The Sixteenth Century
THE INFLUENCE OF THE RENAISSANCE ON ENGLISH LITERATURE
Q.8. Trace the impact of the Renaissance on Elizabethan literature.
(Rohilkhand 1988) Or
Q. Discuss the impact of the Renaissance on the literature of the Elizabethan era. (Puravanchal 1992)
Or
Q. Bring out the influence of the Renaissance on English literature. (Garhwal 1991, Gorakhpur 1988, Nainital 1986)
Or Q. Discuss the general characteristics of Renaissance Literature. \/
(Himachal 1984) Or Q. Discuss the impact of the Renaissance on the literature of
Elizabethan era. (Gorakhpur 1986, Himachal 1985)
Or Q. What does Renaissance imply? Trace out its impact on
English literature in the sixteenth century. (Rohilkhand 1986)
Or
Q. What does Renaissance imply? How did it influence English literature in the sixteenth century? (Rohilkhand 1982)
Or
Q. What is Renaissance? How did it influence English literature in the age of Elizabeth? (Rohilkhand 1988)
Introduction :-
It is difficult to date or define the Renaissance. Etymologically the term, which was first used in England only as late as the nineteenth century, means ”re-birth”. Broadly speaking, the Renaissance implies that re-awakening of learning which came to Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The Renaissance was not only an English but a European phenomenon; and basically considered, it signalised a thorough subsitution of the medieval habits of thought by new attitudes. The dawn of the Renaissance came first to Italy and a little later to France. To England it came much later, roughly about the beginning of the sixteenth century. As we have said at the outset, it is difficult to date the Renaissance; however, it may be mentioned that in Italy the impact of Greek learning was first felt when after the Turkish conquest of Constantinople the Greek scholars fled and took refuge in Italy carrying with them a vast treasure of ancient Greek literature in manuscript. The study of this literature fired the soul and imagination of the Italy of that time and created a new kind of intellectual and aesthetic culture quite different from that of the Middle Ages. The light of the Renaissance came very slowly to the isolated island of England, so that when it did come in all its brilliance in the sixteenth century, the Renaissance in Italy had already become a spent force.
It is difficult to define the Renaissance, but its broad implications in England do not defy discussion. Michelet exaggeratedly calls the Renaissance ”discovery by mankind of himself and of the world.” This is, indeed, too sweeping. More correctly we can say that the following are the implications of the Renaissance in England:’
(a) First, the Renaissance meant the death of mediaeval scholasticism which had for long been keeping human thought in bondage. The schoolmen got themselves entangled in useless controversies and tried to apply the principles of Aristotelean philosophy to the doctrines of Christianity, thus giving birth to a vast literature characterised by polemics, casuistry, and sophistry which did not advance man in any way.
”(b) Secondly, it signalised a revolt against spiritual authority- the authority of the Pope. The Reformation, though not a part of the revival of learning, was yet a companion movement in England. This defiance of spiritual authority went hand in hand with that of intellectual authority. Renaissance intellectuals distinguished themselves by their flagrant anti-authoritarianism.
(c) Thirdly, the Renaissance implied a greater perception of beauty and polish in the Greek and Latin scholars. This beauty and this polish were sought by Renaissance men of letters to be incorporated in their native literature. Further, it meant the birth of a kind of imitative tendency implied in the term ”classicism”.
(d) Lastly, the Renaissance marked a change from the theocentric to the homocentric conception of the universe. Human life, pursuits, and even body came to be glorified. ”Human life”, as G. H. Mair observes, ”which the mediaeval Church had taught them [the people] to regard but as a threshold and stepping-stone to eternity, acquired suddenly a new momentousness and value.” The ”other-worldliness” gave place to ”this -worldliness”. Human values came to be recognised as permanent values, and they were sought to be enriched and illumined by the heritage of antiquity. This bred a new kind of paganism and marked the rise of humanism as also, by implication, materialism.
The Influence of the Renaissance
Let us now consider the impact of the Renaissance on the various departments of English literature.
Non-creative Literature :-
Naturally enough, the first impact of the Renaissance in England was registered by the universities, being the repositories of all learning. Some English scholars, becoming aware of the revival of learning in Italy, went to that country to benefit by it and to examine personally the manuscripts brought there by the fleeing Greek scholars of Constantinople. Prominent among these scholars were William Grocyn (14467-1519), Thomas Linacre (1460-1524), and John Colet (14677- 1519). After returning from Italy they organised the teaching of Greek in Oxford. They were such learned and reputed scholars of Greek that Erasmus came all the way from Holland to learn Greek from them. Apart from scholars, the impact of the Renaissance is also, in a measure, to be {Seen on the work of the educationists of the age. Sir Thomas Elyot (14907-1546) wrote the Governour (1531) which is a treatise on moral philosophy modelled on Italian works and full of the spirit of Roman antiquity. Other educationists were Sir John Cheke (1514- 57), Sir Thomas Wilson (1525-81), and Sir Roger Ascham (1515-68). Out of all the educationists the last named is the most important, on account of his Scholemaster published two years after his death. Therein he puts forward his views on the teaching of the classics. His own style is too obviously based upon the ancient Roman writers. ”By turns”, remarks Legouis, ”he imitates Cicero’s periods and Seneca’s nervous cdnciscness”. In addition to these well-known educationists must be mentioned the sizable number of now obscure ones -”those many unacknowledged, unknown guides who, in school and University, were teaching men to admire and imitate the masterpieces of antiquity” (Legouis). Prose :-
The most important prose writers who exhibit well the influence of the Renaissance on English prose are Erasmus, Sir Thomas More, Lyly, and Sidney. The first named was a Dutchman who, as we have already said, came to Oxford to learn Greek. His chief work was The Praise of Folly which is the English translation of his most important work written in England. It is, according to Tucker Brook, ”the best expression in literature of the attack that the Oxford reformers were making upon the medieval system.” Erasmus wrote this work in 1510 at the house of his friend Sir Thomas More who was executed at the bidding of Henry VIII for his refusal to give up his allegiance to the Pope. More’s famous prose romance Utopia was, in the words of Legouis, ”true prologue to the Renaissance.” It was the first book written by an Englishman which achieved European fame; but it was written in Latin (1516) and only later (1555) was translated into English. Curiously enough, the next work by an English man again to acquire European fame-Bacon’s Novum Organum-was also written originally in Latin. The word ”Utopia” is from Greek ”ou topos” meaning ”no place”. More’s Utopia is an imaginary island which is the habitat of an ideal republic. By the picture of the ideal state is implied a kind of social criticism of contemporary England. More’s indebtedness to Plato’s Republic is quite obvious. However, More seems also to be indebted to the then recent discoveries of the-explorers and navigators -like Columbus and Vasco da Gama-who were mostly of Spanish and Portuguese nationalities. In Utopia, More discredits mediaevalism in all its implications and exalts the ancient Greek culture. Legouis observes about this work : ”The Utopians are in revolt against the spirit of chivalry: they hate warfare and despise soldiers. Communism is the law of the land; all are workers for only a limited number of hours. Life should be pleasant for all; asceticism is condemned. More relies on the goodness of human nature, and intones a hymn to the glory of the senses which reveal nature’s wonders. In Utopia all religions are authorized, and tolerance is the law. Scholasticism is scoffed at, and Greek philosophy preferred to that of Rome. From one end to the other of the book More reverses medieval beliefs.” More’s Utopia created a new genre in which can be classed such works as Bacon’s The New Atlantis (l626),Samuel Butler’s Erewhon (1872), W. H. Mallock’s The New Republic (1877), Richard Jefferies’ After London (1885), W. H. Hudson’s The Crystal Age (1887), William Moris’ News from Nowhere, and H. G. Wells’s A Modern Utopia (1905)
Passing on to the prose writers of the Elizabethan age-the age of the flowering of the Renaissance-we find them markedly influenced both in their style and thought-content by the revival of the antique classical learning. Sidney in Arcadia, Lyly in Euphues, and Hooker in The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity write an English which is away from the language of common speech, and is either too heavily laden-as in the case of Sidney and Lyly-with bits of classical finery, or modelled on Latin syntax, as in the case of Hooker. Cicero seemed to these writers a very obvious and respectable model. Bacon, however, in his sententiousness and cogency comes near Tacitus and turns away from the prolixity, diffuseness, and ornamentation associated with Ciceronian prose. Further, in his own career and his Essays, Bacon stands as a representative of the materialistic, Machiavellian facet of the Renaissance, particularly of Renaissance Italy. He combines in himself the dispassionate pursuit of truth and the keen desire for material advance.
Poetry :-
Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-42) and the Earl of Surrey (15177-47) were pioneers’ of the new poetry in England. After Chaucer the spirit of English poetry had slumbered for upward of a century. The change in pronunciation in the fifteenth century had created a lot of confusion in prosody which in the practice of such important poets as Lydgate and Skelton had been reduced to a mockery. ”The revival”, as Legoius says, ”was an uphill task; verse had to be drawn from the languor, to which it had sunk in Stephen Hawes, and from the disorder in which a Skelton had plunged it; all had to be done anew”. It was Wyatt and Surrey who came forward to do it.
As Mair puts it, it is with ”these two courtiers that the modern English poetry begins.” Though they wrote much earlier, it was only in, 1557, a year before Elizabeth’s coronation, that their work was published in Tottel’s Miscellany which is, according to G. H. Mair, ”one of the ’ landmarks of English literature.” Of the two, Wyatt had travelled extensively in Italy and France and had come under the spell of Italian Renaissance. It must be remembered that the work of Wyatt and Surrey does not reflect the impact of the Rome of antiquity alone, but also that of modern Italy. So far as versification is concerned, Wyatt and Surrey imported into England various new Italian metrical patterns. Moreover, they gave English poetry a new sense of grace, dignity, delicacy, and harmony which was found by them lacking in the works of Chaucer and the Chaucerians alike. Further, they were highly influenced by the love poetry of Petrarch and they did their best to imitate him. Petrarch’s love poetry is of the courtly kind, in which the pining lover is shown as a ”servant” of his mistress with his heart tempest-tossed by her neglect and his mood varying according to her absence or presence. There is much of idealism, if not downright artificiality, in this kind of love poetry.
It goes to the credit of Wyatt to have introduced the sonnet into English literature, and of Surrey to have first written blank verse. Both the sonnet and blank verse were late to be practised by a vast number of the best English poets. According to David Daiches, Wyatt’ sonnets represent one of the most interesting movements toward metrical discipline to be found in English literary history. Though in his sonnets he did not employ regular iambic pentameters yet he created a sense of discipline among the poets of his times who had forgotten his lesson and example of Chaucer and, like Skelton, were writing ”ragged” and ”jagged” lines which jarred so unpleasantly upon the ear. As Tillyard puts it, Wyatt ”let the Renaissance into English verse” by importing Italian and French patterns of sentiment as well as versification. He wrote in all thirty-two sonnets out of which seventeen are adaptations of Petrarch. Most of them (twenty eight) have the rhyme-scheme of Petarch’s sonnets; that is, each has the octave abb a abb a and twenty-six out of these twenty-eight have tiiccddcee sestet. Only in the last three he comes near what is called the Shakespearean formula, that is, three quatrains and a couplet. In the thirtieth sonnet he exactly produced it; this sonnet rhymes a b a b, abab,abab, cc. Surrey wrote about fifteen or sixteen sonnets out of which ten use the Shakespearean formula which was to enjoy the greatest popularity among the sonneteers of the sixteenth century. Surrey’s work is characterised by exquisite grace and tenderness which we find missing from that of Wyatt. Moreover, he is a better craftsman and gives greater harmony to his poetry. Surrey employed blank verse in his translation of the fourth book of The Aeneid, the work which was first translated into English verse by Gavin Douglas a generation earlier, but in heroic couplets.
Drama :-
The revival of ancient classical learning scored its first clear impact on English drama in the middle of the sixteenth century. Previous to this impact there had been a pretty vigorous native tradition of drama, particularly comedy. This tradition had its origin in the liturgical drama and had progressed through the miracle and the mystery, and later the morality, to the interlude. John Heywood had written quite a few vigorous interludes, but they were altogether different in tone, spirit, and purpose from the Greek and Roman drama of antiquity. The first English regular tragedy Gorboduc (written by Sackvule and Norton, and first acted in 1562) and comedy Ralph Roister Doister (written about 1550 by Nicholas Udall) were very much imitations of classical tragedy and comedy. It is interesting to note that English dramatists came not under the spell of the ancient Greek dramatists (Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the tragedy writers, and Aristophanes, the comedy writer) but the Roman dramatists (Seneca, the tragedy writer, and Plautus and Terence, the comedy writers). It was indeed unfortunate, as Greek drama is vastly superior to Roman drama. Gorboduc is a slavish imitation of Senecan tragedy and has all its features without much of its life. Like Senecan tragedy it has revenge as the tragic motive, has most of Us important incidents (mostly murders) narrated on the stage by messengers, has much of rhetoric and verbose declamation, has a ghost among its dramatis personae, and so forth. It is indeed a good instance of the ”blood and thunder” kind of tragedy. Ralph Roister Doister is modelled upon Plautus and Terence. It is based on the stupid endeavours of the hero for winning the love of a married woman. There is the cunning, merry slave-Matthew Merrygreek-a descendant of the Plautine slave who serves as the motive power which keeps the play going.
Later on, the ”University Wits” struck a note of independence in their dramatic work. They refused to copy Roman drama as slavishly as the writers of Gorboduc and Roister Doister. Even so, their plays are not free from the impact of the Renaissance; rather they show it as amply, though not in the same way. In their imagination they were all fired by the new literature which showed them new dimensions of human capability. They were humanists through and through. All of them–Lyly, Greene, Peele, Nashe, Lodge, Marlowe, and Kyd-sho in their dramatic work not, of course, a slavish tendency to ape the ancients but a chemical action of Renaissance learning on the native genius fired by the enthusiasm of discovery and aspiration so typical of the Elizabethan age. In this respect Marlowe stands in the fore-front of the University Wits. Rightly has he been called ”the true child of the Renaissance”.
THE ENGLISH DRAMA BEFORE MARLOWE
Q.9. Write a note on the development of English drama from / the beginning upto the time of Marlowe. (Agra 1965)
Or
Q. Trace the history of the English drama from its beginning up to the end of the fifteenth century.
Or
Q. Trace the history of development of English drama in the fifteenth century. (Punjab 1964; Garhwal 1986,
1990)
Or
Q. Trace the growth of English drama before the University Wits. (Himachal 1985)
Or
Q. Mention the stages through which drama had to pass before the Elizabethan age. (Agra 1969)
Or
Q. Write an essay on drama before Shakespeare.
(Himachal 1987,1988)
Ans: The Origin and Liturgical Plays :
Briefly stated, the drama in England developed from the liturgical play to the miracle play to morality, from the morality play to the interlude, and from that to the ”regular” drama of the Elizabethan age. The story of this development is, however, not so simple as it may wrongly appear. There are overlappings, aberrations, and missing links. As in Greece and many other countries, the drama in England had a religious origin. It sprang from church service as the ancient Greek tragedy had sprung out of the ceremonial worship of Dionysus. As a critic well puts it, the ”attitude of religion and drama towards each other has been strikingly varied. Sometimes it has been one of intimate alliance, sometimes of active hostility, but never of indifference.” In England the church was, in the beginning, actively hostile to drama and all along during the Dark Ages (the 6th century to the 10th) there is missing any record of dramatic activity. Only in the ninth century there were tropes or additional texts to ecclesiastical music. These tropes sometimes assumed a dialogue form. They were, like church service, « couched in Latin. They were later detached from the regular service and presented by themselves on religious festivals such as Easter and Christmas. By and by they took the form of liturgical plays” after becoming somewhat more complex. They were dramatisations of the major events of Christ’s life, such as the Birth and the Resurrection and were enacted by priests right in the church. These plays enjoyed a vast popularity. Thus, as Sir Ifor Evans observes, ”whik at the beginning of the Dark Ages the church attempted to suppress, the drama,at the beginning of the Middle Ages something very much like the drama was instituted in the church itself.” The Miracle and Mystery Plays :-
The next stage of development comes with miracle and mystery plays. The early liturgical drama assumed the more developed form of the miracle and mystery plays sometime in the fourteenth century, though, of course, there is evidence that the first representation of a miracle play took place in Dunstable as early as 1119. In England the ”miracle plays” and ”mystery plays” are often considered synonymous, but technically there is a difference between the two. The miracle plays dealt with the lives of saints (non-scriptural matter), whereas the mystery plays handled incidents from the Bible (scriptural themes). The miracle and mystery plays differ from the early liturgical drama in their slightly more developed sense of drama and better dialogue. They were both written and enacted by ecclesiastics and had for their obvious object the instruction of the people in scripture history. They treated of such themes from the Bible as the Creation, the Flood, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection of the Saviour. But they had an element of entertainment too, in the form of crude grotesqueries which may appear to the modern reader as outright profanities.
With thedevelopmentof the early liturgical play into the miracle and mystery, there were significant changes of locale and players. The place of performance shifted from the inside of the church to the churchyard, and from the churchyard to the market-place, because vast crowds, especially at the time of fairs, had to be accommodated. The clergy could not go to the market-place to perform and in 1210tnere was a papal edict forbidding their appearance on the stage. The performance therefore fell in the hands of laymen who were amateurs. With the change of the locale and the performers, the strictly religious nature of the performances underwent a shift towards secularization. It was in the thirteenth century that professional troupes took over the job of performing and, consequently, there was a marked improvement in stage techniques and overall performance. There are four ”cycles” of miracle plays extant today. These are: York, Towneley, Chester, and Coventry cycles. Each of these cycles embraces the main events of biblical history from the Fall of Satan to the Day of Judgement.
