Opening scenes in Shakespeare’s plays

Romeo and Juliet (1594-96)

The plot
Romeo and Juliet is generally considered to be a love story between two
unfortunate lovers who belongs to families which are enemies. So, the Montagues
and the Capulets are the two families, they are really important in Verona but they
are against each other. Romeo, who is the son of Lord Montague, goes to a masked
ball where he meets for the first time Juliet and falls in love with her. His love is
reciprocated because Juliet falls in love with him, too and after the ball Romeo goes
to the garden which is under the balcony of Juliet and professes his love for her.
They decide to marry secretly, also because Juliet’s father wants her to marry a
respectable man, Count Paris, who is older than her and doesn’t love her too much
but he wants to marry only to get respectability that is really important in the
society at that time, because he wants to have a family, to have children from a
young and beautiful lady, also belonging to a rich family, so he can improve in a
certain way his position in the society. For this reason, Romeo and Juliet decide to
marry and with the help of Friar Laurence, who has a really important role in this
tragedy, they are marring the next day. Unfortunately, the same day some of the
Montagues and Capulets meet in the street and a conflict follows, in which Romeo’s
friend Mercutio is killed by Juliet’s cousin, Tybalt. To vindicate the death of his
friend, Romeo kills Juliet’s cousin and he is banished from Verona to Mantua. Since
Juliet is obliged by her father to marry Count Paris, she decides to ask for help to
Friar Laurence and he gives her a potion that will give her a kind of pictured death,
so can everyone could think that she is really dead, and he has to send a message to
Romeo where he communicates to him the situation. So that during the night he can
go to see Juliet in the shrine and take her with him, but this message fails to reach
Romeo and he heard that Juliet is dead. He wants to return to Verona to see her for
the last time, but he buys a potion to kill himself, so when he goes there and sees
Juliet, there is a wonderful scene in which he professes his love for her and at the
end he takes the potion and kills himself, but immediately after Juliet wakes up and
looking at Romeo dead on the grave and imagining the situation, she takes his knife
and kill herself, so they both die and this is the end of the tragedy.
Themes
It’s important to analyse the contents and the main themes in this tragedy. While
many people believe and generally it is popularly considered a love story and a
tragedy of love, there is much more than this in Romeo and Juliet. First of all, if we
consider the perspective of Romeo and Juliet, the kind of love the feel is a strong
feeling, something that only during adolescence people can feel. It is also a love that
manages to overcome a lot of difficulties and obstacles, just like it happens in real
life when young people have to overcome many problems, for example the
obstacles due to their families or their social position, also because of the fact that
they are of different pf different races, of different financial conditions. In the play,
the obstacle is the fact that these two families are enemies, but this symobolises in a
certain way all the obstacles that young people have to overcome when they fall in
love with someone that is not good for them according to their family or according
to social conventions. This is a strong love, an adolescent love, a pure love,
something that is stronger than anything, even than death. Destiny has an important
role in this tragedy, because it has a great role even if Shakespeare wants to tell us
that perhaps it’s not completely right. But if we consider love in the thought of
Juliet’s father, we can understand that love for him is a kind of social contract, it’s a
kind of social contract, it’s a kind of mean to maintain fame and a good social
position, is something that can give stability, that can be useful to have a bright
future without problems and so it is also a way to organize people’s life, his
daughter’s life in this sense. But if we consider love from the point of view of Count
Paris, who is the man Juliet’s father has chosen to be his husband, we can say that
love for him means a way through he can obtain a social responsibility: by marrying
Juliet he can have a good family with children, so a good social position, and this was
