What Are the Main Features of Jacobean England Which Influenced and Are Reflected in the Writing of “the Duchess of Malfi” and “Othello”?

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John Webster and William Shakespeare were to a great extent men of their day; affected and driven by the social, political and cultural context in which they lived. As playwrights, they used their dramatic works not only to amuse, but to influence their audience. Their plays reflected their society and its fashions and idiosyncrasies, and also held up a mirror to facets of their world which they might have wanted to see changed. The Jacobean era was bursting with violence; people treasured it and enjoyed witnessing it. The public relished watching violent sports and public executions in particular. Disease was ubiquitous in this period; the average life expectancy was appallingly low, with most people perishing before they reached the dismal age of thirty. Sexual diseases such as syphilis, otherwise known as the “pox” were also prevalent, not helped with an outbreak of plague in 1665. Medical awareness was tremendously inadequate; therefore many people were left to succumb to their illnesses, with no hope of endurance. Most of Shakespeare’s most popular plays were unsurprisingly his most violent ones. Jacobean audience rejoiced in shocking drama, they unfailingly crowded the theatres to hear the latest incursion of slaying and deceit. Scenes were depicted with extreme realism, with props such as real blood, and organs of dead animals being used. An example of shocking, and intense violence can be observed in Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’, where Juliet impales herself with Romeo’s dagger and falls dead upon his corpse. In Jacobean England, women were branded in three ways. If they were married, they were strictly the property of their husbands. If they were windowed, they were viewed as being precarious and voluptuous temptresses, like a “dumb sex animal”. However, worse so, if they weren’t married by the time they were ‘of age’, they were categorised as an ‘old

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