry as hay...(I.iii.1-29)
King James also states that witches can 'rayse stromes and tempestes in the aire, either upon land or sea, though not universally; but in such a particular place and prescribed bunds as God will permitte them so to trouble' (Daemonologie Book Three, Chapter V). This is visible in Shakespeare's play (Act I, scene iii), where the second witch can give the first witch 'a wind'.
Shakespeare's reshaping of Holinshed's weird sisters also performs the thematic function of introducing a significant presence of evil with which Macbeth is confronted. The malignant hags are the primary reason for our ability to feel true sympathy for Macbeth despite his heinous crimes. '[Macbeth and his Lady] breathe in a region so vast that good and evil, viewed from very high, become almost indifferent and much less important than the sheer act of breathing' (Marvin Rosenberg, The Masks of Macbeth, 24). The metamorphosis of Holinshed's nymphs into demonic agents lessens somewhat the tragic hero's culpability; '[Macbeth's] will to act diminishes, in favour of degrees of slavery to fate.' (Ibid).
In Macbeth, the role and characterization of Banquo differs considerably from Holinshed's Chronicles. In both texts, Banquo initially is a noble soldier fighting along side Macbeth. However, Holinshed reports that Banquo becomes an accomplice in the murder of King Duncan:
At length therefore, communicating his purposed intent with his trustie friends, amongst whome Banquo was the chiefest, upon confidence of their promised aid, he slue the King...(Chronicles, 269).
In contrast, Shakespeare presents Banquo as being noble and good throughout the play, unaware of the ominous plot concocted by Macbeth and his Lady. As with most of the changes implemented by Shakespeare from the original source, Banquo's portrayal serves all three purposes: dramatic, thematic, and political. It is theatrically more interesting to have Banquo seen as the anthesis of Macbeth -- a pure, moral character foil. And Shakespeare's alterations transform the murder of Banquo into a caustic and loathsome act; a tragic edisode which heightens the emotional state of the audience. We care little when Holinshed narrates the slaying of Banquo the accomplice. In addition, the play is far more effective with the villainy limited to Macbeth and Lady Macbeth alone.
The good and honourable Banquo is also crucial to the thematic issues of evil and its influences upon mortal men. Shakespeare's Banquo is a voice of reason and wisdom that warns Macbeth:
That, trusted home,
Might yet enkindle you unto the crown,
Besides the Thane of Cawdor. But 'tis strange:
And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths,
Win us with honest trifles to betray's
In deepest consequence. (I.iii.123-129)
Banquo's ability to resist the forces of darkness 'points up Macbeth's failure to resist, and stresses his tendency towards evil, the flaw that makes the tragedy possible' (Charles Boyce, Shakespeare A to Z, 48). Another possible reason for the changes made by Shakespeare to Banquo is of a political nature. It was believed at the time Macbeth was written that King James was Banquo's direct descendant, and this presumption might have influenced Shakespeare's characterization of Banquo as an innocent victim rather than an assassin. What would Shakespeare have to lose by pleasing his king and portraying James' ancestor in a positive light? However, Shakespeare has masterfuly and subtly crafted the character of Banquo to ensure that his is not totally exonerated. Shortly after the murder of Duncan, Banquo suspects Macbeth's involvement, saying 'and I fear/Thou play'dst most foully for't...' (III.i.2). Yet Banquo lets no one know of his suspicions. And Shakespeare makes it clear that Banquo is pondering what the witches have told him:
Yet it was said
It should not stand in thy posterity,
But that myself should be the root, and father
Of many kings. (III.i.5-8)
'The anxiety he had earlier about the instruments of darkness seems now to have disappeared' (Rosenberg, 391). It could be that Banquo is dreaming of the lineage promised too him by the hags, and it is only because of his own murder that the real Banquo has no time to show through. Maybe Banquo, given time, would be compelled to see Macbeth receive the same treatment that is administered to King Duncan. The fact that Shakespeare leaves a little room for speculation about the true motivation and thoughts of Banquo, and sees to it that Banquo does not vocalize his suspicions about Macbeth, enables Shakespeare to hold Banquo somewhat accountable -- if not for the direct murder of King Duncan, at least for his lack of gumption in seeking justice rendered to Macbeth. I propse that the reason Shakespeare leaves in our minds doubts about Banquo is that he felt so strongly about regicide that he could not completely exonerate a known accomplice even in a work of fiction.
