UNIVERSITY OF ZENICA

FACULTY OF PEDAGOGY
 
Department: English Language and Literature
Subject: English Literature
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

MENTOR:
STUDENT:
Prof. Dr. Shahab Yar Khan Naida Merdanović
 
INTRODUCTION
 Humanism and renaissance are two separate concepts, and they should be
distinguished. Humanism is the restoration of humana studia, i.e. the
studies of Latin and Greek language and antic literature, which humanist
rediscover, because in the Middle Ages they were unknown and neglected.

 Renaissance stands for great flourishing of literature and art, which is

manifested in different periods from XV to XVIII century in different
European countries. Important difference between the two is that
humanism is internacional and Latin, while the renaissance develops
national language and national artistic personalities of every nation.

 What distinguishes English renaissance from all the others is that the
revision of antic plays had humanist complexion and not the classicist
complexion it had in Italy. Also English drama speaks of the problems of
common people, it is about common issues, like education, political
afiliations and health. It was essentially a massive movement, produced by
common people and performed in public theatres, and it was a realistic
movement not a metaphysical one. And these are the reasons why some
critics call it Genaissance.
CHAPTER I
MARLOWE AND SHAKESPEARE –
THE RISE OF MACHIAVELLISM
 Marlowe
 English drama will remain indebted to Marlowe because he first displayed
the potentialities of blank verse for dramatic use.

 English drama had dealt with single-minded individuals before Marlowe's

Tamburlain and Dr. Faustus. The struggle inside a character was shown in
a morality play fashion, it would be symbolized by conflicting bodies of
minor characters, and not as a struggle inside a character.

 The theme in Doctor Faustus again is the idea of a passionate struggle to

reach beyond the grasp of ordinary mortals. Marlowe gives to Faustus a
dream of power similar to, but more subtle in design of action, than
Tamburlain's.

 It is again a conqueror's dream, but one in which dominance is to be

attained by fineness of knowledge instead of strength. However, he is
never concerned with carrying on the pursuit of pure knowledge,
knowledge for its own sake or for the advancement of human
comprehension.
 Shakespeare
 For Shakespeare we can say that he was a true connoisseur of human nature,
and most importantly that he was able to show this through his plays. Not
only he knew the true nature of men, but he was also able to show how it
reacts to the changes in the society.

 The dinamics of the society was changing, and a lot of these changes
occurred thanks to Niccolo Machiavelli and the ideas elaborated in his
Prince.

 Machiavelli changed the way people thought about many things, but most
importantly he accounted much more for the ability of people than for their
origin.
 Macbeth
 When thinking of Macbeth, most of us think of him as of a murderer and
usurper, but is this the only way to think of Macbeth?
 At the beginning of a play we hear of a great hero ‘brave Macbeth’,
‘Bellona’s bridegroom’ and of ‘noble Macbeth’, only to hear of him as of a
‘dead butcher’ at the end of the play. Reasons for Macbeth’s killing the king
are not just the ambition to be the king, but much more serious and patriotic,
than it seems in the first place.

Macbeth: … this Duncan

Hath borne his faculties so meek: hath been
So clear in his great office,.. (I.vii.l.1-3)

 But is the king who is facing a war, a rebellion and an invasion at the same
time, a capable king, and having this in mind, can we think of Macbeth as of a
patriot not the usurper.
 Duncan names his son Malcolm as his heir, who is not really a perfect
choice for a king at such critical period for Scotland. Because Malcolm
himself tells us at the beginning of a play about his warrior skills.

Malcolm: This is the Sergeant,

Who like a good and hardy soldier fought
‘Gainst my captivity… (I.ii.l.4-6)

 The crown in Scotland at that period was not strictly hereditary, so Duncan
could have named Macbeth as his heir, because he was much more capable
than Malcolm.

 And we all think of Macbeth as the 21st century audience, and it was
written for 16th century audience, and for them so much blood on the stage
was normal.
 Iago

 A lot of critics say that the character of Iago is unnatural, because of his
wickidness, but Shakespeare with his incredible insight into human nature,
knew differently. Iago shows augmenting pride in his achievement as a
psychologist, dramatist and aesthete as he contemplates the total ruin of the
war god Othello.