The Morality Plays :-
The next stage in the secularization of drama comes with the morality plays which developed out of the miracle and mystery plays. The morality play, as David Daiches observes, ”has more direct links with Elizabethan, drama.” The difference between the miracle and mystery plays on the one hand and the morality plays on the other is that whereas the former deal with, as we have pointed out above, biblical events or the lives of saints, the latter have characters of an allegorical or symbolic nature, such as the personifications of various vices and virtues or other abstract qualities like Science, Perseverance, Gluttony, Sloth, Despair, and Everyman (symbolising mankind). The personified vices and virtues are generally shown as fighting among themselves for man’s soul. The moralities intended to convey moral lessons for the better conduct of human life. The writer of the morality play enjoyed a greater freedom than that of the miracle or mystery play, as he was not bound by a particular chain of events presented by the
60 / A History of English Literature
Bible or popular legend which he had to adhere to. It may be pointed out that personified abstractions had already appeared along with scriptural figures in some miracle plays. The function of the morality play was to detach these abstractions from their religious setting and employ them in a new kind of drama. The best known among the morality play are The Castle of Perseverance and Everyman. In the former, allegory is almost identical with that of the second book of The Faerie Queene where the castle of Alma is besieged by the Passions. It also reminds one of The Pilgrim’s Progress as regards its central significance. Everyman appeared at the end of the fifteenth century and enjoyed vast popularity right till the end of the sixteenth. Its story is given by David Daiches as follows:
”Everyman is summoned by Death to a long journey from which there is no return. Unprepared, and unable to gain a respite, he looks for friends to accompany him, but neither Fellowship nor Goods nor Kindred will go; Good Deeds is willing to act as guide and companion, ””But Everyman’s sins have rendered her too weak to stand. She recommends him to her sister Knowledge, who leads Everyman to Confession, and after he has done penance Good Deeds grows strong enough to accompany him, together with Strength, Discretion, Five Wits and Beauty. But as the time comes for Everyman to creep into his grave, all the companions except Good Deeds decline to go with him. Knowledge stands by to report the outcome while Everyman enters the grave with Good Deeds. An Angel announces the entry of Everyman’s soul into the heavenly sphere, and a ’Doctor’ concludes by pointing the moral.” Of all the stock characters employed in the morality plays the most amusing were Vice and the- Devil. The former, arrayed in grotesque costume and armed with a wooden sword or dagger, was the prototype of the Fool of Shakespearean drama, and seems chiefly to have been employed for belabouring the Devil who appeared generally with horns, a long bearoTand a hairy chest. Interludes :-
The interlude signifies the important transition from symbolism to realism. It appeared towards the end of the fifteenth century but it could not displace the morality which continued enjoying popularity, as we have pointed out above, till the end of the sixteenth century. It dispensed with the allegorical figures of the morality play almost completely and effected a complete break with the religious type of drama, even though retaining some of its didactic character. It was purely secular and fairly realistic, though quite crude and somewhat grotesque. The most notable writer of interludes was John Heywood
The English Drama before Marlowe / 61
(14977-1580?) whose interludes are of the nature of light playlets in which, as David Daiches observes, ”the emphasis is more on amusement than instruction.” In his Tlie Four P’s, for instance, he lightheartedly satirises shrews and impatient women. The four P’s are a Pardoner, a Palmer, a Pothycary, and a Pedlar who engage themselves in a kind of lying competition in which the most flagrant Her is to be awarded the palm. The Palmer wins the prize by saying that out of half a million women that he has met so far, not one was seen by him to be out of patience! In TiiePlayof Weather Jupiter is presented as listening to the complaints of the people regarding weather, and confused by conflicting opinions and demands he decides to give the mortals all kinds of weather. Most of Heywood’s other interludes are farcical playlets which are, however, full of wit and humour and1 very realistic portrayal of men and manners.
Another well-known interlude writer was John Rastell whose interlude The Four Elements is of the nature of a Humanist morality play. Various allegorical figures are represented as teaching Humanity science and geography, and ”Sensual Appetite” is shown as obstructing the efforts of ”Studious Desire.” Tlie Four Elements is typical of a class of plays which are quite near the morality but have been classed as interludes.1 However, strictly speaking, an interlude signifies, in the words of W. H. Hudson, ”any short dramatic piece of a satiric rather than of a directly religious or ethical character, and in tone and purpose far less serious than the morality proper.”
The Beginning of Regular Tragedy :-
In between 1530 and 1580 the drama in England underwent a ”dramatic” change. With the dawn of the Renaissance in this period English dramatists started looking back to the ancient Greek and Roman dramatists. It is interesting to note that they were more influenced and impressed by the work of Roman dramatists (who were themselves imitators of the Greek dramatists before them) than that of the Greek. The tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and the comedies of Aristophanes influenced them less than the tragedies of Seneca and the comedies of Plautus and Terence. The tragedies of Seneca are ”closet-tragedies”, that is, they are meant to be read only, not to be acted. All of them (some ten in number) have revenge as their leitmotif. Further, they are characterised by excessive bloodshed, long rhetorical speeches, and the inclusion of the Ghost as an inevitable member of the dramatispersoruSZasteAd of the element of fear or tefror as in the Greek tragedy, we have a superabundance of horror in Senecan tragedy.
62 / A History of English Literature
The first English tragedy based evidently, and rather unthinkingly, on the Senecan model was Gorboduc (or, later, Fenex and Pong) written by Thomas Sackville(1536-1608) and Thomas Norton (1531) It was acted in 1561-62 before Queen Elizabeth at White-hall. We
htvVLtthesameexssivblo
characters,lo.rhetoricalsr
chorus bSveei the acts which characterised Senecaragedies. The
-heplayremindsoneofthatoflSngarGorbuctheking
o England who in bis lifetime divides his kingdom between histwo sons.ftrrexandPorrex.OnebroAermurdersAeother.amrnge
is Sed by his mother. But the people nse and murder both thefang d the queen. The »obles assemble and kiUAe assubutthena
civil war ensues between the nobles themselves and the whole of the cZTrb ruined. One important feature of Gorboducis its emp oyme of blank verse which makes it the first Enghsh play to «s;that measure. Further, the play is divided, ater the Roman model, into five acts-a practice which became from then onwards universal for
tragedy.
Some other Senecan tragedies which followed G ThomasHughes’77,eMt«neJo/(Gray’sto1,1588.Robert
knot’s TrTgedie of Tancred and Gismund (Inner Temple, 1567-68), and George Gascoigne’s/oc«to (Gray’s Inn, 1566). The Beginning of Regular Comedy :-
Plautus and Terence influenced English comedy to a lesser extent than Seneca the English tragedy, forthe reason that Enghsh comedy had a well-rooted native tradition. The first regular English comedy wrUtenaboutlS nster of Eton. It combined well the native comic tradition with the S»n«,medvof Plautus andterenceJt is written in rhyming couplets
t:’ lndon. and with some humorous dialogue and a tolerable variety ofcCaSraffarepresentadon of the manners andideas of the
n!i7d
vainglorious fello of the nature of Plautus-s Miles Gloms. He
unaesamerchant’swifetobeinlovew.thhimandBCO.medm
hTSupid belief by Uie pranks of Matthew Marrygreek. After many misadventures and follies he comes to his senses and recognises die harsh reality. Broadly speaking, the comedy of the play turns on the «± Sasthat of TheMy W of Windsor. The play has the merits oTracy dialogue and delightful unfolding of comedy, but its versification lacks the vigour of Heywood’s metre in 77 tourF.
The University Wits / 63
Greatly inferior to Roister Doister is the comedy Gammer Gurton ’s Needle dated about 1553, and generally ascribed to John Still. It is a crude presentation of low country life. It does not have a well-organised plot, which turns on a single incident-the loss of her needle by the country housewife Gammer Gurton. In search of her needle she disturbs the peace of the entire village. Peace comes back when she discovers her missing needle stuck in the breeches of Hodge, her farm-servant. The whole thing is crudely farcical. There is nothing Plauttne about the play except its Latin structure. What recommends the play to us today is, in the words of Ifor Evans, ”a rough, native realism.”
Conclusion :
From such works as Gorboduc, Ralph Roister Doister, and Gammer Gurton’s Needle it is evident how far the drama has advanced from its state of the liturgical play. We find in the progress of the drama, especially comedy, a gradual gravitation towards the realities of the life of the day. What is lacking still is not arresting vitality but literary power and grace. These qualities were to be supplied later by ”the University Wits’.
/ THE UNIVERSITY WITS
Q.IO. What do you know about The University Wits? Describe theii contribution to English drama. (Rohilkhand 1988)
Or Q. Assess the contribution of the University Wits to English drama.
(Agra 1971,1987)
, — – Or
Q. Discuss briefly the contribution of the University Wits to Elizabethan drama. (Rohilkhand 1984, Garhwal 1987)
Or.
Q. What contribution did the University Wits make to the growth of the English drama? (Agra 1967, Garhwal 1990)
Or Q. Write an essay on the University Wits. (Gorakhpur 1987)
Or Q. Write a critical essay on ”The University Wits”.
(Rohilkhand 1994)
F
64 / A History of English Literature
Q. Who were the’University Wits’and how did they prepare , the ground for Shakespeare?
Introduction :-
The University Wits were a group of well-educated scholars, -cummeji of letters who wrote in the closing years of the sixteenth century. AU of them were actively associated with the theatre and the plays written by them mark a pronounced stage of development over the drama which existed before them. With their dramatic work they paved the way for the great Shakespeare who was indebted to them in numerous ways. Given below are the names of these University Wits:
(1) John Lyly
(2) Robert Greene
(3) George Peele
(4) Thomas Lodge
(5) Thomas Nashe
(6) Thomas Kyd
(7) Christopher Marlowe
They were called University Wits because they had training at one or other of the two Universities-Oxford and Cambridge. The only exception, and that a doubtful one, was Thomas Kyd. Apart from academic training (in most cases, an MA. degree) they had numerous characteristics in common. They were members of learned societies and rather liberal in their views concerning God and morality. They were all reckless Bohemians and had their live_£_short by excessive debauchery or a violent death. Marlowe was killed in a street brawL perhaps over bougjitjpsses, and Greene, after a career of unfettered self-dissipation, died friendless and penniless and in a very touchingly repentant frame of mind. Further, in their intellectualism they were true embodiments of the impact of the Renaissance on English culture and sensibility. Then, all of them had fairly good relations with one another and were wont freely to lend a hand to one another in the writing or completing of dramatic works.
Their Contribution to the Drama :-
Whatever maybe said against their repruachable careers as human beings, it will have to be admitted that, to quote Allardyce Nicoll, ”they laid a sure basis for the English theatre.” For understanding appropriately the contribution of the University Wits in this respect we should first acquaint ourselves with the state of the English drama before them. Now, when the University Wits started writing there were
£
9
D
:
3
b P
P
The University Wits/65
two fairly distinct traditions of the dramatic art before them. One was the native tradition (especially of comedy) which was vigorous, no doubt, but devoid of the artistic discipline of the classical Greek and Roman drama. The other was the tradition set by the imitators of ancient Roman drama. Such works as Sackville and Norton’s Gorbodue (tragedy) and Ralph Roister Doister (comedy) are instances of this tradition. These plays, though they exhibit ample awareness of the classical form and control, are devoid of the vigour of the purely native plays. Differentiating between the popular and classical tradition, AUardyce Nicoll observes : The classicists had form but no fire; the popular dramatists had interest, but little sense of form.” The function of the University Wits was to combine the form with the fire. They had plenty of ”fire” in them, all being reckless, hedonists, but they had ako the sense of form acquired by them from training in classical learning. While retaining in their dramatic works the vigour of the popular native tradition, they gave them that literary grace and power which offered Shakespeare ”a viable and fitting medium for the expression of his genius.” ”””
One thing which needs to be amply emphasised is that though the University Wits looked to the classical drama and incorporated its general respect of form in their own productions, they never imitated it slavishly. They retained for themselves sufficient freedom, sometimes even that of violating its well-recognised principles such as the strict separation of the species (comedy and tragedy, for instance), the observance of ”the three unities” (those of time, place, and action), and the reporting of the major incidents to the audience through the dialogueof the dramatispersonae or the agency of the messenger. What they established upon the English stage was not a pale copy of the ancient Greek or Roman drama, but a kind of romantufcirama which was to be later adopted by Shakespeare himself. Lyly, Greene, and Peele contributed much towards the establishment of the romantic comedy, and Kyd and Marlowe, Elizabethan tragedy. Besides, Marlowe in his Edward II set an example of .the historical play for Shakespeare and others.
Further, the University Wits set about the work of reforming the language of the drama. They made the medium of dramatic utterance extremely pliant and responsive to all the various moods endeavoured to be conveyed through it. Lyly lent the language of comedy, especially the prose, a wonderfully sophisticated touch, Peelc gave it a rare sweetness, and Greene, considerable geniality and openness. As regards the language of tragedy, Kyd did not do much except introdu
66 / A History of English Literature \
cing exaggerative bombast (which is not always without vigour), but Marlowe breathed into it that consuming intensity coupled with virtuosic brilliance which thrilled his contemporaries and thrills us even today. Blank verse became Marlowe’s ”mighty line.”
Now let us consider the individual contribution of the various University Wits to the development of English drama. (1) John Lyly (1554-1606) :-
Lyly is better known for his prose romance Euphues than his dramatic productions. It must be remembered that he himself was a courtier and wrote for the discerning courtiers. He had no intention to charm the eyes and ears of the masses or to win their acclamation. His plays are rather of the nature of masques which were very popular with the queen and the court, He gave comedy a touch of sophistication and an intellectual tone lacking in the native comedy which was predomi nantly of the nature of rough-and-tumble farce. Lyly wrote eight plays in all out of which Compaspe, Endumon}anGallathea arc the best and the beet known. And though all the eight are, broadly speaking, comedies, yet they can be roughly divided, after Nicoll, into three groups as follows:
(i) those which are allegorical and mythical in tone;
(u) those which display realistic features; and
(iii) those which mark the introduction of more or less historical
features.
Lyr/s plays are the production of scholarship united to an elegant fancy and a somewhat fantastic wit, but not of a writer capable of moving the passions or of depicting character by subtle and felicitous touches. Broadly speaking, Lylys achievemnet is to have synthesised many mutually antagonistic elements which had till then tain unreconciled. His was a Renaissance mind working synthetically on the native material before him. For instance we have frequently in his plays a courtly main plot (in which such characters as kings, queens, princes, princesses, knights, fairies, pagan and Greek and Roman deities figure) supported by a subplot setting forth the blunders of villagers. Lyly strangely amalgamates humour and romantic imagination and in this way paves the way for Shakespeare who does likewise in many of his comedies.
In his plays Lyly used a mixture of verse and prose. This mixing of the two is suggestive of his mixing of the world of reality and the world of romance. The same fusion”, observes Nicoll, ”is to be discovered inAs You Like It”. Lyly found a suitable blank verse for
The University Wits / 67
comedy as Marlowe did ibr tragedy. Whereas Marlowe’s blank verse is characterized by consuming intensity and mouth-fiDiag bombast, Lyr/s is by its lightness of touch suitable for comedy. The prose that Lyly used in his comedies is sometimes mannered after the style of his Euphues; it is full of puns, far-fetched conceits, and verbal pyrotechnics which Shakespeare incorporated in his early comedies such as Love’s Labour Lost and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Robert Greene (1558-92) :-
Greene wrote some five plays in all. They are:
(i) The Comical History of Alphonsus King of Ardgon
(ii) A Looking Glass for London and England (written jointly
with Lodge)
(iii) The Honourable History of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (iv) The History of Orlando Furioso (v) The Scottish History ofJamestthe Fourth.
Out of them the most important and interesting is Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay.With this play and James /TjGreene contributed substantially towards the establishment of the romantic comedy. He elfects two kinds of fusion:
(a) The fusion of various plots and sub-plots; and
(b) the fusion of various moods and worlds in one and the same play.
In Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, for instance, there are, in the words of Nicoll, ”three distinct worlds mingled together-the world of magic, the world of aristocratic life, and the world of the country. These, by his art, Greene has woven together into a single harmony, showing the way to Shakespeare when the latter came to write A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” As regards characterisation, Nicoll gives Greene the credit of being ”the first to draw the Rosalinds and Celias of Elizabethan times.” Dorothea, the heroine of his comedy James IV which has romantic love for its theme, is the best known of all the female characters in Elizabethan drama excluding Shakespeare’s works. Further, as regards Greene’s handling of blank verse which he used as the medium of his comedies, it may be observed that he gave it more flexibility than the imitators of the classical models allowed it.
(3) George Pfeele (1558-97) :-
The five plays of Peele extant today are:
(i) The Arraignment of Paris (a pastoral play)
r
63 / A History of English Literature
(ii) The Battle of Alcazar (a romantic tragedy)
(iii) The Famous Chronicle of King Edwardjhe First (a chronicle
history) (iv) The Love of King David and Fair Bathsheba (a kind of
mystery play, for it has a biblical theme) (v)The Old Wives’ Tale (a romantic xil’f on the current
dramatic taste)
The list shows Peele’s versatility as a dramatist. However, his plays are not marked by any technical brilliance. What is of interest to us is his excellence as a poet. ”Certainly”, observes Compton-Rickett, ”he shares with Marlowe the honour of informing blank verse with musical ability that, in the later band of Shakespeare, was to be one of its most important characteristics.” But it is Peele’s fault that ”he allows poetry to enter into scenes from which it ought to be excluded” (Nicoll). For instance, when Absalon in David and Bathsheba finds his own hair about to hang him to death, he bursts into a poetic utterance : What angry angel sitting in these shades, Hath laid his cruel hands upon my hair And holds my body thus twixt heaven and earth?
(4) Thomas Lodge (1558-1625) and
(5) Thomas Nashe (1567-1601) :-
Their dramatic work is inconsiderable. Lodge who was, accordin; to Gosson, ”little better than a vagrant, looser than liberty, lighter than vanityjtself,” was, in NicolTs words, ”the least of the University Wits”, for he ”gave practically nothing to the theatre.” He has left only one play, The Wounds of Civil War. Both Nashe and he are much more imp irtant for their fiction than dramatic art. (6) lltomas Kyd (1557-97) :-
His only play The Spanish Tragedy is modelled on Seneca’s revenge tragedies which before Kyd had been imitated by some scholars like Sackville and Norton, the writers of Gorboduc. But whereas Gorboduc was rather slavishly and strictly based on Seneca, Kyd is much more flexible in his attempt. Of course there are murders and bloodshed, suicides and horru/ing incidents (like the biting off of a man’s tongue by himself and the running amuck of a respectable lady), the ghost, and many other Senecan features, yet The Spanish Tragedy breaks away from the Senecan tradition on various points. For example, there is much of action on the stage itself (and not reported,
The University Wits / 69
as in Seneca). Moreover, though, after Seneca, it has for its leitmotif revenge (Heironimo’s revenge for the murder of his son) yet there is strong external action. The Elizabethan audiences had a craving for watching sensational, even horrifying action. Kyd was obliging enough. Nicoll aptly describes The Spanish Tragedy as ”a Senecan play adapted to popular requirements.”
