English Literature In The 16th Century

UNIVERSITATEA “AUREL VLAICU” DIN ARAD

FACULTATEA DE ȘTIINȚE UMANISTE ȘI SOCIALE

PROGRAMUL DE STUDII DE LICENȚĂ

FORMA DE ÎNVĂȚĂMÂNT CU FRECVENȚĂ

LUCRARE DE LICENȚĂ

ÎNDRUMĂTOR ȘTIINȚIFIC: LECTOR DR. CĂLINA PALICIUC

ABSOLVENT: TOADER T. TANIA- DENISA

ARAD

2016

UNIVERSITATEA “AUREL VLAICU” DIN ARAD

FACULTATEA DE ȘTIINȚE UMANISTE ȘI SOCIALE

PROGRAMUL DE STUDII DE LICENȚĂ

FORMA DE ÎNVĂȚĂMÂNT CU FRECVENȚĂ

ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE 16TH CENTURY

ÎNDRUMĂTOR ȘTIINȚIFIC: LECTOR DR. CĂLINA PALICIUC

ABSOLVENT: TOADER T. TANIA- DENISA

ARAD

2016

Contents

Page

Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………5

Chapter I. Historical and Cultural Background……………………………………………..7

I.1. The Renaissance…………………………………………………………………10

Chapter II. Thomas More and his Utopia………………………………………………….17

Chapter III. The Elizabethan Poetry……………………………………………………….23

III.1. Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542)……………………………………………….23

III.2. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517-1547)………………………………….25

III.3. Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586)…………………………………………………25

III.4. Sir Walter Ralegh (1552-1618)……………………………………………….27

III.5. Edmund Spenser (1552-1599)…………………………………………………29

Chapter IV. The Elizabethan Prose Fiction……………………………………………….35

Chapter V. The Elizabethan Drama………………………………………………………….39

V.1. Elizabethan Theatre………………………………………………………………39

V.2. Moralities and Interludes………………………………………………………..40

V.3. Comedies………………………………………………………………………….40

V.4. Tragedies………………………………………………………………………….40

Chapter VI. The University Wits…………………………………………………………….42

VI.1. John Lyly (1554-1606)…………………………………………………………..43

VI.2. George Peele (1556-1596)……………………………………………………….43

VI.3. Robert Greene (1558-1592)……………………………………………………..44

VI.4. Thomas Kyd (1558-1594)……………………………………………………….44

VI.6. Christopher Marlowe (1564- 1593)…………………………………………….46

Chapter VII. William Shakespeare: The First Period (1589-1600)………………………………..

VII.1. Poems………………………………………………………………………………………………….

VII.2. Plays…………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Conclusions……………………………………………………………………………

Annexes

Bibliography

Introduction

“When I read great literature, great drama, speeches, or sermons, I feel that the human mind has not achieved anything greater than the ability to share feelings and thoughts through language.”

(James Earl Jones)

The topic that I have chosen for my diploma paper is “English Literature in the 16th century”.

As the quote above says that a man can express himself best through language, literature is also a mean through which, people share: feelings, thoughts and even fears. How else can we know the circumstances of an event if not on the account of a participant or how do we know the features of a society if not through the story of a member. The ability to "tell stories" is important for the survival of a society. Its culture and values are lasting through the power of word which passes them on to the future generations. I wanted to discover the English society of the 16th century as it shown in the works of the great storytellers of that period as well as the evolution of English literature during a brilliant age, the Renaissance.

The first chapter contains a short presentation of the social and cultural background of the 16th century, which covers the most important events that occurred in that period, during the reign of the Tudor monarchs. The events that influenced, more or less the literature are the rupture from the Catholic Church, the establishment of the Anglican Church with the King as its head, the reign of Elizabeth I (during which the English literature flourished), as well as the Renaissance movement with its great discoveries.

The second chapter presents the life of the greatest humanists of the English Renaissance, Thomas More, and his most important work “Utopia”. More offers a reflection of his wicked society and, at the same time he introduces the ideal commonwealth of Utopia.

Starting with the Italian influences, the third chapter offers detailed information on the evolution of the Elizabethan poetry, the greatest poets of the age and their contributions to the development of the literature. Such contributions are: the acquisition of a new form of verse, the sonnet; the introduction of the unrhymed iambic pentameter (blank verse) and of the Spenserian stanza.

Although Elizabethan prose-fiction isn’t as ample as poetry and drama, the age marks the apparition of the prose pastorals romances, the realistic novels, and the introduction of a new Elizabethan literary style, called “euphuism”.

Chapter five presents the achievements that occurred in the field of drama, in which Elizabethans excelled. The chapter describes the apparition of the theatre, the first regular comedy and the first regular tragedy.

Chapter six introduces a group of brilliant young people called, “University Wits” who were university graduates and were attempting to make a living as professional writers.

The last chapter portrays the first period of William Shakespeare’s literary activity, at the end of 16th century. His great plays of different kinds (comedies, histories, tragedies, tragicomedies) enriched the stock of the English literature.

Chapter I. Historical and Cultural Background

During the 16th century England was ruled by the Tudors.

Henry Tudor was crowned as King Henry VII on the battlefield though he wasn’t a warrior. Round this sad, grave, thoughtful man two legends took shape. One, the creation of Henry himself in his own lifetime, evoked the image of someone distant and enigmatic, a being set apart, the monarch. The second, the legend of the historians, depicted a distrustful, avaricious king, who drained vast treasures from the coffers of the nobility into his own.

In the meantime, social changes occurred. Most knights were no longer armed fighters and became the ‘landed gentry’. The serfs became free farm labourers and many went to towns to join the craft guilds. In the towns, a new middle class was developing and strengthening its economic position. This new middle class was educated and skilled in law, administration and trade.

Henry VII had the same ideas and opinions as the middle classes; he firmly believed that wars brought economic disaster and that business was good for the state.

He made important trade agreements, made the crown more independent financially and started building a powerful merchant fleet for international trade.

“If the Tudors contrived to strike solid roots, if local institutions became strong enough to supplant the machinery of feudalism, this was due to the twenty-five years of peace at home and abroad which this cautious, mysterious progenitor gave to his country before the dramatic reigns of his son and grandchildren.”

When Henry died in 1509 he left behind the huge amount of £ 2 million, a wealth which was largely wasted by his son, Henry VIII.

A great medieval king had to be courteous, chivalrous, stern and devout; a great prince of the Renaissance, was a cultured libertine, spectacular, and often cruel. Henry VIII had all those qualities. So he remained ’in his subjects’ eyes, despite his crimes, a popular sovereign.

“My, you ought to seen old Henry the Eight when he was in bloom. He was a blossom. […] Our King does not desire gold or gems or precious metals, but virtue, glory, immortality.”- Lord Mountjoy to Erasmus, 1509

Henry VIII was king of England in the early 16th century. He became king at the age of eighteenth, after his father’s death..He spent a lot on maintaining a magnificent court and when he needed more he turned his eyes to the Church whose power greatly disliked. He had another good reason for standing up to the authority of the Church. In 1509 he had married Katharine of Aragon, the widow of his elder brother, Arthur, and since she couldn’t provide a male heir, Henry wanted a divorce but the Pope did not grant it. Henry passed the Act of Supremacy in 1534, broke with the Roman Church and became Head of the Anglican Church. Through several Acts of Parliament issued between 1532- 1536, England became a Protestant country. About 560 monasteries were closed, many were destroyed and the monks and nuns were thrown out. Those who refused to acknowledge the king as the Head of the Church were charged with treason and executed. This was the fate of the renowned humanist Thomas Morus who was imprisoned in the Tower and beheaded in 1535.

Sadly for Henry, his new church didn’t solve his marriage problems. When Ann Boleyn, his second wife, gave him a daughter, Elizabeth, but no son, he executed her on a charge of adultery. Anne’s daughter, Elizabeth, was proclaimed illegitimate and was later recognized as legitimate by the Parliament in 1544. Henry finally had a son with Jane Seymour, but she died after the birth of the baby. After Jane’s death, Henry married Anne of Cleves, a German princess whom he chose from a picture. In real life she was very ugly, and he ended their marriage after six months. Henry didn’t make the same mistake again. His fifth wife, Catherine Howard was a beautiful English girl of sixteen when she married him, a fat 49- year-old. But Henry learned that she had a lover and cut off her head. His last wife, Catherine Parr, was luckier than the rest because Henry died before her.

After Henry’s death in 1547, his nine-year-old son became king. Edward VI was an unhealthy but very intelligent boy, and he had strong ideas about religion. He started to make England even more Protestant than under his father.

When Edward, aged sixteen, died in 1553, Mary, the Catholic daughter ok Katharine of Aragon became queen.

Mary Tudor is a lamentable example of the ravages that may be wrought in a woman's soul by the conjunction of love, bigotry and absolute power. She protested that she would sooner lose ten crowns than imperil her soul. She cruelly repressed the Protestants and she became even more unpopular when she married Philip of Spain. Mary died in 1558 and Elizabeth I’s long and prosperous reign followed.

The accession of Elizabeth was greeted by the English people with almost unanimous joy. After their dread of Spanish tyranny, it was a relief to hail a Queen free of any foreign link. Throughout her reign she tried to win her people’s sympathy.

Elizabeth was strong-willed, well-educated and very intelligent; a shrewd politician, she avoided open conflicts as much as possible and she never married so as to be independent and rule by herself. The struggle between Catholics and Protestants continued to endanger Elizabeth’s position. Some Catholic nobles wished to replace Elizabeth with Mary, the Scottish Queen who was a Catholic. When Mary Queen of Scots returned to Scotland, she found out that Protestantism had spread quickly. The new Church in Scotland disliked Mary and her French Catholicism. She also made the mistake of consenting to the murder of her husband, Lord Darnley, after which she married the murderer, Bothwell. Mary unwittingly made enemies of some powerful Scottish nobles and she had to escape to safety in England. Elizabeth kept Mary her prisoner for almost 20 years and finally agreed to Mary’s execution in 1587, partly because Mary had named Philip of Spain as her heir to the throne of England.

Elizabeth’s foreign policy carried Henry VII’s work further by encouraging merchant expansion. England’s ships sailed the seas and oceans of the world and on many occasions the Spanish ships were attacked and the treasures on board confiscated. The trader pirates and adventurers, called the “sea dogs”, gave Elizabeth her share. The most famous were John Hawkins, Francis Drake and Martin Frobisher.

Elizabeth also encouraged English traders to settle abroad and create colonies and this policy later led to Britain’s colonial empire of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. One of the famous colonists of the Elizabethan period was Sir Walter Raleigh who founded Virginia in North America.

