The Tempest - Context 2

The Tempest - Context 2

1. Performed where?

   • Open air Globe
   • Indoor Blackfriars
     • Probably written for this playhouse
       • Reason why play = innovative
   • Court
     • Play = successful
       • Performed a second time at court at wedding of James' daughter
   • Heterogeneous Audiences

2. Protestant vs Catholicism

   • The Reformation

3. Attitudes towards women/marriage

   • Miranda silent during marriage
   • For Protestants, marriage was essential for a healthy society

4. Great Chain of Being vs an increased sense of social mobility

5. Renaissance society - strictly patriarchal

   • Irony of Queen Elizabeth's position
   • Many in society believed in magic, hell, etc

6. Francis Bacon

   • 'knowledge is power'

7. Colonialism and Colonial Weath

   • 'The world seemed a far larger place to men of the Elizabethan age than it had to earlier generations, New kingdoms had been discovered in America, and the distant Orient had become more accessible.'
     • Orient - Faustus  'Orient Pearl'