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Unit 4 The Elizabethan Age
The
Renaissance English Literature
(1485—1660)
English
literature of the Renaissance can be conveniently divided into
–
three
stages of development;
–
the
two chief literary trends running through the three distinct stages are:
①
court literature mainly representing the interests of the monarch and the
old and new aristocracy
②
bourgeois literature
1. The First Stage of Renaissance
Literature
(1485-1558)
The
Oxford Reformers
–
A group of scholars including
William Grocyn, Thomas Linacre and John Colet are often referred to as
Oxford Reformers.
–
devoted to
the revival of the culture or the humanities of ancient Greece and Rome
that took place in England in the last years of the 15th century and the
early decades of the 16th century.
– students
and then teachers at Oxford University.
– travelled
and studied in Italy and introduced the study of ancient Greek as well as
the new science and philosophy of the time
– made
Oxford University the first important center of ancient classical culture
in England in the early 16th century
– helped
to spread the light of new science and new world outlook
– combated
medieval scholasticism
– laid
the foundations for the rise of a new literature in England in the later
decades of the 16th century.
Thomas
More (1487—1535)
l
Life and Works:
–
received his education at Oxford, with Grocyn and Linacre as his teachers
and Colet and Erasmus as intimate friends.
–
entered the parliament at 22 and for a time was a favorite of Henry VIII,
which raised him to the position of Lord Chancellor, the high office in
the state.
–
More
lost the king’s favor and finally his life because he refused to recognize
the king’s divorce from Queen Katherine and the Act of Supremacy.
–
In
1515 sent to the Low Countries to negotiate a commercial treaty and it was
during this mission that wrote the second part of his famous
book Utopia.
–
completed the first part in the following year when the whole book was
published in Latin in Louvain.
–
The
first part of the book is a realistic description. The social evils in
early 16th century England are exposed and attacked. In it, the society
is described as a conspiracy of the rich against the poor.
–
Part II
is even more significant as it is a valuable document of utopian society.
–
More
regards the existence of private property as the cause of all social evils
in England.
–
No
private property of any kind in Utopia and all land is held
in common.
–
All
the citizens, men and women, are equal and enjoy the same rights, such as
education which is conducted on the basis of rationalism, by means of
reasoning and persuasion instead of corporal punishment.
–
However,
religion and slavery still exist in Utopia. But people enjoy the freedom
of belief or worship.
–
Utopia presents an ideal society and gives More a position as one
of the forerunners of modern socialist thought and the predecessor of the
English Renaissance.
–
More was one
of the forerunners of modern socialist thought; the predecessor of the
English Renaissance (mentioned by Karl Marx in Das Kapita )
[Back]
Court Poetry: Skelton;
Wyatt and Surrey
–
Their
contribution to English literature lies mainly in the innovations they
made in the verse form.
–
John
Skelton (1460?-1529), a great satirist with a most effective verse metre
well known for Skeltonic verse which consists of short lines frequently of
two or three feet each and which contains quick recurring rhymes in a
rapid movement of verse
An Example of Skeltonic
Verse
Though my
rime be ragged,
Tatter’d and
jagged,
Rudely
rain-beaten,
Rusty and
moth-eaten,
If ye take
well therewith,
It hath in it
some pith.
Wyatt
and Surrey
–
Wyatt and Surrey, generally
mentioned together as rather outstanding landmarks in the historical
development of English poetry, mainly because of an anthology composed by
them and others Tottel’s Miscellany (1557).
–
They have been highly praised
for their contributions to development of the English poetry: the ushering
of the flowering of sonnets and lyric poetry of the Elizabethan Age
Sir
Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542)
–
his contribution to English
literature chiefly lies in his introduction into English poetry the sonnet
form from the Italian, which is a result of Petrarchan influence (Petrarch’s
“Sonnets to Laura”)
–
followed the Petrarchan sonnet
rhyme scheme and the Italian theme of a lover’s entreaties to his mistress
–
his poetry of the earthly love
between men and women, starting a tradition to be carried on Shakespeare,
Jonson, Sidney and the University Wits.
Henry Howard, Earl of
Surrey
–
also wrote sonnets singing of his imaginary love
–
Surrey’s
contributions consist in
•
his
writing the first love lyrics in the English language in Petrarchan
fashion
•
in
his introduction of the English form of sonnet
•
and
the invention of blank verse in his translation of
Aeneid
–
His
lyrics are not only about love, but also about friendship
Blank
Verse
–
unrhymed iambic pentameter
–
to become,
through Marlowe’s employment, the great measure of English poetic drama,
to be used by Shakespeare, and by other verse dramatists to the present
day
–
also in
non-dramatic verse (Milton chose it for Paradise Lost, Keats for Hyperion,
Tennyson for the Idylls of the Kings)
2. Early 16thc Drama
–
The miracle
plays and the Morality plays continued to be the main plays before
the ascension of Elizabeth I.
