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THE AGE OF SHAKESPEARE (1558-1625)
Characteristics of the Age
The Age of Shakespeare, known as the golden age of literature, extends from the accession of Elizabeth in 1558 to the death of James I in 1625. It was an era of peace, of economic prosperity, of stability, of liberty and of great explorations. It was an age of both contemplation and action; an era which was conducive to unprecedented efflorescence of various genres of literature, especially drama. Let us now consider the characteristics of the age, which made England, in the words of John Milton, "a noble and puissant nation, rousing herself, like a strong man after sleep, and shacking her invincible locks."
1. Political Peace and Stablility: Elizabeth, a wise and sagacious Queen, followed the policy of balance and moderation both inside and outside the country. A working compromise was reached with Scotland, the rebellious Northern barons were kept in check. So, she could successfully establish peace in traditionally disturbed border areas.
2. Social Contentment: It was an age of great social contentment. The rapid rise of industrial towns gave employment to thousands, who were previously idle and discontented. Increasing trade and commerce enriched England, and, for the first time, systematic care was taken of the poor and the needy. The wealthy were taxed to support the poor or to give them employment. Social contentment and the improvement in living greatly contributed to the development of literary activity.
3. Religious Tolerance: The Queen, who followed a wise policy of moderation and compromise, effected religious tolerance and peace. Upon her accession she found the whole nation divided against itself. The North was largely Catholic, and the South was strongly Protestant. Scotland followed the Reformation intensely, and Ireland zealously pursued its old religious traditions. The energy of the people was dissipated in futile religious and sectarian conflicts. Elizabeth favoured both religious parties and the Catholics and the Protestants acted together as followers of the Queen. People were granted full religious freedom. It was Elizabeth who made the Anglican church a reality. Anglicanism is a kind of compromise between Catholicism and Protestantism. Both the Protestants and the Catholics accepted the church. The defeat of Spanish Armada established the Reformation as a fact in England. All Englishmen were influenced by the Queen's policy of religious tolerance and were united in a magnificent national enthusiasm. The mind of man, now completely free from religious fears and persecutions, turned with a great creative impulse to other forms of activity. An atmosphere of religious peace gave great stimulus to literary activity. It is the golden age of literature, an age in which Renaissance, temporarily arrested by the religious quarrels of the previous era, could come to full flowering.
4. The Queen's Popularity and the Upsurge of Patriotism: Queen Elizabeth, a lady of sterling qualities, loved England ardently and she made her court one of the most brilliant courts in Europe. The splendour of her court dazzled the eyes of the people, and, combined with her policies, did much to increase her popularity and prestige. Worship of the Virgin Queen became the order of the day. She Was Spenser's Gloriana, Releigh's Cynthia, and Shakespeare's "fair vestal throned by the West". Pinto remarks that people "rightly saw in her the incarnate spirit of the nation and the age". Even the foreigners saw in her "a keen calculating intellect that baffled the ablest statesmen in Europe."
An unprecedented upsurge of patriotism was seen everywhere. Legouis writes: "It sprang from England's growing consciousness of her strength, her pride of prosperity, the spirit of adventure which animated her sons, and caused them always to aspire to the first place, and her faith in her own destiny." Long writes that Queen Elizabeth "with all her vanity and inconsistency, steadily loved England and England's greatness, and that she inspired all her people with the unbounded patriotism which exults in Shakespeare, and with the personal devotion which finds a voice in the Faery Queen. Under her administration the English national life progressed by gigantic leaps rather than by slow historical process, and English literature reached the very highest point of development."
5. Expansion: In English history this is the most remarkable epoch for the expansion of both mental and geographical horizons. It is an age of great thought and great action, an age which appeals to the eye, the imagination and the intellect. New knowledge was pouring in from all directions. The great voyagers Hawkins, Forbisher, Raleigh and Drake brought home both material and intellectual treasures from the East and the West. Pinto remarks that by the end of the sixteenth century "the nation was conscious of the fact that it was playing a memorable and heroic part in the great adventure of exploring the wonders of the New World, discovered in the East and the West." The spirit of adventure and exploration fired the imagination of writers. The spirit of action and adventure paved the way for the unusual development of dramatic literature, for drama progresses in an era of action and not of speculation.
