THE RENAISSANCE

● Period of transition because Britain was emerging from the Middle Ages and heading(?) towards the
Modern age
● Humanist ideas were circulating leaving medieval scholasticism behind
● Important new knowledge of the world was available through voyages of discovery
● This period was also profoundly changed by the division of the Church into protestant and catholic
→ This brought important and radical changes both into private life and public life
● population was growing but also the price of food was increasing
● commercial growth and efficient merchant fleets expanded trade across the world (spanish
dominiance) → also slave trade between Africa and America + clonisation of Norton America
IN ENGLAND
● Tudors on the throne from the end of the War of the Roses between York and Lancaster to the
begin of the 17th century
● The last Tudor monarch was Elisabeth I → english renaissance of art and particularly theatre
(Shakespeare), most important form of entertainment for all the levels of society → shakespearean
place were performed at court and london theatres along the south bank of the river Thames
● When the Stuarts came to the throne at the begin of the 17th century the atmosphere changed →
religion acquired an important role and in particular puritanism (form of protestantism that wanted
to purify the Church of England and people wanted to live by extreme moral strictness)
● London was becoming the Europe’s largest city and England was the center of the maritime trade
that increased the wealth and the influence of commercial classes, on the opposite landed
aristocracy declined
● friction between the king and the parliament which led to a civil war in 1642→ ended with the
parliamentarians defeating the royalists and the king was beheaded → This victory gave rise of an
experiment of republicanism (Commonwealth)

HENRY VII
● He ascended to the throne in 1485 and his coronation marked the end of the war of the two roses
and the begin of the Tudor dynasty → he also created a new family emblema, the Tudor rose
(Union of the red rose of Lancaster and the white rose of York)
● His reign was characterised by economic and political stability → he introduced a policy aiming
at holding noblement at bay introducing high taxes and banned them from raising their own
armies + introduced laws to protect english market and opened new markets for the commerce of
English wool + he created a mercantile fleet and improved the royal navy to protect it from
pirates
● Foreign policy: very cautious, he married his son Arthur to the spanish princess Catherine of
Aragon and his two daughters to the kings of France and Scotland
● Had to deal with frequent Yorkist plots
● He sponsored John Cabot to explore eastern America and planted the Tudor flag in Nova Scotia
● During his reign Erasmus of Rotterdam brought the Humanism of the Renaissance to the
universities of Oxford and Cambridge.
● Sir Thomas More moved England closer to North-European origins of Protestantism

HENRY VIII (Henry II 2nd son)

● Became the king of England after the death of his father → he embodied the ideal of renaissance
monarch because he was not only a good governor but also a culture man (golden Prince, for his
good looks and his chivalry and education)
 ● His reign (1509-1547) was marked by the reformation (1534) → separation Church of england
from the roman catholic Church (england became a protestant Nation)
● He was named Difenso fidei by the Pope in order to fight Lutero, that was fighting against the
corruption of the Church of Rome and the sale of indulgences, the use of latin language and the
7 sacraments (he nailed his 95 theses at the Wittenberg cathedral in 1517) (political reason)
● He was married to Catherine of Aragon, but they only had a daughter, Mary → he was worried that
there was no male heir to the throne so he asked the Pope to annul the marriage, but he refused
(personal reason)
● Anglicanism: between catholicism and protestantism
● One of his major instruments of his policy for removing the papal supremacy in england was also a
man named Thomas Cranmer, the archbishop of Canterbury → he annulled the marriage between
Henry and Catherine → after the divorce he married his mistress, Anne Boleyn in 1533
● The schism with Rome was officially sanctioned by the Act of Supremacy in 1534 → declared the
king as the supreme head of the Church of England
● Radical changes in traditional religious practices → latin rituals gave way to english language +
first divulgation of the Bible in english language
● Anne Boleyn in 1536 was beheaded or executed → Henry had other 4 wives: one of them, Jane
Seymour, gave him a male heir, Edward

