A Wondrous Age of Theater
In England and Spain, writing reached new heights between 1580 and 1640. All of these impressive new works were written in the vernacular. Except for academic fields, such as theology, philosophy, jurisprudence, and the sciences, Latin was no longer a universal literary language.
The greatest age of English literature is often called the Elizabethan era because much of the English cultural flowering of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries occurred during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Elizabethan literature exhibits the exuberance and pride associated with England’s international exploits at the time. Of all the forms of Elizabethan literature, none expressed the energy and intellectual versatility of the era better than drama. And of all the dramatists, none is more famous than William Shakespeare (1564–1616).
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Shakespeare was the son of a prosperous glovemaker from Stratford-upon-Avon. When he appeared in London in 1592, Elizabethans were already addicted to the stage. In Greater London, as many as six theaters were open six afternoons a week. London theaters ranged from the Globe, which was a circular unroofed structure holding three thousand spectators, to the Blackfriars, which was roofed and held only five hundred. In the former, an admission charge of a penny or two enabled even the lower classes to attend; the higher prices in the latter ensured an audience of the well-to-do. Elizabethan audiences varied greatly, putting pressure on playwrights to write works that pleased nobles, lawyers, merchants, and even vagabonds.
William Shakespeare was a “complete man of the theater.” Although best known for writing plays, he was also an actor and shareholder in the chief company of the time, the Lord Chamberlain’s Company, which played in theaters as diverse as the Globe and the Blackfriars. Shakespeare has long been recognized as a universal genius. A master of the English language, he was instrumental in codifying a language that was still in transition. His technical proficiency, however, was matched by an incredible insight into human psychology. In tragedies as well as comedies, Shakespeare exhibited a remarkable understanding of the human condition (see the box above).
SPAIN’S GOLDEN CENTURY The theater was also one of the most creative forms of expression during Spain’s golden century. The first professional theaters established in Seville and Madrid in the 1570s were run by actors’ companies, as in England. Soon a public playhouse could be found in every large town, including Mexico City in the New World. Touring companies brought the latest Spanish plays to all parts of the Spanish Empire.
Beginning in the 1580s, the agenda for playwrights was set by Lope de Vega (LOH-pay day VAY-guh) (1562– 1635). Like Shakespeare, he was from a middle-class background. He was an incredibly prolific writer; almost one-third of his fifteen hundred plays survive. They have been characterized as witty, charming, action packed, and realistic. Lope de Vega made no apologies for the fact that he wrote his plays to please his audiences. In a treatise on drama written in 1609, he stated that the foremost duty of the playwright was to satisfy public demand. Shakespeare undoubtedly believed the same thing, since his livelihood depended on public approval, but Lope de Vega was considerably more cynical about it: he remarked that if anyone thought he had written his plays for fame, “undeceive him and tell him that I wrote them for money.”
FRENCH DRAMA As the great age of theater in England and Spain was drawing to a close around 1630, a new dramatic era began to dawn in France that lasted into the 1680s. Unlike Shakespeare in England and Lope de Vega in Spain, French playwrights wrote more for an elite audience and were forced to depend on royal patronage. Louis XIV used theater as he did art and architecture—to attract attention to his monarchy.
French dramatists cultivated a style that emphasized the clever, polished, and correct over the emotional and imaginative. Many of the French works of the period derived both their themes and their plots from Classical Greek and Roman sources, especially evident in the works of Jean-Baptiste Racine (ZHAHNH-bah-TEEST ra-SEEN) (1639–1699). In Ph edre, which has been called his best play, Racine followed closely the plot of Hippolytus by the Greek tragedian Euripides. Like the ancient tragedians, Racine, who perfected the French neoclassical tragic style, focused on conflicts, such as between love and honor or inclination and duty, that characterized and revealed the tragic dimensions of life.
Jean-Baptiste Molière (ZHAHNH-bah-TEEST mohl-YAYR) (1622–1673) enjoyed the favor of the French court and benefited from the patronage of King Louis XIV. Moli ere wrote, produced, and acted in a series of comedies that often satirized the religious and social world of his time. In Tartuffe, he ridiculed religious hypocrisy. His satires, however, sometimes got him into trouble. The Paris clergy did not find Tartuffe funny and had it banned for five years. Only the protection of the king saved Moli ere from more severe harassment.
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CHAPTER SUMMARY
To many historians, the seventeenth century has assumed extraordinary proportions. The divisive effects of the Reformation had been assimilated and the concept of a united Christendom, held as an ideal since the Middle Ages, had been irrevocably destroyed by the religious wars, making possible the emergence of a system of nation-states in which power politics took on an increasing significance. The growth of political thought focusing on the secular origins of state power reflected the changes that were going on in seventeenth-century society.
