Shakespeare: Text and Performance
Early Modern English Culture
Shakespeare’s World
Life expectancy c. 30
Death
The plague
Population growth
Textile industry, wool, enclosures, tin, lead, coal
Imports, exotic goods, silks, satins, embroidery, gold and silver lace
Sumptuary laws
Gentlemen, monarch, nobles, peerage, gentry, knights, live without labor
Citizens, burgesses,
Yeomen artificers, farmers with land
Laborers, are ruled, do not rule
Land ownership was key to power and wealth
Riots
No police, no standing army, anti-enclosure riots
Women
Single women, widowed, unmarried, could inherit and administer land, make a will, sign a contract, own property, sue and be sued, married women lost these rights
Tended to outlive men and were a majority
Primogeniture
More economic than political or social freedom
Women and Print
Recreational literature associated with women
Romance and translation
Henry VIII and Reformation
Corruption of church, indulgences, purgatory, images, language
Faith and faith alone
Calvinists, predestination
Henry VIII’s Children
English Bible
Great Bible 1539 (Tynedale/Coverdale), copy in every church
Bishop’s bible
Geneva Bible Shakespeare’s, Marian providence
Female Monarch
King’s two bodies, 1.) natural, mortal, flawed and 2.) political, immortal, perfect
Royal absolutism
Love
Kingdom in Danger
Mary, queen of Scots
English and Otherness
Economic and religious immigrants
Jews
Africans
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