What do you see as the key features in the renaissance, in terms of its input on Elizabethan plays, and in what ways could Marlowe be said to be a typical renaissance figure.

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Duncan Harvey  28/04/2007

What do you see as the key features in the renaissance, in terms of its input on Elizabethan plays, and in what ways could Marlowe be said to be a typical renaissance figure.  

 The word renaissance means rebirth. It describes the period in Europe’s history when people exposed the art and knowledge of the past, and added additional innovative exhilarating features of their own. Around 1500 A.D. new ideas began to become known. Artists such as Leonardo da Vinci looked back to ancient Greece and Rome for stimulation. Scientists such as Copernicus studied the world and disagreed with the church. There were also affluent merchants prepared to back new ideas and ventures. There were also various new ways of spreading knowledge, such as Gutenberg’s then, recently invented printing press.

   

  I believe that humanist ideas had the greatest effect on the literature of the Elizabethan period. Renaissance Humanism is the spirit of learning that developed at the end of the Middle Ages with the revival of classical letters and a renewed confidence in the ability of human beings to determine for them-selves truth and falsehood. This has to be a key feature during this time as people were able for the first time to be authorized to think freely even though there may have been untold consequences for these sorts of actions. Marlowe in this way was definitely a emblematic renaissance figure as he had a restless curiosity for the world and also had a riotous imagination which led him to write such plays as “Doctor Faustus”, it showed that he was a non-conformist as in it he writes of the devil and also of how man can be greater than the church. Although in the play he only talks of the Pope and the Catholic Church, to an audience it could mean a number of things such as thinking that they are better than for example the Church of England which at that time would have been unheard of. With the power of his plays Marlowe was able to alter public opinion and allow people to think freely this is why in a literary sense Marlowe was characteristic of the renaissance as he was putting over a point of view through his plays.

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   At this time it was the age of voyage and discovery where new places were being revealed and conquered. This I believe gave Marlowe new ideas and different ways of writing. He was comparable to the pop stars of today and I believe that the way he lived his life was equivalent to those of today i.e. he was very outlandish in the way that he acted and led his life. This I believe also is because of the era he was living in, as it was a time of change, which is what the renaissance attributed its ...

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