EDWARD VI
● He was only 9 when his father died and he came to the throne
● Under his reign the Act of Uniformity (1549) imposed on old churches and cathedrals of England
the Book of the Common Prayer, prepared by Thomas Cranmer, and became compulsory →is an
official service book

MARY I
● She came to the throne after Edward’s death, in 1553
● She was a catholic queen, and refused to abandon her faith → against the wishes of the
parliament she married the catholic king of Spain, Philip II, and attended to reintroduce the
catholic religion in england
● She was known also as Bloody Mary because she was responsible for a wave of persecution
against protestant people and also important people like Thomas Cranmer → she tried to restore
England to papal obedience
● She died without a heir

ELIZABETH I
● Daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, ascended to the throne in 1558 and lasted in 1603
● Very brilliant monarch, whose political skills and strength led to the rise of the english nation
● She reintroduced the protestant religion and consolidated the national church, known as the
Anglican church
● She acknowledged the powers of the parliament and during her reign two important acts passed →
2nd Act of Supremacy in 1559 which restored the spiritual and temporal authority of the monarch,
and the Act of Uniformity in the same year, in order to reintroduce the book of common prayer
● As a childless and unmarried queen, she was known also as the Virgin Queen → she wanted this
to preserve the country from foreign domination
● She received an excellent education and she could speak French, latin, Italian
● also she was a woman who travelled a lot → her travels were known also as Royal Progresses
(travels around the country), were to get to know her people
● She was a very symbol of propaganda, showing her as a symbol of unity and peace → many of
their portraits were realized under her reign and spread around the country
 ● The absence of a Tudor heir was a constant concern for the parliament, whose interest was to
guarantee the protestant succession → Mary Stuart queen of Scots was the major catholic
pretender to the english throne because she was the great granddaughter of Henry VII
● Mary became the center of several plots planned by Spain and the extreme wing of english
catholics who wanted a catholic queen on the throne of england → Mary was kept as a prisoner by
Elisabeth for 19 years and was eventually sentenced to death in 1587 after the discovery of the
latest plot
● The execution of a queen by divine right was the pretext from Spain to declare war on England in
1588 → the spanish fleet made by heavy sheeps and known as the Invincibile Armada attacked
the english navy which was inferior in number but faster and easier to handle → the victory over the
spanish fleet confirmed England’s independence and affirmed its sea power and for this Elisabeth
was considered the defender of the nation and the one who preserved peace
● She died in 1603 and left the throne to Mary Stuart’s protestant son James VI

THE ELIZABETHAN AGE - this century was characterized by several changes:

