Topics so far –
Now -
The
Renaissance in England: Part - II
Elizabethan Satire
In 1597 a young
man by name Joseph Hall who had just left the university wrote a collection of
satires. In the past, Piers the Plowman and Steel
Glass flourished as satires and Spenser had produced the harshest and
most successful satire of the century - Mother Hubberds Tale.
Thomas Lodge, a
year before Hall, published A Fig for Momus. Hall became a
Bishop, and it is remarkable that the other satirists of the period also ended
as clergy.
John Marston was
the most cynical of all the Elizabethan authors. His licentious poem Pigmalion
was attacked for its immorality. At the same time as Hall and Marston,
John Donne, as early as 1593 composed his first satires. With Marston and Hall,
Donne represents classical Elizabethan satire.
At the end of
Elizabeth’s reign, several poets flourished who are variously interesting, some
who were influenced by their predecessors, and some who adventured in new paths.
George Wither,
William Browne and two brothers Giles and Phineas Fletcher and Drummond of
Hawthornden may be cited as in the succession of Spenser.
George Wither & William Browne
George Wither,
the Puritan satirist, satirized the court in his Abuses Stript and Whipt (1613).
The satire is general, without personal attacks, but it caused such displeasure
that Wither was imprisoned in the Marshalsea. He was there for several months,
and there he wrote one of his most charming poems, The Shepherd’s Hunting
published in 1615. It is a sort of pastoral in the form of a dialogue between
Willy, who represents the poet William Browne, and Philarete, the friend of
virtue, which is Wither himself.
William Browne,
the close friend of Wither, wrote only pastorals. His Brittania’s Pastorals has
made him the classical representative of pastoral poetry in his country. He was
greatly inspired by Spenser’s Calendar, especially in his Shepherd’s Pipe (1614), which
is a series of eclogues. Browne was capable of seeing Nature as she is, and sometimes
he painted her successfully. He could make English birds sing in concert, and
he could bring a hunt to life or depict an effect of dawn in a village.
Ben Jonson & John Donne
In contrast to
the poets of this period who followed beaten tracks, we have two pioneers, Ben
Jonson and John Donne. Their influence was felt by the greatest number of their
own countrymen down to the Restoration.
Ben Jonson: The spirit of
satire looms large in his Epigrammes and The Forrest published
together in 1616. Ben Jonson also wrote moral satires which were more nobler in
tone and more sincere in expression than those of Hall and Marston. His Epistle
to Sir Edward Sackville is a heavy attack against patrons who grant
their favours generally to the undeserving.
John Donne: John Donne, who
after a libertine youth took orders at the age of 43, in 1615, is perhaps the
most singular poet. His verses offer examples of everything condemned by the
classical writers as bad taste and eccentricity. Although Donne’s love is
always profoundly sensuous, it in revolt against the poetic canons of the age.
He is at his best in his short pieces.
Elizabethan Prose
Poetry dominates
the whole of the renaissance to such a point that it often invades he sphere of
prose.
Greene, Lodge & Nashe
Robert Greene was
Lyly’s disciple and successor, who imitated the prettiness of euphuism.
 |
| The Winter's Tale |
He wrote Arbasto
and Pandosto. Pandosto’s romantic character
supplied the plot to The Winter’s Tale. Worn out by debauchery
and poverty, he brought out a series of pamphlets filled with sorrowful self
accusation, titled Confessions.
Thomas Lodge, a
well-known doctor, he left behind him one euphuistic romance Rosalinde
(1590) which was the source of As You Like It. Shakespeare read it
with delight and he adapted it not only for the plot, but also for the
character of his heroine.
Thomas Nashe: Nashe was the
real successor of Greene. He was called the
young Juvenal. He was the creator of a new genre – the initiators of the
grotesque satirical style. In 1589 he used it against Greene’s dramatic rivals,
Kyd & Marlowe. He wrote the preface to Greene’s Menaphon in which he
poses as a defender of the classical tradition, against the recent authors of
popular tragedies.
