The Elizabethan era was the epoch in English history of Queen Elizabeth I's reign (1558–1603). Historians often depict it as the golden age inEnglish history. The symbol of Britannia was first used in 1572 and often thereafter to mark the Elizabethan age as a renaissance that inspired national pride through classical ideals, international expansion, and naval triumph over the hated Spanish foe. In terms of the entire century, the historian John Guy (1988) argues that "England was economically healthier, more expansive, and more optimistic under the Tudors" than at any time in a thousand years.
This "golden age" represented the apogee of the English Renaissance and saw the flowering of poetry, music and literature. The era is most famous for theatre, as William Shakespeare and many others composed plays that broke free of England's past style of theatre. It was an age of exploration and expansion abroad, while back at home, the Protestant Reformation became more acceptable to the people, most certainly after the Spanish Armada was repulsed. It was also the end of the period when England was a separate realm before its royal union with Scotland.
The Elizabethan Age is viewed so highly because of the periods before and after. It was a brief period of largely internal peace between theEnglish Reformation and the battles between Protestants and Catholics and the battles between parliament and the monarchy that engulfed the seventeenth century. The Protestant/Catholic divide was settled, for a time, by the Elizabethan Religious Settlement, and parliament was not yet strong enough to challenge royal absolutism.
England was also well-off compared to the other nations of Europe. The Italian Renaissance had come to an end under the weight of foreign domination of the peninsula. France was embroiled in its own religious battles that would only be settled in 1598 with the Edict of Nantes. In part because of this, but also because the English had been expelled from their last outposts on the continent, the centuries long conflict between France and England was largely suspended for most of Elizabeth's reign.
The one great rival was Spain, with which England clashed both in Europe and the Americas in skirmishes that exploded into the Anglo-Spanish War of 1585–1604. An attempt by Philip II of Spain to invade England with the Spanish Armada in 1588 was famously defeated, but the tide of war turned against England with an unsuccessful expedition to Portugal and the Azores, the Drake-Norris Expedition of 1589. Thereafter Spain provided some support for Irish Catholics in a debilitating rebellion against English rule, and Spanish naval and land forces inflicted a series of reversals against English offensives. This drained both the English Exchequer and economy that had been so carefully restored under Elizabeth's prudent guidance. English commercial and territorial expansion would be limited until the signing of the Treaty of London the year following Elizabeth's death.
England during this period had a centralised, well-organised, and effective government, largely a result of the reforms of Henry VII and Henry VIII. Economically, the country began to benefit greatly from the new era of trans-Atlantic trade.
The Elizabethan era saw a great flourishing of literature, especially in the field of drama. The Italian Renaissance had rediscovered the ancient Greek and Roman theatre, and this was instrumental in the development of the new drama, which was then beginning to evolve apart from the old mystery and miracle plays of the Middle Ages. The Italians were particularly inspired by Seneca (a major tragic playwright and philosopher, the tutor of Nero) and Plautus (its comic clichés, especially that of the boasting soldier had a powerful influence on the Renaissance and after). However, the Italian tragedies embraced a principle contrary to Seneca's ethics: showing blood and violence on the stage. In Seneca's plays such scenes were only acted by the characters. But the English playwrights were intrigued by Italian model: a conspicuous community of Italian actors had settled in London and Giovanni Florio had brought much of the Italian language and culture to England.
Following earlier Elizabethan plays such as Gorboduc by Sackville & Norton and The Spanish Tragedy by Kyd that was to provide much material for Hamlet, William Shakespeare stands out in this period as a poet and playwright as yet unsurpassed. Shakespeare was very gifted and incredibly versatile, and he surpassed "professionals" as Robert Greene who mocked this "shake-scene" of low origins. Though most dramas met with great success, it is in his later years (marked by the early reign of James I) that he wrote what have been considered his greatest plays:Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, and The Tempest, a tragicomedy that inscribes within the main drama a brilliant pageant to the new king.
