THE OLD ENGLISH PERIOD (700-1100); ANGLO-SAXON/ OLD ENGLISH
THE MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD (1100-1500); MIDDLE ENGLISH
MODERN TIMES (1500 to the present); MODERN ENGLISH
(1340-1400)
Chaucer is the first great poet of the English nation and the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages.
Chaucer’s realism in the Canterbury Tales foreshadows future developments in poetry, with the increasing interest in depicting individual characters as well as nature. The most interesting part is the prologue, which gives a vivid picture of fourteenth century society. In a few lines Chaucer is able to draw a brilliant portrait of the thirty pilgrims assembled at an inn in Southwark who are about to set off for the shrine of Thomas Becket in Canterbury. The pilgrims agree to tell two tales each on their way to Canterbury and two on the way back, but in fact only twenty-three were written in all. For the Canterbury Tales Chaucer will always be remembered. The sources of his tales can often be found in Boccaccio’s Decameron, but the treatment of them is entirely his own. The most beautiful story is said to be The Knight’s Tale.
1476 the first printing press in England
Thomas More
(1478-1535)
More’s principal work, a Latin work describing an imaginary island where communism is the general law, gold is used for children’s toys, wars are banned, both men and women are educated, people work only six hours a day and religious tolerance is recognized.
(1608-1674)
The main figure of the 17th century. Milton participated actively in the struggle for the victory of Puritanism.
Paradise Lost
Also called the age of reason or the age of enlightenment. All branches of science were developed, and this resulted in great technical progress. Literature undertook the serous task of leading and educating the readers, and literary criticism was used to form the readers’ opinions and influence their character. Prose was the most accessible form for the new readers, so that the essay, letters, criticism and later the novel became the main literary genres.
Jonathan Swift
(1667-1745)
The supreme English satirist. Wrote novels and essays.
Gulliver’s Travels
(1660-1731)
A pioneer of the modern English novel. He did not want his books to be thought of as fiction, in fact the most famous book of his, Robinson Crusoe, is written in a journalistic style and cannot really be called a novel.
Robinson Crusoe. (The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe).
William Blake
(1757-1827)
Pre-romantic lyrical poetry. His most beautiful poems are the simplest ones, i.e. Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience.
(1759-1796)
In his poems the Scottish folk poetry finds its culmination. The poems are written in the Scottish dialect.
The literature of this period came under the influence of Jean Jacques Rousseau and his ideas of returning to nature and freeing men from the harmful influence of civilization. These ideas which prepared the way for the French revolutionary ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity were enthusiastically accepted by many of the Romantic poets in England (Wordsworth, Byron and Shelley).
(1775-1817)
The world of English provincial life; middle-class families; innocent love stories of virtuous young ladies generally with a happy ending. Her chosen method is impersonal (she doesn’t comment) and dramatic; she can masterly handle dialogues. Even though writing in the romantic period, realistic tendencies can be traced in her novels.
(1770-1850)
The poet of nature. He loved the Lake District where he lived and described it in his poems.
The manifesto of the romantic movement, a turning point in English poetry, written by both Wordsworth and Coleridge.
(1772-1834)
His poetical works were not based on his personal experience. His poetry is purely imaginative, the themes being highly fantastic and even magical.
Composed in an opium-induced dream.
(1771-1832)
A founder of the historical novel. He drew inspiration from folk ballads, especially from the Scottish history.
The Victorian Age (1832-1902)
Realism and naturalism in the nineteenth century novel. The social criticism present both in poetry and prose in the first half of the nineteenth century (Dickens, Brontë) began to weaken in the second half as literature became more conservative (Tennyson, Eliot). Only at the end of the century did Thomas Hardy and John Galsworthy reveal a renewed interest in social criticism.
Humorous novel. Mr. Pickwick, a comic character. He is short, fat and simple-minded. He triumphs with his childish honesty and moral integrity.
Sentimental novel. A foundling in the underworld of London.
Autobiographical. Dickens shows a deep awareness of the social problems of the time. Poverty, slums, bad schools, medical assistance.
An instrument of social criticism.
(1816-1855)
Both the sisters represent the climax of romanticism in the history of the Victorian novel. They explore the inner life, individual emotions and experiences.
A poor orphan girl that falls in love with Mr Rochester and succeeds in marrying him.
(1818-1848)
Wild and tragic love of Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw.
(1854-1900)
Was born in Dublin and studied at Oxford. He was more inspired by art than by nature. Influenced by the French theory of ‘l’art-pour-l’art’, he became a founder of the aesthetic cult and lectured on aesthetics in London. He was inclined to look upon the world as a stage on which he intended to play a leading role. With his eccentric behaviour (he used to dress in the most bizarre fashion and walk up and down Piccadilly with a lily or a sunflower in his hand), his refined and sophisticated manners, his brilliant and paradoxical conversation, he succeeded in becoming famous even before he had written anything of importance.
In 1888 with the publication of The Happy Prince and Other Tales Wilde began his career as a writer. The tales are remarkable for their poetic qualities and their subtle and bitter irony.
The Picture of Dorian Gray. It is Wilde’s only novel, a psychological study that analyses the influence of passion and sorrow on human character. The hero, Dorian, is a natural and pleasant boy whose physical beauty is fascinating. Basil Halward, a painter and moral idealist, is so charmed by Dorian’s personality that he decides to paint his portrait. The picture is a real success but Dorian, standing in front of it, becomes unhappy and jealous of it. He remembers the words of his rich friend, the amoral cynic Lord Henry Wotton, that he will lose his youth and beauty while the picture will keep them. Henry’s bad influence over Dorian’s character is slow but continual, his friendship becomes fatal to Dorian. The wonderful boy becomes cruel and cynical man. But it is the portrait that ages and reflects his growing perversity while he himself does not. As years pass, the portrait seems to represent the only evidence of his crimes and Dorian decides to destroy it. But in stabbing the picture with a knife, he kills himself. When his servants enter the room, they find the portrait of their master splendid but an ugly, wrinkled old man is lying dead on the floor.
Wilde’s greatest achievement are however his comedies: Lady Windermere’s Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest. He brought back on the English stage the genre of witty comedy.
Wilde’s brilliant career in the world of letter and high society was brought to an abrupt end in 1895, when he was sentenced to two years’ hard labour on a charge of homosexuality. After his release from prison he tried unsuccessfully to regain his former position in society and died in Paris on 30th November 1900
(1856-1950)
Born and educated in Dublin. In 1884 he joined the Fabian Society and espoused the cause of socialism, to which he was to give his support throughout his life with innumerable speeches, articles and books (The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism). Between 1885 and 1898 his energies were directed towards journalism (art critic, musical critic, dramatic critic).
Shaw made it clear that what he was aiming at was a theatre of violent denunciation of social evils and of passionate discussion of idea and problems of every kind, social, political, ethical, educational, religious. He wanted to be a reformer of manners and society and he would use the theatre as and effective platform to this end.
The social evil of prostitution
War and the false romantic notions of heroism and military glory
Marriage and woman’s freedom
In which he maintains that a course of phonetics is sufficient to transform a poor flower-girl into a lady.
The dominant trend in the English novel at the beginning of the 20th century (except James and Conrad) was still towards naturalism.
(1866-1946)
Scientific and fantastic romances
(167-1933)
Popular trilogies The Forsyte Saga
(1865-1936)
Believed in action and in an ideal of duty which implied the self-sacrifice of the individual to the interests of the community. Obedience to “The Law”is one of his central themes.
The moral that stresses the superiority of the natural man to the social man, that is man corrupted by society.
(1879-1970)
His main concern was the exploration of personal relations, with the underlying problems of communication and mutual love and understanding. His characters are generally representative of two contrasting worlds or ways of life: one struggling after “passion and truth”, the other ruled by the hypocrisy and greed of conventional society. A Room with a View; Howards End.
The new narrative technique is called the stream of consciousness. “Consciousness does not appear to itself chopped up in bits... It is nothing jointed; it flows. A “river” or “stream”. It is an attempt to render the continuous flow of the mind with its free play of images and associations. Its proper medium is the “interior monologue”, a kind of soliloquy of the mind with itself. The traditional mediation of the narrator between character and reader is abolished. The reader is taken, as it were, inside the minds of the characters.
(1882-1941)
(1882-1941)
What mattered to her was not external reality but the life of the mind, where reality is experienced as perpetually changing flux. She tried to communicate this inner experience.
To the Lighthouse
(1885-193)
The prevailing mood was that of bitter disillusionment, accompanied by profound pessimism and scepticism as to the future of man.
The thirties were afflicted by the world economic crisis brought about by the collapse of the New York Stock Exchange in 1929. Many young English intellectuals turned to Communism. There was a vast production of politically committed literature.
(1903-1950)
An allegory which tells of a group of farm animals who revolt against the tyranny of their masters and decide to run the farm themselves on equalitarian principles. They create a new Utopia governed by the basic slogan that “All animals are equal”. Things go well for a time, but soon the pigs, who are supposed to be the cleverest, come to form an oligarchy and distort and betray the high-minded principles of the revolution. Their new slogan is “All animals are equal but some are more equal than others” and they finally come to a compromise with their original masters.
In the fifties there appeared a new generation of rebels known as the Angry Young Men, a mixed group of writers who shared a common attitude of social protest. They bear some resemblance to the Californian ‘Beat Generation’. Jimmy Porter, the main character in the play Look Back in Anger (1956) by John Osborne, expressed the typical disillusionment and emptiness which they, as intellectuals, felt after World War II. They were angry and dissatisfied with the establishment, criticizing and mocking the snobs and influential people in the society which they lived in, but were incapable of making any real protest and lacked a positive programme. (Other representatives of this group: John Wain, John Braine)
A devastating attack on the hypocrisy and stupidity of the academic world, with its cultural humbug, as well as on the privileges of class, authority and money.
He is not interested in telling stories but in presenting highly emblematic characters and situations, which invariably show the meaninglessness and absurdity of reality and the tragic destiny of man, seen as no more than “a scrap of life surrounded by death, a something encircled by nothing.”
Expressing the state of mind of many young intellectuals of the fifties and their desperate “anger” in the face of a society that seemed to have lost all sense of diction, a society in which “there were no longer any good causes worth fighting for”.
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British Literature
The Anglo-Saxon Period
The Anglo-Norman Period
The Elizabethan and Jacobean period ( 1558 – 1642 )
The Period of English Revolution and Restoration ( 1642 – 1689 )
The Period of Enlightenment ( 1689 – 1760)
The Romantic Period ( 1760 – 1837)
The High Victorian Period ( 1837 – 1875 )
The Late Victorian Period ( 1875 – 1910 )
The Period from WWI to WWII ( 1910 – 1939)
The Period since WWII
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THE DEVELOPMENT OF STYLE IN POETRY
That the poetry of the period under review has developed greatly from the stylistic point of view is clear from a comparison between, say, Lazamon's Brut and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, but it is difficult to describe in a few words, precisely, this development.
It is not too much of an exaggeration to say that from being ' artleas' the poet becomes the consciout artist. Often enough the
poets when faced with more difficult material tend to become obscure, and again in handling some of the difficult metres which they attempted the same result is achieved. Though humour is often enough lacking, there are touches here and there, sometimes of a grim kind. Pathos, too, of a solemn and elevated kind is to be found as well as that of a more simple genre. In the best the style is lucid, firm, controlled, and superb; in the worst it has every possible fault.
THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND (1350-1450)
Compared with the periods covered by the last two chapters, the period now under review is quite short. It includes the greater part of the reign of Edward III and the long French wars associated with his name; the accession of his grandson Richard II (1377); and the revolution of 1399, the deposition of Richard, and the foundation of the Lancastrian dynasty. From the literary point of view, of greater importance are the social and intellectual movements of the period: the terrible plague called the Black Death, bringing poverty, unrest, and revolt among the peasants, and the growth of the spirit of inquiry, which was strongly critical of the ways of the Church, and found expression in the teachings of Wyclif and the Lollards, and in the stem denunciations of Langland.
LITERARY FEATURES OF THE AGE
1. The Standardizing of English. The period of transition is now nearly over. The English language has shaken down to a kind of average--to the standard of the East Midland speech, the language of the capital city and of the universities. The other dialects, with the exception of the Scottish branch, rapidly melt away from literature, till they become quite exiguous. French and English have amalgamated to form the standard English tongue, which attains to its first full expression in the works of Chaucer.
2. A curious 'modern' note begins to be apparent at this period-There is a sharper spirit of criticism, a more searching interest in man's affairs, and a less childlike faith in, and a less complacent acceptance of, the established order. The vogue of the romance, though it has by no means gone, is passing, and in Chaucer it is derided. The freshness of the romantic ideal is being superseded by the more acute spirit of the drama, which even at this early time is faintly foreshadowed. Another more modem feature that at once
strikes the observer is that the age of anonymity is passing away. Though many of the texts still lack named authors, the greater number of the books can be definitely ascribed. Moreover, we have for the first time a figure of outstanding literary importance, who gives to the age the form and pressure of his genius.
3. Prose. This era sees the foundation of an English prose style. Earlier specimens have been experimental or purely imitative; now, in the works of Mandeville and Malory, we have prose that is both original and individual.The English tongue is now ripe for a prose style. The language is settling to a standard; Latin.and French are losing grip as popular prose mediums and the growing desire for an English Bible exercises a steady pressure in favour of a standard English prose.
4. Scottish Literature. For the first time in our literature, in the person of Barbour (1316 (?)-9 95), Scotland supplies a writer worthy of note. This is only the beginning; for the tradition is handed on to the powerful group of poets who are mentioned in the next chapter.
GEOFFREY CHAUCER (c. 1340-c. 1400)
1. His Life. In many of the documents of the time Chaucer's name is mentioned with some frequency; and these references, in addition to some remarks he makes regarding himself in the course of his poems, are the sum of what we know about his life. The date of his birth is uncertain, but it is now generally accepted as being 1340. He was born in London, entered the household of the wife of the Duke of Clarence (1357), and saw military service abroad, where he was captured. Next he seems to have entered the royal household, for he is frequently mentioned as the recipient of royal pensions and bounties. When Richard II succeeded to the crown (1377) Chaucer was confirmed in his offices and pensions, and shortly afterwards (1378) he was sent to Italy on one of his several diplomatic missions. More pecuniary blessings followed; then ensued a period of depression, due probably to the departure to Spain (1386) of his patron John of Gaunt; but his life closed with a revival of his prosperity. He was the first poet to be buried in what is now known as Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.
2. His Poems. The order of Chaucer's poems cannot be ascertained with certitude, but from internal evidence they can as a rule be approximately dated.
It is now customary to divide the Chaucerian poems into three stages: the French, the Italian, and the English, of which the last is a
3
development of the first two. In none of these divisions, of course, is the one influence felt to the exclusion of the others. It is merely that one predominates.
a) The poems of the earliest or French group are closely modelled upon French originals, and the style is clumsy and immature. Of such poems the longest is The Romaunt of the Rose, a lengthy allegorical poem, written in octosyllabic couplets and based upon Le Romaunt de la Rose of Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meung. This poem, only a fragment, though of 8000 lines, was once entirely ascribed to Chaucer, but recent research, based upon a scrutiny of Chaucerian style, has suggested that only the first part is his work. Other poems of this period include The Book of the Duchesse, probably his earliest and written in 1369, the year when John of Gaunt's wife died, The Compleynt unto Pite, An A.B.C., and The Compleynt of Mars.
b) The second or Italian stage shows a decided advance upon the first. In the handling of the metres the technical ability is greater, and there is a growing keenness of perception and a greater stretch of originality. To this period belong Anelida and Arcite and The Parlement of Foules. The latter has a fine opening, and, in the characterization of the birds, shows Chaucer's true comic spirit. Troilus and Criseyde is a long poem adapted from Boccaccio, but in its emphasis on character it is original, and indicative of the line of Chaucer's development. Reality and a passionate intensity underlie its conventions of courtly love and the tedious descriptions which this code demanded. The complex characters of Criseyde and Pan-darus reveal a new subtlety of psychological development, and indicate Chaucer's growing insight into human motives. Troilus and Criseyde is held to be Chaucer's best narrative work. The rhyme royal stanzas are of much dexterity and beauty, and the pathos of the story is touched upon with deep feeling.
If no love is, O God, what fele I so?
And if love is, what thing and which is he?
If love be good, from whennes com'th my wo? If it be wikke, a wonder thinketh me,
When every torment and adversite
That com'th of him, may to me savory thinke; For ay thurste I the more that ich it drinke.
