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Shakespeare’s Successors
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13. Restoration Period in Literature
12. Shakespeare’s Successors
[DRAMA, PROSE & POETRY under Charles I & The
Commonwealth Period]
Drama under Charles I & The Commonwealth Period
The playwrights
of whom we still have to speak belong to the reign of Charles I and should
therefore have place in the next book of this history. But they are so
entangled with their predecessors that they cannot easily be separated from
them. To study them is to continue the earlier subject. It therefore seems bet
to pursue the study of the dram uninterrupted until the theatres were closed.
Philip Massinger – The
playwright who, after Fletcher, dominated the stage by the number and quality
of his plays, had long worked with him as a subordinate. Massinger was a
composite of Fletcher and Johnson.
Massinger began his career as a
collaborator with older, better-known dramatists, and especially with Fletcher,
whose influence over him was strong. Among his best-known plays are his
comedies, A New Way to Pay Old Debts and The
City Madam, and his tragedies, the
Duke of Milaine and The Unnatural Combat. His finest qualities are the fluency and vitality of his blank verse,
the clarity and strength of his plot construction, and his fine theatre sense.
His characters (with one or two notable exceptions, like Sir Giles Overreach in
A New Way to Pay Old Debts, and Luke Frugal in The City Madam) are usually
types rather than individuals, and in situation, theatrical device, and
characterization, he has a fondness for repetition which is a serious weakness.
The shallow, boldly drawn characters often place too great a strain upon our
credulity--his villains are villainous, and his women shameless, to an
incredible degree. Predominantly serious in temper, Massinger often deals with
the political issues of his day. He seems to lack real humour, and the comic
garb can sit rather uneasily upon him. Philip
Massinger’s A New Way to Pay Old Debts (1625–26) remained one of the most
popular social comedies for more than two hundred years. The theme of class
superiority (the upper class, and the rising mercantile middle class) begins to
be popular here, and will assume greater and greater prominence in the
literature of the eighteenth century.
With characters
like Greedy and Frank Wellborn, Massinger’s play brings the city comedy (here
set near Nottingham) to new heights; in Sir Giles Overreach – ‘a cruel
extortioner’ – it created one of the great comic roles.
John
Ford – His drama is influenced by Burton’s
famous Anatomy of Melancholy. In
his nature Ford had a morbid twist which gave him a strange liking for the
horrible and the unnatural. His plays are unequal in quality; but the most
powerful of them are prevented from being revolting by their real tragic force
and their high literary aims. In The Broken Heart (published 1633)
he harrows the reader's feelings almost beyond endurance, while Tis
Pity She's a Whore of the same year is a grim story of unhallowed passion; his Perkin
Warbeck (1634), a historical tragedy, is reckoned to be among the
best historical drama outside of Shakespeare; and in The
Witch of Edmonton (soon after 1621) he collaborated with Dekker, Rowley, and
others to produce a powerful domestic drama. Others of the sixteen plays
attributed to him are The Lover's Melancholy (1628), Love's
Sacrifice (1633), and The Fancies, Chast and Noble (1638).
James
Shirley – Lamb calls him ‘the last of a great
race’. Shirley’s tragedies The Cardinal (1641) and The Traitor (1631) tackle religious and political
themes. He wrote his Narcissus inspired by
Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis. He
had the satisfaction of witnessing the Restoration and the revival of his
plays, but he died in the Fire of London in 1666. The Cardinal, which Shirley himself esteemed as his masterpiece, is
in the class of tragedies of bloodshed and horror and connected with Webster’s Duchess
of Malfi.
Glapthorne
and Brome –
Henry Glapthorne wrote several plays of which the best, Argalus
and Parthenia is borrowed from Arcadia.
Richard
Brome was first the servant and then the friend
of Ben Jonson, who affectionately called him his son. Brome has his master’s
realism and gives numerous sketches of London life. He is also the disciple of
Dekker, who likewise calls him son, and he alternates romantic comedy with
comedy of manners. His most successful works are comic – A Jovial Crew or The Merry Beggars (1641) and The City Wit or The Woman wears the
Breeches. These works show that, despite Puritan opposition, the
theatre continued to be a lively art-form right up until the theatres were
closed in 1642.
