Elizabethan World View

Introduction

The most typical view of the Elizabethan ages seems to be that it is almost wholly a secular time but that is not at all the case. Instead, a “refinement” of a very medieval view of man’s relationship to God predominates and that’s what we’ll focus on.

This view is expressed in three major ways: the chain of beings (vertical), the planes of correspondences (horizontal) and the Dances.

The first major focus will be on the chain of being, but first some more general background:

Man is viewed in something of a theo-centric context, in his relationship to theology, and the primary conflict/tension is between the present life and the expected after life of heaven, hell or purgatory (which I’m not entirely sure about beyond Catholic dogma at the time). Mankind was confounded between the conflicting claims of this and another world.

Prior to the fall, in what some call the pre-lapserian state, man was unsullied. Since the fall man, while still inhabiting the place between the angels and the beasts, man was seen as having the capability to rise above his station, to be better in a theological or spiritual sense, which was a dominant medieval perspective.

With regard to the Church in Shakespeare’s day, there was something of a high/low split. The high church was essentially the Catholic Church under the guise and leadership of the Church of England. These are the Anglicans. The low church was made up of various puritan sects. These groups were/are called puritans because they wanted to purify the church of it’s “papist” trappings, to make it more like the original church. They wanted a removal of finery, of sacraments such as marriage and confirmation which were not, in their minds, biblically based. They also sought a Presbyterian hierarchy, one in which each church chose its own minister from among the flock, in which the members of a congregation decided who was worthy of being a full member and receiving communion and several other things, such as the role of the Common Book of Prayer. Despite these differences, they were fundamentally the same in their view of the world and cosmology.

This cosmology consisted of a ordered universe in a fixed system of hierarchies that were modified, you might say corrupted, by the fall of man and the hope of redemption. Within this Ptolemaic framework The limits of human virtue were set and immutable as each sort of human is aligned with a particular planet that governs their behaviors. In pagan systems, which came to influence Christian systems, one would pray to certain Gods only for certain things at certain times of the day. For instance, Mars, the god of war, was also the god of fire in crafts, such as smiths and cooks and miners. There was a particular time of day, according to the zodiac, when prayers would be appropriate. At other times, praying to Mars would be wrong and out of step.

Something else to consider and keep in mind is that under the Ptolemaic system, earth is at the center of the universe, which is one of the reasons the “earthly” is seen as corrupt, because the lower on the chain of the universe, the less divine and more corrupt something was, but this is just one such fixed system. More later.

As you might guess, this fixed system which I’ll describe in greater detail as we move on, came to be incredibly complicated and it ended up being simplified by the emergence of both Christianity and later on Protestantism. Still, as we’ll see in Shakespeare, there will be many comparisons/analogies of war is to the body politic as blood letting is to personal health, body parts to various constellations and more. The earthly is linked to the heavenly, the heavenly (meaning both the divine and those things in the sky) have a direct and profound influence on what happens on the earth among men.

Although the Ptolemaic view dominated, many among the educated were aware of the emergence of the Copernican model, which is the universe and solar system pretty much as we understand it today, with the sun at the center of the solar system and the earth and other plants revolving around it. One of the problems this created was that in the fixed system, the sun was the “king” of the plants and the earth was the “dregs,” being at the center of things. Despite this emerging knowledge, many chose to stick with the old notions because of a general unwillingness to upset the system. It went without saying that the earth was at the center of the universe, just as for us many things go without saying, such as we must work to get on in the world, you will get ahead with an education, “the market” is a neutral force for good (if you are a believer in capitalism), and so on.

 The biblical justification for Ptolmeic System

This is often read as the biblical pronouncement in support of the Ptolemaic system, but some consider this a mis-reading, that the world cannot be moved in the sense that its behaviors, rotation, orbit of the sun and such, are fixed, and themselves cannot be moved. I’ll let you decide on this sort of thing.  

 In the Ptolemaic view, it was right and proper to refer to Elizabeth as the “prime mover,” primum mobile, that which makes all else happen. She became viewed in this way in part due to the defeat of the Spanish Armada, which was partly due to superior weaponry (better smelting of cannons so they didn’t blow up in the sailor’s face) and partly luck as the Armada was dispersed by a storm. This victory was seen as God showing his favor to Elizabeth, but also to Protestants over Catholics for most Englanders, though Elizabeth did a good job of playing Protestants, both Puritan and Anglican, and Catholics, off against each other.

