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1. Drama at the time of the English Renaissance flourished and plays got
increasingly complex, especially those of Shakespeare. Although elements of the medieval morality plays still can be seen, in the temptation of characters, and their internal conflict between such forces as ambition and conscience, Shakespeares plays demonstrate the invention of the human, to borrow Blooms phrase, as a modern, complex personality often torn by many conflicting forces, both internal and external.
2.
At the time of Shakespeare people believed there was good and evil in everyone that all humans consisted of opposing forces such as these, and it was important to guard against evil in case you give in to temptation. This idea was reinforced by sermons in the church. In Shakespeares time it was against the law to miss church, and the church often taught people how to resist temptation. Interestingly, Shakespeares great tragedies often show the disastrous consequences of giving in to temptation as Brutus does in Julius Caesar, complete with an allusion to the Fall in the Garden of Eden as Brutus falls in his orchard. Also, Shakespeare has characters that act as tempters Iago in Othello is one, and Cassius is another.
4. In Julius Caesar we see the result of killing a popular leader chaos. In this
way the play might be read as a warning against creating instability in the state. The fact that Caesar is a king in all but name, and is murdered, is more significant to an Elizabethan audience, as a monarch was believed to be the representative of God on Earth. Assassination was thus not merely murder, but also sacrilege.
to come. A popular notion was that when the heavens raged in storms, something must be wrong on Earth see Act I Scenes 2 and 3 in the play.
7. Revenge tragedies were the most popular of the time for example, Thomas
Kyds A Spanish Tragedy. Many of Shakespeares plays involve some kind of revenge plot, including Julius Caesar. Just like in Hamlet the ghost of the murdered king returns to haunt the living world, an embodiment of wrongness that must be balanced. And Mark Antony in Julius Caesar is the willing hero of revenge tragedy, complete with a bloody and horrifying vocabulary see his soliloquy at the end of Act 3 Scene 1.
M.Turver 2006