Philip of Spain decided to conquer England so he built a great fleet, the Spanish Armada, which reached England in the summer of 1588. The attack resulted in a glorious victory of the English and in a terrible disaster for the Spanish, and therefore England took over supremacy at sea.

Elizabeth’s heroic personality enjoyed wide popularity at Court and in the country, especially after her famous address to her troops at Tilbury in 1588 as the Spanish Armada threatened the English shores. She appeared on horseback, armed in a steel breastplate and said that though she knew she had “the body but of a weak and feeble Woman” she also had “the heart and stomach of a King, and of a King of England, too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any Prince of Europe, should dare invade the Borders of my Realm.”

Elizabeth lived to be seventy, a very advanced age for the time; and almost to the last she shone, she flirted, she danced.

When Elizabeth died in 1603 she designated Mary’s son, James VI as her successor and he became James I of England.

Wales. Scotland. Ireland

The Tudors did their best to have Wales, Ireland and Scotland under control.

Between 1536 and 1543 Wales became joined to England under one administration and the English law was applied in Wales. English became the official language and Welshmen entered the English parliament.

The Scottish Kings avoided war with England and made a peace treaty with henry VII. Henry VIII’s army destroyed the Scottish army at Flodden in 1513, the worst defeat the Scots ever experienced.

The Tudors fought four wars to make the Irish accept their rule and religion and in the end Ireland became England’s colony and the seed of the wars between the Protestants and the Catholics was planted.

I.1. The Renaissance

The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are the period of the European Renaissance or New Birth, one of the three or four great transforming movements of European history. This impulse by which the medieval society was to be made over into what we call the modern world, came first from Italy.

“For us the Renaissance is the name of a many-sided but yet united movement, in which the love of the things of the intellect and the imagination for their own sake, the desire for a more liberal and comely way of conceiving life, make themselves felt, prompting those who experience this desire to seek first one and then another means of intellectual or imaginative enjoyment, and directing them not merely to the discovery of old and forgotten sources of this enjoyment, but to divine new sources of it, new experiences, new subjects of poetry, new forms of art.”- Walter H. Pater in “Studies in The History of The Renaissance”, 1873

The Revival of Knowledge

The rediscovery and study of Greek and Roman literature offered a first definite direction to the Renaissance movement. This movement showed boundless possibilities of life to men who were dissatisfied with the narrow limits of medieval thought.

The ideal Renaissance man, the “uomo universale”, had to be conversant with art, literature, science and philosophy. The ideal of the age was aptly expressed by the famous words of Francis Bacon: “I have taken all knowledge to be my province”.

Although, the revival of knowledge, had a great meaning for the men of the 15th century, for us today is hard to understand.

At first, because of the brutal necessities of a period of anarchy, the medieval church frowned on the joy and beauty of life, permitting pleasure to the laity, but as a thing half dangerous. The church declared that there was perfect safety only within the walls of the nominally ascetic Church. The intellectual life was, also, restricted almost exclusively to priests and monks. It had been formalized and conventionalized, until, in spite of its excellent methods and the brilliancy of many of its scholars, it had become largely barren and unprofitable. The whole sphere of knowledge was only limited to the authority of the Bible and a few minds of the past, such as Aristotle. All questions were argued and were often warped into impossible interpretations and applications. Scientific investigation was almost entirely stopped, and progress was impossible. Under this arbitrary despotism, the whole field of religion and knowledge had become stagnant.

Greek literature brought to the minds, which were being paralyzed under this system, the inspiration for which they longed. “For it was the literature of a great and brilliant people who, far from attempting to make a divorce within man's nature, had aimed to 'see life steadily and see it whole,' who, giving free play to all their powers, had found in pleasure and beauty some of the most essential constructive forces, and had embodied beauty in works of literature and art where the significance of the whole spiritual life was more splendidly suggested than in the achievements of any, or almost any, other period.”

The Italians turned to the study of Greek literature and Greek life, with boundless enthusiasm. They always found fresh nourishment. Every new discovery, such as forgotten recesses of libraries, Greek authors or volumes or work of art, or those which were never lost, were reinterpreted with much deeper insight. Aristotle was revived and Plato's idealistic philosophy was once again studied and understood in an appreciative manner. With this new revelation Latin literature, which has never ceased to be studied, received a far greater human significance. Virgil and Cicero, regarded as mysterious prophets from a dimly imagined past, have become real men of flesh and blood, speaking of experiences distant in time from the present, but not less human or real.

The Renaissance scholars took as a motto the word ‘human’ and called themselves ‘humanists’. To them, all that is human is attractive.

The new creation was followed by the discovery of the old treasures, creation in literature and all the arts. This new creative enthusiasm culminated particularly in the early sixteenth century with the greatest painters whom the world has ever seen: Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michelangelo.

In Italy, no doubt, the light of the Renaissance had its palpable shadow; in breaking away from medieval slavery to the full enjoyment of all pleasures, the humanists too often covered all restrains and sank into wild excess, often into mere sensuality. Therefore, the Italian Renaissance is usually called Pagan. And when young English nobles begun to travel in Italy, to receive inspiration from the new moralists, back home protested with much more reason against the ideas and habits which many of them brought back with their new clothes, evidences of intellectual emancipation. However, history, shows no great progressive movement unaccompanied by exaggerations and extravagances.

The Renaissance past from Italy to France, but since the first half of the fifteenth century, English students were frequenting Italian universities. In England, the two great universities of Oxford and Cambridge played an important role in the spreading of culture during the Renaissance. The study of Greek was introduced in England by a group of scholars. William Grocyn, expert in philology and philosophy, was the first teacher of Greek at Oxford, Thomas Linacre, specialized in medicine and classical languages, was the founder of the Royal College of Physicians in London and he taught Greek to Erasmus and Thomas More, John Colet, Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral in London, founded St. Paul’s School in 1504. This new school was based on the principle of kindness in place of the merciless severity of the traditional English system.

Although literary culture was a great stimulus, it was only one of many influences that made up the Renaissance movement. While Greek was spoken very strongly to the cultivated class, other forces contributed to revolutionize life as a whole and all people's perspective upon it.

Geographical expansion

The Renaissance was an age of geographical expansion. After Columbus discovered the New World, in 1492, the geographical boundaries of knowledge have grown dramatically. Following close after Columbus, John Cabot, Italian-born, but naturalized Englishman, discovered North America. Towards the end of the fifteenth century, the Portuguese sailor, Vasco da Gama, finished Diaz's work and discovered the sea route to India around the Cape of Good Hope. A generation after Columbus, Magellan was the first man who led an expedition around the globe, proving that the earth is round. Numerous books of travels and discoveries were published due to the geographical knowledge. Richard Hakluyt (1552?-1616) wrote two papers, “Drivers Voyages touching the Discovery of America”, 1582 and “The Principal Navigations, Voyages and Discoveries of the English Nation”, 1589.

Historical culture

People's interest for the historical past of England was strongly stimulated by a number of historians and chroniclers such as, John Stow (1525?- 1605) through his work, ‘Generale Chronicle of England from Brute until the present year of Christ 1058’, as well as William Camden (1551- 1623) with his chronicle in Latin, ‘Britannia’ (1586). The most significant of all was Raphael Holinshed (1529- 1580), whose work, “The Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland”, 1577; 1578, was one of the major sources used by William Shakespeare for a number of his plays.

Astronomy

The horizon of people's knowledge was not limited to their own earth. The Polish mathematician and astronomer, Nicolaus Copernicus, formulated a model of the universe that placed the Sun rather than the Earth at the center of the universe. He published the model in his book, “De revolutionibus orbium coelestium” (“On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres”) just before his death, in 1543. Copernicus's model is considered a major event in the history of science, making an important contribution to the Scientific Revolution.

The Italian astronomer, physicist, engineer, philosopher, and mathematician, Galileo Galilei (1564- 1642), played an important part in the scientific revolution during the Renaissance. He confirmed Copernicus's heliocentric belief, discovered mountains on the moon and the rotation of the sun around his own axis. Galileo Galilei influenced the Englishman's thinking, rejecting the old Ptolemaic conception according to which the sun and planets revolve around the earth.

Another Italian astrologer, Giordano Bruno (1548- 1600) is celebrated for his astrological theories which went even further than the Copernican model. He claimed that the stars are just distant suns surrounded by their own planets, and could be possible that these planets are inhabited. Bruno also insisted that the universe is infinite and has no celestial body at its “center”.

The idea that “man is his own star”, expressed by Shakespeare and Fletcher, is closely connected to these revolutionary theories.

Science

Sixteenth century marked a remarkable progress in the direction of scientific thinking. The physician of queen Elizabeth I and scientist, William Gilbert (1544- 1603) published, in 1600, “De Magnete” (“The Magnet”), the first book about electricity. He is considered one of the inventors of the term 'electricity'.

Chemistry gradually emerged from alchemy mainly because of the Swiss physician, Paracelsus. The experimental investigations increased, principally in the field of dissection and body examination, thus advancing the knowledge of human anatomy. Modern neurology has begun to develop in the sixteenth century with Vesalius, who described the anatomy of the brain and other organs; although he had little knowledge of the brain's functions. Understanding the diagnosis and medical sciences have improved, but with little benefit to healthcare. Only a few drugs existed. The physician William Harvey (1578- 1657) provided a complete description of the circulatory system. The need for better medicines and healing herbs caused an increase in the study of botany. In 1530, Otto Brunfels (1488–1534) published two landmark books about medicinal herbs, “Herbarium vivae icons” (1530 and 1536, in three parts) and “Contrafayt Kräuterbuch” (1532-1537, in two parts). Also, Hieronymus Bock (1498–1554) and Leonhard Fuchs (1501­-1566) published books about wildflowers. The physician and natural historian, William Turner (1510- 1568) wrote, in England the first modern work of anthropology.

The term 'Renaissance man' is best embodied in the person of Leonardo da Vinci (1452- 1519) due to his natural genius who crossed so many disciplines. He was a painter, architect, inventor, and student of all things scientific.

Religion and Philosophy

In the 16th century Aristotle was revived, and Plato’s idealistic philosophy was once again studied and understood.

Vergil and Cicero were no longer considered as “mysterious prophets from a dimly imagined past”, but as real men which presented real experiences from a distant time.

The great religious event of the 16th century, the break from the Catholic Church coincided with the general position of the age. The reformation caused the new translations of the Bible: “The Great Bible” (1539), “Cranmer’s Bible” (1540), and Miles Coverdale’s translation (1560). These translations were based on the idea that people “have to understand what they read” and “they must have complete text translated faithfully”.

