Life in Renaissance England

Remarks by David Judkins

What we normally refer to as the Renaissance in Western European history

marks a break or transition from the Medieval period and leads toward our
modern era. The Renaissance embraces a series of religious, economic, and
political changes which ripple into areas of science, literature, and philosophy.
Naturally one does not see these changes along clearly demarcated lines, but
looking at the period as a whole, we are aware of a climate or culture which
has, if not promoted change, at least tolerated it.

In Shakespeare's time some of the changes had already taken place and he
was feeling their effects; others were actually taking place during his lifetime
and still others were yet to come. For instance, the great religious upheaval,
the Protestant Reformation, had occurred well before Shakespeare was born
when first in 1517 Martin Luther in Wittenberg, Germany declared his
independence from the Catholic Church, and later in 1536 when Henry VIII
declared England's independence from Rome. In his plays, Shakespeare has
little to say about religion, but this in itself is notable. Had he been writing
100 years earlier, it is barely conceivable that his work would not have strong
traditional Christian overtones. Perhaps because there was so much religious
ferment in Europe that had resulted in extraordinary persecution and
bloodshed on all sides, Shakespeare opted, like his contemporary, Montaigne,
in France, to stay out of the controversy not taking dogmatic positions on
religious issues. Shakespeare does in Twelfth Night, poke fun at the growing
puritan movement in England. Likewise in Loves's Labour's Lost and Measure
for Measure, he finds newly reformed individuals who have "seen the light" a
source of great humor. However, Shakespeare's themes and indeed the
existence of his plays may have more to do with economic change than
religious upheaval.

The Renaissance marks the beginning of capitalism through the formation of

capital holding companies that engaged in expensive and risky trade with
Russia, the Far East, and other remote trading sites. The Muscovy Company,
the East India Company and the West India Company all, from time to time,
provided handsome profits for their investors. Shakespeare was a direct and
indirect beneficiary of this activity. Directly, he himself invested in the newly
built Globe Theater and realized income from the profits of the theater.
Although the Globe was more of a partnership than a stock holding company,
it nevertheless represented profit generated not from land, as would have
been the case in the medieval period, but from joint investment in a business
enterprise. Indirectly, he benefited from the general prosperity of London, a
center for trade with its direct but protected access to the English Channel
via the Thames River, on whose south bank the Globe stood providing
entertainment to city traders and to not a few sailors, I would imagine. Let
me add a cautionary remark, I am not suggesting that Shakespeare is the
product of early capitalist enterprise; however, I am suggesting that a more
open climate allowed people like Shakespeare to prosper and succeed.

Shakespeare himself came from common origins. His father was not of the
aristocracy or even the landed gentry, but a successful glover who had a
shop in Stratford. In an earlier time Shakespeare would have followed his
father's trade, and no doubt there was strong pressure for him to do so in the
late part of the sixteenth century; however, other opportunities presented
themselves during this time of growth and expansion. In the late 1580's or
early 90's Shakespeare found himself in London, a city that was expanding in
size and was developing new businesses. During the sixteenth century
London approximately doubled its size to 200,000 inhabitants, which by
today's standards seems small. During the Renaissance most of the English
population resided in rural areas. Cities were crowded, considered dirty, and
often dangerous. The greatest problem was public hygiene. There were, of
course, no sanitary sewers or a purified source of fresh water. Dung carts,
which passed through the streets daily, attempted to remove the bulk of
human and other animal waste. Wells were dug at convenient places through
the city, but there was no means to monitor the quality of the water. (The
discovery of chlorine, a central chemical in water purification was still nearly
200 years away.) Thus typhoid fever, dysentery, cholera, and a variety of
other water born diseases were always a threat to residents. There was also
no organized police force as we would conceive it today. Shakespeare has
numerous funny scenes that involve Renaissance law enforcement officers,
sometimes called constables or members of the watch. They are nearly
always the dumbest characters in the play. Most often they would not
recognize a criminal if he had the word tattooed on his forehead; yet, in his
gentle way, Shakespeare usually arranges for these officers, despite
themselves, to triumph in the end. One of the best examples of these figures
is Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing.

