How does Shakespeare's writing differ from Medieval Literature?

Answer 1

The thoughts of the ignorant: The only book in the medieval times were the bible. And medieval literuture only talked about religion and Shakespeare only talked about love and sex.

Not true at all. Of course Shakespeare's works cover a lot of ground, and although they do talk about love and sex to be sure, they also talk about revenge, usurpation of power, leadership, the weight of command, revolution, democracy vs. Dictatorship, justice, cannibalism, magic, retirement, loansharks, and lots more.

And although people in the medieval period (which covers a really really long time, you know) did write about religion, they also wrote a LOT about love and sex. See for example Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, or Chretien de Troyes' Romances, or Malory's Morte D'Arthur, or Andreas Cappelanus's Art of Courtly Love. They also wrote a lot about fighting: The Song of Roland or Beowulf or again Malory for example.

Shakespeare's writing differed from medieval writing not in its themes so much, but more in its form. His most famous work is his plays which was a virtually unknown form right up to the beginning of the sixteenth century. Although medieval mystery plays like Everyman are actually quite good, nobody thought of them as literature at the time. His favourite poetic form was the sonnet, a form which arose in the Italian Renaissance with Petrarch and was not a medieval form at all. Only his long poems like Venus and Adonis or The Rape of Lucrece would have been in a form familiar to someone in the England of three centuries earlier.

Shakespeare's frequent use of Classical plots, themes and references also is atypical of medieval writing and more typical of the renasissance. But not wholly: two of his plays share Classical plots with the medieval writer Chaucer (who was much admired in Shakespeare's day).

Answer 2

He focused on the human being, but during the medieval ages, they focused more on religion. He became very interested in everyday life and wanted to express that idea throughout his writing works.

Answer 3

Shakespeare is almost always assigned to the Renaissance.

Shakespeare shows the typical renaissance traits of religious questioning and interest in scientific discoveries. He also has a very powerful and radical critique of social history which he works through in his double tetralogy Richard II - Richard III.

Medieval authors tend to be more interested in order (as Geoffrey Chaucer is), though they can also be intrigued by how it disintegrates (as in Chaucer's Troylus and Criseyde). Renaissance authors tend to be more interested in change, though they can also be fascinated in how certain types of order persist even in mounting chaos (as in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida).

Answer 4

The Globe Theater, in which most of Shakespeare's plays were performed, was not so different from the theaters of today. It had a stage agains the back "wall" of the theater, jutting out a few meters into the audience, with seats in the balconies around the other walls. However, in the center of the theater, what we refer to today as the orchestra seats, there was no proper seating- people would stand for the entire performance. Shakespearian audiences were also very respondent to what was happening in the plays- hissing, jeering, wolf-whistles, cheering, etc. If you want to see a shakespearian audience in modern times, go to the annual Fall Festival of Shakespeare at Shakespeare and Company in Lenox, Massachusetts. The high schoolers are quite inspired.

Answer 5

His plays show more talent and depth than many writers illustrate. There are layers of meaning and fascinating uses of rhyme and meter that you don't see with most other people. I think there are probably other people as talented as he was, but it is rare.

Answer 6

Leaving aside those writers who wrote no plays, who are obviously different, Shakespeare is different from his contemporaries, first, because he was better. The quality of Shakespeare's best work is head and shoulders above that of his contemporaries, who at their best wrote good stuff, but just not as good.

One of the reasons for this is that the plays do not deal, for the most part, with contemporary issues, current events, and newsmakers of the day. Other playwrights did so, thinking that it would make their plays more relevant to their audiences. Ben Jonson was particularly fond of being up-to-date, using the latest slang and talking about current issues. The problem with plays of this kind is that they get old very quickly and by now they are very old. Plays such as Jonson's Volpone, Beaumont and Fletcher's Knight of the Burning Pestle and Middleton and Dekker's Roaring Girl are filled with in-jokes and contemporary allusions, which is why you almost never see them on today's stage.

Of course, Christopher Marlowe also avoided current issues in his plays and was a very good writer. Why is Shakespeare different from Marlowe? Mostly because of characterization and also because Shakespeare had a gift for the apt phrase that made his dialogue snappier.

Answer 7

Shakespeare was able to combine the nobility of Marlowe with the dramatic intensity of Kyd, together with his unique perception into the minds of all kinds of people including kings, rogues, theives, Jewish moneylenders, prostitutes and postulant nuns, to create his amazing dialogue. In addition, he avoided personal information and opinion and topical content which makes his plays relevant long after they were written.

Answer 8

Shakespeare was one of a large number of very competent playwrights who were writing for the English stage in the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras: thirty or more we can name and many times that many whose names we do not know. You can read a lot of these other plays and find that they are in fact very good.

Shakespeare was just much better. Much, much better. Nobody has written better plays than Shakespeare's best ones, at any time, in any language.

So why is Shakespeare so much better known than these hundreds of others? Shakespeare wrote about things which have much wider implications than the others. For example, Dekker and Middleton's The Roaring Girl is a play, written about the same time as Shakespeare's The Tempest, about the controversial contemporary figure Mary Frith. To understand The Roaring Girl you need to know something about Mary Frith and why she was controversial. The Tempest explains itself. Or again, Beaumont and Fletcher's The Knight of the Burning Pestle, written about the same time as Othello, is an extremely clever satire of middle-class aspirations and romantic chivalric literature which is a genre few people know a lot about these days. Whereas Othello . . . who doesn't understand jealousy?

Answer 9

Because he had a very good choice of words and put time into everything he wrote.....most writers did not do that with their writing

Answer 10

how does William Shakespeare's writing differ from medieval times