WORKSHOP III: The Elizabethan World Picture?

By Don Finkel

Form groups of four. Find new people to work with and a comfortable place to work. Before you leave the room, make sure you receive your assignment for Part III. Discuss the following questions and try to agree on answers to them as a group. Write down your group's answers (and your own, if you disagree) in your notebook, so you can refer to them in seminar and in the whole group discussion at the end of the workshop. Appoint someone in the group to keep an eye on the time, so you move through the workshop in the designated time.

Part I Making the Picture (1 hour and 15 minutes)

The goal of Part I is to get you to assemble what Tillyard calls the "Elizabethan world picture." We want you to get clear on its internal structure, before we go on to test it in Parts II and III.

1. (10 min.) Draw a large picture of the Ptolemaic universe with the earth at its center and the "nine, ten or eleven" spheres which surround it. Label all the spheres. Place in their appropriate place: the stars, the planets, the sun, the moon, the angels, God, man, plants, animals and metals.

What is the relationship between the stars and fortune or fate? How did mankind bring this upon itself?

Did the Elizabethans believe they could resist fate?

What is the function of the uninhabited sphere called the primum mobile? Why, do you suppose, the astronomers posited such a sphere?

What does the sublunary realm refer to? Why is this an important realm to distinguish?

2. (10 min.) According to Elton, (p. 18) the scale of creation was characterized by hierarchy, continuity, and plenitude. Explain what each of these terms means, and speculate on the implications of each.

Tillyard, speaking of the chain of creation, says, "There could be no gap." (p. 26) Why could there be no gap?

This universe you will notice is finite. Since Newton, we have come to think of the universe as consisting of infinite space. Why could the medieval imagination not permit into its cosmology the notion of infinite space, do you suppose?

3. (20 min) We will now look at other key ideas to see how they fit in.

For each of the four listed below (a) explain its meaning, (b) give an example, and (c) explain how it fits into the picture that is emerging:

natural law (pp. 13-14)

virtue--the single particular in which each class of creation excelled (p. 29)

sin and disorder (p. 18ff.)

the notion of a ladder (p. 28)

4. (5 min.) Distinguish between and locate on your diagram the three moving forces of history (p. 52): Fortune, Providence, and Human Character.

5. (5 min.) Tillyard repeatedly quotes Ulysses's claim from Troilus that the universe observes "degree, priority, and place." Explain what each of these terms means separately, and then explain how they work together. Give an example of how they work together.

6. (10 min.) If the physical universe is the macrocosm, what is the microcosm? Why is that thing called a microcosm?

If you didn't use the "theory" of the four elements and the four humours to answer the above question, do so now?

Show the distribution of matter and spirit on your diagram. What is the "grossest" (i.e., most material) place in the universe? Where is it located?

What is the distribution of matter and spirit in man? Matter tends naturally to go down, and spirit tends naturally to go up? Where does man tend naturally to go?

7. (15 min) Tillyard refers to "the Elizabethan hovering between equivalence and metaphor." (p. 99-100). Explain the difference between an equivalence and a metaphor. Give an example of each. Now generate a comparison which can be rendered either as an equivalence or a metaphor and show what difference it makes.

Think of a modern metaphor that holds great power for us. How is this like the way correspondences worked for the Elizabethans according to Tillyard, and how is it different?

BREAK: It should be 11:30 now; take a 15 minute break. Begin Part II by 11:45.

Part II Using the Picture (35 minutes)

For each of the three questions below, read through the passages, and select two or three to work on. Look up the passages and consider them in light of the Elizabethan World Picture you have just drawn. Think about them in terms of the theory of the vertical chain of being and the horizontal correspondences. Discuss how an understanding of Tillyard's Elizabethan World Picture specifically enhances the meaning of the passage.

1. (5 min.) Order and Chaos

You seem to me as Dian in her orb

As chaste as is the bud ere it be blown.

Much Ado IV.i.58-59

O, Speak again, bright angel, for thou art

As glorious to this night, being o'ver my head,

As is a winged messenger of heaven

Romeo, II. ii. 26-30.

Art thou a man? Thy form cries out thou art;

Thy tears are womanish, thy wild acts denote

The unreasonable fury of a beast.

Unseemly woman in a seeming man.

And ill-beseeming beast in seeming both,

THou hast amaz'd me!

Romeo, III. iii. 109-114.

I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano,

A stage, where every man must play a part,

and mine a sad one.

Merchant, I. i. 77-79.

2. (10 min.) The Stars and Fortune

And so may I, blind fortune leading me,

Miss that which one unworthier may attain,

and die with grieving.

Merchant, II. i. 36-38

I'll rather dwell in my necessity.