Kyd’s contribution to English tragedy is twofold. First, he gave a new kind of tragic hero who was neither a royal personage nor a superman but an ordinary person. Secondly, he introduced the element of introspection in the hero. Along with the external conflict in the play, we are conscious of a kind of introspective self-analysis within Heironimo himself. In’ this respect Kyd was paving the way for Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Kyd’s blank verse was ridiculed for its pomposity and exaggeration even by his contemporaries who had an ear for high-sounding words. Like Seneca’s tragic style, Kyd’s also has the element of rhetoric in it. Kyd’s extravagance is sometimes annoying but we must remember Compton-Rickett’s words that ”even extravagance is better than lifelessness.”
(7) Christopher Marlowe (1564-93) :-
He is, in NicoH’s words, ” the most talented of preShakespeareans.” His plays are: (i) Tamburlainetthe Great; (ii) Doctor Faustus; ””
(Hi) Tlie Jew of Malta ; (iv) Edward,lhe Second; and
(v) Parts of Tlie Massacre at Pans and Dido Queen of Carthage.
Marlowe’s contribution to English tragedy is very vital and
manifold. He himself seems to-be aware of having scored an advance
over the previous drama. In the prologue to his first play he sets his
manifesto in these lines:
From jigging veins ofrliyming mother wits, And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay, We will lead you to the stately tent of war.
Marlowe promises that his play is going to be different from the conventional plays in both its language and subject. And he, indeed, keeps his promise.
First of all, Marlowe exalted and varied the subject-matter of tragedy. For the Senecan motive of revenge he substituted the more
\
70 / A History of English Literature
interesting theme of ambition-ambition for power as in Tamburlaine. ; ambition for infinite knowledge as in Doctor Faustus, and ambition for gold as in The Jew of Malta.
Secondly, he put forward a new kind of the tragic hero.The medieval concept of tragedy was the fall of a great man. See, for instance, the words of the Monk in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales:
Tragedie is to seyn a certyne stone,
As old bakes maken us memorie,
Of hym who stood in great prosperitie
And is y-falien out of high degree
Into miserie and endeth wretchedly.
Marlowe revived the Aristotelean conception of the tragic hero in so far as he introduced a certain flaw or flaws in his character. His heroes are all supermen whose major flaw is always an over-weening ambition. Their love is the love of the impossible; but with a singular intensity and concentration of purpose, they make headway towards their destination though they perish by forces beyonJtheir control. Thus, there is a dramatic conflict between their ambition and the antagonistic forces of life which stand in its way. But along with this outer conflict, there is, at least in Doctor Faustus, a struggle in the mind of the chief character also. This was something new for English tragedy.
Next, he gave a greater unity to the drama. This he did in Edward II. The rest of his plays are weak in structure, being loose strings of scenes and episodes. But as he matured he acquired a greater technical and constructive skill.
One of Marlowe’s chief merits is his reformation of the chionide plays of his time. They were formless and poor in characterisation. Marlowe humanised the puppets of these plays and introduced motives in them. Also he gave shape and internal development to his plots. He handled the crude .historical material judiciously and artistically, selecting some, rejecting some, and modifying some, so as to suit his dramatic purpose. Out of the formlessness of old chronicles Marlowe produced a play which is a genuine tragedy and the model for Shakespeare’s Richard II.
Last but not least is Marlowe’s establishment of blank verse as an effective and pliant medium of tragic utterance. His blank verse is immensely superior to the blank verse of Gorboduc, the first tragedy which employed this measure. He found it wooden, mechanical, and lifeless and breathed into it a scarifying intensity of passion which electrified it into something living aud throbbing with energy. He
e«-f
,t;Ue
y CTS ~ V Shakespeare’s Greatness / 71
. — –
substituted the end-stopped lines of Gorboduc with run-on lines forming verse paragraphs. True, some element of bombast is percetibiejn Marlowe’s earlier works, but in Edward II his sytle becomes quite subdued and answers more readily to the whjpteggmut_of_vajtying moodA sought to be conveyed through it. He made blank verse a great dramatic medium acknowledged by all his successors as the metre indispensable for any serious drama. With Marlowe, indeed, begins a new era in the history of English drama. _
SHAKESPEARE’S GREATNESS /
. Q.ll. Why is Shakespeare considered a great writer?
(Agra 1952) Or
Q. Mention the main features of Shakespeare’s plays which account for his superiority over his contemporaries.
(Punjab 1953) Or
Q. Account for the universality of Shakespeare’s work.
{Companion Question) What is meant by the statement that ’Shakespeare was of his age, but he was also of the ages’? (Agra 1958)
Introduction :
-Soul of the age !
The applause t delimit I the wonder of our stage I
Triumph, my Britain ! thou hast one to show,
To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe.
He was not of an age, but for all time.
This was the glowing tribute which Ben Jonson, Shakespeare’s wortiiy rival and sometimes harsh critic, paid to him. Since Ben Jonson’s age an unbroken line of critics ranging over four centuries has done the same. It will be tedious to recount the glowing panegyrics which have gons to the bard of Stratford. If one were to believe all of them, one would be led to understand that Shakespeare was not.a man but a phenomenon unamenable to any critical test whatever. Thus Pope, for instance, asserted that Shakespeare was not an imitator but an instrument of Nature. He did not speak for Nature,, rather it was Nature who spoke through him
Nature herself was proud of his designs, Andjoy’d to wear the dressing of his lines.
72 / A History of English Literature
That is subscribing to the claim made in the inscription under Shakespeare’s bust in Stratford church which reads : ”Shakespeare, with whom quick Nature died.’Otherwise quite sane a critic as Matthew Arnold sentimentally and quite simply wrote:
Others abide our question, Thou art free,
We ask and ask-Thou smilest and art still,
Out-topping knowledge
Andthou, who didst tlte stars and sunbeams know, Self-schooled, self-scann’d, self-honour’d, self-secure,’ Did tread on earth ungness’d at….
In the Victorian age the vogue of the ”family Shakespeare” helped in nurturing a sentimental approach to Shakespeare. Fortunately, the critics of today have come to dissociate themselves from such lachrymosic panegyrisation, and much of the cloud of incense which collects around a deity has been laid, enabling us to approach the real Shakespeare clearly and correctly.-Shakespeare did out-top his contemporaries, but he did’ not ”out -top knowledge”- as Matthew Arnold would have it. This is in no way degrading Shakespeare who is ever fresh, and will surely last as long as books last. Dr Johnson’s words are very true : ”The stream of time, which is continually washing dissoluble fabrics of other poets, passes without injury by the adamant of Shakespeare.” Shakespeare, in his perpetual charm, does answer well the words of Enobarbus about Qeopatra:
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety: other women cloy The appetites they feed; but she makes hungry Where most she satisfies. Shakespeare’s Comprehensiveness :
What primarily distinguishes Shakespeare from the host of his contemporaries is that, unlike them, he does not have only a narrow, limited range within which his genius operates. What Shakespeare deals with is the entire length and breadth of human life and character in all its complexity and variety. Which element of human experience and which segment of human sensibility has Shakespeare left untouched? ”He”, as a critic avers, ”sweeps with the hand of a master the varied experiences of human life, from the lowest note to the very top of its compass, from the sportive childish treble of Mimilius and the pleading boyish tones of Prince Arthur up to the sceptre-haunted terrors of Macbeth, the tropical passion of Otheilo, the agonised sense and tortured spirit of Hamlet, the sustaining and sustained titanic force and tragical pathos of King Lear.” With a rare critical acumen Dryden pointed out that .Shakespeare ”was the man, who of all modern and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive souL”
Shakespeare’s Greatness / 73
Shakespeare’s comprehensiveness has another manifestation too–his possession of varied dramatic gifts which we do not find concentrated in any of his contemporary dramatists many of whom are indeed masters of one or other of them, and perhaps better masters than Shakespeare. What is there in Shakespeare to match the architectonic skill displayed by Ben Jonson in Tlte Alchemist, the heart-wringing; terrifying pathos of the last scene of Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, the starkly touching quality of death-scene of the King in Marlowe’s Edward II or that of The Duchess in Webster’s The Duchess ofMalfi, the skilful virtuosity of Beaumont and Fletcher’s comedy The Knight of the Burning Pestle or the ecstatic utterance of Dr. Faustus on his vision of Helen? Even then we have to admit that Shakespeare is superior to any of his contemporaries in that he combines all the gifts. Therein lies ”comprehensiveness” and, consequently, the secret of his continued appeal.
Shakespeare’s Plot-construction :-
Shakespeare’s plot-construction is more often mentioned to be condemned than commended. As regards the ” three unities,” he was a serious offender. Even the most important of the unities -the unity of action- was very often altogether disregarded by him, much to the chagrin of Ben Jonson. However, in his violation of the unities Shakespeare was one with his most contemporaries. Shakespeare seems to have bothered more about the artistic unity of effect than any mechanical observance of any one of the three unities, or even that of all of them put together. Speaking strictly from the architectonic point of view alone, Shakespeare’s plays suffer in comparison with those of Ben Jonson who made much fuss about classical rules. We are told in the Prologue to his Volpone (about Ben Jonson himself) The rules of time, place, persons he observeth: From no needful rule he swerveth.
Correspondingly, in the Prologue to Everyman in His Humour, Ben Jonson’s first comedy, there is a caustic attack on those (like Shakespeare) who violate the basic rules of dramatic construction. We have to admit that Shakespeare has a rather poor skill of architectonics (though it is less disappointing than that of Marlowe and some others), but his mastery of individual scenes: is beyond question. We have a much larger number of memorable scenes in the plays of Shakespeare
I. The Alchemist, Tom Jones, and Oedipus the King are, according to Coleridge, the three works in wortd literature which have perfectly constructed plots.
74 / A History of English Literature
than in those of any other dramatist. Some of the scenes of this nature are the storm scene in King Lear, the sleep walking scene in Macbeth, the trial scene in The Merchant of Venice, the scene in Othello showing the last encounter between Othello and Desdemona, the deposition scene in Richard II, the Falstaff scenes in Henry IV, Pan I. Furthermore) Shakespeare’s exploitation of the technique of suspense is also remarkable. Shakespeare’s Characterisation :
According to Compton-Rickett, one of the two qualities which establish Shakespeare’s superiority over his contemporaries is his ”insight into human nature.” Now, without this quality the work of a dramatist can neither be interesting nor great. And this is the quality in which Shakespeare is far richer than hiscontemporaries.Jt gives his characters an abundance of psychological realism making them very convincing. We know his characters better than we do our aunts and uncles. They are all intensely human, not the wooden personified ”humours” of Ben Jonson’s comedies or the superhuman heroes of Marlowe’s tragedies. Shakespeare was, to use the words of Shelley in the description of Coleridge, ”a subtle-souled psychologist”. ”Shakespeare’, writes a critic, ”was above all a master of human psychology although the word itself was not known in his day.. Jt is his universal humanity, his all-embracing understanding of every human emotion and instinct, which has made Shakespeare what he is-the greatest philosopher of the human heart ever known. He is famous for all time because the scholar, equally with the man in the street, realizes at a glance his true valuation and faithful portrayal of the deep springs of human action to be found in the subtle workings of the mind. His power of piercing to the hidden centres of character, of touching the issues of life and of evolving these issues dramatically with flawless strength subtlety and truth, is superb.” Goeth compares Shakespeare’s characters to watches with transparent dials-you can see the time, that is what is on the surface, but you can also see the working of their mind too. What Compton-Rickett calls Shakespeare’s ”profound and searching knowledge of human nature” comes to the fore when you study any of his characters. Macbeth’s ambition, Falstaffs light-hearted villainy, Lear’s simplicity, Desdemona’s naive devotion, Shylocfcs greed and revengefulness, Portia’s intellectuality, Imogen’s fidelity, and lago’s malignity have all a ring of superb veracity. But these characters are by no means simple or endowed with single-track minds. They are complex-as complex as living individuals whose conduct cannot always be so easily explained.
Shakespeare’s Greatness / 75
According to Legouis, one of the ”most important” characteristics which distinguish Shakespeare ”from his English rivals” is ” the complexity of his characters, which as a rule are not represented only within the short span of a crisis,. Shakespeare took advantage of the wide allowance of space under his dramatic system, the twenty or so scenes into which each of his plays is, on the average, divided, and showed his heroes at various moments of their lives, in changing situations and b ”lp» colloquy with different persons. They are not obliged to sustain one
attitude, but have time to move and alter. No simple principlaaccounts for them. They have life and life’s indefiniteness, and therefore they are not always fully intelligible but are mysteries”. Shakespeare exhibits stage by stage the organic development of his characters from the beginning to the end. The senile Lear of the end of King Lear is much different from the tempestuous Lear of the first scene. He has undergone a transformation amounting to redemption. What a change! But
it is entirely convincing. Shakespeare’s characters are, to adopt the
! distinction drawn by E. M. Forster, ”round” rather than ”flat”–they
are ”capable of surprising us in a convincing way”. On the other hand, Ben Jonson’s humours and Marlowe’s characters such as Tamburlaine, Barabas, and Mortimer do not change much if they do change at all. A word about Shakespeare’s mastery of the female psychology in which we find his contemporaries so deficient. As Compton-Rickett observes, ”Portia, Rosalind, Beatrice, Cleopatra, Juliet are startHngly modern. Placed beside the women of Sheridan or Goldsmith, and you realise how the latter are dated and how alive and fresh are the former. Beside them even the women ot Dickens and Thackeray seem oldfashioned. And the reason is that Shakespeare’s women have the primal qualities of womanhood common to every age, and therefore can never be dated. And there is subtlety no less than actuality.” Shakespeare’s Philosophy and Humanity :
Let us now come to a point on which Shakespeare has provoked a lot of criticism-his alleged philosophy of life or the message intended to be delivered by him. What is his philosophy of life? This question as Compton-Rickett humorously suggests, could be tackled after the manner of the person who on the subject of ”Snakes in Iceland” only wrote: ”There are no snakes in Iceland.” We could say likewise:” There ’ is no philosphy of life in Shakespeare.” And we would be right too.
Many have strained their intellect to extract an intelligible code out of the chaos of dramatic utterances in the dramas of Shakespeare. As Compton-Rickett rightly says,” Shakespeare was an artist and concerned primarily not with postulating theories of life, but with the stuff of life itself. You have a dozen different points of view, but no definite
76 / A History of English Literature
conclusion.” What are these attitudes ? We have, to quote ComptonRickett again,”the fatalism of Kent, the meliorism of Edmund, the despairing cry of Macbeth where life is.’a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing’; the serene melancholy of Prospero to whom ’we are such stuff as dreams are made on, cynical Jaques and idealistic Brutus; each has his value as a human document, each perhaps falls in with some mood of its creator, but none are to be taken as other than the expression of one content to live life to the full, in place of weaving theories about life.” The rich complexity of views and points of view which we often find criss-crossing each other in Shakespeare’s plays will frustrate the working of any codifying intelligence. Nor can we think of Shakespeare as a moral preacher. He egregiously lacks the didactic and satiric fervour of Ben Jonson . He has a prodigious fund of human sympathy and tolerance which sometimes makes his attitude look almost amoral. F. W. Robertson maintains :”l believe this to be one of Shakespeare’s most wondrous qualities-the humanity of his nature and heart. There is a spirit of sunny endeavour about him and acquiesence in the things as they are…”
Shakespeare’s Poetic Power :-
Compton-Rickett considers Shakespeare’s ”incomparable poetry” as one of the two characteristics which have rendered his work of universal interest. Shakespeare was a richer and more imaginative poet than any of his contemporaries. ”He is”, says Compton-Rickett, ”The supreme poet in an age of great poetry, because his poetry is wider in range and deeper in feeling than that of his contemporaries. He touches every mood: of graceful sentiment, as in the romantic comedies; of delicate fantasy, as in the fairy plays; of philosophic meditation, as in the tragedies of the mid-period; and of poignant passion, as in the later tragedies. In the verse that bodies forth such primal things as love, hate, hope, despair, courage, endurance, Shakespeare towers above his fellows. When we think of Lear in his desolation, of Othello in his,last anguish, Macbeth in his soul’s agony, and the despair of Cleopatra-we think of English literature at its grandest.”Hazlitt talks about Shakespeare’s” magic power over words.” They indeed come at his bidding and occupy the right places. Shakespeare has an almost instinctive knowledge of all the nuances of meaning and the art of their most effective arrangement. His interchanging of verse and prose for dramatic utterance too bespeaks his wonderful artistry and a kind of fidelity to nature. Romeo, a romantic lover, talks invariably in verse; Falstaff, an anti-romantic fellow, always talks in prose. The same character may talk sometimes in verse, and sometimes in prose, depending upon the mood. Othello, when
Shakespearean Comedy / 77
moved by bestial thoughts, talks in prose even though normally he does in verse. Rosalind talks, in prose when she is talking lightheartedly in a holiday humour. Conclusion :-
Shakespeare’s plays are of universal significance and highly superior to those of his contemporaries on account of his wonderful poetry, his sympathetic humanity and broad-mindedness, his superb mastery of his medium, and his masterful insight into human nature which ever remains the same. Human beings come and go but human nature remains the same. ”A poet”, said Ralph Waldo Emerson, ”speaks from a heart in unison with his time and country.” Shakespeare’s heart beats in unison with all times and all countries. Ben Jonson said that Shakespeare ”was not of an age but for all time.” We could also say, as Legouis suggests, that he was not of a land but of all lands. Let us conclude by referring to an actual incident. A Japanese student, on being asked if he could understand and sympathise with the characters in As You Like It, replied/tyhy not? They are all Japanese!”
SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDY
Q.12. What do you know about Shakespeare as a writer of
comedies ? (Rohilkhand 1983)
Q. What are the characteristic features of Shakespeare’s
comedy? (Rohilkhand 1979)
Q. Write a brief essay on one of the following:
Shakespearean Comedy (and four more topics)
(Rohilkhand 1978) Introduction :-
It is customary to apply the two inadequate terms ”classicaTand ”romantic” to comedy as to many other literary genres. Shakespeare’s comedies, at least most of them, are broadly speaking of the romantic kind, as opposed to the traditional classical kind more or less exemplified by the comic plays of Shakespeare’s worthy contemporary and rival, Ben Jonson. The salient characteristics of classical comedy are its
(i) realism;
(ii) satiric and didactic purpose; ana
78 / A History of English Literature
(iii) its adherence to the classical rules (such as those of decorum, the separation of the species, and even the ”three unities”)as expounded and practised by the writers and critics of antiquity.
Contrariwise jxtmantic comedy does not bother to be realistic at least mechanically realistic-r-nor has it a very articulate didactic aim, nor even does it bother much about fettering the fertility of the imagination . by subjecting it to rules. Romantic comedy generally has love for its theme, for what can be more romantic than love?
