Historical perspective

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare can be related to its historical context, the Elizabethan era. This era was named after Queen Elizabeth I (reigned 1558-1603), and Shakespeare’s play is believed to have been written in the 1590s.

The Elizabethan era existed within a wider European era called the Renaissance, which is what we will focus on here. In many ways, the Renaissance was the beginning of modernity. It marked a break with the Middle Ages which came before. Renaissance means “rebirth” and new ways of thinking blossomed, for instance within art, science, philosophy, and literature. A lot of this new thinking was inspired by classical ideas from Ancient Greece and Rome.

A central new concept was humanism which is the idea that man i...