The Tudors

Henry VII

VII Henry VII, who came to the English throne when the Wars of the Roses ended, was the first king of the Tudor dynasty. He tried to consolidate his position through: a treaty with France; a trade treaty with the Netherlands and the dynastic marriage in 1501 between his son Arthur and the Spanish princess, Catherine of Aragon. During his turned England modern state. He also laid the foundations of English naval power.

Henry VIII

Henry VIII was Henry VII’s second son. From an early age he was a known figure at court, he was a natural sportsman. He was called the

Golden Prince' both for education his natural good looks and for his chivalry and the Faith in 1521 he was granted the title of Defender of

defending by the pope. After the death of his brother Arthur, Hen married his widow, Catherine of Aragon. In twenty years of marriage

Catherine only produced a daughter, Mary, and Henry desperately wanted a male heir. He began to consider marriage to his pregnant mistress Anne Boleyn and asked the pope for a divorce in order to marry her. Henry broke with Rome and declared himself "Supreme

Head on Earth of the Church of England”. This meant that he had the right to appoint bishops, decide on articles of faith and impose his will on the monasteries. The king soon dissolved the monasteries, taking

their wealth, and social charities -such as schools and hospitals for poor-. Henry married Anne Boleyn in 1533, and she gave him a

second daughter, Elizabeth. Henry on have four more wives in quick succession went to and one son, Edward, from his third wife, Jane

Seymour.

Mary I

Mary I was born in 1516, the only surviving child of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. Rejection by her father and the cruel treatment of her mother were to have a fundamental influence on her life. She refused to abandon her own traditional faith, and when she became queen in 1553 she believed be the agent of a Counter-Reformation. This attempt to restore England to papal obedience, her marriage to the Catholic Philip of Spain and the burning of Protestants, earned her the nickname "Bloody Mary”. Mary's end was tragic: deserted by her husband, without an heir, her foreign and domestic policies were a failure, and her country was still divided over religion when she died.

Elizabeth I

In 1558 Elizabeth, Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn's daughter, became queen of a divided nation the majority of which was anti-Catholic and

anti-Spanish She was twenty-five and had a strong personality, a lively intelligence and a passionate character. She had received an excellent

education and could speak French, Latin and Italian with ease, but above all she was a political genius. As queen she faced the problems

of marriage and succession, religious division, domestic discontent and foreign threats. Her Church of England restored the country firmly to

Protestantism, yet she granted Catholics freedom of worship. She was unmarried and used this as a political weapon. She often repeated that

“the Queen was married to her people”. She recognised Spain as her main trade rival and enemy. At first, open war was avoided and

exploration and overseas trade expanded, making England a commercial and sea power. English sea captains, like Francis Drake (ca 1540-96), were secretly encouraged by the queen in their piracy. They

captured ships. In 1588 the Spanish decided to invade England and sent a great armada of 30 galleons to the English Channel, but the English defeated the Spanish Armada. Supremacy at sea enabled

Elizabeth to lay the basis of England's empire.

King by divine rightWith the death of Elizabeth l in 1603, the Tudor line died out and James VI (1566-1625) of Scotland became the first Stuart king in England, with the title of James l. He was a Protestant, and instead of basing his rule on the love of his people', he based it on the theory of the divine right of kings'. He believed that, as a monarch. he was the representative of God on earth. He summoned Parliament only to ask for money. He was interested in witchcraft and the supernatural. As in the early days of Elizabeth I, religion was the most urgent problem of the new reign. Catholics were barred from public life and were fined if they refused to attend the Church of England; extreme Protestants, called Puritans, disapproved of both the rites and the bishops of the Church of England. These Puritans had a high sense of duty and morality a hundred of them, the Pilgrim Fathers, applied for a government pate to colonise New England. In 1620 they left England for America on the Mayflower and founded New Plymouth. King James authorised a new translation of the Bible in 1604. this version would be heard and read by laymen. The Protestant religion actively encouraged personal knowledge of the Bible, and this version would be used by the Church of England for more than three hundred years. In 1605 some radical Catholics, led by Guy Fawkes, plotted to blow up the king in the Houses of Parliament.

The restlessness of the 16th century was increased by new geographical and scientific discoveries which weakened the old models of the world and the universe, By around 150 AD, the Alexandrian astronomer Ptolemy (2nd century AD) had written the Geography, which defined the discipline of geography and laid down the principles of global mapping.

In Ptolemy's view of the universe, the sun and the planets revolved around a stationary earth. Below the moon was the world of mutability; above it, that of permanence. This old order of ideas was weakened by new cultural influences.

Copernicus was born in but Poland studied in Italy. He created a new model of the solar system in which the sun was at the centre, with the earth and the other

planets moving around it. The invention of the telescope by Galileo Galilei (564-1642) proved that the earth turns around the sun; moreover, the Italian astronomer established the scientific method, that is, the study of the physical world by sensory

observation, experiment and by mathematical measurement.

