Revista de la Asociación de Mujeres Graduadas de la Universidad de Puerto Rico (julio 1941)

Shakespeare in Relation to this Age (An address delivered before the Inter Ameri· c:m "'riters Conference in the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, April 21, 1941)

By ROBERT MORSS LOVETT It is recognized as one of the crudest of er- corresponding to that which in Italy and rors to attach explicit meaning to the dates France had already taken place. In England which mark the divisions in historie time the impact of the Renaissance was delayed whlch we call centuries or decades. Never- by the remoteness from cente1·s of European t helcss, when l\'lrs. Virginia Wolf remarked culture in Italy, and especially by the fifty that human nature underwent a total change years of civil strife known as the Wars of in 1910, the assertion carries a challenge the Roses. With the sixteenth century the which on examination turns out to yield a cer- country felt almost simultaneously the exhitain me:ming. There is no magic in the laration of the rebirth and the stimulus of the ciphers which mark 500 B. C., or 1400, or 1500, Reformation. The period was one of inmense · or 1600, or 1700, or 1800 A. D. and yet we are expansion. It was naturally followed by one conscious of a definable quality in the great of reaction and concentration, as an epoch of íifth century before Christ, though we think creation is followed by one of assimilation and of it as beginning in 490 with thc Battle of criticism. Th:e sixteenth century in England lifara thon, and we recognize a specific char- nearly coincided with the reign of the Tudors; acter and significance for civilization in the the seventeenth century with thc rule of the quat.ro cento :rnd its successors the sixteenth, Stuarts-and no one is likely to confuse Tudor seventeeth, nnd eighteenth centuries. Usual- with Stuart England in architecture, painting, ly some imporbmt event is to be noted near music, literature, or general mood and thougl1t enough to the calendar opening of the centu- any more than in religion, economy, domestic ry to stand out as a signa! of the secular politics or foreign policy. change. Such an event for England was the Shakespeare was a man of both epochsdeath of Queen Eliz¡ibeth and the accession that of the Renaissance, and that of the postof J:imes I in 1603. Preliminary signs of Rennissance, when the brightness of the morchange there had been, but with this event ning of the rebirth was fading into the sober they multiply and become no longer harbin- colo1·s of afternoon preceding a stormy sungers and anticipations but recognizablc char- set. He lived in his youth and yonng manacteristics of n new age. And this date marks hood as an Elizabethan, sharing the hopes with similar exactness a change in thc mood and enthusiasms of that brilliant ago, among nnd expression of the greatest man then living the great figures who in true Renaissance in England. The year 1603 bisects Shakes- fashion seemed to transcend in life or in peare's career as a dramatist. On one side thought the ordinary limits of human capawe have the early comedies, the histories, ami city or achievement, Raleigh, Sidney, Mara s a culmination the bright ancl happy group lowe, Spencer. He carne into his prime as a of plays, The l\ferchant of Venice, As You Jacobean, when doubts and hesitations were Like It, Twclfth N'ight. On the other side bringing a palsy upon action, and his contemwe have whnt have been termed the harsh and poraries were men of lesser stature, Donne, bitt:er comedies, notably J\feasure for Measure, Fletcher, Ben Johnson. The profound change and the g reat series of tragedies, Hamlet, which ocurred in the matter and spirit of his Kín~ Lear, Othello and l\lacbeth. work has been attributed to the circumstance Thc differences between the sixteenth and of his personal life-the death of his son Hamsevcnteenth centuries may be traced th1·ough- net, the betrayal and disillusionment in love 011t Europe. but in England the change is which is a theme of the sonnets. It is to be strongly marked as a transition from high noted, howevcr, that it was in the years folP.C'naif.~ancc t o post Renaissance-a change lowing these misfortunes that Shakespeare