 Order

 When it comes to Elizabethan drama and poetry, order rules. The sonnet, which we’ll be looking at later, is considered the highest form of poetry and it is strictly ordered by a set of rules which we’ll discuss. Drama is the same, constricted most obviously by expected, maybe even culturally required, division into five acts: situation, complication, climax, denouement, resolution. To do otherwise  would be to mark ones self as being a fool.

Order is defined/viewed thusly:

Upsetting any order will upset the universe or one’s place in the cosmos, which is something we might take lightly, concerned Elizabethan’s mightily. Should disorder result in chaos, the laws of nature might no longer function—“the frame of the heavenly arch erected over our heads should loosen and dissolve” (Hooker) then the physical world would come crashing down, literally,  which would scare not just an Elizabethan with an education, maybe even an uneducated Elizabethan. Chaos was cosmic anarchy in the universe. The fear of chaos emphasized and underscores the desire for order, the need for order. In an orderly world, the subservient are rewarded by the sovereign for doing as told and the lawless are rebuked—in short, one gets what one deserves. The images are going to be more along the lines of what happens when the order is upset (think about Macbeth those of you who have seen the play, or Hamlet).

 Finally, here, there is mutability, change of our status in the world, such as from health to sickness, life to death, was often a primary concern. People knew they were mutable, that circumstances were mutable, even in the fixed system. This was due to the corruption/fall of man, due to our falling away from the divine.

Sin

This is no great variation in religious perspective from medieval times. Some say that men were bitter and thought so much of moral decay at the time because they expected so much in a material sense.

Prime concerns: revolt of bad angels, creation, temptation, fall of man, incarnation, atonement, and regeneration through Jesus Christ. An Elizabethan could revolt against but not ignore these notions. It is generally thought it was easier to be an atheist than an agnostic then, given something of an all or nothing mindset.

Disorder and chaos are the product of sin and man’s continually striving for dominance.

The fall is seen as alienating man from himself. To regain true self knowledge man must contemplate the works of nature of which he is a part, which feeds scientific examination of the enlightenment, which goes back to the dominant view that the era is more secular than it was.

The end of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents. Learning is something man is capable of which sets him apart form the beasts. This brings about a double vision, of man as fallen and capable of redemption, something which before was viewed separately. This allows for sufficient optimism despite the degeneracy of the fall. Virtue remains though in varying degrees among each man and woman.

The view is that man can rise above his earthly imperfection and reach toward heavenly perfection. Poetry is an example of man’s effort to rise above his fallen self and reach out towards perfection.

 Chain of Being: one of three forms of order for God’s provided abundance, unimaginable plentitude, unfaltering order, and ultimate unity.

 Shakespeare will often place man between the beast and the angel for emphasis, with destiny/the cosmic world having the lower world as it’s instrument; the heavens are alive and guiding our destinies. There is a sovereignty of nature.

Links in the Chain:

Divine Ranks

God

Angels

Contemplative active in neither potential or deed: Serpahs, Cherubs and Thrones

Active in potential, not deed: Dominations, Virtues, and Powers

More active, some in deed: Principalities, Archangels, Angels

      1. The downside is the angels in hell: Beelzebub is the prince of devils, false god of gentiles
      2. Liars and equivocators
      3. Anger, inventers of mischief, Belial
      4. Malicious, revenging devils Asmodeus
      5. Cozeners, witches, etc.—Satan
      6. Aerial angels of plague, fire, and thunder—Meresin
      7. Destroyers, captains of furies, wars, etc. Abaddon
      8. Accusing, drivers to despair, calumniators,
      9. Tempters in several kinds Mammon

Nature, which has no will, is sometimes inserted between man and the angels, along with the soul bridging the gap between man and angel, earthly and divine/celestial.

Earthly Ranks

Man belongs to the existence, life, feeling, and understanding class. Serves as a link between earthly and divine because man has the potential to be divine, but struggles with earthly corruption.

Sensitive class--existence, life, and feeling that has three levels Vegetagive Class: trees, bushes, weeds, plant life in general

Inanimate class: the elements of: earth, water, air, fire; aligned with humors: black bile ,blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and—the manner in which blood could be seen to separate when stored in a jar. See below.
Humour Season   Element Organ Qualities Ancient name Modern Ancient characteristics
Blood spring air liver warm & moist sanguine artisan courageous, hopeful, amorous
Yellow bile summer fire gall bladder warm & dry choleric idealist easily angered, bad tempered
Black bile autumn earth spleen cold & dry melancholic guardian despondent, sleepless, irritable
Phlegm winter water brain, lungs cold & moist phlegmatic calm, unemotional Rational
Among groups, there is one member who has Primacy: