Representatives:

Wyatt William Shakespeare John Donne

Surrey Christopher Marlowe Francis Bacon

Thomas More Ben Jonson John Milton

Genres:

poetry sonnet pamphlets

song writing drama essays

blank verse

Background

In the opening years of the fourteenth century, there began to develop in Italy an increasing interest in the manuscripts that had survived from ancient Greece and Rome. As more and more of these were unearthed in libraries and masteries, Italy fell under the spell of the intellectual movement we have come to call the Renais- sance - the rebirth of scholarship based on classical learning and philosophy. Spreading westward across Europe, the phenomenon of the Renaissance touched England lightly and fleetingly during the time of Chaucer. As far as England was concerned, however, this early contact was negligible, largely because external wars and internal strife ravaged the country for almost a century and a half, from 1337 to 1485.

As the Renaissance developed in Italy and other European countries, it began to take on added dimensions. Perhaps stimulated by the discovery that the men and women of ancient Greece and Rome were intelligent, cultured, and creative, the Renaissance gradually became also a rebirth of human potential for development. This realization led eventually to many discoveries - geographical, religious, and scientific, as well as artistic and philosophical. Both the Age of Discovery and Protestant Reformation had their origins in the Renaissance spirit. To the same spirit may be attributed the Copernicus' assertion that the earth was not the center of the universe. Upsetting traditional religious teachings, this discovery indirectly fostered the Renaissance belief that life in this world was not merely a preparation for the next world, as thought by Medieval Christianity; but that, on the contrary, an active life in this world had value in itself.

The writers of the Renaissance turned against feudalism and roused in men a longing to know more about the true nature of things in the world. They were called humanists. Man was placed in the centre of life. He was no longer an evil being. He had a right to live, enjoy himself and be happy on earth. The humanists were greatly interested in sciences, especially in natural science, based on experiment and investigation. Engels said that the Renaissance was “the greatest progressive revolution that mankind had so far experienced, a time which called for giants and produced giants”.

First humanists:

Raphael

Leonardo da Vinci

Michelangelo

Dante

Petrarch

Boccaccio

Rabelais

Cervantes

Thomas More (1478-1535), “Utopia” (1516)

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

The Renaissance in England

The Renaissance period in England may be divided into three parts: the rise of the Renaissance under the early Tudor monarchs (1500—1558), the height of the Renaissance under Elizabeth I (1558—1603), and the decline of the Renaissance under the Stuart monarchs (1603—1649).

In 1485, with the end of the Wars of the Roses of the crowning of Henry VII, domestic unrest ended. Henry immediately set about unifying the country, strengthening the crown, and replenishing the royal treasury.

Under the reign of his son, Henry VIII (1509—1547), England was ripe for the intellectual ferment of the Renaissance. The population had begun to increase rapidly, feudalism was on its deathbed, and there was a steady movement of population to the larger towns and cities, especially London. The population of London, only 93 000 in 1563, had by 1605 more than doubled, to 224 000.

In addition, the invention of the printing press, together with improved methods of manufacturing paper, made possible the rapid spread of knowledge. In 1476, during the Wars of Roses, William Caxton had set up England's first printing press at Westminster, a part of London. By 1640, that press and others had printed more than 26 000 different works and editions. With the advent of the printing press and the increased availability of books, literacy increased. It is estimated that by 1530 more than half of the population of England was literate.

Near the end of the fifteenth century, Renaissance learning made its tardy entry into England, carried home by scholars who had traveled in Italy. Earliest among these was the Oxford Group, which introduced the new learning of the Renaissance to Oxford in 1490's and 1500's. A decade later, the great Dutch humanist, Desiderius Erasmus, was teaching Greek at Cambridge.

The first major impact of the Renaissance on English literature is observable in the poetry of Wyatt and Surrey, who introduced and Anglicized the sonnet, a verse form that has proved to be both popular and durable. Surrey is credited also with inventing English blank verse. Other verse forms, borrowed from the Italian and the French, had a lesser impact. Elaborate Renaissance conventions of love poetry were also transplanted, finding their outlet chiefly in sonnets and sonnet sequences.

Though the non-native influence was strong insofar as poetry was concerned, the native drama continued to develop and gain popularity. Miracle and morality plays remained a favourite form of entertainment, while a new dramatic form, the «interlude» developed. One of the important ancestors of Elizabethan drama, the interlude was a short play designed to be presented between the courses of a banquet.

