The Elizabethan World Picture

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THE DOMINANT IDEOLOGY

• The Elizabethan World Picture

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The Elizabethan World Picture

• Many have written about a shared cultural and
  cosmological view of order during the Elizabethan
  period Tillyards Elizabethan World Picture and
  Shakespeare's History Plays, C. S. Lewiss The
  Discarded Image, Theodore Spencers Shakespeare
  and the Nature of Man, Lily B. Campbells
  Shakespeare's Histories

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The Elizabethan World Picture

• Recent materialist criticism has identified
  these pronouncements as the dominant ideology of
  the period, but certainly not the only ideology
  and certainly not Shakespeares only way of
  looking at the world. Dollimore and Sinfield
  Lily B. Campbell and Tillyard demonstrate
  unquestionably that there was an ideological
  position, something like the Elizabethan World
  picture, and that it is a significant presence
  in Shakespeares plays.

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The Elizabethan World Picture

• Materialist critics and others contend that
  Shakespeare surely deployed the dominant ideology
  but certainly not as an ideological legitimation
  of an existing social order as Tillyard and
  others would have us believe.

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The Elizabethan World Picture

• Tillyard claims that The Elizabethans
  pictured the universal order under three main
  forms a chain, a series of corresponding planes,
  and a dance. Let us look at some of these
  concepts so that we can recognize them when we
  come across them in Shakespeares works.
• Troilus and Cressida 1.3.85-124 Ulyssess
  Speech on Order

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• The heavens themselves, the planets, and this
  centre
• Observe degree, priority, and place,
• Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,
• Office, and custom, in all line of order
• And therefore is the glorious planet Sol
• In noble eminence enthrond and spherd
• Amidst the other whose medcinable eye
• Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil,
• And posts like the commandment of a king,
• Sans check, to good and bad. But when the planets
• In evil mixture to disorder wander,
• What plagues and what portents, what mutiny!
• What raging of the sea, shaking of earth!
• Commotion in the winds! frights, changes, horrors
• Divert and crack, rend and deracinate
• The unity and married calm of states
• Quite from their fixure! O, when degree is
  shakd,
• Which is the ladder of all high designs,
• The enterprise is sick. How could communities,

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• Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,
• The primogenity and due of birth,
• Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,
• But by degree stand in authentic place?
• Take but degree away, untune that string,
• And hark what discord follows. Each thing
  meets
• In mere oppugnancy the bounded waters
• Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores,
• And make a sop of all this solid globe
• Strength should be lord of imbecility,
• And the rude son should strike his father dead
• Force should be right, or rather, right and wrong
• (Between whose endless jar justice resides)
• Should lose their names, and so should justice
  too!
• Then every thing include itself in power,
• Power into will, will into appetite,
• And appetite, an universal wolf
• (So doubly seconded with will and power),
• Must make per force an universal prey,

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The Great Chain of Being

• The idea began with Plato, was developed by
  Aristotle, was adopted by the Alexanderian Jews
  (headed by Philo), was formulated by
  neo-Platonists, and became a common place
  assumption by the Middle Ages.

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From Raimond Sebonds Natural Theology

• 1st The Inanimate Class (mere existence)
• (containing the elements, liquids, metals)
• 2nd The Vegetative Class (existence and life)
• (the mighty oak)
• 3rd The Sensitive Class (existence, life, and
  feeling)
• a. creatures with touch, but not hearing
  (memory) or movement, like shellfish
• b. creatures with touch and movement, but not
  hearing, like insects
• c. higher animals with touch, movement, and
  hearing, like horses and dogs
• 4th Man (existence, life, feeling, and
  understanding)
• Thomas Browne Thus Man that great and true
  Amphibian
• whose nature is disposed to live, not only like
  other
• creatures in divers elements, but in divided
  and distinguished worlds.
• 5th The Angels
• a. Third Order (Principalities, Archangels,
  Angels)
• Active intermediaries between angelic
  hierarchy and man
• b. Second Order (Dominations, Virtues, Powers)
• Less Active
• c. First Order (Seraphs, Cherubs, Thrones)
• Contemplative and closest to God

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Steps, Ladder, Chain, Scale
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The Ptolemaic Universe

• Earth,
• Moon,
• Mercury,
• Venus,
• Sun,
• Mars,
• Jupiter, Stellatum (Fixed Stars),
• Primum Mobile

