Religion vs. Magic in English Renaissance Literature
It's no surprise that a rise in humanism—i.e., the basic belief that humans are good and have got something to offer—did funny things to religion. But humanism wasn't even the half of it. Never mind the religious Reformation that created Protestantism, England's religious Renaissance was really sparked by a racy love affair between Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.
Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII's wife at the time, didn't give Henry a male heir. And back then, they had some odd notions about how a child's sex is determined; Henry thought it was Catherine's fault he never had a son. So ole HVIII figured he'd trade her in for a new woman and try again.
Nice. (Heavy on the sarcasm here, of course.) Getting a divorce from Catherine wasn't easy. In the end, HVIII went all see-ya-sucka and decided to found Anglicanism and make himself the head of the Church of England. Which meant that he could do pretty much whatever he wanted.
Well, that's one way to ditch your wife.
Along with the Catholics, Protestants, and Anglicans who were then duking it out for people's eternal souls, there were still pockets of fairy magic in the Europe of the Renaissance. Especially in rural towns, people would turn to magic, spells, and incantations to solve the problems of the heart and the head.
Now, we're not saying witches are real. Or that they ever were. But all the townsfolk back then who burning their neighbors at the stake sure seemed to believe in them.
What this panoply of religions provided for literature was an ever-present juxtaposition between magic and the Christian world. This was doubly (triply?) compounded by the influence the Greek and Roman gods seemed to wield over people's fictional worlds.
As we've said, the poets and playwrights of the day were pretty obsessed with Greek and Roman myths. For instance, most of the themes in The Winter's Tale are ideas stressed in Christianity. But the play itself comes to life through its allusions to classical literature, particularly the myth of Pygmalion.
Chew on This
Romeo and Juliet takes place in Verona, Italy. Italy also happens to house the Vatican, which is where the pope lives. Could this backdrop be the reason why some much of the love language in Romeo and Juliet sounds like religious worship? Food for thought, Shmoopers.
Speaking of Italians and their awesome literature, don't you just love Dante's Inferno? And, we were wondering: is there any chance this dude's take on hell had anything to do with how Renaissance writers felt about religion?