John Day – wrote amusing comedies,
The
Isle of Gulls, Law Tricks, and Humour out of Breath, which are
inspired by Shakespeare. Day’s most original work is The Parliament of Bees, a
fantastic production which is in the nature of a masque, or rather like a
series of eclogues.
Note: The plays of
Massinger sustain the expiring spirit of the great Elizabethans; those of Ford
follow the tragical school of Webster and Tourneur.
The great
flourishing of drama as a popular form in the 1590s left an enormous number of
plays, and a generation of playwrights who are major writers but who have been
overshadowed by the ever-present figure of William Shakespeare.
The distinction
between tragedy and comedy, in writers other than Shakespeare, becomes more and
more distinct during the first twenty-five years of the seventeenth century.
The world of Jacobean tragedy is a dark world of corruption, perversion, blood
and passion. The world of comedy is more localised, ‘city comedy’, based on the
city of London and its people, with their obsessions, above all, with money and
sex.
The major figures
in Jacobean drama (Shakespeare and
Ben Jonson aside) are Thomas Middleton, John Webster, Thomas Dekker, Francis
Beaumont and John Fletcher (usually in collaboration), Thomas Heywood, and
Philip Massinger. In the Caroline period
(after the accession of Charles I in 1625) – although Jonson was still writing
– the most significant (tragic) dramatist was John Ford.
Dramatic
production was suddenly checked in 1642. After the playhouses had struggled for
existence against the Puritans for three-quarters of a century, it was to the
Puritans that victory finally fell. The war had been declared against the
stage. Gosson was writing his School of Abuse in 1579. In 1583,
the Puritan Philip Stubbs renewed the attack much more vigorously with his Anatomy
of Abuses, in which he claimed Biblical support for his condemnation of
the drama. His book provoked many replies from Lodge, Nashe, Field, Gager,
Heywood and others. Five years later, a pendant to it was supplied by the
famous Histriomastix of William Prynne (1632).
Many things
combined to oppress the drama at this time. Chief among these were the civil
disturbances and the strong opposition of the Puritans. In temper the age was
not dramatic. It is curious to note that Milton's greatest work, which in the
Elizabethan age would probably have been dramatic in form, took on the shape of
the epic. The actual dramatic work of the period was small and unimportant; and
the unequal struggle was terminated by the closing of the theatres in 1642.
Some reason for
the Puritans’ objections to the ‘immorality’ of the stage can be found in the
highly charged passions displayed, for instance, in John Webster’s The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi (both between 1609 and 1613), tragedies which
raise the themes of blood, lust and intrigue to new heights of poetry and
violence. It is this rich mixture of shocking themes and vivid language which
characterises Jacobean tragedy, and gives it an intensity which no other age
has repeated in English drama.
Puritanism does
not simply represent opposition to theatrical activity and similar pursuits.
Several dramatists, most notably Middleton, identified themselves with Puritan
beliefs, although not in an extremist way. Puritan thought aimed, in its most
literal sense, to purify and simplify the spiritual mindset of the time: only
later did the extreme of revolution become an option.
The result of
extreme Puritan moralistic pressure was that, in 1642, the Long Parliament put
an end to theatrical performances. The closure of the theatres brought to an
end the greatest period of English drama. Never again was drama to be the most
popular literary genre or such a vital forum for the discussion of the major
themes of the age.
Prose under Charles I & the Commonwealth Period
The previously expansive development of
literature was restricted and thought was concentrated on a single book – The
Bible. The fact that the dominant figure is that of the great Puritan poet
Milton favours this view. In exchange for the liberty it partly lost, it
acquired a seriousness, a severe dignity.
1. Religious Prose:
This period has been called 'the Golden Age of the English pulpit.' No doubt
the violent religious strife of the time has much to do with the great flow of
sermon writing, which is marked with eloquence, learning, and strong argument.
In addition to Jeremy Taylor and Fuller, already mentioned, we may notice Robert South who
writes rather more briefly and simply than the rest, Isaac Barrow learned
and copious, and Richard Baxter a Nonconformist, whose The Saints' Everlasting Rest (1649) has
survived all his preachings.
2. Philosophical Works: On the moral
side there are the works of Sir Thomas Browne; on the political those of
Hobbes; and on the religious side the books of John Hales (1584-1656). Works of
this type show a growing knowledge and advancing scholarship, joined sometimes
to quaint conceits and artless credulity.