important at that time. In the play, there is also another character who is Juliet’s
nurse, so the lady who has taken care of Juliet since her birth, so she loves her a lot
and wants to help her, but is a woman of poor origins, so without an education. For
her, more than a feeling, love means sexual attraction, so something physical linked
to sex and physical pleasure. Through this play, it’s true that Shakespeare has
analysed the theme of love, but he has also analysed this theme from different
perspectives, so that people in the audience could identify themselves with the kind
of love embodied by the several characters in the play: this is really important. So,
we have different ways to consider the same feeling and to consider love. But we
have said that destiny plays a really important role in this play: at that time magic,
plays, destiny were really important, they were popular, people based their life on
these concepts. But Shakespeare wanted to introduce a new way of looking at life
even if he couldn’t do it openly, since he addresses his plays to that audience, so he
had to respect in a certain way their way of thinking. He wanted to suggest the
audience that perhaps everything was in the hand of people, in the hand of the
single character, in the hand of men and women, who could decide for themselves.
Dependences of life are due to people’s decisions, so he meant to ask the audience
the question “what if?”: what if Macbeth had behaved differently? What if Hamlet
had behaved differently? What if Romeo and Juliet had behaved differently? This
means that Shakespeare wanted to communicate that what happens in people’s
lives are the consequences of their choices and so he endows his own characters
with free will, that to say the capacity to take decisions. For example, what if Romeo
had decided to think that perhaps something had happened and so Juliet wasn’t
really dead? What if Juliet had behaved in a different way and decided not to take
the potion? Everything happens because we take decisions. Another important
aspect is another current theme in Shakespeare’s plays that is the opposition
between reality and illusion, that to say many times in our lives we prefer believing
in illusion rather than in reality. At the end of the play, for example, Romeo looks at
the sleeping Juliet and believes the illusion rather than the reality, so he believes
that Juliet is really dead, so he prefers believing in illusion rather than in reality.
Juliet in fact wakes up a minute later, but it’s too late because Romeo has taken a
potion and has killed himself. So, Shakespeare always questions in all his plays the
power of appearance and illusion, so the differences between appearance and
illusion, that to say we sometimes take decisions because we prefer believing in
illusion and so we behave in a wrong way. Another aspect of this tragedy is caused
by the lack of knowledge caused by the lack of communication. We have said that
Friar Laurence sends a message to Romeo to tell him everything about the situation,
but this message fails to reach Romeo. This means that the death of these two
people has been caused by the lack of communication that causes a lack of
knowledge, so since there is a lack of communication, Romeo doesn’t know anything
about Juliet’s apparent death: this is important. Language is also important in this
play: language in Shakespeare is really important because through language he
introduces some interesting philosophical reflecting. We have said that Shakespeare
through this language, through apparent simple situations can introduce
philosophical thinking. Juliet, when she talks about Romeo’s name, she tells that the
obstacles to their love is Romeo’s name, because he belongs to that family. She says
that the name is something not important because what is important is the nature
of people, what they are inside and not what their name means. To communicate
this philosophical reasoning, Juliet says that if we consider a rose, even with another
name the rose would have the same wonderful smell. What is important is not the
name of something or of a person but their qualities, so she says that she loves
Romeo not because of his name but because of his inner qualities, because the
person he is: this is also important to understand the character of Juliet and this is
only an example to understand that even if she’s so young, because she is 16 years
old, she seems to be older, because she is mature and her way of thinking shows
this aspect.

