Elizabeth Age
The Elizabethan Age
1550 - 1620
[This is taken from William J. Long's Outlines of English and American Literature.]
This royal throne of kings, this scepter?d isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea, ...
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England!
Shakespeare, King Richard II
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND. In such triumphant lines, falling from the lips of that old imperialist John of Gaunt, did Shakespeare reflect, not the rebellious spirit of the age of Richard II, but the boundless enthusiasm of his own times, when the defeat of Spain?s mighty Armada had left England
“in splendid isolation,” unchallenged mistress of her own realm and of the encircling sea. For it was in the latter part of Elizabeth?s reign that England found herself as a nation, and became conscious of her destiny as a world empire.
There is another and darker side to the political shield, but the student of literature is not concerned with it. We are to remember the patriotic enthusiasm of the age, overlooking the frequent despotism of “good Queen Bess” and entering into the spirit of national pride and power that thrilled all classes of Englishmen during her reign, if we are to understand the outburst of Elizabethan literature. Nearly two centuries of trouble and danger had passed since Chaucer died, and no national poet had appeared in England. The Renaissance came, and the Reformation, but they brought no great writers with them. During the first thirty years of Elizabeth?s reign not a single important literary work was produced; then suddenly appeared the poetry of Spenser and Chapman, the prose of Hooker, Sidney and Bacon, the dramas of Marlowe, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and a score of others,--all voicing the national feeling after the defeat of the Armada, and growing silent as soon as the enthusiasm began to wane.
LITERARY CHARACTERISTICS. Next to the patriotic spirit of Elizabethan literature, its most notable qualities are its youthful freshness and vigor, its romantic spirit, its absorption in the theme of love, its extravagance of speech, its lively sense of the wonder of heaven and earth. The ideal beauty of Spenser?s poetry, the bombast of Marlowe, the
boundless zest of Shakespeare?s historical plays, the romantic love celebrated in unnumbered lyrics,--all these speak of youth, of springtime, of the joy and the heroic adventure of human living.
This romantic enthusiasm of Elizabethan poetry and prose may be explained by the fact that, besides the national impulse, three other inspiring influences were at work. The first in point of time was the rediscovery of the classics of Greece and Rome,--beautiful old poems, which were as new to the Elizabethans as to Keats when he wrote his immortal sonnet, beginning:
Much have I travell?d in the realms of gold.
The second awakening factor was the widespread interest in nature and the physical sciences, which spurred many another Elizabethan besides Bacon to “take all knowledge for his province.” This new interest was generally romantic rather than scientific, was more concerned with marvels, like the philosopher?s stone that would transmute all things to gold, than with the simple facts of nature. Bacon?s chemical changes, which f ollow the “instincts” of metals, are almost on a par with those other changes described in Shakespeare?s song of Ariel:
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
The third factor which stimulated the Elizabethan imagination was the discovery of the world beyond the Atlantic, a world of wealth, of beauty, of unmeasured opportunity for brave spirits, in regions long supposed to be possessed of demons, monsters, Othello?s impossible cannibals that each other eat, The anthropophagi, and men whose heads Do grow beneath their shoulders.
When Drake returned from his voyage around the world he brought to England two things: a tale of vast regions just over the world?s rim that awaited English explorers, and a ship loaded to the hatches with gold and jewels. That the latter treasure was little better than a pirate?s booty; that it was stolen from the Spaniards, who had taken it from poor savages at the price of blood and torture,--all this was not mentioned. The queen and her favorites shared the treasure with Drake?s buccaneers, and the New World seemed to them a place of barbaric splendor, where the savage?s wattled hut was roofed with silver, his garments beaded with all precious jewels. As a popular play of the period declares:
“Why, man, all their dripping pans are pure gold! The prisoners they take are fettered in gold; and as for rubies and diamonds, they goe forth on holydayes and gather …hem by the seashore to hang on their children?s coates.”
Before the American settlements opened England?s eyes to the stern reality of things, it was the romance of the New World that appealed most powerfully to the imagination, and that influenced Elizabethan literature to an extent which we have not yet begun to measure.