3. Historical
Works: In this class Clarendon's and Fuller's works stand
pre-eminent. The development of the history will be noticed in a future chapter
(see p. 280).
4. Miscellaneous Prose: In this large
and varied group may be included the pamphlets of Milton, Hobbes, Fuller, and
many more; the attractive books of Izaac Walton whose The Compleat Angler (1653) is the classic of its kind; the interesting Resolves, short
miscellaneous essays, of Owen Felltham; and the Familiar Letters (1645),
an early type of essay-journalism, of James Howell.
Sir Thomas Browne may
be taken as representative of the best prose-writers of the period. Almost
alone among his contemporaries, Browne seems to have been unaffected by the
commotions of the time. His prose works, produced during some of the hottest
years of civil contention, are tranquilly oblivious of unrest. His books are only
five in number, are individually small in size, and are of great and almost
uniform merit. Religio Medici, his
confession of faith, is a curious mixture of religious faith and scientific
scepticism; Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or Vulgar
Errors (1646), sharing the same mental inconsistency, resembles the
work of Burton in its out-of-the-way learning; Hydriotaphia: Urne Buriall (1658), commonly
considered to be his masterpiece, contains reflections on human mortality induced
by the discovery of some ancient funeral urns; The Garden of Cyrus (1658) is a treatise on the quincunx. A last work, Christian
Morals, was published after his death.
Anglican Clergy
Jeremy Taylor is
the most prominent literary divine of the period. A learned, voluble, and
impressive preacher, Taylor carried the same qualities into his prose works,
which consisted of tracts, sermons, and theological books. His most popular
works, in addition to his collections of sermons, were The
Liberty of Prophesying,
(1647), Holy Living (1650), and Holy
Dying (1651).
Richard Baxter was
the most prolific of the prose-writers, whose Saints’ Everlasting Rest
is a classic of religious literature and whose Relique is an
inexhaustible mine of information on the ecclesiastical history of the period.
The title Mere Christianity, a phrase used by the seventeenth-century clergyman
Richard Baxter, was meant to evoke the core of Christian belief system and, as
well, the common intellectual issues faced by everyday believers or inquirers
into the Christian faith.
Fuller and Walton –
Fuller is witty and pointed in his prose. He wrote The Church History of Britain, and his book The Holy State and the Profane
State and the Worthies of England are most read. Fuller received various appointments, and by
his witty sermons attracted the notice of Charles I. During the Civil War he
was a chaplain to the Royalist forces; but when his side was defeated he made
his peace with the Parliamentary party and was permitted to carry on his literary
labours. He died the year after the Restoration.
Fuller had an original
and penetrating mind, a wit apt for caustic comment, and an industry that
remained unimpaired till the end of his life. His literary works are therefore
of great interest and value. His serious historical books include The
History of the Holy War
(1639), dealing with the Crusades, and The
Church History of Britain.
Izaak Walton –
was the parishioner and humble friend of Donne, Drayton and Jonson. He is a
delightful biographer. To his life of Donne he added those of Henry Wotton,
Richard Hooker and George Herbert, all of which were collected in one volume in
1670. His The Compleat Angler (1653) is the
classic of its kind, in which he is trying to recall songs which once had
pleased him.
Bunyan & Clarendon
John Bunyan is recognized as a master
of allegorical prose, and his art is often compared in conception and technique
to that of John Milton and Edmund Spenser. Although he wrote
nearly fifty works, he is chiefly
remembered for The Pilgrim’s Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come (1678),
which, translated into numerous foreign languages and dialects, has long
endured as a classic in world literature.
His autobiographical memoir, Grace
Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666), is concerned with life events
only as they relate to his own spiritual experience.
Bunyan’s first published work, Some Gospel-Truths
Opened (1656), was an attack on the Quakers for their reliance on inner
light rather than on the strict interpretation of Scripture.