–
the
interlude as a new kind of plays appeared. It was a short play of a kind
popular especially in the 16th century before the great flowering of
Elizabethan drama. It is a much lighter play than the solemn moralities
inserted between solemn scenes or just a short play between actors.
•
Some of the
important writers of plays are:
–
John Skelton with his
Magnificence (1516)
–
David Lynsay with his
best morality
–
John Heywood with his
interludes
3.
Literature of the Elizabethan Age
(1558-1603)
The
Elizabethan Age witnessed the rising of the British Empire. It is a golden
age of English literature, with such writers as Spencer, Marlowe, Jonson,
Bacon and above all, Shakespeare. Indeed, it is the most creative period
in the history of English literature.
Elizabethan Poetry
Sir Philip Sidney
(1554-1586)
–
not only a writer, but also a
courtier, a diplomat and a soldier, famous for his beauty and courage, his
wit, his learning and his noble character, “the glass of fashion and the
mould of form” (《哈姆莱特》风流的镜子，仁侠的模子oph
III.i).
–
in 1586, he died at the age of
32 when fighting with Spain.
–
his literary reputation rested
on his three works: the sonnet sequence Astrophel and Stella; his
prose romance Arcadia
and his critical essay The Defence of Poesie.
–
Astrophel and Stella,
a cycle of 108 sonnets. He was the first English poet to write a series of
sonnets to express his love for a woman. They had great influence upon
later English poets such as
Shakespeare, Spencer with
his Amoretti, Samuel Danial with his Delia.
–
Arcadia is a pastoral romance
for the amusement of his sister. It is a mixture of love and intrigue and
is the first venture in pastoral tradition in English literature.
–
The Defence of Poesie, one of
the earliest literary essays in English. According to him, poetry imitates
nature, reflects reality, instructs and pleases; whereas philosophy is
concerned with the abstract and the general and the historian with what is
and what should be.
Edmund Spencer (1552-1599)
–
Edmund
Spencer, a great poet, with only shakespeare, Milton and Wordsworth to
compete with him
–
Spencer has
been called the “poets’ poet” because of his superb technical skill,
perfect melodies, rare sense of beauty, splendid imagination, lofty moral
purity and seriousness, and delicate idealism.
–
from a poor
family, but attended Cambridge
–
in 1580
appointed secretary to the English Deputy to Ireland and remained there
until 1598 except for two visits to London.
–
In 1589 he
returned to London and tried to win favor from Elizabeth I by dedicating
to her his epic The Fairie Queen.
–
In 1594
Spencer married Elizabeth Boyle
–
In 1598, an
Irish uprising made him flee back to London and he died in the following
year.
•
Major Works
The
Shepherd’s Calendar,
a pastoral poem of 12 eclogues, one for each month of the year in dialogue
form (with the exception of 1st and last eclogues). The theme of love is
the dominant one. The queen was referred to as fair Eliza in the 4th
eclogue.
–
The Fairie
Queen, an allegorical romance, usually regarded as Spencer's masterpiece.
It is marked with great technical skill both in its music and metre as
well as the rich imageries and ornate language. Its poetic beauty earned
for Spenser the distinction of the poets’ poet.
–
The poem
uses a 9-line stanzaic form, with the rhyme scheme of ababbcbcc, the first
eight lines of which are in iambic pentameter and the last an alexandrine,
called Spenserian Stanza to be used by Byron (The Pilgrimage of Childe
Harold), Shelley (Adonis), Keats (The Eve of St Agnes)
–
The
Amoretti, a sequence of 89 sonnets, addressed to his wife Elizabeth Boyle,
rhymed abab bcbc cdcd ee, a variant of English sonnet, the most
easy-flowing and musical sonnets in the English language.
[Back]
Prose Fiction of the
Elizabethan Age
Comparatively
speaking, the Elizabethan Age is not an age of prose. But it did produced
such prose writers as Lyly, Greene, Sidney, Nashe and Deloney.
John Lyly, the oldest of the University Wits, is well known for a
prose romance, Euphues in two parts: Euphues, or the Anatomy of Wit (1578)
and Euphues and His England (1580).
Euphuism
–
It is
chricterized by the use of balanced setence construction, artificial
elaborations of language including antithesis and alliteration, the
employment of images and similes taken from mythology and history, the use
of quotations and reference. As a result, the language is extremely
affected and unnatural, overburden with rich ornaments and elaborate
decorations.