English Language

During the 1500s, English started to surpass Latin in importance. After the rupture from the Catholic Church, in the 1530s, English and not Latin, was the chosen language for Bibles and prayer books. Furthermore, during Elizabeth’s reign, the English language became a national symbol for the people and church and English literature blossomed.

Although English grew in importance during the Renaissance, it was looked down upon by scholars who believed that it wasn't suitable for literary and scientific works, from their perspective it was good enough only for popular books and plays.

Richard Mulcaster (ca. 1531- 1611) published his work, “Elementarie” in 1582. Written as a pedagogical guide it was an attempt to make English language and culture more appreciated and accessible. Mulcaster stabilized the language, hoping that the scholars would recognize it for its richness and dynamism. He wrote “I do not think that anie language, be it whatsoever, is better able to utter all arguments, either with more pith, or greater planesse, than our English tung is, if the English utterer be as skillfull in the matter, which he is to utter.”

The “Elementarie” contains a list of 8000 words, some of them are familiar today, but others are more obscure. The list cannot be classified as a dictionary because none of those 8000 words are accompanied by definitions. At that time there was no such thing as a purely English dictionary. It was an attempt to start to structure the English language. Although it was a little over a century since printing was introduced in England, there were still significant variations in the way words were spelled, even in print. Mulcaster wanted to solve these problems so he set down some spelling rules such as using an “e” to distinguish between words like “mad” and “made”. Mulcaster did not write a comprehensive dictionary, but he wrote in the “Elemenatrie” of the importance of such project: “It were a thing verie praiseworthie in my opinion…if som one well learned and as laborious a man, wold gather all the words which we use in our English tung…out of all professions, as well learned as not, into one dictionarie, and besides the right writing, which is incident to the Alphabete, wold open vnto us therein, both their naturall force, and their proper use.”

The processes of knowledge and almost of thought, were completely transformed due to the invention of printing and multiplying books in unlimited quantities.

Chapter II. Thomas More and his Utopia

Thomas More was the greatest humanist of the English Renaissance. Born on 7 February 1478 in London, was the son of Sir John More, a prominent lawyer and a later judge. As a boy he attracted the interest of Cardinal John Morton, the Chancellor of England in that time; through Morton's influence More received a classical education at Oxford. Studying under Thomas Linacre and William Grocyn, he developed a passion for both Latin and Greek. He also cultivated a friendship with perhaps the greatest Humanist thinker of the time, Desiderius Erasmus.

After he finished his studies, More followed his father's profession and was called to the Bar, but he gain even more recognition as a lecturer on historical and philosophical aspects.

In 1517, More entered the king’s service, becoming one of Henry VIII’s most trusted and effective civil servants. He acted as his secretary, interpreter, speech-writer, chief diplomat, advisor and confidant.

In 1521, was knighted and in 1529 he was appointed Lord Chancellor. More took the post of Chancellor at the same time as Henry decided to divorce from Catherine of Aragon. Henry was close to break with the Roman Church and to convene the so-called “Reformation parliament”. More resigned the chancellorship, when Henry declared himself “supreme head of the church” and established the Anglican Church, which allowed him to divorce. He remained faithful to his religious beliefs and refused to take an oath of succession which would have repudiated the pope and would have cancelled Henry's marriage. More was charged with high treason, imprisoned in the Tower of London, condemned to death and beheaded on Tower Hill, 6 July 1535.

“English history can show few baser acts than the judicial murder of this great and good man.”

His life and his unwavering moral dignity were evoked by contemporary British playwright Robert Bolt in his play “A man for All Seasons”, in 1960.

More is best known for his fictional work, “Utopia”, written in Latin between 1515- 1516. The original Latin edition of “Utopia”, revised by Erasmus, was first printed in 1516 at Louvain, then at Paris, and then later at Basle, where it was illustrated in two woodcuts by German Ambrosius Holbein, in 1518. More's book wasn't translated in English before his death. The first English translation of “Utopia” belonged to Ralph Robinson in 1551. Although it had the taste of that time, Robinson's translation wasn't as exact as those made later: Gilbert Burnet in 1684, Arthur Cayley in 1808, Valerian Paget and Richards in the twentieth century.

More coined the word “utopia” from the Greek “ou- topos” meaning “no place” or “nowhere”. A general misunderstanding thinks that "utopia" derives from the Greek "eu- topos" which literally translates as "good place" or "all is well". As a result by 1610s its meaning extended to any perfect place. An English translation of the word "utopia" sounds like this: "An imagined place or state of things in which everything is perfect." But at the very heart of the word a vital question rises, can a perfect world ever be realised?

The idea of a place where all is well is ancient. In Greek and Roman mythology we discover such places.

In Greek mythology, Hyperborea was a mythical land of eternal spring situated beyond the North Wind. It was considered a perfect realm and people who lived there were free of war and hard work, they were unaware of the damages caused by disease or aging.

The Elysian Fields in Greek and Roman mythology were the regions, ruled by Cronos where the souls of the heroes rested after death, in perfect bliss.

Plato described in his work, “Republic” in the 4th century B.C. the first ideal “commonwealth”. From the modern point of view, Plato describes in his work a terrible totalitarian state, a Spartan society which allowed little freedom of expression and little diversity. In this society women and children were common property, slavery was a natural thing and eugenics controlled the birth and breeding of children.

Despite Plato's “just state”, his “Republic” was a source of inspiration for More's “Utopia”. “Utopia” was written in two books; the first book, written in dialogue and epistolary form, the first book, written in dialogue and epistolary form, presents the meeting between More and his friend, Peter Gilles and the philosopher Raphael Hythlodaeus, who has accompanied Amerigo Vespucci at sea. Among other things they discuss, Hythloday tells them about the island of the Utopians.

From the very beginning More combines fantasy and reality, autobiography and fiction. The device of second- hand reporting allows More to satirise many aspects of his own time, without exposing himself too much.

Although Thomas More and Peter Giles are real persons, in “Utopia” they are fictionalized, while Raphael Hythloday, their common acquaintance, is invented and fictional.

Hythloday’s name suggest that he has “learned to talk nonsense”. Translated as “Nonsenso”, from “hytos” (“nonsense”) and “daio” (“distribute”) is a clue from More to his readers that the island of Utopia is fiction.

Thomas More began his “Utopia” with the Utopian “alphabet”, a system of strange signs and “A Specimen of Utopian Poetry”, translated word-for-word.

Next he inserted “Lines on the Island of Utopia by the Poet Laureate, Mr. Windbag Nonsenso’s Sister’s Son”:

“Noplacia was once my name,

That is, a place where no one goes.

Plato’s Republic now I claim

To match, or beat at its own game;

For that was just a myth in prose,

But what he wrote of, I became,

Of men, wealth, laws a solid frame,

A place where every wise man goes:

Goplacia is now my name.”

More’s society is reflected in the first book of “Utopia”. A society by which More was truly disgusted. He harshly criticized the social and political evils of his time. He didn't agree with the luxury of the ruling classes. Luxury that led to the growing poverty of the people.

More also disagrees with the execution of the thieves as punishment, the uselessness of wars, the unemployment, poverty and starvation of people caused by the enclosing of common land (the conversion of arable land into pastures).

“… in those parts of the kingdom where the finest, and so the most expensive wool is produced, the nobles and gentlemen, not to mention several saintly abbots, have grown dissatisfied with the income that their predecessors got out of their estates… Each greedy individual preys on his native land like a malignant growth, absorbing field after field, and enclosing thousands of acres with a simple fence. Result- hundreds of farmers are evicted… out of the poor creatures have to go, men and women, husbands and wives, widows and orphans, mothers and tiny children…”

The second book describes the ideal commonwealth of Utopia. Hythloday presents Utopian history, geography, social customs, legal and political systems, economic structures, religious beliefs and philosophy.

Utopia is ruled by Utopus, an enlightened king, and the affairs of the country are handled by the government made of princes and magistrates. The rest of the society consists in “ordinary” people; there are no rich and poor, no lazy class and no beggars and there is no private property on Utopia. Regarding work, all of the Utopians (both male and female) are qualified in farming, though everyone must learn at least one of the other essential trades. They believe that working smart is better than working hard. Utopians work only six hours a day and they spend their leisure time in eating, reading, taking care of their children and gardens.

Utopians have a great sense of virtue and rationalism. They try to avoid the complications of private wealth and class structure, relying upon an education in reason, morality, and religion as a way of keeping an appropriate behaviour among Utopians. They consider that the greatest pleasures are those of the mind and not the body, and dedicate most of their free time to these pleasures.

Utopians have great skills in medicine and they devote a significant time in treating the sick. Utopian priests even encourage euthanasia when the patient is terminally ill and suffering pain, but it can only be done with the consent of the patient. Priests are allowed to marry and divorce is permitted by mutual consent on grounds of incompatibility. There is religious tolerance since the only two amendments are to believe in the immortality of the soul and in the existence of rewards and punishments after death. There is religious tolerance since there are only two amendments: first, to believe in the immortality of the soul and second to believe in the existence of rewards and punishments after death.

Despite the modern ideas introduced in Utopia (euthanasia, marriage of priests and divorce) from the modern reader's point of view, Utopia is not an ideal society but another image of a totalitarian state. In order to attain perfection, Utopians heavily depend on formulas of equality: everybody must look, think and behave like everybody else. There is no private property and that means that there is no privacy either because anyone can walk into your house at any time, though clothes are provided they are the same for everybody just like uniforms and if you want to travel you need a special permit. The idea of no privacy present in Utopia reminds us of George Orwell‘s novel “1984”, with its famous slogan “Big Brother is Watching You!”

Utopia represents an ideal of its own time and more than a projection in the future it is an attack on the present state of affairs in More’s England and in Europe.

Thomas More’s book gave its name to a literary genre that has been amply represented by various writers ever since.

Joseph Hall published, in 1608 “Mundus Alter et Idem”, i.e., “Another World and Yet the Same”, a satiric utopia which criticized without restrain and negatively the English society. Hall’s work, a parody of the 14th century popular utopia, “The Land of Cockaygne” is regarded as the first ‘dystopia’. An antonym of ‘utopia’, dystopia is translated as “not-good place” and it describes a community or society that is undesirable or frightening.

The first dystopia gave birth to a parallel genre which includes works from J. Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels” to Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” and George Orwell’s “1984”.