The balcony scene

This extract is taken from Romeo and Juliet and is the starting of the act, when after
the ball, where Romeo and Juliet met, Romeo decides to go in the garden under the
balcony of Juliet to profess his love to her. From this extract, it’s possible to
understand a lot regarding the personality of these two lovers. Juliet is worried
because she’s afraid of the possible consequences and so we can understand that
Juliet is realistic, but she is also pragmatic, so she faces the situation and wants to do
something to solve it in a practical way: she is a practical woman. While instead
Romeo is naïve, he is immature for many aspects, because he challenges that only
because he wants to stay there. Romeo’s love is in a certain way not superficial, but
conventional, so this means he uses the words so that we can understand that he
loves in a conventional way, that was typical of that time. Juliet instead is much
more interested in his inner qualities than in what is around him, his name, his
family, his money, so nothing is important, only what she feels. To sum up, we can
say that even if Romeo and Juliet are two young people and live in the same social
context, their personalities are different, because Romeo is naïve, passionate,
impulsive, his love is conventional and he approaches in the way people used to do
at that time; Juliet instead is much more mature and we can understand this by
analyzing her attitude in that moment, because she’s afraid of the consequences of
this situation (what was probably going to happen to Romeo, if people of the house
can find him there) and then because of the reflection upon language that shows
her deep feelings, so she is interested in his inner qualities. Moreover, Juliet is
mature but she is also a modern woman because if we consider the situation, Juliet
wants to go against the rules imposed by the society and by the family at that time,
she does not want to obey her father, she wants to marry a man she has chosen for
example, so this means that she is mature and she is also, as we said before,
pragmatic and rational in a certain way. The technique regarding the language that
Shakespeare uses is important because thanks to the asides, the monologues, the
soliloquies, the audience knows much more than the other characters and so there
are some ideas regarding the future development of the play that create a kind of
suspense in the audience, because for example by dealing with the message that
fails to reach Romeo, the audience knows that Juliet is not dead but Romeo does
not know this, so the audience is full of suspense because they are ready to assist to
this death and they cannot do anything to stop the situation, so this is really
important. The language is really lyrical, is just like a poem and Shakespeare through
this language manages to tell us a lot about the situation but also about the
characters as well. As a result, when Romeo makes comparisons in his first two
speeches, his character emerges in the language. Shakespeare uses light and dark
imagery in this scene to describe the blossoming of Romeo and Juliet’s romance. As
Romeo stand in the shadows, he looks to the balcony and compares Juliet to the
sun, then he asks to the sun to rise and kill the envious moon. He also describes
Juliet as “a bright angel” and “dear saint”: the recurring use of religious imagery
emphasizes the purity of Romeo and Juliet. In this scene, Shakespeare alludes to the
Ptolemaic universe, too and precisely in Romeo’s first speech, verses 15-17: this is
important and relevant to the understanding of Elizabethan thought. In fact,
Elizabethans believed Ptolemy’s theory that the Earth was the center of the universe
and that celestial bodies moved around the Earth their crystalline spheres. In the
end, we can say that our impressions of Romeo and Juliet and their relationship
have changes a lot at this point of the story. At the beginning of Shakespeare’s play,
Juliet does not appear, so we get to meet Romeo first and then we meet Juliet, we
meet her as she responds to Romeo. We are told that she is still quite young and
also seems to be very quiet, demure and respectful towards her family: Lord Capulet
and Lady Capulet. Her character at first appears to be positive, obedient, gentle and
innocent. However, all changes when she meets Romeo where she shows she is not
as shy as the first impression suggests. In their dialogue, Juliet is as vocal as Romeo
and has a similar assertive style.

Dramatic effect in Shakespeare

The ball: analysis
Through the human body, the bare stage and the human voice Shakespeare
achieved the dramatic effects. The scene took place during the night at the Capulet’s
great ball when Romeo and Juliet fall in love with each other. The atmosphere is so
romantic, full of love and tenderness; even if there are many people, there is a
magic physical attraction between Romeo and Juliet. Juliet is compared to the
torches, to a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear, to a snowy dove: all these things
communicate the physical love that Romeo feels and they convey an imagine of
courtly love. Romeo makes comparisons also with religious images and elements
and thanks to these aspects he discovers the real meaning of love. Romeo is
compared to a pilgrim and Juliet to the holy shrine. The pilgrim goes on pilgrimage
because he wants to feel purity and to be reborn to a new life, so Romeo, by loving
Juliet, wants to attain her perfection. The simplicity and the purity of their words
point out that they are really young and pure.