–
For a time
Euphuism became the fashion in English literature and many prose writers ,
including Robert Greene and Thomas Lodge imitated the rich and artificial
euphuistic language. These writers produced suxh works as Arcadia
(Sidney), Rosalynde (Lodge) and Menaphon (Greene).
–
Nashe and
Deloney wrote differently from Lyly. Thomas Nashe was the youngest of the
University Wits. He wrote panphlets and plays, but has been known as the
author of The Unfortunate Traveller, a romance published in 1594, telling
the story of Wilton as a page in the court of Henry VIII, and then travels
through Europe as adventure, soldier of fortune. It is the first
important picaresque novel in the English language.
Elizabethan Drama
Pre-Shakespearean Drama
English Drama under Classical Influence
–
While the
moralities and miracles of the medieval times and interludes continued
into the mid-16th century, classical tradition of drama began to be felt
in 50’s and 60’s. Classical comedies and tragedies were staged,
translated and written and merged with the English folk drama and paved
the way for the flowering of dramatic art in England in the last decades
of the 16th century.
–
The first
regular English comedy, Ralph Roister Doister was written by Nicholas
Udall around 1550. It was a verse drama following the classical tradition
in dramatic structure and character portrayal. The second comedy, Gammer
Gurdon’s Needle, also in verse, was again modeled upon the classical
drama.. But it also has a true English theme with elements both of
English church drama and of classical drama.
–
The first
English tragedy, Gorboduc, jointly written by Thomas Norton and Thomas
Sackville and acted in 1561, is constructed on the model of a Senecan
tragedy. Its theme is the inheritance of the crown. What makes the play
more important is that for the first time the play was written in blank
verse, anticipating numerous great tragedies in the late 16th century in
English drama written in the same verse form.
(1)
The University Wits
–
Shakespeare’s immediate predecessors were a group of men from the two
universities of Oxford and Cambridge, including John Lyly,
George Peele, Thomas Lodge, Robert Greene, Thomas
Nashe, Thomas Kyd and above all Christopher Marlowe.
–
They were a
group of young men in the reign of Elizabeth I and educated at either
Oxford or Cambridge, and then embarked on their careers as men of
letters. Most of them had some kind of influence on, or relationship
with, Shakespeare.
–
Lyly used
the kind of sophisticated diction which Shakespeare partly emulated and
partly parodied in Love’s Labour Lost;
–
Greene wrote
mellifluous blank verse which anticipates some qualities in the earlier
verse of Shakespeare, and was the author of the novel Pandosto, source of
The Winter’s Tale; Lodge wrote Rosalynde, the source of As You Like It;
Kyd probably wrote the first version of Hamlet.
–
Lodge:
pastoral romance: Roslynde
Nashe: two
unimportant dramas and a picaresque romance: The Unfortunate
Traveller
Peele: several dramas, of which The Old Wives Tale is the best known
Lyly: Euphues; he also wrote the earliest dramatic works of the University
Wits, the first comedies
–
Thomas Kyd’s
fame mainly rests on his revenge play, The Spanish Tragedy produced in
1585. In it, Kyd followed the tradition of Seneca and adopted the theme
of revenge, the murder of a relative, the appearance of ghosts, the
element of lunacy and a play within a play. He also employed much
declamation and soliloquy in rhetorical verse.
–
Kyd’s
outstanding contribution to the development of English drama consists in
the influence of The Spanish Tragedy upon Hamlet. He may have written an
earlier version of Hamlet known to scholars as UR-Hamlet.
–
In addition,
The Spanish Tragedy is also known for the use of blank verse, rhymed
couplets and prose to adapt to different moods and occasions in the drama.
Greene’s dramatic works mainly include Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, which
deals with a story about magic and reflects the desire of the men of the
Renaissance to probe into the secrets of nature even by means of magic,
and The Scottish History of King James the Fourth.
–
The most
important of all the University Wits is Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593).
Born in a shoemaker family and educated at Cambridge, he was a great poet
and dramatist, who wrote in six years a long narrative poem (Hero and
Leander), some short lyrics including The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
and seven plays of which Tamburlaine the Great, The Tragical History of
Doctor Faustus, The Jew of Malta and Edward the Second are more important.
–
Was this the
face that launched a thousand ships
And that burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.
Her lips sucks forth my soul—see where it flies!
Come, Helen, come give me my soul again.
Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips
And all is dross that is not Helena.