Hall’s book describes a voyage on board of Fantasy to the Southern hemisphere and the discovery of a land of bounty named Crapulia. Crapulia is divided into five provinces: Pamphagonia, or the land of the greedy, Yvronia or the land of the drunkards, Viraginia or the land governed by women, Moronia or the land of the stupid (the biggest and most populated) and Lavernia or the land of the thieves and rogues who live at the expense of the inhabitants of Moronia.

Francis Bacon, the great 17th century philosopher, essayist and humanist, wrote “The New Atlantis”, published after his death, in 1626. The book described an ideal state based on the Christian faith, philosophy and scientific research.

Bensalem (“perfect son” in Hebrew), the utopic island of the New Atlantis, is run by King Solomon who created a College where students study experimental sciences such as engineering, biology, astronomy and chemistry. Solomon’s college is a prediction of the Royal Society, and the teachers are a group of experts, who became objects of worship.

To More, education had the purpose to increase people’s happiness and to develop their personality, while to Bacon, the purpose of education was not happiness but power. The New Atlantis is a utopia “inhabited by scholars after Bacon’s own heart… this novel is, in fact, Bacon’s philosophy of science presented in a romantic form by a writer without the gift for romance of which Thomas More received so fortunate a share.”

Other utopian writers of the 17th century are: Samuel Hartlib with “Macaria” (1641), Samuel Gott with “Nova Solyma” or “New Jerusalem”, introducing an ideal society that considers learning and education, the most important things, that is why teachers get ‘maximum salaries’, and James Harrington with the very topical “Oceana” (1656) dedicated to Oliver Cromwell.

The best known utopias of the 19th century are Samuel Buttler’s “Erewhon” and “Erewhon Revisited” (1872), William Morris’s “New from Nowhere” (1840) and H. G. Wells “The Time Machine” (1895).

“Erewhon Revisited” is a satire in the tradition of More and Swift which describes the strange inhabitants of Erewhon who have forbidden the use of all machines, have suppressed originality, who study above all unreason and hypotheses, and who declare ‘we object to progress.’

The 20th century saw the publication of some barely endurable dystopias such as Huxley’s “Brave New World” and Orwell’s “1984” and “The Animal Farm”, William Golding’s parable, “Lord of the Flies” (1954) as well as the development of the modern science-fiction dystopias and post-modern apocalyptic literature.

Chapter III. The Elizabethan Poetry

Inspired by the Italian Renaissance, the English poetry of the period saw the acquisition of a new form of verse, the sonnet.

The term sonnet derives from the Italian ‘sonetto’ which designates a poem of fourteen lines, usually in iambic pentameters. All notable Italian poets such as Guido Cavalcanti, Dante and Michelangelo used this fixed form of verse, but it was Petrarch who established it as one of the major poetic forms.

Sonnets are love poems addressed by the poet to the Lady of his heart and they continue the tradition of the courtly love according to which the rejected lover begs for the Lady’s pity and complains about her indifference and about the cruelty of love; the theme of unrequited love was a conventional theme and the complaints and laments were mostly poetic exercises, perhaps the only notable exception being Sir Philip Sidney’s love poems.

In 1557, Richard Tottel, a printer, published a collection of poems entitled “Songes and Sonettes, Written by the Ryght Honorable Lorde Henry Howard late Earle of Surrey and others”, in short Songs and Sonnets. Tottel’s Miscellany contained assembled 40 poems by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, 96 by Sir Thomas Wyatt, 40 by Nicholas Grimald, and 95 by “Uncertain Authors”, including Thomas Churchyard, John Heywood, Sir Francis Bryan, Edward, Duke of Somerset, and Thomas, Lord Vaux.

This event marked the beginning of modern English literature.

III.1. Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542)

“A hand, that taught what might be said in rhyme;

That reft Chaucer the glory of his wit.

A mark, the which (unperfected for time)

Some may approach, but never none shall hit.”

(Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey- “On the death of Sir Thomas Wyatt”)

Thomas Wyatt was born in 1503 at Allington Castle in Kent. He was educated at St. John’s College, Cambridge and became a member of the court circle of Henry VIII, where he was popular and admired for his looks and skill in music, languages and arms. During his career, he served a number of diplomatic missions and was knighted in 1535. In 1536, he was imprisoned in the Tower on suspicion of being Anne Boleyn’s lover, but after a short period of time he regained Henry’s favour. Wyatt was again arrested (1541) and charged with treason, after his mentor, Thomas Cromwell fell in disgrace. His charges were lifted again and he was restored to his duties as ambassador. He died in 1542 around the age of 39, during one of his military expeditions.

Wyatt was one of the earliest poets of the English Renaissance. He brought many innovations in English poetry and, alongside Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, introduced the Italian sonnet into England. That is why they often share the title “father of the English sonnet.” An important part of his literary work consists in translations and imitations of Italian poet Petrarch, but he also wrote original sonnets, praised for their poetic vigour and intensity of feeling, such as “They Flee From Me”, written during his imprisonment in the Tower. Wyatt wanted to represent his own culture and his own world using Petrarch's form and words. He didn't want to shape Italian ideas, forms and sentiments into English. Wyatt wanted his writings to be respected as those of the writers from the past and at the same time, he wanted to illustrate the problems of the time, to express the emotions, fears and challenges of the Tudor court. Wyatt wanted to elevate the English language, and English sentiments, to the same level of respect which Petrarch's work achieved.

The Petrarcan sonnets consist of an “octave”, rhyming abba abba, followed by a “sestet” with various rhyme schemes. Wyatt employs the Petrarchan octave, but his most common sestet scheme is cddc ee. Professor Schipper prints abba abba cddc ee as the typical Wyatt scheme, and he doesn't say anything about other Italian types than the Petrarcan. Wyatt’s work marks the beginnings of an exclusively “English” contribution to the sonnet structure that is three quatrains (the statement, the amplification, the climax) and a closing couplet (the conclusion), rhyming ab ab, cd cd, ef ef, gg. This type of sonnet, developed by Surrey and later brought to perfection by Shakespeare, is known as the English sonnet or the Shakespearean sonnet. Wyatt experimented other new forms in English, such as the terza rima and the rondeau, moreover he was acknowledged as a master of the iambic tetrameter.

Only a few of Wyatt's poems were published in his lifetime, in a miscellany entitled “The Court of Venus”. His first published work, “Certain Psalms” (1549) consisted in metrical translations of the penitential psalms. It wasn't until 1557, 15 years after Wyatt's death, that 97 of his poems appeared in printer Richard Tottel's “Songes and Sonettes, Written by the Ryght Honorable Lorde Henry Howard late Earle of Surrey and others”. The rest of Wyatt's works (poetry, lyrics, and satires) remained in manuscript until they were rediscovered in the 19th and 20th centuries.

III.2. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517-1547)

Henry Howard was born in 1517, in Hunsdon, Hertfordshire. He was of royal descendant when his grandfather passed away and his father became 3rd Duke of Norfolk. Surrey lived an adventurous life and just like his father and grandfather before him, he was a mighty soldier. Due to some court intrigues, he was accused of treason and executed in 1547 on Tower Hill.

Surrey followed Wyatt in adapting Italian forms to English verse. His experiments in sonnet writing brought a greater smoothness and firmness. Wyatt and Surrey established the sonnet form that was later used by Shakespeare and others. Surrey was also the first English poet that introduced the unrhymed iambic pentameter, known as the blank verse, in his translation of the second and fourth books of Virgil's “Aeneid”. The blank verse was exceptionally used later by Marlowe and Shakespeare.

Surrey’s poetry circulated in manuscript form at court. He published his “Epitaph on Sir Thomas Wyatt”, but most of his poetry (40 poems) first appeared in 1557, ten years after his death, in printer Richard Tottel’s “Songes and Sonettes, Written by the Ryght Honorable Lorde Henry Howard late Earle of Surrey and others”. Sir Philip Sidney praised Surrey's lyrics for “many things tasting of a noble birth, and worthy of a noble mind”.

III.3. Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586)

Born in 1554 at Penshurst, Kent, Sir Philip Sidney was an Elizabethan courtier, statesman, soldier, poet, and patron of scholars and poets. He was noble, brave and modest, considered the ideal gentleman of his time. He was very admired by his contemporaries, and his early death, in the battle of Zutphen, when he was only 32, caused much grief in England as the people mourned for the man who became the epitome of the ideal courtier. It is said that Londoners, came out to see the funeral and shouted “Farewell, the worthiest knight that lived.” Sidney wasn't widely admired for what he did, but for what he was: the embodiment of the Elizabethan ideal of gentlemanly virtue.

Sidney’s contribution to the Elizabethan poetry is a sonnet sequence of 108 sonnets and 11 songs, “Astrophil and Stella”. The name “Astrophil” comes from the Greek words “aster” meaning “star” and “phil” meaning “lover” and “Stella” comes from the Latin word “stella” meaning “star”. Thus Astrophil is the star lover and Stella is his star, but his love is unrequited because although Stella is luminous, she is also cold and distant. Astrophil complains about the coldness of his lady towards him. He is so in love that her rejection causes him great anguish. The love represented in the sequence may be a true one as Sidney was in love with Penelope Devereux, Lord Essex’s sister, but she didn’t love him and married Lord Rich. Sidney’s sonnets greatly influenced the later sonneteers. Sidney’s younger brother Robert Sidney, Earl of Leicester, also a great poet; his fellow Fulke Greville; Lorde Brooke who wrote a sonnet sequence, “Caelica”; Samuel Daniel with “Delia”; Thomas Lodge with “Phillis” and Michael Drayton with “Idea”, followed in Sidney’s footsteps.

Sidney didn't wrote only poetry but also literary criticism. He excelled in both poetry and literary criticism. His theoretical work, “Defence of Poesie” (published after his death, in 1595), together with George Puttenham’s “The Art of English Poesie” (1589), discuss the place of poetry among human arts. Before Sidney and Puttenham, the art of rhetoric was in the centre of literary criticism. Before Sidney and Puttenham, literary criticism focused on the art of rhetoric. Before Sidney and Puttenham, literary criticism concentratrated on the art of rhetoric. Two good examples are Thomas Wilson’s “Art of Rhetorik” (1553) and Roger Ascham’s “The Scholemaster” (1570).

In his “Defence of Poesie” Sidney defends poetry against the attacks of the Puritans who considered it a waste of time and a corruptive art, but he also discussed theoretical problems and especially the place of the poet within society. For Sidney, poetry is an art of imitation, a superior mean of communication whose value depends on what is communicated. Due to its aims “movere et docere” (move the passions and teach the mind), poetry is more important than history and philosophy.

