In the fifteenth century, European thinkers, educators,

fifteenth century

fifteenth century, In the fifteenth century, European thinkers, educators, and artists began to rebel against the rigid control of medieval authorities, promoting the Renaissance (meaning “rebirth”). Protestant reformers like Luther and Calvin challenged ecclesiastical authority by holding individual believers responsible for their own relation to God. Humanists, including Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Marsillio Ficino, emphasized the power of human reason as the source of reliable knowledge of our place in the world. Florentine diplomat Niccolò Machiavelli advised Medici princes on how to exercise political control over their subjects.

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The fine arts flourished during this period as well:

• Giotto’s introduction of chiaroscuro shading rendered painting more realistic.
• Raphael, Michelangelo, and Titian polished the art of composition and framing. Van Eyck, Bosch, Dürer, Holbein, and Brueghel brought these advances north.
• Donatello and Verrocchio pioneered idealized portraiture in the creation of sculpture.
• Brunelleschi, Alberti, and Palladio emphasized harmony and proportion in architecture.
• Josquin des Prez and Michael Praetorius helped sacred and secular music to thrive.

In all of these arts—and in science and technology as well—Leonardo da Vinci (the original “Renaissance Man”) brought inventive intelligence and creative genius to everything he chose to do.

The discursive arts of poetry, drama, and other literature also thrived during these centuries:

• Giovanni Boccaccio and Geoffrey Chaucer wrote episodic collections of popular fables.
• Baldassare Castiglione described in detail the character of the well-rounded person.
• Desiderius Erasmus and Thomas More explored the practical consequences of humanism.
• Miguel de Cervantes and Michel de Montaigne wrote in Spanish and French vernaculars.

Renaissance scholarship also resulted in translations of the Bible into everyday languages, including French, German, and English.

Shakespeare

In Renaissance literature, however, one figure stands out above all others: William Shakespeare. With a vocabulary as large as any among his contemporaries and a capacity for combining familiar elements in the formation of new words, Shakespeare contributed significantly to the rapid growth of the English language during the Elizabethan era.

In poetry, Shakespeare relied heavily on the traditional iambic pentameter but modified both the form and the content of his sonnets. Abandoning the Italian eight-and-six line structure, he created the “English sonnet,” with three four-line quatrains with varying rhyme schemes followed by a single rhyming couplet at the close. Although he, too, wrote of love, Shakespeare often adopted a stance of ironic detachment, reducing the “courtly love” of Petrarch to a level that more ordinary people could appreciate.

Similarly, Shakespeare’s plays—including histories, romances, comedies, and tragedies—followed patterns akin to those of other playwrights like Marlowe and Kyd. But his treatment of familiar themes transcended the usual, bringing a unique level of creativity to each type of drama. Hamlet, for example, relies on a simple revenge plot in which a son is duty bound to avenge his father’s death. But the introduction of a “play within the play,” political intrigue involving a foreign invasion, a fatuous royal advisor, Hamlet’s relationship with his mother, and the death of his sweetheart Ophelia all complicate the basic situation. Individual characters, acting on incomplete information, blunder through the play clumsily. But Hamlet is different.

For this one central character, Shakespeare devised a way to reveal private thoughts and feelings to the audience (but not other characters) by writing for Hamlet a series of lengthy soliloquies, in which he gives voice to his interior life. Hamlet alone thinks out loud, letting us in on the personal narrative through which he tries to make sense of his own life. Although this technique has become a familiar part of cinematic portrayals now, it was entirely new in Shakespeare’s day. It makes the role a weighty one—Hamlet has more than half the lines in the play—but it renders him a real person with whom we can easily identify. Shakespeare shows us not only how this one Danish prince can be interpreted but also how we might reflect upon the daily experience of our own lives.