The Hous of Fame, a poem in octosyllabic couplets, is of the dream-allegory type. In his dream Chaucer is carried by an eagle to the House of Fame and watches candidates for fame approach the
throne, some being granted their requests and others refused. Though the story is rather drawn-out, and the allegorical significance obscure, it is of special interest because, in the verve and raci-ness of the Eagle, it shows gleams of the genuine Chaucerian humour. In this group is also included The Legend of Good Women, in which Chaucer, starting with the intention of telling nineteen affecting tales of virtuous women of antiquity, finishes with eight accomplished and the ninth only begun. After a charming introduction on the daisy, there is some masterly narrative, particularly in the portion dealing with Cleopatra. The poem is the first known attempt in English to use the heroic couplet, which is, none the less, handled with great skill and freedom.
(c) The third or English group contains work of the greatest individual accomplishment. The achievement of this period is The Canterbury Tales, though one or two of the separate tales may be of slightly earlier composition. For the general idea of the tales Chaucer may be indebted to Boccaccio, but in nearly every important feature the work is essentially English. For the purposes of his poem Chaucer draws together twenty-nine pilgrims, including himself. They meet at the Tabard Inn, in Southwark in order to go on a pilgrimage to the tomb of Thomas a Becket at Canterbury. The twenty-nine are carefully chosen types, of both sexes, and of all ranks, from a knight to a humble ploughman; their occupations and personal peculiarities are many and diverse; and, as they are depicted in the masterly Prologue to the main work, they are interesting, alive, and thoroughly human. At the suggestion of the host of the Tabard, and to relieve the tedium of the journey, each of the pilgrims is to tell two tales on the outward journey, and two on the return. In its entirety the scheme would have resulted in an immense collection of over a hundred tales. But as it happens Chaucer finished only twenty, and left four partly complete. The separate tales are linked with their individual prologues, and with dialogues and scraps of narrative. Even in its incomplete state the work is a small literature in itself, an almost unmeasured abundance and variety of humour and pathos, of narrative and description, and of dialogue and digression. There are two prose tales, Chaucer's own Tale of Melibeus and The Parson's Tale; and nearly all the others are composed in a powerful and versatile species of the decasyllabic or heroic couplet. To this last stage of Chaucer's work several short poems are ascribed, including The
Lak of Stedfastnesse and the serio-comic Compleynte of Chaucer to his Empty Purse.
There is also mention of a few short early poems, such as Origines upon the Maudeleyne,
which have been lost.
During his lifetime Chaucer built up such a reputation as a poet that many works were at a later date ascribed to him without sufficient evidence. Of this group the best examples are The Flower and the Leaf, quite an excellent example of the dream-allegory type, and The Court of Love. It has now been settled that these poems are not truly his.
3. His prose. The two prose tales may be apposite, but are not among Chaucer's successful efforts. Both--that is, The Tale of Melibeus and The Parson's Tale on penitence--are lifeless in style and full of tedious moralizings. Compared with earlier prose works they nevertheless mark an advance. They have a stronger grasp of sentence-construction, and in vocabulary they are copious and accurate. The other prose works of Chaucer are an early translation of Boethius, and a treatise, composed for the instruction of his little son Lewis, on the astrolabe, then a popular astronomical instrument. The following extract is a fair example of his prose:
"Now, sirs," saith dame Prudence, "sith ye vouche saufe to be gouerned by my counceyll, I will enforme yow how ye shal gouerne yow in chesing of your counceyll. First tofore alle workes ye shall beseche the hyghe God, that he be your counceyll; and shape yow to suche entente that he yeue you counceyll and comforte asThobye taught his sone. 'At alle tymes thou shall plese and praye him to dresse thy weyes; and loke that alle thy counceylls be in hym for euermore.' Saynt James eke saith: ' Yf ony of yow haue nede of sapience, axe it of God.' And after that than shall ye take counceyll in yourself, and examyne well your thoughtys of suche thynges as ye thynke that ben beste for your profyt. And than shall ye dryue away from your hertes the thynges that ben contraryous to good counceyl: this is to saye--ire, couetyse, and hastynes."
The Tale of Melibeus
4. Features of his Poetry. (a) The first thing that strikes the eye is the unique position that Chaucer's work occupies in the literature of the age. He is first, with no competitor for hundreds of years to challenge his position. He is, moreover, the forerunner in the race of great literary figures that henceforth, in fairly regular succession, dominate the ages they live in.
(b) His Observation. Among Chaucer's literary virtues his acute faculty of observation is very prominent. He was a man of the world, mixing freely with all types of mankind; and he used his opportunities to observe the little peculiarities of human nature. He had the seeing eye, the retentive memory, the judgment to select, and
ho capacity to expound; hence the brilliance of his descriptions, which we shall note in the next paragraph.
c) His Descriptions. Success in descriptive passages depends on ivacity and skill in presentation, as well as on the judgment shown n the selection of details. Chaucer's best descriptions, of men, nanners, and places, are of the first rank in their beauty, impressive- less, and humour. Even when he follows the common example of
the time, as when giving details of conventional spring mornings and dowery gardens, he has a vivacity that makes his poetry unique.
Many poets before him had described the break of day, but never with the real inspiration that appears in the following lines:
The bisy larke, messager of day, Salueth in her song the morwe gay, And firy Phoebus riseth up so brighte
That all the orient laugheth with the lighte.
The Knight's Tale
The Prologue contains ample material to illustrate Chaucer's power in describing his fellow-men. We shall add an extract to show him in another vein. Observe the selection of detail, the terseness and adequacy of epithet, and the masterly handling of the couplet.
First on the wal was peynted a forest,
In which ther dwelleth neither man nor best, With knotty, knarry, barreyne trees olde
Of stubbes sharpe and hidouse to biholde, In which ther ran a rumbel and a swough,
As though a storm sholde bresten every bough; And dounward from an hille, under a bente, Ther'stood the temple of Mars armypotente, Wroght al of burned steel, of which the entrée Was long and streit, and gastly for to see.
The northern light in at the dores shoon, For wyndowe on the wal ne was ther noon
Thurgh which men myghten any light discern, The dores were al of adament eterne,
Y-clenched overthwart and endelong With iren tough, and for to make it strong, Every pyler, the temple to sustene,
Was tonne greet, of iren bright and shene.
The Knight's Tate
(d) His Humour and Pathos. In the literature of his time, when so
of Chaucer is invigorating and delightful. The humour, which
steeps nearly all his poetry, has great variety: kindly and patronizing, as in the case of the Clerk of Oxenford; broad and semi-farcical, as
in the Wife of Bath; pointedly satirical, as in the Pardoner and the Summoner; or coarse, as happens in the tales of the Miller, the Reeve, and the Cook. It is seldom that the satirical intent is wholly lacking, as it is in the case of the Good Parson, but, except in rare cases, the satire is good-humoured and well-meant. The prevailing feature of Chaucer's humour is its urbanity: the man of the world's kindly tolerance of the weaknesses of his erring fellow-mortals.
Chaucer lays less emphasis on pathos, but it is not overlooked. In the poetry of Chaucer the sentiment is humane and unforced. We have excellent examples of pathos in the tale of the Prioress and in The Legend of Good Women.
We give a short extract from the long conversation between Chaucer and the eagle ("with fethres all of gold") which carried him off to the House of Fame. The bird, with its cool acceptance of things, is an appropriate symbol of Chaucer himself in his attitude toward the world.
Thus I longe in his clawes lay, Til at the laste he to me spak
In mannes vois, and seyde, "Awak! And be not so agast, for shame!" And called me tho by my name.
And, for I sholde the bet abreyde-- Me mette--"Awak," to me he seyde, Right in the same vois and stevene That useth oon I coude nevene; And with that vois, soth for to sayn, My minde cam to me agayn;
For hit was goodly seyd to me, So nas hit never wont to be.. .. And sayde twyes "Seynte Marie! Thou art noyous for to carie." . . .
"O god," thoughte I, "that madest kinde, Shal I non other weyes dye?
Wher loves wol me stellifye,
Or what thing may this signifye? I neither am Enok, nor Elye,
Ne Romulus, ne Ganymede
That was y-bore up, as men rede, To hevene with dan Iupiter,
And maad the goddes boteler."
(e) His Narrative Power. As a story-teller Chaucer employs somewhat tortuous methods, but his narrative possesses a curious stealthy speed. His stories, viewed strictly as stories, have most of the weakness of his generation: a fondness for long speeches, for
pedantic digressions on such subjects as dreams and ethical problems, and for long explanations when none are necessary. Troilus and Criseyde, heavy with long speeches, is an example of his prolixity, and The Knight's Tale, of baffling complexity and over- abundant in detail, reveals his haphazard and dawdling methods; yet both contain many admirable narrative passages. But when he rises above the weaknesses common to the time he is terse, direct, and vivacious. The extract given below will illustrate the briskness with which his story can move.
This sely widwe, and eek hir doghtres two, Herden thise hennes crie and maken wo, And out at dores stirten they anon,
And syen the fox toward the grove gon, And bar upon his bak the cok away,
And cryden, "Out! Harrow! And weylaway! Ha! Ha! The fox!" And after hym they ran, And eek with staves many another man;
Ran Colle, oure dogge, and Talbot, and Gerland And Malkyn, with a dystaf in hir hand;
Ran cow and calf, and eek the verray hogges, So were they fered for berkynge of the dogges, And shoutyng of the men and wommen eek; They ronne so hem thoughte hir herte breek.
They yolleden, as feendes doon in helle;
The dokes cryden, as men wolde hem quelle; The gees, for feere, flowen over the trees; Out of the hyve cam the swarm of bees;
So hidous was the noys, a benedicitee! Certes, he Jakke Straw, and his meynee, Ne made never shoutes half so shrille, Whan that they wolden any Flemyng kille, As thilke day was rnaade upon the fox.
The Nun's Priest's Tale
(f) His Metrical Skill. In the matter of poetical technique English literature owes much to Chaucer. He virtually imported the decasyl labic line from France--it had been employed hardly at all in England previously--and he used it in both stanzaic and couplet forms. The seven-lined stanza a b a b b c c has become known as theChaucerian or rime royale. Chaucer is no great lyrical poet but in some of his shorter poems--roundels and ballades--he shows a skill that is as good as the very best apparent in the contemporary poems.
(g) Summary. We may summarize Chaucer's achievement by saying that he is the earliest of the great moderns. In comparison
with the poets of his own time, and with those of the succeeding century, the advance he makes is almost startling. For example, Manning, Hampole, and the romancers are of another age and of another way of thinking from ours; but, apart from the superficial archaisms of spelling, the modern reader finds in Chaucer something closely akin. All the Chaucerian features help to create this modern atmosphere: the shrewd and placidly humorous observation, the wide humanity, the quick aptness of phrase, the dexterous touch upon the metre, and, above all, the fresh and formative spirit--the genius turning dross into gold. Chaucer is indeed a genius; he stands alone, and for nearly two hundred years none dare claim equality with him.
OTHER POETS
1. William Langland, or Langley (1332 (?)-140© (7)), is one of the early writers with whom modem research has dealt adversely. AD we know about him appears on the manuscripts of his poem, or is based upon the remarks he makes regarding himself in the course of the poem. This poem, the full title of which is The Vision of William concerning Piers the Plowman, appears in its many manuscripts in three forms, called respectively the A, B, and C texts. The A text is the shortest, being about 2500 lines long; the B is more than 7200 lines; and the C, which is clearly based upon B, is more than 7300 lines. Until quite recently it has always been assumed that the three forms were all the work of Langland; but the latest theory is that the A form is the genuine composition of Langland, whereas both B and C have been composed by a later and inferior poet.
From the personal passages in the poem it appears that the author was born in Shropshire about 1332. The vision in which he saw Piers the Plowman probably took place in 1362. The poem itself tells of the poet's vision on the Malvern Hills. In this trance he beholds a fair "feld ful of folk." The first vision, by subtle and baffling .changes, merges into a series of dissolving scenes which deal with the adventures of allegorical beings, human like Do-wel, Do-bet, and Do-betst, or of abstract significance like the Lady Meed, Wit, Study, and Faith. During the many incidents of the poem the virtuous powers generally suffer most, till the advent of Piers the Plowman--the Messianic deliverer--restores the balance to the right side. The underlying motive of the work is to expose the sloth and vice of the Church, and to set on record the struggles and virtues of common folks. Langland's frequent sketches of homely
life are done with sympathy and knowledge, and, unlike Chaucer, he portrays vividly the terrible hardships of the poor peasant.
The style has a sombre energy, an intense but crabbed seriousness, and an austere simplicity of treatment. The form of the poem is curious. It is a revival of the Old English rhymeless measure, having alliteration as the basis of the line. The lines themselves are fairly uniform in length, and there is the middle pause, with (as a rule) two alliterations in the first half-line and one in the second. Yet in spite of the Old English metre the vocabulary draws freely upon the French, to an extent equal to that of Chaucer himself.
The following lines illustrate the predominant tone of the poem. The fiery and direct denunciation of the vices of the times makes an interesting comparison with Chaucer's portrayal of the ecclesiastics in the Prologue to The Canterbury Tales. The reader should note the strong rhythm, and the regular system of alliteration.
Heremites on an heep . With hoked staves, Wenten to Walsyngham . and here wenches after;
Grete lobyes1 and longe . that loth were to swynke, Clotheden hem in copis . to ben knowen fram othere, And shopen hem heremites . here ese to have.
I fonde there Freris . alle the foure ordres, Preched the peple . for profit to hem-selven, Preched the gospel . as hem good lyked,
For coveitise of copis . construed it as thei wolde.
2. John Gower, the date of whose birth is uncertain, died in 1408. He was a man of means, and a member of a good Kentish family; he took a fairly active part in the politics and literary activity of the time, and was buried in London.
The three chief works of Gower are noteworthy, for they illustrate the unstable state of contemporary English literature. His first poem, Speculum Meditantis, is written in French, and for a long time was lost, being discovered as late as 1895; the second, Vox Clamantis, is composed in Latin; and the third, Confessio Amantis, is written in English, at the King's command according to Gower himself. In this last poem we have the conventional allegorical setting, with a disquisition on the seven deadly sins, illustrated by many anecdotes. These anecdotes reveal Gower's capacity as a story-teller. He has a diffuse and watery style of narrative, but occasionally he is brisk and competent. The metre is the octosyllabic couplet, of great smoothness and fluency.
1 Lubbers.
3. John Barbour (1316 (?)-95) is the first of the Scottish poets to claim our attention. He was born in Aberdeenshire, and studied both at Oxford and Paris. His great work is his Bruce (1375), a lengthy poem of twenty books and thirteen thousand lines. The work is really a history of Scotland's struggle for freedom from the year 1286 till the death of Bruce and the burial of his heart (1332). The heroic theme is the rise of Bruce, and the central incident of the poem is the battle of Bannockburn. The poem, often rudely but pithily expressed, contains much absurd legend and a good deal of inaccuracy, but it is no mean beginning to the long series of Scottish heroic poems. This spirited passage from the first book is often quoted:
A! fredome is a nobill thing! Fredome mayss' man to haiff liking! Fredome all solace to man giffis; He levys at ess that frely levys!
A noble hart may haiff nane ess, Na ellys nocht that may him pless
Gyffe fredome failzhe: for fre liking Is zharnyt2 our all othir thing.
Na he, that ay hass levyt fre
May nocht knaw weill the propyrte, The angyr, na the wrechyt dome, That is couplyt to foule thyrldome.
PROSE-WRITERS
1. Sir John Mandeville is the English form of the name of Jehan de Mandeville, who compiled and published a French book of travels between 1357 and 1371. This French work was very popular, and it was translated into several languages, including English.The English version has a preface, in which it is stated that the author was a Sir John Mandeville, a knight, bom at St Albans, who crossed the sea in 1322 and travelled in many strange regions. Much of the personal narrative is invention; nowadays the very existence of Sir John is denied. The real author of the book is said to be
Jehan de Bourgogne, who died at Liege in 1372.
It has now been demonstrated that the so-called 'Travels' is a compilation from several popular books of voyages, including those of a Friar Odoric, of an Armenian called Hetoum, and (to a very small extent) of the famous traveller Marco Polo. These, with a few grains of original matter, are ingeniously welded into one of the most charming books of its kind. The travels are full of incredible
1 makes. 2yearned for.
descriptions and anecdotes, which are set down with delightful faith and eagerness. The style is sweet and clear, with some colloquial touches; and the short narrations freely dispersed through the text, tersely phrased and accurately gauged in length, are rendered with great skill.