III.4. Sir Walter Ralegh (1552- 1618)

Sir Walter Ralegh probably born in 1552, was an English courtier, a writer, a soldier, a discoverer and an explorer. At age 17, he served with the Huguentos in the French religious civil wars and later studied at Oriel College, Oxford, but he didn’t take a degree. He became one of Queen Elizabeth I’s favourite after serving in her army in Ireland. In 1585 he was knighted, and within two years was appointed Captain of the Queen’s Guard. Between 1584 and 1589, he tried to establish a colony near Roanoke Island, which he named Virginia in honour of the virgin queen, Elizabeth, although he never set foot in there. Ralegh led an extraordinary and adventurous life. Accused of treason by Elizabeth’s successor, James I, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London and eventually beheaded at the Palace of Westminster in 1618.

His great courage and grave dignity in his last moments showed a deep understanding of the human condition and the changing fortune of a man. After he saw the axe that would behead him, Ralegh said: “This is a sharp Medicine, but it is a Physician for all diseases and miseries.” Waiting for the blow his last words were: “Strike, man, strike!”

Ralegh was friend with Spenser and Sidney. He was the first named as the centre of “The School of Night” and he is also considered to be the founder of the Mermaid Tavern society where some of the Elizabethan era’s leading literary figures met. Among them are Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and Marlowe.

Ralegh’s poetry is written in a plain style. His poems are short lyrics who treat themes like love, beauty, loss, and time. Most of them were inspired by actual events. Though he was considered by C. S. Lewis one of the era’ s “silver poets”, only few of his lyrics survived and today about 34 poems are attributed to him. That’s the reason why “in poetry as in life Ralegh was a king without kingdom”.

“The Ocean’s love to Cynthia” is the great poem of Ralegh. Written as an elegy, it expresses Ralegh’s devotion to Queen Elizabeth I, and his pleading for restauration to favour. Ralegh addresses the queen as Cynthia and he appears as “The Shepherd of the Ocean” (he called himself “the Ocean”). The complete poem it is thought to have contained 15.000 lines of verse.

In “The Lie”, one of his best-known poem, he accuses the injustice and falsity of the court. While he was waiting for death, he wrote another poem, “The Passionate Man’s Pilgrimage”.

“Give me my scallop-shell of quiet,

My staff of faith to walk upon,

My scrip of joy, immortal diet,

My bottle of salvation,

My gown of glory, hope’s true gage;

And thus I’ll take my pilgrimage.”

His great and dangerous adventures were illustrated in his two books: “Report of the Truth of the Fight about the Iles of the Açores” (1591) and “Discoverie of the Large, Rich and Beautiful Empyre of Guiana” (1596).

Although was fascinated about Guiana, his attempt to establish an English colony there ended tragically: during his last voyage his loyal men and even his son lost their lives, and at his return he was charged with treason, imprisoned and executed.

Despite the fact that he was imprisoned in The tower, he didn’t lose his boldness and strong will, so he started writing a marvellous “History of the World”, which extended to 2nd century BC, and treated the ancient empires, the politics of his time and the meditations on human unsteadiness. Through his work, Ralegh wanted to advice King James I of England, but the king disagreed saying it was “too sawcie in censuring Princes.” Due to his execution, his large work, ended abruptly, but the unfinished book enjoyed great admiration.

Ralegh is remembered as an interesting and mysterious figure rather than a powerful personality in history. He can appear either as a hero or as a villain.

III.5. Edmund Spenser (1552-1599)

Before Shakespeare Spenser was considered the greatest poet of the Elizabethan Age.

He was born in London, England, around the year 1552. As a boy he studied at the Merchant Taylors’ School in London and later was a student at [anonimizat], Cambridge. There he was friend with Gabriel Harvey, a passionate fellow for ancient and modern literature but also a perfectionist and an aspiring. Later, despite of their distinct views on poetry, Spenser asked for his advice.

The time spent by Spenser at Cambridge proved to be very important for his wide knowledge of ancient and modern languages. He had deep knowledge of Latin, Greek, French and Italian. “His knowledge of the traditional forms and themes of lyrical and narrative poetry provided foundations for him to build his own highly original compositions.” His religious training, which played a big part in his education, helped him escape the involvement in the struggles that took place in university over the new church of England.

Spenser entered the service of the Earl of Leicester and in 1580 he went to Ireland as the secretary to the Lord Deputy.

Spenser’s first major work, “The Shepheardes Calender”, published in 1579, was dedicated to “the noble and virtuous gentleman most worthy of all titles both of learning and chivalry M. Philip Sidney”.

Pastoral poetry, was a European tradition, largely used in the Renaissance and inspired by Virgil’s Eclogues. Spenser’s poem represents a rewriting of the literary tradition which he inherited.

The Calender is composed of twelve eclogues, one for each month. An eclogue, literally “a selection”, is a short poem in the form of pastoral dialogue or soliloquy. Though the months come together to form a whole year, each month can also be a separate poem and is written in a different form.

The poem describes the rotation of a year, but also presents the conventional problems of the Renaissance pastoral- the purpose of poetry, the role of the poet, the injures of unrequired love, clerical purity, and the significance of death. Spenser himself is present in the poem, as one of the shepherds, Colin Clout, who is a great poet but has to deal with his smashed love for Rosalind. The eclogue “Aprill” honours the shepherdess Elisa, in reality Queen Elizabeth I, “Maye” offers a characterization and a deeper description and “October” analyses different types of verse composition and suggests the discouragement felt by a modern poet who tries to succeed in any of them. As the poem passes from a month to another and approaches the end of the year, the wording is more simple and straightforward and the lyrics are less beautiful. The poem ends just as December ends the year.

The Calender shouldn’t be seen as a “passive reflection” of the events that took place in the early Elizabethan period but as “an attempt to present the past and the present in ways that may affect the future.”

In his pastoral poetry Spenser intermingles rusticity with sophistication, combining the simple, isolated life of shepherds with the sophisticated figures and their social ambitions. He experiences various patterns, uses deliberate archaisms and classical decorum.

In 1591, Spenser published his next collection, “Complaints”, Containing sundrie small Poemes of the Worlds Vanitie, were complaints presented in a mocking or lamentable tone. The collection included: elegies such as “The Ruins of Times”, which commemorates the deaths of Sidney, Leicester and Walsingham; satires, such as “Mother Husband’s Tale”, a beast fable written in heroic couplets and translations.

Spenser celebrated his love for Elizabeth Boyle, through his sonnet sequence made up of eighty- nine sonnets, “Amoretti”, published in 1595. Shakespeare’s significant themes as the passing of time and the power of art to make love and beauty last forever, are anticipated in the best known sonnet, Sonnet LXXV:

“One day I wrote her name upon the strand,

But came the waves and washed it away:

Agayne I wrote it with a second hand,

But came the tyde, and made my paynes his pray.

“Vayne man,” sayd she, “that doest in vaine assay,

A mortall thing so to immortalize,

For I my selve shall lyke to this decay,

And eek my name bee wiped out lykewize.”

“Not so,” quod I, “let baser things devize

To dy in dust, but you shall live by fame:

My verse your vertues rare shall eternize,

And in the heavens wryte your glorious name.

Where whenas death shall all the world subdew,

Our love shall live, and later life renew”

Inspired by Catullus, Spenser composed another marriage poem, for his own wedding, “Epithalamion”, published in 1959. The poem introduces into its structure the symbolic numbers 24, the number of stanzas and 365, the number of long lines, as an allusion to the structure of the day and of the year. Therefore Spenser idealizes marriage, which is linked with the harmonies of the universe.

Spenser’s most remarkable achievement is his long epic poem, “The Faerie Queene”. The poem received great support from Elizabeth I, which brought it to such level of success that it became Spenser’s defining work.

Spenser wrote a letter to Sir Walter Ralegh, published with the first three books, in which he expressed his intention to write twenty- four books: twelve books, each based on a different knight who illustrated one of twelve “personal virtues”, and another twelve focused on King Arthur pointing out twelve “common virtues”. Though his plan to write twenty-four books failed, completing only six books, “The Faerie Queene” remains one of the greatest poems of the English language, long enough to determine its quality and significance.

The first three books were published in 1590 and the next three books were published in 1596. “Two Cantos of Mutabilitie”, considered a fragment of book VII of “The Faerie Queene”, was published posthumously, in 1609, with the folio edition of the poem.

In the same letter he stated that “the general end of the book is to fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline”. He regarded his work as “a historical fiction” that shouldn’t be read for “the profit of the ensample”, but for “delight”.

“The Faerie Queene” was strongly influenced by Italian works. He was inspired by Homer, Virgil, Arisoto’s “Orlando furioso”, and Tasso.

Spenser chose for his work the romance form of knight-errantry, to which he added allegory, classical epic, myth, philosophy and folklore, creating a vast, sophisticated and very patriotic poem.

Spenser dedicated his poem to “the most excellent and glorious person of our soveraine the Queene”, but in the first edition there are also sonnets dedicated to many powerful Elizabethan figures. Within the poem, the Queen appears as Gloriana, the fairy queen, as Belphoebe and as Britomart.

King Arthur represents Magnificence and the twelve knights embody twelve virtues: “of which these three books, (i.e., the first three books, published in 1590) contain three, the first of the knight of the Redcross, in whom I express Holiness; the second of Sir Guyon, in whom I set forth Temperance; the third of Britomartis, a lady knight, in whom I picture Chastity.”

In Book I, the Redcross Knight travels along with his lady, Una-Truth, to find and slay the enemy of Truth, a terrible dragon named Error. During their journey they encounter many dangers, allegorical characters as the sorcerer Archimago, Lucifera, the Sarazins Sansfoy, Sansjoy and Sansloy, the giant Orgoglio, etc. The Redcross Knight’s adventures illustrate the pursuit of holiness by man, which can be obstructed by error, dissimulation and false intentions. Redcross Knight is the archetype of everyman, who confronts with the ordinary temptations of the world. To attain holiness and lead a righteousness life, he needs Grace’s help (represented by Prince Arthur) as well as Truth, to resist the temptations. He embodies a virtue, holiness, and is also a man in search of that virtue.

Book II presents the battle carried by Sir Guyon, against Acrasia (lust), a sorceress. He defeats her and destroys her palace of pleasures, The Bower of Bliss. Sir Guyon, who embodies Temperance is, at the same time, the everyman who deals with the temptations of health, soul and body caused by different kinds of excess and diseases. The human body governed by the soul symbolises the House of Temperance and the various kinds of threatening passions for body and soul are illustrated by characters like Furor, Strife, Pyrocles and Atin.