Deloney & Dekker
Thomas Deloney is
famous for his series of short stories. The Gentle Craft is a survey of shoemakers
from legendary times.
Thomas Dekker
succeeded Greene & Nashe as a prose-writer, inspired by Deloney. He did not
write novels but social studies and pictures of London life. His tract ‘Wonderful Year’ had for its subject the
year 1603 in which Elizabethan died, James I succeeded and the Great Plague of
London occurred.
Literary Criticism
Criticism of
literature figured considerably in the prose of the English Renaissance. Criticism
had a double aim; it wished both to glorify literature and to proclaim its
laws. When the Italians undertook this task, they chose the ancients for the
guides. The turned to Aristotle’s Poetics or Horace’s Ars
Poetica, or Plato. Scaliger with his Poetics of 1561 represents
Aristotlean criticism, as Minturno with his Ars Poetica of 1564
stands for Platonic criticism.
In England,
criticism took the moral turn, with Ascham’s Scholemaster, as early as
1568. Stephen Gosson, a man of the letters who converted to Puritanism,
directed his attach against all secular literature in his School of Abuse (1579),
where he makes no distinction between poets, pipers, plaiens, jesters and such
like caterpillars of a commonwealth. His principal animosity was against the
theatre, and from the theatre, he extended his condemnation to poets, whom he
calls the father of lies, and therefore considers poetry bad in essence
destructive of energy and that which effeminates a nation.
This invective
has survived because of the retort it provoked. Gosson dedicated it to Sidney,
who was known for his nobility and purity of soul. While Thomas Lodge the playwright
replied immediately with a pedantic Defence of Poetry, Sidney replied at
leisure with his Defence of Poetrie in 1595. His plea for poetry constitutes one
of the most eloquent and most pleasing prose works of the period. In fact, no
other critical English work as broad and as much alive was written in this
period.
The moment a
writer turned a critic, he adheres to the school of antiquity. This applies even
to Ben Jonson, the playwright who discussed his art most. He poses arrogantly and
defiantly as the disciple of the ancients. William Webbe, in a Discourse
of English Poetry (1586) shows himself the champion of measured verse.
George Puttenham wrote the most voluminous treatise of the period.
RELIGIOUS PROSE
The controversy
between the Puritans and the Anglicans:-
The Religious
literature of the Elizabethan period was constituted by a series of violently
controversial writings. The most famous of the disputes which occupied authors
was the Martin Marprelate controversy by which the Calvinists confronted the Anglican
Church. It began in 1588 and lasted for five years. The Marprelates used the secret
priority presses, to bring out a multitude of anonymous pamphlets, in which
they denounced the Bishops as swine, Canterbury Beelzebubs, antichrists, foxes,
dogs. Thomas Nashe is the best known among them.
Richard Hooker
The glorious task
of defending Anglicanism fell to Richard Hooker who published his magisterial
work The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity in 1593, which is one of the first masterpieces
of English prose. According to Hooker papistry supports the authority of the
Church against reason. Puritanism appeals to the authority of The Bible against
the Church and against reason also. Church of England effects reconciliation,
for it admits both authority and The Bible. His work owes its construction to
the Summa of Thomas Aquinas.
The Bible of 1611: Nothing
else in the religious prose of the Renaissance is equal in literary beauty and
importance to the 1611 Authorized Version of The Bible. Mr.A.S Cooker gives the
characteristics of the Bible which lends itself to translation better than any
other poem.
a) Universality
of interest.
b) The
concreteness and picturesqueness of its language, appealing alike to the child
and the poet, which suggests abundant reflection to the philosopher.
c) The simplicity
of its structure, with one brief clause at a time.
d) A rhythm
largely independent of the features, of any individual languages.
The translators
great difficulty is to find language at once simple, homely and bold, and yet
not coarse. Here the 1611 translators were helped by the earlier translations.
Their basic material was a real Biblical dialect which had been shaped by
Wyclif, Tyndale & Coverdale. It is a religious language at the heart of
other English language.
