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Historical background
Elizabethan Period
Elizabeth’s reign was marked by intrigue, war, rebellion, and personal and party strife. Yet there were solid foundations under the state and society that produced the wealth and victories of the Elizabethan Age and its attainments in literature, music, architecture, and science. The economy prospered in an era of unbridled individual enterprise.
The solid administrative system was based on national unity. A common sentiment kept the English together and set limits beyond which most of them would not carry disagreement. Elizabeth herself played a large part in holding her subjects together. Her religious policy, for example, was directed at stretching the already broad principles and practices of the Church of England so that they would cover near-Catholicism at one extreme and near-Congregationalism at the other.
The age of Elizabeth was marked by a remarkable flowering of culture. This was the English Renaissance, when ladies and gentlemen played the lute, sang madrigals, admired painting, and sought to dress as did their counterparts in Italy. The high glory in the English Renaissance lay in its literature, in the works of William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Francis Bacon (1561-1626), Edmund Spenser (1552-1599), and many others who shaped the English language for generations to come.
These Elizabethans and Jacobeans were exuberant even in their refinement, full-blooded even in their learning. To a later generation they were uncouth, undisciplined, too full of the gusto of life. To the nineteenth- century romantics, they were brother sin romance, and nineteenth-century scholars rediscovered the Elizabethan age. The love of excess is obvious in much Elizabethan writing: in the interminable, allusion-packed, allegory- made stanzas of the Faerie Queene; in the piling up of quotations from the ancient Greeks and Romans; in Shakespeare’s fondness for puns and rhetorical devices; in the extraordinarily bloody tragedies and exuberant comedies that made Elizabethan drama second only to that of the ancient Greeks.
Contemporaries of Shakespeare’s contributed importantly to the Elizabethan Renaissance. Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene is recognized as perhaps the finest moral epic of Western writing. Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, the product of an earlier time, became a revolutionary argument much debated in Shakespeare’s time, as it described an ideal community on an island off the New World and argued that crime and violence did not come from the inherently corrupt nature of men and women, as had been argued in earlier centuries, but were the product of society. This view is commonplace today—it is widely believed that education, the environment, the laws of society, the nature of punishment, the workplace, and the family shape a person’s behavior—but in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it was revolutionary.
The Elizabethan Renaissance, which ended with Queen Elizabeth’s death in 1601, merged into the Jacobean period, in which Shakespeare produced some of his finest work. One other important product of this period was the King James Version of the Bible. In 1604 Puritan theologians asked James I to support a new translation of the Scripture, and the committee of scholars to whom he committed the assignment completed the Bible in the form we know it today, divided into chapters and verses, in 1611. Because it was in English, and hence accessible to lay readers, it increased literacy and profoundly influenced the developed of the English language.
Jacobean Period
The Jacobean, or Jacobethan, era was another phase of English Renaissance architecture, theatre, and decoration and formed a continuation, begun in the Elizabethan age, of the the Renaissance's penetration into England. The Jacobean era refers to the period in English and Scottish history that coincides with the reign of King James VI (15671625) of Scotland, who also inherited the crown of England in 1603 as James I. The Jacobean era succeeds the Elizabethan Era and precedes the Caroline era, and specifically denotes a style of architecture visual arts, decorative arts, and literature that is predominant of that period. The term Jacobean era furniture is used here to refer to the period of both kings. The furniture of the Jacobean era was massive, and the early Jacobean carving can be recognized by its simplicity. The Jacobean plays evolved out of Elizabethan dramas but around 1610, began to show a marked shift from the previous era's theatrical tradition.Since Shakespeare was not only such an influence but also spread over into the Jacobean period, he is almost a literary era all his own.This is a phenomenal, rare, carved, bone, Memento Mori, human skull, miniature, model from the Jacobean Period (1603-1625) of the Stuart Era.
Jacobean architecture - The Jacobean style is the second phase of Renaissance architecture in England, following the Elizabethan style.Jacobean style is English Early Renaissance architecture and decoration.
Renaissance style and ideas were slow in penetrating England, and the Elizabethan era in the second half of the 16th century is usually regarded as the height of the English Renaissance.
The Jacobean era is named afer King James I who ruled from 1603 until 1625. The third era of the Renaissance period in British literature defined by the reign of James I. The Renaissance period in British literature spans the years 1500 to1660 and is usually divided into five subsections: Early Tudor, Elizabethan, Puritan which is also divided into Jacobean and Caroline, Commonwealth (or Puritan Interregnum). The Elizabethan Renaissance, which ended with Queen Elizabeth's death in 1601, merged into the Jacobean period, in which Shakespeare produced some of his finest work.
The Jacobean era's most fiery and eloquent author of political tracts (many in defense of Cromwell's government, of which he was a member) was also one of the greatest of all English poets, John Milton.
