elizabethan attitudes towards different cultures

I felt that negro here was not a value-neutral descriptor. Im Michael Witmore, the Folgers director. So that herein the kingdom of England is far more absolute than either the dukedom of Venice is, or the kingdom of the Lacedemonians [Spartans] was. Those are all the kind of competing forces that are playing upon him. Dr. Dadabhoy researches the role of identity and difference in literature, and she has a chapter in the monumental, new Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race thats called Barbarian Moors: Documenting Racial Formation in Early Modern England.. Common law vested control of property in the man, though dower, inheritance, and settlements gave many wives in the propertied classes some safeguards. Uncivilized. They dare not show their husbands; their best conscience Is not to leave't undone, but keep't unknown. Have they been granted only in favor of the wise? Elizabethan England was highly patriarchal in attitudes and structure. Culture is related to the development of our attitude. His presentation of women was depend ent upon the thinking of the society surrounding him. Thats the traditional scholarship. In Elizabethan England, there was fairly widespread belief that freedom of choice was a right among marriage partners. While we are talking about the slave trade, when did the slave trade start and who was involved in it? Culture is a word for the 'way of life' of groups of people, meaning the way they do things. At first the aim of the Spanish Armada was to liberate the captive Queen of Scots, but when Mary was executed for conspiring Elizabeth's death in 1587, Philip planned to invade England in the name of his daughter, the Infanta . When facing differences between the company and foreign cultures, different people have different attitudes which can be listed as being ethnocentric, polycentric, and geocentric. ), Find out more about saving to your Kindle, Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521064309.005. But its one that a cadre of younger scholars is diving into these daysbuilding upon work done by the pioneering Black feminist and premodern critical race scholars who came before them. It is probably true to say that by the early decades of the seventeenth century more scientific information was available than could be digested within the terms in which the world was traditionally conceived; and it is certainly true that the facts of physical geography which were accepted by sailors as useful in practice were very difficult to accommodate within the sophisticated and complex traditions that form the natural background to literature. Marriage in Elizabethan times was considered a necessity by both men and women. The people of England believed themselves to be far superior and treated others with indignity and pity. The earth, trees, seeds, plants, herbs, corn, grass, and all manner of beasts, keep themselves in their order: all the parts of the whole year, as winter, summer, months, nights, and days, continue in their order: all kinds of fish in the sea, rivers, and waters, with all fountains, springs, yea, the seas themselves, keep their comely curfew and order: and man himself also hath all his parts both within and without, as soul, heart, mind, memory, understanding, reason, speech, with all and singular corporal members of his body, in a profiltable, necessary, and pleasant order: every degree of people in their vocation, calling, and office, hath appointed to them their duty and order: some are in high degree, some inlow, some kings and princes, some inferiors and subjectgs, priests and laymen, masters and servants, fathers and children, husands and wives, rich and poor; and every one hath need of other; so that in all things is to be lauded and praised the goodly order of God, without the which no house, no city, no commonwealth can continue and endure, or last. And lastly, as for the head of the natural body, the head has the power of directing all the members of the body to that use which the judgment in th head thinks most convenient. . Now a father may dispose of his inheritance to his children at his pleasure: yea, even disinherit the eldest upon just occasions, and prefer the youngest, according to his liking; make them beggars or rich at his pleasure; restrain, or banish out of his presence, as he finds them give cause of offence, or restore them in favor again with the penitent sinner. BOGAEV: Is this where you see that Moors are called Barbarians, meaning from Barbary, but also, they start to get the connotation of barbarians, less civilized? BOGAEV: So, institutionalized? I think thats one really interesting thing that happens in this play too because, again, the kind of ambivalence that you point out, in terms of, there are multiple meanings that are being conveyed at the same time through the use of barbarian, kind of engenders a kind of racial incoherence already in the play. What I learned from reading