THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY FROM THE DEATH OF CHAUCER TO THE RENAISSANCE (1400 -1516)

General Characteristics of the Age
The hundred years that followed Chaucer's death are the most barren in English literature. There was utter dearth of talent. It was an era of Chaucer's imitators who show little originality. Commenting on the literary scene of the fifteenth century, Vaughan and Moody write: "The enormous growth of English commerce and industry, and the consequent rise of the middle classes in number, wealth and leisure, resulted in a voracious public appetite for the output of literary mediocrity, a large part of which is purely utilitarian. The number of third-rate writers is very large—the works of over three hundred writers have been printed— and the quantity of their output is surprising. But the fact remains that the freshest and most spontaneous work is of popular origin. Songs and carols, ballads, and new remodelled plays of all sorts constitute the finest literature of this period."
1. Literary Barrenness: W. H. Hudson calls it "a long barren period". No talented poet, who could rank with Chaucer, was born during this period. Chaucer was the representative poet of the age, who expressed a free, secular spirit with remarkable technical excellence. He was endowed with a forward looking quality and anticipated modernity in numerous ways in literature. His successors spent a whole century panting and toiling after him in vain.
It is a period of Chaucer's imitators who dwelt on outworn themes. There is no freshness and originality in the poetry of this period. The sense of the beautiful seems to have died out with the sense of life and reality. Literature resumed its course as though Canterbury Tales had never been written. Lydgate and his contemporaries had not the genius to attune their muse to the changed and changing conditions, and so they fell back into medievalism. The living spirit of literature gave place- to a mere literary tradition. Lifeless imitation assumed the outworn garb of romance and allegory. Stopford A. Brooke remarks: "There was then a considerable school of imitators, who followed the style, who had some of the imaginative spirit, but who failed in the music and art of Chaucer." Scottish Chaucerians exhibited better performance in poetry.
The prose of this period is thin both in quality and quantity. The origin and development of drama distinguishes this barren period in poetry and prose.
2. Deficiency of Poetic Understanding: It was an epoch of change in the state of English language. Chaucer's followers failed to understand his sure and accurate versification and made a mess of his metrical art. Disappearance of inflection "e" and other inflections created a problem. When the final "e" had become entirely mute, Chaucer's line badly read and transcribed and later badly printed, seemed to be variable and irregular. The English verse form was thrown off its balance, and definitely recovered a sure rhythm with Spenser.
3. No Free Movement of Thought: The freedom of thought and expression was hampered during this period. Wycliff s reforms and his ideals, and Chaucer's secular spirit were overlooked. Religion and life values continued to degenerate and all attempts at reforms and free expression were stifled and crushed by those in power and authority. Persecution was employed to stamp out all efforts towards reform. So, literature which requires a free atmosphere for development, could not flourish during this period.
4. Poor State of Education: The poor state of education was also responsible for hampering the free movement of thought. Universities were not centres of intellectual activity. They had become the centres of endless and useless controversies over the dry abstractions of medieval philosophy. Outside these centres of learning, and especially among the fast rising middle classes, a mercenary and sordid spirit prevailed, which was hostile to intellectual interests of any kind. In fifteenth century there was nothing to inspire but much to repress literary genius. In this atmosphere of intellectual decadence no talented poet was born.
5. Political Changes: The political conflicts had a harmful effect on art and literature. The post-Chaucerian period was in the grip of wars, lawlessness, unrest and chaos. The powerful lords behaved in a shameless and irresponsible manner. The thirty years' struggle (1455-86) for power between the Houses of York and Lancaster, known as the War of Roses, shook the very foundations of the old order of feudalism. In Cade's rebellion and in the War of Roses the energy of England was violently destroyed. The frightful reign of Richard III followed. It marked the end of civil wars and feudalism. It was marked by a new growth of English national sentiment under the popular Tudors.