–
Marlowe’s
plays are characterized by:
•
the
spirit of the rising bourgeoisie in terms of military might, knowledge or
gold. In Tamburlaine the Great, it is military ambition; in Doctor
Faustus, desire for knowledge; in The Jew of Malta, greed for wealth.
•
the
praise of individuality freed from the restraints of medieval dogmas, and
the conviction of the boundless possibility of human efforts in conquering
the universe.
–
Although Marlowe was a good poet
famous for his mighty lines, his literary contributions chiefly lies in
the field of drama. He was the greatest of the pioneers of English
Drama. He reformed the English drama and perfected the language and made
blank verse an eloquent verse form for drama.
[Back]
(2) William
Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Life and Literary Works:
–
born in Stratford-on-Avon in
April 23 ?, 1546.
presumably attended the Stratford grammar school, acquired a respectable
knowledge of Latin, but he did not proceed to Oxford or Cambridge.
his marriage in 1582 to Ann Hathaway.
A daughter born in 1583 and twins, a boy and a girl, Hamnet and Judith in
1585.
–
Thereafter Shakespeare’s life is
a blank for the next seven years until we meet a reference to him in but
by A Groatsworth of Wit (1592), an autobiographical pamphlet by Robert
Greene, who accuses him of plagiarism.
"an upstart crow, beautified with own feathers," who, "being an absolute
Johannes Factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a
country."
–
From 1592 to 1594 the London
theatres were closed owing to epidemics of plague, and Shakespeare seems
to have used the opportunity to make a reputation for himself as a
narrative poet. In 1593, Shakespeare published a mythological-erotic
poem, Venus and Adonis and the next year The Rape of
Lucrece, both dedicated to Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton.
–
He continued to prosper as a
dramatist, and in the winter of 1594 was a leading member of the Lord
Chamberlain’s Men with whom he remained for the rest of his career. In
1597 Shakespeare had so prospered that he was able to purchase New Place,
a handsome house in Stratford.
–
In 1598, Francis Meres, in his
literary commentary Palladis Tamia, Wit’s Treasure, mentions Shakespeare
as one of the leading writers of the time, lists 12 of his plays and his
sonnets as circulating privately; they were published in 1609.
–
The Lord Chamberlain’s Men
opened the Globe Theatre in 1598, and Shakespeare became a shareholder in
it. After James I ascended the throne, the company came under
royal patronage, and were called the King’s Men; This gave Shakespeare a
status in royal household. He is known to have been an actor as well as a
playwright, but tradition associates him with small parts: Adam in
As You Like It, and the Ghost in Hamlet.
–
About 1610, Shakespeare
apparently retired to Stratford, though he continued to write, both by
himself (The Tempest) and in collaboration (Henry VIII).
This is the period of the "romances" or "tragicomedies" which include,
beside The Tempest, Cymbeline, The
Winter's Tale.
–
Shakespeare died in Stratford in
1616
“He was not of an age, but for all time!” (Ben Jonson)
Shakespeare's
Sonnets
–
The sonnets are Shakespeare's
contribution to a popular vogue. Shakespeare altogether wrote 154
sonnets, but his cycle is quite unlike the other sonnet sequences of his
day. His cycle suggests a story, though the details are vague, and there
is doubt even whether the sonnets as published in 1609 are in the correct
order. Certain motifs are clear: numbers 1-126 celebrate the beauty
of a young man and urging him to marry; some sonnets to a lady; the
remainder are addressed to a woman, the so called dark lady who is dark in
hair and complexion.
–
Some sonnets
(like 144) are about a strange triangle of love involving two men and a
woman; sonnets on destructive power of time and the permanence of poetry;
sonnets about a rival poet; incidental sonnets of moral insight, like 129
and 146.
–
The
vocabulary is often simple, the metaphorical style of the sonnets is rich.
"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day" is a question which might lead to
a very ordinary conceit; instead it introduces a profound meditation on
time, change, and beauty.
–
The
structure of the sonnet frequently reinforces the power of the metaphors;
each quatrain in 73 develops an image of lateness, of approaching
extinction-of a season, of a day, of a fire, but they also apply to life.
The three quatrains may be equally and successively at work preparing for
the conclusion in the couplet, or the first eight lines may contain a
catalogue and the last six turn in quite a different direction, as in
sonnet 29. The rhetorical strategy of the sonnets is also worth careful
attention.
–
The moods
are also not confined to what the Renaissance thought were those of the
despairing Petrarchan lover; they include delight, pride, melancholy,
shame, disgust, and fear.