We add an example to illustrate this admirable prose style. Observe the brief sentences, many of which begin with 'and,' the simple but effective diction, and the straightforward style of narrative.
And zee schull undirstonde that whan men comen to Jerusalem her first pilgrymage is to the chirche of the Holy Sepulcr wher oure Lord was buryed, that is withoute the cytee on the north syde. But it is now enclosed in with the ton wall. And there is a full fair chirche all rownd, and open above, and covered with leed. And on the west syde is a fair tour and an high for belles strongly made. And in the myddes of the chirche is a tabernacle as it wer a lytyll hows, made with a low lityll dore; and that tabernacle is made in maner of a half a compas right curiousely and richely made of gold and azure and othere riche coloures, full nobelyche made. And in the ryght side of that tabernacle is the sepulcre of oure Lord. And the tabernacle is viij fote long and v fote wide, and xj fote in heghte. And it is not longe sithe the sepulcre was all open, that men myghte kisse it and touche it. But for pilgrymes that comen thider peyned hem to breke the ston in peces, or in poudr; therefore the Soudan1 hath do make a wall aboute the sepulcr that no man may towche it. But in the left syde of the wall of the tabernacle is well the heighte of a man, is a gret ston, to the quantytee of a mannes hed, that was of the holy sepulcr, and that ston kissen the pilgrymes that comen thider. In that tabernacle ben no wyndowes, but it is all made light with lampes that hangen befor the sepulcr.
2. John Wyclif, or Wycliffe (1320-84), was born in Yorkshire about the year 1320. He was educated at Oxford, took holy orders, received the living of Lutterworth in Leicestershire (1374), and took a prominent part in the ecclesiastical feuds of the day. He was strong in his denunciation of the abuses then rampant, and only the influence of his powerful friends saved him from the fate of a heretic. He died peacefully in 1384. An active controversialist, he wrote many Latin books in support of his revolutionary opinions. In addition, he issued a large number of tracts and pamphlets in English. An English translation of the Bible made at the end of his life has been popularly attributed to him, but, while it undoubtedly reflects his influence, its authorship remains uncertain. His English style is not polished,, but it is
1 Sultan.
vigorous and pointed, with a homely simplicity that makes its appeal both wide and powerful.
3. Sir Thomas Malory (died 1471 (?)) is included here, though bis famous work, the Morte d'Arthur, was composed as late as the "ix yere of the reygne of Kyng Edward the furth" (1469). Nearly all we know about Malory is contained in the preface of Caxton, the first printer of the book. Caxton says that the book was written by Sir Thomas Malory "oute of certeyn bookes of frensshe."
The Morte d'Arthur, like the travels of Mandeville, is a compilation. The French Arthurian romances are drawn upon to create a prose romance of great length and detail. However diverse its sources, the book is written with a uniform dignity and fervour that express the very essence of romance and chivalry. It is a skilful blend of dialogue and narrative and is full of colour and life, while the style has a transparent clarity and a poetic sensitivity which make Malory our first great, individual, prose stylist. Remote in spirit from the everyday concerns of its age, the Morte d'Arthur stands outside the main stream of the development of English prose.
And on the morn the damsel and he took their leave and thanked the knight, and so departed, and rode on their way until they came to a great forest. And there was a great river and but one passage, and there were ready two knights on the further side to let them the passage. "What sayest thou," said the damsel, "wilt thou match yonder knights, or turn again?" "Nay," said Sir Beaumains, "I will not turn again and they were six more." And therewithal he rushed into the water, and in the midst of the water, either brake their spears upon other to their hands, and then they drew their swords and smote eagerly at other. And at the last Sir Beaumains smote the other upon the helm that his head stonied, and therewithal he fell down in the water, and there was he drowned. And then he spurred his horse upon the land, where the other knight fell upon him and brake his spear, and so they drew their swords and fought long together. At the last Sir Beaumains clave his helm and his head down to the shoulders: and so he rode unto the damsel, and bade her ride forth on her way.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF LITERARY FORMS
The Chaucerian age saw a great and significant advance in poetical forms of literature, and noteworthy ones in the domain of prose.
1. Poetry. With regard to poetry, we can observe the various forms separating themselves and straightening out into form and coherence,
(a) The lyric, chiefly the religious and love-lyric, continues to be written and developed. Chaucer himself contributes very little
toward it, but a number of anonymous bards add to the common stock. It is seldom that we can give precise dates to the lyrics of this period; but about this time were composed such exquisite pieces as The Nut-brown Maid, a curious hybrid between the lyric and the ballad, and the lovely carols of the Church.
b) The Rise of the Ballad. By the late fourteenth century, the traditional ballad, of the type of Chevy Chace, Sir Patrick Spens, and the Robin Hood poems, had become an important source of popular entertainment, especially in the North. The origins of this form are much disputed, but, whether the ballad was composed by minstrels, or was the result of communal activity, it is essentially simple and popular. Mainly about love, local legends, the feats of local heroes, supernatural happenings, or religious stories, the ballad deals with man's elemental passions in frank and uninhibited terms, while its situations are such as affect the individual or family rather than the larger social unit of clan or nation. Its tone is impersonal and detached, and there is little or none of the composer's personality to be felt. The verse form (most commonly abcb, with alternating lines of four and three iambic feet) was subject to considerable variation, but was always simple and easily memo- rized. Frequent use of a refrain and of repetition are, similarly, products of this necessity to memorize the ballad, which also led to a concentration of emphasis (usually on a single incident), a complete lack of ornamental detail, and a rapidity of movement which made each stanza a definite step in the development of the story. It will be seen that the ballad is completely different from the romance, which is aristocratic in tone and theme, and cumulative in form, so that it could deal with any number of adventures. Collections of ballads were not made until the eighteenth century, so that we find many varying forms of the same ballad, and it seems likely that the versions we now possess differ considerably from the original.
c) The Rise of the Allegory. This is perhaps the suitable place to note the rise of allegory, which in the age of Chaucer began to affect all the branches of poetry. Even at its best the allegorical method is crude and artificial, but it is a concrete and effective literary device for expounding moral and religious lessons. It appeals with the greatest force to minds which are still unused to abstract thinking; and about the period now under discussion it exactly suited the lay and ecclesiastical mind. Hence we have a flood of poems dealing with Courts of Love, Houses of Fame, Dances of the Seven Deadly
Sins, and other symbolical subjects. Especially in the earlier stages of his career, Chaucer himself did not escape the prevailing habit. We shall see that the craze for the allegory was to increase during the next century and later, till it reached its climax in The Faerie Queene.
d) Descriptive and Narrative Poems. In this form of poetry The Canterbury Tales is the outstanding example, but in many passages of Langland and Gower we have specimens of the same class. We have already mentioned some of the weaknesses that are common to the narrative poetry of the day, and which were due partly to lack of practice and partly to reliance upon inferior models: the tantalizing rigmaroles of long speeches and irrelevant episodes, the habit of dragging into the story scientific and religious discussions, and an imperfect sense of proportion in the arrangement of the plot. In the best examples, such as those of Chaucer, there is powerful grip upon the central interest, a shrewd observation and humour, and quite often a brilliant rapidity of narration.
e) The metrical romance is still a popular form, but the great vogue of the last century is on the wane. Among the lower classes it is being supplanted by the ballad; and the growing favour that is being shown to the fabliau--that is, the short French tale, realistic in subject and humorous-satirical in style--is leading to tales of the coarser Chaucer type.
3. Prose. The field for English prose is rapidly extending. The Travels of Mandeville presents an interesting departure as a prose work written for amusement rather than instruction. We have the translation of the Bible usually associated with Wyclif, and a prose version of Higden's Polychronicon by John of Trevisa (1326-1412). But the most significant development is to be found in the clarity and vigour of the homely English used in civic records, and by letter-writers such as the Pastons, Celys, and Stonors. Simple, straightforward, and free from the stylistic ornamentation of the consciously literary prose, these everyday writings illustrate vividly the growing command of the native idiom in many sections of the community.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF LITERARY STYLE
1. Poetry. We have already stated that the time of transition and experiment is nearly over. English poetical style has established itself, and the main lines of development have been laid down. For this we are indebted almost entirely to Chaucer.
a) With regard to metre, it is curious to observe that with increasing practice the tendency is toward simplicity. The extremely complicated stanzas are becoming less common, and rhyme royal and other shorter verses are coming into favour. Along with simplification is a greater suppleness and dexterity. There is less rigidity in the position of the pause, and a greater freedom in the substitution of three-syllabled feet for two-syllabled feet. These features are most strongly developed in the couplet forms. It is this union of simplicity and freedom that is to remain the dominating characteristic of English verse, thus contrasting with the quantitative system of the classical measures and the syllabic nature of the French.
b) There is an interesting revival in alliteration. In the true alliterative poem the basis of the line is a system of repeating sounds, such as was the custom in Old English verse. One of the earliest examples of this type which occurs after the Norman Conquest is Wynnere and Wastour (1352), an anonymous poem of ho great merit. The tradition is continued in the alliterative romances of the type of Cleannesse; and it attains its climax in Piers Plowman, Though this last poem gained a great popularity it left no important literary descendants. Hence the revival of the ancient system of alliteration remains as an interesting curiosity. In a very short time after Langland alliteration becomes simply an ornament to metre --sometimes a device of great beauty, but not vital to the metrical scheme.
As regards the actual poetic diction of the period, there is a considerable liking shown for ornate French and classical terms. This can be observed in the earlier poems of Chaucer and in the Confessio Amantis of Gower. We have not yet attained to the aureate diction of the succeeding generation, but the temptation to use French terms was too strong to be resisted. Langland, though he draws upon the French element, writes with much greater simplicity; and the ballads also are composed in a manner quite plain and unadorned.
2. Prose, The state of prose is still immature, but the everyday writings of the age show a vigour and clarity which are a great advance on the mingled French and English writing of the beginning of the period, when English was still struggling to shake off the dominance of French. Wyclif's prose is unpolished, though it can be pointed and vigorous. Mandeville's prose style, though it is devoid of artifices, attains to a certain distinction by reason of its
straightforward methods, its short and workmanlike sentences, and a brevity rare in his day. In the case of Malory, who comes some time after the others, we have quite an individual style. It is still unadorned; but it has a distinction of phrase and a decided romantic flavour that make Malory a prose stylist of a high class. His prose is, indeed, quite distinct from that of his predecessors, and exerts little influence on the writers who follow.
CHAPTER IV
FROM CHAUCER TO SPENSER
THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND (1450-1550)
The dates that appear at the head of this section are only approximate, but the general features of the time are well defined. In England the period begins with wars, unrest, and almost chaos; it concludes with a settled dynasty, a reformed religion, and a people united and progressive. Abroad, as well as in England, there is apparent the broad intellectual flood known as the Renaissance, running deep and strong: the renewed desire for knowledge, changes in religious ideals, the discovery of new worlds, both geographical and literary, and the enormous quickening of heart and mind. In England the scene is being prepared for the great age to follow.
LITERARY FEATURES OF THE AGE
1. Poverty of Material. Considering the length of the period, the poverty of the output is hard to explain. There is no English poet of any consequence; the prose writing is thin in quality and quantity; and if it were not for the activities of the Scottish poets the age would be poor indeed.
2. Scottish Poetry. Scottish poetry comes late into notice, but it comes with a bound. The poverty and disunion of Scotland, its severance from the intellectual stimulus of English thought, and the dearth of educational facilities all combine to retard its literary development. But these disadvantages are rapidly passing away, with the beneficial results apparent in this chapter.
3. The Development of the Drama. The popularity of the romance is almost gone; the drama, more suited to the growing intelligence of the time, is rapidly taking on a new importance. The professional actor and the playwright, owing to real demand for their services, are making their appearance. The development of the drama is sketched in this chapter.
4. The Importance of the Period. The importance of the time is belied by its apparent barrenness. In reality it is a season of healthy fallow, of germination, of rest and recuperation. The literary
4
impulse, slowly awakening, is waiting for the right moment. When that moment comes the long period of rest gives the new movement swift and enduring force.
POETRY
1. The Scottish Poets, (a) James I (1394-1437) was captured by the English in 1406, and remained in England till 1424, when he married Joan Beaufort, the cousin of Henry V, and returned to Scotland. The chief poem associated with his name is The Kingis Quair (quire or book). The attempts to disprove his authorship have not been successful. It seems to have been written during his captivity, and it records his first sight of the lady destined to be his wife. It follows the Chaucerian model of the dream, the garden, and the introduction of allegorical figures. The stanza is the rhyme royal, which is said to have derived its name from his use of it. The diction, which is the common artificial blend of Scottish and Chaucerian forms, is highly ornamented; but there are some passages of really brilliant description, and a few stanzas of passionate declamation quite equal to the best of Chaucer's Troilus' and Criseyde. It is certainly among the best of the poems that appear between the periods of Chaucer and Spenser. Other poems, in particular the more plebeian Peblis to the Play and Christis Kirk on the Grene, have been ascribed to James, but his authorship is extremely doubtful.
The two following stanzas are fair examples of James's poetry. The man who wrote them was no mean poet.
Off hir array the form gif I sall write, Toward hir goldin haire and rich atyre
In fret-wise couchit1 was with perllis quhite And grete balas2 lemyng3 as the fyre,
With mony ane emeraut and faire saphire; And on hir hede a chaplet fresch of hewe,
Off plumys partit rede, and quhite, and blewe;
II. JOHN DONNE (1573-1631)
1. His Life. Donne, the son of a wealthy merchant, was born in London. His parents were Roman Catholics, and he was educated in their faith before going on to Oxford and Cambridge. He entered the Inns of Court in 1592, where he mingled wide reading with the life of a dissolute man-about-town. In these years (1590-1601) he wrote his Satires, the Songs and Sonets, and the Elegies, but, though widely circulated in manuscript, they were not published until 1633, after his death. Donne seemed ambitious for a worldly career, but this was ruined by a runaway marriage with the niece of his patron, after which he spent several years in suitorship
[Footnote: 2 carving.] [Footnote: 3ore.] [Footnote:4 hammered] [Footnote: 5ingots.]
of the great. In 1615 he entered the Anglican Church, after a severe personal struggle, and in 1621. became Dean of St Paul's, which position he held until his death in 1631. He was the first great Anglican preacher.
2. His Poetry. Donne was the most independent of the Elizabethan poets, and revolted against the easy, fluent style, stock imagery, and pastoral conventions of the followers of Spenser. He aimed at reality of thought and vividness of expression. His poetry is forceful, vigorous, and, in spite of faults of rhythm, often strangely harmonious.
His cynical nature and keenly critical mind led him to write satires, such as Of the Progres of the Soule (1601). They were written in the couplet form, later to be adopted by Dryden and then by Pope, and show clearly, often coarsely and crudely, Donne's dissatisfaction with the world around him.
His love poems, the Songs and Sonets, were written in the same period, and are intense and subtle analyses of all the moods of a lover, expressed in vivid and startling language, which is colloquial rather than conventional. A vein of satire runs through these too. The rhythm is dramatic and gives the illusion of excited talk. He avoids the smooth, easy patterns of most of his contemporaries, preferring to arrest attention rather than to lull the senses. His great variety of pace, his fondness for echoing sounds, his deliberate use of shortened lines and unusual stress contribute also to this effect of vivid speech, swift thought, and delicate emotional responses. He is essentially a psychological poet whose primary concern is feeling. His poems are all intensely personal and reveal a powerful and complex being. Among the best known and most typical of the poems of this group are Aire and Angels, A Nocturnall upon S. Lucies day, A Valediction: forbidding mourning, and The Extasie. The following stanzas from A Valediction: of weeping give some idea of Donne's use of striking imagery, and of the excitement of his rhythms:
Let me powre forth
My teares before thy face, whil'st I stay here,
For thy face coines them, and thy stampe they beare, And by this Mintage they are something worth,
For thus they bee Pregnant of thee;
Fruits-of much griefe they are, emblemes of more, When a teare falls, that thou falst which it bore, So thou and I are nothing then, when on a divers shore
On a round ball
A workeman that hath copies by, can lay An Europe, Afrique, and an Asia,
And quickly make that, which was nothing, All,
So doth each teare, Which thee doth weare,
A globe, yea world by that impression grow, Till thy teares mixt with mine doe overflow
This world, by waters sent from thee, my heaven dissolved so.
