On June 29, 1613 during the first on-stage production of Henry VIII, the Globe Theater of Shakespeare fame burned to the ground. Quickly erected and quickly raised, the theater reminds fans of the Elizabethan era that even the best figures from history had their problems.
Shakespeare and his band of thespians known as “The Chamberlain’s Men” performed theater in the round which meant that the audience and the actors had the intimate experience of close proximity. There were no female actors at the time as such a practice was illegal and viewed as obscene. So whether the character was Romeo or Juliet, the actor was male and this was not strange. In fact, the tradition of male actors playing female leads continues today in British pantomime (Christmas Plays) performances.
As theater developed into its modern form, the plays, performances and skills of the various actors and writers were a constant source of conversation. Those who performed best, created the most drama and put on the most captivating stories were rewarded with packed houses and good reviews in the morning papers. For this reason, special effects played a large role in productions and Shakespeare and his company were no exception to this as during his life, he was just another writer trying to improve his credentials.
Without modern safety equipment such as fire extinguishers and smoke alarms and without the close proximity of a municipal fire brigade, devastating structural fires were common during the period. In fact it would be only a few decades later that the Great Fire of London (1666) would take place, raising a vast portion of the capital to the ground.
The term “Renaissance”, or rebirth, was coined by historians in the mid 19th century to describe the period in Western European history that was characterized by a resurgence of ideas, philosophies, and culture from the classical period. A golden age of cultural, intellectual and ideological movements occurred between roughly the early 14th to the late 16th century in Europe that drew on many elements of classical Greek and Roman history. From the decadence of the Middle Ages and the fall of the Roman Empire, the Catholic Church increasingly exerted a dominant influence on European life and became the defacto broker of power in Europe. So it was that within this cultural setting, the dominant ideas of the Renaissance emerged from the collection of city-states in Italy and proliferated throughout Europe via the well connected commercial routes of the time.
Florence, in particular, was emerging as a powerful city-state through its commercial strength as a textile producer and banking center. Its burgeoning economy and growing mercantile class made it a focal point for the cultural transformations that would be associated with the Renaissance. The fall of the Byzantine Empire also fueled change in Western Europe as exiled Greek scholars established themselves in the west, bringing with them copies of classical philosophical texts, literature, and salvaged art works and opening to the Europeans a door to the riches of the classical Greek and Roman periods that had been lost through the centuries of internal tribal warfare and barbaric invasions.
Money from the new middle classes went towards commissioning artists and architects to create masterpieces in quantity and scale unmatched till then. Artists such as Giotto, Ghiberti, Brunelleschi, Donatello, Masaccio, Lippi, Ghirlandaio, Botticelli, Lotto, da Vinci, Michelangelo, to name a few, elevated art to a new level and form of cultural expression. The Renaissance began to flourish in the kingdoms to the north of Florence as well, with new ideas and momentum of change spreading along trade routes. Venetian Italy and the regions of the Netherlands also were transformed by new ideas, aesthetics, and commerce.
New intellectual movements stirred Western Europe as well. Authors such as Sir Thomas More and Erasmus of Rotterdam made notable contributions to a growing canon of western intellectual thought on humanism and the capacities of the individual to reason and contend for themselves with the depths of the human spirit. A growing intellectual need arose to balance a world image dominated and guided by religion with a concept of a mankind’s experience on earth as a breathing, thinking being exercising a measure of self determinism.
| The Renaissance looked to the past, to the classical period, in order to push itself forward. A fascination with art and literature and thought from a previous era contributed to an era of new literary, artistic, and intellectual development for the Europeans. |
Tags: 14th Century, 15th century, 16th century, Botticelli, Brunelleschi, da Vinci, Donatello, Erasmus of Rotterdam, fall of Roman Empire, Florence Italy, Garden of bagatelle Tapestry (Jardin de Bagatelle), Ghiberti, Ghirlandaio, Giotto, greek scholars during the Renaissance, Italian Renaissance, Lippi, Lotto, Masaccio, Michelangelo, rebirth of ancient philosophy, Rebirth of Culture, rebirth of ideas, Renaissance Art, Renaissance artists, Renaissance Breast Plate with leather back, renaissance culture, Renaissance Literature, Renaissance Noble Bodice (Reversible Black), renaissance philosophy, renaissance store, Renaissance Style Fencing Rapier - CAS Iberia, Sculpture of David by Michelangelo - 1504 A.D., Sir Thomas More, The fall of the Byzantine Empire, The Renaissance, The Santa Maria del Fiore - Duomo, western culture
The first records of the Carnival in Venice date to the mid- 13th century when celebrants would don masks and costumes and generally free themselves from proscriptions of dress and appearance during the weeks preceding the Catholic Lent and its restrictions on their behavior.
By the 14th century several laws had been enacted to curb the use of masks and costume during Carnival and by the 18th century, when Venice became part of the Austrian-ruled Lombardy-Venetia kingdom, the masquerade tradition had fallen somewhat out of favor. In Mussolini’s era of the mid-1900’s Carnival and the wearing of masks fell further in decline and was banned by his government only to be restored towards the end of the century. 
The man who had come to be known as “Queen Elizabeth’s Merlin,” John Dee, was born in London in 1527 but, by the age of fifteen, had already moved on to the halls of Cambridge University. There he established a routine that he would maintain until his death the age of eighty-one: two hours for meals, four hours for sleep and eighteen hours for study.
Following Elizabeth’s ascension to the throne, Dee spent the next twenty years as royal authority on matters of both astrology and science for the Queen– then viewed as intertwined fields – and even provided advice on exploration of the New World, coining the term, “the British Empire,” in the process. It’s even said that Elizabeth chose her 1559 coronation date on the advice of her personal mystic.