The plague, which visited cities throughout Europe on a more or less regular
basis, was also the result of uncleanliness and the absence of an effective
central authority to monitor the infestation of vermin and rodents. In 1592
there was a particularly persistent outbreak of plague in London which
resulted in the theaters and other places of public gathering being closed,
and the population dispersing to the country. In our time the Aids has come
closest to resembling "the plague" in that, in its earlier years, physicians were
really helpless to arrest the course of the disease once it was contracted by a
victim. However, in the case of Aids, the means of transmitting the disease
was quickly determined, whereas the spread of the plague in Shakespeare's
time was a complete mystery and the subject of wide speculation among
physicians and scientists in the sixteenth century. The closing of theaters is
important to students of Shakespeare because it marked a period of time
when Shakespeare wrote most of his non-dramatic poetry including Venus
and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece and probably most of his sonnets.

The Renaissance is also marked by numerous advancements in what we

would call technology. The most important, the invention of printing, took
place in 1455, over one hundred years before Shakespeare was born, and
first came to England in 1475, when William Caxton set up a printing press in
Westminster near Westminster Abbey. The effects of printing were
widespread but not as rapid as we might suppose. The percentage of people
who could read and write slowly grew as books became less expensive and
more available. The English language which had been in flux for centuries
stabilized near the end of the fifteenth century and evolved into modern
English in the sixteenth century. Although you may at first find Shakespeare
difficult to read, his language is modern English and except for immature
readers, need not be "translated." The stability of our language is largely
owing to standardized printing practices, and not to English teachers as one
might have thought. It was the printers who gradually regularized spelling,
capitalization, and punctuation so that books and later pamphlets would have
the same look about them. Many of Shakespeare's plays were printed during
his lifetime in individual editions called quartos, and some came out in as
many as five separate quarto editions. The most notable printing of
Shakespeare's plays, however, came seven years after he died when two of
his friends and colleagues collected the thirty-six plays attributed to him
along with his poetry and printed this complete works in a folio now referred
to as Shakespeare's First Folio(1624).

The other technological innovations which I would like to refer to were in

sailing. These changes were largely incremental and not attributable to a
single inventor. Improvements in navigation led to improved maps and
charts. Improvements in sailing ships led to faster and safer travel. In
particular the improvement of keels and moveable sails allowed ships to sail
more closely to the wind making the ships more maneuverable and providing
a wider variety of directions the ship could take. As a result of these
combined improvements, captains began pushing their ships to more distant
lands. New trading routes were secured which led to increased competition in
trade and wider availability of exotic products. However, these gains were
made with considerable risk. Shipwrecks were numerous, individual sailors
were marooned in distant locations, many who left London, Greenwich, or
Plymouth with great hopes, never returned. I believe we see the influence of
this travel and adventure in several Shakespearean plays. The most notable
is The Tempest, where the hero, Prospero and his daughter Miranda have
been marooned on an island for over ten years. But other plays such as The
Comedy of Errors and Twelfth Night feature ship wrecks. In Hamlet we recall
Hamlet's brush with pirates on his way from the continent to England. And
there are many other plays which allude to the dangers of travel.

England had come late to the exploration and exploitation party following
Portugal, Spain, and France. However, when Sir Francis Drake, sailing out of
Plymouth in 1582 circumnavigated the world, following roughly the same
route Magellan had taken sixty years earlier, he was the first captain to
complete the journey and live to tell about it. Moreover, because he raided
Spanish ports on the western coast of South and Central America, and
captured unsuspecting Spanish ships stealing their valuable cargoes
regardless of the fact that England and Spain were not at war, he returned to
England with The Golden Hind full of gold, spices, and precious fabrics much
of which he gave to Queen Elizabeth, who in return made him a peer of the
realm. Drake's famous expedition took place at a time when Shakespeare's
whereabouts are unrecorded and unknown. Not surprisingly, some students
of Shakespeare have speculated that the future playwright may have actually
been on Drake's famous voyage. But such conjecture is just that as there is
no record of what Shakespeare was doing at the time.