His religious poetry was written after 1610, and the greatest, the nineteen Holy Sonets, and the lyrics such as A Hymn to GOD THE FATHER, after his wife's death in 1617. They too are intense and personal, and have a force unique in this class of literature.
They reveal the struggle in his mind before taking orders in the Anglican Church, his horror of death, and the fascination which it had for him, his dread of the wrath of God, and his longing for God's love. They are the expression of a deep and troubled soul. In them are found the intellectual subtlety, the scholastic learning, and the 'wit' and 'conceits' of the love poems. We give here one of the Holy Sonets. It has the intensely personal note and the concern with death which are so typical of Donne's religious works.
What if this present were the worlds last night? Marke in my heart, O Soule, where thou dost dwell, The picture of Christ crucified, and tell
Whether that countenance can thee affright, Teares in his eyes quench the amasing light,
Blood fills his frownes, which from his pierc'd head fell. And can that tongue adjudge thee unto hell,
Which pray'd forgivenesse for his foes fierce spight? No, no; but as in my idolatrie
I said to all my profane mistresses, Beauty, of pitty, foulnesse only is A signe of rigour: so I say to thee,
To wicked spirits are horrid shapes assign'd, This beauteous forme assures a pitious minde.
"He affects the metaphysics," said Dryden of Donne, and the term 'metaphysical' has come to be applied to Donne and the group of poets who followed him. Strictly the word means " based on abstract general reasoning," but the poetry of Donne shows more than this. It reveals a depth of philosophy, a subtlety of reasoning, a blend of thought and devotion, a mingling of the homely and the sublime, the light and the serious, which make it full of variety and surprise. It is to these many characteristics, so widely differing yet
often brought together in a startling fusion, that the general term 'wit' is applied. Probably the most distinctive feature of the metaphysicals is their imagery, which, in Donne, is almost invariably unusual and striking, often breath-taking, but sometimes far- fetched and fantastic. From his wide range of knowledge he draws many remarkable comparisons; parted lovers are like the legs of a pair of compasses, love is a spider "which transubstantiates all," his sick body is a map, his physicians cosmographers, and Death his "South-west discoverie."
3. His Prose. Donne's prose work is considerable both in bulk and achievement. The Pseudo-Martyr (1610) was a defence of the oath of allegiance, while Ignatius His Conclave (1611) was a satire upon Ignatius Loyola and the Jesuits. The best introduction to Donne's prose is, however, through his Devotions (1614,), which give an account of his spiritual struggles during a serious illness. They have many of the qualities of his poetry, are directly personal, reveal a keen psychological insight, and the preoccupation with death and his own sinfulness which is also to be seen in his Holy Sonnets. The strong power of his imagination and the mask of learning, which are features of the work, cannot hide the basic underlying simplicity of Donne's faith and his longing for rest in God. His finest prose works are his Sermons, which number about 160. In seventeenth century England the sermon was a most important influence, and the powerful preacher in London was a public figure capable of wielding great influence. We possess great numbers of these sermons, which show the form to have a highly developed literary technique based on a well-established oratorical tradition. Donne's sermons, of which the finest is probably Death's Duell (1630), contain many Of the features of his poetry. Intensely personal, their appeal is primarily emotional, and Donne seems to have used a dramatic technique which had a great hold on his audiences. They reveal the same sort of imagery, the same unusual wit, the keen analytical mind, and the preoccupation with morbid themes which exist in his poetry, and they are full of the same out-of-the-way learning.
We quote below the ending of his last sermon, Death's Duell (1630), "called by his Majesties household the doctors owne funerall sermon." Note the power of the dramatic appeal to the emotions, and the final peace so often sought for by Donne--rest in God.
There now hangs that sacred Body upon the Crosse, rebaptized in his owne teares and sweat, and embalmed in his owne blood alive. There are those bowells of compassion, which are so conspicuous, so manifested, as that you may see them through his wounds. There those glorious eyes grew faint in their light: so as the Sun, ashamed to survive them, departed with his light too. And then that Sonne of God, who was never from us, and yet had now come a new way unto us in assuming our nature, delivers that soule (which was never out of his Fathers hands) by a new way, a voluntary emission of it into his Fathers hands; For though to this God our Lord, belong'd these issues of death, so that considered in his owne contract, he must necessarily die, yet at no breach or battery, which they had made upon his sacred Body, issued his soule, but emisit, he gave up the Ghost, and as God breathed a soule into the first Adam, so this second Adam breathed his soule into God, into the hands of God. There wee leave you in that blessed dependancy, to hang upon him that hangs upon the Crosse, there bath in his teares, there suck at his woundes, and lie down in peace in his grave till hee vouchsafe you a resurrection, and an ascension into that Kingdome, which hee hath purchas'd for you, with the inestimable price of his incorruptible blood. Amen.
5. His Influence. 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 (1593-1633), Richard Crashaw (1612 (?)-49), Henry Vaughan (1621 (?)-95), Robert Herrick (1591-1674), Thomas Carew (1594 (?)-1639 (?)) and, in some respects the finest of all of them, Andrew Marvell (1621-78). Yet all of these, while reflecting directly or indirectly the influence of Donne, differ in many important respects from their great predecessor.
OTHER POETS
1. Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503 (?)-42) was descended from an ancient Yorkshire family which adopted the Lancastrian side in the Wars of the Roses. He was educated at Cambridge, and, entering the King's service, was entrusted with many important diplomatic missions. In public life his principal patron was Thomas Cromwell, after whose death he was recalled from abroad and imprisoned (1541). Though subsequently acquitted and released, he died shortly afterward.
Wyatt's poems are short but fairly numerous. His ninety-six love poems appeared posthumously (1557) in a compendium called Tottel's Miscellany. The most noteworthy are thirty-one sonnets, the first in English. Ten of them were translations from Petrarch,
while all were written in the Petrarchan form, apart from the couplet ending, which Wyatt introduced. Serious and reflective in tone, the sonnets show some stiffness of construction and a metrical uncertainty indicative of the difficulty Wyatt found in the new form. Yet their conciseness represents a great advance on the prolixity and uncouthness of much earlier poetry. Wyatt was also responsible for the most important introduction of the personal note into English poetry, for, though following his models closely, he wrote of his own experiences. His epigrams, songs, and rondeaux are lighter than the sonnets, and they also reveal a care and elegance that were typical of the new romanticism. His Satires are composed in the Italian terza rima, once again showing the direction of the innovating tendencies.
2. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1516 (?)-47), whose name is usually associated in literature with that of Wyatt, was the younger poet of the two. He was the son of Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, and when his father became Duke of Norfolk (1524) the son adopted the courtesy title of Earl of Surrey. Owing largely to the powerful position of his father, Surrey took a prominent part in the Court life of the time, and served as a soldier both in France and Scotland. He was a man of reckless temper, which involved him in many quarrels, and finally brought upon him the wrath of the ageing and embittered Henry
VIII. He was arrested, tried for treason, and beheaded on Tower Hill.
About 1542 Surrey began his literary relations with Wyatt, who was his elder by fifteen years. His poems, which were the recreations of his few leisure moments, and which were not published till after his death, appeared (1557) along with Wyatt's in Totte's Miscellany. They are chiefly lyrical, and include a few sonnets, the first of their kind, composed in the English or Shakespearian mode--an arrangement of three quatrains followed by a couplet. There are in addition a large number of love-poems. A greater metrical accuracy and a skilful variation of the caesura make them smoother and more polished than Wyatt's poems. His most important poem was published separately: Certain Bokes of Virgiles AEneis turned into English Meter (1557). Though the actual translation is of no outstanding merit, the form is of great significance; it is blank verse, rather rough and frigid, and showing a fondness for the end-stopped line, but the earliest forerunner of the great achievements of Shakespeare and Milton.
In the development of English verse Surrey represents a further
stage: a higher poetical faculty, increased ease and refinement, and the introduction of two metrical forms of capital importance--the English form of the sonnet, and blank verse. We add a specimen of the earliest English blank verse. It is wooden and uninspired, but as a beginning it is worthy of attention.
But now the wounded quene with heavie care Throwgh out the vaines doth nourishe ay the plage, Surprised with blind flame, and to her minde Gan to resort the prowes of the man And honor of his race, whiles in her brest Imprinted stake his wordes and forme of face, Ne to her lymmes care graunteth quiet rest. The next morowe with Phoebus lampe the erthe Alightned clere, and eke the dawninge daye The shadowe darke gan from the pole remove.
3. Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset (1536-1608), was born at Buckhurst, in Sussex, and was educated both at Oxford and Cambridge. He was called to the Bar, entered Parliament, took part in many diplomatic and public missions, and was created Lord Buckhurst in 1566. His plain speaking did not recommend itself to Elizabeth, and for a time he was in disgrace. He was restored to favour, created Lord High Treasurer, and made Earl of Dorset in 1604.
In bulk Sackville's poetry does not amount to much, but in merit it is of much consequence. Two poems, The Induction and The Complaynt of Henry, Duke of Buckingham, appeared in a miscellany called the Myrroure for Magistrates (1563). Both are composed in the rhyme royal stanza, are melancholy and elegiac in spirit and archaic in language, but have a severe nobility of thought and a grandeur of conception and of language quite unknown since the days of Chaucer. The poems undoubtedly assisted Spenser in the composition of The Faerie Queene.
Sackville collaborated with Norton in the early tragedy of Gorboduc (see p. 88).
We add a few stanzas from The Induction to illustrate the sombre graphical power of the poem:
And next in order sad, Old Age wee found: His beard ail hoare, his eyes hollow and blind; With drouping chere still pcring on the ground, As on the place where nature him assigned To rest, when that the Sisters had untwyned His vitall thred, and eneed with their knyfe The fleting course of fast declyning lyfe:
There heard wee him with broke and hollow plain! Rew with him selfe his end approching fast, And all for nought his wretched mind torment With sweete remembraunce of his pleasures past, And fresh delytes of lusty youth forewast;' Recounting which, how would hee sob and shriek, And to be yong again of love beseeke!
Crookbackt he was, tooth-shaken, and blere-eyed; Went on three feete, and sometyme crept on foure; With olde lame bones, that rattled by his syde; His scalp all pilled, 2 and hee with eld forlore, His withred fist still knocking at Deaths dore; Fumbling and driveling as hee drawes his breath; For briefe, the shape and messenger of Death.
4. George Gascoigne (1525 (?)-77) is another of the founders of the great Elizabethan tradition. He was born in Bedfordshire, educated at Cambridge, and became a lawyer. Later in life he entered Parliament. In addition to a large number of elegant lyrics, he composed one of the first regular satires in the language, The Steele Glas (1576). This poem has the additional importance of being written in blank verse. Among his other numerous works we can mention his tragedy Jocasta (1566), a landmark in the growth of the drama (see p. 88); his Supposes (1566), the first prose comedy, which was the basis of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew; and Certayne notes of Instruction concerning the making of verse or ryme in English (1575), our first treatise on poetry. In ease and versatility Gascoigne is typical of the best early Elizabethan miscellaneous writers.
5. Sir Philip Sidney (1554 - 86) was the chief of an elegant literary coterie, and exercised an influence which was almost supreme during his short life. He was the most commanding literary figure before the prime of Spenser and Shakespeare Born in Kent of an aristocratic family, he was educated at Shrewsbury and Oxford, and then travelled widely. He took a brilliant part in the military-literary-courtly life common with the young nobles of the time, and at the early age of thirty-two was mortally wounded at Zutphen when assisting the Dutch against the Spaniards.
Like the best of the Elizabethans, Sidney was successful in more than one branch of literature, but none of his works was published until after his death. His finest achievement was his connected
[Footnote:1 'utterly wasted] [Footnote:2 peeled.]
sequence of 108 love sonnets, the Astrophel and Stella (published 1591).
these sonnets, which owe much to Petrarch and Ronsard in tone and tyle, place Sidney as the greatest Elizabethan sonneteer except shakespeare. Written to his 'mistress,' Lady Penelope Rich, though dedicated to his wife, they reveal ar true lyric emotion couched in a anguage delicately archaic. In form Sidney usually adopts the Petrarchan octave (abbaabha), with variations in the sestet which include the English final couplet.
His pastoral romance, the Arcadia (published incomplete 1590, and complete 1598), is an intricate love-story, embodying the ideals of medieval chivalry, so congenial to Sidney's own spirit. The story is diffuse and involved, and many secondary love-stories interwoven with the main one distract attention. The characters are vague and idealized. The style, in both its strength and its weaknesses, is that of a poet writing prose-- melodious, picturesque, rather artificial, and ornamental) The story contains a number of fine lyrics.
The Apologie for Poetrie (published 1595) has taken its place among the great critical essays in English. It is an answer to Gosson's Schoole of Abuse (see p. 72), an abusive Puritan pamphlet, and, in clear, manly English, defends poetry as greater than history or philosophy, and as an art which instructs by pleasing. In assessing Sidney's condemnation of the attitude of contemporary England towards poetry and his attacks on the English drama, it is important to remember that he wrote before most of the great poets and all the great dramatists of the age of Elizabeth had published their work.
6. Michael Drayton (1563-1631) represents the later epoch of Elizabethan literature. He was born in Warwickshire, was attached to a noble family as tutor, came to London about 1590, and for the remainder of his long life was busy in the production of his many poems.
His first book, metrical translations from the scriptures, was called The Harmonie of the Church (1591); then followed a number of long historical poems which include England's Heroicall Epistles and The Barons' Wars (1603). His Poly-Olbion is the most important of his longer poems, and belongs to a later period of his career. It is a long, careful, and tedious description of the geographical features of England, interspersed with tales, and written in alexandrines. His shorter poems, such as his well-known poem on Agincourt, and his verse tales and pastorals, such as The Man in the Moon and Nymphidia, are skilful and attractive. Drayton is rarely
an inspired poet--the wonderful sonnet beginning "Since there's no help" is perhaps his only poem in which we feel inspiration flowing freely--but he is painstaking, versatile, and sometimes (as in Nymphidia) delightful.
7. Thomas Campion (1567-1620) was born in London, educated at Cambridge, studied law in Gray's Inn, but ultimately became a physician (1606). He wrote some masques that had much popu larity, but his chief claim to fame lies in his attractive lyrics, most of which have been set to music composed partly by the poet himself. His best-known collections of songs were A Booke of Ayres (1601),
Songs of Mourning (1613), and Two Bookes of Ayres (1612). Campion had not the highest lyrical genius, but he had an ear skilful in adapt ing words to tunes, the knack of sweet phrasing, and a mastery of complicated metres. He is one of the best examples of the accom plished poet who, lacking the highest inspiration of poetry, excels
in the lower technical features.
The lyric of Campion's that we add is typical not only of his own grace and melody, but also of the later Elizabethan lyrics as a whole. The ideas, in themselves somewhat forced and fantastic, are expressed with great felicity.
There is a garden in her face, Where roses and white lilies blow; A heavenly paradise is that place, Wherein all pleasant fruits do flow;
There cherries grow which none may buy, Till "Cherry-ripe" themselves do cry.
Those cherries fairly do enclose Of orient pearl a double row,
Which when her lovely laughter shows, They look like rose-buds fill'd with snow; Yet them nor peer nor prince can buy, Till "Cherry-ripe" themselves do cry.
Her eyes like angels watch them still; Her brows like bended bows do stand, Threat'ning with piercing frowns to kill All that attempt with eye or hand
Those sacred cherries to come nigh, Till "Cherry-ripe" themselves do cry.
8. Phineas Fletcher (1582-1650) and Giles Fletcher (1588 (?)- 1623) are usually associated in the history of literature. They were brothers, were both educated at Cambridge, and both took holy orders. Both were poetical disciples of Spenser.
Phineas Fletcher's chief poem is The Purple Island, or The Isle of Man (1633), a curious work in twelve cantos describing the human body in an allegorical-descriptive fashion. There is much digression, which gives the poet some scope for real poetical passages. In its plan the poem is cumbrous and artificial, but it contains many descriptions in the Spenserian manner. The stanza is a further modification of the Spenserian, which it resembles except for its. omission of the fifth and seventh lines.
Giles's best-known poem is Christ's Victorie and Triumph (1610), an epical poem in four cantos. The title of the poem sufficiently suggests its subject; in style it is glowingly descriptive, imaginative, and is markedly ornate and melodious in diction. It is said partly to have inspired Milton's Paradise Regained. The style is strongly suggestive of Spenser's, and the stanza conveys the same impression, for it is the Spenserian stanza lacking the seventh line.
The Fletchers are imitators, but imitators of high quality. They lack the positive genius of their model Spenser, but they have intensity, colour, melody, and great metrical artistry.
