When working on the plays of Shakespeare and his fellow playwrights it is important to understand Elizabethan beliefs and cultural assumptions.
Communities of the time, and for many years afterwards, took these basic assumptions for granted. of his time and for many years afterwards.
The Stars
We are all under the influence of the stars: they were in perfect order and benevolent to man before the Fall. But now, they influence our lives and characters in chaotic and baleful ways. They are still, however, held in harmonious opposition to each other by God.
But there is no astrological determinism. By free will one can overcome the influence of the stars. Some unfortunate people, like Romeo and Juliet, are ‘star-crossed’ from birth. The Unfortunate Planets — Saturn and Mars — can also be changed by action of the will. Melancholy can change to contemplative (Saturn) and belligerent to martyr (Mars).
The Humours
As individuals, we are made up by a unique combination of humours. In the same way, Nature is made up of a combination of the 4 Elements:
| Element | Humour | Common Qualities |
| Earth (the lowest element) | Melancholy | Cold and dry |
| Water (above earth) | Phlegm | Cold and moist |
| Air | Blood | Hot and moist |
| Fire (the highest element) | Choler | Hot and dry |
Your predominate humour is your main characteristic. When you are unwell or mentally disturbed the humours are not correctly balanced in the body and mind; you will need to be ‘blooded’ with leeches.
Food
Food also consists of the 4 elements. Food passes through the stomach to the liver, lord of the lowest part of the 3 parts of the body. The liver converts food into 4 liquids (the 4 humours). Normally all 4 humours travel together through the veins from the liver to the heart, which is the lord of the middle part of the body — the seat of passions, corresponding to the sensitive part of our nature.
Man
Man is seen as the Microcosm, the ‘little universe’, contrasting with the Macrocosm.
Vital Heat and the Spirits
The 4 Humours create vital heat which corresponds to the fires in the centre of the earth.
This VITAL HEAT is mediated to the body by 3 NATURAL SPIRITS: vapours formed in the liver and carried about along the veins with the humours. These natural spirits come from the lower aspects of mankind (centred in the Liver). But when they are acted on by heat and air from the lungs they assume a higher quality and become VITAL SPIRITS. Now, with a nobler kind of blood and refined in the heart, the spirits carry life and heat through the arteries.
Some vital spirits are carried through arteries to the brain, where they are turned into ANIMAL SPIRITS. The brain rules the top part of the body and is the seat of reason and the immortal soul. Animal spirits are the executive agents of the brain, functioning through nerves and partaking of both body and soul.
The Body
In man, the body corresponds with nature: the head is the highest part, like the sun. Hair grows like the grass, blood flows through veins like rivers of water, and our breath is the same as air. The natural heat of the body is the same as the warmth of earth. Our will and changing desires as the clouds; our youthful beauty as springtime flowers which must fade and die. Our tears are rain, our sighs like the wind. See how Juliet’s father describes her ‘little body’ in 111 v, as a ship in her storm of tears and the wind of her sighs.
The Brain
The brain, like the body, is divided into 3 aspects:
- The lowest, containing the 5 senses.
- The middle, containing:
- Common sense, which receives and summarizes the reports of the 5 sense.
- Fancy (imagination). A CONCEIT is an act of the imagination.
- The memory. This middle area supplies the materials for the highest area to work on.
- The highest area contains reason, the supreme human faculty by which man is separated from the animals and allied to God and the angels.
Reason has two parts:
- The understanding or wit.
- The will.
These two highest of human faculties are the base of Elizabethan ethics.
The Wit and the Will
Man’s understanding (the wit) operates differently to that of angels. Angels understand things intuitively. Man, by the painful use of discursive reason, begins in ignorance and progresses, through learning, to God and the perfect knowledge of the angels. So learning, both of knowledge and wisdom for its own sake and self-knowledge (KNOW THYSELF) is essentially moral and spiritual: the specifically human task.
Shakespeare wrote of Lear, who “yet hath ever but slenderly known himself.” He wrote of Othello, both full of the energy of will, but defective in wit / understanding. He wrote of Hamlet and Macbeth, intelligently aware in wit, but deficient in will.
The Battle between Passion and Reason
The storm in men’s minds, the battle between passion and reason, is compared to and mirrors storms in nature. Through free will man can decide which way to go: to the lower area of passion or the higher of the voice of God, the reason.
Shakespeare frequently describes reason as ‘noble’: “Yet with my nobler reason ‘gainst my fury I do take part’ (The Tempest). And in Hamlet, “What a piece of work is Man; how noble in Reason; / that noble and most sovereign Reason; / that capability and godlike Reason.”
Character
The character of a person can be called his TEMPERMANT or COMPLEXION. The intertwining of the humours causes character. In most people one humour would be predominant. But in the perfect man they were equally balanced (as in Brutus, described in ‘Julius Caesar’).
The Great Chain of Being and Status
The Great Chain of Being links nature, society, God and man. In nature each aspect of creation has its hierarchy: the king of the animals is the lion; of the birds, the eagle; of the fish, the dolphin; of the flowers, the rose; of the metals, gold; of the jewels, the ruby; of the stones, marble; of the planets, the sun; and so on. As the king is the highest of mankind, images of royalty use these natural correspondences. There are many in ‘Richard II’ for example.
In society, after the king (and he is after God) and the queen (though women always come second) come then men of the royal family, nobles, clergy, the rising middle classes of Elizabethan England, peasants, servants, and beggars. This order must stay stable to reflect the divine order of Heaven. When the order is disturbed or threatened all Nature reflects the violence of mankind. See the chaos in Macbeth, Julius Caesar, King Lear for example.
Ulysses’ speech in ‘Troilus and Cressida’ 1.iii, gives Shakespeare’s clearest description of order. This order demands that people stay in the God-given statuses they were born into: appearance, language, education, customs of behaviour, access to justice, and opportunity to rise socially were strictly limited to class and the status of your family. Shakespeare took care to raise the status of his family to be a gentleman with a coat of arms, coming from a merchant background in Stratford.
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The Elizabethan beliefs about some animals:
The swan is mute but sings once at death… the swan song.
Adders were deaf but could be charmed by music and so captured.
Baby bears were born shapeless and had to be ‘licked into shape’ by their mothers.
Unicorns could only be captured by a virgin. When a unicorn found a virgin, it would lay its head in her lap.
Pelicans fed their young with their blood by wounding themselves in the breast with their beaks.
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