Important Literary Works (up to 1700)
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”Utopia,” ”Euphues”, and ”Arcadia” / 551
”UTOPIA,” ”EUPHUES”, AND ”ARCADIA” Q.87. Show your acquaintance with the following:
(i) Utopia (Agra 1952) (Agra 1962) (Gorakhpur 198S)
(GorakhtMB i«9)
(\\)Euplnies (Punjab SepL 1956) (Punjab 1958) (Agra
1964) (Gorakhpur 1985)
(iii) Arcadia (Punjab Sept 1956) (Punjab 1959) (Agra
1964). (Gorakhpur 1990) (Punjab 1970)
UTOPIA
Introduction :-
Utopia is an epoch-making work in the history of English literature as it represents the flowering of the spirit of the Renaissance in England. It was written by the great Christian humanist Sir Thomas More (1478-1535). He used Latin for his medium of expression. The original Latin version was published in 1516 at Louvain Its translations in Italian and French appeared long before the English translation done by Ralph Robinson came in 1551. ”Utopia” is a Greek word meaning ”riowhere.” In his book Sir Thomas More gave the description of an imaginary kingdom of his ideals.
The Story :-
In Utopia there is much more of description than of narration. More’s primary purpose is to paint a republic after his own ideals and thereby to expose the evils of the actual set-up of his own country. Utopia comprises two books. In the first we are told how the < vriici and his friend Peter Giles happen to meet at Antwerp, a Portuguese traveller who has just returned after voyaging with the famous voyager and explorer Amerigo Vespucci. The name of the traveller is Raphael Hythloday. More and Peter Giles accompany him to the former’s garden where before and after lunch Hythloday describes to them a country called Utopia which he had happened to visit while on his way back home from travels. The description of this land covers the second part of the work. In Utopia there is no private wealth or money. More sees in society what he calls, very much like a Marxist, ”a conspiracy of the rich against the poor.” The Utopians ”much more detest the folly of those who, when they see a rich man, though they neither owe him anything, nor are in any sort dependent on his bounty, yet merely
1. America is named after him.
2. Hythloday in Greek means ”a recounter of nonsense.”
552/ A History of English Literature
because he is rich give him little less than divine honours.* In Utopia there is no unemployment, and neither poverty nor surfeiting. All work for six hours and sleep for eight hours. All families have, more or less, similar houses. There are no wars of aggression. More strikes hard at medieval chivalry by vilifying fighting and soldiers who ia Utopia are only mercenaries, He recommends Machiavellian methods such as bribery, treachery, and even assassination of the leaders of the enemy, in preference to open war resulting in general massacre. The Utopians have no lawyers as they have no laws. The only law is conformity to Nature. There is exemplary religious tolerance in Utopia, and only those are held culpable who deny divine existence. The Utopians glorify physical culture. According to them, perfect health is ”the greatest of all bodily pleasures. It is thought a sign of sluggish and sordid mind not to preserve carefully one’s natural beauty; but it is likewise infamous among them to use pant.” Few men are attracted as much by the physical beauty of a woman as ”the probity of her life and her obedience.” There is no gambling, drinking, hunting, or thieving. In. England^says^Hythloday, ”you first make thieves and then punish them.” The Utopians are very earnest about their moral well-being and ”a great multitude of every sort of people, both men and women, go to hear lectures.* There are, says the narrator, ”not a few things, from which patterns might be taken for correcting the errors of these nations among whom we live.”
Criticism :-
Thus Utopia is meant by More aot merely to be a figment of his idealising imagination, but”« criticism of life.” It represents, in its essentials, the socialistic pattern of society and lias aptly been called ”the first monument of modem Socialism.* More derives many of his ideals from Plato’s Republic and a few of them from St Augustine’s TheOtyofGod. However, as Comr<on-Rickett puts it in/i History of Enguh Litffature, ”whereas Plato’s is an artistocratic communism, More’s is on a democratic basis. It is a People’s State, with an elective govenuneat even though State controls.” Further, the book embodies the spirit of the Renaissance. More attacks medieval asceticism, fanaticism, schoUsttaem. the other-woridiness, and the idea! of chivalry.
It is of interest to note that though in his Utopia More took pains in representing and glorifying the spirit of religious tolerance yet in his k tJ life he was a pretty narrow-minded Roman Catholic. Intact, he was executed on the-order of Henry VDH for refusing to give up his allegiance’to the Pope and the Roman Catholic faith.
”Utopia,” ”Euphues”, and ”Arcadia” / 553
It may also be of interest to point out that Arthur E. Morgan in his book Nowhere Was Somewhere (1946) has tried to prove Sat th^ <»nceptK>n of Utopia was based on the republic of the Incas in Peru
EUPHUES
Introduction :-
Euphues is a prose romance written by John Lyly (1554-1606). The work came out in two parts.
(i) Euphues or the Anatomy of Wit (1578); and
(ii) Euphues and His England (1580).
These books took the upper classes of England by storm. The chief importance of Euphues in the history of English literature is that it paved the way for the English novel. Some have, indeed, called it ”the first English prose novel”; but it should be noted that it is an agglomeration of many elements foreign to the nature of the novel. The work is important, too, for it set the vogue of Euphuistic style which came to be followed by a large number of Lyl/s contemporaries and immediate successors.
The Story :-
The plot of Euphues or the Anatomy of Wit is the simplest imaginable. Euphues is a man of learning and culture belonging to Athens (which evidently stands for Oxford). He goes to Naples (which stands for London) to lead a life of pleasure. There he becomes intimate friends with a young man named Philautus who introduces him to his fiancee Lucilla. He attracts Lucilla’s love, and the two friends exchange taunting letters. But Lucilla plays him false and elopes with a stranger. Euphues, heart-broken, returns to Athens, and he and Philaotus become friends again. The plot is simple but very long essays on such topics as love and the education of children, with many rhetorical letters and lengthy dialogues are grafted on to the thin stem of the story. In Euphues and His England is narrated the arrival of Philautus and Euphues in England and Philautus’ unsuccessful courtship of Camilla, a maid of honour to Queen Elizabeth. This volume pays glowing tributes to the English nobility, particularly the courtiers. ”Lyly was,” Jo quote Tucker Brooke, ”most careful to depict them not as they wore, but as they would have liked to have themselves regarded”. To quote the same critic, ”in the last fifteen pages a portrait of Queen Elizabeth [is] probably the most elaborately flattering that that much flattered sovereign ever received.”
5S4t / A History of English Literature
Criticism :•
What is remarkable about Lyly’s work is not its matter but its terribly manrieristic prose style which has come to be dubbed ”Euphuism.* It came to be parodied and derided by a long chain of writers from Shakespeare to Scott, even though it also excited imitation from a very large number of writers now justly forgotten. The cool Drayton declared that Lyly taught his countrymen to speak and write ”all like mere, lunatics”. Nevertheless, if Lyly was a lunatic, there was method in his madness. He did employ a wclkhought-out plan which has the following characteristics:
(i) The first is the principle of symmetry and equipoise obtained generally by the employment of alliteration, balance, and antithesis. See,for instance, such expressions as ”hot liver of a heedless lover” or the descriptionof Euphues as a proud gallant ”of more wit than wealth, yet of more wealth than wisdom”.
(ii) Secondly, there are the very numerous references to the classical authorities, even for very well-known facts.
(iii) Thirdly, there is the mass of allusions to natural history generally of the fabulous kind.
All these devices arc used for the purpose of decoration. Bui our complaint is that the style is over-decorated, to the point of being monotonous and insipid, even though it affects poetic beauties. To quote Compton-Rickett, Lyly style ’’suffers from the serious defect of ignoring the distinction between prose and verse. It is the prose of an age that found its most effective medium in verse.”
ARCADIA
Introduction :-
Arcadia is a pastoral romance .written by Sir Philip Sidney (1554-
86). Its importance in the history of English literature is due to the fact that it is the first pastoral romance in English prose just as Spenser’s The Shepherd’s Calendar is the first verse pastoral romance. Even though it is mainly in prose, it includes a number of lyrics and eclogues after the classicaLstyle. ”Arcadia,” in fact, is the name of a mountainous district in the Peloponnese, the domain of Pan, the god of sheperds. It is a blissful rustic place of ideal beauty and perfect simplicity conducive to innocent contentment. Sidney wrote it just for the amusement of his sister, the Countess of Pembroke, and not for the sake of money or literary fame. He started it sometime in 1586. He\did not publish it, and, in fact, expressed his desire, while dying, that it should be destroyed. But Arcadia was published in 1590, after his death, and it won for hkn no inconsiderable laurels.
”Utopia,* ”Euphues”, and ”Arcadia*/555 The Story :-
In diametrical contrast to that of Euphues, the story of Arcadia is extremely complicated. The scene, of course, is Arcadia-thc fairyland of idyllic beauty, with meadows, trees, and. rivulets-where ”shepherd boys pipe as tho’ they would never be old.” The story concerns Basilius, the king of Arcadia, who, in compliance with the words of an oracle, settles in a village with his young wife Gynecia and two youthful daughters, Pamela and Philoclea. To cut a very long story short, two princes named Musidorus and Pyrocles come to Arcadia, fall in love with the two princesses, and secure employment in their houschold-the former in the guise of an Amazon and the latter, that of a shepherd. Complications start when both the king and the queen fall in love with Musidorus disguised as an Amazon, the king taking him to be a woman, and the queen after getting to know his real identity. Cercopia, the heiress to the crown of Arcadia before Basilius’ marriage to Gynecia, carries away the two princesses and the disguised Pyrocles, and tortures the two girls to compel at least one of them to marry her son. It is by the valour of Pyrocles that the girls secure freedom. Musidorus runs away with Pamela. In the end, all complications are resolved with the arrival of Euarachus, the king of Macedonia and father of one of the two princesses. Criticism :-
Both the story and the setting of Arcadia are far removed from reality. Everything in it is on the ideal plane. David Diaches remarks: ”Ideal love, ideal friendship, and the, ideal ruler are directly and indirectly, discussed, suggested and embodied.”
The style of Arcadia is as artificial and attitudinised as that of Euphues, though there are passages of chaste and mellow beauty and pathos, which are criuched in a simple language. Consider, for instance, Pamela’s prayer when she is in the captivity of Cercopia. The style, says Daiches, is ”high!y_’conceited,’ full of elaborate analogies, balanced parenthetical asides, pathetic fallacies, symmetrically answenng clauses, and other devices of an immature prose entering suddenly into the world of conscious literary device.” One of Sidney’s constant devices is to take a word and.somc what like Shakespeare, toss it about till its meaning is sucked dry. As examples of the pathetic fallacy consider Sidney’s reference to the cool wine which seems ”to laugh for joy” as it nears a lady’s lips. The water drops that slip down the bodies of dainty ladies seem to weep for sorrow. The name that a beautiful lady utters is perfumed by the scent of her breath. When the princesses put on their clothes, the clothes are described as ”glad”. And so forth.
556 / A History of English Lttcatnre
”GORBODUC’, THE SPANISH TRAGEDY1,
AND
THE JEW OF MALTA* QJW. Shew your acquaintance with thte following ;•
(a) Gorboduc (Gorakhpur 1985) (Agra 1964) (Punjab 1970)
(b) The Spanish Tragedy (Punjab 1960) (e) The Jew of Malta (Punjab 1957) (Agra 1961)
GORBODUC
Introduction :-
Gorboduc’°r Faroe and Pcmx has much more of historical than intrinsic interest. It has been justly called the first regular English tragedy. It was jointly written by Thomas Norton, an eminent lawyer, and Thomas Sackville, a brilliant courtier (Norton wrote the first three acts and Sackville the remaining two), and was first staged in 1562 in the InnerTemple, before Elizabeth. The plot of the play is based on the mythical history of England of the twelfth century, as it was found in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s chronicle of the kings of Britain, entitled Historia Regum Britanrdae. Gorboduc is the first English tragedy which became so vastly acclaimed a genre in Renaissance England, The Story :-
The story of the play is, after the convention of Senecan tragedy, full of murders and violence. Gorboduc is the king of England who in his lifetime divides his kingdom between his two sons, Ferrex and Porrex. A quarrel arises between the two brothers, and Porrex, the younger of the two, kills Ferrex. The queen Videna who loves Ferrex more than Porrex, kills Porrex in revenge. There is widespread agitation among the people of the country who rise and put both the king and the queen to death. What ensues is horrible chaos. The nobles assemble and put the murderers of the king and queen to death. But they cannot decide the question of succession. There are dissensions among them also which culminate in a very sanguinary civil war. What finally results is anarchy and desolation.
Critidm :-
The plot of the play is, undoubtedly, based on a chapter of English history, but the treatment of the material is altogether Senecan. The play departs considerably from the tradition of native drama, and
. ’Gorboduc” / 557
endeavours to imitate the tragedies of Seneca which had become very popular with the intellectuals of England in the wake of the Renaissance and were frequently translated and performed between 1556 and 1559. It is indeed unfortunate that the English dramatists (as also the French) of the Renaissance looked upon Seneca as their model, and not Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Euripides who were giants of the Greek tragic drama ’of the fifth century B. C Seneca’s tragedies embody much of the degeneration which had appeared in tragedy after the Greek masters. And Gorboduc imitates Seneca slavishly with all his crudeness and dullness. The chief Senecan features of Gorboduc are the following. –
(i) Structurally the play is divided into five acts. It was the first English drama to be so patterned, and its lead was accepted by almost all the succeeding dramatists.
