After Shakespeare’s death, the poet and dramatist Ben Jonson was the leading literary figure of the Jacobean era ( The reign of James I ). However, Jonson’s aesthetics hark back to the Middle Age rather than to the Tudor Era: his characters embody the theory of humors. According to this contemporary medical theory, behavioural differences result from a prevalence of one of the boys four “humors” (blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile ) over the other three: these humors correspond with the four elements of the universe: air, water, fire, and earth. This leads Jonson to exemplify such differences to the point of creating types, or clichés.

           Jonson is a master of style, and a brilliant satirist, His Volpone shows how a group of scammers are fooled by a top can-artist, vice being punished by vice, virtue meeting its reward.

Others who followed Jonson’s style include Beaumont and Fletcher, who wrote the brilliant comedy, The Knight of the Burning Pestle, a mockery of the rising middle class and especially of those nouveau riches who Pretend to dictate literary taste without knowing much literature at all. In the story, a couple of grocers wrangle with professional actors to have their illiterate son play a leading role in a drama. He becomes a Knight-errant wearing, appropriately, a burning pestle on his shield. Seeking to win a princess’s heart, the young man is ridiculed much in the way Don Quixote was. One of Beaumont and Fletcher's chief merits was that of realising how feudalism and chivalry had turned into snobbery and make-believe and that new social classes were on the rise.

Another popular style of theatre during Jacobean times was the revenge play, popularized by John Webster and Thomas Kyd. George Chapman  wrote a couple of subtle revenge tragedies, but must be remembered chiefly on account of his famous translation of Homer, one that had a profound influence on all future English literature, even inspiring John Keats to write one of his best sonnets.

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Hamlet is probably the most popular of Shakespeare’s plays, judging by the number of productions: for example, topping the list at the Royal Shakespeare since 1879. The plot contains elements of revenge tragedy, fratricide, murder, existentialist self- questioning and supernatural intervention. It is Shakespeare’s longest play , and the part of prince Hamlet is by far the largest role in any of his plays.

This a story about young Prince Hamlet who bears the same name as his father, the King of Denmark, who has recently and unexpectedly passed away. His brother, Claudius, has inherited the throne and taken the former kings wife ( and also Prince Hamlets mother ), Gertrude, as his own. Prince Hamlet is greatly grieved by the surrogation of Claudius to the throne and Gertrude’s hasty remarriage to her departed husband's brother, whom Prince Hamlet considers hardly worth of comparison to his father.

On a dark winter night, a ghost resembling the deceased King Hamlet appears to Bernardo, Marcellus, and Horatio, watchmen of Elsinore Castle in Denmark, seemingly with an important message to deliver. However, the ghost vanishes before his message can be told. The sentries notify the prince, prompting his investigation into the matter. The apparition appears once again and speaks to Hamlet, revealing to him that his fathers was murdered by Claudius. After commanding Hamlet to avenge his father's death, the ghost disappears. Hamlet plots to confirm Claudius’s guilt by feigning madness.

Upon notice of Claudius and Gertrude, a pair of Hamlets schoolmates named Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are appointed to monitor him and discover the cause of his apparent insanity. Polonius, the councellor to the King, suspects that the origin of Hamlets madness lies with his love for Polonius daughter,

Ophelia. However, in a secretly overseen meeting between the two suspected lovers, there is no evidence that Hamlet loves Ophelia؛ to the contrary, he orders her away to a nunnery.

Hamlet contrives a plan to uncover Claudius’s guilt by staging a play re-enacting the murder. Claudius interrupts the play midway through and leaves the room. Horatio confirms the Kings reaction and Hamlet goes to avenge his father. He is poised to Kill when he finds Claudius in prayer but concludes that Killing him now would result in his soul's passage to heaven – an inappropriate fate for one so evil. However, when he leaves, Claudius reveals that he had not been praying in a very pious manner.

Hamlet goes to confront and reprimand his mother. When he hears a noise behind the curtain, he thrusts his sword into it, Killing the eavesdropping Polonius. Fearing for his own safety, Claudius deports Hamlet to England along with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who unbeknownst to Hamlet, carry a request for the arrangement of his death .