In the long reign of Henry VIII many purposeful and significant changes took place. For the first time England was freed from all ecclesiastical bondage in Parliament's famous Act of Supremacy. W. J. Long writes: "In previous reigns chivalry and the old feudal system had practically been banished; now monasticism, the third medieval institution with its mixed evil and good, received its deathblow in the suppression of monasteries and the removal of abbots from the House of Lords." Political stability, broad national outlook and modern secular spirit were achieved towards the close of the fifteenth century.
6. An Age of Preparation: The fifteenth century was the seed time for the germination of literature of high order in times to come. The introduction of the printing press by Caxton (in 1476?) was a historical event which made it possible for a book or an idea to reach the whole nation. Greek ideas and Greek culture gradually became popular. Man's spiritual. freedom was proclaimed in Reformation. Schools and universities were established in place of monasteries. With the growth of commerce men travelled about more. Great explorers discovered new trade routes. Renaissance was at hand. What the fifteenth century contributed to prose, drama and ballad literature is enough to show that it can justly be called the "seed time" of English literature.
POETRY
The greater part of poetry is imitative. Touches of genius and originality are found in a long beautiful poem The Flower and the Leaf, long ascribed to Chaucer himself, but not attributed to some author of his school. Chaucer was imitated both in England and Scotland. The Scottish Chaucerians show signs of freshness and originality as compared to English Chaucerians. The Engligh Chaucerians were poor imitators of their master's art and they contributed nothing to the advancement of poetry during fifteenth century.
The English Chaucerians
1. Thomas Occleve (1368-1450). His principal works include The Regement of Princes, written for the edification of Henry V, La Male Regle, autobiographical in nature, The Complaint of Our Lady and Occleve's Complaint. Moder of God is a minor poem. There is no originality in his poetry. He appears to be a dull and uninspired imitator of Chaucer. His style is decadent and shows the rapid degeneration that set in after Chaucer's death. His metre, usually the rime royal or couplets, is loose and sprawling.
2. John Lydgate (1370-1451). Lydgate, a learned Benedictine monk of Bury St. Edmunds, was the most prolific poet of this period. He wrote The Stork of Thebes, The Troye Book Falles of Princes and London Lack Penny. He imitated Chaucer with more labour than skill. The Storie of Thebes is a supposed addition to The. Canterbury Tales. He was not a skilled metrist. His poetry has none of the poetic gaces of Chaucer. He shares the common vices of the time — prolixity, lack of humour and pedantic allegory.
3. Stephen Hawes (1475-1530). He had an aptitude for allegory. As an imitator of Chaucer, he was highly influenced by the French aspect of his master's genius. He followed the author of the Romaunt of the Rose rather than that of The Canterbury Tales. His chief works include The Passetyme of Pleasure, The Example of Virtue, The Conversion of Swearers and Joyfull Medytacyon. He is the most uninspired among the English imitators of Chaucer. His allegorical methods are the crudest and his style is spoiled by the abundant use of Latinised words and awkward constructions. His only redeeming feature is that his Passetyme of Pleasure influenced Spenser.
4. John Skelton (1460-1529). Skelton, whose work comprises The Book of Colyn Clout, Why Come Ye Not To Court, Book of Philip Sparrow, The Tuning, Dirge on Edward IV and The Bowze of Court, was the most original and spirited English Chaucerian. He has little sense of beauty but deftly employs fresh metrical form of expression which suits his subject matter. He is an original force, though rough and undisciplined. He outgrows the imitative period. He started his career in conventional and imitative mode but soon broke away with it. His later work has freshness and individual flavour. He is a moralist with a message for his generation. He attacked the abuses of the church and the court. He appears at his best in satire. His satirical poems like Why Come Yet Not To Court are usually sharp, often witty, and nearly always alive.
As a metrist, Skelton neglected heroic verse and abandoned it in favour of short irregular line. The peculiar metre he used was known as "Skeltonics".
Skelton was a pioneer inasmuch as he broke up old conventions of verse, suggesting new forms, and infusing life and vigour in English poetry at a time when it was needed.