FOREIGN INFLUENCE. We shall understand the imitative quality of early Elizabethan poetry if we read it in the light of these facts: that in the sixteenth century England was far behind other European nations in culture; that the Renaissance had influenced Italy and Holland for a century before it crossed the Channel; that, at a time when every Dutch peasant read his Bible, the masses of English people remained in dense ignorance, and the majority of the official classes were like Shakespeare?s father and daughter in that they could neither read nor write. So, when the new national spirit began to express itself in literature, Englishmen turned to the more cultured nations and began to imitate them in poetry, as in dress and manners. Shakespeare gives us a hint of the matter when he makes Portia ridicule the apishness of the English. In The Merchant of Venice (Act I, scene 2) the maid Nerissa is speaking of various princely suitors for Portia?s hand. She names them over, Frenchman, Italian, Scotsman, German; but Portia makes fun of them all. The maid tries again:
Nerissa. What say you, then, to Falconbridge, the young baron of England?
Portia. You know I say nothing to him, for he understands not me, nor I him: he hath neither Latin, French, nor Italian; and you will come into the court and swear that I have a poor pennyworth in the English. He is a
proper man?s picture, but, alas, who can converse with a dumb show? How oddly he is suited! I think he bought his doublet in Italy, his round hose in France, his bonnet in Germany and his behaviour every where.
When Wyatt and Surrey brought the sonnet to England, they brought also the habit of imitating the Italian poets; and this habit influenced Spenser and other Elizabethans even more than Chaucer had been influenced by Dante and Petrarch. It was the fashion at that time for Italian gentlemen to write poetry; they practiced the art as they practiced riding or fencing;
a nd presently scores of Englishmen followed Sidney?s example in taking up this phase of foreign education. It was also an Italian custom to publish the works of amateur poets in the form of anthologies, and soon there appeared in England The Paradise of Dainty Devices, A Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant Inventions and other such collections, the best of which was England?s Helicon (1600). Still another foreign fashion was that of writing a series of sonnets to some real or imaginary mistress; and that the fashion was followed in England is evident from Spenser?s Amoretti, Sidney?s Astrophel and Stella, Shakespeare?s Sonnets, and other less-famous effusions.
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SPENSER AND THE LYRIC POETS
LYRICS OF LOVE. Love was the subject of a very large part of the minor poems of the period, the monotony being relieved by an occasional ballad, such as Drayton?s “Battle of Agincourt” and his “Ode to the Virginian Voyage,” the latter being one of the first poems inspired by the New World. Since love was still subject to literary rules, as in the metrical romances, it is not strange that most Elizabethan lyrics seem to the modern reader artificial. They deal largely with goddesses and airy shepherd folk; they contain many references to classic characters and scenes, to Venus, Olympus and the rest; they are nearly all characterized by extravagance of language. A single selection, “Apelles? Song” by Lyly, may serve as typical of the more fantastic love lyrics:
Cupid and my Campaspe played
At cards for kisses; Cupid paid.
He stakes his quiver, bow and arrows,
His mother?s doves and team of sparrows:
Loses them too; then down he throws
The coral of his lip, the rose
Growing on?s cheek (but none knows how);
With these the crystal of his brow,
And then the dimple of his chin.
All these did my Campaspe win.
At last he set her both his eyes;
She won, and Cupid blind did rise.
O Love, has she done this to thee?
What shall, alas! become of me?
MUSIC AND POETRY. Another reason for the outburst of lyric poetry in Elizabethan times was that choral music began to be studied, and there was great demand for new songs. Then appeared a theory of the close relation between poetry and music, which was followed by the American poet Lanier more than two centuries later. [Footnote: Much of Lanier?s verse seems more like a musical improvisation than like an ordinary poem. His theory that music and poetry are subject to the same laws is developed in his Science of English Verse.It is interesting to note that Lanier?s ancestors were musical directors at the courts of Elizabeth and of James I.] This interesting theory is foreshadowed in several minor works of the period; for example, in Barnfield?s sonnet “To R. L.,” beginning:
If music and sweet poetry agree,
As they must needs, the sister and the brother,
Then must the love be great …twixt thee and me,
Because thou lov?st the one, and I the other.
The stage caught up the new fashion, and hundreds of lyrics appeared in the Elizabethan drama, such as Dekker?s “Content” (from the play of Patient Grissell), which almost sets itself to music as we read it:
Art thou poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers?
O sweet content!
Art thou rich, yet is thy mind perplexed?
O punishment!
Dost laugh to see how fools are vexed
To add to golden numbers golden numbers?
O sweet content, O sweet, O sweet content!
Work apace, apace, apace, apace!
Honest labour bears a lovely face.
Then hey noney, noney; hey noney, noney!
Canst drink the waters of the crisped spring?
O sweet content!
Swim?st thou in wealth, yet sink?st in thine own tears?
O punishment!