Commenting on expansion in Shakespearean England, S. A. Brooke writes: "All over Europe, and especially in Italy, now closely linked to England, the Renaissance had produced a wild spirit of exhausting all the possibilities of human life. Every form, every game of life was tried, every fancy of goodness or wickedness followed for the fancy's sake. Men said to themselves, "Attempt, Attempt". The act accompanied the thought. England at last shared in this passion, but in English life it was directed. There was a great liberty given to men to live and do as they pleased, provided the queen was worshipped and there was no conspiracy against the state. That much direction did not apply to purely literary production. Its attemptings were unlimited. Anything, everything was tried, especially in the drama."
6. Foreign Travels and Fashions: Italy, the home of Renaissance, fascinated the Elizabethans. All liked to visit Italy and stay there for some time. People were fond not only of Italian books and literature, but also of Italian morals and manners. The Elizabethan literature was immensely influenced by contemporary literary activities. Legouis points out: "The literature of England was enriched by an immense looting of Italian treasures, and the spoils carried back to the island were there exhibited not only as marvellous works of art, but also as objects of reprobation."
7. Backwardness of the Age: It was an age of great diversity and contradictions. It was an age of light and darkness, the age of reason and unreason, the age of wisdom and the age of foolishness, the age of hope and of despair. The barbarity and backwardness, the ignorance and superstition of the Middle Ages still persisted. Disorder, violence, bloodshed and tavern brawls still prevailed. The examples of Dogberry and Verges in Much Ado prove that the police was inefficient. It was unsafe to go out after nightfall as the streets were dark and deserted. Highway robberies, as mentioned in Henry IV, Part I, were very common. The barbarity of the age is seen in such brutal sports as bear baiting, cock fighting and bull fighting, to which numerous references are found in the plays of Shakespeare. Despite the advance of science and learning people still believed in superstitions, ghosts, witches, fairies, charms and omens all sorts. Supernaturalism is a cardinal feature of Shakespearean drama.
Conclusion: In spite of the ignorance and superstition, violence and brutality, "the Age of Elizabeth was a period rarely equalled for exuberance, courage and accomplishment—an age pervaded by expansiveness of mind and spirit, hope and action. The Elizabethans felt that the world was an oayster and they held the knife to open it." It was an agewhich "men lived intensely, thought intensely and wrote intensely."
The Impact of the renaissance on 71-75
1. Influence of Humanism: Renaissance had a profound impact on the ideals of life. It liberated human thinking from the irrational and inhuman restrictions of medieval times. The ascetic ideal of the Middle Ages was replaced by humanism and the ideal of the enjoyment of life. Man had again grown conscious of the glory and wonder of the creation and the beauty of human life and human body. The Hellenic view of life, known as humanism, remarkably influenced literature. The Greek attitude towards life was gay and full of meaning. Through the works of Greek writers Englishmen learnt that life was to be enjoyed, every single piece of life had a significance and value of its own, and that all was meant for human individual who was regarded as the crown of creation, and, therefore, he was regarded as the most significant unit of life on earth. The cramping influences of medievalism with its religious piety and asceticism became dead letters. A new sense of life, of glory dawned and the Elizabethans lived in an era when
Bliss was in that dawn to be alive,
To be young was very heaven !
Hudson remarks: "An appetite for literature was thus fostered, and an immense impetus given to the sense of beauty and everything that made for the enrichment of life."
The conception of man as "the crown of creation is the key factor in all Renaissance literature. Marlowe, Shakespeare, Spenser and all other dramatists, poets and writers of this period were great humanists because their writings are suffused with the glorification of man and human life. Shakespeare's Hamlet exclaims: "What a piece of work is man !" During this era it was said:
Glory to the man in the highest
For man is the crown of things."