Now most of Shakespeare’s comedies are of the romantic type. There are a few, like The Comedy of Errors, Tlie Taming of the Shrew, and Tlie Merry Wives of Windsor, which are not as romantic or as purely romantic as the best of his comedies. As You Like It, The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream-all of which are the most characteristic of his comic genius. Let us now consider the most important features of Shakespearean comedy. The Romantic World :-
Shakespeare’s romantic comedies are all conceived in an Imaginative setting far away from the dull and dreary world of everyday life. Their characters are also different from us as they are denizens of not our humdrum world but the imaginary, colourful world of their own. Allardyce Nicoll well observes in his British Drama : ”Characters and scenes alike are viewed through magic casements which transform reality.” Some of the settings of Shakespeare’s comedy are Thebes, Arden, Illyria. Ephesus, and Venice. All these places are bathed in the light of fancy and romantic splendour which makes them recede still further from the dreary world of ours. Venice for instance is not the real, historical Venice but an ancient town of enchanting beauty in which loans could be obtained by offering the flesh of one’s, heart as security. What is true of settings is also-true of the characters inhabiting them-they too are ”romantic” and remote from the ordinary people of flesh and blood. They are somewhat unearthly. They go about making love, dancing, feasting, engaging themselves in battles of wit with one another, singing, and making merry. Life for them in very often one long spring. They seem to be eating their bread not in the sweat of their face but by some more pleasant, but unknown, method. The ”fever and the fret” of life which is abundantly obvious in Shakespeare’s tragedies is conspicuous by its absence in his comedies. Let us quote Thorndike here: ”There are only three industries in this land [that of Shakespearean
Shakespearean Comedy / 79
comedy], making love, making songs, and making jests. And they make them all to perfection….It is well to interrupt the love-making with a little joking and the joking with a little music and perchance some cakes and ale, and then back to love again.” Another critic quips that ”hardly anybody goes to business b these Shakespearean latitudes. Not Altogether Unrealistic :-
However romantic and fanciful may Shakespeare’s comic world and its denizens be, it will be rash to conclude that they are altogether unrealistic, having nothing to do with the world of reality and the people living therein. Shakespearean comedy is net altogether escapist in nature. It is, in its own oblique manner, what Arnold expected all good literature to be, ”a criticism of life.” There are some very concrete links which join this world with the actual world. These links come into being when Shakespeare has a recourse to the following methods:
(i) Shakespeare imports some features of the real world into the world of his comedy. Take, for instance, the Forest of Arden which provides the setting for As You Like It. The Forest, indeed, is quite romantic and fanciful. But still it has certain features which render it an understandable part of our own concrete world. It is,as Charlton points out, ”no conventional ArcadiaMts inhabitants are not exempt from the penalty of Adam-winter, rough weather, the seasons’ differences. The icy fang and churlish chiding of the winter’s wind invade Arden as often as they invade this hemisphere of ours. Nor does manna fall to it from heaven. One may come by sufficient sustenance of flesh, if one has the weapons and the impulse to make a breach in the conventionality of idyllic Nature by killing its own creatures, the deer, to whom the forest is the assigned and native dwelling placeTThis is a clear instance of special pleading. A few similarities with the world of reality cannot adequately disprove the essentially unrealistic- and romantic nature of the Forest of Arden. Nevertheless, we can agree justly with this critic when he says that though the ultimate world of Shakespeare’s comedy is romantic, poetic, and imaginative, it is by no means ”unsubstantial and fantastic.”
(ii) Secondly, even when many of the characters in his comedies are romantic and remote from the world of reality, Shakespeare has the knack of adding to their world some very realistic and earthly characters who do not share their ways of life, attitudes, sports, and amorous fun. The addition of such characters exerts a concretizing influence upon the world of his comedy as a whole. Let us quote Allardyce Nicoll in this connexion: There are contemporary figures and contemporary fashions in Love’s Labour Lost ; Bottom and his
r
80 / A History of English Literature
companions mingle with the fairies; Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek are companions of Viola and Olivia, Dogberry and Verges of Hero and Beatrice. This is the cardinal characteristic of Shakespeare’s romantic world-the union of realism and fantasy.” Comedies of Love
Most of Shakespeare’s romantic comedies are built around the theme of love which provides the chief motive force for starting, regulating, and sustaining the machinery of the play. In this particular respect romantic comedy strikes a note of diametrical variance with classical comedy in which love seldom plays a major part If love does come in, it comes in the fnn of just physical hist giving rise to some complicated amorous intrigues. There may be sex in classical comedy, but there is not much of love. Intrigues of all sorts, including amorous ones, are alien to the nature of romantic comedy, though they are quite popular with the comedy of the classical kind, especially the one based on the plays of the Roman comedians Terence and Plautus. Love in all its manifestations and in all its kinds is, indeed, the soul of Shakespearean comedy. Referring to As You Like It, Stopford Brooke remarks : ”In this play have lives in many forms : in Orlando and Rosalind, Celia and Oliver, Silvius and Phoebe, Touchstone and Audrey. We also see other forms of love, the love of two girls for each other, of Adam for his master and his master for him, of Touchstone for Celia and Rosalind. Even a few touches are given to us of a daughter’s affection for her father. But these kinds of love, outside the passion of youthful love, are but side issues, due to the love of Shakespeare for lovingness.”
Shakespeare’s comedies are then, mostly love comedies. He deals with Idve rather conventionally, in so far as a comedy with him generally ends m a marriage. However, to use Shakespeare’s own words, ”the course of true love did never run smooth.” There are complications galore. The young lovers have to undergo some sort of discipline before they reach the sweet fruiton of their amours. Ferdinand in The Tempest has to carry logs of wood for Miranda. Viola does not return Olivia’s love. Benedick and Beatrice are poles apart in the beginning. But in the end love makes all obstacles evaporate in thin air, the pipes are brought and there is a marriage. The heroes and heroines in Shakespeare’s comedies are invariably young, and love-making with them is a whole-time profession. The spirit of youth finds appropriate expression in amorous (but not lustful) activity. Naturally enough) there are plentiful songs and dances to irradiate die youthful atmo- phere of these comedies.’The heroes and heroines are youthful men
Q
)
3
X
Shakespearean Comedy/81
and women before their marriage; on the other hand, in most of Shakespeare’s tragedies we find the protagonists past their prime and already married.
Love,t he leitmotif of Shakespearean comedy, is doubtlessly of the romantic kind, but Shakespeare seldom exalts it to the Platonic or Petrarchan level. Nor does it smack of carnality too much; it is not the entirely culpable sexual lust which figures in classical comedy; rather it has a certain elevated and elevating power. J.W. Lever in Elizabethan Love Sonnets observes: ”In Shakespearean comedy love is the means of all human fulfilment. This orientation comes about without a spiritualizing of love’s physical basis. Shakespeare’s heroines are lacking in the saintly qualities of the Petrarchan mistress. Far from raising their lovers’ thought above ’base desires’ Rosalind teaches Orland how to. woo and Juliet reciprocates Romeo’s ardour so frankly that he promptly forgets the chaste attractions of his former lady.” Sometimes we can hear the sadder notes underlying the romantic sentiment.
What is love? Tis not hereafter; Present mirtli has present laughter; What’s to come is still unsure. In delay there lies no plenty; Then came kiss me, sweet and twenty, Youth’s a stuff will not endure Women in Shakespearean Comedy :- ’
Women in Shakespearean comedy constitute its very soul. Shakespeare’s tragedies and history plays are dominated by their heroes, the ups and downs of whose fortunes constitute what is mainly of interest in them. The tragic heroines simply pale into insignificance by the side of the grand heroes. But in his comedies, the reverse is true. A critic rather sweepingly, but not altogether unjustly, remarks that in Shakespeare’s comedies there are no heroes at all; there are only heroines. George Gordon observes: ”All lectures on Shakespeare’s comedies tend to become lectures on Shakespeare’s women/or in the comedies, they have the front of the stage.” In Shakespeare’s comedies, to quote the same critic, we meet with ”women,of all ranks arid ages.frora the queen to the dairy maidand from fifty to fifteen..From Cleopatra to Miranda….he is equally at home and has the whole range of femininity at his command.” Shakespeare’s comic heroines are much more sparkling and interesting than their male counterparts. We have the vivacious and intelligent Portia, the witty Beatrice, the constant Viola and the charming Rosalind. Bassanio does not come to the level
82 / A History of English literature
of Portia, Benedick pales in wit beside Beatrice, the Duke has no
comparison with Viola, and Orlando with the charming Rosalind.
Though all these heroines in their character do not have the same
pattern, yet they have in common one important characteristic-their
quintessential womanhood. This quality makes them look surprisingly
modern. The women in Restoration comedy and even the women in
the novels of the Victorian age appear to be dated, but Shakespeare’s
comic heroines are dateless, though they were conceived much earlier.
It is understandable why Shakespeare in his comedies should give
such importance to women. As we have already said, these comedies
are comedies of love; and love for a man is just a part of his life and
life’s activity, but for a woman it is her whole life and its activity.
Humour :-
A very attractive feature of Shakespeare’s comedies is their humour. It is as it should be, because if comedy has a purpose it is to arouse laughter at the foibles and follies of man with a genial and corrective aim. But the kind of humour we meet with in the comedies of Shakespeare is entirely different’from the kind we have in the classical comedy of Rome and its representation in Ben Jonson. The kind of humour to be found in a literary work is governed by the general attitude of the writer towards his fellow-beings as also his moral standing. Ben Jonson’s humour is sarcastic, satirical, and not a little cynical. He is impatient of the follies of human beings, which he views from a superior moral level. He is always didactic and corrective. His aim is to lash and hurt, not to tolerate and be amused. He earnestly declares:
I will strip the ragged follies of the time, Naked, as at their birth, And with a whip of steel, Print wounding lashes in their iron ribs.
Shakespeare on the other hand, does not brandish such a whip of steel. His attitude towards his fellow being is acceptive and genial, not rejective and cynical. Sometimes (as in The Comedy of Errors) he does fall at the manners of his times, but such a job is essentially alien to his nature. He delights and does not teach. Dowden in The Mind and Art of Shakespeare observes: The genial laughter of Shakespeare at human absurdity is free from even the amiable cynicism which gives to the humour of Jane Austen a certain piquant flavour: it is like the play of summer lightning, which hurts no Irving creature, but surprises, illuminates and charms.” Moreover, Shakespeare’s comic humour is not
Shakespearean Tragedy/83
invariably of the same kind or intensity. It is multi-faceted though it is characterised by the same quality of geniality and Hght-heartedness which issues not from adolescent flippancy but the maturest wisdom and insight into at least one aspect of human life.
SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY
Q.13. Explain and illustrate Shakespeare’s conception of tragedy. (Agra. 1967)
Or
Q. Write an essay on Shakespearean tragedy. (Gorakhpur
1986).
Q. Attempt a critical note on the salient features of’ Shakespearean tragedy. ;« , (GNDU 1992)
Q. Write short notes on :-
(i) The conception of the Tragic Hero’ in Shakespeare’s plays (Garhwal 1990)
plays.
\- ’
Introduction
Shakespeare wrote a number of tragedies, the greatest among which are Macbeth, Othello, King Lear, and Hamlet. Can the tragic experience as conveyed by Shakespeare in his tragedies be conceptualized into an intellectually coherent system? To generalize, said Blake, was to be a fool. Moreover, Shakespeare himself, as A.C. Bradley observes, had only ”a sense for tragedy”, not a ”philosophy” of it. Nevertheless, we certainly can arrive at a few factors which are shared, more or less, by all the great tragedies of Shakespeare. We can, as Bradley says, be able ”to descend on certain well-built principles which underlie almost every Shakespearean tragedy.” Let us examine what these common factors are.
The Story of One Man :-
A Shakespearean tragedy is invariably built around one pivotal flgure-rthe hero, who stands as a colossus beside the many other characters of the play. It must be remembered that a Shakespearean tragedy does bring before us a very large number of dramatis personae. Their number is indeed much larger than that of the characters in an ancient Greek tragedy, excluding, of course, the chorus: however the stage-lights always remain focussed on the hero. Other characters also
84 / A History of English Literature
experience ups and downs of fortune like the hero, but their careers remain in the background.. It is only in the love tragedies,Borneo and Juliet and Antony and Cleopatra, that some importance is given to the , heroine also: her name is also a part of the title of the tragedy. Elsewhere she is just one of the numerous ”minor” characters.In none of his tragedies, does Shakespeare pre-eminently concern himself with more than two persons. Suffering and Death :-
A tragedy always ends in suffering and death, for otherwise it will not be a tragedy. Shakespearean tragedy depicts always the suffering and death of- the hero. If a play does not end in the death of the hero, it is not, in the Shakespearean sense, a tragedy at all. Therefore Troilus and Cressida and Cymbeline, though they have some elements of a tragedy, cannot be classed as tragedies. A Shakespearean tragedy is, in Bradley’s words, ”essentially a tale of suffering and calamity conducting to death.” But the suffering does not befall in the very beginning of the play. It starts only after the hero has committed a sin of omission or commission. In the earlier parts of a tragedy the hero may indeed be happy and altogether unmindful of the suffering and calamity which later would conduct him to death.
The suffering and calamity which befall the hero are quite exceptional in their nature and magnitude. However, they befit the exceptional nature of the hero himself. They cause in the hero a great deal of mental agony though not physical pain. The hero under their stress appears shaken inspite of his greatness and heroic capacity for suffering. Hamlet by his mental torture is virtually laid on the rack. Othello experiences a tempest in his very soul. Lear turns mad. Macbeth loses all interest in life and is obliged to characterise it as a tale told by an idiot, Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
It may be pointed out also that the suffering and calamity experienced by the hero are not limited to him alone; they draw within their vortex numerous other characters. In King Lear and Macbeth, for instance, it is not only the King and Macbeth who suffer and die, but many others loo-like Cordelia in the former and Lady Macbeth in the latter. Thus the last scenes of the tragedy are scenes of general woe. The Hero an Outstanding Figure :
The hero who undergoes this nerve-breaking ordeal of suffering culminating in death is, in Shakespearean tragedy, always a man of an
’ Shakespearean Tragedy /85
outstanding social status. He may be a king, a noble, a prince, a very high official,and so on. Thus, for instance, (i) Lear and Julius Caesar are Icings; (ii) Hamlet is a prince; (iii) Macbeth and Brutus are nobles; and (iv) Othello is a General of the Republic (of Venice). In his conception of the tragic hero as a member of royalty or nobility, Shakespeare conforms to the tradition of the ancient Greek tragedy as exemplified in the works of Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Euripides, the ancient Roman tragedy as handled by Seneca, and even the tragic conception of the Middle Ages as expressed by Chaucer in his Prologue to the Monk’s Tale (one of the Canterbury Tales): Tragedie is to seyn a certeyn stone, As old bokes maken us memorie, . Of him that stood in greet posperitie [-
And is y-fallen out of heigh degree. Into miserie, and endeth wrecchedly.
How and wherefore he ”endeth wrecchedly” is not stated, but what is of interest is that the hero has got to be a man of ”great prosperitie” and ”heigh degree! That is also true of all Shakespearean tragic heroes. Shakespeare may be accused of snobbery by some.BWhy does he think? some may ask,”that the fall of only a great man is productive of the tragic effect, and therefore fit for treatment in a tragedy? Is not the suffering of a poor and humble person also tragic?” Well, Shakespeare has his own ”conve’ntional” way of thinking. He might have believed that the fall of a poor and humble person is painful, no doubt, but it does not make for effective tragedy. The greater a man, the more stunning and effective is his fall. As Bradley says, ”the advantage of Shakespearean conception of the tragic hero is that his fall is more bewildering and conspicuous as contrasted to his former prosperity. Moreover, his fate affects the welfare of a whole nation or empire, therefore his tragedy is more enveloping and widespread”. In modern literature this conception of the aristocratic nature of the tragic hero has undergone a radical change. In the tragedies of Tcheckov and the novels of Hardy, for instance, we have tragic ”heroes” of very humble birth. The Cause of Suffering and Death :-
Now let us consider the. cause of the exceptional suffering and calamity which conduct the tragic hero to death. Is it a malignant destiny or his own character which leads Urn to his doom? This
88 / A History of English Literature
the tragic conflict from without to within. In Romeo and Juliet and Richard II the conflict is almost entirely external. In Macbeth, Hamlet, and Lear it is both external and internal. In Othello it is predominantly internal. In Coriolanus it is almost completely internal. It is in his internalization of the tragic conflict that Shakespeare registered a big advance over his contemporaries and immediate predecessors. The Moral Order of Shakespeare’s Tragic Universe :-
Shakespeare in his tragedies does not adhere to the doctrine of poetic justice which requires the dramatis personae tote rewarded or punished in rigid commensuration with their merits and demerits. Of course, the hero dies on account of some flaw- even if it is a very minor one-in his character. Even then, the suffering undergone is more than is justly merited by nun. Like Lear, he is ”more sinned against than sinning.” Moreover, along with the hero some perfectly flawless and innocent people also die. Cordelia dies with Lear and Ophelia with Hamlet. Why is it so? The answer is that the ultimate power in Shakespeare’s tragic universe is neither wholly fatal nor wholly moral. If it were wholly fatal it would have hurled destruction indiscriminately on everybody, if it were wholly moral it would have dispensed perfect justice. However, this power is predominantly moral, for it does distinguish between good and bad. No evil character does ever go unpunished in Shakespearean tragedy. But evil has a widely destructive power. It is self- destructive, but it pulls into destruction some good also. The total impression left on the reader or the spectator is not pessimistic but piteous, fearful, and mysterious. Moreover, we are not so completely shocked at the death of the hero, for in his death he rises to a nobler plane. Lear, particularly, undergoes a sea-change. The mellow Lear of the last scenes is a completely transformed version of the tempestuous Lear of the first scene.
SHAKESPEARE’S HISTORY PLAYS
Q.14, Write a note on historical plays of Shakespeare,
(Agra 1958, Garhwal 1987) Or
Q. Write a short note on Shakes|«res’ English history plays. (Rohilkhand 1981)
Shakespeare’s History Plays 739
Introduction ;-
Shakespeare wrote some ten plays dealing with the .ustory of England. Roughly speaking, they cover three hundred and fifty yearsfrom 1200 to 1550. Their titles are given hereunder:-
(i) Richard III
(it) The three parts of Henry VI .