A case for Shakespeare's feelings regarding kingship can also be made by examining the changes he makes to King Duncan and the events surrounding Duncan's death, which, in addition to working for dramatic and thematic effects, all serve to illustrate Duncan's virtues, and to emphasize the cataclysmic severity of killing the monarch. Shakespeare changes the King Duncan found in Holinshed's Chronicles into a respected and ideal leader. Macbeth recognizes Duncan's perfection in the following passage:
Besides, this Duncan
Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been
So clear in his great office, that his virtues
Will plead like angles, trumpet-tongu'd against
The deep damnation of his taking-off;
And Pity...shall blow the horrid deed in every eye... (I.vii.16-21)
Furthermore, Shakespeare has created an old King Duncan, with Lady Macbeth remarking, 'I laid their daggers ready...Had he not resembled my father as he slept I had done't' (I.vii.12-14). As James Calderwood suggests in his book If it Were Done: '[Holinshed's historical King Duncan] was simply one of a series of eleventh-century Scottish kings who were slain by their successors. But as Shakespeare has dramatized it, Duncan is more than merely a tribal chieftain with a crown up for grabs; he is a secular divinity of sorts, different not merely in "degree" but almost in kind from other men' (Calderwood, 82). Shakespeare's Duncan is given near mythological qualities, comparable to the Norse god Freyr who cared for and harvested the fruits of the earth:
Duncan: Welcome hither:
I have begun to plant thee, and will labour
To make thee full of growing. Noble Banquo,
That hast no less deserved...
Banquo: There if I grow,
The harvest is your own. (I.iv.29-34)
Shakespeare has not only changed the attributes of Holinshed's King Duncan, he has also altered the events surrounding Duncan's murder. In the Chronicles, the details of the regicide are brief and lackluster: 'upon confidence of [his friend's] promised aid, he slue the king at Enverns, or (as some say) at Botgosuane, in the sixt yeare of his reigne' (Chronicles, 269). So Shakespeare ventures outside Holinshed's report of Duncan and Macbeth to another passage within the Chronicles, namely, Holinshed's narration of King Duffe and his murderer, Donwald. This is illustrated in two excerpts from Holinshed's Duffe:
At the last, comming foorth, he called such afore him as had faithfullie served him in pursute and apprehension of the rebels, and giving them heartie thanks, he bestowed sundrie honourable gifts amongst them, of the which number Donwald was one, as he that had beene ever accounted a most faithfull servant to the King. (Chronicles, 235)
Compare this to Macbeth's words in Shakespeare's text:
We will proceed no further in this business'
He hath honour'd me of late, and I have bought
Golden opinions from all sorts of people...(I.vii.31-34)
The second excerpt from Holinshed's King Duffe is as follows:
At length, having talked with them a long time, he got him [Duffe] into his privy chamber, onelie with two of his chamberlains, who having brought him to bed, came foorth again, and then fell to banketting with Donwald and his wife, who had prepared diverse delicate dishes...wherat they sate up so long, till they had charged their stomachs with such full gorges, that their heads were no sooner got to the pillow but asleep they were so fast that a man might have removed the chamber over them, sooner than to have awakened them out of their droonken sleep. (Chronicles, 235)
Again, notice the parallels to Shakespeare's text:
Lady Macbeth: When Duncan is asleep --
Whereto the rather shall his day's hard journey
Soundly invite him--his two chamberlains
Will I with wine and wassail so convince
That memory, the warder of the brain,
Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason
A limbeck only. When in swinish sleep
Their drenched natures lies as in a death,
What cannot you and I perform upon
Th' unguarded Duncan? (I.vii.60-70)
After examining these alterations to the character of King Duncan, and the addition of the events that beset his death, one can claim that Shakespeare's game plan was multi-faceted. The obvious goal of elaborating on Duncan and his murder is to treat the audience to an enthralling story. The statuesque and splendid king Shakespeare creates is far more captivating than Holinshed's Duncan. And would any theatre-goer not appreciate the concentrated dramatic action Shakespeare has inserted surrounding King Duncan's slaying?