your work is that Shakespeare was hardly the only playwright to write about non-English characters. I think there is a preconceived notion for people who dont go deep into the scholarship on race. A revolution in reading (and to a lesser extent writing) was taking place. BOGAEV: Ah. In some of those you have a, kind of, fixation on color, where some of them are also conversion narratives. DADABHOY: Yes. Differences in attitudes towards disclosure. This lesson seeks to sensitize students to the complex nature of revenge as it is portrayed in Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.Students learn how Shakespeare's play interprets Elizabethan attitudes toward revenge, as reflected in the structure of the Elizabethan revenge tragedy, one of the most popular forms of drama of that era. Right? In many ways, they become what is known as bi cultural or multi . For commonly women are the most part of the forenoon painting themselves, and frizzing their hairs, and prying in their glass like Apes, to pranck up themselves in their gawdies, like Poppets, or like the Spider which weaves a fine web to hang the fly.". This absolute power is called martial law. To be short the Prince is the life, the head, and the authority of all things that be done in the realm of England. Dadabhoy held fellowships at the Folger in 2011 and 2016, and participated in a Folger NEH Summer Institute Shakespeare from the Globe to the Global in 2011. The common wealth is judged by that which is most ordinarily and commonly done through the whole realm. @kindle.com emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. If youre a fan of Shakespeare Unlimited, please leave us a positive review on Apple Podcasts. How does it shape or inform for instance our understanding, your understanding, of Othellos character? That is, of course, the Ottoman Empire. According to a new Yale study, negative attitudes towards plagiarism may be more universal than previously thought. So I think for me the play kind of presents the illusion of what a tolerant society might be, but its really about the danger of letting others into the familiar and intimate spaces of your society. DADABHOY: Yeah. Sir Thomas Smith, De Republic Anglorum: The Manner of Government or Policy of the Realm of England, 1583: The Prince whom I now call (as I have often before) the Monarch of England, King or Queen, hath absolutely in his power the authority of war and peace, to defy what Prince it shall please him, and to bid him war, and again to reconcile himself and enter into league or truce with him at his pleasure or the advice only of his privy council. The Elizabethan era was different than the Medieval era in the way the insane were treated by the public. So that, you know, the noble Moor Abd al-Malik, hes also called a barbarian and he calls himself a barbarian. Her mother, Anne Boleyn had been accused of being a witch ( Anne Boleyn had a sixth . DADABHOY: Yes. BOGAEV: So is it a kind of deliberate colorblind notion? DADABHOY: That was my introduction to this play. Popular culture and the wider world Popular culture. One of the things that I understand about how the geography works in informing Othellos construction is that were deep in the eastern Mediterranean with this play; so were moving from Venice to Cyprus. This was partly due to their lack of understanding and knowledge of other cultures. Journal of African American Men BOGAEV: Right. Thomas Bentley, "The Monument of Matronness," 1572: Primarily a devotional treatise, it sets forth proof of woman's nobility and greatness. When I am playing with my cat, who knows whether she have more sport in dallying with me than I have in gaming with her? In the Scriptures kings are called gods, and so their power after a certain relation compared to the divine power. However, though the society was patriarchal, new ideas and thinking were evolv In part, however, the Elizabethan Age was a success because men had at their disposal new and exciting areas, both of mind and geography, into which to channel their energies. Society and the culture of England was changing. DADABHOY: It was directed at the Black population, who are identified as having come from Spain. And, I mean, its complicated. BOGAEV: But we should know this! I think for me it was really interesting to follow the use and mobilization of that word in the play. 1) How did the city of Venice treat people of different cultures and faiths? Different Attitudes Toward Disclosure In some cultures, it is not appropriate to be frank about emotions, about the reasons behind a conflict or a misunderstanding, or about personal information. I mean, does negro becomes the freighted word or a slur or a conflation of color into race? The Elizabethan Era, during which Shakespeare lived and wrote, is also known for Sir Francis Drake's exploration of the "new world," the English defeat of the Spanish Armada (a naval campaign to invade and bring Roman Catholicism back to England), Sir Walter Raleigh's