There was a great flowering in literature, classical studies, historiography, geography and philosophy, which has made the Elizabethan era practically synonymous with the English Renaissance. New World Encyclopedia," the Jacobean era refers to a period in English and Scottish history, which coincides with the reign of King James I (1603-1625). The Jacobean era can be broken down into three different periods of influence.
The Jacobean style is characterized by English, early Renaissance architecture and decor.
FAMOUS ENGLISH AUTHOR
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
William Shakespeare (bapt. 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's greatest dramatist.He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard").His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays,154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.They also continue to be studied and reinterpreted.
Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. At age 49 (around 1613), he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, his sexuality, his religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by others.
Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613.His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best work produced in these genres. Until about 1608, he wrote mainly tragedies, among them Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in the English language.[2][3][4] In the last phase of his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances) and collaborated with other playwrights.
Many of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy in his lifetime. However, in 1623, two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare's, John Heminges and Henry Condell, published a more definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works that included all but two of his plays.The volume was prefaced with a poem by Ben Jonson, in which Jonson presciently hailed Shakespeare in a now-famous quote as "not of an age, but for all time".
Sonnet 116: Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds
William Shakespeare
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.
Analysis of Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds
The best way to analyse Shakespeare’s sonnets is to examine them line-by-line, which is what will follow.
In the first two lines, Shakespeare writes,
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments.
These lines are perhaps the most famous in the history of poetry, regardless of whether or not one recognizes them as belonging to Shakespeare. Straight away, Shakespeare uses the metaphor of marriage to compare it to true, real love. He is saying that there is no reason why two people who truly love should not be together; nothing should stand in their way. Perhaps he is speaking about his feelings for the unknown young man for whom the sonnet is written. Shakespeare was unhappily married to Anne Hathaway, and so perhaps he was rationalising his feelings for the young man by stating there was no reason, even if one is already married, that two people who are truly in love should not be together.
The second half of the second line begins a new thought, which is then carried on into the third and fourth lines. He writes,
Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
Shakespeare is continuing with his thought that true love conquers all. In these lines, the speaker is telling the reader that if love changes, it is not truly love because if it changes, or if someone tries to “remove” it, nothing will change it. Love does not stop just because something is altered. As clichéd as it sounds, true love, real love, lasts forever.
The second quatrain of Sonnet 116 begins with some vivid and beautiful imagery, and it continues with the final thought pondered in the first quatrain. Now that Shakespeare has established what love is not—fleeting and ever-changing—he can now tell us what love is. He writes,
O no, it is an ever fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken…
Here, Shakespeare tells his readers that love is something that does not shift, change, or move; it is constant and in the same place, and it can weather even the most harrowing of storms, or tempests and is never even shaken, let alone defeated. While weak, it can be argued here that Shakespeare decides to personify love, since it is something that is intangible and not something that can be defeated by something tangible, such as a storm.
In the next line, Shakespeare uses the metaphor of the North Star to discuss love. He writes,
It is the star to every wand’ring bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
To Shakespeare, love is the star that guides every bark, or ship, on the water, and while it is priceless, it can be measured. These two lines are interesting and worth noting. Shakespeare concedes that love’s worth is not known, but he says it can be measured. How, he neglects to tell his reader, but perhaps he is assuming the reader will understand the different ways in which one can measure love: through time and actions. With that thought, the second quatrain ends.
The third quatrain parallels the first, and Shakespeare returns to telling his readers what love is not. He writes,
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come…
Notice the capitalization of the word “Time.” Shakespeare is personifying time as a person, specifically, Death. He says that love is not the fool of time. One’s rosy lips and cheeks will certainly pale with age, as “his bending sickle’s compass come.” Shakespeare’s diction is important here, particularly with his use of the word “sickle.” Who is the person with whom the sickle is most greatly associated? Death. We are assured here that Death will certainly come, but that will not stop love. It may kill the lover, but the love itself is eternal.
This thought is continued in the lines eleven and twelve, the final two lines of the third quatrain. Shakespeare writes,
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
He is simply stating here that love does not change over the course of time; instead, it continues on even after the world has ended (“the edge of doom”).
Shakespeare uses lines thirteen and fourteen, the final couplet of Sonnet 116, to assert just how truly he believes that love is everlasting and conquers all. He writes,
If this be error and upon me proved
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
In this part of Sonnet 116, Shakespeare is telling his reader that if someone proves he is wrong about love, then he never wrote the following words and no man ever loved. He is conveying here that if his words are untrue, nothing else would exist. The words he just wrote would have never been written, and no man would have ever loved before. He is adamant about this, and his tough words are what strengthen the sonnet itself. The speaker and poet himself are convinced that love is real, true, and everlasting.
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