What did Shakespearean people believe?

Answer 1

The people in Shakespeare's time, at least in Europe, were Christians. In England, Shakespeare's country, they were protestants (the Church of England or the Anglicans); everywhere else was Catholic. They also believed in, rather paradoxically, astrology and being able to predict the future using the stars.

In 1531 Henry VIII declared himself sole head of the Church in England, and his authority was recognised by the English bishops. This created a strange hybrid-church which accepted all the Roman Catholic teachings except the primacy of the Pope. Anglicanism was not Protestant - because it accepted all the Roman Catholic teachings. It was also not Catholic - because it denied the authority of the Pope.

This confusing system continued until the death of Henry in 1547. Henry was succeeded by his ten-year-old son Edward VI. Edward VI was in constant ill-health, and was persuaded by his guardians to move Anglicanism much closer to real Protestantism by revising the Book of Common Prayer. (Real Protestantism had started in Bohemia with the teachings of Jan Hus in the 1420's, and had become an important European religion after Martin Luther promulgated his 95 theses in 1517). Edward VI tried to move the church of England closer to Luther's protestantism, and even attempted (illegally) to disinherit his two sisters' claims to the royal succession in favour of the protestant Lady Jane Grey.

Edward VI died in 1553 at the age of fifteen, and Lady Jane Grey was offered the throne of England. But Edward's German protestantism had never been very popular, and Queen Mary - Henry VIII's eldest daughter, and Edward's older sister - had no trouble reclaiming the throne for the Tudor line.

Both Henry VIII and Edward VI had instituted religious purges against the Roman Catholics. Queen Mary (Bloody Mary) replied with purges against the more protestant of the Anglican clergy. Religion was suddenly a good way to get yourself killed in England.

Mary herself died relatively young (42) and without children. She was succeeded by her half-sister, Henry VII's daughter by Anne Boleyn - Queen Elizabeth I.

Elizabeth I was broadly protestant in outlook, but had no interest in religious persecution. She announced that she had 'no window to look into men's souls' and began a gradual process of protestantisation of the Anglican church, but without the religious persecutions which were common all over Europe at the time.

Englishmen in Shakespeare's time were technically protestant, but with a great deal of tolerance of Catholic ideas. Many old Catholic families were allowed to continue to practise their religion (there is some evidence that the Ardens - Shakespeare's mother's family - were such recusant Catholics).

People still had superstitions (as they do today). There was considerable belief in Horoscopes, Herbology, Elves, Fairies, and Scrying (similar to Psychic reading today). But England in Shakespeare's time was a protestant country which was broadly tolerant of Catholics.

Compared to almost all other European countries Elizabeth I's England was extraordinarily tolerant - this is one of several reasons why it was a golden age for British Culture.

Answer 2

Some long while ago, they believed in a lie that black cats are only owned by witches. In fact, the truth is: cats have various colours going only by GENETIC codes and its' ridiculous and superstitious to believe that all witches have black cats and only them.

Some long while ago, they believed in a superstition that witches use red ink when writing; yet they ignored the fact other people use red ink in writing and in art, and in photos, and as the colour of clothes with no problems and no misunderstandings. In fact, some people who have eye problems can see red and can see black much better than green or blue, and it's nothing to do with witches.

As far as I know, there are other superstitions surrounding "witches", most of those beliefs are outdated, erroneous and born of superstition and lack of learning.

Shakespeare was at times very, very wise, yet sometimes was under personal threat from the Royals to do what they said, so he sometimes clothed his wisdom in terms of a fiction in the hope the royals and others would repent. The Court Jesters, also, were under awful threats of torture if they didn't have any joke to say when the royals decided the Court Jester SHOULD say something new and witty: then, the Jester would be called a "witch" and thrown into jail, and tortured or simply beheaded on false charges.

Often, in medieval days, anyone that said or did any tiny little thing wrong, called wrong by a royal or a priest, (such as sneezing near the Queen), people were given tortures and so forth, and called (unjustly) witches. I'm grateful such nonsense has been quit these days.