Ophelia, afflicted by grief, goes mad and drowns in a river ( perhaps by her own doing ). Laertes, her brother and Polonius’s son, returns from his visit to France enraged. Claudius convinces Laertes that Hamlet is to blame for the death of Polonius. Hamlet sends word that he has returned to Denmark after his ship was attacked by pirates on the way to England. Claudius, realizing in Laertes an opportunity to get rid of Hamlet, wagers that Hamlet can best Laertes in a fencing match. The fight is a setup؛  Laertes' blade is poisoned, as is the wine in a goblet from which Hamlet is to drink.

During the bout, Gertrude drinks from the poisoned goblet and dies. Laertes succeeds in cutting Hamlet, then is cut by his own blade. With his dying breath, he reveals the King's plot to kill Hamlet. Hamlet manages to kill Claudius before he too succumbs to the fatal poison. Fortinbras, a Norwegian price with ambitions Of conquest, leads his army to Denmark and comes upon the scene. Horatio recounts the tale and Fortinbras orders Hamlet's body to be carried away honourably.

In this play, price Hamlet is by far the major presence: his problem is central to the plot, and his public wit and private speculations dominate the action. The part of the Prince is far longer that any other in all of Shakespeare’s plays. This most popular tragedy has many dark corners ( Is the ghost good or evil ? Why did Ophelia die?), yet the biggest mysteries of all concern Hamlet's character, his psychology, and his real motivations. Can we make any sense of him at all ? there has been no dearth of speculation no these and many other questions about this central character in Western literature . Anther important aspect of the character is the debate regarding Hamlets exact age in the play. While some consider it to be in the thirties, other interpret his age in the teens to better explain his rebellious attitude.

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As the play opens amid thunder and lightning, with three Witches- the Weird sisters- deciding that their next meeting shall be with a certain Macbeth. In the following scene, a wounded soldier reports to King Duncan of Scotland that his generals, Macbeth ( who is the Thane of Glamis ) and Banquo, have just defeated an invasion by the allied forces of Norway and Ireland, led by the rebel MacDonald.

When Macbeth and Banquo wander into a heath, the three Witches greet them with prophecies. The first hails Macbeth as “Thane of Glamis”, the second as “Thane of Cawdor “ , while the third proclaims that he shall “be King hereafter “ The Witches also inform Banquo he shall father a line of kings. While the two men wonder at these pronouncements, the Witches disappear. Another Thane, Rosse, a messenger from the King, arrives and informs Macbeth of his newly-bestowed title – Thane of Cawdor. The first prophecy is thus fulfilled. Immediately, Macbeth begins to harbour ambitions of becoming king.

Macbeth writes to his wife about the Witches prophecies. When Duncan decides to stay at Macbeths castle at Inverness, Lady Macbeth hatches a plan to murder him and secure the throne for her husband. While Macbeth raises concerns about the regicide, Lady Macbeth eventually manages to persuade him.

In the night, Macbeth Kills Duncan. Lady Macbeth arranges to frame Duncan’s sleeping servants for the murder by planting bloody daggers on them. Early the next morning, Lennox, a Scottish nobleman, and Mac duff, the loyal Thane of Fife, arrive. The porter opens the gate and Macbeth leads them to the Kings chamber, where Mac duff discovers Duncan’s corpse. In a sham fit of fury, Macbeth murders the servants before they can protest their innocence. Mac duff is immediately suspicious of Macbeth. Fearing for their lives, Duncan’s sons flee, Malcolm to England and his brother Donalbain to Ireland. The rightful heirs flight makes them suspect, and Macbeth assumes the throne as the new King of Scotland as a kinsman to the dead King.

Despite his success, Macbeth remains uneasy regarding the prophecy that Banquo would be the progenitor of Kings. Macbeth invites Banquo to a royal banquet and discovers that Banquo and his son, Fleance, While  be riding that night. He hires three men to Kill Banquo and Fleance. While they succeed in murdering Banquo, Fleance is able to escape. At the banquet, Banquo's ghost enters and sits in Macbeths’ place.