This attitude towards human life was not only more gay, it was one of greater honour and greater responsibility. This is the emotional complex which predominates the plays of Shakespeare and the poetry of Spenser. "Character is destiny" essentially partakes this very belief. Shakespeare writes:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
Humanism gave birth to individualism and worldliness. The ancient Hellenic view was centred on this present world rather than on some future one. It was an individualistic view, which is expressed in ancient Greek literature. The result of this individualism was that the Renaissance men cared not at all for authority. They were free in making their own decisions and this freedom found expression in the plays of Marlowe. The writers directed their gaze inward, and became deeply interested in the problems of human personality. During the Elizabethan period, under the influence of humanism, the stress was laid on the qualities which distinguish human beings from one another, and give an individuality and uniqueness to human personality. Shakespeare, the greatest student of human nature, minutely depicts the individual qualities of his characters and vividly reveals their psychic states. All-round development of human personality was stressed during this period. The Renaissance men had the insatiable hunger for all the experiences that this world has to offer. The plays of Marlowe, the poetry of Spenser and the prose of Bacon are the best expressions of individualism in the Shakespearean Age. Boas writes: "For a distinguishing note of Renaissance Age, intoxicated by the magnificent possibilities opened to it on every side, was an uncontrollable aspiration after the ideal, a scorn of earthly conditions, a soaring passion that sought to scale the infinitudes of power, beauty, thought and love. It is this spirit—ever one, and the same — that breathes in Sir Thomas More's vision of a perfect society; in Spenser's pattern of the highest, holiest manhood; in Bacon's clarion call to the conquest of all knowledge, and in the heroic deeds and speeches of Sidney, Gilbert and Grenville. But nowhere does it find more characteristic vent in Marlowe's Tamburlaine."
One of the most important works during the Renaissance was Machiavelli's Prince, which immensely influenced the thought and literature of this period and strengthened the expression of individualism. He taught an opportunistic, utilitarian philosophy of worldly success and Essays. self-aggrandisement. His influence is reflected in Bacon's
Renaissance is attacked as "lacking in spirituality", as "being grossly sensual and human". To Hulme Renaissance represents one great vicious mental trend: the trend of ignoring the original sin and arrogating to the human spirit more than its due, of grabbing impiously for man those things that essentially belong to God. He thinks that the whole point of Renaissance was its joy in the living forms, as if the formal and external side did not exist for it. This opinion is hardly tenable because Renaissance represented a changed conception of morality. Lyly wrote Euphues not merely as an exercise in a new kind of prose, but with the serious purpose of inculcating righteousness of living based on self-control. Sidney wrote his Arcadia in the form of fiction in order to expound an ideal of moral excellence. Spenser wrote his Faerie Queene with a view to fashioning "a gentleman or noble person in virtuous or noble disposition." In the works of Shakespeare also we find the same moral profundity. Thus, the charge of want of moral profundity and spirituality in Renaissance is futile. A new standard of moral edification was insisted upon during this period. This tradition of moral edification "was imbued with the idea of public service..... poets were the voices of those sanities and wisdoms they considered as necessary for public service. They wrote from their capacities, they addressed themselves to the active capacities of their audience. An implicit moral purpose — profit countenancing delight — circumscribed what they wrote."
2. Influence of the Spirit of Discovery and Adventure on Renaissance Literature: The influence of the spirit of discovery and adventure runs through the literature of Elizabethan Age and even after it. The poets and dramatists were influenced by it. The spirit of adventure is in essence romantic. During Elizabethan England action and imagination went hand in hand. The dramatists and poets held up the mirror to the voyagers. The cult of the sea is the oldest note in literature. In Elizabethan period ocean became the highway of national progress and adventure, and by virtue of shipping Englishmen became competitors for the dominion of the earth. Frobisher, Raleigh, Drake and Hawkins discovered and conquered new lands, and expanded the geographical space of England. The stories of the voyagers, who in the new commercial activity of the country, penetrated into remote lands, and saw the strange monsters and savages which, the poets now added to fairies, dwarfs and giants of the Romances. We may trace everywhere in Elizabethan literature the impression made by the wonders told by the sailors and captains, who explored and fought from the North Pole to the Southern seas. The voyagers themselves wrote down the account of their adventures, and two of these accounts proved very popular—that of Hakluyt's Voyages and Discoveries and Purchas' Pilgrimage. The voyagers, in the words of Mair, are the makers of "our modern English prose and some of its noblest passages." They were not scholars and had little knowledge of literary artifices. Hence they are the pioneers in the field of writing plain, unadorned English prose, and the plain and direct telling of a stirring story.
