Week 1 Setting The Scene – Life in Elizabethan England

Elizabethan Life

In order to understand the background context to Shakespeare and his plays I think it is important to do an adequate amount of research about Elizabethan England, Shakespeare’s life & biography, Shakespeare’s London and Elizabethan Theatre audiences because these are the factors that would have hugely impacted his writing, subject matters and possibly even character types.

The Elizabethan Era (1558–1603) is often considered to be a golden age in English history. Elizabethan life was heavily dependent on social order. The monarch was the highest of importance, and then came the nobility, then the gentry, the merchants, and right at the very bottom were the labourers. People then believed that God had formed these social ranks.

The era is most famous for theatre, as William Shakespeare and many others composed plays that broke free of England's past style of theatre.

The Role of Women:

Back then women of noble birth were educated join several languages including Latin, Greek, Italian and also French but even they were not allowed to go to university and were only taught by tutors who visited them in their home.

A woman at that time was expected to stay at home and manage the house hold duties as from birth women were taught how to govern a household and perform domestic duties so that when they married their husbands would be proud. Women were also expected to provide a dowry (an amount of money, good or property) that was to be their contribution to the marriage. Women were expect but sometimes pressured into having and raising children. However, not all Elizabethan women married and those that didn’t were often suggested to join a nunnery and if not they were advised to work in domestic service.

Wives were regarded as properties of husbands and women were expected to get married and also be dependent on male relatives- father, brothers, uncles and husbands. Even religion dictated the fate of women and emphasized the obedience of a woman to a man.

They were:

 -Not allowed to vote
- Not allowed to own a profession
- Not allowed to go to school or University (just private tutors)
- Not allowed to act
- Not allowed to own an estate 

It can be said that women in power are treated with distrust in Shakespeare’s plays due to the fact that they often have questionable morals. For example, Gertrude in Hamlet marries her husband’s murdering brother and Lady Macbeth coerces her husband into murder.

The Role of Men:

Men during the Elizabethan era were to bring honour and respect to their families as they held the power and also provided the money for the family also. All men were expected to live up to the standards of their titles even if they were servants or on the lower social classes. In the marital home, men made the decisions and the women were expected to obey them. The husband of the family was always designated the ownership of the land and property that they family lived on.

The Lives of the Poor:

The Poor were often dominated by the Rich. Many of the poor people around at this time would have lived in the countryside in small thatched cottages that would have most probably been hundreds of years old and would have faced many hardships as life there was not very pleasant. Despite the struggles of the lower class, the government tended to spend money on wars and exploration voyages instead of on welfare.

Families would have consisted of about 8 people and so there would not have been much space inside. Inside, the home for the poor, would have been very dark basic with an earth floor, a small fire going, pots and pans, a tiny window to allow the smoke out, a basket and a bench.

A lot of the time parents would have to go hungry in order to feed their children due to the lack of money and food. The poor consumed a diet largely of bread, cheese, milk, and beer, with small portions of meat, fish and vegetables, and occasionally some fruit. 

The Lives of the Rich:

The Rich were the most powerful and helped to run the country. They were also in power in the House of Commons and helped to solve most of the country’s political problems.

The House of a Gentleman would typically have, lots of carved wood furniture , paintings and self-portraits, rugs and servants to wait on the nobles.

The richest washed themselves irregularly but with rain water as they believed it was sent directly from God as it came from the sky. They believed that cleanliness is important in showing sophistication. However they washed their clothes more than they actually washed themselves.

They often travelled so had to be taken around in horse drawn coaches. They would often drink at taverns or inns but had to be careful about what they said as there were many spies hired to keep an eye on nobles in case they said anything negative about the queen. Assassination plots against the queen were very common during the Elizabethan era because the queen was Protestant and many people disagreed with this.

The rich considered food from the ground to be lowly. Meat and fish, meanwhile, were luxuries reserved for the rich, who could choose among venison, beef, pork and lamb but they occasionally took vegetables such as turnips, carrots, and radishes and fruits such as apples, plums, and strawberries. They also ate desserts such as pastries, tarts, cakes, and crystallized fruit, and syrup, a luxury the poor couldn't afford.

Elizabethan Theatre:

One distinctive feature of the companies was that they included only males. Female parts were played by adolescent boy actors in women's costume. Performances also occurred in the afternoon since no artificial lighting existed. When the light did begin to fade, candles were lit so that the play could continue until its end. Plays contained little to no scenery as the scenery was described by the actors through the course of the play.

