Name : Evita

NIM : 183211034
Class : 5F Literature

Reaction Paper Shakespearean Influence

Anonymous’ Everyman was written in the Middle English during the Tudor period, “Everyman”
is the most famous example of the medieval morality play. Popular in Europe during the 15th
and 16th century, morality plays were allegorical dramas in which the protagonists are met with
the personifications of personal attributes and tasked with choosing either a good and godly life
or evil. “Everyman” is the archetypal morality play, as the main character, Everyman, represents
all of mankind. God, frustrated with the wicked and greedy, sends Death to Everyman and
summons him to account for his misdeeds and sins. It was believed that God tallied all of one’s
good and evil deeds in life and then one must provide an accounting before God upon one’s
death. During Everyman’s pilgrimage to God, he meets many characters, such as Fellowship,
Good Deeds, and Knowledge. Everyman asks them all to join him in his journey so that he may
improve his reckoning before God. In the end, it is only Good Deeds that stays with him before
God and helps Everyman find salvation and eternal life. In addition to “Everyman,” this volume
contains several other morality plays from medieval Europe.
It’s very easy to think of Shakespeare as a unique genius with a singular perspective on the world
around him. However, Shakespeare was very much a product of the radical cultural shifts that
were occurring in Elizabethan England during his lifetime.
When Shakespeare was working in the theater, the Renaissance movement in the arts was
peaking in England. The new openness and humanism are reflected in Shakespeare’s plays.
Broadly speaking, the Renaissance period is used to describe the era when Europeans moved
away from the restrictive ideas of the Middle Ages. The ideology that dominated the Middle
Ages was heavily focused on the absolute power of God and was enforced by the formidable
Roman Catholic Church.
From the 14th century onward, people started to break away from this idea. The artists and
thinkers of the Renaissance did not necessarily reject the idea of God. In fact, Shakespeare
himself may have been Catholic. The Renaissance cultural creators did, however, question
humankind’s relationship to God.
This questioning produced enormous upheaval in the accepted social hierarchy. And the new
focus on humanity created new-found freedom for artists, writers, and philosophers to be
inquisitive about the world around them. They often drew on the more human-centered classical
writing and art of ancient Greece and Rome for inspiration.
The Renaissance arrived in England rather late. Shakespeare was born toward the end of the
broader Europe-wide Renaissance period, just as it was peaking in England. He was one of the
first playwrights to bring the Renaissance’s core values to the theater.
Shakespeare embraced the Renaissance in the following ways:

 Shakespeare updated the simplistic, two-dimensional writing style of pre-Renaissance

drama. He focused on creating human characters with psychological
complexity. Hamlet is perhaps the most famous example of this.

 The upheaval in social hierarchy allowed Shakespeare to explore the complexity and
humanity of every character, regardless of their social position. Even monarchs were
portrayed as having human emotions and were capable of making terrible mistakes.
Consider King Lear and Macbeth.

 Shakespeare utilized his knowledge of Greek and Roman classics when writing his plays.
Before the Renaissance, these texts had been suppressed by the Catholic Church.