The Renaissance period(literature):1500-1600

In the study of english literature,the medieval period and the Renaissance represent
two distinctly diffrent eras.Not only did the language itself change between the two
periods,but the scoope and subject of literature changed.Broadly speaking the
medieval literature was characterized by christianity and chivalry while Renaissance
literature was greatly influenced by the progress of art,sciences and the emergence
of humanism.During the Renaissance period or the Elezabethan period as it popularly
called,the most memorable achivement in literature was the filed of drama and we
can't talk about drama in that period without mentioning the greatest of all
Elezabethan dramatists(WilliamShakespeare).

William Shakespeare(1564-1616),Stratford-upon-Avon,England,was an
English poet,playwrite and actor.His father was a successful local buissnessman and
his mother was the daughter of a landowner,it is said that he went to the local
grammar school where the curriculum would have stressed a classical education of
Greek mythology,Roman ancient history.As his father struggled with serious financial
debt therefore unlike his fellow playwrite Christopher Marlowe,he did not attend
university so it is still a mystery how an uneducated boy who come to London in
search of odd jobs to scrape a living could reach such heights in dramatic
literature.Shakespeare helped bring the Renaissance freedom,humanity and
rebirth appreciation of classical antiquity to the English theater,and he created new
words and expressions that enabled English to become much more precise artistic
instrument.Shakespeare write numerous work,38 plays and 154 sonnets and
poems.His plays were mainly comedies and histories and this works remain regarded
as some of the best work produced in these genres,he then wrote mainly tragedies
until 1608 including Hamlet,Othello,king lear and Macbeth. In his last phase he
wrote tragicomedies,also known as Romances.

Julius caeser

(1599),one of shakespeare famous plays,it considerd as his

first staged in Roman tragedies,he reworked characters and events with which most
of his audience would have been familiar.In Renaissance England,the ancient Roman
Republic did not seen renote or exotic.Instead it served as an important precedent in
politics and history.This play based on a true story,the historical events surrounding
the conspiracy against the ancient Roman leader Julius Caesar(c 100-44B.C).

Shakespeare portrays Caesar's assassination on the Ides of March(15th March) by

a group of conspirators who feared the ambitious leader would turn the roman
republic into a tyrannical monarchy.

In this paly shakespeare explores themes relevant throughout the history of politics.

"Friends,Romans,Contrymen,lend me your ears..." ,That's the opening to the play's

best known speech and a good place to look at a theme in this paly which is 'The

power of persuasive rhetoric'.