Elizabethan theatre refers to the theatre of England between 1562 and 1642. This is the style of the plays of William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson.

Costumes during this time period were often bright in colour, visually entrancing, and expensive. Due to the fast-paced nature of the plays, there was sometimes not even enough time to create period specific costumes for the actors. Because of this the actors wore contemporary and not period specific clothing for the plays.

The growing population of London, the growing wealth of its people, and their fondness for spectacle produced a dramatic literature of remarkable variety, quality, and extent. 

One distinctive feature of the companies was that they included only males. Female parts were played by adolescent actors in women's costume. Performances also occurred in the afternoon since no artificial lighting existed. When the light did begin to fade, candles were lit so that the play could continue until its end. Plays contained little to no scenery as the scenery was described by the actors through the course of the play.

Population:

The population of Elizabethan England was about 4 million and had almost doubled since the Tudor Era.

Entertainment:

Because the life expectancy of people was quite short it was important for people to celebrate as much as possible to make the most of their short lives but this was of course only if they could afford it. This meant entertainment was mainly for the upper classes. Entertainment back then would include feasts, jousts, banquets, music and dancing. These would take place at betrothals, weddings and victories.

Religion:

The two major religions around in the Elizabethan Era were Catholicism and the Protestant religion. The two religions differed and caused so much controversy that they led to a lot of executions due to feuds. The queen herself was recognised to be Anglican, however.

Superstition:

The Elizabethan people were often very superstitious due to the way in which they carefully followed the bibles teachings and so became very weary of anything that could be potentially caused by the devil. They believed in witches, thinking that they were woman who had made a pact with the devil in exchange for supernatural powers. They would often test women for being a witch and of course more than often their tests were biased and would not give a fair or honest answer. If they found a woman to be guilty of being a witch she would be burnt at a stake immediately. Shakespeare about this time wrote Macbeth (a story that includes themes of witchery).

Other superstitions included:

• walking under a ladder causing bad luck
• saying 'bless you' when someone sneezes to stop the Devil from entering your body through your mouth
• if you touch a man who is about to be executed , if a cow breathed on you, or if you spit into a fire then you will have a good luck
• the seventh so of the seventh son is believed to have supernatural powers

Money:

The Queen was paid £60,000 annually, nobleman earnt between £1500 and £3000 a year however carpenters only made £13 per year. Coins in the Elizabethan era were worth the value of the metal they were made from. 

Back then there was no paper money instead it was all in coins.

Here is a list of some things that you can but with the currency used at the time:

Currency            Items

(in shillings)    

12 wine, L 

12 shoes

 6 scissors 

 6 eyeglasses

 6 blue cloth vest 

 5 meal at an inn
12 shoes
6 scissors
6 eyeglasses
6 blue cloth vest
5 meal at an inn
3 a dozen buttons
2 see a play from the gallery
1.3 bread, kg
1 see a play from the ground
1 bed in a tavern
0.8 candle
0.5 ale or beer, L

Jobs:

There were three types of men in employment in poor areas:

• Yeoman- a man who owns a farm and employs others
• Husbandman- a man who rents the land he works on
• Labourer- a man who works on other people’s farms

There were many different jobs around at the time because there was a great change in medical science, fashion and weapons.

 About 1 out of 4 people in England at the time were domestic servants and lived with the families that they worked for.

The most respected occupations in England at the time were Medicine, Law, Education and Church.

Medicine:

In this time medicine followed the theory of the 'humours'.

Humours were four liquids in your body. These were blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm. They believed that they all had to be balanced for a person to be healthy. They thought that each liquid gave off vapours that entered the brain and changed the personality of the person.

They thought that if someone was ill you could treat them by altering the amount of humour they had inside of their bodies because each humour was supposed to correspond to a type of personality.

• 'Sanguine' meant you (dominated by blood) you would be optimistic, jolly and fat.
• 'Choleric' (yellow bile) you would have red hair, be thin and possibly ambitious.
• 'Phlegmatic' (phlegm) you would be pale, lazy and slow
• 'Melancholic' (black bile) you would be thin and tend to spend a lot of time thinking and worrying

Many of Shakespeare's characters correspond to one of these 'humours' and he often made reference to the names of them. Characters often use as 'sanguine' as an insult (Prince Hal in Henry IV)

The reason for the need of so much medicine was often caused by illnesses from lack of sanitation in large towns and cities. This was because of the open sewers and streets with lots of rubbish.

Most medicine was very basic and often included blood letting, lancing and applying varieties of balms and mixtures of herbs on problem areas.