Disturbed, Macbeth goes to the Witches once more. They conjure up three spirits which tell him to “beware Macduff”, but also that “none of woman born shall harm Macbeth” and he will “never vanquish'd be until Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane Hill shall come against him”. Since Macduff is in exile, Macbeth massacres everyone in Macduff castle, including Macduff wife and children .Lady Macbeth eventually becomes rocked with guilt from the crimes she and her husband have committed. In a famous scene, she sleepwalks and tries to wash imaginary bloodstains off her hands.

In England, Malcolm and Macduff plan an invasion of Scotland. Malcolm leads an army, along with Macduff and Englishman Siward ( the Elder ), the Earl of Northumbria, against Dunsinane Castle. While encamped in Birnam Wood, the soldiers are ordered to cut down and carry tree limbs to camouflage their numbers, thus fulfilling the Witches' second prophesy. Meanwhile, Macbeth delivers a famous nihilistic soliloquy (“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow”) upon learning of Lady Macbeth's death ( the cause is undisclosed, but it is assumed by some that she committed suicide).

A battle ensues, culminating in the slaying of the young Siward and Macduff's confrontation with Macbeth. Macbeth boasts that he has no reason to fear Macduff, as he cannot be Killed by any man born of woman. Macduff declares that he was “from his mothers womb / Untimely ripped”(i.e., born by Caesarean section before his mothers actual delivery)- and was therefore not “of woman born”. Too late, Macbeth realises the Witches have misled him. A fight ensues, which ends with Macduff beheading Macbeth offstage, thereby fulfilling the last of the prophecies.

In the final scene, Malcolm is crowned as the rightful King of Scotland, suggesting that peace has been restored to Kingdom. However, the witches' prophecy concerning Banquo, “Thou shalt [be] get King” , was known to the audience of Shakespeare’s time to be true, as James I of England was supposedly a descendant of Banquo.

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      Traditionally, the plays of William Shakespeare have been grouped into three categories: tragedies, comedies, and histories. Some critics have argued for a fourth category, the romance. Like most Western tragedies, a Shakespearean tragedy usually depicts a protagonist who falls from grace and dies, along with a fair proportion of the rest of the cast. It has been suggested that Shakespearean tragedy is the polar opposite of a comedy: it exemplifies the sense that human beings are inevitably doomed through their own failures or errors, or even the ironic action of their virtues, or through the nature of fate, destiny, or the human condition to suffer, fail, and die…. In other words, it is a drama with a necessarily unhappy ending.

      Shakespeare wrote tragedies from the beginning of his career: one of his earliest plays was the Roman tragedy Titus Andronicus, and he followed it a few years later with Romeo and Juliet. [However, his most admired tragedies were written in a seven-year period between 1601 and 1608:] [Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth] (his four major tragedies) and Antony & Cleopatra, along with the lesser-known Timon if Athens and Troilus and Cressida.

      [ Many have linked these plays to Aristotle’s precept about tragedy: that the protagonist must be an admirable but flawed character, with the audience able to understand and sympathize with the character. Certainly, each of Shakespeare’s tragic protagonists is capable of both good and evil.] The playwright insists always on the operation of the doctrine of free will: always the ( anti ) hero is able to back out, to redeem himself. But, the author dictates, they must move unheedingly to their doom.

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A number of Shakespeare’s plays are widely regarded as among the greatest in the English language and in Western literature. He wrote tragedies, histories, comedies and romances, which have been tragedies into every major living language, in addition to being continually performed around the world

As was normal in the period, Shakespeare based many of his plays on the work of other playwrights and reworked earlier stories and historical material. For example, Hamlet ( c. 1601 ) is probably a reworking of an older, lost play ( the so-called Ur-Hamlet), and King Lear is an adaptation of an earlier play, also called King Lear.

For plays on historical subjects, Shakespeare relied heavily on two principal texts. Most of the Roman and Greek plays are based on Plutarch Parallel Lives ( Form the 1579 English translation by Sir Thomas North ), and the English history plays are indebted to Raphael Holinshed’s 1587 Chronicles).