(Hi) Richard II
(iv) The two parts of Henry IV
(v) King John
(vi) Henry V
(vu) HenryVI’II
In the writing of the last play most probably Fletcher had also a hand. These historical plays are based upon English history, but they are not to be read as if they were pages from history. They are works of art, like other plays of Shakespeare, even though they were conceived within a historical framework.
Shakespeare’s history plays are a product as well as an expression of the feeling of patriotism which was intensifed in the Elizabethan England by her continual war with Spain which culminated in the celebrated defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. All of Shakespeare’s history plays were written in the period from 1588 to 1598 when patriotic feelings were at the highest pitch. One usual manifestation of the patriotic impulse is the awakening of a new interest in the history of the country. In the Elizabethan age many chroniclers, the most important of whom were Stowe and Hoiinshed, took upon themselves the task of organising the bits of the then known parts of English history into well knit ”chronicles.” These chronicles were not objective records of history, however, as much of hearsay, legend, and even myth was inextricably mixed up with truth. It was only with Bacon’s Henry VII that the art of near scientific historiography began in England. Shakespeare borrowed the historical framework of all his history plays almost exclusively from the Oironicles of Hoiinshed.
Shakespeare’s patriotic fervour which he shared with his countrymen abundantly manifests inself in his history plays. In the view ofHardin Craig it is England which is the hero in these plays. One of Shakepeare’s major aims in writing history plays was to make Englishmen proud of being Englishmen-Such glowing praise of England as by the dying John of Gaunt in Richard II must have been received by the audience with thunderous’applause:
90 / A History of English Literature
Tliis royal Utrone of kings, this sceptred isle, Tliis earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, ””’”” Tliis other Eden, demi paradise, This fortress built by Nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war. Tliis happy breed of men, this little world, Tliis precious stone set in the silver sea, Wliidi serves it in the office of a wall, Or as a moat defensive to a house Against the envy of less happier lands, Tliis blessed plot, Ms earth, this realm, this England This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings. Henry V’s words before Harfleur are of the same nature;
And you good Yeomen,
Wliose limbs were made in England, show us here
The mettle of your pasture: let us swear
That you are worth your breeding which I doubt not: : For there is none of you so mean and base, That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
Such passages as these would have certainly increased the patriotic fervour of the audience. These history plays were, thus, not only a . product of the patriotic spirit; they were also calculated to infuse patriotic spirit into others. They made a special plea for national unity by showing that foreign aggression was always helped whenever there was internal dissension in the country.
Now those her princes are come home again, Come the three comers of the world in arms, And we shall shock them. Naught shall make us rue,
If England to itself do rest but Due.
(from King John)
A’Mirror for Kings’ :
If Shakespeare is moved by patriotic impulses it does not mean that he represents each and every English king as a hero of impeccable character. In fact, as Dowden suggests, Shakespeare’s kings can be divided into two classes. King John, Richard II, and Henry VI embody the weakness of English kings, whereas Henry IV, Henry V and Richard II are studies of kingly strength. Among themselves these weak and strong kings constitute practical studies of king and kingship. Dowden sums up
Shakespeare’s History Plays / 91
the point well: ”John is the royal criminal, weak in his criminality. Henry VI is the royal saint, weak in his saintliness. The feebleness of Richard II cannot be characterised in a word, he is a graceful sentimental monarch. Richard HI, in the other group, is a royal criminal strong in his crime. Henry IV”, the usurping Bolingbroke, is strong by a fine craft in dealing with events, by resolution and policy, by equal caution and daring. The strength of Henry V is that of plain heroic magnitude, thoroughly sound and substantial, founded upon the eternal verities. Here, then we may recognize the one dominant subject of the histories, viz. how a man may fail and how a man may succeed in attaining a practical mastery of the world.” Shakespeare’s history plays are thus, to borrow the words of Schlegel, a ”Mirror for Kings”. This ”Mirror” will enable any English king to discover his real identity and to correct himself in those respects in which he finds himself lacking in comparison with the past English kings who figure in these plays. Though in an evidently different manner, Shakespeare instructs the English king as Machiavelli had done in his work The Prince. And what can be wiser and more incontrovertible than lesson of history? Their Lesson :- .
Shakespeare’s history plays are in a class apart from bis tragedies and comedies, though sometimes there appears to be a link between them. In Shakespeare’s own times tragedies and history plays were often confused together, but it is clear that the latter, unlike the former, do not fathom the final problems of life and death and the nature of evil. Meredith said that life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel. But Shakespeare’s history plays deal neither with much thought, nor with feelings; their study is action or the absence of it, and the consequences which flow therefrom. Dowden observes in this connexion: The characters in the historical plays are conceived chiefly with reference to action. The world represented in these plays is not so much the world of feeling or thoughts, as the limited world of the practicable-The histories, like the tragedies, are for the reader a school of discipline; but the issues with which they deal are not the infinite issues of life and the feeling which they leave us is that of a wholesome, mundane pity and terror, or a sane and strong mundane satisfaction.” The lessons of Richard II can easily be perceived to be: ”Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.” Sometimes such a lesson as The sins of fathers shall be visited upon the children to the third and fourth generations” is obvious. Mainly however, the histories emphasise the evil consequences of crime, folly, error, and inaction on the part of the king, which plunge the’ country
92 / A History of English Literature
into ruin. Shakespeare’s obvious hero among the English kings is Henry V who is distinguished alike by his valour as by his moral equipoise. His is the philosophy of action-righteous and meaningful action-which leads to prosperity for himself and for his nation. Essays on Kingly Prerogatives :-
Shakespeare’s history plays are,broadly speaking, so many essays on kingly prerogatives. The king is vested with near divine privileges, but he is also saddled with an onerous responsibility which he is called upon to perform for vindicating himself. All along, from King John to Henry VIII, we find kingship fraught with temptations, dangers, and insecurity (the insecurity of life also) Sometimes this kingship is euologised’ to the extent reminiscent of .the doctrine of the Divine Rights of Kings which envisaged a king to be the deputy of God on earth.
Not all the water in the rough rude sea Can wash the balm off from anointed king The breath of worldly men cannot depose This deputy elected by the Lord.
(Rkhardir) Shakespeare’s Fidelity to History :-
A very important question regarding Shakespeare’s history plays is as to how far he has adhered to the historical ”facts” as represented by the Elizabethan chronicle writers like Stowe and Holinshed. Obviously enough, Shakespeare had to depart from a number of facts, or to modify them appropriately, in accordance with his dramatic needs. Historical facts do not always arrange themselve in the form of several well-defined, compact plays as Shakespeare has given us. They have to be manipulated to make them amenable to dramatic treatment. It may amount to some falsification of history or, at least, the imposition of the dramatist’s point of view on the historian’s interpretation of it. In Shakespeare we do meet with quite a few daring historical inaccuracies and many minor ones; but he should not be censured on this score, as he is a dramatist, an artist, and not a historian. If one departs from the known historical facts one is not a good historian, but one may still be a good dramatist. Shakespeare had to reconcile the facts of history with the form of the drama. An unswerving fidelity to historical facts is not to be1 looked for in the work of the dramatist. What he is expected to be true to is the spirit of the age he is representing in his drama aad the ”inner” truth rather than the trappings of history. Thus the dramatist
Shakespeare’s History Plays / 93
can be allowed much more of liberty than the historian. It may be pointed but that Shakespeare docs adhere to much of the truth of history as recognised by his contemporaries. In this respect he is much more responsible than his predecessors and contemporaries like Peele and Greene. Shakespeare dramatised history whereas Peele and Greene went no farther than travestying it (in their ”history plays” James IV and Edward /). It must be pointed out, however, that Marlowe in Edward II is much more accurate in his treatment of history and a much greater artist than Peele and Greene. Marlowe was a worthy predecessor of Shakespeare as a dramatiser of history. The mode of Shakespeare’s treatment of history in his history plays is substantially the same as Marlowe’s in his Edward II. Both of them adhere to the major events as recorded in history and the essential traits of those persons they are dealing with. But the mass of historical facts does not straitjacket them. These facts as much guide them as discipline them. Both of them keep themselves as far as possible within the bounds of the historical truth, but they give themselves allowance to swerve from it whenever the dramatic need urges them to do so. In Shakespeare’s history plays the dead past ranging from 1200 to 1550 comes vivid and breathing with life. Even if he has falsified history a little he has at least vivified it, which no historian could or possible can. Their Composite Character :-
As we have already said, Shakespeare’s history plays are a link between his comedies and tragedies. In fact, they are not only links but plays of composite character including the elements of both comedies and tragedies. History is a vast tragi-comedy ; so are Shakespeare’s history plays. In them Shakespeare does not merely aim at giving a flat picture of history; he rather gives it a new breath and a new life by admitting scenes of low life. As Sir Walter Raleigh observes, ”he ventured to intermix the treatment of high political affairs with familiar pictures of daily life…” He admitted together, to quote the same critic, ”courts and taverns, kings and highwaymen, diplomatic conferences, battles, street brawls, and the humours of low life…He revived dead princes and heroes, and set them in action on a stage crowded with life and manners.” Shakespeare’s sense of crowded and motley-natured humanity was captured with success only by Sir Walter Scott in his historical novels a couple of centuries after him.
94 / A History of English Literature
ELIZABETHAN SONNET Q. 15 Write a short essay on one or the following : (a) Elizabvthan Sonneteers (and five more topics)
(Himachal 1991, Gorakhpur 1983) Or Q. Write a short essay on any one of the following:
Elizabethan Sonnet (and four more topics) (Garhwal
1988, Gorakhpur 1985, Garhwal 1986)
Or
Q, Write on the vogue of the sonnet in the Elizabethan Age.
(Punjab SepU965) Or
Q. Write an illuminating essay on the vogue of the sonnet in the Elizabethan age. Illustrate your answer profusely from the sonnets your may have read.
(Rohilkhand 1989) Or
Q. Write an essay on the vogue of the sonnet in the Elizabethan age. (Punjab 1961)
Or
Q. Give a brief account of the vogue of the sonnet in the Elizabethan age. (Agra 1961)
Q.
0,
Or
Q. Write a critical note on the vogue of the sonnet in Elizabethan England. (Punjab 1958)
Or
Q. Write a brief essay on the vogue of the sonnet in
Elizabethan England. (Agra 1960)
(Companion Question) Write a note on the sonneteers of the sixteenth century. (Agra 1965)
Introduction :-
Like many another literary genre the sonnet in England was imported from abroad. It most probably originated in Italy with Dante who wrote a number of sonnets to his beloved named Beatrice. But the flowering of the sonnet came with Petrarch (1304-74), a generation later. It was Wyatt who introduced the sonnet in England. Though he
Elizabethan Sonnet / 95
wrote much earlier, it was in 1557, a year before Elizabeth was coronated (and some fifteen years after his death),that his sonnets were published in Tottel’s Miscellany. Wyatt’s lead was accepted by Surrey whose sonnets were likewise published after his death, in the Miscellany. Wyatt was much under the spell of his model Petrarch, and out of his thirty-two sonnets, sevente.cn are but adaptations of Petrarch’s. Moreover, most of them follow the Patrarchan pattern; that is, each has two parts-an octave (eight lines) followed by a sestet (six lines). In between the octave and the sestet there is a marked pause indicated on paper by some blank space. With the ninth line comes the volta or the turn of thought. The theught in a Petrarchan sonnet may be compared to a wave which goes on rising and reaches its highest altitude with the eighth line and then starts petering out till it dies at the end. The octave in a Petrarchan sonnet always has the rhymescheme abbaabba, though the sestet may have one of the various patterns such asc dcdc dor cd dee e.Whereas Wyatt mostly adhered to the Petrarchan pattern, Surrey invented a new one for his sonnets, which later was to be adopted by most Elizabethan sonneteers the most prominent of whom was Shakespeare. This pattern came to be termed the Shakespearean pattern. The feature of the Surreyesque pattern is the division of the fourteen lines into four units-three quatrains (four lines) and the ending couplet (two lines). The rhymeschemefolawcdhabab,abab,abab,cc. Both Wyatt and Surrey imitated in their sonnets the conventional thoughts of Petrarch, which rendered them somewhat artificial and insincere. Surrey’s sonnets have a tenderness and grace,occasional lyrical melody, and genuine-looking sentiments which, are absent from Wyatt’s. Moreover, he is easily the better craftsman of the two. However, Wyatt also displays now and then some masculine vigour and disarming simplicity so characteristic of him. All told, his sonnets are, however, much the clumsier. Thomas Watsou :-
fc.Ar? -S3
could do without the pwlXn?;£T”!poeticiwten. lus mistress, real or imna ” (and i Don addresscd ”nomistress, but their M«??AteTZ£ ” ” of them ”
ff£szz
«~-taKSRS£2s2±
96 / A History of English Literature
Wyatt and Surrey. His Hecatompathia was published in 1582, at the time when Sidney was composing his own sequence entitled Astrophel and Stella which was later published in 1591. It is with Sidney’s work that the popular vogue of the sonnet began. The vogue remained in full swing till the end of the sixteenth century. How many thousand sonnets were written between 1591 and 1600 is anybody’s guess, for about two thousand are extant even today: The most prominent among the ”followers” of Sidney were Spenser and Shakespeare. In those years a fresh sonneteering impulse came from France. Wyatt and Surrey had looked towards Petrarch but with Elizabethan sonneteers the Petrarchan influence bad sice died down. Instead,they drew inspiration from the works of the French .sonneteers such as Ronsard (1524-85), Du Bellay (1525-60), and Desportes (1546-1606) who appeared to them as more ”modern” and effective than Petrarch.
Sidney :-
Sidney’s (1554-86) most important work was his sonnet sequence Astrophel and Stella which appeared in 1591. 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 own 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 had been engaged to Sidney when she was about fourteen, but was later married off by her father to one Lord Rich in
1581. This upset Sidney quite considerably, and he poured out the agony of his 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 hundred and eight sonnets .which as Astrophel and Stella were published posthumously in 1591.
Sidney’s sentiments in his sonnet sequence are partly real and partly conventional. Some critics have emphasised then- genuine nature. For instance, G.H. Mair asserts that Sidney’s sonnets ”mark an epoch” as ”they are the first direct expression in English literature of an intimate and personal experience struck off in the white heat of passion…. they never lose the one 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 artifical some of them may seem it is certain that at least then- ground work was provided by genuine autobiographical experience. In the very first sonnet of the
n
)
1
n
H
Elizabethan Sonnet / 97
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 instances where he seems to be writing after the conventional Petrarchan or Ronasardian 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,” expressions after the Petrarchan manner as well as extravagant and patently ”counterfeit” imagery. Even so, in the description of feelings and sentiments there is often a vividness with minuteness which superbly impresses upon the 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, ”fullt 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 moon had to be addressed as Cynthia or Diana.
Formally considered,Sidney’s sonnets are different from both the Shakespearean and Petrarchan kind. He does not always adhere to the same pattern. In most of his sonnets the rhyme-scheme is a b b a’, a b b a, cdcdee , but in a few ilisa b a b instead of the Petrarchan abb a. However, their one constant feature is that they end on a couplet as Shakespearean sonnets do.
Minor Sonneteers :-
Sidney’s works opened the floodgates of sonneteering in England. We hardly meet with a poet of the fifteen-nineties who did not try his hand at this popular genre and who took rest before producing sonnet sequence addressed to a mistress, real or imaginary. The first to follow was Samuel Daniel with his Delia (1592) dedicated to Lady Pembroke. His verses are quite smooth, though the rhymes are sometimes bad. He always used the Shakespearean pattern. Daniel’s worst fault is his prolixity. He himself closes his last sonnet with the very telltale line.’.- / say no more, I fear I said too much.
Henry Constable’s Diana followed closely in 1592. He is only Occasionally graceful, for what he writes is often marred by fantastic
98 / A History of English Literature
,; .( – . -,’ t
conceits. In 1593 followed Watson’s Tears of Fancy which is cold, though it displays much technical skill. Parthenophil and Parthenophe by Barnabe Barnes, Licia by Giles Fletcher, and Phyllis by Thomas Lodge were some other sonnet sequences published in this period. These works are good, and some of them even excellent in patches. Of these sonneteers Fletcher is the smoothest and the most intelligible. Barnes is forceful and copious but harsh and indiscreet in his diction. In 1594 followed William Percy Coelia, written after Barnes, but without his vigour. An anonymous sequence Zepheria followed. But Drayton’s Idea was vastly superior to it. Drayton was quite smooth and interesting, but he failed to exhibit the depth and sincerity of Sidney, In 1595 appeared Spenser’s Amoretti and Chapman’s metaphysical sequence, A Coronet for His Mistress Philosophy. Shakespeare had also perhaps written his sonnets in and about 1595, though they saw publication only after a number of years. In 15 and 1597 appeared some collections of young men who wrote after the fashion of the times. Among them may be mentioned Bartholomew Griffin’s Fidessa, Richard Lynch’s Diella, and William Smith’s Chloris. Spenser :-
We now pi opose to discuss the work of Spenser and Shakespeare who, with Sidney, are the most important sonneteers of the Elizebethan age. Spenser’s Amoretti (1595) is a collection of eighty-eight sonnets in which he narrates the story of his wooing of Elizabeth Boyle, his initial frustration, and his final success culminating in their marriage, which ,is exquisitely celebrated in his wedding hymn Epitlialamion. The Amoretti sonnets show a consistent level of craftsmanship though the profound and stirring intensity of Drayton’s ”Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part” and Sidney’s” Leave me, O love which readiest but to dust” is absent from them. However, the sonnets are quite autobiographical in nature and based more or less on the actual experiences of the poet. The element of convention is, however, also quite obvious. Many of the lover’s (Spenser’s) sigh are of the Patrarchan brand, and the proud and disdainful attitude of the cruel mistress is a pretty traditional feature. And then there are the traditional conceits and extravagances of imagery so dear even to Sidney. Nevertheless, the Amoretti sonnets constitute the only major work of Spenser in which he gives utterance to his personal sentiments without having a recourse to the ”dark conceit” –allegory. With respect to the content, Spenser’s sonnet sequence can be divided into two unequal parts:
(i) Sonnets 1-62 deal with the unrequited love of the poet who ”sighing b”Vc a furnace” writes mostly in the traditional manner.
