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Difference Between Jacobean And Elizabethan Play

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In general, Elizabethan as well as Jacobean plays, not only those of Shakespeare, were more or less influenced by the tradition from which they had arisen, by the sources of information on which they were based, and also by the current political situation in which they were written. While scholars have disagreed about the direct influence of Seneca on Elizabethan drama. The Elizabethan era was a time of relative hope and confidence. In the early seventeenth century, however, the national mood seems to have become tense and anxious, partially because James was not as skillful a ruler as Elizabeth. This period, called Jacobean from the Latin form of James's name, also is known as the early Stuart era after James's family name. William Shakespeare…show more content…
Every fresh addition to the knowledge of the history and thought of ancient Greece and Rome was eagerly welcomed. Sir Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives, which was first published in 1579, provided the framework, and sometimes, even the wording, of the Roman plays of Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, Ben Jonson and Massinger. These plays and their leading figures undoubtedly made a special appeal to the Elizabethan playgoer, who perhaps drew a parallel between the history of those days and the stirring times in which he himself was living. We may, indeed, note here that it was easy for the English to identify themselves with the Romans, whose occupation of Britain had left so firm an impression on their life, laws, and language, and whose feeling for order, justice, and personal integrity in administration they had inherited. In later times, when the English, like Romans, became great Empire-builders, their writers and orators often expressed their pride in this similarity of ideals and achievements.Shakespeare himself must have been keenly conscious of this affinity between his countrymen and their ancient
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