Shakespeare's
Plays
–
Shakespeare
wrote altogether 37 plays, including historical plays, comedies,
tragedies, tragic-comedies. Of these, the four great comedies are The
Merchant of Venice (Portia and Shylock), Much Ado About Nothing
(Beatrice), As You Like It (Rosalind) and Twelfth Night (Viola). The four
great tragedies are Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth.
–
Romeo
and Juliet is the earliest successful tragedy, well known both for
its theme and artistic form. It is about the tragic romantic love of
Romeo, belonging to the family of Montague, and Juliet, of the Capulet
family, both living in the Italian city of Verona. Juliet’s father, in
ignorance of his daughter’s secret marriage, proposes to marry her off in
haste to a young nobleman, Paris.
–
To enable
her to escape this, Friar Laurence gives Juliet a potion which sends her
into a profound sleep and causes her family to suppose her dead; the
Friar’s design is that she shall be placed in the family burial vault, and
that meanwhile a message is to be sent to Romeo directing him to come by
night and steal her away. However, by an accident the message is not
sent, and Romeo hears only of her death, he returns to Verona, but only to
take poison and die by her side. A moment later, the effect of the potion
wears off and Juliet recovers; she sees her lover dead beside her, and
kills herself in turn.
[Back]
The Tragical History
of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
(1601)
–
The
Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (1601) is the first
of the four great tragedies. The story was a widespread legend in
northern Europe. Shakespeare’s immediate source is likely to have been
Belleforest’s Histoires Tragiques (1559), and Belleforest’s own
version came from a 13th century Danish chronicler, Saxo Grammaticus.
–
But
Shakespeare also had another source: a play of the same name already
existed and is thought to have been a lost play by Thomas Kyd. There are
also parallels between Shakespeare’s play and Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy: both
have ghosts and a play within a the play; Kyd’s tragedy is about a father
seeking vengeance for his son, and Shakespeare’s is about a son avenging
his father. Shakespeare’s play is so subtle that Hamlet’s hesitations
have been among the most discussed subjects in criticism.
–
Hamlet’s
uncle, Claudius, has married Hamlet’s mother Gertrude, only a month after
the death of her husband, old Hamlet. Claudius has, moreover, ascended
the throne ignoring the claim of his nephew and with consent of the
court. Hamlet is then told by his father’s ghost that the latter has been
murdered by Clasudius. Hamlet pretends to be mad while planning for
revenge and at the same time trying to make sure about his uncle’s guilt.
–
A group of
actors arrived and Hamlet asks them to stage a play of murder before the
king, and the latter, conscience-stricken, leaves the performance before
it is through. Hamlet is now sure of his uncle’s guilt and decides to
kill the king, but he desists as he sees the villain praying. Hamlet then
goes to his mother’s room and there he kills an important courtier,
Polonius, whose daughter Ophelia Hamlet loves, mistaking him for his
uncle.
–
For this slaughter, Hamlet is sent of England by his uncle, to be beheaded
there upon arrival. But Hamlet escapes and comes home, and he meets
Polonius’s son Laertes in a fencing match as arranged by his uncle, in
which all the principal characters including Hamlet, Claudius, Gertrude,
Laertes die in the final scene.
–
The
revelation that old Hamlet was murdered by Claudius does not lead directly
to aciton, but to Hamlet feigning madness, and to the play within the
play, before which Claudius, in the audience, betrays his guilt.
Claudius’s self-betrayal is only incriminating to Hamlet and his friend
Horatio. Either Hamlet mistrusts the Ghost who may not have been truly
the spirit of his father, or it is part of his vengeance to inform
Claudius that his guilt is known.. However, one of the beliefs about
ghosts current in Shakespeare’s time was that they were sometimes evil
spirits assuming the disguise of dead men.
–
Hamlet
embodies Shakespeare’s own ideal, an idealist: What a piece of work is man
/ How noble in reason / How infinite in faculty/ in form and moving how
express and admirable / in action how like an angel / in apprehension how
like a god the beauty of the world the paragon of animals.
–
Hamlet’s
hostility extends not merely to Claudius, but to the whole court, in so
far as they are or may be subservient to Claudius. Thus Hamlet behaves
brutally to Ophelia because he suspects that she is used as a kind of
decoy by Claudius and by her father, Poilonius.
–
Laertes,
Ophelia’s brother, is a contrast to Hamlet in being a straightforward
revenger: he immediately seeks the death of Hamlet for causing the deaths
of his father and sister. But his impetuosity puts him on the side of
evil, for it causes him to connive with Claudius. These features of the
play suggests that Shakespeare was exposing traditional beliefs about
revenge as over-simplified. Revenge is difficult if we do not feel the
guilty man to be guilty.
