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    Elizabethan Tragedy

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    Taibur Rahaman
    The document discusses the origins and development of Elizabethan tragedy and comedy in Renaissance England. Tragedy flourished due to questions about human nature being asked as people discovered themselves and contending forces of nature. Key tragedians included Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare, whose works like "Tamburlin", "Faustus", and "Macbeth" captured the spirit of the age. Comedy also thrived and commented on increasing wealth and immoral habits through works by Ben Jonson and Shakespeare. Elizabethan drama originated from religious rituals and traditions, such as mystery plays performed in churches, and was influenced by university performances of Greek drama and Italian commedia dell'arte traditions. It progressed from religious to moral to artistic periods.

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    Elizabethan Tragedy

    Uploaded by

    Taibur Rahaman
    3K views1 page
    The document discusses the origins and development of Elizabethan tragedy and comedy in Renaissance England. Tragedy flourished due to questions about human nature being asked as people discovered themselves and contending forces of nature. Key tragedians included Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare, whose works like "Tamburlin", "Faustus", and "Macbeth" captured the spirit of the age. Comedy also thrived and commented on increasing wealth and immoral habits through works by Ben Jonson and Shakespeare. Elizabethan drama originated from religious rituals and traditions, such as mystery plays performed in churches, and was influenced by university performances of Greek drama and Italian commedia dell'arte traditions. It progressed from religious to moral to artistic periods.

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    The document discusses the origins and development of Elizabethan tragedy and comedy in Renaissance England. Tragedy flourished due to questions about human nature being asked as people discovered themselves and contending forces of nature. Key tragedians included Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare, whose works like "Tamburlin", "Faustus", and "Macbeth" captured the spirit of the age. Comedy also thrived and commented on increasing wealth and immoral habits through works by Ben Jonson and Shakespeare. Elizabethan drama originated from religious rituals and traditions, such as mystery plays performed in churches, and was influenced by university performances of Greek drama and Italian commedia dell'arte traditions. It progressed from religious to moral to artistic periods.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    3K views1 page

    Elizabethan Tragedy

    Uploaded by

    Taibur Rahaman
    The document discusses the origins and development of Elizabethan tragedy and comedy in Renaissance England. Tragedy flourished due to questions about human nature being asked as people discovered themselves and contending forces of nature. Key tragedians included Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare, whose works like "Tamburlin", "Faustus", and "Macbeth" captured the spirit of the age. Comedy also thrived and commented on increasing wealth and immoral habits through works by Ben Jonson and Shakespeare. Elizabethan drama originated from religious rituals and traditions, such as mystery plays performed in churches, and was influenced by university performances of Greek drama and Italian commedia dell'arte traditions. It progressed from religious to moral to artistic periods.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
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    Elizabethan Tragedy

    Renaissance England was like the Greek of fourth and fifth century. Man was discovering himself and other
    contending forces of nature. The question of human nature relationships was being asked. The natural outcome
    of this spirit was tragedy. The concept of Elizabethan tragedy was very much influenced by the classical
    Aristotelian concept of tragedy. Two well known masters of this dramatic art are Christopher Marlow and
    William Shakespeare. Marlows Tamburlin, Paustus and the Jew of Malta truly depict the spirit of the age;
    hankering after unlimited power and wealth. William Shakespeare cannot be rivaled by any other writer of any
    language. His tragedies Macbeth, Othello and King Lear are the production of his absolute literary genius.
    Some other writers were also writing for the theater. Theater has become, due to these great writers, the
    theater of common people; men and women of all classes flocked to the theater and theater had turned from
    royal courts to the entertainment of common people. This age was so full of intellectual spirit and activities
    that the age could not have got its proper expression without drama.

    Elizabethan Comedy
    Elizabethan comedy is also a sublime production of human inclination to the humour and mirth. Comedy of this
    age is also an example of supreme dramatic art. The major comedy writers of the age are Ben Jonson and
    William Shakespeare. Increasing wealth and the Renaissance spirit of the age was breeding different immoral
    habits in people; this was depicted in the comedies of this age. Ben Jonsons Everyman in his Humour and
    Volpone and Shakespeare Comedy of Errors and Tempest are the examples of highest standard of comedy
    ever produced in English literature. Thus a courtly age and the age when the human imagination was discovering
    new worlds and also when civil rifes were breeding in the society found its expression in comedy more
    effectively.

    Origin of Elizabethan Drama


    Elizabethan drama is identical with Greek drama as for as the origins of the drama of both ages is concerned.
    Elizabethan drama originated from the religious rituals and traditions. It derived its incentives from the
    medieval theater traditions such as the mystery plays that formed a part of religious festivals in England and
    other parts of Europe during the middle ages. The mystery plays were actually the processes of retelling the
    Biblical stories of different Biblical themes that were originally performed in churches. Later on, these
    religious festivals were linked to the secular celebrations. Three types of influences can be traced that left
    impacts on the Elizabethan drama. First, the religious festivals of medieval church, second, the university units
    who wanted to recreate the Greek drama, third, the Italian traditions of Commedia dell arte. These three
    influences can be seen in all Elizabethan literature in general and Elizabethan drama in particular.
    The religious period of Elizabethan drama was full of mystery and miracle plays. At first the actors as well as
    the authors of the Miracle Plays were the priests and their chosen assistants. Later, when the town guilds took
    up this play and each guild became responsible for one or more of the series, the actors were carefully
    selected and trained. The moral period is marked with the production of morality plays. But the sublimity of
    Elizabethan drama was reached in the artistic period of drama. In Elizabethan drama the three unities were
    discarded and chorus was reduced to the single person who spoke usually the prologue before the play.

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