Best Writing on Writing

[Anonymous No.7078121]

Post a recent essay you had to write for a lit class, bonus points for criticism

E.M.W. Tillyard’s essay, The Cosmic Background, makes the case that Shakespeare’s Histories contain a dual appeal, both to the learned readers of the texts through the use of contemporary theological and political theory, and to the common people through exploitation of conscious patriotism. Tillyard argues, using examples from Shakespeare’s work, along with copious examples from contemporaries, that the essence of the aforementioned dual appeal is the revelation that the Elizabethan rule of the Tudors is a restoration of worldly order to a sort of symmetry with divine order. Through this subtle suggestion of heavenly cosmic order, Tillyard argues that Shakespeare is “…not so much try[ing] out and discard[ing] a provincial mode as present[ing] one of his version of the whole contemporary pattern of culture.”
To evidence these claims, Tillyard first explains that despite there not being overwhelming proof for this idea of Divine Elizabethan Restoration, the vast knowledge of these ideas does show through in specific excerpts of Shakespeare’s work. Tillyard adds that Shakespeare probably did not learn these various theological and political concepts through stringent learning and vigorous academic study, but rather, as he quotes Johnson,
“…various conversation, by a quick apprehension, a judicious selection, and a happy memory, a keen appetite of knowledge, and a powerful digestion; by vigilance that permitted nothing to pass without notice, and a habit of reflection that suffered nothing useful to be lost…”
Tillyard’s first examples comes from a section of dialogue that Lorenzo gives when speaking on music in Merchant of Venice, which Tillyard then links to Plato’s Republic, and more obscurely, his work Timaeus. This is one of the few example the author provides directly from the work of Shakespeare.
Throughout the essay, Tillyard links not text, but rather, ideas from the work of Shakespeare to the ideas of cosmic or heavenly order (first in the most basic ways, and later, that the Elizabethan rule of the Tudors is, in fact, Divine). Part of Tillyard’s defense of such little use of actual Shakespearean work is that, unlike other writers of the time, Shakespeare was “not in the least anxious to parade his learning [,]” and as such, we should not fear putting such weight on such few lines of Shakespearean text.
One of the major ways that Tillyard makes his case is the through the work of Shakespeare’s contemporaries. Someone like Shakespeare had no real motivation to reveal his influences and inspirations, and to do so through stage plays may have been seen as vain, overwrought, and pompous.

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