9. Samuel Daniel (1562-1619) was born near Taunton in Somerset, educated at Oxford, and became tutor to the son of the Countess of Pembroke. For a time (1599) he was Poet Laureate, and was made (1603) Master of the Queen's Revels by James I.
His poems include a sonnet-series called Delia (1592), a romance called The Complaynt of Rosamond (1592), some long historical poems, such as The Civil Wars (1595), and a large number of masques, of which The Queenes Wake (1610) and Hymen's Triumph (1615) are the most important. His best work appears in his sonnets, which, composed in the English manner, carry on the great tradition of Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare. His Defence of Ryme (1602 (?)), a fine piece of English criticism, argues with restraint and clarity the futility of the objections made to rhyme by such works as Campion's Observations in the Art of English Poesy (1602). In it Daniel claims that English poets need not be governed by the practice of the classics, and that each literature is entitled to its own ways. In his longer poems he is prosy and dull, though the masques have pleasing touches of imagination.
10. The poetical miscellanies which abound during this period are typical of the time. By the very extravagance of their titles they reveal the enthusiasm felt for the revival of English poetry. Each volume consists of a collection of short pieces by various poets, some well known and others unknown. Some of the best poems are
anonymous. Among much that is almost worthless, there are happily preserved many poems, sometimes by unknown poets, of great and enduring beauty. We have already drawn attention (p. 81) to Tottel's Miscellany (1557), which contained, among other poems, the pieces of Wyatt and Surrey. Other volumes are The Paradyse of Daynty Devises (1576), A Handefull of Pleasant Delites (1584), The Phoenix Nest (1593), and The Passionate Pilgrim (1599). The last book contains poems by Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Ralegh. The most important of the miscellanies is England's Helicon (1600), which surpasses all others for fullness, variety, and excellence of contents.
PRE-SHAKESPEARIAN DRAMA
The Influence of Seneca. In the last chapter we gave a summary of the rise of the English drama from the liturgical plays to the earliest Tudor times. But English tragedy, at any rate, was not to develop from the miracle play, but from the classical models of Seneca. The Latin dramatist, of the first century A.D., writing for a sophisticated, aristocratic audience, had produced tragedies notable for the horrors which filled them, for their exaggerated character-drawing, their violently rhetorical language coupled with emotional hyperboles, and a wealth of epigram. His influence was first felt in the Latin plays of the universities, especially Cambridge, where, between 1550 and 1560, the records become very Senecan, and his appeal was so strong that, by 1581, he had become the first classical dramatist to have all his works translated into English. From the universities, by way of the Inns of Court, the Senecan influence reached the popular stage, while many of the coming dramatists, such as Marlowe, Peele, and Greene, studied at the universities when this influence was strong. Gorboduc (1562) was the first English play in Senecan form, and was followed by Gascoigne's Jocasta (1566) and Hughes's Misfortunes of Arthur (1588), both on the Senecan model. Most important of the Senecan plays was Kyd's The Spanish Tragedie (c. 1589), which was followed by Daniel's Cleopatra (c. 1593) and Philotas (1604). With Kyd began the tradition of the 'Revenge' play, many features of which are to be seen in Shakespeare's Hamlet, and in the work of late Elizabethan or Jacobean dramatists like Webster, Tourneur, and Marston. Other Shakespearian plays showing a strong Senecan influence are Richard III and Macbeth.
THE UNIVERSITY WITS
These young men, nearly all of whom were associated with Oxford and Cambridge, did much to found the Elizabethan school of drama. They were all more or less acquainted with each other, and most of them led irregular and stormy lives. Their plays had several features in common.
(a) There was a fondness for heroic themes, such as the lives of great figures like Mohammed and Tamburlaine.
(b) Heroic themes needed heroic treatment : great fullness and variety; splendid descriptions, long swelling speeches, the handling of violent incidents and emotions. These qualities, excellent when held in restraint, only too often led to loudness and disorder.
(c) The style also was 'heroic'. The chief aim was to achieve strong and sounding lines, magnificient epithets, and powerful declamation This again led to abuse and to mere bombast, mouthing, and in the worst cases to nonsense. In the best examples, such as in Marlowe, the result is quite impressive. In this connexion it is to be noted that the best medium for such expression was blank verse, which was sufficiently elastic to bear the strong pressure of these expansive methods.
(d) The themes were usually tragic in nature, for the dramatists were
as a rule too much in earnest to give heed to what was considered to be the lower species of comedy. The general lack of real humour in the early drama is one of its most prominent features. Humour, when it is brought in at all, is coarse and immature. Almost the only representative of the writers of real comedies is Lyly, who in such plays as Campaspe (1584), Endymion (1592), and The Woman in the Moone gives us the first examples of romantic comedy.
1. George Peele (c. 1558-98) was born in London, educated at Christ's Hospital and at. Oxford) became a literary hack and free-lance in London. (His plays include The Araygnement of Paris (c. 1584), a kind of romantic comedy; The Famous Chronicle of King Edward the First (1593), a rambling chronicle-play; The Old Wives' Tale (1591:94), a clever satire on the popular drama of the day; and The Love of King David and Fair Bethsabe (published 1599). Peele's style can be violent to the point of absurdity; but he has his moments of real poetry: he can handle his blank verse with more ease and variety than was common at the time; he is fluent; he fair amount of pathos. (In short, he represents a
has humour and a
great advance upon the earliest drama) and is perhaps one of the most attractive among the playwrights of the time.
We give a short example to illustrate the poetical quality of his blank verse:
David. Now comes my lover tripping like the roe, And brings my longings tangled in her hair. To 'joy her love I'll build a kingly bower, Seated in hearing of a hundred streams, That, for their homage to her sovereign joys, Shall, as the serpents fold into their nests, In oblique turnings wind the nimble waves About the circles of her curious walks, And with their murmur summon easeful sleep To lay his golden sceptre on her brows.
The Love of King David and Fair Bethsabe
2_Robert Greene (1558-92) wrote much and recklessly,but his plays are of sufficient merit to find a place in the development of the drama. He was born at Norwich, educated at Cambridge (1575) and at Oxford (1588), and then took to a literary life in London. If all accounts, including his own, are true, his career in London must have taken place in a sink of debauchery. He is said to have died, after an orgy in a London ale-house, "of a surfeit of pickle herringe and Rennish wine."
Here we can refer only to his thirty-five prose tracts, which are probably the best of his literary work, for they reveal his intense though erratic energy, his quick, malicious wit, and his powerful imagination.(His plays number four: Alphonsus, King of Aragon (1587), an imitation of Marlowe's Tamburlaine; Frier Bacon and Frier Bongay (1589), easily his best, and containing some fine representations of Elizabethan life; Orlando Furioso (c. 1591), adapted from an English translation of Ariosto; and The Scottish Historie of James the Fourth (acted in 1592), not a 'historical' play, but founded on an imaginary incident in the life of the King. Greene is weak in creating characters, and his style is not of outstanding merit; but his humour is somewhat genial in his plays, and his methods less austere than those of the other tragedians)
3.(Thomas Nash (1567-1601) was born at Lowestoft, educated at Cambridge)and then (1586) went to London to make his living by literature.(He was a born journalist), but in those days the only scope for his talents lay in pamphleteering(He took an active part in the political and personal questions of the dayand his truculent methods actually landed him in gaol (1600).(Hefinished Marlowe's
Dido, but his only surviving play is Summer's Last Will and Testament (1592), a satirical masque. His The Unfortunate Traveller, or the Life of Jacke Wilton (1594), a prose tale, is important in the development of the novel (see p. 278) (4.Thomas Lodge (c. 1558 - 1625) was the son of a Lord Mayor of London, was educated in London and at Oxford, and studied law. He deserted his legal studies, took to a literary career, and is said to have been an actor at one time.
(_His dramatic work is small in quantity. He probably collaborated with Shakespeare in Henry VI, and with other dramatists, including Greene. The only surviving play entirely his own is The Woundes of Civile War, a kind of chronicle-play)His pamphleteering was voluminous and energetic. His prose romances constitute his greatest claim to fame.
Though his prose is elaborate in the euphuistic style of Lyly, and the tales often tedious, they contain exquisite lyrics. The most famous of his romances is Rosalynde: Euphues Golden Legacie (1590), which Shakespeare followed very closely in the plot of As You Like It.
(5. Thomas Kyd (1558-94) is one of the most important of the University Wits Very little is known of his life. He was born in London, educated (probably) at Merchant Taylors' School, adopted a literary career, and became secretary to a nobleman. He became acquainted with Marlowe, and that brilliant but sinister spirit enticed him into composing "lewd libels" and "blasphemies." Marlowe's sudden death saved him from punishment for such offences; but Kyd was imprisoned and tortured. Though he was afterwards released, Kyd soon died under the weight of "bitter times and privy broken passions." ( Much of this dramatist's work has been lost. Of the surviving plays The Spanish Tragedie (about 1585) is the most important. Its horrific plot, involving murder, frenzy, and sudden death, gave the play a great and lasting popularity.)There is a largeness of tragical conception about the play that resembles the work of Marlowe, and there are touches of style that dimly foreshadow the great tragical lines of Shakespeare. The only other surviving play known to be Kyd's is Cornelia (1593), a translation from the French)Senecan, Garnier, but his hand has been sought in many plays including(soliman and Perseda (1588), the First Part of Jeronimo (1592), an attempt, aftar the success of The SpanishTragedie, to write an introductory play to it,and Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus. (6. Christopher Marlowe (1564-93) was the greatest of the pre-
Shakespearian dramatists.)He was born at Canterbury and educated there and at Cambridge. He adopted literature as a profession and became attached to the Lord Admiral's players. His combination of inquiring mind and dissolute life led him to be charged with atheism and immorality, and only his sudden death in a tavern brawl enabled him to avoid arrest.
(Marlowe's plays, all tragedies, were written within five years (1587-92). He had no bent for comedy, and the comic parts found in some of his plays are always inferior and may be by other writers. As a dramatist Marlowe had serious limitations)though it is possible to trace a growing sense of the theatre through his plays Only in Edward II does he show any sense of plot construction, wnite his characterization is of the simplest, and lacks the warm humanity of Shakespeare's. All the plays, except Edward II, revolve around one figure drawn in bold outlines. This character shows no complexity or subtlety of development and is the embodiment of a single idea.) Indeed, to appreciate Marlowe properly we must put aside -Conventional ideas of the drama and view his plays as the representation of a poetic vision, the typically Renaissance quest for power--Vamour de l,impossible--combined with the quest for beauty. In Tamburlaine the Great the shepherd seeks the "sweet fruition of an earthly crown," in The Jew of Malta Barabbas seeks "infinite riches in a little room," while the quest of Doctor Faustus is for more than human knowledge. Each of the plays has behind it the driving force of this vision, which gives it an artistic and poetic unity. It is, indeed, as a poet that Marlowe excels. Though not the first to use blank verse in English drama, he was the first to exploit its possibilities and make it supreme. His verse is notable for its burning energy, its splendour of diction, its sensuous richness, its variety of pace, and its responsiveness to the demands of varying emotions. Full of bold primary colours, his poetry is crammed with imagery from the classics, from astronomy and from geography, an imagery barbaric in its wealth and splendour. Its resonance and power led Ben Jonson to coin the phrase "Marlowe's mighty line," but its might has often obscured its technical precision and its admirable lucidity and finish. At times Marlowe degenerates into bombast, and there is little attempt before Edward II to suit the speech to the speaker, but his blank verse is unequalled by any of his contemporaries except Shakespeare.
Tamburlaine the Great (1587), centred on one inhuman figure, is on a theme essentially undramatic, in that the plot allows no possibility
of complication. The play is episodic and lacking any cohesion] save the poetic one already referred to. Yet it contains much of Marlowe's best blank verse. Its sequel,)The Second Part of Tamburlaine the Great (1588), is inferior to its predecessor. It contains still less plot and far more bombast. The Jew of Malta (1589) has two fine, economically handled opening acts, but deteriorates later when the second villain, Ithamore, enters The later sections may, however, be by another hand (possibly Heywood's). The play is also of interest as showing Marlowe's attention turning towards the conventional Machiavellian villaim)Edward II(1591) shows the truest sense of the theatre of all his plays. Its plot is skilfully woven, and the material, neatly compressed from Holinshed's Chronicles), shows a sense of dramatic requirements new in his plays, and, indeed, in English historical drama. The play has less poetic fervour than some of the others, and its hero is not great enough to be truly tragic, but it works up to a fine climax of deep pathos. In its multiplicity of 'living' characters and lack of bombast it stands apart from the other plays.(Doctor Faustus (probably 1592, and not, as was long supposed, 1588-89) has a good beginning, and an ending which is Marlowe's supreme achievement,but the comic scenes in the middle are poor and may be by another hand.
The play contains some interesting survivals of the miracle plays in the conversations of the Good and Evil Angels. The Tragedy of Dido, Queen of Carthage (c, 1593) is an inferior piece, in which Nash shared, and The Massacre at Paris (1593) is unfinished. | We give below a typical example of Marlowe's 'mighty line' as Tamburlaine boasts of his doings to his prisoner, and then part of the superb ending of Doctor Faustus, when Faustus realizes the near approach of his departure to Hell.
The god of war resigns his room to me, • Meaning to make me general of the world: Jove, viewing me in arms looks pale and wan,
Fearing my power should pull him from his throne: Where'er I come the Fatal Sisters sweat,
And grisly Death, by running to and fro, To do their ceaseless homage to my sword: And here in Afric, where it seldom rains, Since I arriv'd with my triumphant host,
Have swelling clouds, drawn from wide-gaping wounds, Been oft resolv'd in bloody purple showers,
A meteor that might terrify the earth, And make it quake at every drop it drinks: Millions of souls sit on the banks of Styx,
Waiting the back-return of Charon's boat; Hell and Elysium swarm with ghosts of men That I have sent from sundry foughten fields
To spread my fame through hell and up to heaven.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564-1616)
1. His Life. In considering the life of Shakespeare we have at our disposal a fair number of facts; but on these facts the industry of commentators has constructed an additional mass of great magnitude and complexity. It is therefore the duty of the historian with only a limited space at his disposal to keep his eye steadily upon the established facts and, without being superior or disdainful, to turn toward speculation or surmise, however ingenious or laborious, a face of tempered but obdurate scepticism.
The future dramatist, as we learn from the church records, was baptized in the parish church at Stratford-on-Avon on April 26, 1564. He may have been born on April 23, St George's Day, which happens also to be the date of his death in 1616. His father, John Shakespeare, was a burgess of the town, and seems to have followed the occupations of a butcher, a glover, and a farmer. The boy may have attended the grammar school of the town, though Ben Jonson, himself a competent scholar, affirmed that Shakespeare knew "small Latin and less Greek." From various entries in the town records it is clear that John Shakespeare, after flourishing for a time, fell on evil days, and the son may have assisted in the
paternal butcher's shop. A bond dated November 28, 1582, affords clear evidence of Shakespeare's marriage on that date to a certain "Anne Hatthwey of Stratford." As at this time Shakespeare was only eighteen, and (as appears from the inscription on her monument) the bride was eight years older, speculation has busied itself over the somewhat ill-assorted match.
In 1584 Shakespeare left his native town. Why he did so is not known. The most popular explanation, which appeared after his death, is that he was convicted of poaching on the estate of a local magnate, Sir Thomas Lucy, and that he fled to escape the consequences. Then, until 1592, when he reappears as a rising actor, Shakespeare disappears from view. During this period he is said to have wandered through the country, finally coming to London, where he performed various menial offices, including that of holding horses at the stage-door. On the face of them such tales are not improbable, but they grew up when the dramatist had become a half-mythical figure. The most recent attempt (1949) to bridge this gap in Shakespeare's life is a suggestion that he may have spent much of the time in the Low Countries on service with the armies of the Earl of Leicester.
In 1592 Robert Greene, in a carping book called A Groatsworth of Wit, mentions "an upstart crow ... in his own conceit the only Shakescene in a country.'" This reference, most probably a gibe at Shakespeare, shows that he is now important enough to merit abuse. In 1595 his name appears on the payroll of the Lord Chamberlain's company of actors, who performed at the Court. This company, one of the most important in the town, also played in the provinces, especially during the plague of 1603, in the Shoreditch Theatre till it was demolished in 1598, in the Globe Theatre, and finally (after 1608) in the Blackfriars. During this period, as can be inferred from his purchases of property both in London and Stratford, Shakespeare was prospering in worldly affairs. He was a competent but no! a great actor; tradition asserts that his chief parts were of the type of Adam in As You Like It and the Ghost in Hamlet. His chief function was to write dramas for his company, and the fruit of such labour was his plays.