The imprisonment is the central event
of his later career: It was at once a martyrdom that he seems to have sought
and a liberation from outward concerns that inspired him to write literary
works. Once the Stuart monarchy had been reestablished in 1660 under Charles II,
it was illegal for anyone to preach who was not an ordained clergyman in the
Church of England. Bunyan spent most of the next twelve years in Bedford Jail because
he would not give up preaching, although the confinement was not difficult and
he was out on parole on several occasions. In 1672, the political situation changed
when Charles II issued a Declaration of Indulgence that allowed for greater
religious freedom. Except for a six-month return to prison in 1677, Bunyan was relatively
free to travel and preach, which he did with immense energy and good will.
Bunyan’s principal fictional works were published during this post-imprisonment
period and included the two parts of The Pilgrim’s Progress in 1678 and
1684, The Life and Death of Mr. Badman in 1680, and The
Holy War in 1682.
Clarendon: Clarendon's
History
of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, which was not published
till 1704, is largely the record of his own personal experiences and opinions.
Hobbes & Harrington
Hobbes was an English philosopher, whose
treatise Leviathan (1651) is a fundamental work of political theory. He argued
that information from our senses is the basis of all knowledge, not intuition
or spiritual revelation. In his controversial Leviathan (1651), human
nature is portrayed as essentially selfish.
The strongest reply to Hobbes’s Leviathan
was from the pen of the Puritan James Harrington who in his Oceana, proposed a republican Utopia in
opposition to the absolute monarchy advocated by Hobbes.
Note: Machiavelli has
been called the founder of empirical (observation-based) political science,
having a noticeable influence on the philosophies of Thomas Hobbes and Francis Bacon.
Poetry under Charles I & the Commonwealth Period
At the death of James I in 1625,
Spenser’s influence was almost exhausted, surviving only in Milton. It was Ben
Jonson and especially John Donne who now had disciples and imitators. The poets
of the middle seventeenth century fall into two main groups, separated by the
differences which make the history of this troubled period. There are first the
secular poets, all in the Royalist ranks and therefore known as the Cavaliers,
and secondly there are religious poets, subdivided into the Anglicans and the
Puritans.
Thomas Traherne: The
poetry of Thomas Traherne is, more than any other poetry of the seventeenth
century, poetry of joy. He anticipates Christopher Smart in his celebration of
creation, and has even been compared to the nineteenth-century American poet
Walt Whitman for his unconventional, exuberant verse forms. His poems were not
published until after his death, some in Christian Ethics (1675), more in Centuries in
1699 and, through the good luck of his notebook being found in the 1890s, Poetical Works in 1903
and Select Meditations in
1908.
Note:
The sixteenth century saw the
development of a brand of verse known as Metaphysical poetry, a forerunner of
existentialism. Some of the better-known Metaphysical works include:
Ignatius His Conclave
(1611), a poem by John Donne. The man perhaps most closely associated with the
Metaphysical movement (a label, incidentally, that was only applied in
retrospect), Donne, like Marvell, was not above mixing politics and poetry, as
in this anti-Catholic polemic that mocks the Jesuit order and name-checks several
prominent scientists of the day, including Nicolaus Copernicus, Johannes
Kepler, and Galileo Galilei.
The Temple
(1633), a poetry collection by George Herbert. An Anglican priest, Herbert
concerned himself mostly with religious themes in his poems—several have been turned
into hymns. Nearly all of his poetry is contained in this volume.
Silex Scintillans
(1655), a poetry collection by Henry Vaughan. Like Herbert, Vaughan was a Welsh
poet, but his poetry initially focused more on the natural world and its
beauty. After he met Herbert, however, he experienced a religious conversion
and produced this volume of ‘‘sacred poems,’’ becoming a noted and respected
poet in the process.
Although Donne was far too much of an
individual for any succeeding poet to resemble him very closely, his influence
is strongly felt in both the courtly and religious poetry of the following
generation, and the 'metaphysical' school embraces such names as George Herbert,
Richard Crashaw, Henry Vaughan, Robert Herrick, Thomas Carew and, in some
respects the finest of all of them, Andrew Marvell. Yet all of these, while
reflecting directly or indirectly the influence of Donne, differ in many important
respects from their great predecessor.