1. Enclosures (movement related to the decline of feudal system and the expansion of wool industries
so the common land was enclosed with hedges to make pasture) → this deprived the villagers of
their only means of subsistence and let the development of towns, where most of them were forced
to move to
2. 1601: the poor law, passed to prevent the widespread of poverty of the country caused by
enclosures and unemployment so divided? help for the poors but at the same time vagabondage
and begging were made crimes punished with prison or fines
3. The time of geographical explorations which contributed to the colonization of new lands → new
trading companies were instituted (East India Company), English explorers and commerchant
ventures followed ocean routes to discover rich lands and also find spanish treasure and fight
vanish ships which was sailing from America (plunder the spanish treasure ships sailing from
America) → they were known as sea dogs of pirates like Walter Riley who founded a colony in
North America, Virginia in honor of the virgin queen, another is Sir Francis Drake, who attacked
Spanish ships, another is Sir John Howkins, dealt in the slave trade → triangular trade, a very
profitable traffic taking place between England, Africa and North America, so English ships
reached the western coast of Africa to buy black slaves who were brought in America and sold in
exchange of row materials to work on colonial plantations
● Cultural background: complex set of ideas and based on analogy → different levels of existence,
including cosmic and human related and this —- of mind constituted the Elizabethan world picture
which included the great chain of being (at the top of the structure there’s God, then every being,
depending on his degree of intellect, than angels, inanimated creatures and animals)
1. Macrocosm and microcosm analogy which considered man as a microcosm (human body) and
reflected the macrocosm of the universe → these meant that the rules governing the cosmos were
reproduced in men themselves, so the society had the hierarchical structure with the king on the top
and the lower classes at the bottom
2. The king’s two bodies: a doctrine based on the idea that the monarch had a body natural and a
body politic (the first one was subject to death while the second was immortal and passed to the
king successor) → this doctrine supposed the theory of the divine right of the king and asserted
that the king was appointed by God
3. Cosmic dance, which understood the universe as having a finite spherical shape with the Earth on
his center, motionless and surrounded a series of 9 concentric spheres including the orbits of the 7
planets which revolved around it → the universe was believed to be in a perpetual state of music
and dance (Ptolemaic system)
 ● Literary point of view: revival of the classical culture → renaissance means the rebirth of culture
and learning, that began in Italy in 14th century and spread throughout Europe during the 15th and
16th century
1. Umanism: promoted human values, the recovery of classics (Greek and roman thought) +
improvement of vernacular literature → poetry and prose
2. Increasing interest in translation: Bible, Omero
3. Rising of modern English: many, important and specific rules?, like the optional use of the
auxiliary in negative and interrogative form + the frequent use of pronoun and adjective in the forms
of thou and thee + improvement of english vocabulary thanks to a massive introduction of latin
and Greek words as well as word in spanish, Italian and French
4. The influence of Italian cultural models was very strong: the main Italian poems introduced also in
english literature were the sonnet, the novella, pastoral genres → the Prince of Machiavelli
became influential as it defined a new model of the governor

ELIZABETHAN DRAMA
● Theatre was the main and the most popular form of art → under her reign theater underwent a
development because it broke away from its religious roots so it became the most important
source of entertainment which mirrored the society of the time both in the form and content
● New changes: playacting and playwriting became new and proper professions + acting
companies and playhouses became active and theatre was opened to everybody because the —-
prices were very low → plays were written to be performed and could be understood also by
unlettered people, the language was more direct than poetry and prose
● The popularity of Elizabethan theatre and drama spread thanks to the traveling companies,
formed by actors who were protected by noblemen in order to not be considered as vagabonds →
became proper actors in lord’s Houses and called the companies with their names (The Earl of
Leichester’s men, The Lord Chamberlain’s men) → all the companies did not include women in fact
female roles were played by boy actors dressed as women and this was considered as an
encouragement to homosexuality (one of the reason why permanent playhouses were built
outside the city walls of London)
● Up to 1576 performances took place in in-yards or town squares → the first public theatre IN
London was The Theatre, were the Leichester’s Men mainly performed, other were The Curtain,
The Rose, The Globe (Shakespeare)
● The Globe was built in 1599 by a company of actors called Lord Chamberlain's men, the owners
and Shakespeare, but nobody really knows for sure what the globe looked like → round or
polygonal or octagonal building and 12 meters high, the plays were staged during the day
because the theatre not lit, the viewers could stand in the pit or yard in front of the stage or sit
down in the round galleries, there was no roof over the pit so if it rained the viewers in the pit
(Groundlings) would get wet, the stage jutted out into the pit and was only a few feet high so that
the groundlings though they had to stand and risk getting wet had the possibility of being very close
to the actors, the stage had two trapdoors one in ceiling and one in the floor which were called
heaven and hell, the name globe comes from a Latin saying because all the world is a playground
or all the world is a stage and all the men and women merely players, was not in london but just
outside because of the puritans who were serious people and considered theatres to be disruptive,
in 1613 the globe burned down when a stage cannon misfired and the following year it was rebuilt
but is was torn down 30 years later after puritans had banned theatres
● An actor shareholding depended on the some he invested to buy props and costumes and they
had no more than two weeks to prepare a new play (they need excellent memory)
● They learnt singing, dancing, diction, feminine gestures from a very young age
 ● Two common roles in Elizabethan plays the clown? and the fool → the language of the first one
was counterbalanced by other characters, heroic and romantic language, the fool was a
professional jester dressed in many colors, cup and bells
● Models were Greek and latin tragedies, with 5 acts and a taste for blood and revenge + play
within the play: taken from the spanish tragedies