While the Renaissance was gathering strength in England, two events occurred that were inimical to the influence of the Catholic Church. The first was Martin Luther's posting of his Ninety-five Theses on a church door in Wittenberg, Germany, in 1517, an act which heralded the Reformation. The second event was brought about by the desire of Henry VIII for a male heir and his wish to divorce Catherine of Aragon, who had borne only one child, Mary. When the Pope refused to end the marriage, Henry, with an eye also to seizing the vast and wealthy holdings of the Church, over- threw papal jurisdiction, married Anne Boleyn, and was declared, with Parliament's help, head of the English Church. Thus England became a Protestant nation.

During the reign of his successor, the child king Eduard VI, the movement toward Protestantism continued. However, Queen Mary, was a devout Catholic. Her attempts to restore Catholicism to the country resulted in internal turmoil and much bloodshed.

The Height of the Renaissance

Under Elizabeth I (1558—1603), the next monarch, order was restored and England entered upon her most glorious age. Only twenty-five when she assumed the throne, Elizabeth, who never married, was to rule wisely and well for forty-five years. Through her policy she held in check the proponents of Catholicism on one hand and the growing numbers of Britain extremists on the other. A master politician, Elizabeth established a strong central government that received the loyal support of her subjects.

During her reign, England began to gain supremacy on the seas. Threatened by an invasion from her long-time enemy, the King of Spain, Elizabeth sent Hawkins and Drake out to destroy the Spanish Armada. Her words upon that occasion are noteworthy: “…I know I have the body of a weak feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king - and a king of England, too, and think foul scorn that... Spain or any Prince of Europe should dare to invade the borders of my realm».

England's increasing population created new markets and brought about the exploitation of new sources of raw materials, among them those of the New World. The commercial ventures of the Virginia Company in North America and the East India Company in the Orient were aspects of this expansion. Riches also came from ventures like those of the pirate-patriot Sir Francis Drake, whom Elizabeth commissioned to intercept Spanish treasure ships on the high seas and relieve them of the heavy burden of gold they had stolen from the Indians of South America. Such ventures generated as much as 5000 percent return, which went to sell the royal treasury.

Elizabeth's reign was the age of courtiers. The serious aspects of court life, those that led to England's becoming a world power, were tempered somewhat by the lighter aspects. The queen loved music and dancing, and her court entertainments were notable. Educated in both the classical and modern languages, Elizabeth was not only a master politician, but also a poet of no mean ability. Many of the men of her court did live up to the Renaissance ideal (as expressed in «Hamlet») of courtier, soldier, and scholar. Most famous of the courtier poets were Earl of Essex, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Sir Philip Sidney. Edmund Spencer, unsuccessfully seeking court preferment, wrote «The Faerie Queene», a long allegorical epic in which Gloriana, the Faerie Queene, represented Elizabeth.

During Elizabeth's reign, the popularity of the sonnet led to the writing of sonnet sequences, usually telling the story of unrequited love. Sir-Philip Sidney set the vogue for these with «Astrophel and Stella». Among his more famous followers were Edmund Spencer, with «Amoretti», and William Shakespeare, with an untitled, enigmatic series of 154 sonnets.

Most of Elizabeth's courtiers did not want their works published, preferring to limit their audience to a small group of the «cognoscenti», or educated class.

Lyric poetry and song also flourished in Elizabethan England. Most famous of the songwriters was Thomas Campion, whose five collections of songs with lute accompaniment were printed and made available to Elizabethans at all social levels. Another source of popular music was the drama. Songs were an integral part not only of comedies, but on occasion also of tragedies. Beyond question Elizabethan period was the golden age of English drama, including among its dramatists Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, and Ben Jonson, along with more than a dozen other firs-rate playwrights. Under the skillful handling of these dramatists, blank verse, introduced into the language by Surrey, became the main vehicle for tragedy and comedy. «Hamlet», «Macbeth», and Shakespeare's other tragedies were cast in blank verse, as were his comedies.

Native English drama, which had existed at least since medieval times, was the wellspring of Elizabethan drama? although Classical drama had been known earlier, its initial influence came in the 1560's, with the translation of Latin drama, especially the revenge tragedies of Seneca and the comedies of Plautus and Terence. Somehow everything coalesced, and Elizabethan England saw the theatre develop to an unprecedented degree. The plays of the great dramatists contained something for everyone: low comedy for the groundlings, elevated philosophical concepts for the educated, and strong story lines to engage the attention of everyone. Public theaters, such as Shakespeare's Globe, competed with one another outside the limits of London. Within the city itself, private theaters, charging higher admissions and offering more sophisticated entertainment, provided further competition.