Thomas Carew: Thomas
Carew (pronounced Carey) wrote many lyrics and songs, though with a rather more
cynical tone than those of his friend, Sir John Suckling. He is first noted for
an elegy to John Donne and for one of the best-known masques of the 1630s, Coelum
Britannicum, performed with settings by Inigo Jones in 1634. Carew’s Poems
of 1640, the year of his death, range from the erotic to the satirical, and
express passion vividly, as in Mediocrity in Love Rejected. His Poems
(1640) show his undoubted lyrical ability. The pieces are influenced by Donne
and Jonson, but they have a character of their own.
The Cavalier Poets
John Suckling: Suckling
was the cavalier of the romances and the Restoration plays --gay, generous, and
witty. His poems largely reflect these characteristics. As a poet he has great
ability, but he is usually the elegant amateur, disdaining serious and
sustained labour. Some of his poems, such- as the Ballad upon a Wedding and Why
so Pale and Wan, Fond Lover?
show the tricksy elegance that is his
chief attraction.
Richard Lovelace: When
the Civil War broke out he was imprisoned by the Roundheads, and, being
liberated on parole, could do little actively to assist Charles. His volume Lucasta (1649) contains
the best of his shorter pieces, which had appeared at different times
previously. His best-known lyrics, such as To Althea, from Prison and To
Lucasta, going to the Wars,
are simple and sincere, and free from
the cynicism of his day, but most of his poems are careless in workmanship,
full of affected wit and gallantry, and often rendered obscure by extravagant
and grotesque conceits.
John Cleveland: The
startling 'metaphysical' quality of the works of many of the poets of this age is
revealed at its worst in the works of John Cleveland (1613-58), whose more
violent efforts came to be known as 'Clevelandisms.'
The following is a mild example of his manner:
The flowers, called out of their beds,
Start and raise up their drowsy heads;
And he that for their colour seeks,
May find it vaulting in her cheeks,
Lord Herbert of Cherbury
is remembered for his revealing Autobiography. He is the elder
brother of the devotional poet George Herbert. Herbert also wrote historical
works, including The Expedition to the Isle of Rhé (Eng. trans., 1860) and The
Life and Raigne of King Henry the Eighth (1649). Occasional Verses (1665)
shows him to have been a talented and original poet as well.
Robert Herrick is
recognized as one of the most
accomplished English poets of his age. Scholars and critics are gradually
appreciating the achievement represented by his only book, Hesperides; or, The Works Both
Humane and Divine (1648).While some of his individual poems, such as ‘‘To the Virgins toMake Much of Time,’’
‘‘Upon Julia’s Clothes,’’ and ‘‘Corinna’s Going a-Maying,’’ are among
the most popular of all time, recent examinations of his Hesperides as a whole
have begun to reveal a Herrick whose sensibility is complex, subtle, and
coherent.
Herrick became one of several ‘‘sons of
Ben’’ who had notable literary careers themselves. Others include Thomas Carew,
Sir John Suckling, and Richard Lovelace. This group, sometimes called the
Cavalier Poets by scholars, carried on Jonson’s revival of classical poetic
styles.
Shortly after Hesperides was published,
Charles I was removed from the throne by the victorious Independents led by
Cromwell. The king was executed in 1649, and Cromwell ruled England as a
commonwealth until he died in 1648. Cromwell’s son Richard succeeded him, but
his rule was even more unpopular than his father’s, and Parliament invited the
return of the monarchy in 1660. The year of the Restoration, Herrick personally
petitioned to be returned to his former vicarage. Charles II, the son and heir
of Charles I, granted his petition and sent him back to Dean Prior in 1662,
where he served until his death at the end of harvest season in October 1674.
Note: Herrick’s ‘‘To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time’’ could
be the most famous ‘‘carpe diem’’ poem in the English language. Here are other verses
expressing, or questioning, the same universal theme:
‘‘Mignonne, allons voir si la rose’’ (1553), a poem by Pierre de Ronsard. This French poet
famously compares his reluctant lover’s beauty to a flower destined to droop
and wither.
‘‘The Passionate Shepherd to His Love’’ (c. 1590), a poem by Christopher Marlowe. A famous English
pastoral love poem with romantic ideals as straightforward as its meter: ‘‘Come
live with me and be my love.’’
‘‘Song to Celia’’
(1607), a poem by Ben Jonson. A brief seduction poem from the literary
patriarch of the Cavaliers: ‘‘‘Tis no sin love’s fruit to steal; / But the
sweet theft to reveal.’’