The Authorized Version of 1611
was the work of 47 scholars, nominated by James I over whom Bishop Lancelot
Andrews presided.
Philosophical Prose: Bacon & Burton
Side by side with
the religious literature, a secular literature, was coming into existence and
was concerned with philosophy and morals. Francis Bacon never speaks of religious
except with respect and seems to have been religious for he wrote several very beautiful
prayers for his own use and professed the Anglican faith. The contrast between
his great intellect and his mediocre character is one of the commonplaces of history.
His character was summed up by pope as ‘the wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind.’’
He ranks among the best English prose-writers by virtue of his essays, his Advancement of Learning, and his
unfinished novel, the New Atlantis.
His English works
include his Essays. His other English works were The Advancement of Learning (1605),
containing the substance of his philosophy; The History of Henry Vll
(1622); Apophthegms (1625), a kind of jest-book; and The
New Atlantis, left unfinished at his death, a philosophical romance
modelled upon More's Utopia.
Apart from Bacon,
Burton was known for his The Anatomy of Melancholy which contained
all the pedantry of the Renaissance.
The translators
worked in many varied fields. Of the classics, Virgil was translated by Phaer
(1558) and Stanyhurst (1562); Plutarch's Lives (a work that had much influence
on Shakespeare and other dramatists) by North (1579); Ovid by Golding (1565 and
1567), Turberville (1567), and Chapman (1595); Homer by Chapman (1598). All Seneca
was in English by 1581, and Suetonius, Pliny, and Plutarch's Morals were translated
by Holland. Among the translations of Italian works were Machiavelli's Arte of
Wane (1560) --his more famous and influential The Prince was not translated
until 1640 - Castiglione's The Courtyer, translated by Hoby (1561); the Palace
of Pleasure by Painter (1566) a work which was used by Shakespeare, Marston,
Webster, and Massinger, and accounted for much of the horror of later
Elizabethan tragedy; and Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, translated by Harrington
(1591). From France were drawn Florio's translation of the Essays of Montaigne
(1603) and Dannett's Commines (1596), while Spain provided North with The Diall
of Princes (1557).
The Pamphleteers: All through
this period there is a flood of short tracts on religion, politics, and
literature. It was the work of a host of literary hacks who earned a precarious
existence in London. These men represented a new class of writer. The Reformation
had closed the Church to them; the growth of the universities and of learning
continually increased their numbers. In later times journalism and its kindred careers
supplied them with a livelihood; but at this time they eked out their existence
by writing plays and squabbling among themselves in the pages of broadsheets.
In its buoyancy
and vigour, its quaint mixture of truculence and petulance, Elizabethan pamphleteering
is refreshingly boyish and alive. It is usually keenly satirical, and in style
it is unformed and uncouth. The most notorious of the pamphleteers were Thomas Nash (or Nashe) (1567-1601), Robert Greene (1560 (?)-92), and Thomas Lodge (1558 (?) -1625). We quote
a well-known passage from a pamphlet of Greene, in which he contrives to mingle
praise of his friends with sly gibes at one who is probably Shakespeare. The
style is typical of the pamphlets. "And thou, no less deserving than the other
two,2 in some things rarer, in nothing inferior; driven (as myself) to extreme
shifts, a little have I to say to thee;”
The Fertility of the Drama
The highest glory
and the most direct and original expression of the national genius are dramatic.
The theatre was open to all. The whole town was attracted by it and enthusiastic for it. It was truly national.
For many it took the place of the church they neglected.
PEELE & LYLY
From the time of
Elizabethan’s accession, seven plays were, on an average given before her every
year, and about 150 had been performed before Lyly’s advent. His first known
play Campaspe
(1581) is the work of a humanist. In Endymion (1586) Lyly stages one of
the most poetic of ancient myths. His last plays are pastorals like his Love’s
Metamorphosis. In The Woman in the Moone his only play
in verse, Lyly satirizes woman unreservedly.