Macbeth (1606)
The plot
First act. Three witches resolve to meet Macbeth after the battle. Victory is reported
to king Duncan. Duncan is impressed by reports of Macbeth’s conduct so transfers
the rebellious Thane of Cawdor’s title to him. The witches meet Macbeth and
Banquo. The witches prophesy to Macbeth then Banquo then vanish. Ross and
Angus arrive with news that accord with that same “prophetic greeting”. Macbeth
muses much on “the swelling act of the imperial theme” before suggesting they all
move on. They meet Duncan. Duncan names Malcolm heir then says he will stay
with Malcolm. Macbeth writes a letter to his wife telling her about the prophecy and
his wife tells him to invite Duncan to his castle because they have to kill him in order
to make the prophecy true.
Second act. Macbeth kills Duncan and puts the blame on the servants, who are
sleeping outside Duncan’s room. So, he takes the power and becomes king of
Scotland. But Macduff and Banquo suspect him.
Third act. Macbeth starts thinking about the prophecy, which involves also Banquo,
his son and Macduff’s family. So, he kills Banquo, tries to kill Fleance but he doesn’t
manage because he flees away and Banquo’s ghost starts to hunt Macbeth.
Fourth act. He has to pay attention to Macduff and then the witch tells him “you are
safe ‘til the moment in which the wood moves towards the castle” and that none of
a woman born shall harm Macbeth.
Fifth act. What the witches had said by paradox takes place because the wood
moves towards Macbeth and Macbeth is killed by Macduff, who is born in this way
and so, Macduff proclaims Malcolm king of Scotland.
Themes
Macbeth is really simple in the plot, is not really complicated, but this is really
important because it is a play which tells a lot about the psychology of the
characters. We can say that Shakespeare wanted to emphasize which were the
negative consequences of ambition and grateful power in a weak character, so
Macbeth was a great good soldier at the beginning, before the tragedy starts, but he
turns himself into a murderer in order to reach his goals. So, the main themes in this
play are first of all regicide, the reversal of values, that is the most dangerous aspect
of equivocation and it is related to the theme of contrast between appearance and
reality we talked about reading Romeo and Juliet: a common theme is the contrast
between appearance and reality so that people prefer believing in appearance
rather than reality and this is the cause which determines a lot of negative
consequences; and also, another important theme is the theme of time. We said
that the murder of Duncan brings some consequences that go beyond individual
conscience, so when we talked about the Elizabethan age, we said that it is based on
a strong set of values and a well-organized society, on top of which there was the
king or the queen, so to change this order means to bring about a lot of negative
consequences, so this concept of order implied the concept of harmony in the
universe, because it meant that everything had a place in the universe and so when
you change this order, this means that you can cause a lot of horrible consequences
because this order is destroyed, so this is what was important in the Elizabethan
age, so Duncan is the symbol of social harmony: Duncan is the symbol of this
harmony, this order, honesty, the values society was based on at that time, and so
the values which should inspire human behavior. If this order is destroyed,
everything changes in the society and brings about a lot of negative consequences,
so this the reason why there are a lot of horrible scenes, scenes full of blood,
thunderstorms, people don’t sleep during the night, they are full of horrible dreams,
because this means that the order of universe has been destroyed. The main color is
the color of blood, red, and night doesn’t convey a sense of calm, but instead people
during the night are full of horrible dreams and consequences, so darkness is the
main color with red and there are only some bright scenes and in these scenes
horrible sceneries are depicted, so scenes in which people are murdered, so
confusion, disharmony, horror. Another important theme is the reversal of values,
so it represents the most dangerous aspect of equivocation, that is related to the
theme of false appearance, so Shakespeare points out that sometimes what seems
to be true is not the truth and so that men sometimes prefer believing in what is the
appearance, without analyzing deeper that instead these are only appearances and
not reality, but another important theme is the theme of time.

Hamlet
The protagonists in this play are Hamlet, his father, Ophelia and Claudius (he is Hamlet’s uncle,
Hamlet’s father’s brother) his mother Gertrude.
At the beginning of the play Hamlet’s father, the king of Denmark, dies mysteriously, so no one
know how he died. His wife Gertrude marries his brother in law, Claudius, and he becomes king,
but one night Hamlet is visited by his father’s ghost, who tells him the truth. He has been
murdered by his brother and he wants revenge. Hamlet has to organise a plan to discover the
truth about his father’s death and he pretends to be mad, so no one can imagine what he’s doing,
and if he behaves in a strange way in order to comprehend the truth, nobody will suspect
anything. To do so he has to reject Ophelia’s love because she is his lover and Ophelia is Polonius
daughter. Polonius is the counsellor of the king. To discover the truth Hamlet organises a play to
perform at court. The play deals with the same situation, that to say similar to what happened to
his father. It displays the murder of Gonzago, so a play within the play, in fact during the murder
scene, Claudius reaction is really strong, because he stands up and goes away in a hurry showing a
sense of guilt, proving to Hamlet that he is responsible for the murder of his father. Now hamlet is
sure of what happened and he tells everything to his mother and he tells her that she has
betrayed her husband and he is really angry. While he is talking he hears a noise behind a curtain,
he imagine that is Claudius and he kills him, but actually it is Polonius who was hearing everything.
Hamlet is sent to England because of this murder and Claudius is really happy because he got rid
of a dangerous person who could hurt him. Anyway he manages to escape and returns. While he
was away Ophelia killed herself and so her brother decides to kill Hamlet. Claudius organises a
duel between them and gives Laertes a poisoned sword. During the fight, the same sword hurts
both of them, so they are going to die, meanwhile Gertrude drinks a poisoned potion prepared for
Hamlet and dies too. But Hamlet before dying kills Claudius. This is a tragedy in which everyone
dies at the end.