(ii) It is, like every tragedy of Seneca,.a tragedy of revenge. Revenge is, indeed, its leitmotif. Whatever is done by the characters is done to quench their thirst for revenge.
(iii) This universal revenge-seeking gives rise to all kinds of crimes, including large-scale murders. All the important characters in the play meet violent death,’at one another’s hands.One murder gives rise to another and thus there is a chain of murders. ”Blood must have blood and death must death requite.” The result is obvious.
(iv) But as in Seneca, violence is avoided on the stage. All the murders are reported to the audience through the monologues and dialogues of the dramatis personae.
(v) As in Seneca, we have a lot of rhetoric and sententiousness in the speeches of the characters. Nevertheless, the play is nowhere brilliant. David Daiches describes it as ”supremely dull and A. C. Ward, ”a masterpiece of dullness.”
(vi) Another Senecan feature is the uninterrupted seriousness of the plot. There b no ”comic relief or even one little spark of humour anywhere.
(vii) For the first time in the history of English drama it is Gorboduc that employs blank verse which was later to be used as the medium of all tragedy. A few years earlier Surrey had introduced blank verse into England by first employing it in his translation of the fourth book of The Aeneid. However Garboduc’s blank verse is rather wooden, even though there are noble passages.
(viii) As in Seneca’s tragedies, we have in Gorboduc a ghost among the dramatis personae.
I
558 / A History of English Literature
(fat) Lastly, there is Senecan chorus who appears at the end of every act But there is also the non-Senecan dumb-show with which every act begins.
Gorboduc had a special significance for the- Elizabethans as it reminded them of the dangers of the uncertainty of succession. It was a plea for the settlement of the question of succession after Elizabeth; for otherwise England might meet the same desolation and chaos which she had experienced after the death of Gorboduc.
THE SPANISH TRAGEDY
Introduction :-
The Spanish Tragedy was the chief work of Thomas Kyd, con*:dered one of ”the University Wits” even though it is slightly doubtful whether he had received academic training at either of the universities. The play was first acted about 1580 and enjoyed immediate and long-lasting popularity among Elizabethan audiences. Kyd, in the writing of this play, seems to have had his eye not only on Seneca but also on contemporary popular taste. He tried to marry in this tragedy some of the Senecan conventions to popular drama. The Spanish Tragedy, in the words of AllardyceNicolL is ”a Senecan play adapted to popular requirements.” The Story :-
As regards its story, the play is a lurid melodrama of the bloodand-thunder type, figuring not fewer than eight murders, besides a public hanging, the running amuck of an elderly gentlewoman, and the hero’s biting off of his own tongue-added perhaps to dispel the tediousness of murders ! The play opens with the appearance of the ghost of Andrea, a Spaniard who has recently been murdered treacherously in battle by the Portuguese prince Balthazar. The ghotf prophesies revenge upon his slayer. Andrea’s fiancee Bel-imperia falls in love with Horatio, son of Hieronimo, the marshal of Spain. But Balthazar is also in love, with Bel-imperia. One night he and the Machiavellian Lorenzo (Bel-imperia’s brother) go in masks to an arbour where Horatio and Bel-imperia are engaged in love-play, and hang Horatio to death. Hieronimo is aroused by the cries of Bel-imperia, and both of them take a vow to revenge themselves upon the unknown assassins. Hieronimo feigns madness and succeeds in detecting their identity. Meanwhile the hostilities between Spain and Portugal come to a halt, and Bel-imperia’s father, the Duke of Castile, arranges the marriage of his daughter with the Portuguese prince
The Spanish Tragedy / 559
Balthazar. But on the day of the marriage Hieronimo and Bel-imperia arrange fot the staging of a play for the guests. In this play Balthazar and Lorenzo also appear as characters along with Hieronimo and Bel-imperia who actually murder them. After killing Balthazar, Bel-imperia commits suicide. Hieronimo is caught, however, and asked to explain himself. He bites off his own tongue, so that he may not be forced to speak. But, on being tortured, promises to explain himself in writing. He asks for a pen and then a knife to mend the pen. With this knife he stabs the Duke of Castile and then himself. There are some minor characters,too, who are killed in the course of the play.
Criticism :- –
Kyd imported some features of Senecan tragedy into his play. For example, it has the theme of revenge,, a ghost, and plenty of rhetorical declamation, However, he was as conscious of the necessity of catering I for the popular taste as of following the lead of Seneca. Consider, for instance, how he discarded the antique story taken from classical mythology (or even legendary Birtish history as in the case of Gorboduc). He gave instead a sizzling play of love and war in the setting of contemporary Spain. The battle of Alcantara in which Andrea was killed had been fought as recently as 1580. Further, Kyd introduced a bewildering variety of by-plots and sub-plots, thus striking a note of variance with the dull, monotonous, and unilateral plots of Seneca’s tragedies. But most of all, Kyd’s novelty lies in the fact that he transacts all the important incidents (mostly, murders) on the stage, and does not report them to the audience through the monologues and dialogues of the dramatis personae (as was the Senecan practice, followed so slavishly by Sackville and Norton for their Gorbodin ;. E’L^bUhan audiences had been craving for action and Kyd provided them with the spectacle of the most blood-curdling action. Kyd’s lead was followed immediately by Marlowe and,later, Shakespeare. The Elizabethans preferred watching action for themselves to being enlightened by the communiques of the professional bores of Seneca’s tragedies, called messengers. Moreover, Kyd exhibited an uncanny knack of manoeuvring stage-effects so that even the most patently lurid and melodramatic incidents assumed the power of gripping the attention of even the most sceptical of the audience. Further, The Spanish Tragedy presents a new concept of the tragic hero who is neither a member of the royalty nor a figure from classical mythology, but nearer the ordinary man. Marlowe took a cue from Kyd in this respect, as his Faust us and Barabas are tragic heroes of the new kind. However, Kyd’s characters are characterless. They lack mobility and psychological
560!/A History of English Literature
complexity, {hough Hieronimo k somewhat complex, and a worthy forerunner of Hamlet. Kyd’s blank verse is characterised by declamatory rhetoric which was parodied by Shakespeare and some others, but his dialogue is effectively rendered.
THE JEW OF MALTA
Introduction ;-
The Jew of Malta is a tragedy written by one of the ’University Wits’-Christopher Marlowe (1564-93>and first staged in 1589. It is a powerful drama but is marred by a lot of bloodspilling and melodramatic grotesqueries. T. S. Eliot opines that it may be described as a ”savage farce” rather than a tragedy. The play takes us to Malta of the fifteenth century and presents before us the horribly gory deeds of Barabas, a Jewish merchant, who revenges himself upon the Christian community of the island for his ill-treatment at their hands. As is usual with Marlovian tragedy, the whole scene is dominated by the hero himself before whom all the other characters appear as no more than dwarfs.
The Story :•
Barabas, the hero of the play, is a very rich, avaricious, and revengeful character .*No holds are barred in his pursuit of wealth or revenge. Heis a widower with a young and beautiful daughter named Abigail The Turkish masters of Malta demand tribute from the Christian governor. As the tribute has been lapsing over a number of years, the governor finds it difficult to muster the required amount from the official treasury. So he decrees that all the Jews of Malta give over half their estates or accept Christianty. All the Jews except Barabas part with their estates. As punishment the whole of Barabas’ estate is confiscated and his house is converted into a nunnery. Barabas has buried a part of his treasure in his house before his ouster. He sends his daughter Abigail in the dress of a nun to the house, pretending that she has embraced Christianity. At night Abigail throws the hidden treasure, after excavating it, to her father waiting outside the window. Thereafter Abigail returns to him.
After that, Barabas buys an Arabian slave named Ithamore and trains him to be a confidential partner in his nefarious schemes. He introduces his daughter to two Christian young men one of whom is the only son of the governor. After they have fallen in love with her, he sends diem separately two forged letters and thus provokes between them a duel which proves fatal for both. But Abigail, who has truly
The Jew of Malta* 155]
fallen in love with the governor’s son^feels heart-broken, becomes a real Christian nun and joins the nunnery. Barabas manages through Ithamore to poison all the nuns (including Abigail) to death. Before her death, however, Abigail discloses everything to Friar Jocambo who later harasses Barabas. Barabas offers to become a Christian and give all his wealth to the friar who would recieve him into the Christian faith. Friar Bernardine who comes to him with this purpose is strangled by Ithamore, and Friar Jocambo is accused of this murder.
Ithamore gets thick with a prostitute, and at her instance demands money from Barabas against the threat of exposing him. Barabas poisons both of them to death with the help of a bouquet dusted with poison.
Meanwhile the governor of Malta turns back on his promise of paying the. tribute to the lurks and prepares for battle. Before dying, Ithamore and the prostitute disclose everything about Barabas to the governor who puts him in prison. But Barabas manages to escape after posing to be dead. He joins the Turks and betrays the weak lines in the defence of Malta. The Turks conquer Malta and make Barabas the governor. He now turns to the Christians and offers to destroy the Turks in return for a good amount. He manages to blow with explosives the barracks of the Turkish soldiers and invites the Turkish leaders to a feast. He takes them to a collapsible floor under which are kept cauldrons of boiling water. But the Christian governor overpowers the Turkish leaders, and Barabas becomes his own victim as it is he who falls into a cauldron and perishes.
Criticism :-
In part, The Jew of Malta has for its leitmotif the desire of revcnir.-. Barabas has been wronged by the Christians and he yearns for revenge. Therein the play comes close to Senecan tragedy. Again, after the Senecan tradition, there is a goodly number of murders. But in one important respect the play is different from Senecan. tragedy, in that all the chief events are presented on the stage and not reported in dialogue. Elizabethan audiences had a sort of unsophisticated taste for ”action”’and in Elizabethan tragedy there is action, and plenty of action. Marlowe does not have his eye only on the classical models but on the preferences of the audience, too. The first two acts of the play have been quite justly accorded praise but the remaining three are but a horrifying orgy of bloodshed. The play has neither the cosmic dimensions of Doctor Faustus nor the constructive skill and controlled artistry of Edward //; yet it is a powerful, albeit horrifying, study of superhuman greed and desire of revenge. Barabas in his egocentricism
5621A History of English Literature
and reckless disregard of all ethical principles is a peraoaitkation of naked Machiavellianism which was seen as something brilliantly sinister by Marlowe and his contemporaries. It is not without reason, that in the prologue to the drama Marlowe brings the great Machiavelli to the stage in his own august person to speak some lines including the following:
I count Religion but a childish Toy,
And hold there is no sinne but ignorance.
It is another thing that Barabas who is a cold, calculating Machiavellian; at the start, ends as, to quote Legouis,” a frenzied wretch”.
”ASTROPHEL AND STELLA,” ”HERO AND LEANDER,” AND THE RAPE OF LUCRECE* O4J9. Sho«v your acquaintance with the following :-
(\)Astrophel and Stella (Punjab I960) (Agra 19631
(U) Hero and Ltander (Agra 1962)
OU) The Rape ofLucrece (Agra 1999)
ASTROPHEL AND STELLA
Introduction :•
The sonnet-sequence Astrophel and Stella which appeared in 1591 is Sidney’s most important and best known work as a poet In bulk it constitutes about one third of all his poetic production. It comprised one hundred and eight sonnets and eleven songs. In it Sidney told, the story of his. unrequited love for Penelope just as Petrarch in his sonnets had told the story of his unsuccessful love-affair with ”Laura.” Penelope is Stella (=a star), and Sidney himself Astrophel (=star-lover). Penelope Devereux was engaged to Sidney when she was” about fourteen, but was later married off by her father to Lord Rich in 1581. This upset Sidney quite considerably, and he poured out the agony ofhis despair into the mould of the sonnet. Two years afterwards, however, he got married to Frances Walsingham, and with marriage his sonneteering passion, understandably enough, vanished. But for these two interim years he remained busy in putting his feelings into the one
– • •- – i?-t- – .–.. L-I-j c»^M» MF* nuhlich-
ed posthumously in 1591.
”Astrophel and Stella* / 56> Criticism :-
Sidney’s sentiments as sought to be conveyed by him in his sonnetsequence are partly real and partly conventional. Some critics have emphasized their genuine nature. For instance G. H. Mair asserts that Sidney’s sonnets ”mark an epoch, ”as they ”are the first direct expression in Engligh literature of an intimate and personal experience, struck off in the white heat of passion…they never lose the merit above all Others of lyric poetry, the merit of sincerity.” Another critic avers that ”Sidney writes not because it is a pleasant and accomplished thing to do but because he must. His sonnets let out blood.” However artificial some of them may seem, it is certain that their ground-work was provided by genuine experience. In the very first sonnet of the series Sidney describes how, while writing, he looked in the beginning to other poets for inspiration, and how he read book after book so that he might write well:
But words came halting forth….
Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite.
”Fool,” said my Muse to me, ”look in thy heart and write.” However, we cannot say that Sidney always looked in his heart before writing, for there are obvious moments when he seems to be writing according to the conventional Pertrarchan or Ronsardian formula. There are his traditional apostrophes to sleep, to night, to the moon, and even to his mistress’s dog. And then, there is the same medley of rhetorical conceits and formalised and ”sugared” expression after the Petrarchan manner, and extravagant and patently ”counterfeit” imagery. Even so, in the description of his feelings and sentiments ihorv is often a vividness and minuteness which superbly impresses upon ilic reader -their genuineness. To Lamb also Sidney’s feelings did not appear as imaginary and unreal, for he called them in his oft-quoted words,”full material and circumstantiated.” Even when Sidney follows a set tradition, he is often surprisingly realistic. Consider, for instance, his apostrophe to the moon. He addresses the moon as the moon, which no contemporary poet would have done, for in poetry the moor had to be addressed as Cynthia or Diana.
Formally considered, Sidney’s sonnets are different from both the Petrarchan and Shakespearean kinds. Nor does he adhere to the same pattern always. The most usual rhyme-scheme which he follows is a b ba,abba,cdcdee.Ina few we have abab instead of the Petrarchan abba. However, the one invariable feature of his sonnets is that they end with a couplet as Shakespeare’s sonnets do.
564 / A History of English Literature
HERO AND LEANDER
Introduction :-
Hero and Leander, which is described by Compton-Rickett as a narrative poem ”of singular lustiness and beauty^ is the last written of Marlowe’s works. It was composed by him moat probably in 1592, that is, a year before his death. As he left it, it was incomplete and consisted of about eight hundred words only. After his derth k was completed by Chapman, and first published in 1598. Hardin Craig calls k ”a strikingly beautiful poem”, and Swinburne paid it a very flamboyant tribute: ”That pocta stands out alone amid all the wide and wild poetic wealth of its teeming and turbulent age, as might a small shrine of Pierian sculpture amid the rank splendour of a tropical jungle.”
The Story:-
The poem is a simple love tragedy based upon the work of the Greek poet Musaeus, which was written in the fifth century A. D. The story of Hero and Leander also appears in Ovid’s Heroides (xviii, xix). Musaeus poem was translated into Latin, French, and Italian, and was frequently published. In his own words, Marlowe was paraphrasing . Musaeus, but his tone and treatment are widely different from those of Musaeus. Marlowe, in fact, lets the English Renaissance spirit act upon a tale of antiquity and transform it according to its own genius.
Hero is a young beautiful priestess of Aphrodite (the goddess of love) at Sestos on the European shore of the Hellespont. She is in love with a young maii, Leander, who lives at Abydos, just on the opposite shore of the sea. Every night Leander swims across to Hero who guides his course by holding a lighted torch atop a tower. One night there comes a storm and Leander is drowned. In despair Hero leaps into the sea and kills herself.
£jriticisra :-
•–f This was the simple and stark love tragedy to which Marlowe lent ”a’beautitul, sensuous attire. In its sensuous appeal the poem is not as rich as, say, Tamburlaine; but it has its purple passages. For illustration, consider this description of Hero’s dress :
Buskins of shells, all silver’d used she, And branch ’d with blushing coral to the knee; With sparrows perch’d of hollow pearl and gold, Such as the world would wonder to behold, Tliose with sweet water oft her handmaid fills Which, as she went, would clientp through the bills.
ACTO and Leander / 565
.Clowe’s personal charIn spite of the well-known Bohemianism of Monographic taint which racter, the poem is singularly free from the /we such as Mansion’s ;
1 could have been admitted by a poem of this / sense of gravity and Pygmalion. In fact, the poet exhibits a raring from such a heady reticence which appears almost surprising «/asure in describing the youth as Marlowe. He does take a defiant ply er even when they are consummation of love between Hero and Lea’ rebel as he is–to overnot married, as it gives him an opportunity-./ j^ age. But there is no throw (even if vicarously) the set traditions of Birches a considerable element of the loJianate eroticism which be/ part of such writings of the age. not Ma;|owe.s ”mighty
The poem is couched in heroic couplets/W freer and less artful line” –blank verse. But Marlowe’s couplets C^ does not scan as an than Pryden’s and Pope’s. Every line in Mar/of tne end-stopped line iambic pentameter, nor is Marlowe a devotee Costly run-on lines. His often bifurcated by a caesura. His lines are ifyfe, too. From Tamburreticence and gravity are perceptible in his J.s intention in this poem laine to Hero and Leander is a far cry. Marlow/ high astounding terms” is not, as in Tamburlaine, to thrill the world ”wi/oty and exquisite poetic but to unfold the tragic story with asenseofbe/ is mature and chastequality subjected to artistic control. The styl/,e some famous lines to There is more of light and less of heat. Here a prove our point:
It ties not in our power to love or hate. For will in us is overrul’d by fate.
, Where both deliberate, the love is slight’ht? Who ever lov’d that lov’d not at first si/
**” *** ”** / SW&fft
Sweet are the kisses, the embracemen’J Wlien like desires and affections meet; • ,j Far from the earth to heaven is Cupid X7= weiRhed) W!,en fancy is in equal balancepois’d f make ^^ Brboke It is such passages as the second one whic/not an obsccne word or remark: In what he (Marlowe) wrote there is the marriage of true a degenerate suggestion; everywhere he see/^ childlike souls” minds,, the cleanliness of ocean-dewy limbs an/^^ immcdiatc,y set a Hero and Leander, with its immense popul^oiogy. Some poems of vogue for love stones based on classical myiKfi) Shakespeare’s Venus its kind are Lodge’s Glaucus and Scytla (159V
566 / A History of English Literature
and Adonis (1593), Drayton’s Endimion and Phoebe (1594), and Marston’s Metamorphosis of Pygmalion’s Image (1S98).
THE RAPE OF LUCRECE
Introduction :-
The Rape of Lucrece is a narrative poem written by Shakespeare and published in 1594. Like Venus and Adonis (1593) it was dedicated by Shakespeare to his friend and patron, the Earl of Southampton. This poem, like the one just named above, won immediate and immense popularity, and was widely imitated. Some of the immediate imitations were: • .
(i) Oenone andParis by one ”T.H.” (1594) (ii) Vie First Rape of Fair Helen by John Trussel (1595) (iii) Tlie Ghost of Lucrece by T. M. Gent (1600). The Story :-
The story of TJie Rape of Lucrece counterbalances that of Venus and Adonis with which it is often compared. Venus and Adonis is the story of an extremely handsome youth, Adonis, who is seduced and passionately sought after by Venus, the goddess of beauty. The present poem narrates the story of a chaste woman who is raped by a wicked and wretched debauchee. It is not a story of love but of unvarnished lust. In 77ie Rape of Lucrece, says David Daiches in A Critical History of ! English Literature, Vol. 1, Shakespeare ”demonstrated that virtue as- : sailed and overcome by lust is as amenable to such treatment as iovc1* triumphant.”
Lucrece is the chaste woman w»’h whom Tarquin, the wicked hedonist, falls in love. But he cannot succeed in winning her attentions. So he decides to force her. One night when she is sleeping alone, he enters the bedroom and spies her after moving the curtains aside. But Lucrece gets up and, noticing his evil intentions, tries to dissuade him with humble supplications. But Tarquin would have none of them. He rapes her. She bewails the loss of her chastity and then commits suicide. Criticism :-
If we compare this poem with Venus and Adonis we will find that it is much less voluptuous and licentious than its predecessor. Perhaps Shakespeare wrote it to counteract the impression of licentiousness which the earlier poem hadcreated. In this poem he celebrates:chastity quite vigorously and without any apparent hypocrisy. ”Lucrece is,” says Hardin Craig,” a formal exaltation of chastity.” Again, the same critic observes: ”It is at once greater and less than Venus and Adonis; greater
t ”The Duchess of Mali? / 567
n#!:1’’.-I’:
in care, workmanship and weight of thought; less in freshness, naturalness, and brilliancy of execution.”
The poem is couched in rhyme royal stanzas (five foot, iambic lines rhyming ababbcc). The style is more subdued and less luxuriant than in Venus and Adonis, but the poem is marred by long drawn-out speechification (for example, Lucrece’s exhortations and supplication to Tarquin before the rape) and some crude conceits, illustrating which are the following lines describing the sleeping Lucrece : Her lify hand her rosy cheeks lies under, Cozening the pillow of a lawful kiss; Who, therefore angry seems to pan in sunder, • Swelling on either side to want his bliss; Between whose lulls her head entombed is…. Herbrests, tike ivory globes circled with blue. A pair of maiden worlds unconquered, Save of their lord no bearing yoke they knew, And him by oath tltey truly honoured.
”THE DUCHESS OF MALFI” ” THE ALCHEMIST’, AND ”BARTHOLOMEW FAIR”
Q.90-. Show your acquaintance with- the following :-
(i) The Duchess ofMalfi (Punjab 1966) (Agra 1965)
(ii) The Alchemist (Punjab SepU956) (Punjab 19701
(iii) Bartholomew Fair (Agra 1959)
THE DUCHESS OF MALFI Introduction :-
The Duchess ofMalfi is the most important dramatic work of the Jacobean dramatist John Webster (1575-1625). It is a horror tragedy of a very sombre kind. It was first acted in 1613. The scenes of action are Milan and Malfi (Italy) of the early sixteenth century. The piot of the play was derived from the work of the Italian chronicler Bandello, through William Painter. The main element of the plot is the reveuge which two nobles wreak on their widowed sister (the Duchess ofMalfi) for her ”crime” of marrying her own steward, a man much beiow her rank. A number of murders plus some other macabre and weird happenings are the staple of the ptey. ’.
568 /A History of English Literature
TheStory :-
Structurally, the play is quite simple, and its plot can easily be summarised. The widowed Duchess of Malfi was a young woman having two brothers-a Cardinal and Ferdinand the Duke of Calabria. They desired that the Duchess should not marry so that they themselves might inherit her estate. They engaged a sinister cynic named Bosola to keep a watch on her. But the Duchess fell in love with her steward Antonio and married him secretly. She had two sons and a daughter by him before her brothers got to know about her marriage. Under threats she confessed her marriage to her brother Ferdinand, but did not disclose the name of her husband. She asked her husband to flee to Ancona where it was arranged that she would join him. But she took Bosola into confidence and told ”him all. Bosola advised her to go to Ancona via Loretto so as to give the impression that she was going on pilgrimage. Bosola informed her brothers, and later met the Duchess and Antonio near Loretto with a letter from Ferdinand asking Antonio to visit him in Rome. But Antonio fled with his eldest son to Rome. Bosola brought the Duchess back to Malfi as a virtual prisoner. Ferdinand showed her a dead man’s hand implying that it was from Antonio’s dead body. The Duchess and her two children were strangled by Bosola. Bosola asked Ferdinand for reward, but was laughed away. He then went to Milan to seek reward from the Cardinal, but was similarly dismissed. Bosola decided to join Antonio to revenge himself upon Ferdinand and the Cardinal but he accidentally murdered Antonio himself. A few minutes later he stabbed the Cardinal, but was himself murdered by Ferdinand who had become mad after the death of his sister. But before ’dying, Bosola managed to kill Ferdinand. After all this bloodshed the surviving son of Antonio and the Duchess of Malfi (whom the fleeing Antonio had taken to Milan) was declared the owner of the estate of the Duchess and also of that of Ferdinand and the Cardinal.
Criticism :-
As must have become obvious from the summary of its plot, the play is a melodrama of the ”blood and thunder type” which puts one in mind of The Spanish Tragedy of Kyd. As such, it is typical of the decadent drama of the age of James I (the Jacobean age). However, the excessive butchery and melodramatic extravagance of the play take the shape of genuine tragedy, for they are exalted and sustained by a rare poetic power which creates for itself a world of its own-macabre, irrational, and shocking, but interesting.. As I for Evans obser-
The Alchemist” ,569:
ves,”Webster’s sombre spirit, aided by his poetic powers, raises them [his plots] from melodrama to a tragic world. Such is his genius that his characters do not move in a story, but in a strange, cruel, irrational world which is peculiarly his own,”
The play is rich in pathos. Pity and terror are tragic emotions, according to Aristotle, and the play arouses both of them quite abundantly. The most memorable line of the play is the one steeped in stark pathos which Fredinand utters in a fit of remorse on looking at the face of his dead sister.
Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle: she died young. What can be less melodramatic, more pathetic, and more natural ? Webster comes close to Shakespeare in his darker moods; and this play at places reminds one of King Lear. Consider, for example :
We are merely the stars’ tennis-balls, struck and bandied
Which way please them. and Gloucester’s famous:
As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods;
They kill us for their sport
THE ALCHEMIST ’ ^
Introduction :- ^ ..