‘‘To His Coy Mistress’’
(c. 1680), a poem by AndrewMarvell. A strong carpe diem argument is presented
in a courtly seduction poem featuring the lines: ‘‘Had we but world enough, and
time, / This coyness, lady, were no crime.’’
‘‘Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night’’ (1943), by Dylan Thomas. This lament upon mortality,
Thomas’s most famous poem, urges the reader to ‘‘Rage, rage against the dying
of the light.’’
George Herbert: George
Herbert was a seventeenth-century English poet best known for writing intensely
devotional verse using simple, direct speech. Although considered a
metaphysical poet, alongside John Donne and Andrew Marvell, Herbert avoided
secular love lyrics in favor of sincere, holy worship. His best-known work, The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations (1633), is admired
as a profound exploration of humanity’s relationship with God.
Note:
Two of Herbert’s most anthologized
poems are ‘‘The Altar’’ and ‘‘Easter Wings,’’ shape poems—also
called figure poems—in which the poem is written or printed in a shape that
reflects the subject of the poem.
Other well-known shape poems include:
Calligrams
(1918), poems by Guillaume Apollinaire. With the publication of this work,
which is composed of complex shape poems, Apollinaire coined the word calligram
to describe literature in which words are assembled to form an object.
Come to My Party, and Other Shape Poems (2004), a children’s poetry collection by Heidi Roemer.
Springtime rain, ocean waves on a summer day, Halloween pumpkins, snow-covered
hills—the poems in this book celebrate the shapes one can find in each season.
Types of Shapes
(1991), a poetry collection by John Hollander. Some playful, others artistic,
these poems show that form can enhance meaning in poetry.
Richard Crashaw: His
best work is in Steps to the Temple (1646) and much of it was reprinted with valuable
additions in Carmen Deo Nostra (1652). In many ways Crashaw is not
metaphysical: his poems reveal no complexity of mind, no conflict or tension:
the manner is not colloquial, and the images are pictorial rather than
intellectual, lacking the homeliness of Donne and Herbert. At the same time he
has the metaphysical fondness for the striking conceit, which, in him, often
becomes fantastic. His poetry is notable for its fire and fervour, and the
impetus which it derives from his religious excitement and exaltation.
Henry Vaughan: Vaughan's love-poems, though they are often
prettily and sometimes beautifully phrased, are inferior to his religious
pieces, especially those in Silex
Scintillans. His religious fervour is nobly imaginative, and strikes out
lines and ideas of astonishing strength and beauty. His regard for nature,
moreover, has a closeness and penetration that sometimes (for example, in The
Retreat) suggest Wordsworth.
Andrew Marvell: One
of the last of the seventeenth-century Metaphysical poets, Andrew Marvell is
noted for intellectual, allusive poetry that is rich in metaphor and conceit. The
poems generally thought to be his best, such as ‘‘To His Coy Mistress’’ and ‘‘The
Garden’’—both first published in Miscellaneous
Poems (1681)—are characterized by complexity and ambiguous morality, which
critics believe both define his talent and account for his appeal.
Political poems, such as ‘‘An Horatian Ode Upon Cromwell’s Return
from Ireland’’ and ‘‘Upon Appleton
House,’’ have prompted much critical debate due to their ambiguity.
Abraham Cowley: In
the Civil War he warmly supported the King; followed the royal family into
exile, where he performed valuable services; returned to England at the
Restoration; and for the remainder of his life composed books in retirement. Cowley,
even more than Pope and Macaulay, is the great example of the infant prodigy. When
he was ten he wrote a long epical romance, Pyramus and Thisbe (1628), and two years
later produced an even longer poem called Constantia and Philetus (1630). All through
his life he was active in the production of many kinds of work--poems, plays, essays,
and histories. His best-known poem was The Davideis (published 1656), a
rather dreary epic on King David, in heroic couplets. Other poems were The
Mistress (1647), a collection of love-poems, and the Pindarique Odes,
which are a curious hybrid between the early freedom of the Elizabethans and
the classicism of the later generation. His prose works included his Essays and
Discourse by way of Vision concerning the Government of Oliver Cromwell (1661).