Iago: …Three Great-ones of the city

(In personal suit to make me his Lieutenant)
Off-capp’d to him…

 These are the opening lines of Othello, and right at the beginning we have
the reasons which most of the critics name as the reasons why Iago hates
Othello.
 According to Victor Kiernan Iago is going through psychological crisis of
a crussader, meaning that Iago is a psychological victim of an unnatural
growth of a Muslim in a Christian Venice.

 A.C.Bradley says that the hatred is the result of tension of socio-historical

forces, that is the Crussades. Iago is a Crussader, that is a soldier trained to
kill the Infidels, and all of a sudden, there is this Muslim commanding over
one of the most important Christian armies at that period, and more
importantly commanding over him. And after everything he has gone
through he must obey this Muslim Moor, and Iago coming from the society
in which certain prejudices about Muslims were rooted, cannot take this
and he plans to kill the Moor.

 The whole play is concieved as a Machiavellian strategy on how to kill the

Infidel. And the strategy is Machiavellian because, Iago convinces Othello
that he is honest Iago.

 Even though Iago is a true Machiavellian ‘I am not what I am’, he is not

someone who hurts other people so he could enjoy in their pain, because if
he was just a remorseless villain he would not have entrapped so many
with his character.
 Edmund – the base
 It is enough to say that in 16th century England a bastard was considered
to be unnatural, and there was no need to show him a respect decent of a
human being. All this is obvious from the conversation between Gloucester
and Kent at the beginning of the play, in which Gloucester acted as if
Edmund was not present.

Kent: Is not this your son, my Lord?

Gloucester: His breeding sir, hath been at my charge. I
have so often blush’d to acknowledge him, that now I am
braz’d to’t. (I.i.l.9-12)

 Large number of the critics blame him for being extremely cruel, but
Edmund is just a Machiavellian and as such he is the product of the society
he lives in. His opinion abut his situation is clearly visible from his
soliloquy:
 Thou Nature art my Goddess, to thy Law
My services are bound, wherefore should I
Stand in the plague of custom, and permit
The curiosity of Nations, to deprive me?...
(I.ii.l.22-42)

 ‘In his soliloquy Edmund is addressing the goddess of nature, and she
seems the guardian of powers we all approve: strength of mind, animal
vigour, handsome appearance, instinctive appetite, impatience with
hambug and iconoclastic force’.

 Edmund is not a devil. On the contrary, he is a normal, sensible, reasonable

fellow, but an emancipated fellow, and in his soliloquy he showed us a
reflection of new rationality which is opposed to the old-fashioned reason
of Lear. His knowledge of what nature is like is a real knowledge of what
she really is like, and not a twisted image of it in his community.
CHAPTER II
JOHNSON – THE HUMANIST
 Throughout the 17th century Johnson was considered to be England’s
leading dramatist, and by many he shared equality with Shakespeare. It is
even sometimes said that he has unjustly been overshadowed by
Shakespeare.

 But Johnson lacked Elizabethan insight into life as whole, he depicted the
‘humours’ of character, not life in its entirety. Also Johnson relied too
much on learning and detailed realism instead of imagination, and on
classical form rather on classical spirit, the result is that, while Shakespeare
lives, Johnson is but a memory.

 Two comedies The Alchemist and Volpone are Johnson’s lasting

masterpieces. They depict characters in the grip of obsessions, usually for
love or for money, and the farcical build up of the plays reaches a climax
of deceit and trickery that is unique in the theatre. These plays have been
defined as ‘comedy of humours’, where the humour is the principal
characteristic of an individual. The humours, choleric, melancholic,
phlegmatic, or sanguine, of which the human body was believed to be
compounded, determined disposition, and the exaggeration of any one of
them gave rise to the comic obsession Johnson portrayed.
 Johnson endows each of his characters with some particular whim or
affection, but in Volpone he depicts a master passion, the passion of greed,
as it affects a whole social group. The play itself opens with a hymn to
gold which is regarded by Volpone as a ‘saint’ or ‘deity’, and a love of
gold pervades the whole play, and all the characters are in love with
money, property and gold.

 But the two main characters in the play, Volpone and Mosca, are not
governed by a single obsession which excludes every other passion. Both
of them seem to transcend mere miserliness. They treat gold not as
something possessed for its own sake, but rather as an instrument used to
purchase other delights, or as symbol of their genious. For them the
essence of man is the exercise of cunning in order to gain wealth.

