Culture of the Elizabethan age

Elizabethan Culture

Elizabethan England: A world of change, a theater of ambiguity

Elizabethan England was torn apart by a series of succession crises that shook its very core. The anxieties of the era are made manifest in William Shakespeare's tragedy of Julius Caesar, where republicanism and autocracy are pitted against one another. Although the play seems to validate monarchical authority, no political system is shown to be essentially stable. Autocracy leads to assassination, republicanism to civil unrest, and dictatorship to murder. Julius Caesar is not simply about Rome: rather it makes conscious parallels with the controversies of the age during which it was written, in terms of the different character's ways of life, political beliefs, daily routines, and view of entertainment.

Julius Caesar depicts a society that has undergone a series of leadership changes. For example, the fickleness of the crowd and the relative newness of Caesar's leadership is underlined early on in the play. "Many a time and oft/Have you climb'd up to walls and battlements,/...To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome:/…And when you saw his chariot but appear,/And do you now strew flowers in his way/That comes in triumph over Pompey's blood? Be gone!/Run to your houses, fall upon your knees, / Pray to the gods to intermit the plague" (1.1). The Roman aristocrat upbraids the crowd for praising Pompey, then Caesar, although both men are enemies. This underlines the fickleness of the crowd, but also their relative powerlessness, even though the nation is technically a republic, in terms of determining who rules them and the degree to which way of life is controlled by others. This was also true in Shakespeare's England, which had gone from Catholic to Protestant to Catholic to Protestant, because of the power struggles of the royal family. Individual's religious lives were changed by the whims of Henry VIII, Bloody Mary Tudor, and Queen Elizabeth I. "During the Tudor period Henry VIII adhered to the Catholic religion and then due to his liaison with Anne Boleyn moved to the Protestant religion. Henry was succeeded by his son King Edward VI who adhered to the Protestant religion. Edward died at the age of 15 and was succeeded, for a brief nine days, by the tragic, Protestant, Lady Jane Grey, who was beheaded. Edward's eldest sister Mary then succeeded to the throne. Queen Mary was a staunch Catholic and was determined to return the country to the ' old religion '. Her violent methods to gain converts to the Catholic religion led to her nickname of ' Bloody Mary '. Mary was succeeded by her sister Queen Elizabeth who was a liberal follower of the Protestant religion. It must have been extremely difficult to keep changing…with the religion of the times and equally dangerous not to" (Elizabethan education, William Shakespeare Info, 2005). These rapid regime shifts are also seen in Julius Caesar, as well as the way the common people are swept up by larger events, rather than control them -- just like Cinna the poet is killed for having the same name as Cinna the conspirator.

The difficulties and the dangerous impact leaders could have upon the lives of commoners are seen in Julius Caesar. Although most of the assassins are merely ambitious and jealous, like Cassius, others are genuinely concerned about republican ideals, like Brutus who muses: "…He [Caesar] would be crown'd:/How that might change his nature, there's the question" (2.1). Brutus notes that leaders are unpredictable when in power. He has observed that absolute power can corrupt absolutely, a truth later born out by Mark Anthony's cruelty and dictatorial behavior when he becomes part of the dictatorship of the Triumvirate. Shakespeare's portrait of Brutus is quite sympathetic because his own nation had rapidly seen the definition of what merited a traitor change abruptly, and visitors coming to the capital would see "the heads of gentlemen and nobles…who suffered the fate of traitors" (Greenblatt 173). A few years ago, those traitors would have likely been Protestant, now they were Catholic.

Shakespeare's analogies between past and present are also seen in the ways in which he deliberately makes use of anachronisms in Julius Caesar. Shakespeare would have studied classical Roman life in grammar school, as these aspects of history were the core of every gentleman's education. But Shakespeare does not try to render Republican Rome in faithful and accurate historical detail. "Peace! count the clock," says Brutus (2.1) although the play is ostensibly set during ancient times, and the practice of bear-baiting is referred to when Octavius says "We are at the stake / And bayed about by many enemies" (4.1)The entertainment of bear-baiting, a reminder of the brutality of the Elizabethan age, was even enjoyed by the queen and often took place near the Globe theater where Julius Caesar was first performed: "The bear was tethered to a stake in the middle of the ring, able to move only a short distance before being drawn up sharply when it got to the end of its tether. That's where the phrase 'at the end of my tether' comes from - the frustration and agony of not being able to go any further. Dogs would be released to taunt the bear, and the excitement came from the tension between the bear and the dogs. The most agile dogs would be able to spring away, out of the bear's range, but any mistakes would be fatal: a bear would kill several dogs before itself occasionally becoming the victim. The crowd would roar its encouragement to the bear" (Entertainment at Shakespeare's Globe Theater, No Sweat Shakespeare, 2004.). This common practice shows the acceptance of cruelty in Shakespeare's life, but also Shakespeare's skillful use of ordinary activities in the metaphors of his works to make analogies between Elizabethan's lives and the citizens of Rome.