In the Elizabethan times, there was a common belief that all beings belonged to a structure called the "Great Chain of Beings". At the top of the chain was God, who was the absolute symbol of perfection, followed by angels which had reason, human beings, and then animals, that were full of passion. It was believed that the human being was a mixture of both the angel and the animal, thus there was conflict between these two halves of a human being. The angel was representative of all that was right and virtuous and in contrast, the an ....