Edmund Waller: Edmund
Waller is considered a minor poet within the English canon. He is known less
for his poetry than his political activism; specifically, the thwarted royalist
conspiracy known as ‘‘Waller’s Plot.’’ In terms of his writing, he is best
recognized for ‘‘Go, Lovely Rose’’ (1645), which has been widely anthologized
as an excellent example of a Cavalier lyric.
John Denham: is
known for his descriptive poem Cooper's Hill (1642). It is the
first example in English of a poem devoted to local description, of the Thames
Valley scenery round his home at Egham in Surrey. Denham wrote many versions of
this poem, reflecting the political and cultural upheavals of the Civil War.
John Milton: English
writer John Milton used both his poetry and prose to address issues of religion
and politics.
At first unpopular, Milton eventually
made a name for himself as a rhetorician and public speaker. While at Cambridge
he probably wrote ‘‘L’Allegro,’’ ‘‘Il
Penseroso,’’ and ‘‘On the Morning of
Christ’s Nativity,’’ three of his earliest great poems in English. Upon
graduating in 1632, Milton devoted himself to intense study and writing. To
this period scholars assign the composition of some of Milton’s finest nonepic poems,
including ‘‘Lycidas’’ (1638).
The purpose of ‘‘Lycidas’’ was twofold: to honor the late Edward King, a former
schoolmate at Christ’s College, and to denounce incompetent clergy—a perennial
concern of Milton’s. The poem also reveals Milton’s own philosophical ambitions—later
undertaken in Paradise Lost—to justify
God’s ways to humanity. Many critics consider ‘‘Lycidas’’ the finest short poem in the English language.
In May 1638, Milton embarked on a long
journey through Italy. The experience, which he described in Second
Defence of the People of England (1654), brought him into contact with
the leading men of letters in Florence, Rome, and Naples. Upon his return to
England, Milton wrote the Italy-inspired Damon (1640).
With the advent of English Civil War,
Milton’s life changed utterly as his attentions shifted from private to public
concerns. The English Civil War was a result of the discontent between Charles
I and his subjects. Beginning in 1642, armed conflict broke out between the
antiroyalist Puritans and Scots and the royalists, who supported the monarchy,
and who included the Welsh. Abruptly Milton left off writing poetry for prose,
pouring out pamphlets during the early 1640s in which he opposed what he
considered rampant episcopal tyranny. He declared his Puritan allegiance in
tracts in which he argued the need to purge the Church of England of all vestiges
of Roman Catholicism and restore the simplicity of the apostolic (that is,
early) church.
In 1644, Milton published Areopagitica,
often cited as one of the most compelling arguments for the freedom of the
press. During the next few years Milton worked on his History of Britain
(1670). With Puritan leader Oliver Cromwell’s execution of King Charles I in
1649, however, Milton entered the political fray with The Tenure of Kings and
Magistrates (1649), an assertion of the right of a people to depose or
execute a ruling tyrant. Paradise Lost was published in 1667,
an epic poem recounting the biblical story of humanity’s fall from grace. This
work and its sequel, Paradise Regained (1671), are
celebrated for their consummate artistry and searching consideration of God’s
relationship with the human race. Samson Agonistes (1671), a tragedy,
appeared in the same volume as Paradise Regained. In 1673, Milton embraced
controversy once again with Of True Religion, a short defense of
Protestantism.
Note:
Epic poems are
long narrative poems in an elevated style that usually celebrate heroic
achievement and treat themes of historical, national, religious, or legendary
significance. They appear in every culture. Here are some other examples of
epic poetry.
Omeros (1990), by Derek
Walcott. The Nobel Prize–winning poet retells the story of the Odyssey through West
Indian eyes. The Caribbean island of St. Lucia reveals itself as a main
character, and the poem itself is an epic of the dispossessed.
Paterson (1946–1958), by
William Carlos Williams. This five-book serial poem was one of the first to
redefine the epic, concerning itself with the city of Paterson, New Jersey, and
examining modernization and its effects.
The Ring Cycle
(1848–1874), by Richard Wagner. This cycle of four operas by the German
composer is based on events from Norse sagas and the Nibelungenlied. The cycle
is designed to be performed over the course of four nights, and the full
performance takes about fifteen hours.
Next –
Restoration Period in Literature
Sources
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
Gale’s Contextual Encyclopedia of World Literature
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