–
Furthermore,
revenge does not solve evil, if evil lies in a complex situation: ‘The
time is out of joint; O cursed spite / That ever I was born to set in
right. Finally, revenge itself may be morally wrong: what was the Ghost
on earth?
[Back]
King Lear
–
King
Lear (1605), also a tragedy, tells the story of King Lear who
wishes to divide his kingdom and give it to his daughters: Goneril, Regan
and Cordelia. Foneril and Regan flatter him but Cordelia refuses to
conform to her father’s demand for a public expression of her love for him
and speaks her mind. So he leaves the kingdom to Goneril and Regan while
Cordelia, dowryless, is married to the King of France.
–
Goneril and
Regan treat their old father badly and he becomes mad and wanders in the
storm. Cordelia learns of this and comes back with an army. She meets
Lear and with her care cures him of his madness, but they were defeated in
battle and are taken prisoner. Goneril and Regan in the meanwhile both
fall in love with Edmund, a handsome young man.
–
Out of
jealousy, Goneril poisons Regan and then commits suicide. Regan’s husband
has been killed by a servant after he has cruelly plucked out the eyes of
an old courtier, Gloucester, Edmund’s father. At the end, Cordelia and
Lear die and Goneril’s husband Albany alone lives to rule the kingdom.
There are some points worthy of notice: the change of Lear situation, the
real madness of Lear and the pretended madness of Edgar, the main plot
with the subplot of Gloucester and his sons Edmund and Edgar.
[Back]
Macbeth
–
Macbeth,
one of the four great tragedies, is about an historical king of Scotland
who reigned approximately from 1045-58. The tragedy is the conversion of
a good man into a wholly evil one. Macbeth begins as the heroic warrior
who defends Scotland against a triple enemy: the king of Norway has
invaded Scotland in alliance with the open rebel Macdonwald and the secret
rebel Cawdor.
–
After his
victory, Macbeth is confronted by a triple enemy assailing his own soul:
the witches; his own evil desires; and his wife, who reinforces these
desires. He first encounters the witches, who predict that he is to be
king of Scotland, after being made Thane (Lord) of Cawdor. As Macbeth
knows nothing of Cawdor’s part in the rebellion and invasion, both
prophecies are to him equally incredible. The second is, however,
immediately confirmed by emissaries from Duncan, king of Scotland.
–
Macbeth is
now also lord of Cawdor and finds himself haunted by thoughts of
bloodthirsty ambition: he becomes his soul’s own secret enemy. The
witches and his own desire would not in the end have been sufficient to
cause him to murder the king, but Lady Macbeth dedicates herself to
reinforcing his ambition. Macbeth is thus brought to murder Duncan,
though in a state of horror at the deed, and become a hardened man though
a restless and desperate one; he proceeds to the murder of Banquo, whose
children the witches have predicted will succeed him on the throne, and
then degenerates into massacre and tyranny.
–
The play
exemplifies one of the beliefs of Shakespeare’s time: that the soul of man
is the pattern of the state, and that where evil breaks into the soul of a
king it will extend over the state he rules. Points to think about: the
function of sheer force of circumstances in the evil deeds of Macbeth (the
prediction of the witches, the visit of Duncan to his castle to spend the
night) and the opposite directions of mental developments of Macbeth and
Lady Macbeth.
[Back]
Othello
–
Othello is again a tragedy. Othello, the central character of the
play, is a dark faced Moor serving as commander of Venetian forces against
the Turks. He is highly valued by the Venetian for his military prowess,
but he is first and last a soldier, a member of a military community,
trusting and trusted by his brother officers. Consequently it is as
astonishing to him when Desdemona, a conventional Venetian aristocratic
girl, leaves her home to marry him, as it is outrageous to her indignant
father, Brabantio.
–
Venice urgently needs Othello to defend Cyprus against the Turks, so that
Brabantio is forced to accepts the match; however he warns Othello that a
girl who has behaved so unpredictably once may prove as unreliable a wife
as she has been a daughter. Othello is in rapture; his bliss is greater
for its incredibility, so that he naively imagines himself transported
into a heaven on earth.
–
But his
junior officer, Iago, has motives of resentment against him; the most
concrete of these is that the Florentine, Cassio, has been promoted over
his head. Moreover, he is himself a cynic who has a low opinion of human
nature and of the scope for genuine happiness.
–
Partly as a
double revenge against Othello and against Cassio, partly as a cynical
game the object of which is to bring Othello down to his own level of
reality, he contrives first to disgrace Cassio temporarily, and then to
insinuate into Othello’s mind the suspicion, mounting by degrees to
certainty, that Cassio and Desdemona are conducting a secret love affair.
