Life in Elizabethan England

Shakespeare Alive; Chapters 1&2

Give us this day our Daily Bread

England was facing a depressing and hopeless time

Starvation was rampant throughout the region.

Life during this time is full of contradictions; the economic gap between the rich and poor is huge.

Families primarily lived in the countryside on farms owned by the rich.

Landlords were cruel and would raise rent often without warning.

England's population was looking at a dramatic increase in population which would eventually cause inflation of prices making food and land even more unaffordable

The plague was widespread throughout the country and eventually moved to the cities as people migrated to London.

Hitting the RoadMany people leave to London to find job opportunities.

Most common transportation is walking; only wealthy on horseback

Walking takes a few days to reach the city; Encounter merchants, runaway servants, old people on the way

There are no shelters, nursing homes, hospitals, charities to take in elderly so they wander from place to place; Often found dead in ditches, holes,caves and fields

London very crowded; variety of people everywhere

Wealthy on their way to college, government officials on horseback, Pedestrians everywhere.

Many people in the city are looking for jobs; some travel in groups, others separately because it is easier to find work when you are alone

People without traveling papers must be aware of officials; considered a vagrant (lazy and idle)

Famine and trade depression is found throughout the country

The Bestseller List

Intellectual Spirit of the Renaissance completely changed people and the way of looking at life and themselves

Began in 14th Century Italy

Italian scholars looked into the works of Homer & Hesiod, Plato & Aristotle and Virgil & Ovid

Was a major change since the Church dominated civilization, literature and education

Italy soon became amaze with the culture that inspired ancient Greek writers

Because of outbreak of new culture, paintings and sculptures of Titian, Raphael, and Michelangelo and rich narratives and romantic epics of Boccaccio, Tassot and Aristo were born

● Translations of ancient Greco-Roman and contemporary Italian authors were best sellers

● Greek Roman poet Homer and the Roman Virgil were the highest achieving of literature for combining action-packed stories with Christian moral virtues like courage, loyalty, and patience

● Many books set forth the idea of the "Renaissance Man": a widely accomplished man who was statesman and athlete, scientist and poet, philosopher, courtier and soldier all in one

The Bestseller List cont’d

The City That Never Sleeps

Constant hustle and bustle and a population of well over 100,000

Lack of work and no formal welfare system leaves many hungry and homeless

Migrants stay in cold tenements that are never cleaned

Extreme inflation led to food scarcity for the poor

Taverns and pubs are abundant and are a common place for the poor

Beer is cheap, so the poor drink to forget hardships

Disease is abundant due to sever lack of hygiene

Weak understanding of anatomy for doctors.

Strong liberal arts education

Lack of travel locally, and more so for foreign affairs

Acting companies always traveled to London

Which Way Is Up?

European astronomers began challenging age old beliefs of the universe

Copernicus suggested the sun was the center of the universe and not Earth

Better maps were made, along with new mathematics tables and other advances in technology

Explorers of European nations sailed off in search of wealth and fame

Vasco da Gama sailed around the southern tip of Africa and discovered an eastern route to India

Amerigo Vespucci ran into Brazil in the southwest

John Cabot found Newfoundland in the northwest

Francisco Vasquez de Coronado and Hernando de Soto traipsed up the Pacific Coast and around the southern areas of America

● Because of frequent traveling, seductive spices, strange cloths and glittering jewels were jumping into the markets of London

● Accurate descriptions of new exotic cultures flooded bookstalls, revealing things like black Africans who wore heavy gold and ivory jewels over naked bodies or the new luxury drink "coffee"

● It became vaguely threatening to learn that the English way of doing things wasn't the only way

Which Way Is Up? cont’d

A Mighty Fortress

Religion and Politics were considered the same as one affected the other.

A lot of turmoil due to England’s constant changing of religion; Protestant and Catholicism

Queen Elizabeth finally made Protestant the main religion and made a law that requires England’s citizens to go to church every Sunday.

She was lenient with the practice of other religions

Puritans pushed her leniency to the limits; Henry Barrow was publicly executed to show others what would happen

In fear of the Spanish infiltrating England, Queen Elizabeth was wary of every English Catholic in her realm, causing disarray and the disruption of lives.

A Most Excellent and Perfect Order?

Hierarchy was the guiding principle of all realms of existence

According to the clergy, all Elizabethans had their place. Some were Princes or nobles and some were inferiors and subjects

Merchants started getting richer and so started buying purple clothes. Thus the Clothing Acts was made to fully separate the classes

The Great Chain of Being was to be followed by every living thing on this planet. If it were to be disrupted somehow, the Elizabethans believed that violent disturbances would occur in the heavens or in nature.

The people at this time grew up believing this and this is why most of them did not go out of their way to disturb the Great Chain of Being