THEMES
Really important to understand what Shakespeare wanted to tell us.
The main theme, the easiest to detect is the theme of REVENGE. Everything stars because Hamlet
wanted to revenge his father. But there are a lot of other themes
IMPORTANCE OF ACTIONS: we as human being need to take decisions and take actions in our life,
so we have to do what we think is the right thing to do. So this theme is important, because it
means that we are people who are able to decide for themselves and we don’t depend on other
people’s opinions, but we know that our own decisions determine our future. For example
Claudius actions are important because they determine the tragedy, and Hamlet’s actions what he
has to do in the future, Gertrude’s actions and so on.
POWER AND AMBITION: Why does Claudius kills his own brother? Because he desired to get
power, so even nowadays this happens. People are capable of doing anything to get power in life,
for example people change their political belief in order to get the power, but there are also
crimes and murder still nowadays. It was true in the past and it is true even now.
HONOR: Hamlet’s father needs revenge because his honour has been betrayed by his wife and
brother, so the honour needs to be re-established in this country. This theme is strictly linked to
the theme of JUSTICE: Hamlet wants to re-establish also the theme of justice, he can’t stand the
fact that a dishonest person is on the throne, that a person who has committed an horrible crime
can reign. According to him, evil should be punished and justice restored.
DOUBT: Hamlet is alone and he cannot tell anyone about what he knows about the truth of the
situation, so he has to struggle on his own to understand what is the right choice and behaviour.
He asks himself weather it is right to commit other crimes in order to re-establish justice in his
realm. He asks himself if he should renounce to his love to accomplish his task. He can’t tell
anyone so he has in front of him a range of possibilities and he has to make the right choice,
according to his point view, to revenge his father and to protect his country. (TO BE OR NOT TO
BE)
DEATH: death is the reason why everything happens in the play. The death of the king brings out a
lot of consequences, so death is experienced as a source of pain and sorrow. Death anyway is also
a solution in certain situations, for example it can be a weapon used to punish dishonest people
and it is a balm to someone suffering. it has double connotation
THE RESTORATION OF ORDER: it was impossible to think that guilty people could enjoy the
consequences of their actions, so order needed to be restored. Guilty people should be punished
and honest people should be rewarded. Even in this play Shakespeare analyses the true nature of
human being. Their weaknesses, their powers and the way they solve or not their problems. Also
the nature of a good ruler is analysed. The most important quality of a king is to be wise so this
means that kings should be able to distinguish between good and bad.
CONTRAST BETWEEN APPEARANCE AND REALITY: sometimes evil is hidden under false
appearance, so for example in the play they say “something is rotten in the realm of Denmark”,
this means that everything seems plain and clean, but something is corrupt there’s too much guilt
and excessive lust for power under the surface of this apparent perfectibility. Hamlet pretend to
be mad, but he is sane. Another metaphor is the play within the play, the play is something that
seems to be fake, but helps to reveal truth.
CHARACTERS
HAMLET is a really important character, he is the first in all the literature who is so full of
reasoning and doubts. He’s alone and can’t tell anything about what he feels inside. Through his
soliloquies and monologues we can analyse better the situation, analysing our own self, this
means that Hamlet is the first character who expresses a philosophical reasoning and analyses the
situation by analysing himself and what he feels inside. He asks himself if it’s right to kill others in
order to re-establish the order. His analysis is really important and it makes him a complete,
modern and unique character in literature in general, not only in England.