Tlie Alchemist, which Gregory Smith describes as ”the comedy of drunken ambition made foolish by its excess”, marks the peak of Ben Jonson’s dramatic career, as it is, to most critics, the best and most well-constructed of hfs comedies. It was acted in 1610 and published in 1612. The locale of the play is Ben Jonson’s contemporary London, and more specifically, the quarter of London known as Blackfriars where Jonson himself lived and which he knew so intimately. The so-called alchemist is the very subtle Subtle who with His consorts Face and the courtesan Dol Common swindles a large number of Londoners by holding out to them the hope of acquiring the Philosopher’s Stone. In its essentials, the play is a satire on greed and works through the exposure of that gullibility which is engendered by greed. As such, the play can be compared with another powerful comedy thematically akin to \n~Volpone. However, The Alchemist is the more bracing of the two and nearer to the spirit of comedy. ”In this play”, says Frank M.Magill.”Jonson, the artist, superseded Jonson the moralist”. More truly, Jonson is still a moralist in the play even though it lacks what David Daiches calls ”the misanthropic fierceness” of Volpone.
f
5701 / A History of English Literature
The Story :-
The story of the play is built around the nefarious activities of three swindlers-Subtle, Face, and the courtesan Dol Common. On account of the outbreak of plague, Lovewit, a gentleman, flees from his London house leaving it in the custody of his butler, Face. (London was struck by a plague epidemic in 1610 ).Taking advantage of his master’s absence, Face invites Subtle, a swindler, and his consort, the courtesan Dol Commotytnd the three of them start cheating Londoners of their money, making Lovewit’s house the base of their operations. Several gulls fall victims to the subtle swindling of Subtle who holds out to them extravagant but, to them, convincing, hopes of prosperity through the Philosopher’s Stone which he protests is under preparation in his laboratory. His victims are :
[i) Dapper, a lawyer’s clerk, who is promised good luck at gambling.
[ii] Abel Drugger, an ambitious tobacco merchant, who is
promised a brilliant Future.
(iiil Sir Epicure Mammon, an epicurean worshipper of Mammon (the god of gold ). He is lustful and greedy, and is given a vision of the wonderful future when he would be able to transform everything including his household articles into gold. Surly, a sceptical gambler and an associate of Sir Mammon, however, is unconvinced. Sir Mammon falls in ”love” with Dol Common whom Subtle represents as an aristocratic lady at present under his treatment.
[iv] Elder Ananias and Tribulation Wholesome, two Puritans from
Amsterdam.
[VI Kastril, a young swashbuckler from the countryside, who arrives with his sister Dame Pliant to London in order to learn such sophisticated activities’as smoking and fighting.
The trio of swindlers-Subtle, Face and Dol Common-succeed for a while. Surly in the dress of a Spanish knight comes to the house to expose them, but he is unsuccessful. The play comes to its denouement at the unexpected arrival of Lovewit at a time when its many gulls are in his, house. Subtle and Dol escape empty-handed from the back-door. Face promises to reform and arranges the marriage of his master with Dame Pliant. The gulls demand their money and goods back from Face and Lovewit, but are. finally convinced that they have been cheated on account of their own greedy nature and selfishness.
Criticism :-
The play is a powerful but pleasant satire on cheats and gulls ail of whom are actuated by excessive greed. But,unlike in Volpone, there is no pronounced poetic justice. All the cheats and gulls in Volpone meet their deserts in the end. But in The Alchemist we find Subtle and Dol
Bartholomew Fair /57j
Common escaping scot-free, -:vcn though empty-handed. Ben Jonson’s didacticism and his reformative 7.cal arc here without their harsher tones. According to Ifor Evans, the play is brought to ”a more genial conclusion than is usual in Jonson’s comedy.”
As regards Jonson’s characterisation in this play, it may be pointed out that he follows his usual ”humours” pattern. However, he has succeeded in enlivening his characters with individual traits which distinguish them from all the rest. Most of the characters arc gulls or cheats, and yet each has his individual shade of gullibility or cunning. Most of them arc greedy yet their greed is not, in every case, of the same kind. Among swindlers, Subtle enjoys the prominence of place, and among the greedy gulls, Sir Epicure Mammon whose greed heats up his imagination and makes him utter words of rich splendour reminding one of those of Marlowe’s Tamburlaine.
As regards plot-construction, it will be pertinent to remark that the play was put by Coleridge along with two other literary worksSophocles’ Oedipus the King and Fielding’s Tom Jones-as the most perfect in plot-construction. Ben Jonson observes in Tlie Alchemist all the three unities, particularly the unity of placc; All the incidents happen either inside Lovewit’s house or in front of its door.
BARTHOLOMEW FAIR ;
Introduction :-
Bartholomew Fa/r-Which Daiches describes as ”the most expansive of Jonson’s mature satiric comedies and the most English in atmosphere”–was first acted in 1624 and publsihed in 1631. As the title of the play indicates, it is concerned with Bartholomew Fairthe annual fair held at Smithfield, London, in the month of August. Jonson brings a vast number of characters to the .site of the fair and, very like Dickens, sketches their manners and doings, thus revealing the ”low life” of contemporary London. We meet there all sorts of people-magistrates, bawds, toymen, hawkers, gulls, gallants, and cutpurses. In this way Ben Jonson provides us with a panoramic vision of life in London of the early seventeenth century. As compared to Dickens he is much less squeamish and inhibited in his revelation of manners and morals. Dickens was a Victorian who had to abide by the straitjacketing, priggish canons associated with the age. The Story:-
The scene of Bartholomew Fair is highly crowded, and the play u M Agglomeration of a hundred diverse episodes and incidents which are not fully developed, and many only hinted at. Jonson’s intention
I
5*72 / A History of English Literature
was obviously not to give a well-kml plot but to hold a mirror to the London of his age. His canvas is over-crowded with all sorts of characters whose actions do not fall into clear patterns. They haveabout them the diffuscness of life itself. The plot itself is, therefore, not very important. David Daichcs observes in this connexion : ”The plot here is less important than the speech and action of individual characters and the roistering atmosphere of the Fair at which most of the play
is set.”
Bartholomew Cokes, a foolish young squire, goes to the Fair with his servant Waspc and his fiancee Grace Wellborn. There he is relieved of his purse, cloak, and sword, and even his marriage licence, by the dexterous cut purse Edgcworth and his companion Nightingale, a ballad-singer. Adam Overdo, a justice of the peace, who is roaming in the Fair in disguise for detecting criminals, is himself taken as the pickpocket who has robbed Cokes, and is put in the stocks. Waspe indulges in fighting and is also put in the stocks. The same punishment is awarded to the hypocritical but fanatical Puritan Zeal-of-the-Land Busy who makes himself a nuisance in the Fair to which he has come for wooing Dame Purecraft, a rich widow. Winwife, a London gallant and Busy’s rival, quarrels with his own friend Quarlous, a gamester disguised as a madman, over Grace Wellborn, Cokes’ fiancee. Overdo , manages to escape from the stocks and after he has well watched with . his own eyes the rogueries and vices going on in the Fair, declares in the end his real identity and his intention to bring all culprits to book. But Quarlous convinces him of the possibility of false judgement by disclosing that Edgeworth, whom Overdo has been taking for an innocent youth, is a cutpurse. This mitigates Overdo’s severity and he invites all to dinner. It is Quarlous who ultimately wins the hand of Dame Purecraft.
Criticism :•
This play, unlike Volpone, exhibits the spirit of pure and good natured comedy. There is plenty of satire-particularly levelled at the fanatical Puritan Zeal-of-the-Land Busy who is shown making a fool of himself. However, Jonson is never too harsh or judicial in this attitude. He lets his gulls and cheats go scot-free. Magill observes in Masterpieces of World Literature, Second Series: ”That no great evil is done in the play and that no one comes to any grief would indicate that Jonson, though a satirist, felt a real affection for all men in his beloved London.” The main interest of the play lies in its being a very interesting and authentic portrait of London life in the age of James I. ”Even to modern audiences.” says Ifor Evans in A Short History of English Dra/n<j,”the picture remains crowded and lively, and for Jonson’s contemporaries this portrait of Jacobean London must have appealed by its keen verisimilitude.”
Ralph Roister Doislcr 7573
”RALPH ROISTER DOISTER,”
”THE SHEPHEARDES CALENDAR /’AND
”EPICOENE”
Q.90. Show your acqaintance with the following :• (i) Ralph Roister Doister (Agra 1966)
(ii) Tlie Shepheardcs Calendar (Agra 1966) (Gorakhpur 1982) (Hi) Epicoenc (Agra 1986)
RALPH ROISTER DOISTER
Introduction :-
Ralph Roister Doistcr.has (he distinction of being the first”regular” English eOmedy. It was composed by Nicholas Udall (1505-56),headmaster successively of Eton and Westminster, in or around 1553, was first printed about 1567, and was probably acted by the boys of Westminster when Udallwasthc headmaster of that school. Udall tried to marry the native tradition of comedy to the Roman classical tradition To Terence and Plautus which had come to be increasingly appreciated and admired in Renaissance England. The Story :-
The story of the comedy is based upon the stupid love-affair of a foolish braggart who gives his name to the comedy. Ralph Roister Doister is a. jwaggei ing simpleton who imagines’the rich widow Dame Custance to be in love with him. Actually the rich widow loves and is betrothed to the merchant Gawin Goodluck who has gone to some other town. In his stupidity Ralph Roister Doister is confirmed by the roguish tricks of the mischievous servant Marrygreek who induces him to call on Custance and profess his tremendous love. Ralph does so and is promptly beaten up by the widow and her maids. He feels crestfallen and comes to his senses after all. The merchant, who is moved by jealousy in the beginning, understands the whole position and gets reconciled to Dame Custance.
Criticism :-
As we have said above, the play is the first regular English comedy. Its regularity lies in the adoption of the method of dividing the action into five acts and its strict adherence to the unities of time and place, <f not of action too. However, it is not altogether an imitation of the Roman comedy of Terence and Plautus-the most well known of the Roman comedy writers of the third century B. C. The setting of the P’ay, for instance, is provided by contemporary London, and the
574 / A History of English Literature |
dramatist manifests ample knowledge of the manners of middle-class Londoners. The characters of the play seem to have been suggested by Plautys and Terence. We have, for instance, the incorrigible braggart and the wily parasite. However, the most delightful character of the play is Dame Custance. She is, says Albert C. Baugh, ”as English as the Wife of Bath. She combines, not unengagingly, an acute sensitiveness about social proprieties and the discipline of servants with a prompt efficiency in boxing the ears of unwise suitors.” A feature of Ralph Roister Doister is the numerous songs interspersed throughout the play-and most of them exceedingly delightful.
The play is written in rhyming verses. In this respect it is different from the first regular English tragedy-Sackville and Norton’s Garbodwc-which employed blank verse. Udall’s verses are often bad, and sing but rarely. Now and then they drop into sheer doggerel. But in spite of all the crudities of expression and characterisation,, the play has a recognised importance in the history of English drama, though that importance is almost entirely due to precedence, not due to excellence. The play did not give rise to a tradition nor did it prompt any worthwhile imitation. Nevertheless, being the first regular English comedy, it won for Udall the title of the ”father of English comedy.”
THE SHEPHEARDES CALENDAR
Introduction :-
The Shepheardes Calendar is the first true pastoral in the history of English literature. The work is also, incidentally, the first important work of Spenser (1552-99). It was first published in 1579. It was, in fact, Alexander Barclay (writer of the Ship of Fools) who was the first Englishman to try his hand at the eclogue. He wrote some five eclogues which were published in a body in 1514. But they were crude attempts, and were more satiric than idyllic in nature. Barclay did not look for inspiration so much to Theocritus and Virgil as their Italian imitator of the Renaissance named Mantuanus. Spenser scored a tremendous advance over Barclay, and though he was influenced by Mantuanus and even by Marot, he seems to have thoroughly imbibed the Spirit of Theocritus and Virgil-the pastoralists of antiquity. The Theme and Plan :•
The twelve eclogues which constitute The Shepheardes Calendar are addressed to Sir Philp Sidney in, what Albert C. Baugh remarks, are ”the most charming of all Spenser’s famous Dedications”: Co little book: thyself present,
1
The Shepheardes Calendar” ,’575
As child whose parent is unkent, ;
To him that is the president
Of noblesse and of chivalry …
Of the twelve eclogues each one is for one month of the year. So all of them together cover the whole of the year. Every eclogue is in the form of a dialogue among the shepherds. The only exceptions are the first and the last eclogue which are of the nature of ”complaints” by ”Colin Clout” who stands for the author himself. Broadly speaking, the themes of the eclogues are three-love, poetry, and religion. To be more specific, four of them deal with love, one is in praise of Elysa who obviously stands for Queen Elizabeth, one of them is a lament for a ”maiden of great blood,” one describes a singing match, another laments the contempt in which poetry is held by worldings, and the remaining four deal allegorically with the subject of religion and right conduct. Allegory~”the dark conceit” -was always dear to Spenser’s heart, and so made its way into even The Shepheardes Calendar.
The style and versification of the eclogues are deliberately varied. Spenser skilfully interchanges decasyllabic lines and lines with four accents. He seems to have varied with great meticulousness consonance and discord and given the work a kind of symmetry even in the most insignificant details. On the whole, the style is made to vary with the subject. Eclogue IV is a very light-hearted but refreshing song in praise of Queen Elizabeth. On the other extreme, we have the heavy, dirge-like eclogue (”Dido”: Eclogue XI) lamenting the death of an unknown woman, the style of which is charged with excessive sobriety and funeral gloom so appropraite to the subject.