Shakespeare also popularized the English sonnet which made significant changes to Petrarch's model. The sonnet was introduced into English by Thomas Wyatt in the early 16th century. Poems intended to be set to music as songs, such as by Thomas Campion, became popular as printed literature was disseminated more widely in households. See English Madrigal School. Other important figures in Elizabethan theatre include Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Dekker, John Fletcher and Francis Beaumont. Had Marlowe (1564-1593) not been stabbed at twenty-nine in a tavern brawl, says Anthony Burgess, he might have rivalled, if not equalled Shakespeare himself for his poetic gifts. Marlowe's subject matter focuses more on the moral drama of the Renaissance man than any other thing. Marlowe was fascinated and terrified by the new frontiers opened by modern science. Drawing on German lore, he introduced Dr. Faustus to England, a scientist and magician who is obsessed by the thirst of knowledge and the desire to push man's technological power to its limits. His dark heroes may have something of Marlowe himself, whose untimely death remains a mystery. He was known for being an atheist, leading a lawless life, keeping many mistresses, consorting with ruffians: living the 'high life' of London's underworld.
Beaumont and Fletcher are less-known, but it is almost sure that they helped Shakespeare write some of his best dramas, and were quite popular at the time. It is also at this time that the city comedy genre develops. In the later 16th century English poetry was characterised by elaboration of language and extensive allusion to classical myths. The most important poets of this era include Edmund Spenser and Sir Philip Sidney. Elizabeth herself, a product of Renaissance humanism, produced occasional poems such as On Monsieur’s Departure. The most famous themes of the Elizabethan Drama are: Revenge, Sensationalism, Melodrama and Vengeance.
The following is an incomplete list of writers considered part of this period.
1.
William Shakespeare
2.
Christopher Marlowe
3.
Ben Jonson
4.
Edmund Spenser
5.
John Fletcher
6.
Thomas Kyd
7.
Thomas Middleton
8.
Thomas Nashe
9.
John Webster
10.
John Donne
11.
Philip Sidney
POETRY
Edmund Spenser was born in East Smithfield, London, around the year 1553, though there is some ambiguity as to the exact date of his birth. As a young boy, he was educated in London at the Merchant Taylors' School and matriculated as a sizar at Pembroke College, Cambridge. While at Cambridge he became a friend of Gabriel Harvey and later consulted him, despite their differing views on poetry. In 1578 he became for a short time secretary to John Young, Bishop of Rochester. In 1579 he published The Shepheardes Calender and around the same time married his first wife, Machabyas Childe.
In July 1580 Spenser went to Ireland in service of the newly appointed Lord Deputy, Arthur Grey, 14th Baron Grey de Wilton. When Grey was recalled to England, he stayed on in Ireland, having acquired other official posts and lands in the Munster Plantation. At some time between 1587 and 1589 he acquired his main estate at Kilcolman, near Doneraile in North Cork. Among his acquaintances in the area was Walter Raleigh, a fellow colonist. He later bought a second holding to the south, at Rennie, on a rock overlooking the river Blackwater in North Cork. Its ruins are still visible today. A short distance away grew a tree, locally known as "Spenser's Oak" until it was destroyed in a lightning strike in the 1960s. Local legend has it that he penned some of The Faerie Queene under this tree.
In 1590 Spenser brought out the first three books of his most famous work, The Faerie Queene, having travelled to London to publish and promote the work, with the likely assistance of Raleigh. He was successful enough to obtain a life pension of £50 a year from the Queen. He probably hoped to secure a place at court through his poetry, but his next significant publication boldly antagonised the queen's principal secretary, Lord Burghley, through its inclusion of the satirical Mother Hubberds Tale. He returned to Ireland.
By 1594 Spenser's first wife had died, and in that year he married Elizabeth Boyle, to whom he addressed the sonnet sequence Amoretti. The marriage itself was celebrated in Epithalamion.
In 1596 Spenser wrote a prose pamphlet titled, A View of the Present State of Ireland. This piece, in the form of a dialogue, circulated in manuscript, remaining unpublished until the mid-seventeenth century. It is probable that it was kept out of print during the author's lifetime because of its inflammatory content. The pamphlet argued that Ireland would never be totally 'pacified' by the English until its indigenous language and customs had been destroyed, if necessary by violence.
