16th Century
House of Lancaster/House of York: Tudor Dynasty
Henry VIII: break with the Catholic church gradually throughout the 1530s, enabling an ecclesiastical takeover by Protestant reformers inspired by Martin Luther.
Allowed the King to seize all properties and funds belonging to the many monasteries of the country, which were now dissolved.
Elizabeth I: The Elizabethan Settlement: a compromise between the lavish and venerable ceremonies, liturgy, traditions and practices of the Catholic church and the more severe, austere and non-hierarchical theological practices of the Protestant religion. This religious settlement formed the basis for what would become the Anglican Church - The Church of England.
Renaissance - Rebirth of Western culture. reintroduced what was good and civilized about the Classical Greek and Roman eras.
Humanism: Humanisme er en generell holdning og tankeretning som setter mennesket i fokus som selvstendig aktør, ser på mennesket som selv ansvarlig for å skaffe seg kunnskap på best mulig måte ved hjelp av sin kritiske fornuft og praksis, og tilskriver enkeltmennesket en ukrenkelig egenverdi og verdighet.
William Shakespeare.
The establishment of the first permanent theatre buildings in the country. Under the Tudor monarchs, power was increasingly centralised in London, the capital expanded rapidly and there was thus finally a city with enough people to support fixed entertainment venues such as theatres.
Explosion of play writing. Theatre plays was a form that everybody could enjoy, regardless of whether they could read or not and regardless of whether they could afford to buy expensive luxuries such as books or not. Not considered "proper literature" by f.ex. the library of the University of Oxford. Placed outside the City Wall. Associated with other "low" forms of entertainment.
Macbeth:
By what right does anybody hold any authority over anyone else? As a result of violence and deception, do they derive it form their bloodline or from God?
Witchcraft:
Scotland - place of mystery
Tensions between Catolics and Protestants. Roman Catholics was treated with suspicion. Compromise - the Catholics were allowed to continue to practise their forms of worship in private.
The practice of "equivocation": the finding of a form of words that meant one thing to the listener (a Protestant) but another to the speaker (a Catholic).
Equivocal: the world is like a theatre play in which everyone may simply be acting a role and putting on a performance.
Iambic pentameter: de DUM de DUM de DUM de DUM de DUM)
The higher class character express themselves in verse, the lower class in prose.
What drives Macbeth onward on his destructive path? Fate and pre-destination, his amitions, his wife's ambition, his inner character? Is it to avoid suffering himself for his crimes that he continues to commit even more of them?
Free will? How much agency do we have? To what extent are we just the pawns of the gods, circumstances or other people?
Lady Macbteh: