in the Elizabethan Age
Theodora Jankowski argues that, until recently, literary and social-historical critics accepted the paradigm of the Renaissance as a time of the "rebirth" of classical learning and culture, the "birth" of "man" as an individual, and the movement away from a religiously dominated to a secular life. However, she notes that this "essentialist humanist" view of the period has been challenged recently by many scholars. The new view is a much more flexible notion of the period as a gap in history, "neither modern nor medieval, but a space between two more monolithic periods where one can see acted out a clash of paradigms and ideologies, a playfulness with signifying systems, a self-reflexivity, and a self-consciousness about the tenuous solidity of human identify." Rather than accepting a single view of a specific circumstance called "the Renaissance," critics are now open to the flexible nature of the period--caused by the conflict between various paradigms and ideologies--and the necessity of considering the various discourses that were in circulation regarding any concept.
William Shakespeare was an heir to this clash of ideologies and this may be one of the reasons John Guy calls him one of the greatest influences on English literature and European drama. The late Elizabethan Age, during which Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet, was also a time of cultural transition. Talbert argues the Elizabethans believed the problem of political and social order required the involvement of the masses, the aristocracy, and the ruler. In the Elizabethan age, the Parliament in addition to Queen Elizabeth herself, was generally recognized as representing the force of the whole and was responsible for determining the succession of the state and the control of men's estates. These ruling factions were required to act in accordance with the conventional definition of the commonwealth, thus acting for the good of...