Prospero and Caliban

EXTRACT
The second scene of the first act of the tempest provides insight into the
character of Caliban that is Prospero’s slave on the island. Prospero
stands for the colonizer and Caliban for the colonized people in fact when
Prospero arrived on Caliban’s island, he was the king of it with his mother
Sycorax and he knew the island very well. But now Prospero has turned
him into a servant and this extract is about his behaviour and how it has
changed after the relationship between him and Prospero. This
relationship is important especially in the historical period in which the
play was written because that was the period in which Elizabeth I was
enlarging her power, so supporting other people that wanted to move
from one land to another to conquer them, not only in Ireland but also in
other lands. In this period started the idea of the British empire that will
finely become the powerful reign of Victoria. The way in which Prospero
addresses Caliban is important, he despises this creature and he wants to
subject him not only physically but also through words. Caliban curses
Prospero but he refers also to Miranda, that is on the island with
Prospero. Prospero threatens him with some punishments, for example
that he will have cramps and side-stitches or he will also be pinched by
the urchins. So Caliban expresses his idea of sorrow and pain that is linked
not only to the fact that Prospero wants to make a slave of him but also
because their relationship has worsened, it wasn’t the same as it was at
the beginning, when Caliban was kind to Prospero because he wanted to
know everything about the island: he welcomed him and showed him all
the resources of the island, so the behaviour has now changed and he
turned into a tyrant. Prospero then tells Caliban that he has the merit of
having taught him how to speak, but Caliban had his own language. So
this means that Prospero wanted to teach him his language, not to
improve his life, but to make him a better slave so that he could obey his
rules. Shakespeare makes a reflection on the word "profit", which is a
word which has a double meaning. Because for Prospero, that is the
colonizer, profit is a material profit, so something positive. But instead
profit for Caliban, that is the colonized person, is not material and it's
something negative because Caliban has learnt how to curse Prospero so
it’s something linked to rage and resentment.

ANALYSIS
The dialogue contains Caliban’s opening speech and it gives us insight into
his character. There are some expressions that Prospero uses to describe
Caliban, for example “poisonous slave”, “lying slave”, “hag-seed” or
“savage” and we can understand the condition of Caliban that is the
condition of a slave. Slavery is also associated to something negative and
brutal and so, also to black magic and supernatural power. We can also
see that the scene presents Caliban as a beast, but there are three
elements that make us understand that he was also human and kind; the
elements are: the human emotions that he feels, so love and affection;
the appreciation of natural elements and the fact that he knows that
Prospero is above him. We can also understand that Caliban combines
animal and human traits so he has in himself something human but also
animal that aroused a lot of curiosity and sympathy linked to empathy in
the Elizabethan audience in fact they were interested in how the story
continued but they also thought that Caliban wasn’t that brutal and this is
important because the emotion that we can feel lets us understand that
Caliban has been deprived from his own lands and his own rights.