5. Minor Poets. A few minor poets did no more than keep the poetry alive. Hugh de Campeden's Sidrac, Thomas Chestre's Lay of Sir Launfal, and the translation of the Earl of Toulouse prove that romances were still taken from the French. William Lichfield's Complaint Between God and Man, and William Nassington's Mirrour of Life carry on the religious, and the Tournament of Tottenham the satirical poetry. John Capgrave's Chronicle of England and John Harding's rhyming Chronicle continue the historical poetry.
The Scottish Chaucerians
The best poetry of the fifteenth century was written in Scotland, where, though Chaucer's influence was clearly marked, the spirit of originality was far stronger than in the South. The Scottish poetry is characterised by the love of wild nature for its own sake, and the love of colour. It is also noticeable for the wittier and coarser humour. Scottish poetry is conspicuous for strong national elements. Commenting on the originality of Scottish poetry, Stopford A. Brooke writes: "The natural description of Chaucer, Shakespeare or even Milton, is not distinctly English. But in Scotland it is always the scenery of their own land that the poets describe. Even when they are imitating Chaucer they do not imitate his conventional landscape. They put in a Scottish landscape; and in the work of such men as Gawin Douglas the love of Scotland and the love of nature mingle their influences together to make him sit down, as it were, to paint, with his eye on everything he paints, a series of Scottish landscapes."
1. James 1 (1394-1437). His famous work King's Quair (book) is an allegorical romance which reveals the influence of Chaucer's Roman de la Rose and Troilus and Criseyde. It follows the Chaucerian model of the dream, the garden, and the introduction of allegorical figures. The stanza is rhyme royal, and the diction is the blend of Scottish and Chaucerian forms. It is an autobiographical poem which reveals the poet's love for LadyJane Beaufort, the niece of Henry IV. Though imitative of Chaucer, the King's Quair has an original element in it. The natural description is more varied, the colour is more vivid, and there is a modern self-reflective quality, a touch of mystic feeling which does not belong to Chaucer. It is considered "among the best of poems that appear between the periods of Chaucer and Spenser.”
2. Robert Henryson (1440-1506). Henryson’s the Testament of Cresseid is a continuation of Chaucer’s Troilus and has a fine tragic conclusion. Its diction is an artificial blend of that of Chaucer and of colloquial Scots. It is overloaded with descriptive epithets, but it is picturesque and dramatic.
Besides doing the imitative work, he did some original work also. In his hands the fables of Aesop were treated in a new fashion. They are long stories, full of pleasant dialogue, political allusions, and with elaborate morals attached to them. He also reanimated the short pastoral in his Robin and Makyne. His individuality also appears in the Garment of Good Ladies. Orpheus and Eurydice has some passages of real pathos. He is a typical poet of the Scottish soil. "Of all the Scottish poets of this time, Henryson has most rustic realism and savours most of the soil."
3. William Dunbar (1460?-1530?). He is considered "to be the chief of the Scottish Chaucerian poets. Though Dunbar wrote on subjects of passing interest and imitated the Chaucerian lines, he has an energy and pictorial quality that are quite individual. His The Thistle and the Rose is quite in the manner of Chaucer's early poetry. But much of his later poetry as his satirical ballads and Dance of Seven Deadly Sins combine vigour, broad humour, and homely pathos, which belong wholly to the character of the poet and to his native soil. Dunbar's poetic output is varied. The Golden Targe is of the common allegorical-rhetorical type. The Tua Moruit Wemen and the Wedo is a revival of the ancient alliterative
Dunbar is a great and gifted artist. Though he is without Chaucer's or Henryson's fine gifts of observation, he has attained a rare degree of virtuosity of style and versification. He cultivated the pictorial style and imparted musical quality to versification. He dazzles the eyes and ravishes the ears. He is the Burns of the fifteenth century, with something of that poet's passion for beauty, native humour and force of expression.
4. Gawin Douglas (1474-1522). He is the most scholarly and painstaking among the Scottish Chaucerians. But he lacks the native vigour of his fellows. The Palace of Honour is a typical allegory but it is remarkable for elaborate and careful workmanship. Conscience is a short poem that is without any poetical merit. His translation of Aeneid was done with competence and some poetic ability. His poems are remarkable for vivid, picturesque and sensuous descriptions of Scottish scenery.