Criticism :•.
The Shepheardes Calendar is not only a fine start made by young Spenser, it also represents a fine start made by English poetry in the age of Elizabeth after its spirit had slumbered for upward of a century. Before this work the English poetic Muse had precious little to show by the side of the good work done by the poets of Renaissance Italy and France, especially the contemporary group of French poets called the Pleiade. ”For the first time,” observes Legouis in A History of English Literature by Legouis and Cazamian, ”an English poet seemed to triumph over his European rivals and in the very genre which was generally attractive in the sixteenth century, in pastoral poetry. Spenser marked the first score in the’game of parallelism between England and antiquity or modern Italy, which the English critics were to pursue, all
m,f
if «.
576/ A History of English Literature
ready to acclaim the victory of their national champions. The merit of the poem is great; its date and circumstances turned it into a triumph. From the moment of its publication Spenser was the acknowledged national poet.”
EPICOENE
Introduction :-
Epicoene, or the Silent Woman is one of the most delightful and light-hearted of Ben Jonson’s comedies. It was first acted in 1609, and since then it has been enjoying uninterrupted popularity among all classes of readers. But it must be admitted that just as another comedy of Ben Jonson’s, Volpone, borders upon tragedy, in the same way Epicoene borders upon the farce. Anyway, for once Jonson seems to have rid himself of his fearful load of classical doctrines and seriousness of purpose and given a play primarily meant for delighting rather than instructing the audience and the readers. As he himself says in the prologue to the play, many scenes in his plays are intended
For ladies, some for lords, knights, squires, . Some for your wailing wench, and city wires:
Some foryouf men, and daughters of Whitefriars.
The Story :-
The ”hero” of the play is the very eccentric old bachelor named Morose. He is, as his name indicates, an embodiment of morosity. His is a pathological case. His ”humour” is a mortal fear of all noise. He lives in a blind alley of London and is in a perpetual preparation of war against all sorts of noise. He always keeps his shutters drawn and has even muffled up his front door and quilted the stairs. His servants ”talk” to him only through signs. Being a bachelor, his property after his death has to go to his nephew Sir Dauphine Eugenie. But Morose suspects him of having ridiculed him. So he decides to get married lest his property should go to him. But he wants for his wife a perfectly silent woman. His barber Cutbeard manages to find for him such a silent woman named Epicoene (which means ”with qualities of either sex)”. But immediately after the marriage, the silent woman proves herself to be most garrulous, and makes Morose skip about in the house in search of asylum from her full-throated onslaught. The situation gets hotter for Morose with the arrival of his nephew and friends, a pack of dissolute women called ”Colllegiate ladies/’and a number of musicians to celebrate the auspicious occasion. The net result of all this hubbub
•Epicoene’ /577
is that Morose goes almost crazy and is prepared to go to any length for putting a halt to this nerve-shattering din.- He consults a pretending divine and a lawyer to seek some valid excuse for divorce. This learnedly grotesque consultation also makes for good comedy. In the end, Morose’s nephew offers to rid him of Epicoene in return for a payment of five hundred pounds a year plus the reversion of all the property to him. The offer is accepted, whereupon Dauphine proceeds to pull Epicoene’s wig, which reveals her to be a boy disguised as a woman. Actually the whole drama had been planned by Dauphine and Cutbeard to teach a lesson to Morose. And they succeed quite well. Criticism :- ,
What distinguishes Epicoene from the other important comedies of Ben Jonson, such as Volpone and The Alchemist, is the lightness of touch and the absence of any heavy moral purpose.
-r „ .M^M. « uvruuojr uuiu any senous didacticism, and,
unlike in Vblpone,” sports with human follies not with crimes.” Morose Vhumour” is his fear of noise. Now, all wise people are afraid of noise and the German philosopher Schopenhaur went so far as to say that a man’s capacity of tolerating noise is in inverse proportion to his intelligence. However, Morose is a neurotic. He goes to excess and trembles at every sound as if it were the. «m/i «f »i-»~ •«–1J?- –
j- „_>.» u «*Mu«iv4.bi wticuvmg among us, ine psychiatrists
would have labelled him as a ”neurasthenic.” His discomfiture on the very day of his marriage excites farcical humour. Among the other characters whose behaviour contributes to the humour of the play are Captain Otter, who always stands corrected by his overbearing wife ; Sir Amorous La-Foole, the incorrigible braggart and coward (somewhat like Bobadill of Every Man in His Humour); Sir John Daw, a braggart knight and a ”title scholar”– that is, one knowing the titles of most books without ever taking the trouble of peeping into their contents; and the ”Collegiate Ladies”-a group of dissolute women ”between courtiers and country madams who live for their husbands and give entertainment to all the wits and braveries [that is, dandies of the time.” In the play Jonson has tried to synthesise his vast classical learning, his peculiar humour, and his intimate observation of the life and manners of the Londoners of his times. On the whole Epicoene is a very delightful comedy. We cannot agree with Legouis when he says about Ben Jonson : ”He lacks spontaneity, like Flaubert, he is too industrious and too learned to evoke light laughter”. Jonson may be too learned, but he does not flaunt his learning-at least in this comedy.
5J8 / A History of English Literature
”THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLV/’RELIGIO
MEDICI,” AND ”HYDRIOTAPHIA’
Q, 92. Show your acquaintance with :•
(i) The Anatomy of Melancholy (Punjab Sept. 1956)
(Gorakhpur 1986) (Punjab 1961) (Punjab 1970) (ii) Rcligio Mlaici (Punjab 1957)’ (Punjab 1959) (Punjab 1961) (ii) Hydriotaphia or Urn Burial (Punjab 1958) Gorakhpur
– – 1984)
THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY Introduction :•
The Anatomy of Melancholy, published in 1621, was the only work of the eccentric humanist Robert Burton (1577-1640). By profession Burton was a degyman, but he spent the last forty years of his life in the bachelor quarters of Brasenose College, Oxford. From there he collected a vast fund of miscellaneous learning all of which was dumped into his only work. Nominally the treatise is about melancholy which in the age of Burton was taken to be something like a physical disease giving rise to numerous follies and serious distempers that could lead a man to madness and even death. Sir Thomas Browne, who wrote after him, was a physician who took interest in religion. Burton is just opposite to him, as he took interest in medicine when by profession he was a clergyman.
The Theme and Plan :•
The treatise was divided into three”parthions” by the author who intended to deal with melancholy on all levels and in all its manifestations. The first partition deals with the definitions, sources, symptoms, and properties of melancholy. The second is concerned with methods of curning melancholy. The third partition deals with the two most important kinds of melancholy-the melancholy of love and the melancholy’of religion. The melancholy of love is discussed with the help of a number of stories. The discussion of the meloncholy of religion is very pertinent for an age when gloomy Puritans had started making their appearance felt. As an Anglican, Burton was naturally antagonistic towards the Puritan melancholiacs and the Cassandras of doom. So, nominally, the book concerns itself with the distemper of melancholy, but practically speaking, it has very large amplitude of treatment. ”The Anatomy of Melancholy,” says Tucker Brooke in A Literary History of England, ed. Albert C. Baugh, ”can most simply by regarded as a great collection of essays on man’s dissatisfaction with the world and ways to mitigate it.” Secondly, the treatise is a vast .
fe»
”Religo Media”/579
reservoir of Burton’s immense classical learning drawn from innumerable sources. Burton has no well-defined philosophy of life, nor does he have as much as a definite point of view. He lives on universal . plunder and deposits what he plunders in this book. Thus The Anatomy of Melancliofy is a vast repository of the miscellaneous classical and humanist learning, mostly of the recondite or uncommon type, which could be accessible to an erudite scholar of the Elizabethan or Jacobean age.
Criticism :-
Though apparently The Anatomy of Melancholy is an objective treatise on a subject which in Burton’s age’was considered a scientific one yet there is something of the author in it. Legouis observes in A Short History of English Literature : ” There was nothing of himself [B urton] in the thick quarto which appeared in 1621, for he had pillaged from every known book; yet there was self-revelation in the choice of subject and in the unity that his temperament infused into it.” As he was mostly a retailer of other men’s opinions, Burton’s book has the very egregious feature of frequent quotation from and paraphrase of the writings of all sorts of writers. Sometimes, of course, Burton himself does drop in, and in the relation of his experience he reminds one of the fathers of the essay-Mo^S116- However, he is, unlike the French author, quite eccentric and equally pedantic.
Burton’s style, on the whole, is of the baroque kind. Baroque style is that in which the Gothic elements-savageness, changefulness, grotesqueness, redundance, etc. -arise from a fundamentally classical pattern. However, there are moments of Baconian simplicity text. Burton’s sentences are normally quite lengthy, and sometimes he seems to be confusing, the paragraph with the sentence. A kind of ”metaphysical” quality is also discernible in his prose, which makes him appear akin to Donne, for right in moments of the most serious meditation and sombre earnestness, a note of sarcastic humour is sometimes struck.
Tlie Anatomy of Melancholy proved a book of lasting though selective popularity. Dr. Johnson used it for his daily reading, and Lamb-a person altogether different from Dr. Johnson-popularised it in the early nineteenth century and also used it as a guide- book to foster his style.
Introduction :•
RELIGIO MEDICI
Rellgio Medici is the best work of the Caroline prose writer Sir ’ Thomas Browne. The Latin title of the book means in English ’The
b
080 / A History of English Literature
Religion of a Physician.” After taking his degree of Doctor of Medicine from the University of Leyden (1634) and before starting his practice in Norwich, Browne spent some months of leisure at a Yorkshire . village. It was during this period that he wrote Religio Medici which was published in an unauthorized edition in 1634. After another unauthorized edition had come out, the first authorized edition appeared in 1643. Browne made it clear that he had not intended the work for publication at all, and that it had been ”composed at leisurable hours for his private exercise and satisfaction.” He was giving a ”full and intended copy” because the*work had been published without his consent or even knowledge. The Theme and Plan :-
Religion provides the warp and woof of the whole work. Physicians in the age of Browne were commonly suspected of being atheists. In writing Religio Medici, Browne might have primarily intended to combat this popular prejudice. The very title which means”the religion of |jj a physician” implies that a physician, too, can have a religion. Browne U begins by saying that though he is a physician by profession, he is also 9 a member of the Church; more specifically, the Church of England, fl However, he is for an all-embracing tolerance-tolerance even of non-11 Christian and actively anti-Christian faiths. He admits that once hen himself subcribed to three heresies which, however, he has sinceP| outgrown. He supports a rational enquiry into the works of God-Nature and the Bible. He says that ”’tis the debt of our reason we own unto God, and the homage we pay for not being beasts.” But he is also a mystic, and likes to drive his reason beyond the limits within which it can possibly operate.”! love to lose myself in a mystery, to pursue my reason to an O aititudo \” He is for both faith and reason, but is critical of passion which thwarts both of them. ”As Reason is a rebel unto Faith, so Passion unto Reason: as the Propositions of Faith seem absurd unto Reason, so the theorems of Reason unto Passion and both unto Reason.” Though Browne is apt to discuss scientifically biblical miracles, yet he appears to be a firm believer in witchcraft, magic, and a hundred superstitions. And then, in keeping with the tradition of the first half of the seventeenth century, he has frequent recourse to the theme of mortality (which was later to find a really majestic expression in his •worV.Hydrio(aphia or Um Burial). But, unlike Donne, he is not at all afraid of death, and is always willing to die, I am,” says he,”not so much afraid of death as ashamed thereof.” Again, he observes: ”For the world I count it not an inn but an hospital; and a place not to live,but to die in.” He shows, indeed, Christian resolution coupled with a deep melancholy and stoicism of temper. In the second
•Hydriotaphia” fS8l
part of the book he deals entirely with the virtue of charity which for him means universal love. To sum up, Browne’s religious attitude is very complex. It has the elements of orthodoxy, rationalism, eclecticism, scepticism, and mysticism, and many more ”isms.” But his personality combines all of them into a fairly harmonious unity.
Criticism :-
Religio Medici is of the nature of an autobiography. But it is not an ordinary autobiography-like, say, Gibbon’s, Herbert Spencer’s, John Stuart Milk’s, or Maxim Gorki’s. It is an autobiography of the soul. Browne’s active life was somewhat uneventful, but his spiritual life was quke colourful. In Religio Medici he gives us a peep into the deep recesses of his mind and soul We can agree with Hugh Walker when he classifies the work as ” an essay of the personal type.” And in this essay there is a high degree of fidelity to ”Acts.” The style of Religio Medici is, in one word, of the baroque kind. The syntax is complex and Ciceronian. Browne writes prose as a poet does verse. He is extremely painstaking about the harmony of his expression. Then, there is the obvious impress of Latinism on his prose. Balance and antithesis come in handy to add to the rhetorical, harmonious effect.With his emphatic pica for tolerance Browne provided food for thought to his strifeHora countrymen. ”It is”, says Tucker Brobkes ”likely that Dr Browne, in all his estimable career, never prescribed a better medicine than when he wrote Religio Medici. The world was sick of horrors, on the the brink of civil war, and in the throes of a harsh theory. The book is a prophylactic against totalitarian damnation, and the world took it to its heart.”