Answer 3

There were many superstitions, ranging from ways to avoid being cursed by a witch's evil eye to predictions for the weather. Many of these have persisted in folk tales and superstitions today, including the fear of black cats (associated with witchcraft in medieval England), the statement "red sky at morning, sailors take warning" and other such idioms.

Answer 4

Yes they did believe in them.

Because of the time period, many people believed in the existence of the supernatural. As the people of the time were strongly religious, the supernatural elements found in The Bible would have been very influential in their beliefs. Some also believed that it was the loved ones they had lost in the past that they were watching over them. That why some say they are always with them, all the time.

Answer 5

They believed most of the things people nowadays believe except for the things discovered by science in the last 400 years. They tended to believe that everything in the Bible was literally true. They also sometimes believed in legendary and mythological beings like trolls and witches.

Answer 6

There is very little that was believed by people back then that is not believed by someone or other today. And even back then, not everyone held those beliefs. It was the start of an age of new knowledge and rationalism, yet at the same time it was also the age of traditional belief and superstition, and people had trouble distinguishing between a scientist and a magician, and to be frank, the difference between an astrologer and an astronomer or between an alchemist and a chemist is not as great as all that. Although the ultimate purposes of astrology and alchemy were different, the study of these fields revealed volumes of astronomical and chemical information. Characters like Friar Bacon in Greene's play Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay was a theologian, scientist and magician; so was Dr. Faustus in Marlowe's play. Friar Laurence in Romeo and Juliet is skilled in making potions, which makes him a kind of pharmacist as well as a kind of divine; his potion for Juliet is a kind of anaesthetic. Even today there are people who feel that potion-making (what pharmacists do) is a kind of diabolical magic. Some people believed very strongly that studying the stars could give you information about the future, to the extent that Queen Elizabeth had Dr. Dee as an advisor, but others were skeptical, as we see in Cassius in Julius Caesar ("The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.") or Edgar in King Lear ("an admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star!"). Some may have believed that alchemists could turn iron into gold, but to others (as we see in Jonson's The Alchemist) to others it was an opportunity to fleece the greedy and gullible.

Some of the older traditional beliefs about geography, the customs of people in foreign lands, and the behaviour of animals were still held by people who did not have the opportunity through experience or education to know differently. Thus although Magellan had circumnavigated the globe in 1519, there were still some people who held the medieval notion that the world was a disc with Jerusalem in the centre. They believed there were people in far-off countries who had no heads but their faces were on their chests and others who had only one big leg and hopped about. They believed in the existence of dragons and phoenixes and wyverns and other weird animals. They believed that elephants were afraid of mice, that bears were born as a lump which the mother bear had to lick into the shape of a bear cub, and that ostriches put their heads in the sand when they were afraid. People who knew more about elephants and bears and ostriches knew better. But these old ideas were still literally believed by many.

Perhaps the ideas which would seem strangest to people in 21st century North America and Europe are ideas pertaining to human behaviour and social customs. Many of these are ideas which were current here until only fifty or sixty years ago. "Spare the rod and spoil the child" was the maxim of childrearing until the 1960s and Dr. Spock, and is still considered good advice in many parts of the world. The idea of people being put to death for not following the state-sponsored religion was not considered strange at all. The death penalty for serious crimes was imposed everywhere in the world sixty years ago; now, it is a feature of ISIL, Saudi Arabia, China and the USA. Marriages between elderly men and young women in their late teens were considered commonplace until quite recently; they would now be considered horrific. In the England of Shakespeare's day, it was considered indecent for a woman to appear on stage at all, although that changed within fifty years of his death. What was not considered indecent was for a middle-aged man to appear on stage and to kiss and talk love-talk to a thirteen-year old boy actor.

Answer 7

That spirits would come and guard the earth. There was a widespread belief in horoscopes, and Queen Elizabeth had her own personal astrologer, a man called John Dee.