THE CIVIL WAR

Elizabeth I died childless and James I of Scotland became king of England. When he died, Charles I
Stuart succeeded him, he was in the tradition of a long line of rulers who took for granted the
king’s absolute power to make and administer rules and to rule without consulting the Parliament
so he was an absolute monarch who considered himself appointed by God. He believed he was
king by divine right and so this was his point of view, this was his attitude. But things had changed
in England in the meantime, because the wealth of the nation was no longer in the hands of the
nobility but it was on the hands of the gentry and the new middle class, therefore now they had
money, they had financial power and could have an important role in politics. In parliament there
were the Puritans, who belonged to this social class. They were the most extreme protestants in
the Church of England. They thought that the English reformation hadn’t reformed the Church and
they wanted to purify the national Church by eliminating all traces of Catholicism. They wanted a
balance between the power of the king and the power of parliament and so the reign of Charles I
was characterized by a continuous clash with Parliament and a lot of troubles. So this new social
class, because of their political power derived from their financial power, now had the wealth of
the Country in their hands and so they wanted to make the king submit to parliament, so they had
completely different perspectives. In 1642 the parliament asked the king to give up his commend
of the armed forces, the king refused and the civil war broke out.
There were two factions: The “Royalists” or “Cavaliers” who supported the king and the
“Roundheads” or “Parliamentarians” who supported the parliament.
The “roundheads” were called like this because they had their hair cut short because they
considered long hair sinful, they had specific and important concept linked to religion and religion
hardly influenced their life also politically. Their faction was led by Oliver Cromwell and they
managed to defeat the king and imprison him. Oliver also arrested 100 members of parliament
loyal to the king and on 3rd January 1649 king Charles I was executed so Cromwell abolished the
monarchy and proclaimed himself Lord Protector and this is a turning point in the history of
England, since for the first time monarchy was abolished and the republic was established. It was a
kind of dictatorship, it wasn’t really a republic, because Oliver Cromwell had the power in his
hands and even though he improved some aspects of the English economy it was still a kind of
dictatorship. It was also a period of strict rules, they wanted to impose a strict behaviour because
they were puritans and for this reason English people were tired of this situation so when Oliver
died in 1658 they called back the king and monarchy was re-established.
PURITANS
This movement arose within the Church of England in the latter part of the sixteenth century, so
the puritans wanted to carry the reformation of the Church, beyond the point represented by the
Elizabethan settlement in 1559. Elizabeth I wanted to establish a kind of compromise between the
roman Catholicism and the new ideas of the protestant reformers and for this reason the puritans
didn’t consider this reform effective, they wanted to go beyond this limitations and to establish
this new rules and way of thinking that is typical of Puritanism.
Puritans rejected any spiritual authority except that of the bible. According to them priests,
bishops, archbishops were not important because the bible was for them the only book and mean
through which it was possible to live a religious life according to the principles expressed by the
bible. they questioned the power of official Church authorities and believed that the voice of God
spoke in each man’s individual conscience and that no intermediary should interfere. This means
that they rejected the authority of bishops and archbishops (that was the highest authority in the
Church of England). They were convinced that these figures were not necessary because God
speaks directly in the mind of people and so people don’t need any intermediary between them
and God because there is a direct relationship. Another important aspect is that they insisted on
extreme austerity which characterised their lives as individuals and their religious lives. They were
convinced that images, altars, ornate vestments worn by priests were medieval superstitions and
should be eliminated, so what was peculiar of Churches like gold, beautiful altars, particular
vestments were considered unimportant, the important thing for them was their relationship with
God. then they regarded any form of entertainment (dancing, singing but also theatres) as a kind
of vanity which diverted people from spiritual devotion and for this reason theatres were closed in
1642. They also believed in the importance of hard working. This is really important because this
attitude, which is typical of puritan mentality, was connected to the Calvinist theory of
predestination according to which men and women are born sinners and only through hard work
and discipline that they could be saved. That’s why many people think that Calvinism is at the
base of the capitalistic way of looking at the world (because they worked hard and produced a lot
as a consequence) but they worked hard to be saved by God, to exploit their personal talents,
which had been given them by God, and so they want to satisfy God by exploiting their talents and
working hard. Puritanism was really influential in the first half of the seventeenth century, in fact
from the civil war until the restoration of the monarchy a puritan government ruled England. After
the restoration puritans were at first denied the participation in the Church of England and then
refused rights of free religious worship, therefore the movement failed from this aspect. Anyway
Puritanism would continue to flourish in north America where puritans moved from England to
America to fund the first colonies and we can say that this way of looking at the world, this strict
discipline is still influential in America where people behave differently.
JOHN MILTON
Life
John Milton was born in London in 1608. At first he wanted to become a
priest but then he changed his mind. He travelled abroad, in France,
Greece and Italy where he met a lot of educated people and so he
managed to wide his mind. When he knew about the civil war in England
he returned to London and wrote about it to support the Parliament and
any form of freedom and struggle instead against any form of tyranny and
suppression. He was also punished because he gave support to these
elements and lived in seclusion until his death. Towards the end of his life
he became blind and for this reason he wrote his works with the help of
an assistant, who wrote what he said. This is important to express the
values of the Puritans in fact he continued the same to compose his
works with his assistant because according to him people have to exploit
their talent even if there are some problems and difficulties in life.

Paradise Lost
It’s is the most important play of this author. It’s composed of 12 cantos,
dealing with the story of the fall of Adam and Eve and their exile from
Paradise. Satan, that was expelled from heaven because he has rebelled
against God, is in hell and decides to summon the rebel angels that are
sharing his same destiny and suggests to take revenge against God, so he
wants to tempt the creature of God: the man, represented by Adam and
Eve in the garden of Eden. He manages to realize his plan so Adam and
Eve eat the forbidden fruit and lose their innocence and are sent out of
Paradise; God punishes them with sorrow and work in their lives.
It’s an epic poem and we can understand this for some reasons:
1. At the beginning of the poem there is the invocation to the holy spirit
that reminds us of the invocation to the muse that we find at the
beginning of the epic poems.
2. The content is really elevated because it describes the relationship
between God and the man.
3. There is the description of a war, because epic poems always contain
wars and in this poem it’s described the war between the fallen angel
and God.
4. There is also the description of the hero that is in this case, Satan, who
has also leader qualities that create a kind of fascination that creates
also a sort of sympathy in the reader.
5. There is the presence of some supernatural elements and magic, for
example when Satan disguises as a snake to tempt Adam and Eve.
6. Also the language is really elevated, in fact the play is written in blank
verse following the model of classical verse and it’s characterised by an
elevated style and tone.