New lands had been discovered, new territories opened up; new wonders had been exposed, which were, perhaps, the first fruits of greater wonders to come. Spenser makes the voyagers his warrant for his excursion into fairyland:
Whoever heard of the Indian Peru !
Or who in the venterous vessel measured
The Amazons huge river now found true?
Or fruitfullest Virginia who did ever view?
Yet all these were, when no man did them know
Yet have from wisest ages hidden been
And later times things more unknown shall show.
The spirit of adventure, caught from the voyagers, got its fullest and finest expression in Elizabethan drama. Walter Raleigh writes: "Without the voyagers Marlowe is inconceivable." His imagination in each one of his plays in preoccupied with the lust of adventure, and the wealth and power adventure brings. Tamburlaine, eastern conqueror though he is, is at heart an Englishman of the school of Hawkins and Drake. Dr. Faustus assigns to his serviceable spirits tasks that might have been studied from the writings of Hakluyt,
I'll have them fly to India for gold
Ransack the ocean for orient pearl
And search all corners of the new round world
For pleasant fruits and princely delicates.
In Shakespeare's Tempest and Pericles is the terror of storm and shipwreck with all its dramatic poignancy.
The spirit of adventure provided figures of speech, metaphors and symbols to dramatists. The Merchant of Venice, Othello, The Twelfth Night and The Tempest testify to his accessibility to its spirit. Milton is full of allusions to it. Satan's journey through chaos in the Paradise Lost is the occasion for a whole series of metaphors drawn from seafaring. In Samson Agonistes Dalila comes in
Like a stately ship
With all her bravery on, and tackle trim,
Sails filled, and streamers waning
Courted by all the winds that hold them play.
Samson speaks of himself as one
Like a foolish pilot, have shipwrecked
My vessel trusted to me from above,
Gloriously rigged.
The influence of the voyagers and of discoveries persisted long after ' rthe first bloom of Renaissance had flowered and withered. Defoe's Robinson Crusce, Coleridge's The Ancient Mariner and many other works show the influence of Purchas' Pilgrimage.
3. Influence of the revival of Classical Learning: The classical revival of learning influenced the content, style and technique of literature. Plato's influence is remarkable. The Platonic doctrine that poets are divinely inspired was well known even to the common man. Mair says: "In one or the other form the rediscovery of Plato proved to be the most valuable part of the Renaissance gift from Greece." The doctrines of Symposium influenced Spenser's Hymn to Intellectual Beauty. They influenced almost all the courtly writers of the period. Plato's Republic encouraged new ways of thinkig and inspired of More’s Utopia and Bacon’s New Atlantis.
Mair remarks: "The reading of the ancients awakened new delight in the melody and beauty of language: men became intoxicated with words." The study of logic was replaced by the study of rhetoric, and it coloured all literature. The rhetoricians encouraged embellishments and decoration of language for language's sake. The literary affectation called Euphuism was directly based on the precepts of the handbooks on rhetoric. Its author John Lyly only elaborated and made more precise tricks of phrase and writing which had been used as exercises in the schools of his youth. The prose of his school with its fantastic delight in exuberance of figure and sound, owed its inspiration to Cicero, and in the decorations with which it was embellished to the elder Pliny and to later writers of his kind.
The long declamatory speeches and the sententiousness of early drama were directly modelled on Seneca. Latinisms and the use of sonorous and high sounding words were common. There was wholesale importation of foreign words, both French and Latin, and scholars like Cheke, Ascham and Wilson were compelled to raise a warning finger against the danger of such excessive use of what was then called "inkborn terms". They stood for clarity, ease, simplicity and the use of common English words; but their efforts could not succeed.
The sonnet and the blank verse are the two imported metres which were used with artistic adroitness and excellence in Elizabethan literature. Various poetic genres, writes Legouis, "in which the ancients and the moderns had won distinction — pastorals, epics, comedies, tragedies, lyrics of every kind, every kind of prose romances, criticism, history and philosophy" were skilfully and successfully attempted. The writers of this period aimed at producing a literature that will surpass the literatures of ancient Greece and Rome.
