The Renaissance and the

Elizabethan Periods (Cont’d)

Lecture 5
Salman Hamid Khan
History of English History – I
BS English 2nd Semester
GDC Hayatabad
04/07/2020
Renaissance Wonder and Love of Beauty

• Both writers and readers of the Renaissance marveled at the world,

which seemed to be designed by a master artist or craftsman. Writers
strove to be as creative as the creator of the world.
• People of the Renaissance loved design and valued beauty and
elaboration. Today’s common minimalist writing style, which strives
for the quickest and shortest way to say anything, would neither have
impressed nor interested readers and writers of the Renaissance.
• On the contrary, they loved to see writers find as many clever, witty,
and beautiful ways to say things as they could. But readers and
writers prized not only the sound, flow, and beauty of elaborate
language; they were also engaged by deep, original, thoughtful, even
startling ideas.
• For instance, what era offers lovelier writing than dramatist
Christopher Marlowe’s words on the next slide, spoken by his
doomed fictional character Dr. Faustus.
“Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium —
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss. —
Her lips suck forth my soul: see, where it flies! —
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.
Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena. . . .”
–Christopher Marlowe, Dr. Faustus
Humanism

• Renaissance writers were full of curiosity about humankind. What

motivates or inspires people? What angers or pleases them? What
makes them good or bad? How will people of different character
respond under pressure? What are the limits to the capabilities of
men and women?
• Writers also pondered the human condition. What is the nature of
human life in this world? Is it bad or good? Free or determined?
Monumentally important or completely insignificant?
• A few famous quotes on the next slide from Shakespeare’s plays
suggests how many answers he alone proposed to questions like
these.
“All the world ‘s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time
plays many parts.”
(As You Like it Act 2, Scene 7)

“Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of
death but once.”
(Julius Caesar Act 2, Scene 2)

“We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded
with a sleep.”
(The Tempest Act 4, Scene 1)
Religion in the Renaissance

• The English revolt against the Church in Rome began in earnest in

1534, when Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy declaring Henry
VIII rather than the Pope to be Supreme Head of the English Church.
Two years later, Henry VIII began the “dissolution of the monasteries,”
in which all property formerly belonging to English Catholic
monasteries became property of the Crown.
• Puritans had huge influence in English political history toward the end
of this era as they amassed enough power under Oliver Cromwell to
fight King Charles I in the English Civil War. In 1649 the Puritans
beheaded Charles and took over the government of England until
1660.