5. Sir David Lyndsay (1490-1555). He was the last of the Scottish poets of the fifteenth century. He had no poetical gifts but had a strong sense of humour. The Dream is written in rhyme royal stanza and has the usual allegorical setting. Lyndsay's The Complaint to the King, and The Testament of the King's Papyngo are absorbed in the evils and sorrows of the people, in the desire to reform the abuses of the church, of the court, of party and of nobility. His verse has charms but it is neither sweet nor imaginative.
BALLADS
The ballad literature became immensely popular in the fifteenth century. It was, as we have seen, a poetically barren period. But songs and carols, ballads, and new and remodelled plays of all sorts constitute the finest literature of the century. Hudson writes: "Often rude in style, but often wonderfully direct and vigorous and full of real feeling, these ballads did much to foster a love of poetry among the English people." The English popular ballad used to be regarded as a variety of folk art, communally produced. It was then defined as "a narrative poem without any known author or any marks of individual authorship, such as sentiment and reflection, made in the first instance for singing, and connected, as its name implies, with the communal dance, but submitted to a process of oral tradition among people free from literary influences and fairly homogeneous." These ballads with strongly marked communal element flourished abundantly in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Over three hundred of them, in 1300 versians, have survived. Bishop Percy collected and published them for the first time in Reliques of Ancient Popular Poetry. These ballads are of two different types. The first type, known as the folk ballad, has some signs of group composition. The second type, known as the minstrel ballad, is certainly the result of individual composition. Some popular ballads are The Battle of Otterbum, The Nut Brown Maid and the numerous ballads of the Robinhood cycle.
The interest in ballad was revived during the Romantic period. From that period most of the "literary" ballads, poems were written consciously in the manner of the ancient ballad.
PROSE
The prose works of the fifteenth century have little originality and some artistic value. Latin still attracted the, writers. The first half of the fifteenth century was a period of narrow orthodoxy in which the cruelly persecuted Lollards were reduced to silence. Only in the second half of this century a few deserving works appeared in English prose. Prose translations of Latin works were attempted. There were no outstanding achievements in prose. The significant development was the waning influence of Latin and the increasing importance of English. More promising work was done in prose than in verse, for Englishmen had begun to shape the rough materials of their native tongue into literary form for the various purposes of instruction and entertainment.
The establishment of the printing press in 1476 by Caxton contributed much to the development and popularity of English prose. Albert writes about the development of prose in the fifteenth century: "Unlike the poetry of the time, prose suffered from no retrogression. There was perceptible increase in skill. Due to increased practices there was a growing perception of the beauties of rhythm and cadence and in the purely formal sense, there was the appearance of the prose paragraph. Above all the chief prose styles—the ornate, the middle and the plain—are appearing faintly and perceptibly. With their arrival rapid development of prose is assured."
The following writers contributed to the development of prose during this period:
1. Reginald Peacock (1390-1491). He departed from the radical reforms of Lollards and the conservative ideas of orthodox churchmen. He expressed his ideas in English instead of Latin. His famous works include Repressor of Overmuch Blaming of the Clergy and the Book of Faith. These two works are the landmarks in the history of English prose. Peacock's prose shows a marked advance on that of his predecessors. He had clarity, the gift of choosing homely examples and a wealth of words. His style is argumentative and opinionative. His prose is-often rugged and obscure. He prefers English words to those of Latin origin. As a writer of controversial prose, he is a pioneer.
2. Sir John Fortescue (1394?-1476?). He was a lawyer by profession. He wrote mainly in Latin. His English works, The Difference Between an Absolute and Limited Monarchy and the Government of England are remarkable for clear, easy, straightforward and simple style, and for the expression of the national sentiment. His works are the earliest examples of writing political prose.
3. The Paston Letters. This is the correspondence of the Paston family. It is of great interest to the students of literature. While scholars, clerks and nobles still wrote in Latin, the middle class was taking to English. These letters present a realistic picture of English life from 1422 to 1509 in a clear, fluent and straightforward style. These letters are written on a wide variety of topics and are an early example of writing epistolary prose.
4. Caxton (1421-1491). He was the first to establish printing press in England. He printed almost every work of real-quality known in his day, including those of Chaucer and Malory. Caxton made and printed twenty-four translations from French, Dutch and Latin texts. The Reciryell of the Histories of Troye and the Game and Playe of Chesse are his most remarkable translations. The introductions of many of his books are of great personal and general interest. He was conscious of his limitations as a literary artist. Caxton's style is uncertain because he is not clear how far to draw upon foreign tongues. Rickett writes: "But he has a ready instinct for good Saxon prose, and his prose is far more readable and attractive than some of the prose written about this tithe. One of his pleasentest qualities is the confidential note which he strikes— a note that was later on to be the distinctive note of English Essay." He wrote as he habitually spoke, avoiding too rustic terms, aiming at the comprehension of clerks and gentlemen. He is a mediocre translator, and the best of his prose occurs in his explanatory prefaces, in which he shows himself a good fellow and a man of cheerful disposition.
5. Sir Thomas Malory (1471). Malory's memorable work Morte D'Arthur was published by Caxton who pointed out that it was completed in the reign of King Edward IV, in the year 1470. Little is known about Malory's life, except the fact that he was the victim of the War of Roses. Morte D'Arthur is a compilation of French romances dealing with different cycles of romances like that of King Arthur and His Round Table. Malory's object was to digest the scattered stories into a connected summary. He has skilfully coordinated different romances but he could not impart unity and proportion to his narration. The author transports us to a distant country unreal, impossible, yet imaginatively coherent. Thus, he has cultivated unity of tone, manner and atmosphere. The narrator of these fanciful tales found a style which fits them well— simple, spontaneous, childish, monotonous but harmonious and cadenced. It is England's first book in poetic prose. It is the storehouse of those medieval legends which have most haunted English imagination. Matthew Arnold, Swinburne, Morris, and, above all, Tennyson whose Idylls of the King is based upon it, took inspiration from it.
DRAMA
The Beginnings: The origin of drama is religious. It grew out of the Liturgy (a religious ceremony) of the church. It played an important part during the Middle Ages. Arresting episodes from the life of Christ and Gospel stories were illustrated by a series of living pictures in which the performers acted the story in dumb shows. These dumb shows were mostly acted on Christmas and Easter. Bishops acted. In the beginning these tropes and liturgical plays were portions of the mass service itself. These tropes were written mostly in Latin and French. They were in vogue before as well as after the Norman conquest in 1066. The earliest mention of any dramatic representation in England referred to a performance of a Latin play in honour of St. Katherine, at Dunstable about 1110. Adam is the best known example of this type of play, written in French about twelfth century.
The following four stages are noticeable in the development of tropes:
1. Gradual development of dialogue and action into little Latin playlets.
2. Introduction of the vernacular in the midst of the Latin verse.
3. Composition of purely vernacular plays which were acted still within the precincts of the church. All of these plays were written for performance within the church or cathedral. The actors were presumably the monks, the priests and the choir boys in the service of the church.
4. The secularization of drama was effected by the circumstances of time. Drama, being the only source of recreation, attracted huge crowds on Christmas and Easter. The church was not capacious enough to provide room for the growing number of spectators. The obvious solution was to carry the performances outside into the spaces surrounding the church itself. This change of locality added to the introduction of the vernacular. Instructions were issued forbidding the clergy to act in the plays. Thus, drama gradually broke away from the service of the church. The play emerged from the church into the market place.