Elizabethan Sonnet / 99
(ii) Sonnets 63-84 deal with the lovers happiness. The maidenly bashfulness of the mistress is gone and she surrenders herself happily to the ardent lover. In no. 64 he records the first kiss and in no. 67 describes himself as a hunter who after a toilsome pursuit has succeeded in securing his quarry, which is, of course, the mistress herself who at the approach of the hunter
Sought not to fly but fearless still did bide,
Till I in hand her yet half trembling took,
And with her own good will her firmly tied;
Strange thing, me seem ’d to see a beast so wild
So goodly won, with her own will beguil’d.. The usual, though not invariable.rhyme-scheme of Spenser’s sonnets is abab,bcbc,cdcd,ee which came to be known later as the Spenserian pattern. It will be seen that the three quatrains are very deftly interlinked through rhyme. The last rhyme of the first quatrain is used in the first line of the second and the last rhyme of second quatrain is likewise used in the first line of the third. The result is a complicated rhyme- pattern with a harmonious orchestral effect which is so characteristic of Spenser’s poetry, an exquisite metrical artist as he is.
Shakespeare :-
Shakespeare’s sonnets have proved an attractive bone for the generation after generation of critics to gnaw at. These sonnets, some one hundred and fifty-four in number, were first published in a body in 1609’, though there is clear evidence that they were in circulation as early as 1598 and were written most probably in 1595-96. The first one hundred and twenty-six sonnets are addressed to a young and handsome man who has been variously interpreted as the Earl of Southampton and William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. The next twenty-six sonnets are addressed to a ”dark” and wanton lady who betrays the poet for the young man. Albert C.Baugh in A Literary History of England observes: ”Of all the Elizabethan sonnet sequences Shakespeare’s is the least typical, it celebrates not the idealized love of an idealized mistress but the affection of an older man for a gilded and wayward youth.” In his sonnets Shakespeare frequently bewails his anguish and misfortunes. He feels to be an outcast, the young patron starts liking a rival poet, and the poet’s mistress deserts him for the young man. In expressing his anguish Shakespeare lends his verses a rare glow of lyrical melody and meditative energy which strike one as
V. 1 –
100 / A History of English Literature
coming from a heart which really feels what it articulates, Shakespeare is very exasperatingly impersonal in his dramatic works, but in the sonnets, he, to use ihc words of Wordsworth, ”unlocked his heart”. There seems to be more of genuineness and less of convention in his sonnets. Even then, we cannot accept Wordsworth’s sweeping statement. ”Some of the sonnets are,” to quote Albert C.Baugh, ”obstinately private and elusive, and some are conceits, exercises in reaching old conclusions by new ways. But the happiest of them reach the old conclusions through series of metaphors of incomparable suggestive power. The style….is largely free from the ingenuities of the early plays and from the dense figurativeriess of the later”. In spite of the agonised tone and the rather lugubrious atmosphere of the sonnets, they end on an optimistic note, for there is the triumphant affirmation of the transcendence of love (the poet’s love for his patron). Thus even in the sonnets, as elsewhere, we are convinced of Shakespeare’s insistent sanity of outfook.
Formally, Shakespeare’s sonnets follow the rhyme-scheme ab ab, cdcd,cfef, gg, which was first used by Surrey and which was the most popular among Elizabethan sonneteers. One characteristic of Shakespeare’s sonnets is that the final couplet, far from coming as the crescendo, comes with the feebleness of almost on afterthought or a parenthetic remark-generally affirming his love for the young man. ;
/ ELIZABETHAN LYRIC
Q.I6. Write a short essay on lyrical poetry in the Elizabethan age. (Punjab 1962)
Or Q. Trace the development of any one of the following:
(a) Lyric poetry in the sixteenth century (and two more topics) (Agra 1956)
Or Q. Write h ihort essay on the Elizabethan lyric. (Agra 1966)
Or
Q. Write a note on the lyrical poetry of the Elizabethan age. (Gorakhpur 1984)
Or
Q. Give an account of the lyrical poetry in the Elizabethan
age. (Robilkhand 1978)
Q-
Q. Q.
Q-
»
Elizabethan Lyric/tOl
Introduction :~
Next to drama, lyrical poetry was the most popular, significant, and representative literary genre of the Elizabethan age. In the sixteenth century, particularly in the last two decades, there was a tremendous outburst of lyrical expression and the whole air was thick with ear-filling melodies of the songsters of the age. ”England, Merry England”, in Legouis’ words, ”was a nest of singing birds.” The generation of the lyrical spirit in the Elizabethan England may be explained by reference to the break which,consequent upon the Renaissance, England registered with the murky Middle Ages, a period too steeped in religious spirit to hold a brief for that passionate abandon which is the soul of lyricism. The Elizabethans felt themselves to be free, and this sense of freedom found a suitable medium in the writing of songs and lyrics which did not require much of discipline, either emotional or artistic. The Elizabethans thought intensely, lived intensely, and wrote intensely. Intensity was the thing. And this intensity has, naturally enough, a recourse to lyricism. Moreover, there were Italian and French precedents not to be discredited in an age which gloated in copying the foreign modes in writing as well as behaving. Some Italian and French strains are easily discernible in the rich orchestration of Elizabethan lyrical poetry. Lyrics and songs became the order of the day. Legouis observes: ”And the song was everywhere, sung in halls and parlours and trolled along the roads. It was in towns and in the country, on the stage and in romances. It filled whole collections; some poets specialized in it…England, destitute of the plastic arts, became the impassioned lover of song.”
Variety of Theine and IVeatment :-
The lyrical impulse of the Elizabethans found expression in a great variety of poetic forms. Some of these forms are the pastoral iyric, sonnet and sonnet sequence, the formal ode, epithalamion, madrigal, conzone. roundelay, catch, and lyrical elegy or the dirge. Thus Elizabethan lyricists arrogated to themselves a great deal of freedom aoth in the matter of theme and treatment. On the one hand some lyrics and songs, such as those of Robert Southwell, are steeped in deep religious sentiments, and on the other hand, there are some others which are f”-yikly sensuous and even heavy with erotic Italianism which was in the Elizabethan air; and a sight of which is provided by such poems as Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis and Marlowe’s Hero and Leander, and even more by Mansion’s Pifftwlion and Drayton’s The Barons’ War. The lyricists dealt with such themes as love, war,
102 / A History of English Literature
patriotism, and so on, but most of all, love. In spite of all this thematic variety, one thing was common in all the songs and lyrics; and that was the lightness of touch giving them freshness and charming simplicity. They are never, to quote a critic, ”overweighted with meaning, nor at their best are they overcharged with convention or with ornament.” ’ Collections of Lyrical Verse-’Song Books” :-
In the sixteenth century there was a raging vogue for the collections of lyrical verse which were commonly known as ”song books”. These collections were publications of men of unrefined and undiscr iminating taste. The exquisite flowers of great lyrical genius were strung in these collections along with the indifferent productions of very inferior minds. Nevertheless, these collections were much more popular than the works of individual authors separately published. The vogue of the song book started in 1557 with the appearance of Tottel’s Miscellany which comprised chiefly the songs and sonnets of Wyatt and Surrey. The last of the famous collections was Davidson’s Poetical Rapsody which appeared in 1602. In between 1557 and 1602 there flowed an uninterrupted torrent of such song books. There was not a single year which did not see the publication of one or other of such collections of lyrical verse. Even to name these collections would be a lengthy.task. Many of them appeared under the titles instinct with a kind of poetry of their own. Let us iust name a few of the mostimportant collections. They are.
; if!? . – .
w (i) The Paradise of Dainty Devices, 1576.
(ii) A Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant Inventions, 1578.
(Hi) A Handful of Pleasant Delimits, 1584.
(iv) The Phoenix Nest, 1593.
(v) The Passionate Pilffim. 1599.
(vi) England’s Helicon 1600.
(vii) England’s Parnassus 1600.
(via) Belvedere 1600.
As we have already said, the contents of these collections are a curiously mixed stuff. As Legouis says, ”exquisite poems are elbowed by others which are mediocre or even deplorable; the worst rhymsters are associated with the true poets”. TheJXiinty Devices, which included contributions from some thirty writers, proved very popular and ran into no fewer than ten editions. Far from what the tide may lead one to expect, the poems included in it are marked by perfect sobriety. The
Elizabethan Lyric /103
songs are relatively few, and all of them prefectly serious. Tlie Phoenix Nest, according to the title, contains, ”the most rare and refined works of noblemen, worthy knights, gallant gentlemen, masters of art, and brave scholars.” These authors do not lend themselves to identification, but it is certain that almost all of them were men of Oxford. England’s
Helicon contained one hundred and fifty poems, some out of which are, according to Tucker Brooke, ”the finest lyrics that had appeared from Tottel’s Miscellany to Shakespeare.” As regards England’s Parnassus the same critic avers that ”its selections are neither made with taste nor classified with care. The lover of poetry cannot read it and the scholar cannot rely upon it, but neither can safely disregard it.” A Poetical Rhapsody contained forty poems by Francis Davidson, eighteen by his brother Walter and sixty-five by ”Anomos” who has not yet been identified, and some lyrics by Sidney, Campion, Constable, and others. The importance of The Passionate Pilgrim is that in it were for thefst time published some of the sonnets of Shakespeare which were then in private circulation atd were to be printed in a body only in 1609.
Some Lyricists Considered :-
To enter into a more than thumb-nail treatment.of the work of even the more important of Elizabethan lyricists is a task quite prohibitive in magnitude. No Elizabethan with even the slightest claim to poetic inspiration, or courtly refmement,’or even plain cleverness, could do without producing at least a few songs and lyrics. Let us cast a hurried glance at the most prominent of Elizabethan lyricists.
Spenser inserted some lovely songs in his Shepherd’s Calender. However, he is too sophisticated and elaborate, so that some of these songs have almost the appearance of odes. Sidney’s songs and lyrics are much more airy. The eleven songs which he inserted among the one hundred and eight sonnets ofAstrophel and Stella are the best of their kind, and are vastly superior to the songs he introduced in Arcadia, most probably because they have the genuineness and intensity of his personal feeling at their core. Some of Sidney’s most famous and most delightful songs are those with the following refrains: To you. to you, all song of praise in due;
Only Joy! Now here you are; and
Who is that tha dark night?
Marlowe, the wielder of ”the mighty line”, who in Tamburlaine Hed” the audience ”to the stately tent of war” to thrill them with ”the high astounding terms of Tamburlaine’s speech, ”laid”, in the words of Legouis, ”his sonorous trumpet aside one day to play a pastoral air on
104 / A History of English Literature
a reed pipe. He sang the shepherd’s call to the shepherdess, ’Come, live with me and be my love ” Raleigh came out with the song of the shepherdess:
If all the world and love were young. Lyrics and Music :
All these songs and lyrics were full of harmony and had the capability of being set to music. We have already referred to some collections of lyrical verse which were very popular among Elizabethan readers. There were other collections, too, and equally popular, which included both verses and music. Tucker Brooke maintains: ”Much ot the finest Elizabethan lyric [is] found in the collections that the musicians made for household singing, for the English musicians in this period were, like the poets, the greatest in Europe.” Among these musicians-cum-song- writers the most prominent were William Byrd, Nichols Yonge, John Dowland, and Thomas Campion. Byrd is rather heavy and didactic. Yonge’s songs are too obviously imitations of Italian airs. Dowland was credited with a ”heavenly touch upon the lute”, and though he was decidedly a better lutanist than poet yet some of his songs are quite interesting.
Campion as a poet is much better than Dowland. And though he was a doctor of medicine by profession who sought entertainment in music yet he was, as Legouis says, ”a true poet”. He wrote a few masques which contained songs and lyrics. Campion as a lyricist is much airy and fresh. Compton-Rickett observes: ”Campion’s songs are light as thistledown, and float away in the air.”
The Dramatists :-
Some of the best of Elizabethan songs and lyrics are to be found in plays of the age. It. was a practice with playwrights then, and it continued till the Restoration, to insert quite frequently songs and lyrics in their works. And though these songs and lyrics have a contextual significance and appropriateness yet many of them can be enjoyed and appreciated by themselves too. Lyl/s famous songs are Cupid and my Campaspe played and O yes, O yes, if any maid. George Peele’s Arraigment of Paris, has some wonderfully lovely songs. So are the cradle-songs in Greene’s Menaphon, Weep not, my wanton and the madrigal in Lodge’s Rosalinde:
Love in my bosome like a bee
Doth suck his sweet:
Now with his wings he plays with me,
Elizabethan Lyric 7105
Now with his feet.
Within my eyes he makes his nest,
His bed amidst my tender breast.
Shakespeare’s songs are in a class apart. They are so different thematically from one another that they defy all classification.But all of them are exquisitely fresh and full of first-hand impressions of nature. Most of them fit in with the scenes in which they are recited and cannot be properly wrenched out of their context. Their tone and content are alike appropriate to the occasion. Consider, for instance,the jeeringly ironical lines of the fool in King Lear, the incantations of the witches in Macbeth, the carousing songs of lago in Othello, and in the same play, Desdemona’s pathetic willow song. The versification of Shakespeare’s songs is as varied as their content, and in all cases is fitted to the mood of the intended speaker with a rare ingenuity and insight.
Shakespeare’s contemporaries do not show the same skill and imagination in the writing of songs and lyrics for their plays. But some successful attempts may here be mentioned :
Dekker’s Cold’s the wind and
Art thoit poor;
Beaumont and Fletcher’s Lay a garland on my hearse:
Hence all your vain delights,nnd _v Drink today and drown all sorrow.
Webster’s ” Call for the robin redbreast; and finally,
Ben Jonson’s … Come, my Cela, let us prove and
Drink to me only with thine eyes (which does not, however, occur in a play, but his collection entitled Underwoods)
Sonnets and Sonneteers :-
The sonnet is a very disciplined form of lyrical poetry. It has to have fourteen lines’arranged in one of the various rhyme- patterns, and each line is to be, more or less, an iambic pentameter. The sonnet had its origin around the fourteenth century in Italy from where it was imported into England by Wyatt who modelled his own sonnets closely on the pattern used by the Italian poet, Petrarch.The amorous and idealistic, if not artificial, sentiments expressed by Petrarch in his sonnets were also aped by Wyatt. Surrey also wrote sonnets, but he employed another kind of rhyme-scheme which came later to be called the Shakespearean pattern, after the name of Shakespeare who also
106 / A History of English Literature
adhered to it in his sonnets. Whereas Petrarch and Wyatt divided the sonnet into two parts~an octave (eight lines) and a sestet (six lines) mutually separated by a pause-Surrey and Shakespeare divided the sonnet into four parts-three quatrains (four lines each) and the ending couplet. The Petrarchan octave had the rhyme-scheme abb a, abb a, and the sestet, one of the many. The Shakespearean sonnet has the rhyme-scheme ababcdcdefefgg. Spenser tried a somewhat different pattern –ababbcbccdcdee. Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare were the most prominent among Elizabethan sonneteers. Their sonnet sequences are combinations of autobiographically genuine sentiment and convention. There were many other sonneteers, too. About two thousand of the sonnets written in the last two decades of the sixteenth century are extant even today.
.’;… SPENSER-THE POETS’ POET
Q. 17. Why has Spenser been called the poets’poet’?
(Punjab 1957) Or Q. Why is Spenser called the Poet’s Poet? (Agra 1970)
Or
Q. What are various implications of the remark that Spenser is the poet’s poet ? (Rohilkhand 1983)
Or
Q. Consider the appropriateness of calling Spenser ”the poet’s poet” (Delhi 1959)
Or
Q. Estimate the place of Spenser in the history of English poetry. (Punjab 1956)
Or
Q. Spenser has been called the ’poets’ poet Elucidate and comment on this dictum. (Punjab Sept 1955)
Or
Q. Spenser has been called ”the poets’ poet” Comment on this dictum. (Punjab 1976)
Introduction :-
Spenser’s tombstone proclaims him to be ”the Prince of Poets in his Time.” The truth will not be violated if we proclaim him to be ”the
Spenser – The Poet’s Poet /107
Prince of Poets ofall Times The prince of essayists, Charles Lamb, appropriately designated the prince of poets, Edmund Spenser, ”the poets’ poet.” In spite of what some modern Zoiluses may say, Spenser’s work strikes us as an exquisite embodiment of the ultimate in poetic excellence which has been the rather mirage-like goal of all poetical endeavour, beckoning all the generations of English poets after Spenser as an example and ideal. Whatever may be the other faults of Spenser, there is no gainsaying the fact that there is no dearth of the poetic in him. And the poetic faculty transforms, like the Philosopher’s Stone or a magic wand, all the dross that it touches into the pure gold of genuine poetry. How intensely he influenced the succeeding poets and how widely he excited imitation are common knowledge for a student of English literary history:
Spenser through the Ages :-
That Spenser’s contemporaries hailed him as the greatest of the poets of their age, we have mentioned above. He was often enthusiastically called ”the New Poet.” His eclogues (in 77t? Shepherd’s Calender) and his epic The Faerie Queene earned him the very proud title of ”the English Virgil.” The reputation that he gained among his contemporary poets was perpetuated over the ages after him by a very large number of poets who acknowledge him as their master and model. Spenser’s poetic works provided the poets of all schools practical lessons in the writing of excellent poetry. In no age was Spenser out of vogue. Donne’s reputation suffered a complete eclipse in the eighteenth century, the century of Pope, and Pope’s own reputation fell in the nineteenth, but Spenser’s reputation has remained constant like the lodestar which twinkles but does not fade. Of course, in the early eighteenth century, ”the age of prose and reason,” Spenser went somewhat out of vogue, but towards the middle of the century he became a source of inspiration for the poets like Croxhall and many others. The great Dr. Johnson looked with dismay and disapproval at the contemporary cult of imitating Spenser, but he could do nothing to stem the popular tide in spite of his being the arbiter of contemporary taste. Spenser was, indeed, as James Reeves says, ”at no time out of fashion.” He was, to quote the same critic, ”a copious source of inspiration to other poets for three centuries.”
It must be noted that, unlike Chuacer’s influence on his immediate successors, Spenser’s influence on his immediate succesors was not so marked. Chaucer inspired a large number of ”Chaucerians” – both in England and Scotland-whose cherished aim was to write like their
1. Zoilus was a malignant and captious critic who attacked Homer pedantically anil ungenerously.
108 / X History of English Literature
master or, even,”father” (as Lydgate called him). Spenser, ”the second father of English poetry,” did not generate such a tremendously imitative tendency. The reason for it was the rise and extreme popularization of the drama in the Elizabethan age. Most of the literary geniuses up to about twenty years after the death of Spenser tried their hand at the writing of the drama–the most popular and ”paying” literary genre of their age. But later on, even a poet of Milton’s stature acknowledged him to be his original, and in // fenseroso he referred to him quite reverently as a poet who sang Of tourneys, and of trophies hung, Of forests and enchantments drear, Where more is meant than meets the ear.