The universe
The universe represented in this play has some characteristics: it’s based
on a precise order, on the top we can find God and at the bottom we find
the beasts. This structure is important because it’s based on the
Ptolemaic theory where the Sun orbits around the planets and the earth
is the centre of the universe, it was still used at that time and still had a
great influence among the people even though there was also the
Copernican theory where the earth and the other planets orbited around
the Sun. God sits on the throne surrounded by 9 orders of angels, the 10 th
one has been expelled from heaven and is in hell: the world of chaos. Out
of chaos God created the earth and around it there are the spheres. The
poem can be considered as a political allegory of what was happening at
that time politically and historically speaking in England, so Lucifer who
was sent away from heaven stands for the Puritans who wanted to rebel
against Charles I causing the civil war and the establishment of the
Commonwealth.

Satan
He is important in this poem, he can’t be considered as a terrible creature
because he rebelled against a form of tyranny just like the Puritans
rebelled against Charles I. This means that he has the qualities of the epic
hero that are:
 The proudness
 The energy
 The intelligence
With these qualities he can and wants to rebel against any form of
oppression and tyranny.
As we said before the language is really elevated because Milton uses a
lot of Latin constructions, derived words and classical and biblical
allusions. The structure is also elevated because Milton wanted the Latin
structure to be the example of his play as a matter of fact he introduces in
his works a lot of elements, for example the inversion (adjectives after the
nouns), long sentences containing many subordinates clauses and the
musicality of the verses; so Milton chose the words not only for their
meanings but also for their sounds because they gave musicality to what
he wrote.

SATAN’S SPEECH
In this passage of Paradise Lost we can see Satan that arrives in his new
kingdom: Hell. Satan, who is the protagonist of these scene makes us
understand that God is not superior to him in terms of reasoning and
cleverness but he is superior to him only because of his strength and
power.
Satan wants to awaken the other angels to struggle against the power of
God, so telling them that it’s better to reign in hell that to serve in
heaven, he wants to encourage them to take revenge against God, in
order to be strong and secure.
Satan is a strong character, even though he is in miserable conditions he
manages to react against the situation and find the courage and strength
not only to help himself but also to convince the other fallen angels that
it’s good for them to take revenge against God. With these words,
‘è’ììèpòòp00he manages to describe his own nature, characterized by a
great sense of strength, proudness, charisma: qualities that are typical of
a leader, that convinces people of the positivity of their ideas.

SATAN IN MILTON AND DANTE

Milton’s hell precedes the creation of the world and it’s obviously still
dominated by chaos instead Dante’s underworld is well defined and
organized. In that chaos Satan rises and speaks so his voice masters the
elements and after a first moment in which he says that they have to
change that celestial light for this mournful gloom, he refuses his strength
and welcomes that horrible place because it can give him the opportunity
to reign. Both Dante and Milton describe hell and both are caught in their
religious idea. In the Divine Comedy, the poet Dante is the protagonist,
while in the first part of Paradise Lost, Satan is the hero. Another
difference is that Dante gives us a picture of the society of his time, he
refers to a lot of people through conversations and we can understand
the problems of his society at that time and they are also political
problems. He also talks about deadly scenes while Milton talks mainly of
the original scene. Dante enters a hell that is well organized, instead
Milton’s hell is in a state of chaos. Dante attacks some figures of his time
and Milton doesn’t. Dante uses a language which could be understood by
everyone and Milton’s language can be understood only by educated
people. Satan is a great dramatic figure, so the hero of Paradise Lost. In
Dante’s work Satan is a means of punishment for the souls. In Milton’s
work, he is a twofold symbol of God’s eternal justice.