About 1610 Shakespeare left London for Stratford, where he stayed at New Place, a house that he had bought in 1597. He may have written his last plays there; but it is likely that his connexion with his company of actors ceased when the Globe Theatre was
The passage containing this reference appears on pp. 123-124.
burned down during a performance of Henry VIII in 1613. His will a hurriedly executed document, is dated March 25,1616. His death occurred a month later, April 23.
2. His Poems. Shakespeare's two long narrative poems were among the earliest of his writings. Venus and Adonis (1593), composed in six-line stanzas, showed decided signs of immaturity. Its subject was in accordance with popular taste; its descriptions were heavily ornamented and conventional; but it contained individual lines and expressions of great beauty. Already the hand of Shakespeare was apparent. The Rape of Lucrece (1594), in rhyme royal stanzas, is of less merit. As was common in the poetry of that day, the-action was retarded with long speeches, but there were Shakespearian touches all through. In 1599 a collection of verse called The Passionate Pilgrim appeared with Shakespeare's name on the title-page. Of the constituent poems only one, taking its name from the title of the book, has been decidedly fixed as Shakespeare's. It consists of some sonnets of unequal merit.
In 1609 a collection of Shakespeare's sonnets was printed by Thomas Thorpe, who dedicated the volume to a certain "Mr W. H." as being "the onlie begetter" of the sonnets. Speculation has exhausted itself regarding the identity of" MrW. H." The most probable explanation is that he was William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. The sonnets themselves consist of 154 numbers, which are all composed in the English form of the sonnet, that of three quatrains clenched with a couplet. The entire collection falls into two groups of unequal size, divided, at number cxxvi, by a poem of six couplets. The first group consists largely of a series of cryptic references, often passionately expressed, to his friendship with a youth, apparently of high rank, who may be, and probably is, the mysterious "Mr W. H." The second group, also obscurely phrased, is taken up with reproaches addressed to his mistress, "a black beauty," whose hair is like "black wires." The identity of this 'Dark Lady of the Sonnets' is one of the romances of our literature. She may be, as is often asserted, Mary Fitton, who happened to be fair; but she probably did not exist at all. Among the numerous sonneteers of the time it was a common trick to apostrophize a lovely and fickle mistress, as a rule quite imaginary, and it may be that Shakespeare was following the custom of the period.
Concerning the literary quality of the sonnets there can be no dispute. In the depth, breadth, and persistency of their passion, in their lordly but never overweening splendour of style, and, above
all, in their mastery of a rich and sensuous phraseology, they are unique. Byron once remarked that the tissue of poetry cannot be all brilliance, any more than the midnight sky can be entirely stars; but several of the sonnets (for example, xxx, xxxiii, lv, lxxi, cxvi) are thick clusters of starlight; and all through the series the frequency of lovely phrasing is great indeed. We quote one sonnet that is nearly perfect; the second that we give, after a splendid opening, deteriorates toward the conclusion.
(1) Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks. But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error, and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Sonnet cxv
(2) When in the chronicle of wasted time I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
And beauty making beautiful old rime,
In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights, Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty's best, Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
I see their antique pen would have expressed Even such a beauty as you master now.
So all their praises are but prophecies Of this our time, all you prefiguring;
And, for they looked but with divining eyes,
They had not skill enough your worth to sing: For we, which now behold these present days, Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.
Sonnet cv
Shakespeare's later poetical work is worthily represented in the numerous lyrics that are scattered through the plays. It is not quite certain how much of the songs is original; it is almost certain that Shakespeare, like Burns, used popular songs as the basis of many of his lyrics. As they stand, however, the lyrics show a great range of accomplishment, most of it of the highest quality. It varies from the nonsense-verses in Hamlet and King Lear to the graceful perfection of Ariel's "Full fathom five"; from the honiely
rusticity of 7
"It was a lover and his lass" to the scholarly ease and wry humour of "O mistress mine"; it includes such gems as the willow-song in Othello, "Take, O take those lips away," in Measure for Measure, and the noble dirge, "Fear no more the heat o' the sun," in
Cymbe-line. If Shakespeare had not been our greatest dramatist, he would still be numbered among our greatest lyrical poets.
3. His Plays. Concerning the plays that are usually accepted as being Shakespeare's, almost endless discussion has arisen. In the following pages we shall indicate the main lines of Shakespearian criticism.
(a) THE ORDER OF THE PLAYS. All the manuscripts of the plays have perished; Shakespeare himself printed none of the texts; and though sixteen of them appeared singly in quarto form during his lifetime, they were all unauthorized editions. It was not till 1623, seven years after his death, that the First Folio edition was printed. It contained thirty-six dramas (Pericles was omitted), and these are now universally accepted as Shakespeare's. In the Folio edition the plays are not arranged chronologically, nor are the dates of composition given. The dates of the separate Quartos are registered at Stationers' Hall, but these are the dates of the printing. With such scanty evidence to hand to assign the order of the plays, a task fundamental to all discussion of the dramas, much ingenious deductive work has been necessary. The evidence can be divided into three groups.
1) Contemporary References. With one important exception such are of little value. The exception occurs in a book by Francis Meres (1565-1647), an Elizabethan schoolmaster. In Palladis Tamia, Wit's Treasury (1598), he gives a list of contemporary authors, among whom is Shakespeare. Meres mentions twelve of Shakespeare's plays, along with " his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, and his sugred sonnets among his private friends." This valuable reference supplies us with a list of plays which were written before 1598.
2) Internal References. In the course of the plays there occur passages, more or less obscure, that can be traced to contemporary events. Such are the references to "the imperial votaress" (perhaps Elizabeth) in A Midsummer Night's Dream, to "the two-fold balls and treble sceptres" (perhaps the Union of 1603) in Macbeth, and to a famous eclipse of the moon in the Sonnets. Owing to the invariable obscurity of the passages, this class of evidence should be used cautiously, but unfortunately it has been made the basis of much wild theorizing.
(3) The Literary Evidence. Soberly examined, and taken strictly in conjunction with the statement of Meres and the dates of the Quartos (when these arc available), this type of evidence is by far the most reliable. We can examine the workmanship of the plays in such matters as the construction of the plot, the force and originality of the characters, and, most significant of all, the style and metrical dexterity of the writing. Broadly speaking, in the earlier plays, such as Love's Labour's Lost, Shakespeare's style is carefully studied and relatively ornamental, while the thought content is often too slight for the elaboration with which it is dressed out. In the middle period of his writing, as in Julius Caseai; he attains an almost perfect balance between thought and expression, while the later plays, such as The Winter's Tale, show a preponderance of ideas over words. The sentences are full of closely packed ideas elliptically compressed; there are abrupt changes of thought, and the style is rich in imagery. Generally there is a greater proportion of rhyme in the early plays (e.g., A Midsummer Night's Dream) and more prose in the middle plays, while alexandrines, feminine endings, and enjambment are more freely used in the later works. Shakespeare's use of pauses is also significant. Mid- line pauses become more frequent as his technique develops, while the caesura after the first and fourth foot of a line is a relatively late feature of his style.
(h) THE DATES OF THE PLAYS. The following table, which to a large extent is the outcome of generations of discussion and contention, represents a moderate or average estimate of the dates of the plays, ft can be only an approximate estimate, for no exact decision can ever be possible.
1593 Richard III The Comedy of Errors
1594 Titus
1 Andronicus The Taming of the Shrew Love's
2 Labour's Lost Romeo and Juliet
1595 A Midsummer Night's Dream The Two Gentlemen of Verona King John
1596 Richard II The Merchant of Venice
1597
Henry IV
1598
Henry IV
Much Ado about Nothing
1599
Henry V Julius Ceesar
1600
The Merry Wives of Windsor As You Like It
1601
Hamlet Twelfth Night
1602
Troilus and Cressida All's Well that Ends Well
1603
(Theatres closed)
1604
Measure for Measure Othello
1605
Macbeth King Lear
1606
Antony and Cleopatra Coriolanus
1607
Timon of Athens (unfinished)
1608
Pericles (in part)
1609
Cymbeline
1610
The Winter's Tale
1611
The Tempest
1613
Henry VIII (in part)
(c) CLASSIFICATION OF THE PLAYS. It is customary to group the plays into sets that to some extent traverse the order given above.
less finished, and the style lacks the power of the mature Shakespeare. They are full of wit and word play, usually put into the mouths of young gallants, but often the humour is puerile and the wit degenerates into mere verbal quibbling. Of this type are The Comedy of Errors, Love's Labour's Lost, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
2)The English Histories. These plays show a rapid maturing of Shakespeare's technique. He now begins to busy himself with the developing character, such as Richard II or Prince Hal. He shows clearly the importance attached in his day to the throne, and the contemporary desire for stable government. Figures like Falstaff illustrate his increasing depth of characterization, and the mingling
of low life with chronicle history is an important innovation. The plays in this group, to which belong Richard II, I Henry IV 2 Henry IV, and Henry V, contain much more blank verse than those of the earlier group. (3) The Mature Comedies. Here is the fine flower of Shakespeare's comic genius. The comic spirit manifests itself at many levels--the sophisticated wit of Beatrice and Benedick or the clowning of Dogberry and Verges in Much Ado about Nothing, the jovial good humour of Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night; the lighter clowning of Launcelot Gobbo in The Merchant of Venice; the urbane worldlywise humour of Touchstone in As You Like It. The plays are full of vitality, contain many truly comic situations, and reveal great warmth and humanity. In this group there is much prose.
4) The Sombre Plays. In this group are All's Well that Ends Well, Measure for Measure, and Troilus and Cressida. Though comedies in the sense that the chief characters do not die, their tone is sombre and tragic. They reflect a cynical, disillusioned attitude to life, and a fondness for objectionable characters and situations. In them Shakespeare displays a savage desire to expose the falsity of romance and to show the sordid reality of life.
5) The Great Tragedies. Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and King Lear are the climax of Shakespeare's art. In intensity of emotion, depth of psychological insight, and power of style they stand supreme.
6) The Roman Plays. These are based on North's translation of Plutarch's Lives, and, though written at fairly wide intervals, are usually considered as a group. Julius Caesar, contemporary with the English histories, shows the same concern with political security, and in its depth of character study is approaching the great tragedies. Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus follow the great tragic period, and, while the former, in soaring imagination and tragic power, is truly great, both of them show some relaxation of tragic intensity.
(7) The Last Plays. A mellowed maturity is the chief feature of this group, which contains Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest.The creative touch of the dramatist, making living men out of figment, is abundantly in view; the style is notable and serenely adequate; and with the ease of the master the author thoroughly subdues the metre to his will. No more fitting conclusion --rich, ample, and graciously dignified would be found to round off the work of our greatest literary genius than these plays of reconciliation and forgiveness.
4. His Prose. Shakespeare's prose appears all through the plays,
sometimes in passages of considerable length. In the aggregate the amount is quite large. In the comedies the amount is considerable, but the proportion is apt to diminish in the later plays. With regard to the prose, the following points should be observed: (a) it is the common vehicle for comic scenes, though used too in serious passages (one of which is given below); (b) it represents the common speech of the period, and some of it, as can be seen in Hamlet, is pithy and bracing. Even the rather stupid clowning that often takes place cannot altogether conceal its beauty.
We quote a passage from Hamlet. The style is quite modern in phrase, and the beauty and grace of it are far beyond the ordinary standard of Shakespeare's literary contemporaries.
I have of late--but wherefore I know not--lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is man ! How noble in reason 1 how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?
Hamlet
5. Features of his Plays. The extent, variety, and richness of the plays are quite bewildering as one approaches them. All that can be done here is to set down in order some of the more obvious of their qualities.
a) Their Originality. In the narrowest sense of the term, Shakespeare took no trouble to be original. Following the custom of the time, he borrowed freely from older plays (such as King Leir), chronicles (such as Holinshed's)," and tales (such as The Jew, the part-origin of The Merchant of Venice). To these he is indebted chiefly for his plots; but in his more mature work the interest in the plot becomes subordinate to the development of character, the highest achievement of the dramatist's art. He can work his originals deftly: he can interweave plot within plot, as in A Midsummer Night's Dream; he can solidify years of history into five acts, as in King John and Antony and Cleopatra; and, as in Macbeth, he makes the dust of history glow with the spirit of his imagination. b)Characters. (1) In sheer prodigality of output Shakespeare is unrivalled in literature. From king to clown, from lunatic and
demi-devil to saint and seer, from lover to misanthrope--all are revealed with the hand of the master. Surveying this multitude, one can only cry out, as Hamlet does, "What a piece of work is man!"
2) Another feature of Shakespeare's characterization is his objectivity. He seems indifferent to good and evil; he has the eye of the creator, viewing bright and dismal things alike, provided they are apt and real. In his characters vice and virtue commingle, and the union is true to the common sense of humanity. Thus the villain Iago is a man of resolution, intelligence, and fortitude; the murderer Claudius (in Hamlet) shows affection, wisdom, and fortitude; the peerless Cleopatra is narrow, spiteful, and avaricious; and the beast Caliban has his moments of ecstatic vision. The list could be extended almost without limit, but these examples must serve.
3) Hence follows the vital force that resides in the creations of Shakespeare. They live, move, and utter speech; they are rounded, entire, and capable. Very seldom, and that almost entirely in the earlier plays, he uses the wooden puppets that are the stock-in- trade of the inferior dramatist. Of such a kind are some of his 'heavy' fathers, like Egeus (in A Midsummer Night's Dream), and his sentimental lovers, like Orsino (in Twelfth Night). Yet, as a rule, in the hands of Shakespeare the heavy father can develop into such living beings as the meddlesome old bore Polonius (in Hamlet), and the tediously sentimental lover can become the moody and headstrong Romeo, or the virile and drolly humorous Orlando (in As You Like It).
c)Metre. As in all the other features of his work, in metre Shakespeare shows abnormal range and power. Some features of his metrical development have already been discussed (see p. 99); we go on now to amplify these points. In the earlier plays the blank verse is regular in beat and pause; there is a fondness for the stopped and rhymed couplet; and in a few cases the couplet passes into definite stanza-formation in a manner suggestive of the early pre-Shakespearian comedies.
d)
Lysander. Why should you think that I should woo in scorn? Scorn and derision never come in tears:
Look, when I vow, I weep; and vows so born, In their nativity all truth appears.
How can these things in me seem scorn to you, Bearing the badge of faith to prove them true? A Midsummer Night's Dream
As Shakespeare becomes more sure of his instrument the verse increases in ease and dexterity; the cadence is varied; the pause is shifted to any position in the line. And before he finishes he has utterly subdued the metre to his will. In the last line of the extract now given every foot is abnormal:
Lear. And my poor fool is hanged!
No, no, no life ! Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more,
Never, never, never, never, never !
King Lear
(d) Style. For lack of a better name we call Shakespeare's style Shakespearian. One can instantly recognize it, even in other authors, where it is rarely visible. It is a difficult, almost an impossible, matter to define it. There is aptness and quotability in it: sheaves of Shakespeare's expressions have passed into common speech. To a very high degree it possesses sweetness, strength, and flexibility; and above all it has a certain inevitable and final felicity that is the true mark of genius.
The following specimen shows the average Shakespearian style, if such a thing exists at all. It is not extremely elevated or poetical, but it is strong, precise, and individual.
If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, Absent thee from felicity awhile,
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, To tell my story.
Hamlet
Such a style moves easily into the highest flights of poetry:
(1) That strain again! it had a dying fall:
O! it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odour.
Twelfth Night
(2) Cleopatra. Come, thou mortal wretch,
[To the asp, which she applies to her breast. With thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate Of life at once untie; poor venomous fool, Be angry, and despatch. . . .
Charmian. O eastern star!
Cleopatra. Peace, peace !
Dost thou not see my baby at my breast, That sucks the nurse asleep?
Antony and Cleopatra
Or it can plumb the depths of terror and despair. The following are the words of a condemned wretch shivering on the brink of extinction:
Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about The pendant world; or to be worse than worst Of those that lawless and incertain thoughts Imagine howling: 'tis too horrible !
Measure for Measure
The style lends itself to the serenely ecstatic reverie of the sage:
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
The Tempest
It can express, on the other hand, the bitterest cynicism:
But, man, proud man,
Drest in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant, of what he's most assured, His glassy essence, like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven As make the angels weep.