In part because of Drake and other overt acts of piracy by the English against
the Spanish, Spain mounted a major assault against the English in an attempt
to seriously damage their shipping and stop the piracy. In 1588 the Spanish
Armada sailed up the English Channel to attack Holland and England, but
they were badly defeated losing numerous ships, sailors, and soldiers. Part of
the loss came from a bad turn in the weather, but the English victory should
not be minimized. English ships were smaller and more easily maneuverable.
At the same time they were more lightly armed, but this disadvantage seems
to have been more than compensated for by more agile ships. The result of
the defeat of the Spanish Armada was a period of relative peace for the next
twenty years; a period of peace that almost directly coincides with
Shakespeare's dramatic career.

I would like to conclude this brief and very basic essay on life in Renaissance
England, with some remarks on political issues. England was, of course, a
monarchy. Elizabeth I came to the throne at the age of 25 on the death of her
half-sister, Mary, in 1558. Elizabeth reigned until 1603, when upon her death
her cousin, James I, who was also king of Scotland, was coronated. James
ruled until 1625 and was succeeded by his son Charles I. Both Elizabeth and
James were relatively good monarchs. Elizabeth is often regarded as rather
brilliant. She had a quick mind, was not extravagant, and recognized that her
throne was not as secure as her counselors might lead her to believe. She
was strong and certainly capable of making hard and difficult decisions;
however, perhaps because she was a woman, she was less functionally
arrogant than most of her contemporary monarchs. It is in fact Elizabeth's
wariness that I believe sets her apart and allowed her to have such a
successful reign. Although she was Queen of England, she shared some of her
rule with Parliament, a body made of men chosen to represent the various
areas of England. There was voting for these members; however, suffrage
was dramatically limited. Women, of course, could not vote, but neither could
most men. Property was the main consideration and individual home
ownership, small farms, etc were very rare, for nearly all of the property was
in the hands of the aristocracy and the landed gentry. The Queen herself was,
and still is, the largest land owner in England. The point I am making is that
Parliament was not an early example of democracy at work. The illiterate
"folk" were not consulted for direction of the state. Moreover, even the
members of Parliament were not free to take up any issues they thought
important. For instance, as Puritanism became popular, some MPs wanted to
debate religious issues. in 1586 Elizabeth had Peter Wentworth thrown into
the Tower (prison) for insisting on debate regarding the Anglican Book of
Common Prayer. Nor can we point to Shakespeare as an early proponent of
free speech and democracy. Rather, Shakespeare seems to be fairly supple
with his politics and does not use the stage as a campaign soapbox or a
pulpit. In his Roman plays, particularly Coriolanus and Julius Caesar, he has
his characters say quite cruel words about the proletariat, the common
people: "You blocks, you stones, you less than senseless things!" But these
are the words of characters who are among the losers by the end of the play.
In his English history plays, Shakespeare is well aware of the relationship of
the present monarch to those of the past whom he writes about. Thus,
Richard III is an arch villain who well deserved being slain on the field of
battle by Elizabeth's grandfather. Would the reader or the audience at the
time expect anything different? Henry V, on the other hand, is a great hero
who triumphed over the French at Agincourt and whose early and untimely
death unfortunately led to the War of the Roses. Richard II is more
problematic. Being forced to abdicate by Henry IV, Shakespeare presents us
with a man who seems not to have been made to rule. As dramatized,
Richard is clearly the wrong man for the wrong job. Moody and depressed,
Richard's fate was sealed by his personality not his ideology. Which leads me
back to my earlier remarks in the essay. Shakespeare is an imaginative writer
not a philosopher or an ideologue. He is much more interested in people than
abstract ideas. Perhaps because of censorship restrictions he expressed
himself through interesting and complex people whom he visualized, indeed
whom he created to provide us with lively and thoughtful entertainment.