George Peele: Like Lyly, the
prose-writer, George Peele, the poet began his career as a courtier. Like Lyly,
he had a taste for ornament and cared for fine language. His first work was a
mythological pastoral, The Arraignment of Paris which was played before the
queen in 1580. His play David and Bethsabe acts as a link
with the old religious plays.
KYD AND MARLOWE
Neither Peele,
nor Lyly had achieved striking success on the stage when suddenly, at some
months’ distance, the playhouses rang with the verse of Kyd and Marlowe. In swift
succession, Kyd in 1586 produced his Spanish Tragedie, Marlowe in 1587 produced
Tamburlaine.
The majority of
the Elizabethan audience desired romantic melodrama, and the first writer who
supplied them was Thomas Kyd with his Spanish Tragedie, which foreshadows Hamlet.
Marlowe, a young
man of twenty-three, who had just left Cambridge, was entirely without
experience of the stage. He had read a translation of Tamerlaine’s life by the Spaniard
Pedro Mexia. Similarly, the Tragical History of Dr. Faustus
(1588) drew on one of the most fruitful of legends, the German legend of Faust.
In the Jew of Malta, (1599) he reveals his lyrical power. His Jew
Barabas is unjustly deprived of his goods by Christians. His Edward
the Second (1592), is better constructed than Marlowe’s other plays,
and preceded Shakespeare’s.
GREENE AND LODGE
Robert Greene and
Lodge together, in the old didactic manner, wrote a miracle play called A
Looking Glass for London and England. As an effect of the great success
of MARLOWE AND KYD, Lodge bade a sad farewell in 1589, resolving “to write no more”.
But Greene persisted, and was obliged to conform to the altered taste. His Friar
Bacon and Friar Bungay is another Faustus, which was staged based on the
success of that play.
Shakespeare – the
crowning glory of the Age
Shakespeare’s Plays
Nashe and his
friends, the company of young humanists known as the University Wits had hardly
recovered from Marlowe’s sudden triumph, when they were faced with another rand
more dangerous rival who sprang from a different world. Greene, who was near
his end, filled with jealousy, in 1592 pointed out to his fellows, that ‘there
is an upstart crowe beautified with our feathers’. So great was the danger that
Greene advised his colleagues, Marlowe among them, to abandon the playwright’s
profession.
He studied the
triumph of Kyd and Marlowe, and found out that, the applause of audiences could
be won by means of innovations. He wrote Titus Andronicus, a tragedy of
atrocious vengeance, which is far better than The Spanish Tragedie and The Jew
of Malta.
Lyly’s witty
dialogues inspired him, and he then wrote Love’s Labour’s Lost, with a vigour
which far excelled Lyly. His first romantic play was The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
After Greene’s attack, he published Venus and Adonis and The
Rape of Lucrece in quick succession. He was moreover honoured by the
friendship of one of the greatest peers of the realm, the Earl of Southampton.
Chance, death, and his own genius made him the undisputed and only master of
English drama for seven long years. Greene died in 1592, almost immediately
after attacking him. Marlowe, the greatest of his enemies, met with a sudden
end the next year. Kyd’s death occurred in 1594. Lodge abandoned playwrighting
for medicine. Lyly withdrew from the court; Peele plunged deeper and deeper
into dissipation and wrote no more. Nashe had found his right means of expression
in satirical pamphlets and novels.
Man in his
infinite variety is thus focus of Elizabethan literature. The abundant nautical
metaphors which abound in Elizabethan literature reflect the great maritime expeditions
which flourished and also made England a superpower in its own right.
Hence it would
not be an exaggeration to sum up the Elizabethan Age in the words of Shakespeare’s
Hamlet: “What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in
faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel”
would expressly sum up the glory of the Elizabethan Age.
Next -
Shakespeare’s
Contemporaries & Successors
Source(s) -
English
Literature by Edward Albert [Revised by J. A. Stone]
History of
English Literature, by Legouis and Cazamian
The Routledge
History of Literature in English: Britain and Ireland, by Ronald Carter and
John McRae
Image Credits: art.famsf.org
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