Measure for Measure
Or, in prose, Shakespeare can put into words the artless pathos of the humble hostess of the inn:
Hostess. Nay, sure, he's not in hell: he's in Arthur's bosom, if ever man went to Arthur's
even just between twelve and one, even at the turning o' the tide; for after I saw him fumble with the sheets and play with flowers and smile upon his
fingers' ends, I knew that there was but one way; for his nose was as sharp as a pen, and a' babbled of green fields. "How now, Sir John?" quoth I: "what, man! be of good cheer." So a' cried out "God, God, God!" three or four times.
Henry V
Shakespeare can rant, and often rants badly; but at its best his ranting glows with such imaginative splendour that it becomes a thing of fire and majesty:
His legs bestrid the ocean; his reared arm Crested the world; his voice was propertied As all the tuned spheres, and that to friends; But when he meant to quail and shake the orb, He was as rattling thunder. For his bounty, There was no winter in 't, an autumn 'twas That grew the more by reaping; his delights
Were dolphin-like, they showed his back above The element they lived in; in his livery
Walked crowns and crownets, realms and islands were As plates dropped from his pocket.
Antony and Cleopatra
With such a style as this Shakespeare can compass the world of human emotion, and he does so.
6. Summary. "He was the man," said Dryden, "who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul."
POST-SHAKESPEARIAN DRAMA
In the following section it will be found that, although much of the work was composed during Shakespeare's lifetime, the most typical of the plays appeared after his death. On the whole, moreover, the work marks a decline from the Shakespearian standard, and so we are probably justified in calling this type of drama post-Shakespearian.
1. Ben Jonson (1573 (?)-1637) was born at Westminster, and educated at Westminster School. His father died before Jonson's birth, and the boy adopted the trade of his stepfather, who was a master bricklayer. Bricklaying did not satisfy him for long, and he became a soldier, serving in the Low Countries. From this he turned to acting and writing plays, engaging himself, both as actor and playwright, with the Lord Admiral's company (1597). At first he had little success, and the discouragement he encountered then must have done much to sour a temper that was not at any time
very genial, in his combative fashion he took part freely in the squabbles of the time, and in 1598 he killed a fellow-actor in a duel, narrowly escaping the gallows. On the accession of James ! in 1603 there arose at the Court a new fashion for picturesque pageants known as masques, and Jonson turned his energies to supplying this demand, with great success. After this period (1603-15) he commanded great good-fortune, and during this time his best work was produced. In 1617 he was created poet to the King, and the close of James's reign saw Jonson the undisputed ruler of English literature. His favourite haunt was the Mermaid Tavern, where he reigned as dictator over a younger literary generation. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, and over him was placed the epitaph "O rare Ben Jonson!"
Jonson's numerous works, comedies, tragedies, masques, and lyrics, are of widely varying merit, but all of them, as well as his Timber, a kind of commonplace-book, which is of considerable interest for its critical comments on literature, show the unity of aim underlying his writing. Jonson was the first great English neoclassic. Like Donne, he was in revolt against the artistic principles of his contemporaries, and he sought in the classics a cure for the uncontrolled, romantic exuberance of Elizabethan literature. In all branches of his writings he is the conscious artist and reformer, working on clearly defined principles. To him the chief function of literature was to instruct.
His plays divide conveniently into comedies and tragedies, for Jonson, true to his classical models, did not combine the two. In his comedies he aimed to return to the controlled, satirical, realistic comedy of the classical dramatists, and the inductions of his plays make it clear that he hoped to reform the drama on these lines. His main concern was with the drawing of character, and his creations are important because they introduce the "comedy of humours," which portrays the individual as dominated by one marked characteristic. Many of his characters arc, in consequence, types, but the best, like Bobadill in Every Man in his Humour, rise above the type and live as truly great comic characters. In nearly all his comedies Jonson opened up a vein that was nearly new and was to be very freely worked by his successors--the comedy of London life and humours, reflecting the manners of the day.
His early comedies, Every Man in his Humour (1598), Every Man out of his Humour (1599), Cynthia's Revels (16()0), and The Poetaster (1601), show his ingenuity of plot, his hearty humour, his wit, and
they are full of vivacity and fun. Every Man in his Humour is, perhaps, his greatest work. The middle group of comedies, Volpone, or the Fox (1605), Epiccene, or the Silent Woman (1609), The Alchemist (1610), and Bartholomew Fayre (1614), represent, as a group, his best work. More mature than the early works, they are all satirical in tone (Volpone, is one of the most relentless exposures of vice in English), realistic and natural in dialogue, and ingenious in plot. The characters are less angular and more convincing. Epiccene and Bartholomew Fayre are written entirely in prose, while The Alchemist is entirely in blank verse. His later comedies, The Devil is an Ass (1616) and The Staple of News (1625), show a distinct falling-off in dramatic power.
The two historical tragedies, Sejanus his Fall (1603) and Catiline his Conspiracy (1611), are composed on classical models. They are too laboured and mechanical to be reckoned as great tragedies, though their author would fain have had them so. They show immense learning, they have power, variety, and insight, but they lack the last creative touch necessary to stamp them with reality, and to give them a living appeal. As for his masques, they are abundant, graceful, and humorously ingenious, into them Jonson introduced the device of the anti-masque, which parodied the principal theme. The best of them are The Masque of Beauty (1608), The Masque of Queens (1609), and Oberon, the Fairy Prince (1611).
The lyrics, many of which appeared in Underwoods, reflect no deep surge of emotion, but are controlled, poised, and urbane. If some of them are stiff, and most do not rise above mediocrity, the best of them, such as the well-known "Drink to me only with thine eyes," have a delicacy of touch and a clarity of style which are as fine as anything achieved by the Elizabethan lyrists. We quote two brief but typical pieces:
(1) Have you seen but a bright lillie grow, Before rude hands have touch'd it?
Have you mark'd but the fall of the snow Before the soyle hath smutch'd it?
Have you felt the wooll of the bever? Or the swan's downe ever?
Or have smelt of the bud of the brier? Or the nard on the fire?
Or have tasted the bag of the bee?
O so white! O so soft! O so sweet is she!
The Triumph
(2) Underneath this sable hearse Lies the subject of all verse, Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother:
Death, ere thou hast slain another, Learned, and fair, and good as she, Time shall throw a dart at thee!
Epitaph on the Countess of Pembroke'
In the estimation of his own age Jonson stood second to none; to a later generation he is overshadowed by the towering bulk of Shakespeare. But even the enormous prestige of Shakespeare cannot or ought not to belittle the merits of Jonson. Of Jonson we can justly say that he had all good literary gifts except one, and that the highest and most baffling of all--true genius. He had learning--perhaps too much of it; industry and constancy well beyond the ordinary; versatility; a crabbed and not unamiable humour, diversified with sweetness, grace, and nimbleness of wit; a style quite adequate to his needs; and an insight into contemporary life and manners greater than that of any writer of his day. But the summit of it all --the magical phrase that catches the breath, the immortal spirit that creates out of words and buckram "forms more real than living man"-- these were lacking; and without these he cannot join the circle of the very great.
2. Francis Beaumont (c. 1584-1616) and John Fletcher (1579-1625) combined to produce a great number of plays, said to be fifty-two in all. How much of the joint work is to be assigned to the respective hands is not accurately known.
The elder, Fletcher, was a cousin of Giles and Phineas Fletcher (see p. 86), and was born at Rye, Sussex. He may have been educated at Cambridge, and he lived the life of a London literary man. He died of the plague in 1625. His colleague Beaumont, who was probably the abler of the two, was the son of a judge. Sir Francis Beaumont, was educated at Oxford, and entered the Inner Temple (1600), but was captivated by the attractions of a literary life. He died almost within a month of Shakespeare, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Beaumont and Fletcher excelled in comedy, especially in the comedy of London life. They felt the influence of both Shakespeare and Jonson, but their plays are generally more superficial. They are mainly tragi-comedies, full of striking incident and stage effect. Their plots sustain interest and are often ingenious, lively, and
1 This piece is sometimes ascribed to William Browne (1588-1643).
entertaining, though rather loosely knit. The characters are numerous and widely varied, but the concentration on incident often makes them shallow. Full of witty dialogue, the plays attain a high level of lucidity and simplicity in their style, but they lack the Shakespearian wealth of imagery. A study of the style enables us to distinguish fairly clearly between the regular and flexible blank verse of Beaumont and the irregular verse of Fletcher, with its fondness for the extra syllable at the end of a line which is frequently end-stopped. Typical comedies are A King and No King (1611), esteemed by Dryden as the best of them all, The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1607 (?)), a very agreeable farce, and The Scornful Lady (1613-16). Their tragedies, such as The Maid's Tragedy (1610 (J)),Philaster (1611), which is very reminiscent of Twelfth Night, and The Faithful Shepherdess (by Fletcher alone), are not too tragical, and they are diversified by attractive incidents and descriptions.
3. George Chapman (c. 1559-1634) was born at Hitchin. Beyond this fact little is known of him. He took part in the literary life of his time, for his name appears in the squabbles of his tribe. He
died in London.
His first play, The Blind Beggar of Alexandria (1596), was followed by many more, both comical and tragical. Among them are Bussy d'Ambois (1604 (?)), Charles, Duke of Byron (1608), and The Tragedie of Chabot (c. 1613). These are historical plays, dealing with events nearly contemporary with his own time. Chapman's comedies include All Fools (1605) and Eastward Hoe! (1605), in the latter of which he combined with Jonson and Marston. Chapman writes agreeably and well; he has firmness, competence, and variety, and his comic and tragic powers are considerable. His translation of Homer has something of the pace and music of the original.
4. John Marston (c. 1575-1634) was born at Coventry, was edu cated there and at Oxford, became a literary figure in London, and later took orders. Latterly he resigned his living in Hampshire, and died in London.
Marston, a member of the Senecan school (see p. 88), specialized in violent and melodramatic tragedies, which do not lack a certain impressiveness, but which are easily parodied and no less easily lead to abuse. They impressed his own generation, who rated him with Jonson. For a later age they are spoiled to a great extent by exag- geration, rant, and excessive speeches. Typical of them are Antonio and Mellida (1599) and Antonio's Revenge (1602), which were ridiculed by Jonson in The Poetaster.
5. Thomas Dekker (c. 1572-e. 1632) was born in London, where his life was passed as a literary hack and playwright. His plays, chiefly comedies, have an attraction quite unusual for the time. They have a sweetness, an arch sentimentality, and an intimate knowledge of common men and things that have led to his being called the Dickens of the Elizabethan stage. His plots are chaotic, and his blank verse, which very frequently gives place to prose, is weak and sprawling. The best of his plays are Old Fortunatus (1599), The Shoemaker's Holiday (1599), and Satiromastix (1602). He collaborated with other playwrights, including Ford and Rowley, with whom he wrote The Witch of Edmonton (1621), and Massinger, in The Virgin Martyr (c. 1620).
6. Thomas Middleton (c. 1570-1627) was born in London, wrote much for the stage, and in 1620 was made City Chronologer.
He is one of the most equable and literary of the dramatists of the age; he has a decided fanciful turn; he is a close observer and critic of the life of the time, and a dramatist who on a few occasions can rise to the heights of greatness. His most powerful play, which has been much praised by Lamb and others, is The Changeling (1624); others are Women beware Women (1622), The Witch, which bears a strong resemblance to Macbeth, and The Spanish Gipsy (1623), a. romantic comedy suggesting As You Like It. Along with Dekker he wrote The Roaring Girle, or Moll Cutpurse (1611), which is a close dramatic parallel to the earliest novels.
7. Thomas Heywood (c. 1575-c. 1650) was born in Lincolnshire about 1575, was educated at Cambridge, and became an author and dramatist in London. He himself asserts that he had a hand ("or
at least a main finger") in two hundred and twenty plays, of which twenty-three survive.
Like so many more dramatists of the time, he excelled in his pictures of London life and manners. He was a rapid and light impoviser, an expert contriver of stage situations, but otherwise content with passable results, and caring little about the higher flights of the dramatist. His best play is A Woman Killed with Kindnesse (1603), which contains some strongly pathetic scenes; The English Traveller (1633) is only slightly inferior. Other plays of his are The Royall King and the Loyall Subject (1602 (?)), The Captives (1624), and a series of clumsy historical dramas, including King Edward theFewth (1594-97), (John Webster, who flourished during the first twenty years of the seventeenth century, is regarded as the greatest post-Shakespearian dramatist)
Next to nothing is known regarding his life and much of his work has been lost.
(The most striking follower of the Senecan Revenge tradition, Webster turns from the mere horror of event to the deep and subtle analysis of character. His plots are not well constructed and there is still some crudeness of incident. but his horrors are usually controlled, (and are subordinate to the total artistic purpose of the play in which they occur. He deals with gloomy, supernatural themes, great crimes, turbulent emotions, and in largeness of tragic conception he resembles Marlowg) (He is a great dramatic poet, whose verse, though sometimes faulty, often reaches the highest levels and has great power. Tender and pitiful scenes add a touch of fine pathos to his greatest works.) (His career falls into three parts. After an early apprenticeship as a collaborator, especially with Dekker, he produced his two great tragedies., The White Devil (1609-12) and The Duchess of Malfi (1613-14)) which.) in Vittoria and the Duchess(contain two of the finest women character in the Elizabethan drama)(His later plays, which include THE Devil's Law Case (1623), do not approach the great tragedies in quality)
9.(Cyril Tourneur (1575 (?)-1626) seems to have been a soldier and to have served in the Low Countries.)He took part in Buckingham's disastrous expedition to Cadiz, and on his return died in Ireland.
In(the work of Tourneur, another and cruder follower of the 'Revenge' tradition, we have horrors piled on horrors. His two plays The Revenger's Tragedy (1600) and The A theist's Tragedy (1607-11) are melodramatic to the highest degree. He attempts much, but achieves little. He does not lack a a certain poetic sensibility; but he lacks grip, method, and balance. and he is weakest where Webster is strongest.
PROSE
THE ENGLISH BIBLE ; THE AUTHORIZED VERSION
In the last chapter we indicated the growth of the Bible from the earliest to Reformation times. The task of translation was completed by the issue of King James's Bible, or the Authorized Version (1611).
The need for a standard text was urged during the conference between the dissentient sects held at Hampton Court in 1604. James I, who was present at some stages of the conference, approved
of the project.( Forty-seven scholars, including the ablest professorial and episcopal talent, were appointed for the task; they were divided into six companies, each receiving a certain portion of the Biblical text for translation; each company revised the work of its fellow-translators. The task, begun in 1607, was completed in 1611. Since that date little of sufficient authority has been done to shake the Authorized Version's dominating position as the greatest of English translations.
It may be of use here to set down some of the more obvious features of this great work. ....
1. With regard to the actual work of translation, itought to be regarded simply as the climax of a long series of earlier translations. The new translators came to handle a large mass of work already in existence. All the debatable ground in the texts had been fought over again and again, and in a dim fashion a standard was emerging. The translators themselves acknowledge this in the preface to their work : their task, they say, is "to make a good one better, or out of many good ones one principal good one." In other words, their task was largely one of selection and amendment. The reliance upon earlier work resulted in a certain old-fashioned flavour that was felt even in Jacobean times. "It is not the English," says Hallam, "of Daniel or Ralegh or Bacon It abounds,
especially in the Old Testament, in obsolete phraseology." It is a tribute to the compelling power and beauty of the Authorized Version that its archaisms have long been accepted as permissible, and even inevitable. Allowing, however, for all the reliance upon earlier work, one cannot overpraise the sound judgment, the artistic taste, and the sensitive ear of every member of the band who built up such a stately monument to our tongue.
2. Diversity of the Work. One can best appreciate the vastness and complexity of the Bible by recollecting that it is not a single book, but an entire literature, or even two literatures, for both in time and temper the New Testament is separated from the Old. The different books of the Bible were composed at widely different times, and many hands worked at them. Their efforts resulted in a huge collection of all the main species of literature--expository, narrative, and lyrical. These will be noticed in their order below.
3. Unity of the Work. If the Bible were a collection of discordant elements it would not possess its peculiar literary attraction. In spite of the diversity of its sources it has a remarkable uniformity of treatment and spirit. The core and substance of the entire work
is the belief and delight in the Divine Spirit; and, added to this, especially in the Old Testament, a fiery faith in the pre-eminence of the Jewish race. With regard to the literary style, it owes most to the translations of Tyndale and Coverdale (see p. 61), for it combines the strength of the former with the beautiful rhythms of the latter. From cover to cover it is almost unvaried: firm, clear, simple, dignified, and thoroughly English. It represents the broad and stable average of the labours of generations of devout and ardent men; and it endures unshaken.