 Mosca is a trickster of an exceptional kind, he has unique ingenuity of

mind, and is distinguished from other persons of his kind by awareness of
his art as something inborn. Throughout the play Mosca is demonstrating a
capacity for counterfeiting roles and playing different parts, while nobody
is able to see through his disguise at any stage.
CHAPTER III
MILTON – A MAN OF SATAN’S
PARTY
 As the greatest writer of the 17th century, John Milton wanted to realize
his long-standing ambition to write an epic poem based upon such classical
models as the Iliad and the Aeneid. During the seventeenth century, the
epic was considered the greatest creative achievement possible, and Milton
sought to pen the definitive English epic, following conventions
established by Homer and Virgil.

 Although he had originally planned his theme around the Arthurians

legends, Milton decided to focus instead on the Book of Genesis in the
Bible. This is how he created one of the most famous epics in the world
Paradise lost, which centers on the fall of Adam and Eve and their
restoration to God’s favour, and the epic ranges over time from the
rebellion of Satan and his followers in Heaven to Judgement Day.

 The reasons why Paradise lost is popular even today, is because its topic is
not fiction but real hell and heaven, it is about absolutes not about regions,
it is the universal epic – epic of human kind, it is the most contemporary
epic and it is written in a language shared and spoken by all mankind.
Readers have objective correlative, what means that they can find
themselves in the epic, because it is the epic about mankind.
 Satan
 We can analise Satan through his first four speaches in the epic, which
follow their fall from heaven and their waking up, as a defeated party of
the war against God, in hell. If we accept the opinion, that the first few
lines determine the mind of a character, than we can openly say that the
character of Satan is glorious.

 His first speech is after he wakes in the lake of fire, and recognises his
second in command Beelzebub, changed after the war. He forgets his
suffering after he sees other suffering, and he takes the role of a leader,
trying to raise their broken spirits.

 The Satan acknowledges only a lost battle and not the war, and through the
following lines he not only shows that his ego cannot be won,
determination in his plans to revenge, hate because no one can convince
him that God is good, but also that he will never surrender:
…What though the field be lost?
All is not lost – the unconquerable will.
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield..
(BK.I.l.105-108)
 His firm resolution to do nothing but evil, does not make him necessarily
evil, because he does not do evil – for the sake of doing it, but he does it in
order to oppose God, and it is evident from his own words, which also
show that he is not bad in nature but he is forced to be bad. From this is
evident that Milton is not portraying the Biblical Satan, but the Manichean
one, according to Manicheans we cannot distinguish good from bad
because they are complementary.
To do aught good never will be our task,
But ever to do ill our sole delight,
As being the contrary to His high will
Whom we resist.
(BK.I.l.159-162)

 ‘Embattled seraphims’ are mentioned in Satan’s speech , and they were

the angels created to worship God. Through this the Satan shows us that
God was unpopular in heaven, when even the creatures which burned with
passion for God, stood up against Him.
 Milton’s own self esteem, pride and republicanism, are voiced by the
Satan, and that is why he is the embodiment of heroic energy in which
Milton believed. Probably that is the reason why Blake called Milton ‘of
the Devil’s party’
CONCLUSION
 One of the consequences of the humanism was that the interpretation of the
Biblical texts by the church came under the question. People were no
longer willing to blindly accept approaches of the church regarding the
religion, but they wanted to make their own based on their reading and
understanding of the texts. And as a result of the change in the society,
which now needed men who were able to let go of the past and focus on
the present, the concept of divine virtue was becoming the thing of the past
and sin became socially expedient.

 When all that is said is taken into account it is no wonder that characters
like Dr. Faustus, Macbeth, Iago, Edmund, Mosca and Satan were put on
the stage. For most of the named characters it can be said that they were
living in moral vacuum, but they were just a new power emerging on the
surface. They faced fierce criticism, because of their daring attitudes
toward the world and everything in it. It would be ridiculous to claim that
they are the first ones who were Machiavellians, but they definitely are the
most prominent. Refusing to follow the established conventions of
behaviour, and believing more in the ability of an individual than in God’s
plan for every creature, they were demonstrating one of the basic humanist
beliefs – that the individual matters more than cosmology. It is important to
notice that this did not lead to ateism but to the belief that religion is more
than the forms and rituals performed.
THANK YOU