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The book The Elizabethan World Picture by Tillyard is an account of the ideas and beliefs of people during the Elizabethan age. The great writers of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries included many of the same ideas and viewpoints discussed in The Elizabethan World Picture in their writings. Shakespeare, Donne, and Milton are just some of the many authors that incorporated Elizabethan ideas in their works. The play Richard II written by Shakespeare portrays many Elizabethan ideas. The most characteristic idea of the Elizabethan era was cosmic order.
I also found that the order I was describing was much more than political order, or, if political, was always a part of a larger cosmic order. I found, further, that the Elizabethans saw this single order under three aspects: a chain, a set of correspondences, and a dance (Tillyard vii). Simply put everything in the heavens and on earth has its own place. In heaven God had created order in the form of a hierarchy which consisted of God at the top followed by archangels and angels.
This hierarchy was mirrored on earth where God had appointed kings, princes, and others under them. In Shakespeare's play Richard II King Richard was atop the hierarchy in England, he was followed by his nobility and peasants. However this hierarchy was not of pure form. Richard had disrupted the array on earth by ordering the killing of his brother Thomas of Woodstock who was the Duke of Gloucester. Richard ordered his killing in order to get control of the English throne.
This disrupted the order of things in turn creating chaos on earth and in the heavens as well. Take away order from all things, what should then remain? Certes nothing finals, except some man would imagine festoons chaos. Also where there is any lack of order needs must be perpetual conflict (Tillyard 11).
King Richards blunders did not stop there however. Richard appointed several of his friends in high government places such as his advisors. In Richard II the Gardener presents an excellent speech about King Richards careless ways. Go bind thou up young dangling apricots, which, like unruly children, make their sire/ Stoop with oppressions of their prodigal weight. / Give some support ance to the bending twigs. / Go thou and, like an executioner, Cut off the heads of too-fast-growing sprays/ That look too lofty in our commonwealth. / Al must be even in our government. / You thus employed, I will go root away/ The noisome weeds which without profit suck. / The soils fertility from wholesome flowers (3. 4. 29 - 39) The Gardener is using the simile of England being a garden and Richards advisors are weeds. The Gardener says that a man must keep his garden in order by trimming the flowers that are growing too rapidly and remove the weeds before they kill the flowers.
He is truly saying that Richard should keep order in his own government by removing his friends who do not belong there thus restoring order to the hierarchy. In the Elizabethan era it was believed that the king's power to rule was issued directly from God, therefore, the king ruled by divine right. King Richard was the rightful king of England and the fact that he was a poor king in many ways meant nothing. Richards throne could not be taken away from him unless it was unlawfully seized and Richard knew this. We are amazed; and thus long have we stood/ To watch the fearful bending of thy knee, / Because we thought ourself thy lawful king. / And if we be, how dare thy joints forget/ To pay their awful duty to our presence? / If we be not, show us the hand of God, that had dismissed us from our stewardship; for well we know no hand of blood and bone. / Can gripe the sacred handle of our scepter, unless he do profane, steal, or usurp. (3. 3 72 - 81) Richard was a poor king in many ways which ultimately all lead to his downfall but none more so then his seizing of his dead uncles land. This land rightfully belonged to Henry Bolingbroke whom Richard had exiled from England five years earlier over a dispute concerning the murder of Thomas of Woodstock.
Now Bolingbroke has returned to England to find the government in disarray and his inheritance seized by the king. King Richard foolishly embarks on a trip to Ireland to pursue a war leaving the perfect opportunity for Bolingbroke to raise an army and invade England. Richard had lost the support of the English commoners and was beginning to lose the support of the nobility as well. The nobility backed Richard simply because they knew that if Bolingbroke took over the crown subsequently the order that God had intended would be disrupted. When Richard returns to England he has lost his kingdom to Bolingbroke. Richard losing his country to Bolingbroke is almost ironic in a way due to the fact that it was Bolingbroke's father, John of Gaunt, who at his death bed put a curse on Richard predicting him to lose his kingdom in a very short time.