Later on, during the Nine Years War in 1598, Spenser was driven from his home by the native Irish forces of Aodh Ó Néill. His castle at Kilcolman was burned, and Ben Jonson (who may have had private information) asserted that one of his infant children died in the blaze.
In the year after being driven from his home, Spenser travelled to London, where he died aged forty-six. His coffin was carried to his grave inWestminster Abbey by other poets, who threw many pens and pieces of poetry into his grave with many tears. His second wife survived him and remarried twice.
Spenser's masterpiece is the epic poem The Faerie Queene. The first three books of The Faerie Queene were published in 1590, and a second set of three books were published in 1596. Spenser originally indicated that he intended the poem to consist of twelve books, so the version of the poem we have today is incomplete. Despite this, it remains one of the longest poems in the English language.
It is an allegorical work, and can be read (as Spenser presumably intended) on several levels of allegory, including as praise of Queen Elizabeth I. In a completely allegorical context, the poem follows several knights in an examination of several virtues. In Spenser's "A Letter of the Authors," he states that the entire epic poem is "cloudily enwrapped in allegorical devises," and that the aim behind The Faerie Queene was to “fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline.”
Spenser published numerous relatively short poems in the last decade of the sixteenth century, almost all of which consider love or sorrow. In 1591 he published Complaints, a collection of poems that express complaints in mournful or mocking tones. Four years later, in 1595, Spenser published Amoretti and Epithalamion. This volume contains eighty-nine sonnets commemorating his courtship of Elizabeth Boyle.
In “Amoretti,” Spenser uses subtle humour and parody while praising his beloved, reworking Petrarchism in his treatment of longing for a woman. “Epithalamion,” similar to “Amoretti,” deals in part with the unease in the development of a romantic and sexual relationship. It was written for his wedding to his young bride, Elizabeth Boyle. The poem consists of 365 long lines, corresponding to the days of the year; 68 short lines, representing the sum of the 52 weeks, 12 months, and 4 seasons of the annual cycle; and 24 stanzas, corresponding to the diurnal and sidereal hours.
Some have speculated that the attention to disquiet in general reflects Spenser’s personal anxieties at the time, as he was unable to complete his most significant work, The Faerie Queene. In the following year Spenser released "Prothalamion," a wedding song written for the daughters of a duke, allegedly in hopes to gain favor in the court.
The Spenserian Stanza created by Sir Edmund Spenser,, 16th century English poet, for his Faerie Queene. The stanza has the feel of a scrunched, combination, Italian and Shakespearean mini-sonnet. Frances Mayes says the stanza makes an effective visual and rhythmic break in a long poem.
The Spenserian Stanza is :
1.
A narrative. It tells a story centered around a single theme, often in a time frame that includes a beginning, middle and end. It is usually written in the 3rd person.
2.
Stanzaic, written in any number of 9 line stanzas.
3.
metered, most often iambic. L1-L8 are usually pentameter and L9 is always an Alexandrine line a hexameter (6 feet) with a caesura division creating 2 commonly, equal hemistiches (half lines). According to the New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, the Alexandrine line with it's even number of stresses brings a balance or harmony to the end of the stanza.
4.
Rhymed. There is a fluid interlocking rhyme scheme a b a b b c b c c that moves the stanza forward while a rhyming couplet brings the stanza to conclusion. The opening stanza from the Faerie Queen, Canto I by Edmund Spencer 1596.
A Gentle Knight was pricking on the plaine,
Y cladd in mightie armes and silver shielde,
Wherein old dints of deepe wounds did remaine,
The cruell markes of many' a bloudy fielde;
Yet armes till that time did he never wield:
His angry steede did chide his foaming bitt,
As much disdayning to the curbe to yield:
Full iolly knight he seemd, and faire did sitt,
As one for knightly giusts and fierce encounters fitt.
