LOYALTY IN THE RENAISSANCE

Loyalty in the Renaissance

Loyalty in the Renaissance

Hamlet

In Shakespeare's Hamlet honor and loyalty play a large role in the way that this tragedy unfolds. After being told about his fathers murder, Hamlets loyalty to his loving father begins the plot. Fortinbras' personal honor and loyalty to his father thickens the plot, while Laertes' loyalty brings about the tragic ends of many of the lead character's lives. Honor and loyalty are very human characteristics especially when dealing with one's dead father therefore these themes arelaced throughout the plot of the play. Honor and loyalty are shown in Hamlet through the three main father/ son duos of the play. First of all, in the play Hamlet by Shakespeare Hamlet and King Hamlet's relationship can be used as an example of honor and loyalty. Hamlet is presented as a devoted son to the memory of his father, King Hamlet. He is displeased with the marriage of his uncle, Claudius, to his mother so soon after the death of his father. It has been a mere two weeks since the death and his uncle has now become his father and king of Denmark. Hamlet's difficulty to except his father's death is because of his great love for his father. Hamlet is the only one still mourning when the play opens because his loyalty to his father.

Oedipus

Oedipus Rex begins outside King Oedipus's palace, where despondent beggars and a priest have gathered and brought branches and wreaths of olive leaves. Oedipus enters and asks the people of Thebes why they pray and lament, since apparently they have come together to petition him with an unknown request. The Priest speaks on their behalf, and Oedipus assures them that he will help them. The Priest reports that Thebes has been beset with horrible calamities — famine, fires, and plague have all caused widespread suffering and death among their families and animals, and their crops have all been destroyed. He beseeches Oedipus, whom he praises for having solved the riddle of the Sphinx (an action which justified his succession to King Laius, as Jocasta's husband and as king) to cure the city of its woes. Oedipus expresses his profound sympathy and announces that he sent Creon, the Queen's brother, to Delphi to receive the Oracle of Apollo, in order to gain some much-needed guidance.Creon arrives and Oedipus demands, against Creon's wishes, that he report the news in front of the gathered public. Creon reports that the gods caused the plague as a reaction against the murder of their previous king, Laius, and that they want the Thebans to “drive out pollution sheltered in our land”; in other words, to find the murderer and either kill or exile him (Laius had been killed on the roadside by a highwayman). Oedipus vows to root out this evil. In the next scene, the chorus of Theban elders calls upon the gods Apollo, Athena, and Artemis to save them from the disaster. The Great Papal Schism divided and denigrated papal prestige for ...