Dear Me,

Oookey dokey!  Another fun chapter of Shakespeare.
God, thinking up of intros for myself is getting harder and seems kinda pointless and yet here I am...meh...

Cheers

Shakespeare: The Biography

by

Peter Ackroyd

Part Three

Chapter 21:  The Spirit of the Time Shall Teach Me Speed

The city was expanding quickly.  It lured both the poor and wealthy, the immigrant and the agricultural labourer.  The aspiring the youth of the country came to the Inns of court, while the gentry haunted the legal courts and royal court of Westminster.The shock of the new, for the young Shakespeare, was in part the shock of great numbers of people huddled together in a vast effusion of life.

London was unique.  It was the only city of its kind in England.  It was no longer a medieval city and had suffered a sea of change.  It was created and existed upon confusion.  The rise of the gentry and the merchant classes steadily eroded the position and privileges of the old nobility.  Kinship counted for less.  It has been described as the transition from a "lineage society" to a "civil society".

The city became home of the pageant in which all the spectacle and colour of the urban world were in display.  On these festival occasions, arches and fountains were especially built, thereby turning London into a piece of moving scenery.  It might in part be a definition of Shakespeare's own art. there was a preference for bold colour, intricate pattern was all designed to elicit wonder or amazement.  These were also the characteristics attributed to Shakespearian drama.  

This sense of magnificence was particularly pertinent to royalty.  Shakespeare, with such dramatic instinct, populated his stage with monarchs and courtiers.  

As the Church became more desacralised, urban society became more profoundly ritualistic and spectacular.  This is of the utmost importance for any understanding of Shakespeare's genius.  He thrived in a city where dramatic spectacle became the primary means of understanding reality.

The London playhouse was a new kind of building.  People watched the actors in order to learn how to behave, how to speak and how to bow.  The drama was used as a means of conveying a social or political message on stage to those in the audience.  It retained its authority as an instructor and was not simply entertainment in a modern sense.