4. The Renaissance Spirit of Rational and Scientific Quest: The Renaissance also fostered the spirit of questioning, of rational and scientific quest for truth. Reason had been put forth as the best guiding factor in human life. Reason wedded to liberty and a sense of responsibility flouted authority if it obstructed the free development of human personality. This marks the beginning of a scientific outlook. The realization of the characteristics of Nature and the power of God were sought for through reason."Make an appeal to the reason of man" became the ideal of many writers." Bacon is the high priest of this attitude. He developed the inductive method of research. The spirit of rational inquiry is at the very root of his major works. Ben Jonson also represents the rational and free approach. The theme of the Paradise Lost is the fall of man due to his refusal to obey reason.
5. Renaissance and Reformation: Hudson writes: "While the Renaissance aroused the intellect and the aesthetic faculties, the Reformation awakened the spiritual nature; the same printing press which diffused the knowledge of the classics put the English Bible into the hands of the people; and the spread of an interest in religion was inevitably accompanied by a deepening of moral earnestness." Reformation is briefly explained as the religious movement arising out of the revolt of Martin Luther against Pope's supremacy; and the consequent establishment by him of a new and reformed church founded upon scriptural authority. The consequences produced by the conjunction of the Renaissance and the Reformation resulted in the growth of a new spirit of nationalism, repudiation of Pan-European Papal authority, the growth and development of national languages, and, ultimately, the growth and development of Puritanism.
Puritanism developed from new ethical forces released by Reformation. But the theology of Puritans was mainly derived from the philosophy of John Calvin (1509-64), known as Calvinism. Puritanism implies a strictly ethical life in conformity with the teachings of the Bible. An individual can attain salvation only due to his efforts. Thus, individualism was introduced in religion, which parallels the humanistic individualism which originated in Pagan philosophy and the popularity of the Hellenic view of life. The great English writers of this period— Ben Jonson, Milton, Bunyan etc.— are the true children of both Renaissance and Reformation.
It must be mentioned here that the combined product of humanism and Puritanism is called "Christian humanism". In Christian humanism the worldiness of Christianity has been modified by the individualistic emphasis on humanism. At the same time the purely secular character of humanism has been replaced by a metaphysical definition of human experience. Spenser and Milton represent Christian humanism.
Reformation encouraged the writing of theological prose, which influenced the development of English prose. We have already considered the works of Wycliff, who is "the morning star of Reformation", and William Tyndale's Translation of the New Testament. It was due to Reformation that the Bible became common property, and its language glided into all theological writing and gave it a literary tone. The Authorised Version of the Bible (1611) left imperishable mark on the evolution of English language and literature. S. A. Brooke points out: "Theological Reform stirred men to another kind of literary work. A great number of polemical ballads, pamphlets, and plays issued every year from obscure presses and filled the land. Poets like George Gascoigne and still more Barnaoby Rudge, represent in their work the hatred the young men had of the old religious system. It was a spirit which did not do much for literature, but it quickened the habit of composition, and made it easier."
6. Conclusion: The Age of Shakespeare, in which Renaissance finds its highest and most spontaneous expression, marks the real beginning of a very high order of literature. The enrichment of English language due to various factors which have already been discussed, facilitated the development of literature. S. A. Brooke writes: "Nor must one omit to say, that owing to this employment of life on so vast a number of subjects, and to the voyages, and to the new literatures searched into, and to the heat of theological strife, a multitude of new words streamed into the language, and enriched the vocabulary of imagination. Shakespeare used 15,000 words."
The literature of this period is romantic. Edward Albert remarks: "The romantic quest is for the remote, the wonderful, and the beautiful. All these desires were abundantly fed during the Elizabethan age, which is our first and greatest romantic epoch. On the other hand, there was the revolt against the past, whose graph was too feeble to hold in restraint the lusty youth of the Elizabethan Age; on the other, there was a daring and resolute spirit of adventure in literary as well as in other regions; and, most important of all, there was an unmistakable buoyancy and freshness in the strong wind of the spirit. It was the ardent youth of English literature, and the achievement was worthy of it."
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