(from Broadway to English)
THE PLOT OF "Romeo and Juliet" (The Tragedy of Romeo
and Juliet) by William Shakespeare (1594 - 1597)
In
Verona, Italy, there are two families: the Montagues and the Capulets.
These
families are always fighting.
The
Montagues have a son, Romeo.
The
Capulets have a daughter, Juliet.
One night the Capulets have
a party and Romeo goes to the party. He meets Juliet and they fall in love.
Juliet’s cousin, Tybalt, sees Romeo and is
very angry. Romeo and Juliet wish to get
married. They know that their families will be very angry so they go to Friar
Lawrence and got married in secret.
The
next day, Tybalt sees Romeo. He is still angry with Romeo and wants to fight
him.
Romeo
doesn’t want to fight but his best friend, Mercutio, does.
Mercutio
fights Tybalt. Tybalt kills Mercutio! Romeo is so upset, he fights Tybalt and
kills him too!
The
Prince of Verona is very angry and sends Romeo away.
Juliet goes to Friar Lawrence for help and says to Juliet:
“Here is a special drink. You will sleep for two days. Your family will think
you are dead but you will wake up. Then you and Romeo can be free together”.
Friar
Lawrence sends Romeo a letter to tell him the plan. But Romeo doesn’t get the
message.
He
sees that Juliet is dead!
Romeo is very upset and he
buys some poison and goes to see Juliet because he wants to “stay with her for
ever” - Romeo takes the poison and dies.
Too late, Juliet wakes up! She sees what
happened. Juliet decides to kill herself, but the poison is over.
Jiuliet
finds the knife in the pocket of Romeo and kills herself. Romeo and Juliet are
both dead.
Friar Lawrence tells the Capulets and Montagues what happened.
They are so sad and they agree not to fight any more.
SHAKESPEARE AND ELIZABETHAN ERA – OVERVIEW
Queen Elizabeth I
reigned from 1558 to 1603. During her reign the British Empire has experienced
a period of splendor in the art of poetry, theatre, music and literature.
She expanded her
reign abroad with new colonies across the globe thanks to the renewal of naval
fleet.
She expanded British trade in the New
World: the today's Americas.
She was considered a very good monarch.
Elizabethan Era
is very famous for theatre: the plays of William Shakespeare and of others
composers of that time are still very famous today all over the word.
Elizabeth I was a Protestant (Christian Protestant) and a strong believer in
God.
In Britain,
before Elizabeth I, queen Mary I and king Philip II were Catholics (Christian Catholics).
When
Elizabeth became Queen Elizabeth I she declared that Christian Catholicism was
illegal. She was against Catholics religious rebels.
If Catholics were
discovered to pray in secret they were punished; sometimes they were also executed.
When Shakespeare
was born Elizabeth was already to the throne as Queen Elizabeth I, therefore
the works of Shakespeare were created during the same cultural-religious
changing era.
Shakespeare knew very well the social and
cultural changes around him and around Europe.
During his life
he wrote many plays that reflected the social life and the important changes of
Elizabethan Era in Britain and in Europe.
WILLIAM
SHAKESPEARE, HIS LIFE, WORKS AND THE GLOBE THEATRE
William
Shakespeare was born in 1564 in
Stratford-upon-Avon, in England. His
father, John, was a glove maker.
His
mother, Mary, was a farmer’s daughter. He had two older sisters, two younger
sisters and three younger brothers.
William probably
studied Latin, Greek and history, and left school when he was 14 or 15. Three
years later he married Anne Hathaway. They had a daughter called Susanna and
twins named Judith and Hamnet. Sometime before 1590 he left Stratford and went
to London, the capital city of England.
London’s
first theatre opened in 1576. Shakespeare worked in London as an actor and then
started writing plays too. In 1593 the plague, a terrible disease, killed
thousands of people and theatres were closed. During this time William started
to write poems instead of plays.
His short poems are called sonnets.
Shakespeare
helped build a new theatre called The Globe. It opened in 1599. It was round
and had space for 3000 people. At The Globe some people stood in front of the
stage and others had seats. The audience shouted, clapped, booed and laughed
while they watched plays.
Musicians created
special noises to make the plays more exciting and they had a cannon to make
big bangs! No women acted in Shakespeare’s time: men and boys played all the
parts. Shakespeare wrote comedies with happy endings, like A Midsummer Night’s
Dream. He wrote tragedies which had sad endings, like Romeo and Juliet. His
history plays are about kings and queens, like Henry V. Shakespeare wrote 38
plays, maybe more. He loved language and invented new words and expressions
that we still use today.
William became
rich and famous. He had houses in London and in Stratford. He died when he was
52 on 23 April 1616. His plays and poetry were very popular 400 years ago and
they are still popular today. People all over the world love his work because
he wrote wonderful stories about very interesting people.
Click on the link below to get information about Shakespeare and the Elisabethan Era from my blog The Travelling Teachers:
SOCIAL ISSUES
THE
SOCIAL CLASSES OF THE EMPIRE AND ELIZABETHAN POOR LAW
Elizabethan
England had 4 main social classes: The Nobility, the Gentry, the Yeomanry, and
the Poor. Each social class identified how people could dress, where they could
live, and the kinds of jobs that people and their children could get.
A nobleman was
rich and powerful during the reign of Elizabeth and also during the reigns of
her father and grandfather, Henry VIII and Henry VII. A person could become a
noble by birthright or by grant from the king or queen.
The gentry
were the people who were knights, squires, gentlemen and gentlewoman who were
very rich and did not work for a living. Their numbers grew rapidly, and became
the most important class during Elizabethan time. Most of the important people
of this time came from this class.
The Yeomanry
were the ‘middleclass'. They could live comfortably with the little savings
they built up, but at any moment they could lose everything in case of illness or
period of severe famine. While the gentry spent their money for building large
homes, the yeomen used their wealth more simply to expand their land and
improve it.
Poor
The
last class of Elizabethan Era was the day labourers, poor husbandmen, who did
not own their own land. Artisans, shoemakers, carpenters, brick masons and all
those who worked with their hands belonged to this class of society.
This class included also serving-men and
beggars. Under Queen Elizabeth I, the government created
an assisting system for the labourers class and the result was the famous Elizabethan Poor Laws.
The Poor Law
The first British Poor Laws passed in
1598 and continued till 1948.
In
the Elizabethan Poor Law of 1601 there was a tax devoted to poors
and an organization of people dedicated to the poor surveillance in order to
find them a work.
SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXT OF ELIZABETHAN ERA - THE RELIGION
The predecessor
of Queen Elizabeth I, Mary, was Christian Roman Catholic. Mary was known for
persecution of Protestants.
Religion in
Europe during the 16th century was
marked by the Protestant Reformation.
In 1521 the
teachings of the monk Martin Luther
(1483–1546) started the Protestant Reformation also known as the
Reformation; the Protestant religious movement wanted to reform the Roman
Catholic Church and establish Protestant Churches.
The
Reformation consisted of several Christian
factions leaving the authority of the Catholic Church in protest of canonical
and procedural practices.
One
of the main protest was against the “policy of indulgences” started on
1517: the payment of sums of money to be
absolved from all sins and direct go to heaven after death.
Calvinism and Lutheranism formed the
major Christian factions, called Protestants.
Although
this movement originated in mainland Europe, the Protestant Reformation spread
to England with King Henry VIII (father of Elizabeth I).
Many northern European countries, such as
the German states, the Netherlands, England, and Scotland, adopted the Protestantism, while southern European states, such as Italy, France, and Spain, remained Catholics.
Catholics believed
that human beings needed the assistance of intermediaries to help them to
communicate with God. The church itself
acted as an intermediary with God. The Church offered the official blessing
to those people who had a good behaviour during life, because church was
capable of interceding with God to protect people on earth.
Protestants believed
that Christian needed only of the authority of the Bible. They believed
Christians were wrong because they encouraged worship of something different
from God.
When
Elizabeth I inherited the throne she called the Parliament in 1559 the to
create a new Church of England.
Elizabeth I
closed all relations with the Catholic Church and issued the Reformation Bill which appointed Elizabeth as the Governor of the Church of
England.
1559 Act of Supremacy
Elizabeth
declared herself Supreme Governor of the
Church of England.
Anyone refusing
to take the Oath could be charged with treason.
Act of Uniformity
On the 8th May
1559, Queen Elizabeth I gave her approval to The Act of Uniformity which made Protestantism England’s official
faith, established a form of worship which is still followed in English Parish churches today.
After Protestant
Reformation Europe was divided between Catholics and Protestants and this split
caused many persecution in Europe: Catholics against Protestants.
England in the 16th century experienced
a massive immigration of Dutch,
Flemish, and French Protestant refuges.
Many immigrants
settled in London with the new economic opportunities due to the English
Reformation and the improvement of manufacturing.
Jews in 16th-century
England practised their religion
secretly, and many of them converted themselves to Christianity or
pretended to have done so.
Jews were not
many in Elizabethan England. About 200 Jews among the thousands of strangers
living in late 16th-century London.
Virtually all Jews practised their faith in
secret: most were of Spanish or Portuguese descent, Marranos who had survived the
Inquisition.
EMIGRATION AND IMMIGRATION IN ELIZABETHAN ERA
Emigration
The
main reason of migration was because there was better land in the new
countries, more food, less people and they could practice whatever religion
they wanted.
Around the late 1580’s, people started to
migrate from England to the new world. The reason
people migrated from England to Americas was mostly because of disagreement of
religion.
Plague Outbreak 1592
The
massive expansion of population in London in late sixteenth century caused many
problems. London became crowded, dirty and with many diseases. In particularly
the plague in 1592 caused many deaths. It was called “the Black death” .
Public places
were closed and therefore also theatres
were closed.
The
unsafe conditions in London resulted in a major emigration from London, as people fled to the countryside to escape the plague.
New World Pilgrimage
In
the early seventeenth century, English Separatists where a religious group who did
not agreed with the reforms of the Church of England.
Puritans were
another religious group who believed that the only one authority for the church
was found in the Bible.
These
groups during the seventeenth century began leaving England. This was in part
due to religious persecution that began against all non-members of the Anglican
Church.
Citizens
who missed the weekly Sunday procession, had to pay heavy fines and often were
imprisoned.
These
religious groups became the first settlers in the New World (Americas).
The Mayflower was
the ship that in 1620 transported 102 English
Pilgrims, including a core group of Separatists,
to New England.
Immigration (1575-1625)
The
Elizabethan era (1558-1603) was notable for large immigration and emigration
within, as well as to and from England. Immigration within England mainly
consisted of people from the rural country side moving to the capital city of
London.
Immigration
from other European was mainly do to
religious reasons, as was emigration from England. London was one of two
European cities that experienced the greatest population growth from 1500-1800
nearly doubling its size in the late 16th
century. These immigration and emigration events influenced political, social,
economic, and religious aspects.
London as the attractive place to live
The
Elizabethan era is considered the height of the English Renaissance, a cultural
movement in England. This movement involved the revolution in literature, art,
and music. London became the centre for
Theatre performance and art, attracting rich people to the capital for these
luxuries. The great influx of wealthy inhabitants in London, attracted
English merchants and working class who also immigrated to the city. These new economic opportunities motivated
them to sell their products or provide services to the wealthy inhabitants.
London Centre of Trade
During
the Elizabeth era, London became the center of trade for all of Europe. Traders
traveled to London from North Africa and India. This created a new category of
immigrants as a notable population of Africans and Indians set up residents in
England.
The
presence of African's marked the beginning
of the slave trade in early England. It is difficult to estimate the actual
number of Africans that were taken to or immigrated to England during this time
period.
But in around 1600, the presence of black
people had become a problem for the English government.
Their numbers recently increased by many slaves freed from captured Spanish
ships (imported by the Spanish colonizers). The presence of black people
suddenly came to be seen as a nuisance.
Elizabeth's Expulsion Orders
Queen
Elizabeth I issued three expulsion orders from 1596-1601, calling for the
expulsion of all dark-skinned citizens in England. This act had no effect on
slaves without citizenship, it was only
for the expulsion of legal working citizens.
The
poor London Economy in the 1590's created resentment toward African immigrants,
who were presumed to be taking away
jobs. This intolerance measures of
the government toward a particular ethnic group is considered an early
indication of racism that transferred over to the Americas.
BRITAIN TODAY: A MULTI-ETHNICAL SOCIETY
British Immigration - Facts of the 21st century:
In Britain live about 8 million people from different minority ethnic groups.