DRAMA
The renaissance theatre in England saw the coming of the Elizabethan drama. The renaissance theatres were those that were opened during the time between Reformation and the closing down of theatres. Queen Elizabeth ruled England from 1558 - 1603, hence the drama of this era came to be known as Elizabethan drama.
Earlier, dramas were based on the bible stories, mystery, or had a moral attached to it and even tried to recreate Greek or Italian drama. However, during the Elizabethan period, drama branched out to political plays, comedy and historical content. It veered away from bible stories and tackled the reality.
The unique feature of Elizabethan drama is that one play was not played twice and certainly not within the same week. A new play was belted out almost every day.
The theme of Elizabethan drama ranged from history of monarchs or the country including various European countries, tragedy, comedy and something called revenge drama emerged which the audience quite liked.
The historical plays included Richard III and Henry V, both written by William Shakespeare, Edward II by Richard Marlowe and Famous Chronicle of Edward King the First written by George Peele. These were particularly informative and also informative for those who had not or were unable to read about the history of England. A Larum for London was something like a current event play which was written by an unknown author. It was the very first of its kind to be presented in London and its roots were in the Elizabethan theatre.
Comedy was a genre appreciated by the audience. A number of sub genres of comedy drama emerged in the Elizabethan drama. Some of them are the Shoe maker's Holiday by Thomas Dekker and A chaste maid in cheapside by Thomas Middleton.
City comedy was one of the sub branches of comedies that emerged in the Elizabethan theatre. It contained slick and sarcastic depiction of life in a city, namely, London. Ben Johnson wrote the alchemist which presented society without the rose coloured glasses.
Tragicomedy breathed its first in early 1600s in the Elizabethan drama. The audience loved a good tragedy. And who better than the most eminent of all playwrights, William Shakespeare, to deliver a heart wrenching drama. Titus Andronicus, Othello, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet and many more. John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi was received with great adulation.
Elizabethan drama differs from Jacobean Drama as the latter was named during the rule of King James I. Although, Jacobean drama was more like a continuation of Elizabethan drama, it was more intense and more intelligent. The plays became more complicated, tackling burning issues and portrayed more emotions, intensity, and aggression. The White Devil written by John Webster is an excellent example of Jacobean drama.
PROSE
John Lyly (1554-1606)
Lyly in his romance displays all the peculiarities of Elizabethan prose which we have mentioned above. At the age of twenty-four he came out with his Euphues or the Anatomy of Wit (1578) which took England by storm. This work which may only very roughly be termed the "first English prose novel" was an agglomeration of a thousand elements many of them alien to the nature of the novel proper. The "plot" of the work is the simplest imaginable. Euphues is a man of learning and culture belonging to Athens (which evidently stands for Oxford). He goes to Naples (which stands for London) to lead a life of pleasure. There he-becomes intimate friends with a young man Philautus who introduces him to his fiancee, Lucilla. Euphues attracts Lucilla's love, and the two friends exchange taunting letters. But Lucilla plays him false and elopes with a stranger. Euphues, heart-broken, returns to Athens, and he and Philautus become friends again. The plot is simple but very long essays on such topics as love and the education of children, with many rhetorical letters and lengthy dialogues, are grafted on to the thin'Stem of the storv. In 1580 Lvlv came out with, a sequel. Euphues and His England,in which is narrated the arrival of Philautus and Euphues in England, and Philautus' unsuccessful courtship of Camilla, a maid of honour to Queen Elizabeth. This volume pays a glowing tribute to the English nobility, particularly the courtiers. "Lyly was," to quote Tucker Brooke, "most careful to depict them, not as they were, but as they would have liked to have themselves regarded." To quote the same critic, "in the last fifteen pages a portrait of Queen Elizabeth is probably the most elaborately flattering that much flattered sovereign ever received."
