Introduction

In an England where most of the population was either Catholic or Protestant,

the Queen's tastes in fashion set the standard for the aristocracy and the rest of
society. Under Elizabeth's leadership, England experienced the true cultural
reawakening or renaissance of thought, art, and vision. Her love of music,
drama and fashion encouraged many of the greatest artists in history. The old
sea-king, Sir Francis Drake, made a sweeping attack upon the Spanish
Armada; he also made many discoveries for the crown. This historical period
was characterized by a particular way of thinking.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the world picture during the
Elizabethan period which was inherited from the Middle Ages. The main
concepts that will be developed were commonly known to the collective mind of
the people. These being: order, sin, the chain of being, the planes of
correspondence and the cosmic dance. The structure of the essay will follow
the pattern of Tillyard’s The Elizabethan World Picture. We will attempt to relate
these beliefs to Shakespeare’s work by exemplifying some of them with
excerpts of his plays and poems. When necessary, we will illustrate our point by
quoting Tillyard.

1. Order

The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre

Observe degree priority and place
Insisture course proportion season form
Office and custom, in all line of order;

(Troilus and Cressida: 85-88)

For the Elizabethans the conception of order was deeply ingrained in the minds
of everybody; it was literary taken for granted. This conception shows not only
degrees or categories but also interconnexions between layers. This picture of
order tried to provide the ordinary and the educated people with a sense of
superior unifying power. This supreme order is God’s law, which is above all a
cosmic and domestic order or law. ‘God created his own law both because he
willed it and because it was right.’ (Tillyard: 1968, p 23) In other words, order
could be understood as coming from God because it was his divine reason,
which was beyond man’s grasp.
 ‘REIGNIER. Why ring not out the bells aloud throughout the
town?
Dauphin, command the citizens make bonfires
And feast and banquet in the open streets
To celebrate the joy that God hath given us.’
(Richard VI: I, vi, 11- 14)

The notion of order was closely connected to harmony. However if this

order was broken, the Elizabethans believed that some sort of signs or visible
tokens of disorder would show this disruption. To the Elizabethans this
disruption meant chaos, cosmic anarchy with earthly consequences.

CASCA Are you not moved, when all the sway of earth
Shakes like a thing unfirm?

(Julius Caesar: I, iii, 3-4)

Besides – I ha’ not since put up my sword –
Against the Capitol I met a lion,
Who glazed upon me and went surly by
Without annoying me
(Julius Caesar: I, iii, 19-22)

Ulysses states that throwing out the order of hierarchy completely destroys a
society.
But when the planets
In evil mixture to disorder wander,
What plagues and what portents, what mutiny,
What raging of the sea, shaking of earth,
Commotion in the winds, frights changes horrors,
Divert and crack, rend and deracinate
The unity and married calm of states
Quiet from their fixture! O, when degree is shak'd,
Which is the ladder of all high designs,
The enterprise is sick. How could communities,
Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities,
Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,
The primogenity and due of birth,
Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,
But by degree stand in authentic place?
Take but degree away, untune that string,
And hark what discord follows

(Troilus and Cressida: 94-110)

Order could also be connected to obedience and respect for that order.
One could see a domestic example of order and obedience in The Taming of
the Shrew when Katherina says:

Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,

Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee,
And for thy maintenance commits his body
To painful labour both by sea and land,
To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,
Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe;
And craves no other tribute at thy hands
But love, fair looks, and true obedience-
 Too little payment for so great a debt.
Such duty as the subject owes the prince,
Even such a woman oweth to her husband;
And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour,
And not obedient to his honest will,
What is she but a foul contending rebel
And graceless traitor to her loving lord?
I am asham'd that women are so simple
To offer war where they should kneel for peace;
Or seek for rule, supremacy, and sway,
When they are bound to serve, love, and obey.
(V, ii, 146-164)

While Shakespeare associated disorder with chaos, Spence associated

disorder with mutability. Since ‘mutability is part of a larger stability’ (Tillyard:
1968, p. 27) Spencer expressed this instability through a desire for order.