Further, in Areopagitica he extolled him as ”our sage and serious Spenser.” Cowley tells us how by reading a copy of Spenser iying in his mother’s parlour he became a poet at the age of twelve. Dryden proclaimed him as one of his two models-the other one being the ”smooth Waller.” Even in the eighteenth century we find the great Pope himself praising Spenser and acknowledging his debt to The Shepherd’s Calendar in the writing of his own Pastorals. Addison, however, in his Account of the Greatest English Poets dismissed The Faerie Queene as a ”mystic tale” which
Can charm an understanding age no more.
But it must be remembered that Addison’s judgement of Spenser was as wanting in maturity as his summary dismissal of Chaucer as a rude barbarian,
Wlio tries to make his readers laugh in vain.
Addison wrote this critical-in fact, ”uncritical” -poem when he was a callow youth, and he was sensible enough in his years of maturity to dissociate himself from his patently irresponsible judgements. Steele knew better when he observed in a Spectator that Spenser’s ”numbers” were ”exquisite.” In the later years of the eighteenth century, with the birth of a more imaginative spirit, Spenser came to be appreciated with a far keener sensitivity. Thomson and Shenstone not only caught a spark of the Spenserian flame but also used the Spenserian stanza to register a prosodic break with the heroic couplet of the Popean schoolthe former in his Castle of Indolence and the latter in his Schoolmistress. To discuss the influence of Spenser on the early nineteenth- century poets-Wordsworth, Shelley, Coleridge and Keats-will require a sizable volume. Keats in Tiie Eve of St. Agnes, Scon in the Vision of Don Roderick, Shelley in The Revolt of Islam, and Byron in his CHUde //oroWpjolonged the Spenserian note, though the last named was alien / v\
/
Spenser – The Poet’s Poet /109
lo the Spenserian spirit, and once remarked :1 can make nothing of him.” Later, in the Victorian age we find Spenser exerting a profound influence on Tennyson, becoming the idol of Charles Doughty, and even being re-echoed in the ”Spenserian” cadences of the poems of Robert Bridges. Among modern poets W B. Yeats comes nearest to him.
Spenser’s Equipment as a Poet :–
Why and how Spenser inspired and influenced such a large number of poets can be explained by pointing out that he had what every poet aspires to have-a fertile, teeming imagination wedded to exquisite craftsmanship. Some poets have too powerful an imagination but a poor degree of craftsmanship to mould it into artistic patterns of poetry. Blake Is a representative example of such a poet whose imagination runs away unbridled, by artistic control. Some other poets have a rather unproductive imagination even though they are wonderful craftsmen. Spenser is one of the ideal poets like Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, and Milton who have a fertile imagination which is perfectly moulded into poetry by their uncanny sense of pattern and architectonics, in addition to their mastery of the poetic idiom with all its suggestiveness. Spenser was fully equipped a poet. He was as learned as Milton. As a ”child” of the Renaissance, he was well read into the classics which were in his age beginning to exercise a hold on scholars and men of letters. He was an M.A. from Cambridge University and well grounded in the traditions of Greek and Latin poetry as also the poetry of Renaissance Italy and France. Homer, Virgil, and Ovid on the one hand, and Tasso, Ariosto, Petrarch, Ronsard, and du Bellay on the other, were at his finger-tips. In his poetic works he freely drew upon them with the result that there grew a number of similarities, stylistic as well as thematic, between his own works and the works of the above-named masters before him. And that is not all. Spenser was well-versed even in the philosophers-Plato and Aristotle-out of whom the former exercised a strong hold upon his mind. In his Four Hymns and elsewhere, he effectively and unmistakably gives expression to his Platonism which believes that we should ascend from a specific embodiment of beauty to the idea of beauty itself. This idea of beauty is divine, and its contemplation something religious in nature. Nor was Spenser ignorant of the medieval lore. Though he disapproved medieval patterns of thought yet he loved to breathe the medieval air with all its fairy-land tints of chivalry, knight errantry, religious fervour plus all its superstitions and backwardness. He captured this air exquisitely in The Faerie Queene. Then he was greatly influenced by the Reformation, too, and in his work we are not unconscious of his
110 / A History of English Literature
puritanic temper. Thus he exhibited a rarely synthesizing temper and mind which is the hall mark of every poet who aspires for universal fame. With all his poetic equipment it was natural for him to be the envy of all poets. He wrote for the cultivated and the initiated, and not what in Europe and America are called ”the common people” and in India ”the masses”. He was-the poets’ poet and not the people’s poet, in any sense, Marxian or otherwise. Spenser’s Poetic Genius :-
But all of Spenser’s learning and scholarly equipment would have been of no avail if he did not have the all-important poetic impulse which was necessary to electrify it into poetry. Even a huge dump of fuel fails to give heat without the all-important spark. Spenser had this spark. Even captious Addison admitted that Spenser was ”warm’d with poetic rage.” This poetic rage, genius, or impulse is hard.to define, but it unmistakably shows itself in every page and every line of Spenser’s works. Spenser may be a prodigiously learned man, but what matters most is his poetic genius. ”The Faerie Queerie, says W.P. Ker, ”is the truest sort of poetry in which the poetic genius declares itself most truly, as distinct from other kinds of genius.” Leigh Hunt likewise observes: Take him in short for what he is, whether greater or less than his fellows, the poetic faculty is so abundantly and beautifully predominant in him above every other.” W.L.Renwick appropriately remarks: ”Beyond question, what moved Spenser to write was a genuine poetic impulse….He sang because he must; not only because
people listened… He sang not because he was learned or an intense
votary of the Reformation or the Renaissance, but because his imagination longed for outward embodiment, because it must give birth to its divine conceptions, because it insisted on relief and deliverance, in other words, Spenser’s poetry is a true incarnation of a poetical spirit, not the elaborate effort of a partisan,literary, political, religious.” As is said about Shelley, Spenser exhales verses as a flower exhales fragrance. He cannot help it.
W. L. Renwick further points out that even when Speaser sometimes uses material which is prosaic enough he transforms it into true poetry. He refers in this connexion to the description of the House of Alma in Book II of Tlie Faerie Queene and the versification of Geoffrey of MonmouthsH«fwy of the Britons in the following canto and observes that whatever be the difficulties in Spenser’s path, ”he never ceases to be a poet.” He always flies and never creeps or even walks. Nobody has ever posed the question-as was done too openly and too repeatedly in the case of Pope-whether he is a poet or not. He is not only a poet,
’Xr
Spenser – The Poet’s Poet /111
a great poet, but the poets’ poet. ”Of all the poets”, observes Hazlitt, ”he is the most poetical.” He offers in this work the quintessence of poetic lushness. Spenser’s Deft Craftsmanship :-
Add to Spenser’s vigorous poetic impulse his virtuosity and sureness of touch as a craftsman. He has a perfect mastery over his medium-words. He does whatever he likes with words and makes them responsive to alt sorts of moods and feelings. His poetry has a rare pictorial quality which was sought to be imitated by poets like Keats, Swinburne, Tennyson, and many more. He was, as Legouis so well puts it, a painter who never held a brush. With equal justice we may remark that he was a musician who never wielded a musical instrument. The English language, tattered and jagged as it had become by the awkward handling of the fifteenth-century poets like Lydgate and Skelton, in Spenser’s hands not only regained the harmony of Chaucer’s numbers, but .vastly added to its musical quality, in which it was previously much below Italian and French. ”He seemed able,” writes Legouis, ”to tune English verse which had been so long rebellious, to the natural tones of his voice. For him language ceased to be refractory.” It may be true that, as Ben Jonson complained, Spenser wrote no language. But whatever he wrote bespeaks a highly poetic spirit subjected to the process of exquisite craftsmanship which has always remained with the poets of all ages a thing of professional interest and emulation. It is in this sense, too, that Spenser can be called the poets’ poet.
Spenser’s Importance :-
Spenser appears as a source of inspiration for the succeeding poets because through his example he amply showed that the heights were within reach of English poetry, and he did actually make his poetry reach them. In his age-the age of the Renaissance–before he started writing, England had to show nothing to compare with the poetry of the Italian Renaissance poets such as Ariosto, Tasso, and Petrach, and the French Renaissance poets like Ronsard and du Bellay. By his poetic effort Spenser proved that, to quote Renwick, ”modern England was capable of poetry as great as that of any other age and that she had her share of poetic power, of art and learning.” In his pastoralism (The Shepherd’s Calendar) he challenges comparison with the ancient Theocritus and Virgil, in his sonneteering’with Petrarch and Ronsard, in his epic-writing Tasso and Ariosto and in his imaginative fertility and craftsmanship with any poet ancient or modern. He taught his countrymen once and for all not to look for poetic gems to Italy or
112 / A History of English Literature
France but to their own country, for it had come after all to have a great poet.the poets’ poet!
THE INFLUENCE OF THE RENAISSANCE, THE
REFORMATION, AND THE MIDDLE AGES ON
SPENSER
Q.I8. Trace the elements peculiar to the Renaissance, the Refor mation, and the Middle Ages on the work of Spenser.
(Companion Questions)
Q. Comment on the statement: ’Spenser is at once the child of the Ranaissance and the Reformation’.
(Punjal) Sept. 1976)
Q. Write a note on anv one of the following: (e) .Spenser as a child of the Renaissance (and three more topics), (Agra 1962) Q. Discuss the influence of Renaissance on Spenser’s poetry.
’Punjab 1955)
Q. ; Write a note on Spenser as a child of the classical Renaissance. (Agra 1965)
Q. Write a note on the blending in Spenser of the medieval and Elizabethan elements of thought and poetry.
(Agra 1964)
Q. ’Spenser is at once the child of the Renaissance and the Reformation.’ Comment.
Introduction :-
What Chaucer was to the England of the late fourteenth century, Spenser was to that of the late sixteenth century. In his work he has completely and effectively captured the spirit of the age. The late sixteenth century was a period known appropriately as that of the efflorescence of the Renaissance in England. Simultaneously, it was the age when England came under the full impact of the Reformation which had started in the early pan of the sixteenth century. In the age of Spenser the spirit of the Renaissance as also the Reformation was abroad, and nobody could keep himself untinctured by it. Spenser’s works are imbued with this twin spirit. But though Spenser kept pace with the changing times he sometimes also shows evidence of looking to the past-the fairyland of the Middle Ages.Consequently, we find him not only faithfully recording the impact of the Renaissance and
H
I
!H
c/o i
N-i (
The Influences on Spenser / 113
the Reformation but at o allowing a gust of the medieval wind to blow across his pages. He is at once a child of the Renaissance and the Reformation even though there are some touches of medievalism in his poetry as well as temper. Let us now try to bring out, one after the other,J the elements peculiar to the Renaissance, the Reformation,and theJ Middle Ages in the work of Spenser. Let us start with the Renaissance:’: THE RENAISSANCE
I he Spirit of the Age :- ,,,
The Renaissance (etymologically, re-birth) which started in1 Italy (and somewhat later, in France) as early, as the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries came to have its full impact on England only some-I time in the middle of the sixteenth. Basically, the arrival of the Renais- sance signalised a revival of interest in ancient Greek and Roman ’ literature and learning. But as the Renaissance arrived in England via} Italy (and to some extent, France), it came after acquiring a particular complexion associated with the Italy of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Not only were the ancient Greek and Roman men of letters f and philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, Homer, and Virgil hailed as-” guides and models by the English but also the Italian poets and philosophers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, like Ariostor:’) Petrarch, lasso, and Machiavelli who themselves had written under the i impact of the ancient masters. By the time the dawn of the Renaissance . arrived in England, it had already become a decadent, if not an,, altogether defunct, force in Italy, Nevertheless, the Renaissance meant»/; in England not only the revival of interest in the Greek and Roman ’» antiquity but also a great deal of respect for the values of Renaissance ; Italy which was characterised, along with an avid love of learning, by,, such features as a reckless spirit of adventure, a taste for pomp and , splendour, a keen appreciation of beauty (generally of the physical „ kind), a kind of ”Machiavellian” egocentricism, and a general love of luxury. Spenser’s work very well captures the spirit of the Italian Renaissance which stirred the life of his age in all its aspects except the sordid Machiavellianism which held such a sinister interest for some of his contemporaries, like the University Wits and Bacon as well as a vast brood of gilded courtiers. The Renaissance elements in Spenser are tempered by the Reformation ideals. Writers :-
Spenser, an M.A. of Cambridge University, was well read in much of the ancient classical literature which had then begun to be commonly known. He borrowed a good deal from the vast treasure of that
114 / A History of English Literature
literature and came to be intimately influenced by a number of ancient poets and philosophers and the writers of Renaissance Italy who themselves had been influenced by these poets and philosophers. He modelled his most important work The Faerie Queene upon the epics of the Greek Homer, the Roman Virgil, and the Italian Ariosto and Tasso. Theocritus and Virgil prompted him to try his hand at the pastoral (Vie Shepherd’s Calendar). The first English writer of the eclogue was Barclay (of the Ship of Fools fame) who flourished in the fifteenth century, but he had based his five eclogues on the work of the Italian poet Mantuanus rather than the great Virgil and Theocritus. Spenser went back to Virgil and wrote what stands in comparison with his eclogues. Then, Spenser looked to Petrarch and his French followers while composing his sonnet sequence Amoretti. Thus in his selection of the literary genres for his use Spenser clearly displays his debt to the ancient Creek and Roman and the modern Italian writers. Moreover, there are some specific echoes of these writers hi his works. ’” For instance, we have a number of Virgilian phrases which, like a good writer, Spenser does not allow to stand out, but submerges into the’4 context In The Faerie Queene Sir Guyon’s voyage to the Bower of Bliss (where his-arch enemy Acrasy is living) is suggested most probably by — M m :„ u«m,,r«e fMassev. but Spenser means by this voyage
what Homer did not. men me ucsvtm. v»«,..-»
suggested by the sixth book of Virgil’s Aeneid. Tasso’s Armida gave Spenser some obvious hints for his description of Acrasy and her terrible powers. Ariosto, the writer of the first romantic epic in the ,f history of world literature (Orlando Furioso), set before Spenser a… living example of the romantic love of adventure and unbounded activity which he was to imitate in The’Faerie Queene. Plato and Aristotle :-
, The great Greek philosophers, Plato and his disciple Aristotle, exerted a strong hold on Spenser’s intellectual and moral temper, tn his four Hymns Spenser gives a poetic utterance to the Platonic conception of Love and Beauty. Plato taught that all material beauty (such as the beauty of the human body) is a shadow as weU as a symbol of the Ideal Beauty which is divine. A specific embodiment of beauty should be used for ascending to the contemplation of the abstract Idea of Beauty. .The abstract Idea is divine, and the contemplation of the Idea is a religious activity. Echoing the true Platonic spirit, Spenser observes in the Hymn tn Honour of Beauty that ”a comely corpse, with beauty faur endowed” is the house of a ”beauteous soul”
The Influences on Spenser / 115
Fit to receive the seed of virtue strewedFor all that fair is, is by nature good.
Spenser well became a spokesman of the neo-Platonism of the Renaissance.
Aristotle, too, was a philosopher of abiding interest for Spenser. He seems to have effectively taught Spenser the doctrine of the golden mean which finds an effective embodiment in Guyon who stands for Temperance. The very groundplan of The Faerie Queene, which is to celebrate twelve cardinal virtues, is perhaps suggested by Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics. If it is nbt Aristotle himself, it must have been some of his very numerous commentators who seems to have enumerated the twelve virtues each of which was to be dealt with in one of the twelve projected books of The Faerie Queene. Spenser’s Prince Arthur is described as the image of a brave knight, perfected in the, twelve private moral virtues, as Aristotle hath devised.” Thus”, writes”;’, a critic,” Spenser follows the great formative work of Elizabethan and later English culture, the Nichomachean Ethics.” ?
Classical Mythology :- ..
Another Renaissance feature of Spenser’s work is his employment’ of classical mythology for ornament and illustration. Being a devout Christian he did not believe at all in the multiplicity of pagan deities, but, like Shakespeare, Marlowe, Lyly, and almost all the rest of his contemporaries, he was attracted by classical mythology which he freely drew upon in his works. Very like Milton he uses his profound and vast knowledge of this mythology even when his sincere aim is to drive home a Christian moral. At any rate, the frequent references to classical mythology give the language a veneer of richness and exoticism which was so much sought after by the English writers of the Renaissance.
Emphasis on Self-culture :-
A new creed of humanism arrived with the Renaissance in England. It taught that the universe was not, as the Middle Ages had believed, theocentric (that is, centred in God), but homocentric (that is, centred in man). Much emphasis came to be laid upon man,human life, the material world, and man’s activity in this world. Such things had hitherto been despised, for man was taught to concern himself with his welfare in the next world. The new humanistic thinking, which put human interests paramount, gave special importance to self-culture which did not mean simply the cultivation of the well-known Christian virtues
– 116/A History of English Literature
but implied a harmonious development of the human personality on all planes-thought, feelings, and action. More concretely, it meant the cultivation of ”the twelve private moral virtues, as Aristotle hath devised.” In The Faerie QueeneSpenser celebrates not only Holiness but also other virtues, like justice and Temperance, which are more of secular and humanistic than of Christian nature. Spenser’s aim in his great poem is not just to teach people to submit passively before the Divine Will, or to seek for Divine Grace/but in the manner of a Renaissance humanist (as, for example, the Italian Castiglione) ”to fashion”, as he himself writes, ”a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline.” Some Other Renaissance Features :- .
. The age of the Renaissance in England was, as has been often said, : ”a young age.” It was marked by unprecedented ebullience and adolescent impatience of all fetters-intellectual, religious, and even moral It also developed a craving for sensuous thrills. Renaissance Italy had burst forth into hectic activity in the field of arts like painting, music, and sculpture which in the Middle Ages were looked down upon as too mundane. England in the late sixteenth century produced a number of great musicians such as Byrd, but she remained devoid of the plastic arts. However, in the poetry of the age we often find the sensuous touches of a painter. Spenser’s poetry is well known for its sensuous and, more specifically, pictorial quality. He was, in the words of Legouis, ”a painter who never held a brush.” But, what is more, Spenser all his Platonism and puritanism notwithstanding-seems too.frcqucntly to indulge in the pleasures of the senses for their own sake. His paradise seems to be as earthly as that of Omar Khayyam himself. He spends all his art while describing the beauty of the nude female figure, which he does quite voluptuously and with untiring zeal, dwelling on each and every part with great patience and a greater joy. He is, no doubt, uncontaminated by the virus of the Italian pornographic eroticism which is evident in works luce Marston’s Pigmalion and even in Marlowe’s Hero and Leander and Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis, but his taste for the delights of the senses is quite apparent. For instance, see the following sonnet:
Coming to kiss her lips (such greet I found), Me seem’d I smelt a garden of sweet flow’rs, That dainty odours from them threw around. for damsels fit to deck their lovers’ bow’rs. Her lips did smell like unto gilliflowers, Her ruddy cheeks Kite unto roses red.