The English Renaissance

The English Renaissance covers the historical period from 1509, the year Henry VIII ascended the throne, to 1660, the year which marked the beginning of the Restoration. The English Renaissance developed later than its European equivalents and was an original, typically English movement. Its main feature was its strong Protestant basis influenced by the Reformation under the reign of Henry VIII, who broke with Rome and declared that the king was the head of the English Church.

England fought to free itself from the ltalian influence, which was identified with Rome and the papacy. The new literature was also influenced by the training in classical imitation of a number of Humanist scholars and translators, reaching back to the time of Erasmus of Rotterdam (ca 1469-1936) At the beginning of the century, he had stressed the importance of studying classical literature for the Christian student, The New Learning', as Humanism was also called, was established in schools all over the country and in the two universities, Oxford and Cambridge.

The English Renaissace

New Learning

The SonnetThe Renaissance is considered the olden age of poetry because l of the flourishing of love songs and sonnets. The sonnet was introduced into England by Sir Thomas Wyatt, from Italy, where it had been experimented with and refined by Dante and Petrarch, whose Canzoniere had become the model for all European Renaissance poets. As a metrical form, the sonnet is composed of fourteen lines. ‘The Italian', or 'Petrarchan', sonnet is divided into one octave plus a sestet. The most frequent rhyme schemes are: ABBA ABBA CDE CDE or ABBA ABBA CDC DCD. The octave generally presents an issue or a situation, while the sestet contains the solution of the problem or personal reflections. After a period the English sonnet came to be evolution, identified with the Shakespearean model. It consists of three quatrains and a final couplet; the rhyme scheme is ABAB EFEF GG. Through this structure, the poet can use the quatrains to present a theme or three different arguments and draw a conclusion in the final couplet. The traditional subjects of the sonnet are love, faith, beauty, art and the destructive action of time.

William Shakespeare

The life William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in April

1564, possibly on 23rd April which is also said to be the date of his death, His father was a yeoman (a successful tradesman), until be met with financial difficulties. William was the eldest son and attended the local grammar school, which gave him a thorough grounding in the use of language and classical authors. In 1584 he left Stratford and went to London. It was at that time that he first experienced the playhouse. He was received into one of the acting companies at a very minor level at first, but his admirable wit soon distinguished him if not as a great actor, as an excellent writer. In 1593 the London theatres were closed because of the plague and Shakespeare needed the support of a private patron. When the theatre reopened, Shakespeare became a shareholder and of the main playwright of the most successful company actors in London: the Lord Chamberlain's Men. In 1599 his company built the Globe Theatre, where most of his plays were performed. The latter part of was his life spent in retirement in Stratford. He died in 1616 when he was 52 years old.

Romeo and Juliet The plotThe setting is Verona, where two families, the Montagues and the Capulets, are locked in a violent feud. First Act. The first act covers a whole day and it opens in a street in Verona. This act is composed of a series of dialogues about the courtly concept of love, which was linked to melancholy holy devotion and the idealisation of the object of desire. It ends with the scene of the masque and the meeting of the main characters, Romeo. Second Act. The second act concentrates on the development of the relationship between Romeo and Juliet. The dialogue between the two lovers deals with the theme of love in a way that departs from courtly conventions. Third Act. The pace of events increases. It is the longest act and can be divided into two parts: that of public events, full of action and movement, and the part devoted to private events. Mercutio, Romeo's friend, is killed by Tybalt, Juliet's cousin. In revenge Romeo kills Tybalt and is banished from Verona to Mantua. The act ends with Romeo and Juliet's wedding night. Fourth Act. It is the preparatory act to the final tragedy. Juliet takes a drug given to her by Friar Laurence. This potion makes her seem dead. The friar sends a messenger to Mantua, but before he arrive Romeo is told that Juliet is dead and decides to come back to Verona. Fifth Act. The fifth act consists of three scenes. first breaks the unity of place, moving from Verona to Mantua. In the last scene Romeo poisons himself after seeing Juliet apparently dead in the tomb, while Juliet, waking from her trance, sees Romeo dead and stabs herself with his dagger. Unlike most Shakespearean heroes, Romeo and Juliet will never know the truth about their death.

ThemesThe main themes of the play are:• The lack of knowledge which necessarily derives

from bad communication: Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy of not knowing and unawareness; it cannot be summed up as the tragedy of ‘old hate’ and ‘young love', since the tragic final destruction results from a pattern which includes the elements of chance.

• The reflection upon language made by Juliet, who shows a tendency to realism in her use of language: though she is set within the court love convention and she stands for innocence, she returns Romeo’s love. She belongs to no characterization. She is in love with Romeo, and the first obstacle to their love is ‘his name’. She reflect upon the symbolic order of language and its links to ‘reality’.