2. Sin

Another set of principles that influenced the Elizabethans was sin and salvation.
‘The orthodox scheme of salvation was pervasive in the Elizabethan age.’
(Tillyard: 1968, p 29) These concepts were inherited from the Middle Ages; they
became part of the Christian lore through the material drawn from St Paul.
Tillyard believes the scarcity of references is a result of the familiarity of the
scheme of salvation. However its origins go back to the Genesis and Plato’s
Timaeus.
This picture of order and the effects of sin influenced the great medieval
achievements and continued during Elizabethan times. For instance in Measure
for Measure, Isabella says:

Alas, alas!
Why, all the souls that were were forfeit once;
And He that might the vantage best have took
Found out the remedy. How would you be,
If He, which is the top of judgement, should
But judge you as you are? O, think on that;
And mercy then will breathe within your lips,
Like man new.-made.
(II, ii, 72- 79)

Hamlet has a gloom tone towards Purgatory:

GHOST Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night,

And for the day confin'd to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purg'd away. But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul;
freeze thy young blood;
Make thy two eyes, like stars, apart from their spheres;
(I, v, 14- 21)
Hamlet expressing his feelings about his mother’s marriage to his uncle says:
HAMLET: Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d
His canon against self-slaughter! O God! God!
(Ham. I, ii, 131-132)

From The rape of Lucrece, these are Lucrece’s words to Tarquin:

“When Truth and Virtue have to do with thee,
A thousand crosses keep them from thy aid.
They buy thy help; but Sin ne’er gives a fee,
He gratis comes; and thou art well apaid
As well to hear as grant what he hath said.
My Collatine would else have come to me
When Tarquin did, but he hath stayed by thee.

“Guilty thou art of murder and of theft,

Guilty of perjury and subornation,
Guilty of treason, forgery, and shift,
Guilty of incest, that abomination-
An accessory by thine inclination
To all sins past and all that are to come,
From the creation to the general doom.

(The Rape of Lucrece , 911-924)

5. The Cosmic Dance

The notion that the universe was in a state of music or in a perpetual dance
goes back beyond the Middle Ages, to the early Greek philosophers. They held
the view that ‘creation had been figured as an act of music.’ (Tillyard: 1968, p.
123) The degrees or hierarchies mentioned in the previous sections are not
static but moving to the accompaniment of music. This cosmic dance not only
occurred among angels but also among the spheres. For instance in A
Midsummer’s Night Dream, Oberon tells us that:

Thou rememb'rest
Since once I sat upon a promontory,
And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath
That the rude sea grew civil at her song,
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres
To hear the sea-maid's music.

(II, i, 148-154)
Traces of the Cosmic Dance can also be found in The Merchant of Venice when
Jessica and Lorenzo are in Belmont and he says to her:
How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.
Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins;
Such harmony is in immortal souls;
(V, i, 53-62)

The cosmic dance could also be seen as connecting the abstract to the
concrete. For instance, Queen Elizabeth surrounded by her court, showed the
link between the body politic and the microcosm.

Conclusion

Having read and analysed the material, we arrived at the conclusion that
Tillyard’s account of the Elizabethan world picture was not a merely abstract
conception of the universe present in every day life. Through the examples we
have selected from some of Shakespeare’s greatest works, we made an
attempt to illustrate the extent of these beliefs.

Taken from:
Best, Michael.
Shakespeare's Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions, University of
Victoria: Victoria, BC, 2001-2005. <http://ise.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/>. Visited
October 6, 2007.
 1579 drawing of the Great Chain of Being from Didacus Valades, Rhetorica Christiana

Debe, Demetri .
History 1301 Deparment of History website, University of Minnesota.
<http://www.hist.umn.edu/hist1301/documents/documents.html>. Visited
October 6, 2007.