Thematically, Duncan's goodness allows Macbeth's feelings of guilt to surface, and become momentous, thereby enhancing the complex characterization of Macbeth. Being a soldier, Macbeth has killed many a man in battle without feeling greatly perplexed. His feelings about killing a corrupt or incompetent king would probably not be much more upsetting to Macbeth -- he would see it as a just action. However, Shakespeare's portrayal of Duncan as a gentle, compassionate, trusting, and magnificent monarch, presents a tangible reason why Macbeth has a tormented conscience. And subsequently, this conscience, which is the backbone of Macbeth's complexity, can be fully explored. Duncan's characterization enables us to believe Macbeth is racked with guilt.
Not only does Shakespeare's depiction of Duncan serve a dramatic and thematic purpose, but, as I mentioned earlier, one could argue that it also illuminates Shakespeare's attitude towards the killing of a rightful ruler. Duncan is seemingly infallible -- sacred. As Macduff exclaims, 'Most sacrilegious murther hath broke ope/The Lord's anointed temple, and stole themce/The life o' th' building!' (II.iii.70-73). We begin to get the sense that Duncan's murder has extraordinary significance. This feeling is intensified after the murder when anomalous thing begin to occur:
Old Man: Threescore and ten I can remember well,
Within the volume of which time I have seen
Hours dreadful and things strange, but this sore
night
Hath trifled former knowings...
'Tis unnatural...A falcon, tow'ring in her pride of
place,
Was by a mousing owl hawk'd at and kill'd. (II.iv.1-10)
Ross: And Duncan's horses--a thing moststrange
And certain--,
Beautious and swift, the minions of their race,
Turn'd wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out,
...as they would make war with mankind
Old Man: 'Tis said they eat each other. (II.iv.13-10)
It should be noted that, for Act II, scene iv, Shakespeare extracted three of the four omens associated with King Duffe's murder from the Chronicles, and applied them to the murder of Duncan. Holinshed writes: 'Monsterous sights also that were seene within the Scottish kingdome that yeere were these: horses in Louthian, being of a singular beautie andf awiftnesse, did eate their own flesh, and would in no wise taste anie other meate...There was a sparhawke also strangled by an owlq. Neither was it anie lesse woonder that the sunne, as before is said, was continuallie covered with clouds for six monthe space.' (237). As Henry Paul points out in his book The Royal PLay of Macbeth: '[Shakespeare] improved Holinshed's portents (1) by assigning the horses to Duncan, thus dramatizing the events; and by converting the strange behaviour of the hourses into a protest against the inhumanity of man... (2) by transforming the hawking owl into an image of the witches malign power; and (3) by confining to the murder day the darkness which the Chronicle ruinously diluted by protracting it for six months.' (200).
A divinely appointed monarch has been assassinated, and it is a calamity of such epic proportion that even the workings of nature are disrupted. This is reminiscent of the events following the death of Christ:
And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent; And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the Saints which slept arose... (Matthew: 27:51)
Presenting Duncan's murder in this way diminishes Macbeth's place in the grander scheme of the play. Like those who sought to crucify Christ, Macbeth and his Lady are relegated to mere player status -- they become, if only briefly, instruments whose crime against all of humanity has surpassed their collective motive of ambition; they have done a deed of apocalyptic consequence. Through them evil has been unleashed, and it has destroyed God's beloved.
The belief in the divine right of kings was voiced with equal vehemence by James. While Shakespeare arguably indirectly inserts his beliefs into his fiction, King James writes directly about his convictions in both the Basilicon Doron (1599), and The True Law of Free Monarchies (1598). The books of King James undoubtedly enhanced and reaffirmed Shakespeare's already developed ideas on kingship -- specifically, that the usurpation or regicide of a righteously titled ruler was wrong without exception.
Whether one agrees with the postulations regarding Shakespeare's authorial intentions, one would be hard pressed to refute the claim that Shakespeare has taken his semi-historical sources and made alterations that allow for a more exciting, thought-provoking, and, ultimately, tragic story.
How to cite this article:
Mabillard, Amanda. An Analysis of Shakespeare's Sources for Macbeth. Shakespeare Online. 2000. (day/month/year you accessed the information) < http://www.shakespeare-online.com/playanalysis/macbethsources.html >.
Shakesperean times
In the Renaissance, educated people did not believe the Earth was flat, but that it was in the centre of a spherical universe. A Greek-Egyptian of the second century A. D. was largely responsible for the beliefs on the nature of the cosmos which those in the Renaissance inherited. Ptolemy (around 140 AD) collected and organized the beliefs of earlier writers, and devised an elaborate model of the universe in order to explain the movements of the sun and planets. The illustration* is of a model of the universe as conceived by Ptolemy, conveniently designed to fit in a neat carrying case. There is no sense of the infinite here. To us it may seem a cozy place with the earth comfortably nestled in the centre of a series of spheres. The teaching of the Church, however, was that since the Fall that part of the cosmos that was at the centre -- within the sphere of the moon -- had been polluted by human sin, and was a kind of sinkhole or cesspool for all that was evil. Almost like hell. The enclosed earth, far from being a comforting shelter from the infinite, was a prison. The spheres The earth, according to Ptolemy, was stationary, while the spheres rotated at different speeds and in different directions. The system was arrived at by a combination of inductive and deductive reasoning. The movements of the sun from solstice to equinox, and of the moon and the planets, were carefully charted, partly because of their importance in navigation, and the fascination of the "wandering stars," the planets. However, the explanation of their movements involved not only a series of spheres but of extra circles in order to explain what we now know to be the elliptical orbits of the planets about the sun. The result was a highly complex system. Some spheres had to become centred somewhere other than on the earth and had to have on their surfaces circles ("epicycles") which themselves rotated. The system was virtually unchallenged for twelve hundred years. The Roman Catholic church accepted the Ptolemaic theory, because biblical passages suggested the sun was in constant motion while Earth remained in one place. Since the Church was in control during this time period, anyone who did not believe in the Ptolemaic theory would be punished, possibly with house arrest. The first modern* astronomer to propose that the sun is in the centre of the planets (not a planet itself, revolving around the Earth) was Copernicus (a Latinizing of the Polish Kopérnic). He realized the greater mathematical logic of such a system, not to mention the accuracy*. It was a great leap of imagination to think of the Earth spinning around something else, not in the centre of the spheres. Not surprisingly, religious leaders of the time were suspicious of the hypothesis, since it could be seen as irreligious to challenge the accepted view of the universe, since to do so was to challenge divine order; Copernicus' book, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (published in the year of his death, 1543), was for a time forbidden reading (though it was dedicated to Pope Paul III, and though the mariners' charts derived from it continued to be used). Martin Luther was also opposed to the views of Copernicus Heliocentric Theory VS Geocentric Theory In the middle ages it was believed that the earth was located at the center of the universe and that all the planets revolved around the earth. The name for this belief was called the Geocentric Theory. The Geocentric theory was believed by the church especially because the church taught that God put earth as the center of the universe which made earth special and powerful. The Geocentric theory was active for almost 2,000 years and it was not until a man named Nicolaus Copernicus that the Geocentric theory was finally proven wrong. Copernicus was actually the first man to come up with the heliocentric theory. Copernicus felt that the geocentric theory did not accurately explain the movements of the sun, moon, and planets. Copernicus studied the movements of the planets for thirty years and he then figured out that the sun was actually at the center of the universe and not earth. Copernicus was told by many scholars that he should make his new findings accessible to others by publishing it. In 1543 the book called "On the revolutions of the heavenly bodies" was released. Copernicus's book had a great impact that angered the Catholic and Protestant Church. The reason why the Church became so angry was because the Geocentric theory made human beings seem closer to God and since earth was in the center that meant humans were more special. The heliocentric theory changed that perspective completely making humans lose that position in the universe. RENAISSANCE What we are accustomed to call the Renaissance began as a rediscovery of older knowledge, and flowered as a series of new discoveries and new attitudes. In the particular alchemy of the social and political climate of Florence* in the late fourteenth century, humanism was born: scholars and administrators read the Latin of Vergil and Cicero, and explored Greek writers for the first time in centuries. Contact with earlier ways of seeing the world encouraged a new exploration of ideas, of art, and of the physical universe. From Florence the movement of minds widened to include the whole of Italy, spreading through France, and finally reaching England about a century later. The word Renaissance (French for 'rebirth', or Rinascimento in Italian), was first used to define the historical age in Italy (and in Europe in general) that followed the Middle Ages and preceded the Reformation, spanning roughly the 14th through the 16th century. The principal features were the revival of learning based on classical sources, the rise of courtly and papal patronage, the development of perspective in painting, and the advancements of science. "English Renaissance" is a recent term used to describe a cultural and artistic movement in England from the early 16th century to the early 17th century. It is associated with the pan-European Renaissance that many cultural historians believe originated in northern Italy in the fourteenth century. This era in English cultural history is sometimes referred to as "the age of Shakespeare" or "the Elizabethan era," taking the name of the English Renaissance's most famous author and most important monarch, respectively; however it is worth remembering that these names are rather misleading: Shakespeare was not an especially famous writer in his own time, and the English Renaissance covers a period both before and after Elizabeth's reign.Poets such as Edmund Spenser and John Milton produced works that demonstrated an increased interest in understanding English Christian beliefs, such as the allegorical representation of the Tudor Dynasty in The Faerie Queen and the retelling of mankind’s fall from paradise in Paradise Lost; playwrights, such as Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare, composed theatrical representations of the English take on life, death, and history. Nearing the end of the Tudor Dynasty, philosophers like Sir Thomas More and Sir Francis Bacon published their own ideas about humanity and the aspects of a perfect society, pushing the limits of metacognition at that time. As England abolished its astrologers and alchemists, it came closer to reaching modern science with the Baconian Method, a forerunner of the Scientific Method. The Elizabethan Era is the period associated with the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603) and is often considered to be a golden age in English history. It was the height of the English Renaissance, and saw the flowering of English literature and poetry. This was also the time during which Elizabethan theatre flourished and William Shakespeare, among others, composed plays that broke away from England's past style of plays. It was an age of expansion and exploration abroad, while at home the Protestant Reformation became entrenched in the national mindset.The Elizabethan Age is viewed so highly because of the contrasts with the periods before and after. It was a brief period of largely internal peace between the English Reformation and the battles between Protestants and Catholics and the battles between parliament and the monarchy that would engulf the seventeenth century. The Protestant/Catholic divide was settled, for a time, by the Elizabethan Religious Settlement and parliament was still not strong enough to challenge royal absolutism. The Jacobean era refers to a period in English and Scottish history that coincides with the reign of James I (1603 – 1625). The Jacobean era succeeds the Elizabethan era and precedes the Caroline era, and specifically denotes a style of architecture, visual arts, decorative arts, and literature that is predominant of that period. The era took its name from the Latin form, Jacobus, of the name of King James I and VI. Literature In literature, some of Shakespeare's most powerful plays are written in that period (for example The Tempest, King Lear, and Macbeth), as well as powerful works by John Webster and Ben Jonson. Ben Jonson also contributed to some of the era's best poetry, together with John Donne and the Cavalier poets. In prose, the most representative works are found in those of Francis Bacon and the King James Bible.Jonson was also an important innovator in the specialized literary sub-genre of the masque, which went through an intense development in the Jacobean era. His name is linked with that of Inigo Jones as co-developers of the literary and visual/technical aspects of this hybrid art form. [For Jonson's masques, see: The Masque of Blackness, The Masque of Queens, etc.] The high costs of these spectacles, however, positioned the Stuarts far from the relative frugality of Elizabeth's reign, and alienated the middle classes and the Puritans with a prospect of waste and self-indulgent excess.
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