JAMES I
● James I of England but VI of Scotland (1603-1625) became the 1st Stuart king → he reduced the
the danger of civil war, because he was brought up as a protestant
● He ignored the parliament and based his rule on the divine right of the king, because he believed
to be the representative of God on earth
● He joined Scotland to England and Wales as one kingdom, Great Britain, with 2 separate
parliaments + introduced the flag Union Jack + common coinage
● He was a learned man who wrote treatises in english and latin and ordered a new translation of
the Bible in 1611
● A year after his coronation he held a conference at Somerset house to sign a peace treaty with
Spain (end of all the conflicts)
● In 1604 he met the representatives of the bishops and the puritans to try to solve the conflict
between them → the catholics had been excluded so a group of them, led by Guy Fawkes,
organized the Gunpowder Plot to blow up the Parliament in 1605, but the conspiracy was find out
and the plotters were executed, but the government did not start a period of persecution against
Catholics

CHARLES I
● 1625-1649, James’s son, very fond of art and created one of Europe’s greatest art collections
● He married Henrietta Maria, the daughter of the king of France (Catholic)
● He avoided parliament and ruled eleven years without him
● the Commons were strongly protestants and denied the king money for more than one year at a
time → 1628: Petition of Right, stated that the king could not imprison without trial or impose taxes
without the consent of the Commons, but Charles dismissed it because he thought that he was
king by divine right
● In 1635 extended the ship money, a tax on coastal towns for their defense because he needed
money to pay his army to fight a rebellion in Scotland → the king was forced to summon the
Short-parliament in 1640, which refused to give him the money so was elected the
Long-parliament (370 Presbyterian and Royalists sympathisers, 121 most radical members were
called Rump parliament)
● The new middle class wanted the king to be subjected to the Parliament, passing laws to reduce his
powers → in 1642 the king entered the House of Commons to arrest its opponents but they had
already escaped so raised an army of Royalists and declared war, so the Parliamentarians
prepared to fight back → civil war
● 1642-1649: bloody battles between Royalists and Parliamentarians (tyranny with Stuart
absolutism vs liberty with the parliament) → the first one were also called Cavaliers (aristocratic
landowners), the second one Roundheads (middle class of merchant, artisans and small gentry)
● The parliamentarian army, New Model Army, was stronger because it was made up of professional
soldiers (Ironsides) and had a cavalry: they were middle-class men who though that God was on
their side
● The commander of the parliamentarians was Oliver Cromwell, a strongly built and religious man
who wanted to free his land from superstition
● Charles I was captured in 1648 and was brought to London, was condemned to death and his
execution took place in 1649
THE COMMONWEALTH
● The Rump parliament abolished the monarchy and declared the republic, the House of Lords
was abolished and censorship was introduced
● Cromwell took the new model army to Ireland for a campaign of repression but culminated in the
slaughter of citizens of Drogheda
● He also defeated the Scottish royalists who had crowned Charles II king of Scotland → the king
managed to escape to France and Cromwell gave himself the title of Lord Protector of England,
Scotland and Ireland
● In 1655 Cromwell divided the country into eleven military regions + puritan rules were introduced
+ inns pubs and theatres were closed down + banned Christmas and Easter, replaced with days
of fasting
● The republic encouraged foreign trade and both the merchant and the war fleet grew up rapidly →
in 1651 parliament had passed the Navigation Acts (monopoly of trade to British ships)
● Cromwell died in 1658 at the age of 59 and his son Richard held office for eight months before the
Rump voted to end the protectorate → in 1660 the army invited Charles II to come back from
France and so the monarchy was restored