The Mysteries and the Miracles: The mystery or the miracle plays which grew out of the early liturgical drama came into being in the fourteenth century. There is a distinction between the two. The mysteries dealt with subjects taken from the Bible and the miracles with the lives of saints. At the festival of Corpus Christi miracle plays were represented in nearly all great towns in great connected sequences or cycles. These Corpus Christi Plays, or "collective mysteries" exhibited the whole history of the fall of man and his redemption. These plays, which had remained disconnected and heterogenous, were bound together into more or less formal cycles dealing with the main incidents in the Old and the New Testaments and, hence, revealed to the eager crowd the whole story of the world from the creation of Adam to the resurrection of Christ.
A true appreciation of these plays is possible only when we take into consideration contemporary theatre and audience. For staging the liturgical plays in the church some raised platform was employed to raise the actors above the crowd surrounding them. With the elaboration of the cycle of plays such stationary platforms must have become rather cumbersome and inadequate for the performance of various dramas, so that by the fourteenth century we find that the normal theatre was a pageant run on wheels and taken bodily to different stations throughout the town. Crude spectacular effects must have been aimed at. Noah's Ark was certainly in the likeness of a ship and a Dragon's mouth symbolised hell. Costuming, though grotesque and primitive, was an important feature of the performances.
The actors in these plays were all amateurs. The plays and the performances were distinctly the creation of the common people. The audiences were profoundly devout and sincere.
Both seriousness and laughter characterise these plays. Seriousness is represented by the figures of God and his angels, the terrible passion of Christ and His resurrection from the dead. The comic element is revealed through Noah's wife and Satan. They are, indeed, the prototypes of the clown who played a significant role in Shakespearean drama. There is freshness of fancy, a free treatment of material, a rich fund of humour, and at times a true sense of the profound and the tragic.
These plays gave to Englishmen a taste for theatrical shows and prepared the ground for the Elizabethan drama of a later date. In origin the English mystery plays have borrowed much from the French plays of a similar type, but fundamentally they breathed of the native soil.
The performance of the mystery plays was apportioned among the Trading Guilds of the different towns. Four of these cycles have come down to us complete: the Chester Cycle of 25 plays, the Coventry of 42, the Wakefield of 31, and the York of 48.
Moralities and Interludes: In the mystery and miracle, serious and comic elements are interwoven. Now they part. The Morality presents the serious and the Interlude the lighter side of things. The Morality was didactic and dealt in abstractions and allegory. The rise of this form of drama was very natural at a time when allegorical poetry was immensely popular. The characters embodied certain qualities and types —Sin, Grace, Repentance, Perseverance, Seven Deadly Sins, Good and Bad Angels, Everyman etc. Devil held a prominent place in the miracle plays. Vice was introduced as the humorous incarnation of evil and rcognised as the fun maker. "He is especially interesting as the direct forerunner of the clown of the Elizabethan Age. Gradually contemporary traits were imparted to the allegorical figures; for example, the Evil counsel in the play called John, the Evangelist is a portrait of the Tudor Age. Thus, the writer of Morality plays linked the drama with contemporary reality. The comic scenes in the moralities have in them the germs of that humour which enlivened the Interludes, from which it passed on to the writers of Elizabethan comedy. Rough farce in Bedford's Wit and Science is noteworthy. The cardinal feature of nearly all the Moralities was the pursuit of Everyman by Evil and his rescue by Wisdom and Conscience. In Moralities we come across, for the first time, the tragic soul struggle, the secret of progression of character and the delineation of conflicting passions, which became the marked features of Shakespearean tragedy. These plays have also a sense of construction and unity form which distinguish them from the chaotic heterogeneity of the mystery cycles. Everyman is considered as the best morality play.
The Interlude was a late product of the dramatic development of Morality play. It flourished about the middle of the sixteenth century. "It had several distinguishing points: it was a short play that introduced real characters, usually of humble rank, such as citizens and friars; there was an absence of allegorical figures, there was much broad farcical humour; and there were set scenes, a new feature in the English drama." The Interlude was far superior to Morality. John Heywood was the most gifted writer of the Interlude. His The Four P's and Johan Johan are memorable interludes. Rastell's A New Interlude and Medwall's Fulgens and Lucrece and Calesto Melebea are remarkable plays of this type. These plays introduce purely secular characteristics for the first time.