What is remarkable about Lyly's work is not its matter but its terribly manneristic prose style which has come to be dubbed as "Euphuism." It came to be parodied and derided by a long chain of writers from Shakespeare to Scott, though it also excited imitation in a very large number of writers now justly forgotten. The cool Drayton declared that Lyly taught his countrymeiilo speak and write "all like mere lunatics." Nevertheless, if Lyly was a lunatic there was method in his madness. He did employ a well-thought-out plan which has the following characteristics:
The first is the principle of symmetry and equipoise obtained generally by the employment of alliteration, balance, and antithesis. See, for instance, such an expression as "hot liver of a heedless lover", or the description of Euphues as a young gallant of more wit than wealth, yet of more wealth than wisdom."
Secondly, there are the very numerous references to the classical authorities, even for very well-known facts.
Thirdly, there is the mass of allusions to natural history, generally of the fabulous kind.
All these devices are used for the purpose of decoration. But our complaint is that the style is over-decorated, to the point of being monotonous and insipid, even though it affects poetic beauties. To quote Compton-Rickett, Lyly's style "suffers from the serious defect of ignoring the distinction between prose and verse. It is the prose of an age that found its most effective medium in verse.”
from Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit
[Euphues Introduced]
by John Lyly
There dwelt in Athens a young gentleman of great patrimony, and of so comely a personage, that it was doubted whether he were more bound to Nature for the lineaments of his person, or to Fortune for the increase of his possessions. But Nature impatient of comparisons, and as it were disdaining a companion or copartner in her working, added to this comeliness of his body such a sharp capacity of mind, that not only she proved Fortune counterfeit, but was half of that opinion that she herself was only current. This young gallant, of more with than wealth, and yet of more wealth than wisdom, seeing himself inferior to none in pleasant conceits, thought himself superior to all in honest conditions, insomuch that he deemed himself so apt to all things, that he gave himself almost to nothing, but practicing of those things commonly which are incident to these sharp wits, fine phrases, smooth quipping, merry taunting, using jesting without mean, and abusing mirth without measure. As therefore the sweetest rose hath his prickle, the finest velvet his brack, the fairest flower his bran, so the sharpest wit hath his wanton will, and the holiest head his wicked way. And true it is that some men write and most men believe, that in all perfect shapes, a blemish bringeth rather a liking every way to the eyes, than a loathing any way to the mind. Venus had her mole in her cheek which made her more amiable: Helen her scar on her chin which Paris called cos amoris, the whetstone of love. Aristippus his wart, Lycurgus his wen: So likewise in the disposition of the mind, either virtue is overshadowed with some vice, or vice overcast with some virtue. Alexander valiant in war, yet given to wine. Tully eloquent in his glozes, yet vainglorious: Solomon wise, yet too wanton: David holy but yet an homicide: none more witty than Euphues, yet at the first none more wicked. The freshest colors soonest fade, the teenest razor soonest turneth his edge, the finest cloth is soonest eaten with moths, and the cambric sooner stained than the coarse canvas: which appeared well in this Euphues, whose wit being like wax apt to receive any impression, and having the bridle in his own hands, either to use the rein or the spur, disdaining counsel, leaving his country, loathing his old acquaintance, thought either by wit to obtain some conquest, or by shame to abide some conflict, and leaving the rule of reason, rashly ran unto destruction. Who preferring fancy before friends, and his present humor, before honor to come, laid reason in water being too salt for his taste, and followed unbridled affection, most pleasant for his tooth. When parents have more care how to leave their children wealthy than wise, and are more desirous to have them maintain the name, than the nature of a gentleman: when they put gold into the hands of youth, where they should put a rod under their girdle, when instead of awe they make them past grace, and leave them rich executors of goods, and poor executors of godliness, then it is no marvel, that the son being left rich by his father's will, become retchless by his own will.
Author
: John Lyly
First Published: 1578
Type of Work
: Novel
Type of Plot
: Didactic
Setting
: Naples and Athens
Characters
: Euphues, Philautus, Don Ferardo, Lucilla, Livia, Eubulus
Genres
: Long fiction, Didactic literature, Novel
Subjects
: Values, Love or romance, Friendship, Manners or customs,Moral conditions, Sixteenth century, Italy or Italians, Greece or Greek people, Nobility
Locales
: Europe, Greece, Athens, Greece, Naples, Italy