In Othello’s mind the circumstances make this affair more than plausible:
he has the habit of trusting Iago as his confidential officer;
–
Desdemona
has come to him out of a foreign society; Cassio is the sort of man who
would have been considered an eligible husband for her. Until their
marriage, Othello had had a single-minded dedication to his military
vocation; the marriage has enriched this dedication, since it was
Desdemona’s admiration for him as a soldier that attracted her to him; he
now finds that his jealousy has divided his single-mindedness and is
destroying his integrity. Accordingly he murders her, in the belief that
heavenly justice is on his side.
–
Desdemona,
however, has been resented as one of the most innocent of all
Shakespeare’s heroines, for whom adultery is unimaginable, and her
innocent goodness has won the heart of her lady companion, Emilia, who is
Iago’s wife. Emilia, who has been ignorant of Iago’s plot but has
unintentionally assisted him in it, realizes his guilt and publicly
exposes him; Othello, restored to his dignity, makes a final speech of
self-assessment, and kills himself.
Shakespeare’s Literary Achievements
–
character-creations: In different types of dramas he created a whole
gallery of well-drawn characters in all their variety, from Richard III to
Henry V, from Romeo to Hamlet, from Rosalind to Desdemona, from Dogberry
to the Fool in Lear, from the Duke of Vienna in Measure for Measure to
Prospero in The Tempest, from Iago to Iachimo in Cymbeline, from Lay
Macbeth to Miranda. Shakespeare’s characters are usually not simply type
characters but they are individuals representing certain types.
–
Shakespeare
often uses contrasts to give his characters greater vividness. Thus,
there is the contrast between Hamlet and Leartes, between Cordelia and her
sisters, between Edgar and Edmund, and so on.
–
learns from
and improves upon his predecessors, different from classical drama:
Shakespeare not only learned from the English dramatic tradition and from
his predecessors such as Kyd, he also greatly advanced and innovated the
English Drama. His plays have a much wider range of time, space and
events which went beyond the classical unities of drama: action, place and
time.
–
psychological analysis of characters: The inner workings of his important
figures are generally shown to be very intricate, and the poet reveals the
thinking process usually in a very detailed, analytical way, often through
the use of soliloquies.
–
plot-construction: He did not invent plots for his plays, but took stories
from other sources. For example, the dramatic irony which involves making
actor or actress on the stage do certain ridiculous or pathetic things
just because he or she is ignorant of some information known to other
people and to the audience
–
language:
Shakespeare used the English Language with the greatest freedom and ease,
so that almost all the speeches fit all the characters He used 16,000
words; fit speeches for different characters on different occasions;
different styles; master of blank verse
–
the creation
of women characters, against sexual and racial discriminations: Very
often the central characters of his comedies women, superior to men in
intellect. Therefore, there is Portia in Merchant of Venice, Rosalind in
As You Like It. There are lots of lively women characters such as Lady
Macbeth, Cordelia, Juliet, Desdemona.
[Back]
English
Literature of the First Quarter of the 17th Century
Drama of Shakespeare’s Contemporaries: Ben Jonson
–
Ben Jonson,
Shakespeare’s contemporary and most distinguished rival, was born in
London, the son of a clergyman. He wrote 14 comedies and two tragedies.
His universally acknowledged masterpieces are the comedies Volpone and The
Alchemist, and a tragedy Sejanus.
–
Jonson was
also a fine poet. He produced a body of fine poetry which influenced the
form of later lyric verse and brought the masque to its highest degree of
perfection. (A masque is a courtly entertainment of drama, dance, and
music, popular in the Elizabethan Age. He is also the author of a little
lyric “To Celia.”
–
Jonson was
also a scholar and a critic. He was the acknowledged poet, scholar and
critic of his day. A group of poets loved to listen to his talks in the
Mermaid Tavern and called themselves Sons of Ben. He insisted on a careful
study of the old Greek and Roman masters and took a firm stand for the
three unities of time, place and action. He was known for his comedies of
humours, including Every Man in His Humour and Every Man Out of His Humour.
–
A humour,
that is, a dominant peculiarity of character determining a person’s
behaviour, thoughts and manner of speech. Every character in Jonson
comedies personifies a definite humour, such as greed, vanity, etc.
The Decline of Drama
English drama declined
after the first decade in the 17th century, with such writers as John
Maston, John Webster, John Ford with their tragedies of blood and Thomas
Middleton, Philip Massinger and James Shirley with their comedies and
domestic dramas.