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Qualities, Elements, Seasons, Humours
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Four Qualities, Four Elements, Four Seasons, Four
Humours
Season Element Humour Body Fluid Location
Spring Air Sanguine Blood Heart
Summer Fire Choleric Yellow Bile Liver
Autumn Water Melancholic Phlegm (Various)
Winter Earth Phlegmatic Black Bile Spleen
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Four Humours
Humour Qualities Element Personality
Sanguine Hot, Moist Air Optimistic, red-checked, corpulent, irresponsible, (Falstaff)
Choleric Hot, Dry Fire Short-tempered, red-haired, thin, ambitious (Hotspur)
Phlegmatic Cold, Moist Water Sluggish, pallid, corpulent, lazy
Melancholic Cold, Dry Earth Introspective, sallow, thin (Richard II, Hamlet).
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The stars were taken to dictate change in
sublunary things. All things above the moon were
immutable while all below were imperfect and
subject to mutability or change. Thus,
paradoxically, Man is the center of the universe
yet the Earth is debased and is furthest from God.
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The Music of the Spheres

• It was further believed that there was an
  angelic group that inhabited each of the nine
  spheres and when these spheres moved they were
  thought to created music, either by angels
  singing or by the differences in speeds between
  the spheres. Fallen man could no longer hear the
  music of the spheres. Merchant of Venice 5.1.54
  ff. Further, was the notion that the universe
  itself was in a state of perpetual dance.

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How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this
bank! Here will we sit, and let the sounds of
music Creep in our ears. Soft stillness and the
night Become the touches of sweet harmony. Sit,
Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven Is thick
inlaid with patens of bright gold. Theres not
the smallest orb which thou beholdst But in his
motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the
young-eyd cherubins Such harmony is in immortal
souls, But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear
it. (Merchant of Venice 5.1.54-65)
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The Dance

• As the spheres moved in their stately dance to
  the music of the spheres, so humans could move in
  the motion of a dance, imitating the circles and
  figures of the cosmos. Thus dance was a way of
  celebrating order in society and nature.

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The Corresponding Planes

• If the entire universe was an expression of
  Gods plan, then it followed that all things in
  the universe were related to each other in some
  way or another. This was expressed through the
  concept of corresponding planes, which can be
  grouped into the following

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The Corresponding Planes

• The Divine or Angelic
• The Universe or the Macrocosm
• The Commonwealth or Body Politic
• Man or the Microcosm
• The Lower Creatures

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Microcosm/Macrocosm
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Within each of these planes or subdivisions there
existed other hierarchies all headed by the
Primate of highest member of that class

• God, among angels
• The Sun, among the planets and the stars
• The King, among men
• Husband, among the family
• The Lion, among animals
• The Eagle, among birds
• The Oak, among trees
• The Rose, among flowers
• Fire, among the elements
• Gold, among the minerals

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By extension if there were a disruption in one
sphere or plane that disruption would also be
reflected in another

• JC storms and portents
• Macbeth storm after Duncans death
• R2 trees wither, meteors fall from the sky
• 1H4 birth of Glendower

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The New Philosophy
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John Donne on the New Philosophy
And new philosophy calls all in doubt,The
element of fire is quite put outThe sun is
lost, and the earth, and no mans witCan well
direct him where to look for it . . . Tis all
in pieces, all coherence gone,All just supply,
and all relation . . .     (An Anatomy of the
World c. 1612 )   
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Copernicus
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Astronomy

• The sun is in the center of the planets (not a
  planet itself, revolving around the Earth)

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Machiavelli
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Political Science

• a prince should make himself feared in such a
  way that, even if he gets no love, he gets no
  hate either . . .
• a prince should be concerned only with power and
  be bound only by rules that would lead to success
  in political actions

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Montaigne
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Social Science

• When I play with my cat, who knows whether I
  do not make her more sport than she makes me?

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Martin Luther
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Religion

• Humans can gain salvation through faith, rather
  than through good works or the dispensations of
  the Church. Faith
• Religious truths can be known only through
  reading the Word of God as revealed in the Bible.
  Scripture
• Humans are innately evil, incapable of either
  knowing religious truth or acting for the good
  without God's grace. Grace

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John Calvin
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Calvinism

• Double Predestination--all souls are predestined
  either for salvation or damnation.
• Grace, or damnation, is therefore irresistible.
• God's grace is evident in those who live a pious
  and moral life and a truly godly Christian must
  be an active instrument to spread God's glory.

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T.U.L.I.P.

• Total Depravity (also known as Total Inability
  and Original Sin)
• Unconditional Election
• Limited Atonement (also known as Particular
  Atonement)
• Irresistible Grace
• Perseverance of the Saints (also known as Once
  Saved Always Saved)

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W. R. Elton

• Shakespeares drama provided an appropriate
  conflict structure a dialectic of ironies and
  ambivalences, avoiding in its complex movement
  and multi-voiced dialogue the simplification of
  direct statement and reductive resolution.

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John Barton

• Shakespeare likes verbal complexity but is
  often simple and direct. His thoughts naturally
  shape themselves antithetically . . . He loves
  ambiguity and paradox. He delights in the sheer
  act of expressing himself and in handling
  seemingly impossible situations.