colonial exploration, the blossoming of theatre and poetry in England . BOGAEV: Well, We could go on for weeks, and I wish we could. While some travel narratives from the Elizabethan period comment positively on black Africans, there are many that do not. BOGAEV: Hes internalized, yes, those in power, their way of thinking of his own Blackness. Yet Iago is so much in control of the narrative that as an audience we fall into his plots. You can find more about the Folger at our website, folger.edu. Marriage: Early marriage was more common among the nobility and gentry than further down the social scale. On the contrary, the male is more ready to help, and, as it hath been said, more brave than the female; and . Kings are also compared to fathers of families, for a king is truly parens patriae, the politic father of his people. For where there is no right order, there reigneth all abuse, carnal liberty, enormity, sin, and Babylonical confusion. According to one source, "in the Elizabethan age, upwards of 80% of all books were purchased for and read by women" ("Elizabethan Women" 1). Garland Scott is the associate producer. Our April festival celebrating 400 years of Shakespeare's First Folio, Our award-winning performances of Shakespeare, adaptations, and new works, Our early music ensemble Folger Consort and more, Our longstanding O.B. We think about this population that in the edicts is identified as having come from Spain, but what were they doing in Spain? And these notable faults have men in all ages espied in that kind, for the which not only they have removed women from rule and auhority, but also some have thought that men subject to the counsel or empire of their wives were unworthy of all public office. The period with which we are concerned here - let us say the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries - is well known as one in which the amount of scientific information about the world increased dramatically. Certainly, I dont think it was the first play to do so, but it was the play that really centered on Morocco, focused on presenting this Moorish villain character whose racial Blackness becomes that Blackness gives the reason for his villainy. The attitude of Queen Elizabeth was certainly more lenient than those of her neighbours in France and Spain. This paper presents a cross-cultural study on peoples' negative attitude toward robots. Find out more about saving to your Kindle. I mean, he could have been drawn and quartered or any of the other nasty, nasty things. Right? In Elizabethan England, there was fairly widespread belief that freedom of choice was a right among marriage partners. Yeah. BOGAEV: Wow. Yes, exactly. . In shocking his audience with this deviation from the norm, Shakespeare presents a reality that African . In the mid 1600s, England went through a time called "Elizabethan Era.". Some of the factors that influence cultural differences in human-companion animal relationships are addressed, including the role of religion and symbolism and the role of veterinary medicine. But to treat of that which by natural understanding may be comprehended. But by the common law if he that dieth hath no sons but daughters, the land is equally divided among them, which portion is made by agreement or by lot. They were probably people who were kidnapped from Africa, either themselves, or their ancestors might have been. Othello's tragedy transcends race and is based on a natural human weakness. People of color were called "savage.". AMBEREEN DADABHOY: We actually know quite a bit about the Black people who were living in London during Shakespeares time. Content may require purchase if you do not have access. . He also says in that same scene, Haply, for I am black, right? In 1601, Queen Elizabeth deported all Africans becaused she believed they displayed "irregular behavior" and that allowing them to stay in England would lead to overpopulation. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. People's attitudes toward the supernatural (paranormal, ghosts, mysterious happenings, witches, etc.) Semblably in birds, beasts, and fishes, some be good for the sustenance of man; some bear things profitable to sundry uses; other be apt to occupation and labor; in divers is strength and fierceness only; in many is both strength and commodity; some other serve for pleasure; none of them hath all these qualities; few have the more part or many, specially beauty, strength . What this study adds to existing knowledge To the best of our . Many Africans were brought back to England as proof of their existence. A good deal of mutual affection existed in most marriages, with wives occupying a separate but subordinate sphere in the family economy. . According to the behaviorist definition of . DADABHOY: Thats a really complicated question. We go back thinking about the Middle Ages and the popularity of certain kinds of romance forms. The role of the husband is one of authority and . The convents had been