What were the elizabethan attitudes towards death and love?
The rituals and the values of the ancient world were still embedded in Elizabethan society, despite the long historical antagonism of the Christian Church. Those values incorporated ideas of the sacred; of the role of love and sexuality; of the relationship of Man to Nature, embodied as Woman, and worshipped as the Great Goddess. Catholicism, with the myth of the sacrificed God and the Virgin enshrined within it, was as close to religious concepts not derived from Judaism or original with Christianity, as it was to the Protestant religion of Sin and the Fall, of Redemption and Divine Mercy. However the ancient values, were repressed within all contemporary religion and often regarded as heretical, and so could only be explored internally, within the private life and mind. This process is visible in Donne’s early poetry, and in Shakespeare’s later plays. Ideas are retrieved from the arcane literatures of Neoplatonism, and the Mystical tradition. Religious terminology is transferred to a