Shakespeare’s plays tend to be placed into three main stylistic groups:

* early comedies and histories ( such as A Midsummer Nights Dream and Henry IV, part I )

* middle period ( which includes his most famous tragedies, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Hamlet and King Lear, as well as ’’problem plays ’’ such as Troilus and Cressida and Measure for Measure )

* Iater romances ( such The Winters Tale and the Tempest ).

The earlier plays range from broad comedy to historical nostalgia, while the middle-period plays tend to be grander in terms of theme, addressing such issues as betrayal, murder, lust, power and ambition. By contrast, his late romances feature redemptive plotlines with ambiguous ending and the use of magic and other fantastical elements. However, the borders between these genres are never clear .

Some of Shakespeare’s plays first appeared in print as a series of quartos, but most remained unpublished until 1623 when the posthumous First Folio was published by two actors who had been in Shakespeare’s company: John Heminges and Henry Condell. The traditional division of his plays into tragedies, comedies, and histories directions, punctuation and act divisions enter his plays, setting the trend for further future editorial decisions. Modern criticism has also labelled some of his plays problem plays or tragic-comedies,  as they elude easy categorization, or perhaps purposefully break generic conventions. The term romances has also been preferred for the later comedies .

There are many controversies about the exact chronology of Shakespeare’s plays. In addition, the Shakespeare did not produce an authoritative print version of his plays during his life accounts for part of the textual problem often noted with his plays, which means that for several of the plays there are different textual versions. As a result, the problem of identifying what Shakespeare actually wrote became a major concern for most modern editions. Textual corruptions also stem from printers errors, compositors misreading, or wrongly scanned lines from the source material. Additionally, in an age before standardized spelling, Shakespeare often wrote a word several times in a different spelling, contributing further to the transcribers confusions. Modern scholars also believe Shakespeare revised his plays throughout the years, sometimes leading to perhaps two or more existing versions of one play.

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William Shakespeare ( baptised April 26, 1564 – died April 23, 1616) was an English poet and playwright widely regarded as the greatest writer of the English language, and the worlds preeminent dramatist. He wrote approximately 38 plays and 154 sonnets, as well as a variety of other poems. Already a popular writer in his own lifetime, Shakespeare became increasing celebrated after his death and his work adulated by numerous prominent cultural

figures through the centuries. In addition, Shakespeare is the most quoted writer in the literature and history of the English speaking world He is often considered to be England’s national poet and sometimes referred to as the Bard of Avon ( Or simply The Bard ) or the (Swan of Avon ).

Orthodox scholars believe Shakespeare produced most of his work between 1586 and 1612, although the exact dates and chronology of the plays attributed to him are under considerable debate. He is counted among the very few playwrights who have excelled in  both tragedy and comedy, and his plays combine popular appeal with complex characterization, poetic grandeur and philosophical depth.

Shakespeare’s works have been translated into every major living language, and his plays are continually performed all around the world. In addition, his many quotations and neologisms have passed into everyday usage in English and other languages. Over the years, many people have speculated about Shakespeare’s life, raising questions about his sexuality, religious affiliation, and the authorship of his works .

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Elizabeth’s reign is referred to as the Elizabethan era or the Golden Age of Elizabeth. Playwrights William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlow, and Ben Jonson all flourished during this era: Francis Drake became the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe: Francis Bacon laid out his philosophical and political views: and English colonisation of North America took place under Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Humphrey Gilbert. A favourite motto for her was video et taceo (I see and keep silent ) . This last quality, viewed with impatience by her counsellors, often Henry VIII, she was writer and poet. She granted Royal Charters to several famous organisations, including Trinity College, Dublin ( its official name is the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Elizabeth near Dublin ) in 1592 and the British East India Company ( 1600 ).                                                                                     

In nearly forty-five years, only nine peerage dignities, one earldom and seven baronies in the peerage of England, and one barony in the peerage of Ireland, were created. She also reduced the number of Privy Counsellors from thirty-nine to nineteen, and later to fourteen.                                                                

The Commonwealth of Virginia, a former English colony in North America and one of the United States of Americas original 13 states, was named after Elizabeth I, the "Virgin Queen"

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The Elizabethan Era is the period associated with the reign of Queen Elizabeth I ( 1558 – 1603 ) and is often considered to be a golden age in English history. It was the height of the English Renaissance, and saw the flowering of English literature and poetry This was also the time during which Elizabethan theatre flourished and William Shakespeare, among others composed plays that broke away from England’s past style of plays. It was an age of expansion and exploration abroad, while at home the protestant Reformation became entrenched in the national mindset.                              