closed. And yet, I am a scholar who is located in a body, who is located in a race, who is located in a gender and a sexuality and all of these things that influence how I think. Aristotle, Historia Animalium, translated by Richard Cresswell: And in all animals in which there is a distinction of the sexes nature has given a similar disposition to the males and to the females. After being imprisoned by her half-sister and surviving several plots designed to prevent her from ascending the throne of England, Elizabeth became queen in 1558. The model summarized below, by Milton Bennett describes this journey from ethnocentrism to ethnorelativism: . And thats the point, right? July 06, 2017. One taken out of the word of God, and the two other out of the grounds of policy and philosophy. I mean one of the things about Shakespeare is he does something different than what other people are doing. I mean, that has, I think, troubled this play so much in terms of where does the Moor fit into this discourse about empire? So, we see that genre, it was quite popular in the Middle Ages. Also where there is any lack of order, needs must be perpetual conflict. DADABHOY: I think that many of us who work on Shakespeare and race, of course, think a lot about Othello. The Elizabethan era is the epoch in English history marked by the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603). Let him show us his letters of privilege for so noble and so great a charge. Sometimes . Previous: Paul Edmondson onAll the Sonnets of Shakespeare| Next: Geoffrey Marsh on Shakespeares Neighbors. DADABHOY: Yes. and primary school children and girls held more positive attitudes towards bullying/victimization than secondary school children. Love and Marriage. BOGAEV: So you know, knowing this, seeing this, writing about this, how does it change how you teach your students? We had technical help from Andrew Feliciano at Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. And there was a wide diversity, right? There could be no mistaking who she was. . In some places the youngest is sole heir: and in some places after an other fashion. Elizabeth's reign was seen as a 'golden age' of culture, with theatre becoming popular across all of society, and it's also when . So, Shakespearean audiences, then, already had exposure to, or thoughts along, these lines, and theyre getting it from different aspects of culture. Is one white and one not white? Older adults perceptions of children's attitudes toward them were more negative But it really was in how I got to my topic was really from a moment of teaching Othello really. Since the Spaniards based their claim to monopoly of the New World upon the right of prior discovery, the Elizabethans rejoined that Cabot had got to the . Women who didn't marry were considered witches by their neighbors, and for lower class women, the only alternative was a life of servitude to wealthier families. Because Mediterranean slavery was still slavery and there was a lot of African slavery that was going through the Mediterranean, but often that form of slavery wasnt inheritable in the same way that the transatlantic program of enslavement becomes, right? } That its used as a keyword. Many of their viewpoints were substantiated from their dominant influence of Christianity, whether Protestant or Catholic. All rights reserved. The idle poor and the deserving poor. In whose power it is not to know the least part of it, much less to command the same. John Knox, "The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women," 1558: Nature, I say, doth paint them forth to be weak, frail, impatient, feeble, and foolish, and experience hath declared them to be unconstant, variable, cruel, and lacking the spirit of counsel and regiment. During the Elizabethan Age, people were able to know the class of one another from what they were wearing. Then concern they but a few. Elizabethan Englishmen associated blackness with evil, death, and danger. This immediately implies Desdemona is her father's physical possession, much the same as Brabantio . But somehow scholars look at this play and argue that race and racism as we understand it are present in it because the term Moor is so inexact and ambiguous. But then, when I read it and I noticed the frequency of the use of negro, I felt that something was happening here, right? BOGAEV: Okay, so we take that understanding of geography or the geopolitics and apply it to the themes in Othello. And here is a good guy. In the play hes called Muly Mahamet Seth or Muly Seth. In practice, marriages ranged over a spectrum running from arranged at one end to completely free at the other. The importance of culture lies in its close association with the ways of thinking and living. Thats proof that race, as we know it, people werent thinking that way back in that time. She is also more shameless and false, more readily deceived, and more mindful of injury, more watchful, more idle, and on the whole less excitable than