4. The Expository Portions. Considered from the purely literary point of view, the expository parts (that is, those that contain exhortation, information, or advice) are of least importance) In bulk they are considerable, and include the Book of Deuteronomy . in the Old Testament and the Pauline Epistles in the New. (they have all the distinction of the Biblical style, and they are expressed with clearness, dignity, and precision.
5. The narrative portions include the bulk of the Bible, and are of great literary interest and value.) In the Old Testament they comprise the Pentateuch and many other books, and in the New Testament they include the Gospels and the Acts, of the Apostles. The tone of the Old Testament differs somewhat from that of the New. As can be supposed, the former is often harsher in note, and is sometimes confused and contradictory (from the unsatisfactory condition of some of the texts); the New Testament narrative, which came under the influence of the Greek, is more scholarly and liberal in tone.' Both, however, have a breadth, solidity, and noble austerity of style that make the Biblical narrative stand alone. It is perhaps unnecessary to quote, but one short specimen may not be out of place:
Then they took him, and led him, and brought him into the high priest's house. And Peter followed afar off.
And when they had kindled a fire in the midst of the hall, and were set down together, Peter sat down among them.
But a certain maid beheld him as he sat by the fire, and earnestly looked upon him, and said, This man was also with him.
And he denied him, saying, Woman, I know him not.
And after a little while another saw him, and said, Thou art also of them. And Peter said, Man, I am not.
And about the space of one hour after another confidently affirmed, saying, Of a truth this fellow also was with him: for he is a Galilean.
And Peter said, Man, J know not what thou sayest. And immediately, while he yet spake, the cock crew.
And the Lord turned, and looked upon Peter. And Peter
remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said unto him, Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. And Peter went out, and wept bitterly.
St Luke
7. The Lyrical Portions. These (which include the Psalms, the Song of Solomon, much of the Book of Job, and the frequent pas
sages, such as the song of Sisera, which occur in the narrative books) are perhaps the most important as literature.) In addition to their native shrewdness and persistence, the Jews had a strongly emo tional strain, which finds wide expression in the Bible. Their poetry, like that of the Old English, was rhythmic; it went by irregularly distributed beats or accents. The English translators to
a large extent preserved the Jewish rhythms, adding to them the music, the cadence, the soar and the swing of ecstatic English prose. In theme Jewish poetry is the primitive expression of simple people regarding the relations of man and God and the universe. Its
similes and metaphors are based upon simple elemental things--the heavens, the running water, and the congregations of wild beasts. The emotions are mystically and rapturously expressed, and convey the impression of much earnestness. The following extract is fairly typical of its kind:
As the hart patiteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?
My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?
When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me: for I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holyday.
Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.
The Book of Psalms
7. The Influence of the Bible., The English Bible has been a potent influence in our literature, Owing largely to their poetical or proverbial nature(multitudes of Biblical expressions have become woven into the very tissue of the tongue: "a broken reed," "the eleventh hour," "a thorn in the flesh," "a good Samaritan,"
"sweat of the brow," and so on'. More important, probably, is the way in which the style affects that of many of our greatest writers. The influence is nearly all for the good; for a slight strain of the
Biblical manner, when kept artistically within bounds, imparts simplicity, dignity, and elevation. Bunyan shows the style almost undiluted; but in the works of such widely diverse writers as Ruskin, Macaulay, Milton, and Tennyson the effects, though slighter, are quite apparent.
FRANCIS BACON, BARON VERULAM, VISCOUNT ST ALBANS (1561-1626)
1. His Life. Bacon was bom in London, the son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. The family was connected with the Cecils and other political magnates of the time. Bacon was a delicate youth, and for a time he was educated privately; then he proceeded to Cambridge, and thence entered Gray's Inn (1576). To complete his education he spent three years in France. On his being called to the Bar his family influence helped him to acquire a fair practice, but Bacon was ambitious and longed for the highest rewards that his profession could bestow. He became a member of Parliament in 1584, but the recognition that he expected from the Queen did not come his way, hard though he fought for it He assisted in the prosecution of the Earl of Essex, a nobleman who had befriended him earlier in his career. Essex, an injudicious man, had involved himself in a charge of treason, and the ingenuity of Bacon was largely instrumental in bringing him to the block. On the accession of James I, Bacon, who was never remiss in urging his own claims to preferment, began to experience prosperity, for he was tireless in urging the royal claims before Parliament. He was made a knight in 1603, and Attorney- General in 1613. In the latter capacity he was James's chief agent in asserting and enforcing the King's theories of divine right, and he became thoroughly unpopular with the House of Commons. His reward came in 1618, when he was appointed Lord Chancellor and created Baron Verulam, and in 1621, when he became Viscount St Albans. Popular dissatisfaction was mounting against the King and his agents, and when Parliament met in 1621 it laid charges of bribery and corrupt dealings against the Lord Chancellor. Bacon quailed before the storm; made what amounted to a confession of guilt; and was subjected to the huge fine of £40,000 (which was partially remitted), imprisonment during the King's pleasure (which was restricted to four days in the Tower of London), and exile from Court and office. He spent the last five years of his life in the pursuit of literary and scientific works.
2. His Works. Bacon wrote both in Latin and English, and of the two he considered the Latin works to be the more important.
a) His English works include his Essays, which first appeared in 1597, Then they numbered ten; but the second (1612) and third 1625) editions raised the number to thirty-eight and fifty-eight respectively. They are on familiar subjects, such as Learning, Studies, Vainglory, and Great Place; and in method they represent the meditations of a trained and learned mind. 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.
b) His Latin works were to be fashioned into a vast scheme, which he called lnstauratio Magna, expounding his philosophical theories. It was laid out on the following plan, but it was scarcely half finished:
1) De Augmentis Scientiarum (1623), This treatise, in which the English work on the Advancement of Learning is embodied, gives a general summary of human knowledge, taking special notice of gaps and imperfections in science.
2) Novum Organum (1620). This work explains the new logic or inductive method of reasoning, upon which his philosophy is founded. Out of the nine sections into which he divides the subject the first only is handled with any fullness, the other eight being merely named.
3) Sylva Sylvarum (left incomplete). This part was designed to give a complete view of what we call Natural Philosophy and Natural History. The subjects he has touched on under this head are four--the History of Winds, Life and Death, Density and Rarity, Sound and Hearing.
4) Scala Intellectus. Of this we have only a few of the opening pages. 5)Prodromi. A few fragments only were written.
6)Philosophia Secunda. Never executed.
3. His Style. Of Bacon as a philosopher we can only say that he is
one of the founders of modern systematic thought. His most important literary work is his Essays, which might be described as an
appendix to his longer works, especially The Advancement of Learning, in that it provides a practical everyday philosophy of the life of his own world. In its three versions this work shows the development of Bacon's English style. In the first edition the style is crisp, detached, and epigrammatic, conveying the impression that each essay has arisen from some happy thought or phrase, around
which other pithy statements are agglomerated. In the later editions the ideas are expanded, the expression loses its spiky pointedness, and in the end we have an approach to a freer middle style. In choice of subject and approach, they reveal his breadth of intellect, bis worldly wisdom, his concern with public life and material advancement. They are impersonal, objective, and orderly in thought, and reflect a cool, scientific detachment, which makes them, in spite of an occasional flash of poetic fire, as in Of Death, rather (ormal and cold. Yet they are written in the language of ordinary men, and the imagery is that of everyday life. The essays are brief and full of condensed, weighty, antithetical Sentences, which have the qualities of proverbial expressions, and are notable for their precision and clarity of phrasing. Many have striking openings: "Revenge is a wild kind of justice, which the more man's nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out" (Of Revenge); "God Almighty first planted a garden; and indeed it is the purest of human pleasures" (Of Gardens); "Men fear death, as children fear to go in the dark" (Of Death). All are full of allusions to, and extracts from, other writings.
For the sake of comparison we quote the same extract from the first and third editions of the Essays. The second extract, it will be noticed, is a studied expansion of the first.
1) Crafty men contemn them, simple men admire them, wise men use them; for they teach not their own use, but that is a wisdom without them and above them won by observation. Read not to contradict nor to believe, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read but cursorily, and some few to be read wholly and with diligence and attention. Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man. And therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning to seem to know that he doth not.
Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtle; natural philosophy deep; moral grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend.
2) Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise-men use them; for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be
read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that would be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books; else distilled books are like common distilled waters, flashy things. Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. And therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not. Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtle; natural philosophy deep; moral grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend.
Of Studies
OTHER PROSE-WRITERS
1. Roger Ascham (1515-68) is representative of the earliest school of Elizabethan prose. He was born in Yorkshire, and educated privately and at St John's College, Cambridge where he became a Fellow (1535) and a teacher of Greek (1540). He took part in the literary and religious disputes of the time;..but'managed to keep his feet on the shifting grounds of politics- He was appointed tutor to Elizabeth (1548) and secretary to Queen Mary; he visited the Continent as secretary to an embassy; and ultimately was appointed a canon of York Minster. 'His two chief works were Toxophilus (1545). a treatise, in the form of a dialogue, on archery; and The Scholemaster (1570), an educa tional work containing some ideas that were then fairly fresh and enlightening. Ascham was a man of moderate literary talent, of great industry, and of boundless enthusiasm for learning.,. Though he is strongly influenced by classical models, he has all the strong Elizabethan sense of rationality,. In" Toxophilus he declares his in tention of "writing this English matter in the English speech for Englishmen." In style he is plain and strong, using only the more
obvious graces of alliteration and antithesis. ;
2. John Lyly (1554 (?)-1606) marks another stage in the march of English prose. He was born in Kent, educated at Oxford, and, failing to obtain Court patronage, became a literary man in London. At first he had considerable success, and entered Parliament; but at a later stage his popularity declined, and he died poverty-stricken in
London. We have already mentioned his comedies (see p. 89), which at the time brought him fame and money. But his first prose work Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit (1579), made him one of the foremost figures of the day. He repeated the success with a second part, Euphues and his England (1580). The work is a kind of travel-
romance, recounting the adventures of Euphues, a young Athenian. The narrative is interspersed with numerous discussions upon many topics. It was, however, the style of its prose that gave the book its great vogue. It is the first consciously fabricated prose style in the language. It is mannered and affected almost to the point of being ridiculous. Its tricks are obvious and easily imitated, and they were freely applied by the next generation: balanced phrases, intricate alliteration, laboured comparisons drawn from classical and other sources, and ornate epithets. The effect is quaint and not displeasing, but the narrative labours under the weight of it. It certainly suited the growing literary consciousness of its day, and hence its pronounced, though temporary, success. The following extract will illustrate the euphuistic manner:
Philautus being a town-bom child, both for his own continuance and the great countenance which his father had while he lived crept into credit with Don Ferardo one of the chief governors of the city, who although he had a courtly crew of gentlewomen sojourning in his palace, yet his daughter, heir to his whole revenues, stained the beauty of them all, whose modest bashfulness caused the other to look wan for envy, whose lily cheeks dyed with a vermilion red, made the rest to blush at her beauty. For as the finest ruby staineth the colour of the rest that be in place, or as the sun dimmeth the moon, that she cannot be discerned, so this gallant girl more fair than fortunate, and yet more fortunate than faithful, eclipsed the beauty of them all, and changed their colours. Unto her had Philautus access, who won her by right of love, and should have won her by right of law, had not Euphues by strange destiny broken the bonds of marriage, and forbidden the banns of matrimony.
Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit
3. Richard Hooker (1554-1600) was born near Exter, and educated at Corpus Christi College,.Oxford, where he was elected a Fellow (1577). In 1582 he took orders, and later was appointed to a living in Kent, where he died.
His great work, at which he laboured during the greater part of his life, was Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. The first four of the proposed eight books were issued in 1594; he finished one more; and though the remaining three were published under his name when he was dead, it is very doubtful if he was entirely responsible for them. In the work he supports Episcopacy against Pres,byterianism. In style he is strongly affected by classical writers; but he usually writes with homeliness and point; his sentences are carefully constructed; the rhythm moves easily; and there is both precision and
melody in his choice of vocabulary. His style is an early example of scholarly and accomplished. English prose.
4. Sir Thomas Qverbury (1581-1613) may be taken as typical of a fairly large class of Elizabethan writers. He was born in Warwick shire, educated at Oxford, and became a figure at the Court of King James. His chief friend at Court was James's favourite Robert Carr, with whom he quarrelled over a love-affair. For this Overbury fell into disfavour, and was imprisoned in the Tower, where he was poisoned under mysterious and barbarous circumstances. Overbury survives in literature as the author of a series of Characters (1614), though he is probably not the author of all of them. Based on the ancient Greek work of Theophrastus, the book consists of a number of concise character-sketches of well- known types, such as a Milkmaid, a Pedant, a Franklin, and "an Affectate Traveller." They are written from the point of view of the courtier and are epigrammatic and full of 'conceits' and wit. They show a close and penetrating observation and a fine sense of humour. But they are important for several reasons: they are a curious development of the pamphlet, which was so common at that time; they are another phase of the 'humours' craze, seen so strongly in the Jonsonian and other dramas; and they are an important element in the growth of the essay. In style the book is strongly euphuistic, thus illustrating another tendency of the time. They were added to and imitated by other writers, including John Earle (1601-65).
5. Robert Burton (1577-1640) was the son of a country gentleman, and was born in Leicestershire. He was educated at Oxford, where, in holy orders, he passed most of his life.
His famous work, The Anatomy of Melancholy, was first issued in 1621, and then constantly revised and reissued. It is an elaborate and discursive study of melancholy, its species and kinds, its causes, results, and cure. The book, though laboured and saturnine in tone, shows an underlying common sense and a true sympathy with humanity. It has exercised a strong fascination over many scholarly minds, including those of Dr Johnson and Charles Lamb. Its learning is immense and unconventional, being drawn from many rare authors; its humour curiously crabbed, subdued, and ironical; and its 'melancholy,' though pervading, is not oppressive. The diction has a colloquial naturalness and is rarely obscure; the enormous sentences, packed with quotation and allusion, are loosely knit.
Both as a stylist and as a personality Burton occupies his own niche in English literature.
6. The Sermon-writers, At the beginning of the seventeenth cen tury the sermon rose to a level of literary importance not hitherto attained, and afterwards rarely equalled. We have already mentioned Donne (see p. 80), probably the most notable of his group, and we give space to two other writers. James Ussher (1581-1656) was born in Dublin, and was descended from an ancient Protestant family. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and rose to be Bishop of Meath and Archbishop of Armagh (1625). In 1640 he visited England, where, owing to the disturbed state of Ireland, he had to remain for the rest of his life. His many sermons, discourses, and tracts show learning, adroit argument, and a plain and easy style. His Chronologia Sacra was for a long time the standard work on Biblical chronology.
a)Joseph Hall (1574-1656) was educated at Cambridge, took orders, and became a prominent opponent of the Puritans, among whom was Milton. He was appointed Bishop of Exeter (1627) and of Norwich (1641). When the Puritans rose to power Hall's opinions brought him into disgrace. He was imprisoned, and, though liberated, forbidden to preach. He died in retirement.
Hall's earliest work was in verse, and consisted of a series of satires called Virgidemiarum (1597), which were condemned by the Church as being licentious. His theological and devotional works, the product of his later years, are very numerous, and include tracts, sermons, and treatises. Though he is often shallow and voluble, he writes with literary grace. He is without doubt the most literary of the theologians of the time.
7. The Translators. The zeal for learning and spirit of adventure, which were such a prominent feature of the early Elizabethan times, were strongly apparent in the frequent translations. This class of literature had several curious characteristics. The translators cared little for verbal accuracy, and sometimes were content to translate from a translation, say from a French version of a Latin text. The translators, moreover, borrowed from each other and repeated the errors of their fellows. These habits deprived their work of any great pretensions to scholarship; but they were eager adventurers into the new realms of learning, and to a great extent they repro
duced the spirit, if not the letter, of their originals. 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).
8. 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,1 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; and were it not an idolatrous oath, I would swear by sweet St George, thou art unworthy better hap, sith thou dependest on so mean a stay. Base-minded men all three of you, if by my misery ye be not warned; for unto none of you (like me) sought those burs to cleave,--those puppets, I mean,-- that speak from our mouths,--those antics garnished in our colours. Is it not strange that I, to whom they all have been beholding,--is it not like that you, to whom they all have been beholding,--shall
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