The Elizabethan Age is viewed so highly because of the contrast with the periods before and after. It was a brief period of largely internal peace between the English Reformation and the battles between protestants and Catholics and the battles between parliament and the monarchy that would engulf the seventeenth century. The Protestant/ Catholic divide was settled, for a time, by the Elizabethan Religious Settlement and parliament was still not strong enough to challenge royal absolutism.

                                

England was also well-off compared to the other nations of Europe. The Italian Renaissance had come to an end under the weight of foreign domination of the peninsula. France was embroiled in its own religious battles that would only be settled in 1598 with the Edict of Nantes. In part because of this, but also because the English had been expelled from their last outposts on the continent, the centuries long conflict between France and England was largely suspended for most of Elizabeth’s reign.

The one great rival was Spain, with which England conflicted both in Europe and the Americas in skirmishes that exploded into the Anglo-Spanish War of 1585 – 1604. An attempt by Philip II of Spain to invade England with the Spanish Armada in 1588 was famously defeated, but the tide of war turned against England

with a disastrously unsuccessful attack upon Spain, the Drake– Norris Expedition of 1589. Thereafter Spain provided some support for Irish Catholics in a draining guerrilla war against England and Spanish naval and land forces inflicted a series of defeats upon English forces. This badly damaged both the English Exchequer and economy that had been so carefully restored under Elizabeth’s prudent guidance. English colonization and trade would be frustrated until the singing of the Treaty of London the year following Elizabeth's death.

England during this period had a centralized, well-organized, and effective government, largely a result of the reforms of Henry VII and Henry VIII. Economically,the country began to benefit greatly from the new era of trans-Atlantic trade.                                                        

Elizabeth I ( 7 September 1533 – 24 march 1603 ) was Queen of England, Queen of France ( in name only ), and Queen of Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. She is sometimes referred to as The Virgin Queen ( as she never married ), Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess, and was immortalized by Edmund Spenser as the Faerie Queen Elizabeth I was the sixth and final monarch of the Tudor dynasty ( along with Henry VII, Henry VIII, her half-brother Edward VI, her cousin Jane, and her half-sister Mary I).[She reigned for 44 years, during a period marked by increases in English power and influence worldwide, as well as great religious turmoil within England

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The Renaissance Age in Literature and History

The word Renaissance ( French for  'rebirth', or Rinascimento in Italian) was first used to define the historical sge in Italy – and in Europe in general- thst followed rge Middle Ages and preceded the Reformation, spanning roughly the 14^th through the 16^th century. The principal features were the revival of learning based on classical sources, the rise of courtly and papal patronage, the development of perspective, and the advancements of science. The word Renaissance is now often used to describe other historical and cultural moments ( e.g the Carolingian Renaissance, the Byzantine Renaissances).

Renaissance Self-awareness

By the fifteenth century, writers, artists, and architects in Italy were well aware of the transformations that were taking place and were using phrases like modi antichi (in the antique manner) or alle romana et alla antica (in manner of the Romans and the ancients) to describe their work. As to the term "rebirth", it seems that Albrecht Durer in 1523 was the first to use such a term when he uses Widererwachsung ( German: rebirth ) to describe Italian art. The term "la rinascita" first appeared, however, in its broad sense in Giorgio Vasari's Vite de' piu eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori Italian ( The Lives of the Artists, 1550-68). Vasari divides the age into phases: the first phase contains Cimabue, Giotto and Arnolof di Cambio; the second phase contains Masaccio, Brunelleschi and Donatello; the third centers on Leonardo da Vinci, culminating with Michelangelo. It was not just the growing awareness of classical antiquity that drove this development, according to Vasari, but also the growing desire to study and imitate nature.

The Renaissance as a Historical Age.