Merchant, I. iii. 155.

I fear, too early, for my mind misgives

Some consequence yet is hanging in the stars

Shall betterly begin his fearful date

With this night's revels, and expire the term

Of a despised life clos'd in my breast

By some vile forfeit of untimely death.

Romeo, I. iv. 106-111.

O, I am fortune's fool!

Romeo, III. i. 136.

Alack, alack, that heaven should practice stratagems

Upon so soft a subject as myself!

Romeo, III. v. 209-210.

Then I defy you, stars!

Romeo, V. i. 24.

Come from that nest

Of death contagion, and unnatural sleep.

A greater power than we can contradict

Hath thwarted our intents.

Romeo, V. iii. 151-154.

3. (5 min.) The Music of the Spheres

It is the lark that sings so out of tune

Romeo, III. v. 27-35.

Let music sound while he doth make his choice;

Then if he lose he makes a swan-like end,

Fading in music. That the comparison

May stand more proper, my eye shall be the stream

And wat'ry death-bed for him. He may win,

And what is music then? Then music is

Even as the flourish when true subjects bow

To a new-crowned monarch;

Merchant, III. ii. 43-50.

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!

Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music

Creep in our ears. Soft stillness and the night

Become the touches of sweet harmony.

Merchant, V.i. 54-57.

Such harmony is in immortal souls

But whilst this muddy vesture of decay

Doth grossly close it in, we cannot near it.

Merchant, V. i. 63-65.

4. (15 min.) The Humors or The Elizabethan theory of personality

To help you along here are characteristics of the four humors to use in thinking about characters featured in these passages:

A. Melancholic (Cold and dry): sullen, having the propensity to causeless and violent anger, mental gloom, sadness.

B. Phlegmatic (cold and moist): Watery and insipid, not easily excited feeling or action, lacking in enthusiasm, cold, dull, sluggish, apathetic, calm, self-possessed.

C. Blood or Sanguine (hot and moist): Courageous, hopeful, having an amorous disposition.

D. Choleric (hot and dry): hot or fiery, inclined to wrath, irascible, hot tempered, passionate, angry.

Read the following passages without discussing them.

His life was gentle, and the elements

so mix'd in him that Nature might stand up

and say to all the world, "This was a man!"

Julius Caesar, V.v. 73-75

I thank God and my cold blood, I am of your

humor for that.

Much Ado, I. i. 130-131

I wonder that thou (being, as thou

say'st thou art, born under Saturn) goest about to

apply a moral medicine to a mortifying mischief.

I cannot hide what I am: I must be sad when I

have cause, and smile at no man's jests;

Much Ado, I. ii. 10-14.

Then half Signior Benedick's tongue in

Count John's mouth, and half Count John's melancholy

in Signior Benedick's face--

Much Ado, II. i. 11-13.

Patience perforce with willful choler meeting

Makes my flesh tremble in their different greeting.

I will withdraw, but this intrusion shall,

Now seeming sweet, convert to bitt'rest gall.

Romeo, I. v. 89-92.

But fish not with this melancholy bait.

Merchant, I. i. 101.

For it engenders choler, planteth anger,

And better 'twere that both of us did fast,

Since of ourselves, ourselves are choleric,

Than feed it with such overroasted flesh.

Taming, IV.i. 172-175.

Now think of other characters we have encountered in terms of their predominant humor. Make a list of characters under each of the four categories, giving the personality traits that correspond to their predominant humor.

Part III Finding the Cracks in the Picture (20 min.)

Tillyard argues that the basic medieval world picture still dominates Elizabethan society. He sees it in the literature. But is this wishful thinking? Is it really there or has it crumbled? Current scholars argue that he paints too clear a picture, that this medieval world is under threat, that there are huge cracks in it. In this part of the workshop you are to consider the ideas that are causing these cracks. For these discussions you will need to refer to both Briggs' This Stage-Play World and Elton's "Shakespeare and the Thought of His Age". Each group should just work on the topic which has been assigned to you.

Your job is to explain to the rest of the class why and how these ideas would threaten the Elizabethan World Picture. Plan to give this explanation in a formal summary when we meet back together at 12:40 for Part IV. Before you begin elect a spokesperson from your group to make the presentation.

A. The Protestant Reformation with its focus on individual salvation through faith alone.

B. The Copernican Revolution which not only argues that the earth is not the center of the universe but that the earth is constantly moving.

C. The skeptical and relativistic writings of Montaigne.

D. The philosophy of Machiavelli whose advocacy of practical politics replaces a moral view of human action with one that strikes most readers as amoral.

Part IV (20 min.)

We will reconvene especially to consider the cracks in the Elizabethan world picture and to hear the reports from the groups.