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English Prose in the First Decade of the 17th
Century
–
Politician,
philosopher and essayist, Bacon rose to the rank of lord chancellor,
before being dismissed from that office in the same year in which he
attained it in 1621 for accepting bribes. Throughout his life, he
appealed to the English sovereigns, first to Queen Elizabeth I, and then
to James I, to subsidize an ambitious project for scientific research. It
is, however, as an essayist, and, more importantly, as one of the earliest
theoreticians of scientific methodology for which Bacon was to become
famous.
–
Bacon’s
major writings include The Advancement of Learning, which is a part of his
ambitious work Instauratio Magna, Novum Organum
(The New Instrument), also part of Instauratio Magna,
The New Atlantis, and The Essays, or Counsels,
Civil and Moral.
–
The
Advancement of Learning, written in English, is about knowledge. He puts
knowledge into different kinds, knowledge acquired by divine revelation
and knowledge acquired by the exercise of human faculties without
revelation, which can be further divided into history, poetry and
philosophy.
–
Novum Organum,
written in Latin,
is more important than The Advancement of Learning. His aim was to
describe a method of gaining power over nature through a complete and
correctly founded system of knowledge. Knowledge must be acquired by
experience and experiment, ie inductively. The obstacles to true
knowledge are false assumptions which Bacon calls Idols.
–
The New
Atlantis is a philosophical tale in the tradition of More’s Utopia. The
title is an allusion to the mythical island described by Plato in his
dialogue. Bacon’s island is called Bensalem and its chief glory is its
university Solomon’s House. Unlike the English universities of Bacon’s
day, this is devoted to scientific research.
–
Bacon’s
literary reputation rests mainly on his Essays which represent a series of
terse observations in the style of Seneca rather than the more fluid
meditations to be found in the writings of Montaigne who is credited with
originating the essay as a distinctly modern form.
–
Essays
was first
published in 1597 and issued in its final form in 1625 with 58 essays. It
has generally considered as an important landmark in the development of
English prose and the first collection of essays in the English language.
These essays are marked with their clearness, brevity and force of
expression.
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Robert Burton
Besides Bacon, the first
quarter of the 17th century also produced a prominent prose writer Robert
Burton. Burton was from a country gentleman’s family. He graduated from
Oxford University and took orders. Burton’s fame mainly rests on The
Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), a pseudoscientific book of medicine.
Non-dramatic English poetry
In the First Quarter of the 17th
century
There were two distinct
main streams: the metaphysical school led by John Donne and the Cavalier
poets who modeled their poetry upon that of Ben Jonson and who called
themselves Sons of Ben.
John Donne
(1572-1631)
–
Poet and
Dean of St Pauls and prose writer. He is regarded as one of the most
important writers of the Renaissance period. He went to Oxford and
studied law at Lincoln’s Inn. He was said to be “a great visitor of
ladies, a great frequenter of plays, a great writer of conceited verse.
–
Donne’s
works cover an enormous variety of genres and subjects. They include
religious works such as the Devotions on Emergent Occasions (1624), Essays
in Divinity (1651), a considerable number of sermons, a collection of
paradoxes and in poetry, satires, lyrics, elegies, epigrams, verse letters
and divine sonnets. Donne was also a famous preacher.
–
Donne wrote
much love poetry in his youth. Songs and Sonnets, a group of 55 short
love lyrics belonged to the early period of his poetic career. In these
poems, the poet expressed his genuine sentiments of love, with cynical
comments on the inconstancy of women in love or fiery utterances of unruly
passion mixed with coarse suggestions of sensual love.
–
They
departed from the Petrarchan tradition of love poetry which had been
adopted by many English poets of the late 16th century, idealizing the
women loved. Women are very often described as fickle in love (“Go and
catch a falling star”).
–
Donne frequently stresses physical and sensual love based on the classical
tradition of the ancient Roman writer Ovid. What’s more, Donne employed
intricate reasoning through the use of conceits or far-fetched comparisons
and involved imageries. This resulted in a style extremely artificial,
witty but obscure and bizarre and unreal In a poem entitled
–
The Flea the
poet considers the flea as their marriage bed. For, sucking the blood of
the lover and that of the mistress, the flea has brought about the union
of the two. Consequently, killing the flea would mean the murder of three
lives: that of the lover, that of the mistress and that of the flea
pregnant with their blood.
–
Divine
Poems, consisting of 26 holy sonnets, is a mixture of rational analyses
and emotional outbursts similar to his love lyrics exemplified by “Death
be not proud”.
The metaphysical
school refers to a succession of 17th century poets such as John Donne,
George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, Andrew Marvell, Henry Vaughan and
Abranham Cowley.
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