Then he that patiently want?s burden bears
No burden bears, but is a king, a king.
O sweet content, O sweet, O sweet content!
So many lyric poets appeared during this period that we cannot here classify them; and it would be idle to list their names. The best place to make acquaintance with theo is not in a dry history of literature, but in such a pleasant little book as Palgrave?s Golden Treasury, where their best work is accessible to every reader.
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EDMUND SPENSER (1552-1599)
Spenser was the second of the great English poets, and it is but natural to compare him with Chaucer, who was the first. In respect of time nearly two centuries separate these elder poets; in all other respects, in aims, ideals, methods, they are as far apart as two men of the same race can well be.
LIFE. Very little is known of Spenser; he appears in the light, then vanishes into the shadow, like his Arthur of The Faery Queen. We see him for a moment in the midst of rebellion in Ireland, or engaged in the scramble for preferment among the queen?s favorites; he disappears, and from his obscurity comes a poem that is like the distant ringing of a chapel bell, faintly heard in the clatter of the city streets. We shall try here to understand this poet by dissolving some of the mystery that envelops him.
He was born in London, and spent his youth amid the political and religious dissensions of the times of Mary and Elizabeth. For all this turmoil Spenser had no stomach; he was a man of peace, of books, of romantic dreams. He was of noble family, but poor; his only talent was to write poetry, and as poetry would not buy much bread in those days, his pride of birth was humbled in seeking the patronage of nobles:
Full little knowest thou, that hast not tried, What hell it is in suing long to bide: ... To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run, To spend, to give, to want, to be undone.
To the liberality of a patron he owed his education at Cambridge. It was then the heyday of Renaissance studies, and Spenser steeped himself in Greek, Latin and Italian literatures. Everything that was antique was then in favor at the universities; there was a revival of interest in Old-English poetry, which ac counts largely for Spenser?s use of obsolete words and his imitation of Chaucer?s spelling.
After graduation he spent some time in the north of England, probably as a tutor, and had an unhappy love affair, which he celebrated in his poems to Rosalind. Then he returned to London, lived by favor in the houses of Sidney and Leicester, and through these powerful patrons was appointed secretary to Lord Grey de Wilton, the queen?s deputy in Ireland.
From this time on our poet is represented as a melancholy Spense r?s “exile,” but that is a poetic fiction. At that time Ireland, having refused to follow the Reformation, was engaged in a desperate struggle for civil and religious liberty. Every English army that sailed to crush this rebellion was accompanied by a swarm of parasites, each inspired by the hope of getting one of the rich estates that were confiscated from Irish owners. Spenser seems to have been one of these expectant adventurers who accompanied Lord Grey in his campaign of brutality. To the horrors of that campaign the poet was blind; [Footnote: The barbarism of Spenser?s view, a common one
at that time, is reflected in his View of the Present State of Ireland. Honorable warfare on land or sea was unknown in Elizabeth?s day. Scores of pirate ships of all nations were then openly preying on commerce. Drake, Frobisher and many other Elizabethan “heroes” were at times mere buccaneers who shared their plunder with the queen. In putting down the Irish rebellion Lords Grey and Essex used some of the same horrible methods employed by the notorious Duke of Alva in the Netherlands.] his sympathies were all for his patron Grey, who appears in The Faery Queen as Sir Artegall, “the model of true justice.”
For his services Spenser was awarded the castle of Kilcolman and 3000 acres of land, which had been taken from the Earl of Desmond. In the same way Raleigh became an Irish landlord, with 40,000 acres to his credit; and so these two famous Elizabethans were thrown together in exile, as they termed it. Both longed to return to England, to enjoy London society and the revenues of Irish land at the same time, but unfortunately one condition of their immense grants was that they should occupy the land and keep the rightful owners from possessing it.
In Ireland Spenser began to write his masterpiece The Faery Queen. Raleigh, to whom the first three books were read, was so impressed by the beauty of the work that he hurried the poet off to London, and gained for him the royal favor. In the poem “Colin Clout?s Come Home Again” we may read Spenser?s account of how the court impressed him after his sojourn in Ireland.
The publication of the first parts of The Faery Queen (1590) raised Spenser to the foremost place in English letters. He was made
poet-laureate, and used every influence of patrons and of literary success to the end that he be allowed to remain in London, but the queen was
flint-hearted, insisting that he must give up his estate or occupy it. So he returned sorrowfully to “exile,” and wrote three more books of The Faery Queen. To his other offices was added that of sheriff of County Cork, an adventurous office for any man even in times of peace, and for a poet, in a time of turmoil, an invitation to disaster. Presently another rebellion broke out, Kilcolman castle was burned, and the poet?s family barely escaped with their lives. It was said by Ben Jonson that one of Spenser?s children and some parts of The Faery Queen perished in the fire, but the truth of the saying has not been established.
