Shakespeare was fortunate to live early in the age of freedom of information and able to educate himself by reading plenty of printed books. A century earlier, printed books were scarce, and two centuries before that, there were none at all.
In any society, what counts as true information is determined by institutions such as universities. In medieval Europe, the universities belonged to the church, and education, in the sense of book learning - theology, law, medicine - was essentially an ecclesiastical monopoly. Other kinds of practical education were in the hands of craftsmen, who imparted their knowledge and skill to apprentices. In medieval Europe, probably the only prestigious knowledge aside from university studies was the military training of the aristocracy.
During the Renaissance, the church and its universities lost their uncontested power to determine what an educated person should know and what was true. An intelligent, literate person like Shakespeare could educate himself outside of the universities, and his plays provide abundant evidence that he did so. He knew British and ancient history, classical mythology, and literature. He was familiar with the ideas under discussion in his time and put them in the mouths of his characters:
Look at Angelo's argument to Isabella, who has come to plead for her brother's life, in Act II, Scene ii:
Condemn the fault and not the actor of it?
Why, every fault's condemn'd ere it be done:
Mine were the very cipher of a function,
To fine the faults whose fine stands in record,
And let go by the actor.
Or Vicentio's effort to persuade Claudio that life is worthless in Act III, Scene i:
Be absolute for death; either death or life
Shall thereby be the sweeter. Reason thus with life:
If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing
That none but fools would keep: a breath thou art,
Servile to all the skyey influences,
That dost this habitation, where thou keep'st,
Hourly afflict: merely, thou art death's fool;
For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun
And yet runn'st toward him still.
But, more importantly, ideas are at issue in the very action of the play, and I plan to discuss them.
In any society, what counts as true information is determined by institutions such as universities. In medieval Europe, the universities belonged to the church, and education, in the sense of book learning - theology, law, medicine - was essentially an ecclesiastical monopoly. Other kinds of practical education were in the hands of craftsmen, who imparted their knowledge and skill to apprentices. In medieval Europe, probably the only prestigious knowledge aside from university studies was the military training of the aristocracy.
During the Renaissance, the church and its universities lost their uncontested power to determine what an educated person should know and what was true. An intelligent, literate person like Shakespeare could educate himself outside of the universities, and his plays provide abundant evidence that he did so. He knew British and ancient history, classical mythology, and literature. He was familiar with the ideas under discussion in his time and put them in the mouths of his characters:
Look at Angelo's argument to Isabella, who has come to plead for her brother's life, in Act II, Scene ii:
Condemn the fault and not the actor of it?
Why, every fault's condemn'd ere it be done:
Mine were the very cipher of a function,
To fine the faults whose fine stands in record,
And let go by the actor.
Or Vicentio's effort to persuade Claudio that life is worthless in Act III, Scene i:
Be absolute for death; either death or life
Shall thereby be the sweeter. Reason thus with life:
If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing
That none but fools would keep: a breath thou art,
Servile to all the skyey influences,
That dost this habitation, where thou keep'st,
Hourly afflict: merely, thou art death's fool;
For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun
And yet runn'st toward him still.
But, more importantly, ideas are at issue in the very action of the play, and I plan to discuss them.
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