The Influences on Spenser /117
Her snowy brows like budded bellamoures, Her lovely eyes like pinks but newly spread, Her goodly bosom Kke a strawberry bed, Her neck like to a bunch of cullambines, Her breast like lilies ere their leaves be shed, Her nipples like young blossom ’d jessamines; Such fragrant flow’ers do give most odorous smell, But her sweet odour did them all excel.
THE REFORMATION
Introduction :-
The very important movement called the Reformation was started in Europe by the German clergyman named Martin Luther sometime in the early sixteenth century. This movement was intended against the growing corruptions of the Pope of Rome and his deputies and had for its aim the taking of Christianity back to the original religion of Jesus Christ and the Holy Bible. A permanent cleavage came to separate Roman Catholicism and the new ”religion” termed Protestantism. Most of the Englishmen under Henry VIII and later bis daughter, Queen Elizabeth, embraced the new religion which recommended simplicity amounting to abstemiousness as against the luxury and pageantry of the Popish religion. Spenser was much influenced by the spirit of the Reformation which he, however, tried to reconcile with that of the Renaissance. He was a devout Christian and, as such, adored the Bible. The thought- content of the Four Hymns is a compromise between Christianity and neo-Platonism to which we have already referred. As regards his sincerity as a Christian, there can be no doubt, even though his Christianity puts a few hurdles in the path of his voluptuous enjoyment and his sensitive appreciation and assimilation of the Greek and Roman antiquity.
Illustration :-
Spenser is not only a Christian but a Protestant. As such, he is extremely and zealously critical of Roman Catholicism wbw:h the Reformation was sweeping off the English land. The first book of The Faerie Queene.rcad on a particular plane of symbolism, is a representation of the conflict between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, ending id a decisive victory for the former. It is the work of a zealous partisan who loads the dice too obviously in favour of his own religion. Una may be justly considered to be representative of
TlT/A History of English Literature
Protestantism. Her champion is the ”Red Cross Knight representing Holiness. Duessa, who represents Roman Catholicism, is false, deceitful, and corrupt and is supported by the. arch-trickster Archimago. Orgoglio, the horrible monster, symbolises the multifarious corruptions of the Roman Catholic Church. The evil designs of Archimago and Duessa to create a schism between the forces of holiness and Protestantism are shown by Spenser to be frustrated with the help of Prince Arthur. To which side Spenser’s sympathies lie is crystal clear. He powerfully, though indirectly, lashes at the follies and corruptions of the papists and satisfies his fervour by showing them put to rout by the forces unleashed by the Reformation.
Odd Synthesis :-
The synthesis of the elements of the Renaissance with the features of the Reformation appears to be odd. But Spenser was a child of his age which itself effected such a synthesis. About that age Lytton Strachey observes: ”It is, above all, the contradictions of the age that baffle our imagination anil perplex our intelligence; the inconsistency of the Elizabethans exceeds the limits permitted to man.” To Spenser”, says another critic, ”as to his contemporaries, the best of all three worlds, the ancient, the medieval, and the Christian Renaissance, were almost on one plane.” And Spenser moved quite glibly on this ”one plane.” He was at once a Hellenist, a humanist, a Christian, and a medievalist. Let us now consider him in his last-mentioned, manifestation.
THE MIDDLE AGES
Introduction :-
Broadly speaking, the Renaissance signalised the end of the Middle Ages and the arrival of the modern times. Though Spenser represented in himself what the Renaissance stood for, yet he also showed in his work some elements associated with the Middle Ages. la this respect he lags behind his times which were not yet far from the Middle Ages. Let us consider briefly some elements associated with the Middle Ages which we come across in his work. Medieval Chivalry :-
Spenser was the last English writer who wrote about medieval chivalry, love, and courtesy, and believed in ’hem. Though The Faerie Queene has a didactic aim very much pertinent for Spenser’s contemporaries, yet its setting and times are medieval. The allegory works through a multitude of knights and monsters, damsels in distress, magicians, and enchanters. As C.S. Lewis has well put it,the surface of
The Influences on Spenser / 119
the poem consists of ”interlocked stories of chivalrous adventure in a world of marvels.” Now these stories and this ”world of marvels” were quite distasteful to Renaissance scholars who scoffed at them as things from the ignorant past. But, as we have said, Spenser believed in them and looked at them with singular wistfulness. While gathering the flowers of the New Learning he could not forget the flavour of the medieval lore.
His Recourse to Allegory :
Spenser is a mediaevalist in his frequent recourse to the old-world device of allegory or what he called ”the dark conceit.” Allegory in the Middle Ages was a conventional medium of poetic utterance. Even Chaucer, ”the first of the moderns,” wrote most of his poems in the allegorical form, though, of course, The Canterbury Tales has somehow ’escaped unhurt. In the fifteenth and early sixteenth century the followers of Chaucer continued writing in the form of allegory. Happily, however, in the age of Spenser the vogue of allegory was discarded in favour of a direct and realistic form of poetry. But Spenser continued sticking to the convention of the Middle Ages, and filled his Faerie Queene with such allegorical complexities as have for him earned the censure of both the critic and the reader in spite of such defence as Hazlitt’s who said that the allegory in The Faerie Queene does not ”bite” anybody. .
Diction and Alliteration :-
In his diction and frequent employment of alliteration, too, Spenser seems to be going back to the Middle Ages. It was perhaps his admiration for his ”master” Chaucer which led him to archaise his diction. Many of the words he used in Tlie Faerie Queene were out of date even in his own age; but he employed them to lend an old-world flavour to the setting of the poem, which was the England of the Middle Ages. Ben Jonson rightly complained that Spenser wrote ”no language”. In his frequent employment of alliteration, too, he reminds one of the alliterative measure of verse which was in use before Chaucer. Spenser did not revive that measure but practised too frequently its salient features. Lastly Spenser’s love of myths, symbols, antiquarian, details, and his discursiveness and leisurely progress with the narrative are also suggestive of the manners and taste of the Middle Ages rather than of the age of the Renaissance.
120 / A History of English Literature
/ ELIZABETHAN PROSE
Q.I9. Write a short essay on Elizabethan prose.
(Companion Question). Write a critical estimate of Elizabethan prose fiction. (Agra 1964)
Introduction :-
The Elizabethan age has well been called a ”young” age. It was full of boundless vigour, re-awakened intellectual earnestness, and unfettered, soaring imagination. The best fruits of the age are enshrined in poetry in which- all these elements can be befittingly contained. In poetry there are restrictions of versification which exerted some check on the youthful imagination and vigour of the Elizabethans.Consequently, Elizabethan poetry is very great. But prose does not admit of any restrictions, and the result is that Elizabethan prose is as one run apuiek. Too much of liberty has taken away much of its merit.
During the fifteenth century, Latin was the medium of expression, and almost all the important prose works were written in that language. It was in the sixteenth century, particularly in its later half, that the English language came to its own. With the arrival of cheap mass printing English prose became the popular medium for works-aiming both at amusement and instruction. The books which date from this period cover many departments of learning. We have the chronicles of such writers as Stowe and Holinshfi recapturing the history of England, though mixed with legends and myths. Writers like Harrison and Stubbs took upon themselves the task of describing the England not of the past but of their own age. Many writers, most of them anonymous, wrote accounts of their voyages which had carried them to many hitherto unknown lands in and across the Western Seas. Then, there are so many ”novelists” who translated Italian stories and wrote stories of their own after the Italian models. There are also quite a few writers who wrote on religion, And- last of all there is a host of pamphleteers who dealt with issues of temporary interest.
Though the prose used by these numerous wr»’ rrs is not exactly similar, yet we come across a basic characteristic common to the works of all: that is, the nearness of their prose to poetry. The age,” says G.H. Mair, ”was intoxicated with language. It went mad of a mere delight in words. Its writers were using a new tongue, for English was enriched beyond all-recognition with borrowings from the ancient authors, and like all artists who become posessed of a new medium, they used it to excess. The early Elizabethans’ use of the new prose was very like the use some educated Indians make of F-ngfoh. It was rich, gaudy and
Elizabethan Prose /121
overflowing, though, in the main, correct.” A.C.Ward observes in Illustrated History of English Literature, Vol.1: ”Our modern view of prose is strictly and perhaps top narrowly practical and utilitarian or../w/ictio.-ial. Prose, we hold, has a job to do and should do it without fuss, nonsense, or aesthetic caipers. It should say what it has to say in the shortest and most time- saving manner, and there finish.” But we find Elizabethan prose far from this commonly accepted principle. It is colourful, blazing, rhythmic, indirect, prolix, and convoluted. Rarely does an Elizabethan prose writer call a spade a spade.
The prose wprks of the Elizabethan age fall into two categories: (i) Fiction (ii)-Non-Fiction.
Let us consider them one by one.
FICTION
The fiction of the age of Elizabeth is generally ”romantic” in nature in the sense that it is of the kind of romance. Many forms of fiction were practised in the age. Some important forms and their practitioners’are as follows:
(i) The romances of Lyly, Greene, and Lodge (ii) The pastoral romance of Sir Philip Sidney (iii) The picaresque novel of Nashe ) -.
(iv) The realistic novel of Delony. John Lyly (1554-1606) :-
Lyly in his romance displays all the peculiarities of Elizabethan prose which we have mentioned above. At the age of twenty-four he :ame out with his Euphues or the Anatomy of Wit (1578) which took England by storm. This work which may only very roughly be termed the’ ”ft u English prose novel” was an agglomeration of a thousand eleme :.s many of them alien to the nature of the novel proper. The ”plot” l’ the work is the simplest imaginable. Euphues is a man of learnir.g 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., Philautus who introduces him to his fiancee, Lucilla. Euphues attracts Lucilla’s love, and the two friends exchangelaunting letters. But Lucilla plays him false and elopes with a stranger. Euphues , heart-broken, returns to Athens, and he and Philautus 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
122 / A History of English Literature
grafted on to the thin stem of the story. In 1580 Lyiy came out with a sequel, Eup/utes and His England, in which is narrated the arrival of ifiilautus and Euphues in England, and Philautus’ unsuccessful courtship of Camilla, a maid of honour to Queen Elizabeth. This volume pays a glowing tribute to the English nobility, particularly the courtiers. ”Lyiy was,” to quote ”flicker Brooke, ”most careful to depict them, not as they were, but as they would have liked to have themselves regarded!1 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.”
What is remarkable about Lyh/s work is not .its matter but its terribly manneristic prose style which has come to be dubbed as ”Euphuism.” It came to be parodied and derided by a long chain of writers from Shakespeare to SeottYttlough it also~excited imitation in a very large number of writers now justly forgotten. The cool Drayton declared .that Lyiy taught his countrymen to speak and write ”all like P mere lunatics.”/Nevertheless, if Lyiy was a lunatic there was method in his madness. He did employ a well-thought-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 an expression as ”hot liver of a heedless lover”, or the description of Euphues as young 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 are used for the purpose of decoration. But 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, Lyh/s 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.” Robert Greene (1560-92) :-
Greene was a patent imitator of Lyiy, and laterthat of Sidney, after he came to know of his Arcadia. Though in his actual life he was a debauchee of the worst kind yet in his works he was quite didactic. His several ”novels” include Pandosto (1588) which very obviously furnished the plot for Shakespeare’sX Winter’s Tale. His other important
Elizabethan Prose /123
works are Menophon (1519), Mamilia (1583), and The Card of Fancy which was published within a decade of Euphues and, as A.C.Ward says, ”reproduces its mannerisms of style,its elaborately artificial and vpluble,conversations its classical embellishments, its images and comparisons from natural history (for’Greene, like Lyiy, drew upon
Pliny), its frequent and lengthy soliloquies.” The frequency of letters may have furnished Richardson with a model of epjstglary_qpvel. In his
Life and Death of Ned Brown, a notorious pick-pocket, Greene
provides hints for the low-life scenes e meet with in the novels of
Smollett and Defoe.
Thomas Lodge (1558 7-1625) :
He was another writer of Euphuistic nove’- the best of which is Rosfynde:Euphues Golden Legacie (1590). In his tricks of style Lodge imitates Lyiy, but his matter is derived from Greek pastoral romance. The work is significant because it furnished Shakespeare with the plot of As You Like it. Further, it includes, like Greene’s Menophon, some very charming lyrics.
Sir Philip Sidney (1554-86) :-
Like Lyiy, Sidney also prompted a number of imitators. Hisrcadia (1590) is the first pastoral romance in English prose, just as Spenser’s The Shepherd’s Calendar is the first verse pastoral romance. All the happenings of the story are envisaged in an imaginary land of idyllic L-iury with shepherds, shepherdesses, running brooks, and lush i scenery, ’u ells the story of Basiiius, king of Arcadia, who settles in a village with his wife and two daughters named Pamela and Philoclea. Two princes from abroad come to Arcadia and start courting the two girls. One disguises himself as a shepherd and the other as an Amazon. Complications start when both Basiiius and his wife fall in love with the ”Amazon”, the former taking him to be a real Amazon and the latter, after discovering his real identity. Everything is finally unravelled by Euarchus, king of Macedonia and father of one of the princes. Everything ends happily. This was the first version of the Arcadia, known as the Old Arcadia. In the revised version Sidney included many cootplications and also added, much symbolism and didacticism which rendered it almost of the nature of The Faerie Queene. In the Arcadia, observes Daiches, ’Ideal love, ideal friendship, and the ideal ruler are, directly and indirectly, discussed, suggested, and embodied.
The style of the Arcadia is as artifkial and attitudinised as that of Euphues. It is, to quote Daiches again, ”highly ’conceited’, full of elaborate analogies, balanced parenthetical asides, pathetic fallacie/
124 / A History of English Literature
symmetrically answering clauses, and other devices of an immature prose entering suddenly into the world of conscious literary artifice.”6ne of Sidney’s constant devices is to take a word and, somewhat like Shakespeare, toss it about till its meaning is sucked dry. As an example of pathetic fallacy consider his reference to the cool wine which seems ”to laugh for joy” as it nears a lady’s lips. Similarly 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 the their clothes, the clothes are described as ”glad.” And so forth. Thomas Nashe (1567-1601) :-
Nashe had a taste for buffoonery, satire, reckless savagism, and ejEfronjejyHe is best known for his vigorous pamphlets. HTabo wrote the first English picaresque novel The Unfortunate Traveller, or The Life of Jack Wilton (1594) which is a tale of the adventures of a page named Wilton in the reign of Henry VIII. It was perhaps suggested by the Spanish Lozarillo de Thames. It has also been called the first English historical novel as it introduces as characters such known figures of yorc-as Erasmus, Sir Thomas More, and the Earl of Surrey. But Nashe jumbles up all the historical details with reckless abandon and irresponsibility without minding gross inaccuracies and anachronisms. The adventures of Jack Wilton take him through half of Europe which, (particularly Italy) is described with all its sordidness, crime, culture, and beauty. The novel has no form. It is made up of, to quote Ccmpton-Rickett, ”a series of episodes lightly strung together.” It is hopelessly incoherent at times. In his prose style Nashe follows neither Lyty nor Greene nor Sidney. His sentences are short and striking, but sometimes he is carried away by a flood of words. ”Nashe,” says A.C. Ward, ”was drunk with words, even besotted by them? Anyway, his strength was acknowledged by his contemporaries, and he had many imitators. ThonuuiDdon«y(1543M600?) :-
Deloney, a silk-weaver by profession, exhibited even weaker sense of form and structure than Nashe. His three tales/adfc ofNewbury, The Gentle Craft, and Thomas ofReadutg(t 1590) «how bunas a storyteller of the bourgeois craftsmen. In the second named he glorifies the craft of shoemakers. Deloney’s style is quite homely, and he was read and appreciated by a vast number of people, particularly craftsmen, whom he had tried to flatter. In spite of his gifts of description he does not
Elizabethan Prose /125
manage to give pattern, unity of action, or even unity of tone or mood to his stories.
NON-FICTION
Richard Hooker (15547-1600) :-
Hooker’s masterly work Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Policy is the greatest of the non-fictional prose works of the Elizabethan age. It began appearing volume by volume in 1594 and continued till the author’s death. It was the first book in England which used English for a serious philosophic discussion. Hooker was a Protestant who combined the piety of a saint with the simplicity of a child. His purpose in writing the book was to defend the Church of England and to support certain principles of Church government. Hardin Craig in A History of English Literature edited by himself maintains:
”As originally written the eight books were already on a very high level of theological and legal argument. The first book is Hooker’s famous general treatise on law. The second argues that divine law or scripture is not the only law that ought to serve for our direction in things ecclesiastical. The effect of the third is to make of the Church an independent and self-directing social institution within the State. The fourth claims for the Church the right to adjust its position, free, on the one side, of Rome and, on the other, of Geneva. The fifth book… deals with the established practices of the Church of England. The fragmentary sixth is largely on penitence…The seventh treats the
power and position of bishops, andthe: eighth is a most significant treatise on the relation of the Church to the secular government. Hooker admits the right of the secular government to establish and control the Church, but declares that the powers of the Crown are derived from the consent of the governed as expressed in a parliament of the people.”
Hooker modelled his style on Cicero. Though his diction is simple yet the syntax is highly Latinized, but not without much harmony and studied flow. The style is as much removed from vulgarity as from pedantry. Ruskin was later to seize upon this style and use it in his earlier works,particularly modern Painters.
BMW (1561-1626) :-
Ex«ctlyoppo«ketoHooker’sQc»ronianstewasBacoasEngush prose style which has been called style coupe or anti-Ciceronian style. Much of what Bacon wrote appeared in the age of James I. However, the first edition of his Essays appeared in 1597, that is, within the age.
126 / A History of English Literature
j- ’ .-i;’;; .; .};’ .
of Elizabeth. Bacon borrowed the term and the conception of the essay from the French writer Montaigne whose Essais first appeared in 1580. In spite of the fact that Bacon took them lightly, his essays make pretty heavy reading. They are full of memorable aphorisms which have passed into everyday speech. The scope of his essays is vast, and they embrace all kinds of issues, but, mostly, those of practical life. By writing his essays Bacon became ”the father of the English essay.” Even though his essays differ from the kind which was later established in England, he is a worthy predecessor of the line of essayists ranging from his own times up to ours.
-.