Soon after this experience, which crushed the poet?s spirit, he was ordered on official business to London, and died on the journey in 1599. As he was buried beside Chaucer, in Westminster Abbey, poets were seen casting memorial verses and the pens that had written them into his tomb.
In character Spenser was unfitted either for the intrigues among Elizabeth?s favorites or for the more desperate scenes amid which his Lot was cast. Unlike his friend Raleigh, who was a man of action, Spenser was essentially a dreamer, and except in Cambridge he seems never to have felt at home. His criticism of the age as barren and hopeless, and the melancholy of the greater part of his work, indicate that for him, at least,
the great Elizabethan times were “out of joint.” The world, which thinks of Spenser as a great poet, has forgotten that he thought of himself as a disappointed man.
WORKS OF SPENSER. The poems of Spenser may be conveniently grouped in three classes. In the first are the pastorals of The Shepherd?s Calendar, in which he reflects some of the poetical fashions of his age. In the second are the allegories of The Faery Queen, in which he pictures the state of England as a struggle between good and evil. In the third class are his occasional poems of friendship and love, such as the Amoretti. All his works are alike musical, and all remote from ordinary life, like the eerie music of a wind harp.
The Shepherd?s Calendar (1579) is famous as the poem which announced that a successor to Chaucer had at last appeared in England. It is an amateurish work in which Spenser tried various meters; and to analyze it is to discover two discordant elements, which we may call fashionable poetry and puritanic preaching. Let us understand these elements clearly, for apart from them the Calendar is a meaningless work.
It was a fashion among Italian poets to make eclogues or pastoral poems about shepherds, their dancing, piping, love-making,--everything except a shepherd?s proper business. Spenser followed this artificial fashion in his Calendar by making twelve pastorals, one for each month of the
year. These all take the form of conversations, accompanied by music and dancing, and the personages are Cuddie, Diggon, Hobbinoll, and other
fantastic shepherds. According to poetic custom these should sing only of love; but in Spenser?s day religious controversy was rampant, and flattery might not be overlooked by a poet who aspired to royal favor. So while the January pastoral tells of the unhappy love of Colin Clout (Spenser) for Rosalind, the springtime of April calls for a song in praise of Elizabeth:
Lo, how finely the Graces can it foot
To the instrument!
They dancen deffly and singen soote,
In their merriment.
Wants not a fourth Grace to make the dance even?
Let that room to my Lady be yeven.
She shall be a Grace,
To fill the fourth place,
And reign with the rest in heaven.
In May the shepherds are rival pastors of the Reformation, who end their sermons with an animal fable; in summer they discourse of Puritan theology; October brings them to contemplate the trials and disappointments of a poet, and the series ends with a parable comparing life to the four seasons of the year.
The moralizing of The Shepherd?s Calendar and the uncouth spelling which Spenser affected detract from the interest of the poem; but one who has patience to read it finds on almost every page some fine poetic line, and
occasionally a good song, like the following (from the August pastoral) in which two shepherds alternately supply the lines of a roundelay:
Sitting upon a hill so high,
Hey, ho, the high hill!
The while my flock did feed thereby,
The while the shepherd?s self did spill,
I saw the bouncing Bellibone,
Hey, ho, Bonnibell!
Tripping over the dale alone;
She can trip it very well.
Well deckéd in a frock of gray,
Hey, ho, gray is greet!
And in a kirtle of green say;
The green is for maidens meet.
A chaplet on her head she wore,
Hey, ho, chapelet!
Of sweet violets therein was store,
She sweeter than the violet.
THE FAERY QUEEN. Let us hear one of the stories of this celebrated poem, an d after the tale is told we may discover Spenser?s purpose in writing all the others.
From the court of Gloriana, Queen of Faery, the gallant Sir Guyon sets out on adventure bent, and with him is a holy Palmer, or pilgrim, to protect him from the evil that lurks by every wayside. Hardly have the two entered the first wood when they fall into the hands of the wicked Archimago, who spends his time in devising spells or enchantments for the purpose of leading honest folk astray.
For all he did was to deceive good knights,
And draw them from pursuit of praise and fame.