The period did not become recognized as a historical age, however, until the early 19^th century during which time the word renaissance In French came to be used to describe it. The Renaissance was first defined by French historian Jules Michelet (1798-1874), in his Histoire de France (History of France, 1885). For Michelet, the Renaissance was less a development in art and culture as in science. For him, it spanned the period from Columbus to Copernicus to Galileo, in other words from the end of the 15^th century to the middle of the 17^th century. The Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt (1818-1897) in his Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italian ( The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, 1860) ( English translation, by SGC Middlemore, in 2 vols., London, 1878), by contrast, followed Vasari, defining the Renaissance as the period between the Italian painters Giotto and Michelangelo. His book was widely read and influential in the development of the modern interpretation of the Italian Renaissance. In architecture, the folio of measured drawings Edifices de Rome moderne; ou, Recueil des palais, maisons, eglises, couvents et autres monuments, ( The Buildings of Modern Rome) first published in 1840, by Paul Letarouilly (1795-1855) also played an important part in the revival odf interest in this period.

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Anglo-Saxon literature (or Old English literature) encompasses literature written in Anglo-Saxon period of Britain, from the mid-5^th century to the Norman Conquest of 1066. These works include genres such as epic poetry, hagiography, sermons, Bible translations, legal works, chronicles, riddles, and other literary works. In all there are about 400 surviving manuscripts from the period, a significant corpus of both popular interest and specialist research.

Some of the most important works from this period include the poem of Beowulf, which has achieved national epic status in Britain, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a collection of early English history, and the poem of Caedmon's Hymn from the 7^th century, one of the oldest surviving written texts in English.

Old English literature, though more abundant than literature of the continent before 1000 A.D, is, nonetheless, scanty. In his supplementary article to 1935 posthumous edition of Bright's Anglo-Saxon Reader, Dr. James Hulbert Writes:

In such historical conditions, an incalculable amount of the writings of the Anglo-Saxon period perished. What they contained, how important they were for an understanding of literature before the conquest, we have no means of knowing: the scant catalogs of monastic libraries do not help us, and there are no references in extant works to other compositions … How incomplete our materials are can be illustrated by the well-known fact that, with few and relatively unimportant exceptions, all extant Anglo-Saxon poetry is preserved in four manuscripts.

Old English was one of the first vernacular languages to be written down. As mentioned earlier, some of the most important surviving works of Old English literature are Beowulf, an epic poem, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a record of early English history, and Caedmon's Hymn, a Christian religious poem. There are also a number of extant prose works, such as sermons and saints' lives, biblical translations, and translated Latin works of the early Church Fathers, legal documents, such as laws and wills, and practical works on grammar, medicine, and geography. Still, poetry is considered to be the heart of Old English literature. Nearly all Anglo-Saxon authors are anonymous, with a few exceptions, such as Bede and Caedmon.

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In historiography, the term Dark Ages or Dark Age most commonly refers to the European Early Middle Ages, the period encompassing (roughly) 476 to 1000. This concept of " Dark Age " was created by the Italian scholar Francesco Petrarch and Was originally intended as sweeping criticism of the character of Late Latin Literature. Later historians expanded the term to include not only the lack of Latin literature, but a lack of  contemporary written history and material cultural achievements in general. Popular culture has further expanded on the term as a vehicle to depict the middle ages as a time of backwardness, extending its pejorative use and expanding its scope. The rise of archaeology and other specialties in the 20^th century has shed much light on the period and offered a more nuanced understanding of its positive developments. Other terms of periodization have come to the fore: Late Antiquity, the Early Middle Ages and the Great Migrations, depending on which aspects of culture are being emphasized.

Most modern historians dismiss the notion that the era was a "Dark Age" by pointing out that this idea was based on ignorance of the period combined with popular stereotypes, many previous authors would simply assume that the era was a dismal time of violence and stagnation and use this assumption to prove itself. The term is now widely considered to be pejorative.

In Britain and the United States, the phrase "Dark Ages" has occasionally been used by professionals, with severe qualifications, as a term of periodization. This usage is intended as non-judgmental and simply means the relative lack of written record, " silent " as much as " Dark "

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