In mid 2014 the total of Britain population was 64,6 millions **
(12% was the total of minority ethnical groups)
In 2011 the Census conducted in England and Wales registered that population was composed of:
- Asian groups (Pakistans Indians, Bangladeshi, other) were 6,8% of the total population
- Black groups were 3.4%
- Chinese groups were 0,7%
- Arab groups 0,4%
- Other groups were 0,6% (Jews 0,0004%)
Religion
The same 2011 Census recorded 56 million residents of England and Wales in 2011 (included UK born and non-UK born population)
59 % were Christian (both Catholic Church and Protestant Church)
4.8 % were Muslims
0,4% were other religions
25% had no Religion
Britain – A Multicultural Society
This multicultural society causes many problems for the British government. There are a lot of street fights between whites and non-whites, because the people are not living equal. Each ethnic group follows its religion and its cultural events. Many white people still have a lot of prejudices against ethnic minority groups.
These facts are a big cause for the racial discrimination and the violence of many white people against minorities. White people are frustrated about illegal immigrants crossing the English Channel. There are also problems in education and employment: children of ethnic minority groups need more special help in education than whites. Among the ethnic minority groups the unemployment is very high.
** According to 2014 data of Office for National Statistics
But there are also positive aspects of the multicultural society in Britain.
Although all these problems exist, the ethnic minority groups are in no other European country as good as integrated than in Britain.
The offer of food is nowhere bigger than in London, and there are lots of mixed ethnic communities.
The Religion: a bridge between religion at the time of Elizabeth I and religion today
Because of the historical dominance of Christianity power in England, Christianity is the 'established religion' of the UK.
Bishops still sit in the House of Lords (the UK's second chamber of government)
"Britain is the only country left in the democratic world that allows clerics to sit in its legislature as of right".
Click below for more information about immigration and multiculturalism in the UK from my blog The Travelling Teachers :
BRITAIN TODAY IN THE EUROPEAN CONTEXT
Britain joined the EC in 1973
(which means that it was a member of the EU
till the United Kingdom's recent
withdrawal from the European Union - widely known as Brexit
– following the referendum of June
23rd 2016).
From then on
(from 1973), the issue of Europe has been the most divisive one within the
Labour and Conservative parties for many years and still causes passionate
discussions still today, despite the 52% of June 23rd
EU referendum votes were in favour of leaving the EU.
51,9% voted to Leave the EU – 49.1 % voted to Remain in the EU.
THE LANGUAGE OF IMMIGRATION
The immigration is a very complex phenomenon which today is assuming new forms. Let's try to make some distinction to give a name to what is happening in the contemporary world. How to call people who move from a place to another place?
The word “migrant” indicates a generic category for those who move from a place to another place. Some migrants are “in transit” because for example they reach the south of Italy where they stop for a few months; then they reach their final destination in the north of Italy or to a Northen European country.
The word “immigrant” is technically a migrant who reaches the country of destination and settles there with the status of a resident. Following this criterion the category of immigrants also includes that of refugees (because the refugees are almost by definition people who are established in the country of the final destination).
Let's make another distinction between “economic migrant” and established “irregular migrant” “Economic migrants” are migrants and immigrants who move for economic reasons. “Irregular migrants” are those who, for whatever reason, enter a country without legal travel documents. It is a category that includes many others, such as refugees (potential asylum seekers and refugees) who in most cases arrive irregularly in countries of destination, without document of identification.
The term non-EU-citizen includes any person who is not a citizen of one of the 28 member countries. It is a term in itself neutral, but has come to assume, at least in the Italian debate, a negative connotation.
The refugee is a precise legal category, and refers to a person who has been recognized, in fact, the refugee status. That means that the person has been forced to leave its country because of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, and which can not return home. Refugees are a special category of immigrants who have a special legal status under the Geneva Convention.
To achieve the status of refugee a person must apply for asylum and wait for a response. The asylum seeker is someone who has applied for political asylum, and therefore the status of a refugee in a foreign country. It is, again, a category defined legally and temporally. In fact, the asylum seeker becomes refugee or economic migrant, or irregular migrant when he gets a definitive answer to his application for asylum.
In Italian the word “profugo” (which does not exist in English), is used to precisely define who leave their country for reasons of force majeure, as distinct from the term refugee, which instead defines who gets asylum.
But beyond the terms we are using today to define the migrants, “profughi” or the fugitives or even refugees it is important to understand that these are people with serious difficulties to which we should recognize the dignity of each person with all his needs but also with all of its resources.
And now the some songs from the show!
Taylor Swift - Love story
Rag'nBone - Human
John Legend - All of me
Elena - Mamma Mia (He's Italiano)
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