Escaping from the snare, Guyon hears a lamentation, and turns aside to find a beautiful woman dying beside a dead knight. Her story is, that her man has been led astray by the Lady Acrasia, who leads many knights to her Bower of Bliss, and there makes them forget honor and knightly duty. Guyon vows to right this wrong, and proceeds on the adventure.
With the Palmer and a boatman he embarks in a skiff and crosses the Gulf of Greediness, deadly whirlpools on one side, and on the other the Magnet Mountain with wrecks of ships strewed about its foot. Sighting the fair Wandering Isles, he attempts to land, attracted here by a beautiful damsel, there by a woman in distress; but the Palmer tells him that these seeming women are evil shadows placed there to lead men astray. Next he meets the monsters of the deep, “sea-shouldering whales,” “scolopendras,” “grisly wassermans,” “mighty monoceroses with unmeasured tails.” Escaping these, he meets a greater peril in the mermaids, who sing to him alluringly:
This is port of rest from troublous toil,
The world?s sweet inn from pain and wearisome turmoil.
Many other sea-dangers are passed before Guyon comes to land, where he is immediately charged by a bellowing herd of savage beasts. Only the power of the Palmer?s holy staff saves the knight from annihilation.
This is the last physical danger which Guyon encounters. As he goes forward the country becomes an earthly paradise, where pleasures call to him from every side. It is his soul, not his body, which is now in peril. Here is the Palace of Pleasure, its wondrous gates carved with images representing Jason?s search for the Golden Fleece. Beyond it are parks, gardens, fountains, and the beautiful Lady Excess, who squeezes grapes into a golden cup and offers it to Guyon as an invitation to linger. The scene grows ever more entrancing as he rejects the cup of Excess and pushes onward:
Eftsoones they heard a most melodious sound
Of all that mote delight a dainty ear,
Such as at once might not on living ground,
Save in this paradise, be heard elsewhere:
Right hard it was for wight which did it hear
To read what manner music that mote be;
For all that pleasing is to living ear
Was there consorted in one harmony;
Birds, voices, instruments, winds, waters, all agree.
Amid such allurements Guyon comes at last to where beautiful Acrasia lives, with knights who forget their knighthood. From the open portal comes a melody, the voice of an unseen singer lifting up the old song of Epicurus and of Omar:
Gather the rose of love whilst yet is time.
The following scenes in the Bower of Bliss were plainly suggested by the Palace of Circe, in the Odyssey; but where Homer is direct, simple, forceful, Spenser revels in luxuriant deta ils. He charms all Guyon?s senses with color, perfume, beauty, harmony; then he remembers that he is writing a moral poem, and suddenly his delighted knight turns reformer. He catches Acrasia in a net woven by the Palmer, and proceeds to smash her exquisite abode with puritanic thoroughness:
But all those pleasaunt bowers and palace brave
Guyon brake down with rigour pitilesse.
As they fare forth after the destruction, the herd of horrible beasts is again encountered, and lo! all these creatures are men whom Acrasia has transformed into brutal shapes. The Palmer “strooks” them all with his holy staff, and they resume their human semblance. Some are glad, others wroth at the change; and one named Grylle, who had been a hog, reviles his rescuers for disturbing him; which gives the Palmer a final chance to moralize:
Let Grylle be Grylle and have his hoggish mind;
But let us hence depart while weather serves and wind.
Such is Spenser?s story of Sir Guyon, or Temperance. It is a long story, drifting through eighty-seven stanzas, but it is only a final chapter or canto of the second book of The Faery Queen. Preceding it are eleven other cantos which serve as an introduction. So leisurely is Spenser in telling a tale! One canto deals with the wiles of Archimago and o f the “false witch” Duessa; in another the varlet Braggadocchio steals Guyon?s horse and impersonates a knight, until he is put to shame by the fair huntress Belphoebe, who is Queen Elizabeth in disguise. Now Elizabeth had a hawk face which was far from comely, but behold how it appeared to a poet:
Her face so fair, as flesh it seem?d not,
But heavenly portrait of bright angel?s hue,
Clear as the sky, withouten blame or blot,
Through goodly mixture of complexions due;
And in her cheek the vermeil red did shew
Like roses in a bed of lilies shed,
The which ambrosial odours from them threw
And gazers? sense with double pleasure fed,
Able to heal the sick and to revive the dead.
There are a dozen more stanzas devoted to her voice, her eyes, her hair, her more than mortal beauty. Other cantos of the same book are devoted to Guyon?s temptations; to his victories over Furor and Mammon; to his