Book III presents Britomart, a lady knight, embodying the virtue of Chastity, and the saving of Amoret and in Book IV the virtue of Friendship, represented by Cambel and Telamond.

Book V presents the virtue of Justice embodied in Sir Artegal. The book highlights the importance of order, not only in nature but also in human society, the requirement for everyone to know their place and position.

In Book VI, Sir Calidore, representing the virtue of Courtesy, studies the notion of “gentilesse” as is detailed in some works of the Renaissance writers.

“Two Cantos of Mutabilitie” present “a discussion of the relation between change and order, between the principle of alteration and decay and the principle of Nature, the ever renewing heart of things. (…) Spenser is concerned to find the relation between time (over which Mutability rules) and eternity, where all things firmly stay.”

Spenser invented a new stanza for “The Faerie Queene”, known as the Spenserian stanza. For the first publication of “The Faerie Queene” (1590), he wrote over two thousand stanzas. The Spenserian stanza is made up of nine iambic lines, the first eight being pentameters and the last a hexameter, or alexandrine, which form “interlocking quatrains and a final couplet”. The rhyme pattern of the Spenserian stanza is ab ab bcb cc:

“A gentle Knight was pricking on the plaine,

Ycladd in mightie armes and silver shielde,

Wherein old dints of deepe woundes did remaine,

The cruel markes of many’ a bloody fielde;

Yet armes till that time did he never wield:

His angry steede did chide his foming bitt,

As much disdayning to the curbe to yield:

Full jolly knight he seemd, and faire did sitt,

As one for knightly giusts and fierce encounters fitt.”

(“The Faerie Queene”, Book I, Canto I)

Chapter IV. The Elizabethan Prose Fiction

The 16th century prose fiction emerged from the translations and imitations of Italian works.

Though the first remarkable work is the prose tale of George Gascoigne, “The Pleasant Fable of Ferdinando Jeronimi and Leonora de Velasco”, it was John Lyly who wrote the first successful courtly novel.

John Lyly (1554-1606)

John Lyly, one of the University Wits was born in Kent in 1554. He studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he received his degree.

He gained popularity with the publication of the two prose romance, “Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit”, published in 1578, and its sequel, “Euphues and his England”, published in 1580. They both made Lyly the fashionable English writer of the 1580s, his fashion being followed by many imitators. Though the plot is poor (letters alternated with general discussions on religion, love, and epistolary style), the success depends on the elaborate style, the intentional use and over-use of antitheses, hyperboles, metaphors, mythological and classical elements and alliteration, a style called “euphuism”. Lyly’s work “provided a witty, courtly, rhetorical, and learned divertissement” fit “for all gentlemen to read, and most necessary to remember”

Sir Philip Sidney’s “Arcadia” is a pastoral courtly romance, written for the entertainment of his sister Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke. In writing “Arcadia”, Sidney was influenced by Heliodorus’ “Aethiopica”, 3rd c. A.D., by “Amadis of Gaul”, a Spanish medieval romance, and by Jacopo Sannazaro’s “Arcadia” of 1504.

Derived from Arcas, son of Zeus, Arcadia, situated in Peloponnesus, Greece, represented for the classical poets, a symbol for rural tranquillity and harmony.

The book presents the story of two young princes, Musidorus and Pyrocles who, after many adventures, are reunited with their loves, the daughters of Basilius, King of Arcadia, Pamela and Philoclea.

Sidney called his work an “idle work of mine, but a trifle”, which of course it was not. Sidney’s “Arcadia” describes with charm and artistry a picturesque and idealized world. Sidney’s “Arcadia” influenced Mary Worth's "Urania" (1621). She was the first English woman writer of fiction which was published.

Robert Greene (1558-1592)

Robert Greene was one of the most popular English prose writers of the later 16th century and a representative of the University Wits. He was a romancer, a playwright and a pamphleteer, “a picturesque but pathetic Bohemian with wit lent from Heaven but vices sent from Hell”.

“Pandosto: The Triumph of Time” and “Menaphon” are Greene’s best pastoral romances. The plot of “Pandosto: The Triumph of Time”, inspired Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale”. He lightened the darker elements from “Pandosto”, for its comic purposes. “Menaphon” combines adventures and intrigue with important changes of fortune.

His pamphlets present the underworld of London. These were warnings for the Londoners against the dangers of the dark streets which were populated by rogues and criminals.

Though he was a productive and talented writer, he had a tragic end, he died alone in extreme poverty. “A Groatsworth of Wit Bought with a Million of Repentance”, published posthumously, represents Greene’s apology for his life. It also contains the famous injurious attack on Shakespeare and the warnings of his fellow-playwrights against the “upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers hart wrapt in a Players hyde, supposes he is well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you and being an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his own conceit, the onely Shake-scene in a country.”

Thomas Lodge (1558?-1625)

Thomas Lodge was a pamphleteer, a poet, a playwright and an author of prose romances. He studied at Merchant Taylors' School and Trinity College, Oxford, practised medicine and took part in expeditions to the Canaries and South America. His prose romance “Rosalynde, Euphues Golden Legacie” (1596) was influenced by both Lyly and Sidney, and provided the story for Shakespeare’s comedy, “As You Like It”.

Other works he wrote are: “A Margarite of America”, “The Delectable Historie of Forbonius and Prisceria”, a sonnet sequence, “Phillis”, “A Fig for Momus”, a collection of Horatian satires, and “The Wounds of Civil War”, a play about Roman history.

Thomas Nashe (1567-1601)

Thomas Nashe was a satirist, a pamphleteer, a playwright and a novelist. He was educated at St John's College, Cambridge, and was one of the University Wits. “Thomas Nashe was, like Greene, a university wit who lived hard, wrote fiercely, and died young.”

In 1589 he published “The Anatomy of Absurdity”, a satire on contemporary literature which was especially directed at the artificiality and affection of the romances. “The Terrors of the Night” was a series of visions, and an exposure of superstitions and haunting demons, while “Lenten Suffle” (1599) was a false eulogy of a red herring.

Thomas Nashe contributed to Marlowe’s “Dido, Queen of Cartage”, and among his original plays include “Summer’s Last Will and Testament”, and “The Isle of Dogs”. After “The Isle of Dogs” was performed, in 1597, the Privy Council closed the theatres.

“Pierce Pennilesse”, his first novel, presents the story of a professional writer who is in need of financial support and laments the decline of patronage.

His second and best-known novel is “The Unfortunate Traveller” or “The Life of Jack Wilton”, the first picaresque novel in English. The word “picaro”, derived from Spanish, means a rogue, an adventurer. This type of hero or anti-hero appeared in “Lazarillo de Tormes”, translated into English in 1576.

“The Unfortunate Traveller”, written as first person narrative, describes in a strong, realistic way the adventures of Jack Wilton in England and on continent and his final regret and marriage.

Thomas Nashe is undoubtedly the resourceful and gifted precursor of the great 18th century novelists.

Thomas Deloney (1543-1600)

He was an English novelist and balladist. His realistic novels, present the daily life of the English middle and lower classes and in terms of documentation, have important value. “Jack of Newbury”, “The Gentle Craft” and “Thomas of Reading” depict the world of the wavers and shoemakers and the rising professional manufactures. They present the evolution of their heroes, from young, virtuous apprentices, to prosperous and respected members of the community.

Deloney is the first English writer concerned with the life and perspective of the new middle-class therefore he opens the way for the 18th century novelists.

“Elizabethan prose fiction… unmistakably the literature of a people that produced the Elizabethan drama. Their culture was too oral, too symbolic, and too traditional to entertain the idea of the mainly representational prose genre- the novel; but… it is very rewarding for its own sake, as well as for the light is sheds on the age of Shakespeare.” (Ian Watt)

Chapter V. The Elizabethan Drama

V.1. Elizabethan theatre

In an age when poetry was read mostly by the cultivated aristocracy and prose-fiction was rare, the theatre became the most popular entertainment, enjoyed by the nobles and commoners alike.

Before the permanent theatre were built, the wandering actors were performing in the inn-yards, in the houses of the nobles or in the royal schools. The actors had no professional status, so they had to find a patron, otherwise they would have been considered rogues and arrested. They were wearing the liveries of their masters and they were known as Lord Admiral’s Men and Lord Chamberlain’s Men. The Earl of Leicester even obtained a patent for his men to perform in public places.

One of the most famous London Inns, The Cross Keys Inn, located on Gracechurch Street, London was used as a venue for Elizabethan plays and theatre, between 1576 and 1594. The performances took place in the cobbled courtyard, with an audience up to 500 people, and anyone who wanted to watch the plays was charged a small fee at the entrance of the courtyard.

But when the City Council banned performance in the city of London, James Burbage, the company leader, build a theatre outside the city limits which he called The Theatre. It was soon followed by The Curtain, The Rose, The Swan and the Globe. These were the theatres were Marlowe’s and Shakespeare’s plays were performed.

The Elizabethan theatre had a round or hexagonal shape; the stage was a projecting platform with two columns supporting an upper structure and with two doors at the back used for entrances and exits. There were wooden galleries round the stage where the spectators sat; the stage was bare since there were few properties so the actors had to fill this empty space with their bodies, their gestures, and their voices. The audience capacity of an Elizabethan amphitheatre was between 1500 and 3000.

The scarcity of the physical properties was balanced by the richness of the costumes were often bright in colour, visually entrancing, and expensive. Since women were not allowed to walk the stage, their parts were played by young boys.

V.2. Moralities and Interludes

At the beginning of the century, the old miracles and moralities were still being performed. Gradually, the moralities became less and less religious; some turned to the political issues, such as John Skelton’s “Magnificence” or David Lyndsay’s “Satire of Three Estates”, others towards the age’s interest in science, such as the anonymous “Four Elements” or John Redford’s “Wyt and Science”.

Henry Medwall wrote, as Levitchi said, “the first morality play without a devil in it”, with a love-triangle theme, “Fulgens and Lucrece”.

John Heywood is the best known author of the interludes. He wrote “The Four P.P; A New and a Very Merry Interlude of a Palmer, a Pardoner, a Pothecary, a Pedlar”. The play describes a competition about who is the greatest liar and the winner is the Palmer who says “Yet in all places where I have been, of all women that I have seen, I never saw, no knew in my conscience, any one woman out of patience.”

“A Merry Play Between Johan Johan, The Husband, Tybb, His Wife, and Sir Johan, the Priest” is attributed to Heywood, and is the dramatization of the traditional tale of the cuckolded husband.

