The Renaissance

Our always Virgin Queen

What was the The Renaissance? Why is it different from Puritanism and Middle Ages? These are two (and a half) questions that I hope I can help answer.

By this time, England was facing a rebirth on the arts: architecture, art, theatre. They seeked the knowledge of the Greeks, of the ancient; and found themselves observing the social construct as a whole. The Elizabethan and early Stuart periods have been said to represent the most brilliant century of all.

This century was known for the birth f geniuses, who, until today, have not been surpassed, and still make an impact on the world. And in some point of view, this era was flourished and beautifull, but the context in which England acquired the Renaissance is different. Many changes were being held on the country, taxes were really high and the citizens were not used to this.

England's population doubled, social loyalties were dissolved and the new industrial, agricultural and commercial veins were first tapped. Some social relations were plunged into a state of fluidity from which the merchant and the ambitious lesser gentleman profited at the expense of the aristocrat and the labourer, as satires and comedies current from the 1590s complain.

There was an intellectual revolution, to science, religion and humanism. Humanism fostered an intimate familiarity with the classics that was a powerful incentive for the creation of an English literature of answerable dignity. Humanism’s effect, however, was modified by the simultaneous impact of the flourishing Continental cultures, particularly the Italian.

In 1561, and Elizabethan court poetry is steeped in Castiglione’s aristocratic Neoplatonism, his notions of universal proportion, and the love of beauty as the path to virtue. Equally significant was the welcome afforded to Nicholas Machiavelli, whose lessons were vilified publicly and absorbed in private. The Prince, written in 1513, was unavailable in English until 1640.

And here, our queen makes an entrance. With all these changes, the situation became desperate for literature. Therefore, in 1570, the poetry and English prose burst in glory. The always virgin queen, Elizabeth, composed different types of poems, being the most recognized one "When I young and fair" that reads:

When I Was Fair and Young

BY QUEEN ELIZABETH I

When I was fair and young, then favor graced me. Of many was I sought their mistress for to be. But I did scorn them all and answered them therefore: Go, go, go, seek some other where; importune me no more. How many weeping eyes I made to pine in woe, How many sighing hearts I have not skill to show, But I the prouder grew and still this spake therefore: Go, go, go, seek some other where, importune me no more. Then spake fair Venus’ son, that proud victorious boy, Saying: You dainty dame, for that you be so coy, I will so pluck your plumes as you shall say no more: Go, go, go, seek some other where, importune me no more. As soon as he had said, such change grew in my breast That neither night nor day I could take any rest. Wherefore I did repent that I had said before: Go, go, go, seek some other where, importune me no more.

Therefore, the Renaissance was a period of rebirth of the arts, of theatre and advances on technology. It was called the Golden age, not because of society, but because the philosophy was all about the rebirth. The difference with the Middle Ages is basically that the ruled was centered on educating man, and re-flourishing the arts.