Methinks I am a prophet new inspired/ And thus, expiring, do foretell of him: His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last, For violent fires soon burn out themselves; Small shows last long, but sudden storms are shorter; (2. 1 31 - 35) Gaunt goes into the pitiable rule of Richard in his speech which may be the most famous dialogue in Richard II. The royal throne of kings, the sceptered isle, The earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, / This order Eden, demi-paradise, This fortress built by nature for herself/ Against infection and the hand of war, / This happy breed of men, this little world, / This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall, / Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands; / This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings, / Feared by their breed and famous by their birth, / Renowned for their deeds as far from home, For Christian service and true chivalry, / As is the sepulcher in stubborn Jewry/ Of the worlds ransom, blessed Marys son; / (2. 1 40 - 57) Gaunt speaks of Richard putting the kingdom of England to shame and stating how he has disrupted the order in the heavens as well as on earth. In Elizabethan times people believed that actions in heaven vastly affected events on earth as well. Shakespeare uses this idea in Richard II also such as when the Welsh Captain talks about meteors and the moon in his prediction of the fall or death of King Richard.
And meteors fright the fixed stars of the heaven; The palefaces moon looks bloody on the earth, / And lean-looked sad, and ruffians dance and leap-/ The one in fear of lose what they enjoy, The other enjoy by rage and war. / These signs forerun the death r fall of kings. Farwell. Our countrymen are gone and fled; As well assured Richard their king is dead. (2. 4 9 - 17) Elizabethan people as believed not only in a hierarchy in the heavens and on earth but also in the elements as well. The earth was at the center of the universe being that it was the heaviest, water surrounded the earth, along with air outside of the water, and then sealed in with fire. (Tillyard 62) The Elizabethans believed that this was the way God had wanted to be and was the only way to separate them in order that they do not self destruct each other. For instance God separated fire and water by putting air in between them creating a peace amongst the elements. Shakespeare put this idea into Richard II in when Bolingbroke talks about if he and Richard were to meet.
Bolingbroke says that Richard would be the fire and he would be the water, implying that he could defeat Richard but he says that he would not. (Shakespeare 3. 3) In Richard II, Shakespeare links both Richard and Bolingbroke to the sun making the relationship to the sun being the ruler of the heavens and the king being the ruler on earth. Bolingbroke says about Richard. See, see, King Richard doth himself appear, / As doth the blushing discontented sun/ From out the fiery portal of the east/ When he perceives the envious clouds are bent/ To dim his glory and stain the track/ Of his bright passage to the occident. (3. 3 62 - 67) Then Richard later in the play says that he was just a mere mockery before Bolingbroke's rule as king. Destiny or fate is yet another belief of the Elizabethan time period. Bolingbroke is a prime example of this in Richard II. He is cast out of England as well as losing his inheritance yet he does not give up.
Upon returning from exhale he states that he will ascend the throne and in the end Bolingbroke prevails becoming the king of England. He strived through his blows of bad fortune to succeed. In Elizabethan times it was thought that when two men fought that their guardian angels would in turn fight also. God for his Richard hath in heavenly pay/ A glorious angel. Then, if angels fight, Weak men must fall; for heaven still guards the right. (3. 2 60 - 63) This is to show the effect that God has on earth because the angels do Gods will. Music is one of the fundamental views of the Elizabethans.
They believed that nothing existed with out music. Shakespeare used music in Richard II, while Richard is in prison he hears music in his head. With being nothing. Music do I hear? / Ha-ha-keep time! / How sour sweet music is/ When time is broke and no proportion kept! / So is it in the music of mens lives. / And here have I the daintiness of ear/ TO check time broke in a disordered string; (5. 5 41 - 47) Here Shakespeare is showing how the order of things has been disrupted by Bolingbroke seizing the throne from Richard. The universe was considered to be in a state of musical harmony by the Elizabethans which had been broken by Bolingbroke's actions. Throughout out Richards rule as the King of England he made numerous mistakes such as his casual spending of the states finances, appointing his friends to high places in government such as his advisors, and the seizing of Bolingbroke's inheritance.
Richard ironically entered into his ruling with an unnatural change in the order and also left due to an unnatural change in the order. Bolingbroke's start to his rule is strikingly similar to Richards start also. Elizabethans had a very different outlook on life then people do in the present day. How ever some of their beliefs and ideas still hold true today for some people, not for all though. Shakespeare's Richard II is a prime example of Elizabethan ideas in great works of literature.
It is because of great works like this that the beliefs of the Elizabethans will never be lost and will remain with us forever. Bibliography Shakespeare, William. Richard II. New York: Penguin Books, 2000. Shakespeare Criticism. Vol. 39.
Gale Research, 1998. Tillyard, E. M. Y. The Elizabethan World Picture. New York: Vintage Books.
Tillyard, E. M. Y. Shakespeare's History Plays. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1946. [/b]
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