The literature of ancient Greece was commonly in the form of plays. There were many plays written in this time because playwriting was one of the competitions that various city-states participated in. These plays had to follow a set of rules given by Aristotle in the 5th century. He stated that a play's tragic hero must be a man, a good person, intelligent, use reason and must take responsibility for his actions. The tragic hero could not have been perfect. Each had a tragic flaw which helped bring about their downfall. They started as great men, nobles or kings, and fell to nothing. Sophocles' Oedipus was a model for othre authors. His play followed Aristotle's rules to the letter. The character Oedipus was a tragic hero, with a tragic flaw. Oedipus had a bad temper, and was stubborn. His flaws helped bring him down, along with his futile attempt to alter his fate.
Renaissance plays, such as Shakespeare's Macbeth, compared with plays like Oedipus, reveal some commonalities and differences. Macbeth was also brought down by attempting to change his fate. He had a tragic flaw; he was over-ambitious. He was intelligent, and started out a good person. However, the Shakespearian play was also quite different. While Oedipus was clearly an Aristotelian play, Macbeth didn't follow the key elements of Aristotle's rules. Aristotle had also said that a play should take place in one setting and in one time frame, which Oedipus did. Macbeth took place in various settings around Scotland, and told of the events of many weeks. Also, while the beliefs seen in Oedipus were polytheistic, those in Macbeth were Christian.
The significance of these plays was influenced by certain social events that also, eventually, led the the revival of classical learning, and the Renaissance itself. Towards the end of the Roman Empire, Christianity had become widespread. People watching the Empire fall began to think their world was ending, and that Jesus would soon return. Milleniarianism was rising among the people. Many became monks and nuns, abandoning everything they had accumulated (wealth, friends) to prepare themselves for the end of the world. Then they saw that the world had not ended. Milleniarianism failed, and the monks and nuns began leaving the monastaries and convents. When they had entered, they took with them the writings, artworks, etc., of the classical artists and writers, for safe keeping. These were now brought out as well, and people began to take a new interest in them.
The Renaissance can also be attributed to the rise of trade in that time. The plague, brought by trade, killed a lot of workers. There was an increased demand for workers, and they took that demand as an opportunity for increased wages. Business owners didn't want to pay the workers the extra money. With the rise of new technology, the expensive workers could now be replaced with machines.
Trade continued to rise. Gunpowder was brought from China. The gun was soon invented. It made knights obsolete very quickly, because it could do more damage than a knight with a sword in the hands of a common person. Also it was very much less expensive than a knight. There were now nobles and ex-knights with nothing to do. THe idea of the gentleman gave them something to do. They now studied music and poetry, trained for mock sword fights, and learned to read and write in Greek and Latin, two languages that were now dead. Now the problem for nobles was not that they had nothing to do, but they had nothing to read. The classic works that had been saved in the monasteries now had a use. People began reading the old works, like Sophocles' Oedipus. With this revival of the classics, the Renaissance had begun.
The similarities and differences in the literature of ancient Greece and the Renaissance were a result of the social events that took place between the two time periods.