the male. Certainly, later centuries will try to fix race into certain kinds of concrete meanings, but even those wont hold, right? I think there was also travel writing, and was there a romance genre that had Black-skinned characters? And how Shakespeares audiences would have come in contact with darker skinned people and what their impressions might have been? BOGAEV: Right, yes. 4 For a totally different view, see Lukas Erne, Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist (2003). They make and unmake their subjects; they have power of raising and casting down, of life and of death; judges over all their subjects, and in all cases, and yet accountable to none but God only. But also, this character, its very important to situate him within the context of the eastern Mediterranean and in the context of the Ottoman Empire. The Prince doth participate to them all, or so many of them as he shall think good, such legations anal messages as come from foreign Princes, such letters or occurrents [news] as be sent to himself or to his secretaries, and keepeth so many ambassades [messages] and letters sent unto him secret as he will, although these have particular oath of a councillor touching faith and secrets administered unto them when they be first admitted into that company. Its also popular in the early modern periodCrusader, or Holy Land-encounter storiesthey still have a little bit of those kind of conflict narratives. Let them negotiate and recommend and you're much more likely to be happy in marriage. The earth, which is of substance gross and ponderous, is set of all elements most lowest. Where does the actual the race, yeah, the skin color, come in? I think Othello falls into that trap too, when he begins to doubt Desdemonas love for him and one of the thingsor her fidelity, when he talks about how nature erring from itself in terms of talking about Desdemonas. Well, is it that theres a negro Moor and then just Moors? BOGAEV: Yeah. ELIZABETHAN BLACKNESS 5-18-21 [00:16:05]DADABHOY: I dont think its the origins of racial thinking, but I think its a very powerful example of how race is already being understood, operating in a shorthand that is legible to audiences. Throughout William Shakespeare's The Tempest, Caliban, as the native, is treated as an inferior by Prospero and Stephano, the colonists. In fact, the press treated their presence as part of the spectacle itself. DADABHOY: Yeah. . Find out more about saving content to Google Drive. I mean, it just requires really teaching this whole period differently, it seems. The word insular might have been coined to describe us. DADABHOY: English people are already trainedand we have scholars like Anthony Barthelemy has talked about this in his book Black Face, Maligned Race, where the image of blackness, as associated with sin, with the devil, all of these things, makes it quite easy to map onto then Black people these kinds of characteristics. Its based on current events at the time. whether this influence is linked to different cultural attitudes towards money or the institution al, legal, political and social context specific to each country. on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. And Cyprus is quite close to, sort of, the center of power of the Ottoman Empire, thinking about Istanbul. DADABHOY: Sure. The number of poor was increasing and people were far less charitable. The women of the Elizabethan era were given education only if they were members of the nobility. Benefits. OF WOMEN, MARRIAGE, AND THE FAMILY. Edward Gosynhill, "Schole house of women," c. 1542: A popular and well-known diatribe against the vanity, talkativeness, extravagance, faithlessness, and general frailty of women from Eve to Jezebel. Who perceiveth and seeth himself placed here amidst the filth and mire of the world, fast tied and nailed to the worst, most senseless, and drooping part of the world in the vilest corner of the house and farthest from heaven's cope with those creatures that are the worst of the three conditions and yet dareth imaginarily place himself above the circle of the moon and reduce heaven under his feet. See we not plainly that obedience of creatures unto the law of nature is the stay of the whole world? She is not talking about Spanish people in that edict, right? "useRatesEcommerce": false The material she gathered for that chapter, and frankly, a large portion of her entire academic career, are based around the idea that students can and should be moved toward a new way of looking at concepts of race in the plays of Shakespeare and in all the writings of his contemporaries. Published May 25, 2021. 