Because the public theaters attracted large audiences from all levels of society, pickpockets and other criminals were drawn there. As Puritan influence grew in England, more and more complaints were made about ungodliness of the theatres, and they were occasionally closed In time of plague, too, their operations were suspended, and the acting companies went on tour.

The Puritan influence was symptomatic of what was to come. Renaissance exuberance was the exuberance of youth, and as Elizabethan poets warned, youth cannot last forever. Queen Elizabeth's Protestantism and personal presence had maintained England's domestic stability. In 1600, however, when the new century began, Elizabeth was in her late sixties, an aging queen not in the best of health. Despite the urging of her councilors, not until she was on her deathbed in 1603 did she name her successor, King James of Scotland.

The Decline of the Renaissance

James I had little firsthand knowledge of England, nor was he equipped with leadership traits to rouse patriotic fervor and bind his new subjects to him. Elizabeth had managed to maintain religious balance, but under the Stuarts, James and his son Charles I, who succeeded him, that balance was lost Both monarchs were firm Anglicans opposed to Puritanism. James's active persecution of the Puritans led to the founding of Plymouth in New England.

Both monarchs also engaged in straggle with Parliament, notably the House of Commons, over finances and their divine right to rule absolutely. The increasing strength of the predominantly Puritan middle class in the House of Commons made confrontation inevitable. This did not occur until the reign of Charles, who settled his disputes with his Parliaments by dismissing them. In 1642, civil war erupted, with the King and his supporters, called Royalists or Cavaliers, ranged against the Parliamentary forces, called Puritans or Roundheads. The king was defeated, tried, found guilty of treason, and executed in 1649. England was declared a commonwealth under the jurisdiction of Parliament.

At the beginning of the Stuart period, poetry was only a little less exuberant, a little more cynical and introspective than it had been earlier under Elizabeth. A major development was the growth of a group of metaphysical poets, led by John Donne. For emphasis, they used «strong» or harsh lines, overriding regular meter; they employed strong metaphors (or «conceits»); and they were intellectual rather than romantic, even in their love poetry. The lyrics of Ben Jonson show the gradual movement toward the metaphysical.

With the outbreak of the Puritan revolution, literature polarized. A number of young Cavaliers, loyal to the king, wrote lyrics about love and loyalty, but even in the love poems it is evident that the freshness of the Elizabethan era had passed. Among the best of these poets were Richard Lovelace, Robert Herrick, Sir John Suckling, George Wither (who later became a Puritan).

King James performed a great service to literature as well as to the Protestant cause when he commissioned a new English translation of the Bible. Completed in 1611, the King James Bible influenced English prose for generations.

A major accomplishment in English prose occurred with the publication, over a period of years, of the essays of Francis Bacon. Their insights into human nature and their clear style make them popular to this day.

Drama continued to flourish in England under the Stuarts. Shakespeare's great tragedies were written during the reign of King James, and Shakespeare's acting company, taken under the patronage of the king, became known as the King's Men. The theatre did in fact remain a popular form of entertainment until the Puritan government closed all playhouses in 1649.

The greatest of the Puritan poets, and one of the greatest English poets, was John Milton, Latin Secretary to the Puritan Commonwealth. He continued in this position when his sight began to fail, eventually becoming blind. Sightless, he composed «Paradise Lost», his greatest work and the only successful English epic, choosing for his subject the fall of man. Although Milton's epic was written after the fall of the Puritan Commonwealth, he is included in the Renaissance unit because he did his early work during that period, and because his output looks back toward the Renaissance rather than ahead to the Age of Reason. The same is true of Andrew Marvell, Puritan and close friend of Milton.

The writers of the Renaissance turned against feudalism and roused in men a longing to know more about the true nature of things in the world. They were called humanists. Man was placed in the centre of life. He was no longer an evil being. He had a right to live, enjoy himself and be happy on earth. The humanists were greatly interested in sciences, especially in natural science, based on experiment and investigation. The new ideas first appeared in Italy.

First humanists:

Raphael

Leonardo da Vinci

Michelangelo

Dante

Petrarch

Boccaccio

Rabelais

Cervantes

Thomas More (1478-1535), “Utopia” (1516)

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)