CRAMMERS GUIDE - 5 MORE Shots of CONTEXT for Romeo and Juliet

CRAMMERS' GUIDE - 5 MORE shots of Context for Romeo and Juliet

Duelling and swordplay were an important feature of Elizabethan England.

The first 5 shots...

Queen Elizabeth

Queen Elizabeth was famously known as the 'virgin queen'. Having refused to marry for many years, her virtue had become a point of national pride. And in 1597, towards the end of her reign, Elizabeth was actively taking steps to make herself appear more masculine and powerful.

And we can link this with the approach to gender in the play. Romeo is described as 'womanish' and in her holding back her tears and resisting her father, demonstrates a strength of character that Shakespeare's audience might have considered masculine.

Shakespeare's London was a city of clear hierarchies. Those in charge had a lot of power. The Queen (Elizabeth I) had ultimate control (as Prince Escalus does in the play). But like him, she sometimes had problems controlling her noblemen at court - who battled for position at court.

In the 1590s the future of England was in the balance. Elizabeth was nearing the end of  her reign, and the succession to the throne was becoming a national obsession. It was something that the queen herself was conscious of. In 1571 she made it an act of treason to even discuss the issue. 

In plays like Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare's audience cold be presented with ideas about power and marriage and dynasty without any laws being broken.

Finally, in Shakespeare's time, the theatre was under threat. It was important that playwrights present a positive image of those in power. And a playwright's job was a balancing act exploring the big issues of the day, and teaching the audience to be good citizens.

Duelling

In 1596, a man named William Waite was set upon by four assailants. On of those attackers was William Shakespeare. The case went to court, but a settlement was reached, and he wasn't prosecuted. He promised to keep the peace.

So violence in Shakespeare's times was so widespread that even playwrights were often involved. Shakespeare's contemporary Christopher Marlowe was  killed a man in 1596, just a year before Romeo and Juliet is thought to have been performed.

In the 1590s England was a pirate nation, and the Spanish Armada of 1588 had been defeated. Englishmen felt a lot of pride in their swordsmanship, and fencing was an important part of a man's education. There had been a number of guides that taught swordplay and these are referenced in Romeo and Juliet.

Tybalt apparently fights in the continental style set out in Vincentio Salviolo's 'Discourse of Rapier and Dagger' which had been translated into English in 1595. An Englishman called George Silver published a competing manual supporting a 'British' style of  fencing, a style favoured by Mercutio.

Stage fights were extremely popular with Elizabethan audiences, but actually settling arguments with swords in real life was very much illegal. But it was also very common. Laws were made to stop it. In 1562 the length of rapiers were limited. In 1574 the carrying of rapiers and daggers was limited to 'gentlemen'.

Nevertheless, the wearing of swords  in public was fashionable and the violence we see in the play reflects the violence of Shakespeare's London.

Courtly Love

The idea of courtly love is a European tradition with its origins in the Middle  Ages. It was a set of rules about how lovers from noble families should behave. Andrea Capellanus set out these rules in his 'The Art of Courtly Love' . Some of the rules in this Twelfth Century text were:

⦁ A man should fall in love with a woman of equal or higher status than himself.

⦁ A woman should be cold towards the man, and this coldness will increase his passion for her.

⦁ A man will be unable to sleep or eat because he is thinking about his love.

⦁ An old love can be dropped when a new love is found.

⦁ A man must agree to any demand his love makes of him.

So  we see these rules fit perfectly with Romeo's love of Rosaline at the start of the play, a love that is replaced with his love  for Juliet. Of course Juliet does not act coldly towards  Romeo. She does not reject his advances and seems unconcerned with protecting her good  name. 

So in a way, Romeo's attachment to the conventions of courtly love marks him as old  fashioned, and Juliet represents the new personally assertive, emerging view of  love and marriage.

War

In 1597, England was involved in the Nine Years War against the Irish. The defeat of the Spanish Armada (1588) was a recent historical event. The War of the Roses, a war in which two houses fought for control of the English crown had ended in 1485 when Henry took the throne for the Tudors, a dynasty that survived through to the sitting monarch Elizabeth I.

In the 1590s, Londoners could learn about history in two ways. They could spend a penny for  a tour of Westminster Abbey, where a guide would intruct them of the monarchs of the past, or they could spend a penny and go to the theatre where the great history plays of the day would give them a memorable but not necessarily accurate view of those same events.

And Shakespeare wrote several history plays, all of which portrayed the Tudor monarchs of the past in a very favourable light. In fact a key feature of Elizabethan drama is to teach its  audience to be good citizens, and to put forward a view of history that supported the establishment.

And while Romeo and Juliet is not a history play, its portrayal of the feuding families would remind the audience of the importance of stable leadership.

Male Friendship

Love for cousins features twice. The friendship between Romeo and Benvolio is close. They are young men of a similar age - and this makes them close anyway. But their allegiance to the Montague family also binds them together. Benvolio's pain is clear when he doesn't protect Romeo at the end.

In Early Modern England, men were used to spending time with other men. In universities, at court, in the law, and in the playhouse, groups of men worked together, largely without the presence of women, and relied on each other for jobs and friendship. This is called homosociality - sociability between men.

Classical writers such as Cicero wrote about male friendship. His book, De Amicitia, influenced how men thought about this, and a French writer in the sixteenth century , Montaigne, based his essay on male friendship on Cicero's ideas. Montaigne was translated into English at the time of Shakespeare, who read his work.

The friendships between men in Romeo and Juliet - particularly between Romeo and Mercutio - are important to the play, and form another kind of love alongside the romantic love of Romeo and Juliet.

Catholicism

In 1597, England was a protestant country, after the reformation led by Queen Elizabeth's father, Henry VIII. Consequently, Shakespeare's English audience had a very negative view of Catholicism.

By setting his plays in Catholic Italy, Shakespeare gets more freedom, as he present characters and institutions behaving  in ways that could easily cause offence if his plays had been set in England.

For instance the Friar's sneaky plans and political scheming and self-interest would be controversial in a British clergyman, but in an Italian, and a Catholic, this kind of morally questionable behaviour would be accepted without question.

In reality Shakespeare had not travelled  to the continent and had no idea what Verona was actually like. The Verona of the play is probably far more like London than the walled Italian city mentioned in the prologue.

Five more shots of context...