V.3. Comedies

Nicholas Udall (1505-1556), head-master of Eton and Westminster schools, wrote the first regular comedy. The comedies of the age were much influenced by the Roman comic playwrights, Plautus and Terence. Udall’s “Ralph Roister Doister”, respects the strict 5 act pattern and the unity of time and space required by Aristotle. The character is also borrowed from Roman comedies, representing the classic “miles glorious”. Ralph is the braggart soldier that courts Dame Custance, who is rejected and even beaten because of a wrongly punctuated letter.

He wanted to send the following lines to the lady:

“Regarding yours riches and substance, chief of all

For your personage, beauty, and demeanour and wit

I commend me unto you. Never a wit

Sorry to hear report of your good welfare;

For (as I hear say) such your conditions are

That ye be worthy favour; of no living man

To be abhorred; of every honest man

To be taken for a woman inclined to vice

Nothing at all; to virtue giving her due price.”

(Ralph Roister Doister, Act III, Sc. 5)

The text read to the lady was:

“Regarding yours substance and riches chief of all,

for your personage, beauty, demeanour, and wit

I command me unto you never a whit.

Sorry to hear report of your good welfare.

For (as I hear say) report of your conditions are

That ye be worthy favour of no living man;

To be taken for a woman inclined to vice;

Nothing at all to virtue giving her due price”

(Ralph Roister Doister, Act III, Sc. 4)

A certain “Mr. S” wrote another popular comedy, published in 1575, “Gammer Gurton’s Needle”. Some critics ascribed it to a Cambridge scholar, William Stevenson. The setting is the English countryside and the plot revolves round the loss of a needle, an expensive article in those days. After much uproar, the needle is found in a servant’s trousers.

V.4. Tragedies

Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton, lawyers by profession, written the first regular tragedy. “Garboduc”, produced at the Inns Court in London, in London, in 1562, was written in blank verse and had all the elements of Seneca’s plays, admired and copied by the Elizabethan playwrights: the rhetorical speeches, the appearance of ghosts, the violent murders, revenge and other horrors.

Aristotle defined for the first time, in his “Poetics”, tragedy as the mimesis of an action with incidents which stirs pity and fear. Aristotle also depicts six elements of the tragedy. The first three refer to the means and manner of the mimesis. These are: diction or “lexis”, spectacle or “opsis” and music or “melos”. The other three, plot or “mythos”, character or “ethe” and thought or “dianoia”, deal with the objects represented by the means. The Elizabethan playwrights were well acquainted with the Aristotelian concepts of “harmatia” (the tragic flow or fatal error), of “hubris” (wanton insolence, defiance of the gods), of “anagnorisis” (the moment of recognition), of “peripeteia” (the dramatic change or the reverse of the fortune), and of “catharsis” (the purgation of emotions). This concepts are still used nowadays by the English playwrights. The Greeks respected the norms of decency and decorum, when they rejected the idea of presenting brutal acts of violence on the stage. The violent deeds were transmitted in narrative form by the messengers. Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville respected the Aristotelian tradition and didn’t show violent actions on stage, but the work of the later dramatists, including Thomas Kyd’s “The Spanish Tragedy” and Shakespeare’s “Titus Andronicus”, didn’t obey the classical rules and presented on stage visual representations of appalling horrors.

“Garboduc”’s story is taken from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s “Historia Regum Britanniae” (“History of the Kings of Britain”). The play presents the story of a good king, Garboduc who divides his kingdom between his two sons, Ferrex and Porrex. The division of power leads to murder and chaos; Porrex, the younger, kills Ferrex, Queen Videna, avenges the death of her beloved older son by killing Porrex, Garboduc and his queen are killed by the people, and the civil war breaks out.

Chapter VI. The University Wits

The University Wits were a brilliant group of talented young people who were educated at Oxford and Cambridge and became playwrights and popular writers. The most remarkable members of this group were: Christopher Marlowe, Robert Greene, and Thomas Nashe from Cambridge, and John Lyly, Thomas Lodge from Oxford. Another member included in the group was Thomas Kyd, but he didn’t study at university. They were multilateral writers who tried different works due to which some of them have already been mentioned for their poetry or prose fiction.

The “university wits” were considered as part of the earliest professional writers in English. They brought important contributions to the development of the English drama and opened the path for William Shakespeare.

The group of writers wasn’t named “University Wits” in their life time. The term was coined by the writer, George Saintsbury who believes that the “rising sap” of dramatic creativity proved itself in two separate “branches of the national tree”:

“ In the first place, we have the group of university wits, the strenuous if not always wise band of professed men of letters, at the head of whom are Lyly, Marlowe, Greene, Peele, Lodge, Nash, and probably (for his connection with the universities is not certainly known) Kyd. In the second, we have the irregular band of outsiders, players and others, who felt themselves forced into literary and principally dramatic composition, who boast Shakespeare as their chief, and who can claim as seconds to him not merely the imperfect talents of Chettle, Munday, and others whom we may mention in this chapter, but many of the perfected ornaments of a later time.”

Led by Marlowe, the “university wits” created the blank verse line for dramatic usage, and though they were cultivated men, they gave up on classical models and “gave English tragedy its Magna Charta of freedom and submission to the restrictions of actual life only.” Yet they didn’t manage “to achieve perfect life-likeness.” It was Shakespeare “a champion unparalleled in ancient and modern times” who “borrowed the improvements of the university wits, added their own stage knowledge,” and with his help “achieved the master drama of the world.” They were the ones that created the first really impressive dramas in English.

Many writers of the 20th century present the “university wits” in the light of Saintsbury’s fundamental model of dramatic progress. Such as Adolphus William in his “Cambridge History of the English Literature” claims that to the “pride in university training which amounted to arrogance” were added “really valuable ideas and literary methods”. Another writer, Allardyce Nicoll, declared in 1931 that “it was left to the so-called University Wits to make the classical tragedy popular and the popular tragedy unified in construction and conscious of its aim.”

In his “History of English Literature” (1979), Edward Albert stated that the plays of the University Wits had some common features: one is the predisposition for heroic themes like the lives of important figures: Tamburlaine, Mohammed, another is that heroic themes request heroic attention: magnificent descriptions, plenitude and variety, long speeches, the controlling of emotions and cruel incidents (when are kept in control, are great qualities, but out of control, they produce disorder), the style is also heroic, main purpose is to attain strong and resonate lines, the best result was achieved by Marlowe, using his blank verse, and one of the most prominent features is the general lack of humour which when is brought is harsh and immature. Lyly is the sole representative of the writers of real comedy.

VI.1. John Lyly (1554-1606)

Among the important dramatists, John Lyly was the first who wrote completely prose comedies. He refined the language of comedy and was an expert in using the puns, witty dialogues, and all sorts of word play. His language is the one used by Shakespeare in his early comedies, like “Midsummer Night’s Dream”.

He wrote “Endymion” (1588), “Mother Bombie” (1590), “Midas” (1589), “Campaspe” (1584), “Sapho and Phao” (1584), and other plays which treat classical and mythological stories with charm and subtlety.

VI.2. George Peele (1556-1596)

He was an Elizabethan dramatist whose work is very varied due to his experiments in theatrical art: pastoral, melodrama, history, tragedy, folk play, and pageant. His first important work was a pastoral mythological play, “The Arraignment of Paris”, written for a troupe of boy actors, Children of the Chapel, and performed at court before Queen Elizabeth. He also wrote: a tragedy “The Battle of Alcazar” (c. 1589); a chronicle history, “Famous Chronicle of King Edward the First” (c. 1593); a biblical tragedy, “The Love of King David and Fair Bethsabe” (1594); and his most enduring achievement, the fantastical romantic comedy, “The Old Wives’ Tale”. It’s a fairy tale told by Madge, the old wife, to three travellers who have lost their way in the woods and it is about two brothers who are searching for their sister Delia, enchanted by a wizard.

VI.3. Robert Greene (1558-1592)

Robert Greene discovered his comic talent in drama with his first successful romantic comedy, “Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay”. The title character, Friar Bacon is no other than Roger Bacon, the greatest philosopher and visionary scientist of the 13th century. The plot draws our attention to the love story between Margaret, a lovely and charming heroine, and Lacy, the Earl of Lincoln. Oberon, the king of the fairies appears for the first time on stage in “The Scottish History of James the Fourth”, a tale about love and faithfulness. His other plays include “George a Greene, the Pinner of Wakefield”, “Orlando Furioso”, “Alphonsus, King of Aragon”.

VI.4. Thomas Kyd (1558-1594)

Kyd was one of the most important figures in the development of the Elizabethan drama, the father of the revenge tragedy or the “blood and thunder tragedy” which captivated both Elizabethan and Jacobean audiences and influenced many later playwrights.

“The Spanish Tragedy” or “Hieronimo is Mad Again” was first produced in 1592 at the Rose Theatre, and it was popular through all Shakespeare’s life.

Kyd adopted the Senecan tradition and to the themes of love, memory, justice, revenge and conspiracy he added the device of the play-within-the-play as the means of revealing and punishing the culprits as well as the presentation of acts of physical violence on stage. The Elizabethan enjoyed the savage, cruel “shows” of bear-baiting.

The Elizabethan position toward revenge is resumed by the Bible verse “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, sayeth the Lord.” (Romans XII.19) quoted by Hieronimo in Act III, scene Xiii. Although revenge should be left in God’s hands, it still needs to be performed. After the death of his son and the escape of his murderers, Hieronimo doubts whether the Heavens are in fact just. He decides to take revenge and even receives Heaven’s favours for his decision, becoming the instrument of vengeance of a just God against his son’s murderers.

The action of the play takes place during a war between Spain and Portugal. The play opens with the Ghost of Andrea, killed in battle by the son of the king of Portugal, Balthasar, and the spirit of Revenge, who will serve as a chorus to the tragedy.

During a truce, Balthasar is sent to the Spanish court as a royal prisoner. There he becomes friends with Lorenzo, the king’s nephew, and falls in love with Lorenzo’s beautiful sister, Bell-imperia. Bell-imperia loves Horatio, the son of Hieronimo, Marshal of Spain. Lorenzo and Balthasar conspire to kill Horatio. When Hieronimo and his wife, Isabella discover their dead son hanging in a tree, they are overwhelmed by grief. He mourns his dead son:

“O eyes, no eyes, but fountains fraught with tears!

O life, no life, but lively form of death!

O world, no world, but mass of public wrongs,

Confused and filled with murder and misdeeds!”