Within those states, there slowly emerged some of the machinery that made possible a growing centralization of power. In those states called absolutist, strong monarchs with the assistance of their aristocracies took the lead in providing the leadership for greater centralization. In this so-called age of absolutism, Louis XIV, the Sun King of France, was the model for other rulers. His palace of Versailles, where the aristocracy was entertained and controlled by ceremony and etiquette, symbolized his authority. Louis revoked his grandfather’s Edict of Nantes, and he fought four costly wars, mainly to acquire lands on France’s eastern borders. Strong monarchy also prevailed in central and eastern Europe, where three new powers made their appearance: Prussia, Austria, and Russia. Peter the Great attempted to westernize Russia, especially militarily, and built St. Petersburg, a new capital city, as his window on the west.
But not all European states followed the pattern of absolute monarchy. Especially important were developments in England, where a series of struggles between king and Parliament took place in the seventeenth century. The conflict between the Stuart kings, who were advocates of divine-right monarchy, and Parliament led to civil war and the creation of a republic and then a military dictatorship under Oliver Cromwell. After his death, the Stuart monarchy was restored, but a new conflict led to the overthrow of James II and the establishment of a new order. The landed aristocracy gained power at the expense of the monarchs, thus laying the foundations for a constitutional government in which Parliament provided the focus for the institutions of centralized power. In all the major European states, a growing concern for power and dynamic expansion led to larger armies and greater conflict. War remained an endemic feature of Western civilization.
But the search for order and harmony continued, evident in art and literature. At the same time, religious preoccupations and values were losing ground to secular considerations. The seventeenth century was a period of transition toward the more secular spirit that has characterized modern Western civilization to the present. No stronger foundation for this spirit could be found than in the new view of the universe that was ushered in by the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century, and it is to that story that we turn in the next chapter.
CHAPTER TIMELINE
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CHAPTER REVIEW
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Upon Reflection
What does the witchcraft craze tell us about European society in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries?
What did Louis XIV hope to accomplish in his domestic and foreign policies? To what extent did he succeed?
What role did the nobility pl
ay in Poland and England?
Key Terms
absolutism
divine-right monarchy
intendants
parlements
boyars
procurator
Janissaries
gentry
Mannerism
Baroque
Suggestions for Further Reading
GENERAL WORKS For general works on the seventeenth century, see T. Munck, Seventeenth-Century Europe, 1598–1700, 2nd ed. (London, 2005); Q. Deakin, Expansion, War, and Rebellion, 1598–1661 (Cambridge, 2000); and J. Bergin, Seventeenth-Century Europe, 1598–1715 (Oxford, 2001).
WITCHCRAFT CRAZE The story of the witchcraft craze can be examined in J. Klaits, Servants of Satan: The Age of the Witch Hunts (Bloomington, Ind., 1985). See also R. Briggs, Witches and Neighbors: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 2002).
THIRTY YEARS’ WAR The fundamental study of the Thirty Years’ War is now P. H. Wilson, The Thirty Years War: Europe’s Tragedy (Cambridge, Mass., 2009). For a brief study, see R. Bonney, The Thirty Years’ War, 1618–1648 (Oxford, 2002).
THE MILITARY REVOLUTION On the military revolution, see G. Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500–1800, 3rd ed. (Cambridge, 1995), and J. M. Black, A Military Revolution? Military Change and European Society (London, 1991).
FRANCE AND SPAIN For succinct accounts of seventeenth-century French history, see R. Briggs, Early Modern France, 1560–1715, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1998), and J. B. Collins, The State in Early Modern France (Cambridge, 1995). A solid and very readable biography of Louis XIV is A. Levi, Louis XIV (New York, 2004). For a shorter study, see P. R. Campbell, Louis XIV, 1661– 1715 (London, 1993). See also the collection of articles in P. Sonnino, ed., The Reign of Louis XIV (New York, 1990). A good general work on seventeenth-century Spanish history is J. Lynch, Spain Under the Habsburgs, 2nd ed. (New York, 1981).
CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE On the German states, see P. H. Wilson, The Holy Roman Empire, 1495–1806 (New York, 1999). On the creation of Austria, see C. Ingrao, The Habsburg Monarchy, 1618–1815 (Cambridge, 1994), and P. S. Fichtner, The Habsburg Monarchy, 1490–1848 (New York, 2003). On Austria and Prussia, see P. H. Wilson, Absolutism in Central Europe (New York, 2000). On Frederick William the Great Elector, see D. McKay, The Great Elector (Essex, 2001).
RUSSIA Works on Peter the Great include L. Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great (New Haven, Conn., 1998), and P. Bushkovitz, Peter the Great (Oxford, 2001).
ENGLISH REVOLUTIONS On the period of the English Revolutions, see M. A. Kishlansky, A Monarchy Transformed (London, 1996), and D. Purkiss, The English Civil War (New York, 2006). On Oliver Cromwell, see P. Gaunt, Oliver Cromwell (Cambridge, Mass., 1996). For a general survey of the post-Cromwellian era, see T. Harris, Politics Under the Late Stuarts (London, 1993).
UNITED PROVINCES On the United Provinces, J. Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall (New York, 1995), is a valuable but lengthy study. Of much value is S. Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (New York, 1987).