2021 May;56(3):609-619. doi: 10.1111/1460-6984.12617. What do we know about who they were and where they came from? Hath not he set degrees and estates in all his glorious works? Now, when we talk about Atlantic slavery, we are talking about a related but also, kind of different kind and form of enslavement. the Elizabethan view of the New World. Generations of Christians throughout the whole world have been consumed . DADABHOY: So, I think a lot about Othello of course. You write that in his day at least 50 plays featured characters that were marked as racially or religiously different from their English audiences. Shakespeare's works Read and learn more about Shakespeare's plays and poems; Shakespeare in print The First Folio (the book that gave us Shakespeare) and what came after; Shakespeare in performance From playhouse to film sets, explore four centuries of staging . ; 11 Strikingly enough, the study of popular Shakespeare in live performances has been relatively unexplored. Negro has specific meaning that is tied to being made fit for a certain kind of dominance by European and white powers. Even the idea of objectivity: As a scholar I am just sort of a disembodied mind that is interpreting all of these things. In heaven he hath appointed distinct or several orders and slates of archangels and angels. It was psychologist Robert Levine who analyzed different cultures and their attitude towards time.He found out that the more economically developed countries like the . The concept of culture is very complicated, and the word has . We dont hold to the 19th-century biological explanations of race anymore, and yet we still try to fix race even now. BOGAEV: But interesting that its being skinned. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. And also directed at slaves? In fact, even the Medieval Church had reminded parents of their duty to consider their children's inclinations in marriage arrangements. So, how is it deployed and what does it connote, and what light does it shed on the topic were talking about today? So in loving him, her nature is erring from itself. Weve been engaged here at the Folger in a series of Critical Race Conversations. Attitudes are often the result of experience or upbringing. BOGAEV: This is really interesting because I want to step back now to the bigger picture. Theyre transformed into other kinds of encounters now when weve traveled a couple of centuries forward. BOGAEV: That is so interesting, that Shakespeares audiences would have some kind of familiarity with a population thats so diverse, in terms of Otherness, I guess: non-white. But, a very racist city who would only allow Catholics to enter the city. For though God have power as well of destruction as of creation or maintenance, yet will it not agree with the wisdom of God to exercise his power in the destruction of nature and overturning the whole frame of things, since his creatures were made that his glory might thereby be the better expressed. And were going to talk about that in a moment, but I should get back to what we were talking about, which is: in Shakespeares time, by the late 1500s or early 1600s, does this history mean that English people already associate dark skin with enslavement and servitude? Venice was a very important trading center. The fact that she identifies them as Blackamoors suggests then that they were Black African people. 4. I feel this very strongly every time I see the play performed, that it just doesnt work for me. "The fabric of English society was woven so tightly that it seemed to exclude . However, in Othello by William Shakespeare, had issues about race. In war time, and in the field the Prince hath also absolute power, so that his word is a law, he may put to death, or to other bodily punishment, whom he shall think so to deserve, without process of law or form of judgment. That there is a difference between the visage in her mind versus the visage that is presented to the world. But now to prove by example of those things that be within the compass of man's knowledge, of what estimation order is, not only among men, but also with God, albeit his wisdom, bounty, and magnificence, can be with no tongue or pen sufficiently expressed. BOGAEV: The myth of the glorious enlightenment. So Im really thinking about the way that the play opens not with Othello, but with Iago and Roderigo shaping for us how we should interpret the Moor and Othello, and really relying on lurid imagery of Othellos sexuality and the kind of potential violation of Desdemona that they conjure for Brabantio. We see here already Othello as kind of being hypersexualized and also criminalized in a way through the elopement. They can have a powerful influence over behavior and affect how people act in various situations. BOGAEV: Oh, thats fascinating. That was specifically directed at people from Spain, right? Her chapter in the Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race is called Barbarian Moors: Documenting Racial Formation in Early Modern England. The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race was published by Cambridge University Press in 2021. So, is that the origins of racial thinking? And lastly, kings are compared to the head of this microcosm of the body of man. DADABHOY: Yes.

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