HYDRIOTAPHIA OR URN BURIAL
Introduction :•
Hydriotaphia or Um Burial is a work of Sir Thomas Browne and was first published along with his The Garden of Cyrus in one volume in 1658. The immediate occasion for the writing of Hydriotaphia was provided by the excavation of forty or fifty Roman urns containing the remain of the dead at Norfolk, near Norwich, where Browne practised as a physician. The work was, in its original intention, meant to be a scientific report concerning those historical urns then recently exhumed.
The Theme and Plan :•
Browne, obviously, broadened considerably his original intention by taking upon himself to trace the history of the various methods of disposal of dead human bodies practised in Britain. From there Browne comes to descant on urns and their contents, and from there
582 / A History of English Literature
to funeral ceremonies. This takes him to the general meme of human mortality which is always so near his heart and which always prompts him to give his best-at feast his best style. He ridicules the efforts of human beings to perpetuate their memory in the world by erecting massive monuments, for, says he, time destroys everything by slow but steady corrosion, and the ’toughest pyramid is no tougher than a pillar of snow which soon melts into nothing. Browne himself is not afraid of death and is ever ready to face it cheerfully. On earth there is no felicity.” But man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes and pompous in the grave.”
Criticism :-
One thought that never fails to inspire Browne to really tremendous passages is the fear of annihilation combined with the distant prospect of eternal felicity. And it is the inimitable play of Ifght and shade upon the thought of death that makes Browne so different from any other writer upon the same subject.
The style of Hydriotaphia is fundamentally the same as that of Religio Medici, but it is full of greater artifice, polish, and studied eloquence. Comparing the two, Hugh Walker observes: ”On the one hand, k [the style of Hydriotaphia] has lost something of ease, on the other it is far more highly wrought, richer and more gorgeous.” From the very beginning of the Epistle Dedicatory (”When the Funeral pyre was out, and the last valediction over”) to the majestic glory of the last passage (”But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy”) the work reaches the heights of harmonious eloquence. The last passage is the most celebrated example of Browne’s eloquence. There is in it, observes a critic, ”a peculiar kind of music that accompanies majestic funeral marches to the grave. • Browne is indeed a connoisseur of the subtle art of interweaving harmonies, which cannot but impress even a very obtuse ear. Both his diction and syntax are Latinised. However, unlike Burton, he does not use many Latin words as they are; he rather anglicizes them before employing them.
As regards the ”philosophy” of Hydriotaphia, it is, in accordance with the intellectual set-up of the writer, of a composite character. David Daiches remarks in/I Critical History of English Literature, Vol. I: ”The antiquarian, the Platonic mystic, the Christian moralist, and the artist all contribute to the total effect, but the artist is generally in the ascendant.” It is indeed the artistry ot verbal patterns and the exploitation of verbal harmonies at their fullest that distinguishes Hydriotaphia.
*>*
Coraus /583-
”COMUS”, ”AREOPAGmCA”t”LYCIDAS”
AND ”SAMSON AGONISTES” lQ.93 Show your acquaintance with the following :- (I) Comus (Agra 1967) (Agra 1972) (Agra 1976)
MAnopafftica (Agra 1964) (Punjab 1957) (Gorakhpurl984) (Hi) Lycidas (Agra 1957) (Punjab 1972)
(to) Samson Agonistes (Agra 1986)
COMUS
Introduction :-
Comus is a masque written by John Milton in 1634 at the request of Henry Lawes, the musician. It was meant for amusement of the family of the dowager Countess of Derby. The immediate occasion of writing was presented by the appointment of the Earl of Bridgewater to the presidency of Wiles and the Marches. A masque was a kind of dramatic entertainment very popular in the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. The difference between a masque and a drama is that in the former much interest lies in spectacle, songs, and dances, and conn paratively very little ia character and action. Modern opera is a kin of the ancient masque. Strictly speaking, Milton’s Comus is a pastoral drama rather than a masque. It may be of inter est to note that in the first three editions of the work the name ”Comus” did not figure in the rather long title; in the subsequent editions, it did.
The Story :• . .
There is much more of ”poetry” than action or story in Comus. The plot is the simplest imaginable. Two young brothers and their beautiful and young sister Alice get lost in a forest at night while they are on way to their castle. Alice gets separated from her brothers and falls into the hands of Comus, the lustful magician who encounters her in the form of a shepherd. He offers to lead her to his cottage and to lodge her there for the night. The offer is accepted and he leads her off. The two brothers come to know of it from the ’Attendant Spirit” who comes to them in the guise of a shepherd. The Spirit tells th%m of the true nature of Comus and the danger which Alice is presently running. The brothers go to Comus’ residence and there find him pressing the lady to drink from a glass. Alice however, with her upright and unswerving chastity, foils Comus’ attcmps to entice her. The brothers disperse Comus and the crew of monsters around him. Alice is thus saved, but she has tost the power of movement. Finding this, the Attendant Spirit invokes the aidofSabrina, the goddess of a neighbour-
1
584 / A History of English Literature
ing river. She comes attended by nymphs, and frees the lady from the evil spell of Comus. After appropriate thanksgiving to Sabrina, Alice and her brothers go to their castle.
Criticism :•
The masque has a very simple allegorical significance. It celebrates. the triumph of upright virtue as embodied by Alice in frustrating the designs of lustful evil as allegorised by Comus. In fact, it is the very pronounced moral aim which makes Milton’s masque quite different from the masques of his predecessors like Ben Jonson, Middlcton, and Chapman whose purpose was pure amusement. But in realising a didactic purpose,. Milton docs no violence to the airy spirit of the masque which he makes entertaining as well as edifying. ”Fortunately,” remarks a critic,”his power as an artist was so developed that he could charge the delicate texture of his masque with ethical doctrine, without at all marring its airy beauty.” There arc, however, some spots which indicate that this ”airy beauty” has, to some extent, been ”marred,” There are loo many monologues and.rather dull (partly because they are too lengthy) speeches. On account of its ethical and puritanic note, Comus has ben called by A. F. Wyalt ”a worthy prelude of the grandeur of Paradise Lost, and a noble expression of Puritanism.” With Comus, Milton seems to have finally adopted blank verse in place of rhymed verse. About the poetic quality of Comus, Dr. Johnson observes that ”a work more truly poetical is rarely found. Allusions, images, and descriptive epithets embellish almost every period with lavish decoration.”
AREOPAGITICA
Introduction :-
Areopagilica, which appeared in November 1644, is the most important prose work of John Milton. The intention of the writer is clear from its complete title which reads Areopagitica, a Speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicensed. Printing to the Parliament of England. At the time of Milton’s writing this book, Parliament was dominated by the Presbyterians who were imposing various restrictions on the liberty of expression. Though Milton had much sympathy with them in other matters yet he reacted passionately to their attempt at throttling the press.
The Theme and Purpose :•
Milton appeared wth Areopagitica as a vigorous champion of the liberty of the press. He raised his powerful voice against a recent order ”that no hook-shall be henceforth printed unless the same be first
”Areopagitica” 7535
approved and licensed by such…as shall be hitherto appointed.” He was particularly sore because this order affected’his pamphlets on divorce which he, therefore, was forced to get published secretly. Thus confronted with a personal problem he was stung into action. In the body of the work, he gave numerous reasons for granting full liberty to the press. He maintained that licensing had been mostly practised by the Roman Catholics whom the Presbyterians hated so much. Christian prophets were all for the freedom of learning. Then, for maintaining minds virtuous it was necessary that all kinds of books should be allowed to be read. And/mally,to try to keep out evil doctrines by just curbing the liberty of the press was as vain as ”the exploit of that gallant man who thought to pound up the crows by shutting his park gate.” In the end, Milton bursts into a magnificently eloquent plea for intellectual liberty. He reminds the Parliamentarians of the dignity of their nation. ”What nation it is whereof ye are, and whereof ye are the governors : a nation not slow and dull but of a quick, ingenious and piercing spirit.” He pictures to his mind ”a noblcTand puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep and shaking her invincible locks.” ”Give me,” cries Milton, ”the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely, according to conscience, above’all liberties.”
Criticism :-
Areopagitica is of interest to us even today for both its theme and style. The theme is pretty modcrn-the liberty of expression which is enshrined right in the constitutions of most democratic countries today. As Hardin Craig observes in A Histify of English Literature edited by himself, ”it has become in Britain and America the original document on the subject of the freedom of speech and the” press.” The style of Areopagitica is the style of a poet, a poet associated with sublime style. The poetical element is both the strength and bane of Milton’s prose. Milton admits that in his prose works he has ”the use, as I may account it, but of my left hand.” He also speaks of himself as ”sitting here below in the cool element of prose.” But his ”left hand” is also quite forceful and h> is sc Mom ”cool” in his prose. At his best he scales the dizzy heights of noble eloquence but often his sentences run into intricate tangles of zigzag expression in which the d> tinction between a paragraph and a sentence di^ppears completely. The .peroration of Areopagitica is a very nobk vsample of Milton’s eloquence in the medium of prose. ”His style,” says Hardin Craig,” in at least parts of the address is the acme of the prose style of that eloquent age: not Browne or 1aylor,Donne or Bacon ever surpassed it.”
586 / A History of English Literature
LYCIDAS Introduction:-
Lycidas is a pastoral elegy written by John Milton at the premature death of Edward King, his former college mate at Cambridge. King was drowned in a calm sea, while sailing from Chester Bay to Dublin, after the collision of his ship with a rock. The poem was published as one of the twenty elegies on the same subject published in 1637, the year of King’s death, Milton was about thirty when he wrote this poem. As a pastoral elegy the poem follows similar poems by the Greek poet Theocritus.
Ttte Development of Thought :-
In its form Lycidas closely follows the Theocritean elegy which usually consists of three parts: (i) First, we have a lament:
-.For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer:
Wlio would not sing for Lycidas; he knew
Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme…
Of course, Lycidas, a shepherd, is the deceased King who is supposed to be mourned by another shepherd-the poet himself. .
(ii) Secondly, there is a procession of mourners. The chief mourners for Lycidas-King are Poetry, represented by the ”fountain Arethuse” and ”smooth-sliding Mincius,” Learning, represented by Camus or Cambridge, and the Church, represented by St. Peter. The death of King is a loss to all of them. King was a budding scholar who intended to take up orders after his studies were over. He was also a promising poet. His representation as a shepherd is quite happy as it indicates his intended priesthood (a priest is a tender of the (lock of sheep, that is, Christians) as also his poetic nature (a shepherd is a good piper).
(iii) Thirdly, there is an epitaph. Criticism :-
Though Milton follows the Tbeocritean model rather closely yet .the poem is not an uninteresting copy but a lively and individualised poetic expression. Though there is no room to question the genuineness of Milton’s grief at the death of his friend yet it appears that the poem contains more of Milton than of King. Legouis observes in A History of English Literature by Legouis and Cazamian: ”It is not King
”Samson Agonistes” 7587
but Milton who should be sought in them [the lines of the poem].” When Milton wrote this poem his poetic genius was still on its way to maturity. He was dreaming of attaining immense fame as a poet, but the premature death of a promising poet (King) gave a jolt to his complacency. The same fate could be in store for him. Moreover, worldly fame is worthless and not worth making an effort for. This gloomy line of thinking finds an expression in the poem:
Alas! what boots it witli incessant care
To tend tliehomefy slighted shepherd’s trade,
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse ?
Were it not belter done as others use
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles ofNeaera ’s hair ?
But Milton’s puritanism has an answer for htm. It teaches him through the agency of Phoebus that the true reward is not fame»”the last infirmity of noble mind”~but that he should ”in heaven expect his meed.” Puritanism also finds a strong expression in the stinging indictment of the corruption of the clergy, which St. Peter is made to pronounce.
The poem is written in irregular stanzas which follow no definite rhyme-scheme. However, most of the lines are iambic paniameters. There is a pleasant variety of harmony and eloquence. The result,” says Legouis, ”is a marvel of liquid, blended harmony, whence monotony has been expelled.”
SAMSON AGONISTES Introduction :•
Samson Agonistes is a classical tragedy by John Milton. It was published in one volume with Paradise Regained in 1617. The plot of the tragedy is from the Bible and deals with the last phase of the life of Samson of Judges xvi, when he is represented as a prisoner of the Philistines. In the execution of this theme, Milton quite obviously looks to the practice of the ancient Greek tragedians-Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides-and the theory of tragedy as put forward by Aristotle inhis/toetfcj.
The Story:-
The story of the play, as we have said, is based on the Bible. Samson, a prodigiously strong man, is shown in the prison of the Philistines at Gaza. He is visited by friends of his tribe who try to console him; then by his old father who also consoles him and expresses the hope of obtaining his release; then by his wife Dalila who
588 / A History of English Literature
proves to be false; then by Harapha, a wrestler of Gath who taunts Samson at his captivity and powerlessness. After that Samson is invited to provide with his tremendous strength some amusement for the Philistine governors who have assembled in a palace to celebrate a feast. The blind Samson in a rage kills himself and his captors by pulling down the massive pillars supporting the roof of the palace under which they have gathered for the feast.
Criticism :-
Samson Agonistes unites in itself the elements of Milton’s ” ^ Puritanism and his Hellenism. On the one hand, Milton looks to the Bible for his theme, and on the other, to the Greek tragedians of antiquity to put this theme into an artistic mould. He does not imitate any one particular playwright. He follows, in fact only the general Greek practice. For instance, he limits the action only to the last phase of the hero’s life, thus making for a greater unity and concentration of action. Then he observes quite strictly the unities of time and place. Then, all the action is reported by the Chorus or Messenger. And finally, he does not introduce any ”comic interlude” to offset the gravity of the main action. It is not because he has no sense of humour but because he follows the Greek tragedians in this important particular, disdaining to intermix ”comic stuff with tragic sadness and gravity.” It is of interest to point out that Milton does not divide the play into five acts or, in fact, any number of divisions. It is perhaps due to the fact that as Milton declared, the play was not intended for the stage. However, the play easily falls into five divisions or acts of almost equal length.
One important feature of the play is the striking similarity between Milton himself and the hero. Samson was blind; so was Milton. Samson was in prison though he was of an irrepressible spirit. Milton, a Puritan, found himself in a similar situation in the age of Charles II when Puritans like him were persecuted to the extreme. There are many passages uttered by Samson in which can be heard the defiant but agonised .voice of the author himself. Comparing Samson with Milton, Tucker Brooke observes : ”Like Milton he has been embittered by an unwise marriage, has suffered blindness, and been delivered into the hands of godless enemies; and like Milton he is grappling humbly with the problem of God’s justice and the question, ”Doth God exact ,, dav-labour, light denied ?”
”Essay of Dramatic Poclry” 7589
”ALL FOR LOVE,” ”ESSAY OF DRAMATIC POESY”, ”MAC FLECKNOE,” AND ’THE
HIND AND THE PANTHER’ Q. 94 Show your acquaintance with the following :-
(i) All for Love (Gorakhpur 1986) (Agra 1958)
(ii) Essay of Dramatic Poesy (Punjab 1957)
(\\\) Mac Fltcknoc (Punjab 1957)
(iv) The Hiiid and the Panther (Punjab 1958)
. ALL FOR LOVE
Introduction :•
All for Love* is the best and the best known tragedy of John Drydcn (1631-1700). It was first staged in 1677. and achieved immediate success. Before writing this blank verse tragedy, Dryden had written numerous tragedies in heroic couplets or what he called ”my long-loved mistress rhyme”. As regards plot, Drydea’s All for Love is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra; but as regards spirit and execution, the resemblance does not go very far. In spirit Dryden’s tragedy is modelled after the contemporary neo-classical heroic tragedy. Frank N. Magill observes, comparing Antony and Cleopatra and All for Love: The difference between All for Love andAntony and Cleopatra is not simply the difference between Dryden and Shakespeare; Dryden excelled himself here.”
The Story:-
The story of the play concerns itself with Antony, the Roman prince and general, and Cleopatra, the fabulously beautiful Egyptian queen who captivates him after his defeat at Actium. Antony is represented as married to Octavia and having two children who are waiting for his return to Rome. But Antony is blind in love with Cleopatra who would not let him go. The struggle is between Cleopatra on the one hand and Octavia, Ventidius (Antony’s general and friend) and Dolabella (another friend) on the other. This struggle is for the soul of Antony who vacillates between the opposing pulls of love and duty. Towards the end, his sense of duty seems to be winning, and it is decided by him that a compromise with Caesar, king of Rome, will be made, and he will get back to Rome to live with his family. But he becomes suspicious that after his departure from Egypt Dolabella will take his place in the affection of the queen. Meanwhile the Roman forces are
1. The full title is All for Love, or The World Well Lost
’3§a
590 (A History of English Literature
pressing him hard and he is shocked to find that the Egyptian fleet has deserted him. He is further distressed to think that Cleopatra may be responsible for this desertion. A false report is brought by Alexus, Cleopatra’s eunuch, that she has committed suicide. Antony kills himself by falling on his sword. When Cleopatra learns of his suicide she follows suit by applying an asp to her arm. Criticism :-
It is natural to compare All for Love with Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. So far as the plot goes, the two have obvious similarities as in both is sought to be depicted the tragic career of Antony and Cleopatra. However, in Dryden’s play there is more of selection and compression. The dramatist limits his treatment, unlike Shakespeare, to the last phase of the protagonists at Alexandria. He eschews multiplicity of scenes which gives to Shakespeare’s play a greater vividness ’and a sense of crowded life, but which on the side of debit, makes for diffusion if not confusion. Obviously, Dryden is here looking towards the example of the French neo-classicists. Like them he observes the unities of place and action, though not the unity of time, because that he must have found well-nigh impossible to adhere to. Thus All for Love is the example of a Shakespearean play subjected to the discipline of the French neo-classical tradition. According to George Sherburn, ”it remains the best of the plays that pour Elizabethan material into neo-classic moulds.” Similarly, Allardyce Nicoll observes: ”Dryden’s aim has here been to fuse the more formal elements of the pseudo-classic theory with die richer proportions of the Elizabethan theatre.” Dryden lessens the intensity and passion of the character of both Antony and Cleopatra. The former, as has been said, resembles a Restoration courtier or noble and is no more heroic. He is more of a cynical philosopher than a passionate hero. Indeed, Dryden is less successful with amorous scenes figuring Antony and Cleopatra than the ones showing the deep friendship of Ventidius and Antony.
As regards Dryden’s blank verse, it appears, to some extent, like heroic couplets without rhyme, for it shows the same tricks of balance, antithesis, cogency of expression, and aphoristic flavour which are typical of it. However, Dryden happily avoids all rhetoric and gaudy expression which are characteristic of the heroic tragedy of which he was the acknowledged master.
ESSAY OF DRAMATIC POESY Introduction :-
It is the first real work of criticism by an English writer and has brought to Dryden the title of ”the father of English criticism.” The Essay was first published in 1668 though it was written by Dryden a few
”Essay Of Dramatic Poesy”/591r
ye£s earlier when he was perhaps at Charlton, near Mahnesbury, in Wiltshire, where he had taken shelter while London was in the grip of a devastating plague epidemic. One very important feature of the work is that it i&cast in the form of a dialogue among four men of tetters. The Theme and Plan :-
The four participants in the discussion are as follows: (i) Eugenius (representing Dorset)
(ii) Crites (representing Sir Robert Howard)
(iii) Lisideius (representing Sir Charles Sedley)
(iv)Neander (representing Dryden himself)
All of them are shown as friends who have hired a boat on the Thames on the historic day. of the combat between the D’utch and the English fleets in the mouth of the river. In the beginning this combat is the topic of discussion, but later their conversation veers round to literature, particularly drama. Many burning literary issues of the day are discussed or at least briefly dwelt upon.
The first speaker is Crites (Howard) who pays a glowing tribute lo the ancients. Dryden himself is full of praise for them. Then Eugenius (Dorset) comes out to assert the superiority of contemporary (that is, early Restoration) English drama. He seems like Dryden to believe in the idea of progress and resultant continuation towards perfection. Lisideius (Sedley) asserts the superiority of French to English, and Elizabethan to contemporary English drama. He feels that instead of becoming better, the quality of drama in English is deteriorating day by day. Finally, Neander (Dryden) comes out to defend English against •French drama. He pays glowing tributes to the earlier English dramatic geniuses, particularly Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Fletcher and Beaumont. Moreover, he defends the use of rhyme in tragedies. It may be pointed out here that Sir Robert Howard, Dryden’s brother-in-law, had expressed himself against the use of rhyme in tragedy. So Dryden’s Essay is, in part, an argument against the position held by Howard. Dryden himself had used rhyme in his ”heroic tragedies,” though after AurengZebf he said good-bye to his ”long-loved mistress rhyme” and started employing blank verse instead. Criticism :-
This shows Dryden’s catholicity as well as his freedom from all dogma. It is customary to brand him a neo-classicist, or even a pseudoclassicist. However, his critical position favouring the romantic extravagance of Shakespeare, and his candid criticism of the ancient
• –• –*’ i…:~»i Rmirli drama modelled
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”Mac Flecknoe” 7593
composittoa.lBut unlike, say, Rhymer, he does not cab these rules to the sky nor does he consider them substitutes for real inspiration and intensity of expression. ”Now what, I beseech you,’ says he, ’is more easy than to write a regular French play, or more difficult than write an irregular English one, like those of Fletcher, or of Shakespeare?” ”It is noteworthy”, to conclude with Louis I. Bredvold, ”that Dryden, for all hit «nskivcness to the greatness of the ancients and the urbanity of the French casts himself in this dialogue in the role of champion of the English/
The Essay is not only a monument of English criticism but also one of English prose. Dryden’s vigour, raciness, and perspicuity as a prose writer have won for him the tributes of all critics many of whom •maintain that modem English prose started with him.
MAC FLECKNOE
Introduction :•
Mac Flecknoe is one of four major satires of John Dryden,- the other three being Absalom and Achitopfiel, The Medal, and what Dryden contributed to the second part oi Absalom and Achilophel. George Sherburn rightly <considers! Mac Flecknoe ”certainly one of Dryden’s most effective and most influential poems.” The poem is of the nature of a personal satire having for its target Thomas Shadwell who had offended Dryden with his Whig leanings, his alleged dullness in general, and his poem The Medal of John Bayes in particular. This work was intended by Shadwell to be a counterblast to Dryden’s The Medal. The full title of Mac Flecknoe declares his intention. It runsfMac, Flecknoe or A Satyr upon the True-Blew Protestant Poet, T. S. The poem was first published anonymously in 1682 and was acknowledged by Dryden only in 1693.
The Theme and Plan :-
Though the title of the poem describes Shadwell as a True-Blue] Protestant” yet there is not much political or religious in the grounds on which Dryden attacks Shadwell. The sole basis of his satire is literary. What is sought to be brought out is Shadwell’s dullness as a poet, not the impropriety of his political or religious affiliations. Of course, his fatness and some other physical particulars are also casually alluded to, but the staple of Dryden’s satire is provided by Shadwell’s alleged dullness.
The poem opens with the representation of Flecknoe, the king of dullness, thinking of choosing a fit heir. (Flecknoe, was a voluminous Irish poet popularly considered to be very dull; Dryden had no per-
1. About 200 lines.
r
H
5-
sonal grievance against him.) Flecknoe has numerous progeny and therefore many contenders for the throne after him. However, his choice falls on Mac Flecknoe (Shadwell) who he thinks is the dullest of all. He says:
The rest to some faint meaning make pretence. But Shadwell never deviates into sense. And also that
Shadwell’s genuine night admits no ray.
The rest of the poem describes the coronation of Shadwell conducted in low suburb of London. Dryden also recounts his numerous claims to the most unrelieved stupidity. Criticism :• •
Satire is not a plain but a distorted and distorting mirror. It does not represent reality as it is but as distorted through exaggeration and extenuation for the propagandist aim of the satirist. In Mac Flecknoe Dryden is. far from being a realist. Shadwell, needless to say, was not as stupid as Dryden represents him to be. He wrote, at least, some quite good comedies comparable with Dryden’s own.
The poem is of the nature of a mock epic. Dryden ridicules Shadwell not by applying to him any low imagery or very vulgar diction, but on the contrary, high imagery and, mostly, elevated diction. The reader laughs at Shadwell on noting the incongruity between his pettiness and the dignity of the high-flown stale and imagery employed for him. So the technique, basically, works through irony. Lest the irony should go unperceived, Dryden introduces the real names of streets and some historical persons also. Dryden’s masterful handling of the heroic couplet is one of the chief reasons for the success of the poem. The poem was very successful in tarnishing beyond repair the image of ShadwcH as a poet. No amount of self-defence on the part of Shadwell was able to nullify the damage done by Mac Flecknoe. The poem was the worthy predecessor of many a similar satire on dullness m general or with reference to personalities. The most remarkable among such poems was Pope’s 77ie Dunciad–the most massive poetic work of the eighteenth century.
THE HIND AND THE PANTHER
Introduction :-
The Hind and the Panther is an allegorical poem written by Dryden and first published in 1687. The purpose of the poem was to defend the Roman Catholic Church against the opposing Churches, particularly the Protestant Church of England, immediately after the succession of Roman Catholic King James II in 1685, Dryden had become a Roman Catholic. His conversion has been considered by some critics a very gross, time-serving manoeuvre. But some have tried to credit Dryden
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with sincerity on the ground that after his conversion he continued a Roman Catholic for the rest of his life, even when after 1689 the era of Roman Catholic rule had come to an end with the Glorious Revolution. At any rate, The Hind and the Panther was intended by Dryden { to bt} an explanation of his conversion. j
The Story :- !
In the poem Dryden works through an animal fable. Various sects of Christianity are represented as various animals. The ”milk white Hind, immortal and unchanged” represents the Church of Rome. The Panther in his ferocity stands for the Church of England. The poem consists of three parts. In the first part are described the various sects as so many animals, many of which are mutual enemies. There are also reflections on the problems represented by each of them. This part ends with the command oftheLion(representu,?JamesII) toallthe fierce beasts to let the timorous and innocent Hind come unharmed to the watering-place. The act of the Lion signifies the Declaration of Indulgence (1687) which restored all the liberties to the Roman Catholics. In the second part are given the arguments between the Hind and the Panther as they stroll towards the habitat of the foi tier. The third part continues the argument which lasts late into the rught. But the emphasis shifts from theological controversy to political and mundane matters. Specific references to English history are made by both j the arguers. The Panther relates the story of the misguided Swallows who refused to cross the sea at the instance of the Martins (the extremists among the Roman Catholic ministers). The Hind, as a I retort, comes out with the fable of the Buzzard (Bishop Burner) and | the Doves to show the savageness of the Anglicans. j
Criticism :-
The ”Hind and-the Panther is a mixed performance. The animal I allegory chosen by Dryden to discuss religious issue? is very fanciful , and equally bold. George Sherburn in A Literary Hi lory of England ’ edited by Albert C. Baugh observes in this connexio .: ”This curious ’ blend of animal fable and religious controversy illustrates Dryden’s aesthetic courage rather than his tact.” The Representation of the various sects of Christianity as so many animals talking and often sophistically arguing with each other makes too great a demand on the credulity of the reader.
The poem is written in heroic couplets, and Dryden’s employment of them is wonderful? happy. ”Pope,” as George Sherburn maintains, ”was right, also, in thinking the poem showed at its best the poet’s marvellous command of the couplet.” It also shows Dryden’s adeptness at arguing in verse, which has so often been commented upon, and also, to quote W.H. Hudson, ”his extraordinary skill in making the most of whatever position he might for the moment adopt.”
”Hudibras” /59S
”HUDIBRAS”, THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS-,
AND ”ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL’. Q. 95 Show your acquaintance with the following :- (i) Hudibras (Agra 1952) (Punjab 1958) (Agra 1959)
(Rohilkhand 1989) (Agra 1964) (Punjab 1972) (ii) Tlic Pilgrim’s Progress (Agra 1966) (Punjab 1957)
(Gorakhpur 1989) (Gorakhpur 1985) (Punjab 1961) (iii) Absalom andAchitophel (Punjab 1960)
HUDIBRAS Introduction :•
Hudibras is the most famous satiric poem of Samuel Butler (1612-
80). The Restoration period begins with this satire which is very much representative of its spirit. It is extremely long and was brought out in three parts appearing at intervals in 1663, 1664, and 1678. Each of these parts was further sub-divided into three cantos. Hudibras is a powerful but ”low” satire on the Puritans who had been subdued with the restoration of the Protestant king Charles II to (he throne of England in 1660. It became one of the choicest amusements of the courtiers and nobles of the age to ridicule the Puritans who had during the Protectorate reduced the ”merry England” to psalm-singing England. Butler was neither a courtier nor a nobleman, but in his sarcastic attack on the Puritans he outdid all the courtiers and noblemen. Hudibras won immediate and lasting popularity with the ’ ’courtiers and the king, who is said to have grown so fond of the work that he always carried a copy of it in his pocket.
In its form Hudibras is a burlesque of high romance which dealt with puissant knights out to defend virtue. That way it resembles Cervants’ Don Quixote which is also a burlesque of the same kind. But it has elements reminiscent of the French humorist, Rabalais, as also of Scarron, the contemporary French poet who burlesqued the epic of Virgil.
The Story :-
/
The name ”Hudibras” is taken from Spenser’s t-aene Queene. The hero, Hudibras, is a Presbyterian who is hypocritical, cowardly, and chock-full of pedantic learning. Ralpho, an Independent, is his squire. The hero rides a rickety horse and is equipped with rusty arms. Both of them come out together in search of some righteous adventure. However, much of their time is consumed by their interminable
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disputes over subtle points of religious doctrine. Both are subtle reasoners. Hudibras is described to be in Logic a great critic,
Profoundly skill’d in Analytic;
He could distinguish and divide
A hair ’twixt south and south-west side,
On either which he would dispute
Confute, change hands, and still confute. Their first adventure is their fight with a group of bear baiters. The Puritans were against all country sports, particularly bear-baiting, not because, as Macaulay puts it, it gave pain to the bear but because it gave pleasure to the spectators. In the beginning Hudibras and Ralpho have some success, but ultimately they are overpowered and put in the stocks for disturbing the peace. Even while they are in the stocks they continue their disputation.
In part II Hudibras is represented as having fallen in love with the property of a widow, and incidentally, the widow herself, too. The widow proposes that he should submit to whipping for winning her favour. The hero first shilly-shallies and then urges Ralpho to undergo whipping on his behalf. Thereupon a loud quarrel ensues between them. Finally, they consult an astrologer who is discovered to be a humbug, is beaten up by the two, and is left for dead. Hudibras parts company with Ralpho so that the blame for the murder should fall on the latter.
In part HI Hudibras is represented as going alone to the widow pleading for her favour. On hearing a knock he hides under a bed fearing that it is the ghost of the astrologer who has come to wreak vengeance. His cowardice is discovered and he is soundly belaboured. After escaping shamefully he consults a lawyer who advises him to write love letters to his beloved. The rest of the part does not advance the story at all. It is probable that Butler desired to round off the poem with a fourth part, which, however, could not be written.
Criticism :-
basically the satire in Hudibras is intended against the Puritans– their hypocrisy, pedantry, covetousncss, casuistry, fanaticism, and querulousness. Hudibras and Ralpho are the instruments of this satire, being representatives of the Puritans. The satire, however, becomes broader here and there in purpose and significance. Butler is anti-intellectual, anti-science, and even anti-poetry. Thus he in the intellec-
The Pilgrim’s Progress* / 597
tual context stands opposed to the trend of his age. He was fighting a losing battle in the.age of the establishment of the Royal Society.
The unit of the poem is the octosyllabic couplet. Butler’s couplets are very rugged and unmusical. He is very fond of curious doublerhymes which add a strong touch of the doggerel. There is nothing ”classical” either in the form or the treatment in Hudibras.
THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS Introduction :•
it is an allegory by John Bunyan (1628-1688), first published in
1678. The second edition with some additions appeared in the same year, and a third in 1679.
Vie Pilgrim’s Progress is, in the words of George Sherburn, ”one of the several masterpieces by various authors written in prison.” Bunyan’s father was a tinker who intended his son to adopt his very profession. Bunyan did so, and also led a kind of dissolute life. But later he became a convert to the Puritan faith, and also started preaching. Grace Abounding (1666) is his spiritual autobiography depicting the story of his conversion. After the Restoration he was imprisoned for an unlicensed preacher. It was in prison that he wrote Tlie Pilgrim’s Progress as well as Grace Abounding. Whereas in the latter Bunyan is openly and absolutely subjective, in the former he is not so, and gives the story of the salvation of a Christian. Bunyan was a deeply and sincerely religious-minded person who reverenced the Bible in a most devoted manner. ”He,” says Lcgouis in A Short History of English Literature, ”seems to have lived with the Scriptures alone, indifferent to every production of the human mind, occupied only with the quest for means of salvation.” The story of the salvation of a Christian in The Pilgrim’s Progress is set forth in the form of an allegory. The Story :-
In the beginning is described the dream of the author in which he sees Christian with a burden on his back, reading in a book that the city in which he and his family are living (the City of Destruction) will be shortly consumed by fire. Christian prepares to run away from that city to the Celestial City (= Heaven) along with his wife and children; but they cannot be convinced by him, and he takes to his journey alone.
But his journey is not easy. His path is beset with numerous obstacles and temptations. In part I is described his journey through such places as the Slough of Despond, the Interpreter’s House, the
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Palace Beautiful, the Valley of Humiliation, the Valley of Shadow of Death, Vanity Fair, and so on. In the course of his journey Christian meets allegorical personages like Mr. Worldly Wiseman, Faithful, Giant Despair, Apollyon (a fiend), and so forth. The encounter with them signifies the difficulties lying in the way to salvation.
In part II is described the journey of Christian’s wife (Christiana) and her children to the same destination. She has a, vision and starts in the company of her neighbour Mercy, overruling the objection of people like Mrs. Timorous. Great-heart accompanies them as their guard and guide, and it is he who kills Giant Despair and other monsters and escorts the party safely to the. Celestial City.
Criticism :-
The story in its outline is quite simple. It is all imaginary, but Bunyan succeeds in enlivening thewhole thing by his simplicity coupled with the strength of conviction, and above all, his style, which closely resembles in its strength, simplicity, and vividness, that of the Bible. His prose, says Legouis in A Short History of English Literature, ”has at once the tang of popular speech and a dignity derived from the noble translation of the Bible.” Moreover, the allegory in the work is quite clear, being as simple and ”unlearned1’ as in the morality plays of yore. As an allegorist Bunyan is much clearer, perhaps because much simpler, than Spenser. His allegory, says Legouis, has ”a lucidity and lifelikeness which learned authors like Spenser had been far from attaining.” Allegory came to Bunyan as naturally as verse came to Spenser.
But Bunyan as an allegonst or .story-teller is not merely didactic: he shows a keen sense of landscape surroundings, which is fully exploited to vivify the proceedings. 1 nen, there are some instances of humour and social satire also, which further add to the interest and liveliness of his work.
ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL
Introduction :-
Absalom and Achitophel is the grandest of Dryden’s satires. Basically considered, it is political in nature. It was first published in 1781, just a week before the trial of Whig leader, the Earl of Shaftesbury. It is said that Dryden wrote his poem at the suggestion of king Charles II to secure the indictment of Shaftesbury who had been arrested on charge of treason. After the Popish Plot of 1678 people had become scared of all Roman Catholics, and a bill was sought by the Whigs to
”Absalom and Achitophel” 7599,
:n*.
be pushed through Parliament barring the Roman Catholic Duke of York (the king’s brother and the legitimate heir to the throne) from succession. Instead, Shaftesbury and his followers supported the king’s illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth. It may be pointed out that Dryden’s immediate and specific purpose in writing this poem could not be realised in so far Shaftesbury was released, much to the delight of the Whigs and the despair of the Tories including Dryden and the king. In the poem Shaftesbury is depicted as a subtle villain who seduces the raw Monmouth into rebellion against his kind and lenient father.
Tlie Story :-
The ”story” of the poem is built up of just a few episodes. There is. not much of action in the thousand and odd lines of the poem. How-, ever, there is tenseness. The satire is couched in a biblical framework, and characters, too, are biblical or pseudo-biblical. However, there are obvious deviations from the biblical narrative of the rebellion of Absalom against his kind father David. The most important of these deviations lies in the excessiveness of importance which Dryden gives to the wiles of Achitophel (Shaftesbury). The whole burden of the blame is laid by Dryden on the shoulders of this character. Absalom (Monmouth) is represented only as a callow, open-hearted, but ambitious young’man who makes a fairly easy prey for the corrupting influence of the wicked counsellor. The temptation of Absalom by Achitophel is consistently made by Dryden to suggest the temptation of Adam and Eve by Satan. After Absalom has determined to rise against his father, be rallies his forces. However, no battle is shown. The whole thing comes to a close- something like a ”happy ending” -with a speech by the king (David) from his throne,
Henceforth a series of new time began,
The mighty years in long procession ran;
Once more the godlike David was restored.
And willing nations knew their lawful lord, Criticism :-
Absalom and Achitophel is a very powerful political satire, but it is also so many things besides. It is ”a poem”1 of composite character. There are elements of the panegyric, funeral oration, caricature, and so on. Much of the interest of the poem inheres in sis satiric portraits-of the Earl of Shaftesbury, the Duke of Buckingham,
1. The title of the work is Absalom andAchitopkel A Poem-
oOO /A History of English Literature /
Slingsby Bethel, and Titus Dales-all of whom arc represented as enemies to the rights and privileges of the king. There are portraits of the supjwrtcrs of the king, too. But they, even though good, arc not as effective as those of his adversaries. Among the satiric portraits themselves, the portrait of Zimri (Buckingham) is decidedly the best. Dryden himself was aware of it when he observed : The character of ZimrL.is worth the whole poem”. The beauty of Drydcn’s portraits is that they represent individuals as also types. Thus Achilophel is the crooked and selfish politician, Zimri ”the Inconstant Man,”, and so on. That is why Drydcn’s work rises above topical considerations and is valuable for all limes and places.
Drydcn’s success as satirist is primarily dependent on his masterlul handling of the heroic couplet. Though he did not value ”the art to blot” yet his heroic couplets, especially in Absalom and Achitopliel, are wonderfully ”precise” without losing the air of spontaneity: His employment of heroic couplets gives the lie to those mistaken critics who believe that only one kind of poetry can be written in heroic couplets.. As we have said, Absalom and Achilophel is a composite poem, and for every purpose Dryden makes a most happy use of the couplet. In this work he put forward a glorious example for Pope.