He vows to take revenge and punish the “savage monster, not of human kind that has been glutted whit thy harmless blood” Hieronimo is helped by Bell-imperia to plots his violent revenge. He manages to fulfil his revenge on the occasion of the festivities celebrating the reconciliation between Spain and Portugal. Asked by Hieronimo and Bell-imperia, Lorenzo and Balthasar, perform in a play as actors, and are really killed in front of an unsuspecting audience. The next scene is a bloodshed in which Bell-imperia kills herself, Hieronimo is grabbed by the guards and unwillingly to confess, he bites his tongue and spits it on the stage, after which he kills Lorenzo’s father, The Duke of Castille. Many other characters are killed as well and the play ends with Revenge and Andrea’s Ghost enumerating all those who met their tragic end.

Hieronimo portrays a suffering, distracted, brooding, relentless, slightly insane tragic hero. He is the first to embody the type of avenger on the stage. His depth and dramatic development spares him from the blood-thirsty madman title.

Other best known revenge tragedies were Shakespeare’s “Titus Andronicus”, John Marston’s “The Malcontent”, and “Antonio’s Revenge”, Cyril Tourneur’s “The Revenger’s Tragedy” and John Webster’s “The Duchess of Malfi”.

VI.6. Christopher Marlowe (1564- 1593)

Among the members of the group known as the University Wits, Christopher Marlowe was by far the most gifted and the most original playwright. And he was also Shakespeare's greatest rival.

Christopher Marlowe was born and brought up in Canterbury. He studied at The King’s School and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1584. He nearly failed to receive his master's degree, in 1587, due to the doubts resulted from his frequent absences from the University. However the doubts were stopped when the Privy Council sent a letter stating that he had been employed “on matters touching the benefit of his country.” Though the nature of his service wasn’t specified in the letter, many speculation led to a theory, which sustained that Marlowe was working as a secret agent for Sir Francis Walsingham's intelligence service.

Marlowe was a young, ambitious man, who was a member of Ralegh’s “Nite School” which gathered literary and science people who had atheistic views, a political crime in that time.

His life was like that of a blazing, falling star seen for too short a while before plunging into the darkness. He was just 29 when he was killed in a drunken brawl, and many think that if he had lived longer he might have equalled or even surpassed Shakespeare.

Christopher Marlowe made great contribution for the development of the English drama. His “mighty line”, as Ben Jonson called it, introduced in the theatrical language the blank verse (a wonderful, unrhymed iambic pentameter) and created a language characterised by emotional complexity, outstanding intensity and intellectual rigor.

Many writers rhapsodized Marlowe for his “services” to the English dramatic literature: one of them is John Addington Symmonds who, in 1884, styled Marlowe “the father and founder of English dramatic poetry” or Algernon Charles Swinburne, who named Marlowe “alone…the true Apollo of our dawn, the bright and morning star of the full midsummer day of English poetry at its highest… The first great English poet was the father of English tragedy and the creator of English blank verse… the first English poet whose powers can be called sublime… He is the greatest discoverer, the most daring and inspired pioneer, in all our poetic literature”

At the beginning of his literary career he translated Ovid’s “Amores”. He chose to express his passionate self through drama.

His first original work, “Tamburlaine the Great” (c.1587), was a play written in two parts, inspired by the life and achievements of the Central Asian emperor, Timur (Tamerlane/ “Timur the Lame”). Timur's story was first told by the Spanish writer, Pedro Mexia and then was translated into English.

“Tamburlaine the Great” was first played, late in 1587, by the Admiral’s Men.

It is the story of the 14th century Scythian shepherd who was to become one of the bloodiest tyrants humanity had ever known in its history. This powerful historical figure who conquered through bloodshed and slaughter vast territories and who, in his cruelty, showed no mercy for his opponents or for his innocent victims, appealed to Marlowe’s imagination and daring spirit.

In his immense pride, Tamburlaine thinks he is the equal of gods if not their superior and he continues to fight even after he has conquered many countries, because, as he says, the wars illustrate gods and he desires to become one for his followers.

Marlowe’s Tamburlaine is magnificently haughty in his obsessive thirst for absolute political power. He calls himself the “scourge of God” and he believes that he can turn with his hand “Fortune’s wheel about”. On his way to achieve “the sweet fruition of an early crown”, he leaves behind a trail of blood and horrors: Bajazeth’s terrible death, the slaughter of the virgins of Damascus, the murder of his own son, etc. Tamburlaine destroys the world around him but he loves Zenocrate, his wife, with equal passion. When Zenocrates dies his deep suffering attains tragic greatness. Tamburlaine, who in his ambition thinks he is the equal of God, is finally defeated by Time and Death.

Tamburlaine may be considered a titan of evil but through his almost Luciferic spirit of rebellion, his defiance of all limits, his overwhelming individualism and pride he belong to the spirit of the Renaissance, that spirit which placed Man and his power at the centre of the Universe in spite of all religious dogmas.

Dr. Faustus in “The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus”, embodies another characteristic of the Renaissance spirit: the overwhelming thirst of knowledge, which brings to our mind Bacon’s famous words: “I have taken all knowledge to be my province”.

The play is the first dramatization of an old medieval legend, well known in Germany during the 16th century, published in 1587 at Frankfurt-am-Main under the title “Das Faustbuch” by Johann Spies and translated into English as “The History of The Damnable Life and Death of Dr. John Faustus” one year later.

The story, one of the most durable myths in Western culture, tells of a learned German doctor, an astronomer as well as a necromancer, who sold his soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge and power.

During the Middle Ages, there were numerous stories concerning men who possessed supernatural powers owing to their compacts made with the Devil, which was quite natural for a time when most of the believed in sorcerers and witchcraft. The historical John Faustus seems to have been an itinerant scholar and fortune-teller like many others, but for quite unknown reasons, the legend of his involvement with the dark forces quickly took shape after his death.

Early representations of this legend insisted on Faustus’ exploits as an artful trickster but Marlowe recognized in the story of Faustus’ temptation and downfall the elements of the great tragedy.

If in Tamburlaine the lust for power is rendered through the symbol of the early crown, in Faustus, the key-symbol is “books”, which stands for the infinite knowledge Faustus aspires to obtain in order to control all phenomena in the world, resurrection included.

For 24 years of absolute power Faustus signs the pact with Mephistophilis, written in his own blood, challenging the wrath of God by defiantly concluding with the words “Consummatum est”, Christ’s last words on the cross.

After the 24 years granted, during which Faustus enjoyed his power and performed incredible deeds, such as the summoning of Helen of Troy and Alexander the Great from the dead, he dramatically and painfully realizes that the time has come and that there is no redemption or salvation for him, who has fallen prey to his own tragic folly of mistaken desires.

Marlowe’s dramatic use of blank verse:

“Ah, Faustus,

now hast thou but one hour to live,

and then thou must be damm’d perpetually!

Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of Heaven,

That time may cease, and midnight never come;

Fair Nature’s eye, rise again and make

Perpetual day; or let this hour be but

A year, a month, a week, a natural day,

That Faustus may repent and save his soul!

O lente, lente, currite noctis equi!

The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,

The Devil will come, and Faustus must be damn’d.”

As time runs out and the moment of eternal damnation draws near, Faustus still hopes that time will stand still and that God will have mercy on his soul and grant him redemption.

He understands that his destructive ambitions, “all things that move between the quiet poles, shall be at my command”, brings him no great reward; his choice has been made of his own free will and even if he offers to burn his magic books, his lack of faith has condemned him.

Faustus cries his last words, when the clock strikes 12 and the devils come to take what is their due:

“Adders and serpents, let me breathe awhile!

Ugly hell, gape not! Come not, Lucifer!

I’ll burn my books!-Ah Mephstophilis!”

The symbol of “Jew of Malta” (c. played in 1592), is gold. Its obsessive desire isn’t for political power or for the power of knowledge, but for financial power. The main character, Barabas, is a wealthy Jew who lives in the Christian community. When Malta has to pay tribute to the Turks, the governor decides it will be the Jewish community, who will pay. Barabas refuses, thus his wealth is confiscated and his house becomes a nunnery.

There is also a historical truth in Marlowe’s play, which is the beginning of the Crusades that marked the beginning of cruel attacks on the Jews all over Europe. They were the scapegoats, easy to be banished, and after they were banished their properties and wealth was confiscated. Barabas is driven by the same desire for gold which motivates all the characters, whether Christian, Turks or Jews. Disposed of his treasures, Barabas chooses the path of a blood-thirsty avenger. Led by his hatred for both Christians and Muslim, causes the death of many people, including his daughter, Abigail, and develops a plan to punish the leaders of the Turks who have invaded the country. The plan proves to be fatal for him because he falls into the trap prepared for his enemies, a cauldron of boiling oil, under a collapsible floor. Barabas dies cursing the “Damned Christian dogs and the Turkish infidels”.

For “The Troublesome Reign and Lamentable Death of Edward II”, Marlowe leaves his self-destructive tragic heroes who confront with their destinies alone and turns to English history for inspiration. Eduard II studies the weaknesses of a character, a homosexual king who neglects his royal duties and who, by his foolish act, allows his enemies, included his wife, Isabella, to dismiss and brutally murder him.

“The Massacre at Paris” is a historical play that presents the massacre that took place on St. Bartholomew’s Day in Paris, in August 1527. The play introduces Peter Ramus, that is, Pierre de la Ramée, a French philosopher who was a victim of that bloody night during which more than 2000 Protestants were killed.

“Dido, Queen of Carthage” tells the dramatic tale of Dido and her tragic love for Aeneas.

Marlowe also wrote two wonderful poems, “The Passionate Shepherd to his Love”, written in pastoral style is famous for its line “come live with me and be my love”, and “Hero and Leander” tells the mythological love story of Leander, a youth from Abydos, and Hero, the priestess of Venus. Leander swims every night across the Hellespont to see Hero, until he drowns on a stormy night and Hero follows him into his death.

In his greatest plays, Marlowe presents the pursuit of power and excessive passion which eventually leads to deception and destructiveness and his memorable characters can be considered symbols of human rebellion against all restrains. Tamburlaine, Faustus and Barabas embody the greedy thirst for power, its triple manifestation, political, intellectual and financial whose symbols are the crown, the books and the gold. They are demonic figures who face their tragic fates brought more by the dark forces within themselves than by external circumstances. Till Marlowe no one made such personalities credible. Led by his weaknesses, Eduard II is the opposite of the other characters. He gives up his royal power to indulge his homosexual desire.

Marlowe’s achievement in the field of drama is outstanding. More than that, “his merit is that in his short career he set the stage on fire with the flame of his passion.”

When we think of Marlowe, out of curiosity, a question arises: what other plays might he had written had he not been met a stupid and tragic death?