EUROPEAN CULTURE A brief, readable guide to Mannerism is L. Murray, The High Renaissance and Mannerism (New York, 1985). For a general survey of Baroque culture, see F. C. Marchetti et al., Baroque, 1600–1770 (New York, 2005). The literature on Shakespeare is enormous. For a biography, see A. L. Rowse, The Life of Shakespeare (New York, 1963). For an examination of French and Dutch art, see A. Merot, French Painting in the Seventeenth Century (New Haven, Conn., 1995), and S. Slive, Dutch Painting, 1600–1800 (New Haven, Conn., 1993).
Visit the CourseMate website at www.cengagebrain.com for additional study tools and review materials for this chapter.
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CHAPTER 16
Toward a New Heaven and a New Earth: The Scientific Revolution and the Emergence of Modern Science
A nineteenth-century painting of Galileo before the Holy Office in the Vatican in 1633
Louvre, Paris// © Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY
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CHAPTER OUTLINE AND FOCUS QUESTIONS
Background to the Scientific Revolution
What developments during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance contributed to the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century?
Toward a New Heaven: A Revolution in Astronomy
What did Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton contribute to a new vision of the universe, and how did it differ from the Ptolemaic conception of the universe?
Advances in Medicine and Chemistry
What did Paracelsus, Vesalius, and Harvey contribute to a scientific view of medicine?
Women in the Origins of Modern Science
What role did women play in the Scientific Revolution?
Toward a New Earth: Descartes, Rationalism, and a New View of Humankind
Why is Descartes considered the “founder of modern rationalism”?
The Scientific Method and the Spread of Scientific Knowledge
How were the ideas of the Scientific Revolution spread, and what impact did they have on society and religion?
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CRITICAL THINKING
In what ways were the intellectual, political, social, and religious developments of the seventeenth century related?
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IN ADDITION TO the political, economic, social, and international crises of the seventeenth century, we need to add an intellectual one. The Scientific Revolution questioned and ultimately challenged conceptions and beliefs about the nature of the external world and reality that had crystallized into a rather strict orthodoxy by the Later Middle Ages. Derived from the works of ancient Greeks and Romans and grounded in Christian thought, the medieval worldview had become formidable. But the breakdown of Christian unity during the Reformation and the subsequent religious wars had created an environment in which Europeans became more comfortable with challenging both the ecclesiastical and political realms. Should it surprise us that a challenge to intellectual authority soon followed?
The Scientific Revolution taught Europeans to view the universe and their place in it in a new way. The shift from an earth-centered to a sun-centered cosmos had an emotional as well as an intellectual effect on the people who understood it. Thus, the Scientific Revolution, popularized in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, stands as the major force in the transition to the largely secular, rational, and materialistic perspective that has defined the modern Western mentality since its full acceptance in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The transition to a new worldview, however, was far from easy. In the seventeenth century, the Italian scientist Galileo Galilei (gal-li-LAY-oh GAL-li-lay), an outspoken advocate of the new worldview, found that his ideas were strongly opposed by the authorities of the Catholic Church. Galileo’s position was clear: “I hold the sun to be situated motionless in the center of the revolution of the celestial bodies, while the earth rotates on its axis and revolves about the sun.” Moreover, “nothing physical that sense-experience sets before our eyes … ought to be called in question (much less condemned) upon the testimony of Biblical passages.” But the church had a different view, and in 1633, Galileo, now sixty-eight and in ill health, was called before the dreaded Inquisition in Rome. He was kept waiting for two months before he was tried and found guilty of heresy and disobedience. Completely shattered by the experience, he denounced his errors: “With a sincere heart and un-feigned faith I curse and detest the said errors and heresies contrary to the Holy Church.” Legend holds that when he left the trial room, Galileo muttered to himself: “And yet it does move!” Galileo had been silenced, but his writings remained, and they spread through Europe. The Inquisition had failed to stop the new ideas of the Scientific Revolution.
In one sense, the Scientific Revolution was not a revolution. It was not characterized by the explosive change and rapid overthrow of traditional authority that we normally associ
ate with the word revolution. The Scientific Revolution did overturn centuries of authority, but only in a gradual and piecemeal fashion. Nevertheless, its results were truly revolutionary. The Scientific Revolution was a key factor in setting Western civilization along its modern secular and materialistic path.
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Background to the Scientific Revolution
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FOCUS QUESTION: What developments during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance contributed to the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century?
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To say that the Scientific Revolution brought about a dissolution of the medieval worldview is not to say that the Middle Ages was a period of scientific ignorance. Many educated Europeans took an intense interest in the world around them since it was, after all, “God’s handiwork” and therefore an appropriate subject for study. Late medieval scholastic philosophers had advanced mathematical and physical thinking in many ways, but the subjection of these thinkers to a strict theological framework and their unquestioning reliance on a few ancient authorities, especially Aristotle and Galen, limited where they could go. Many “natural philosophers,” as medieval scientists were called, preferred refined logical analysis to systematic observations of the natural world. A number of changes and advances in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries may have played a major role in helping “natural philosophers” abandon their old views and develop new ones.
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