Halleck's New English Literature Part 27

Ford's _The Broken Heart_ is a strong, but unpleasant, tragedy. He is so fascinated with the horrible that he introduces it even when it is not the logical outcome of a situation. His best but least characteristic play is _Perkin Warbeck_, which is worthy of ranking second only to Shakespeare's historical plays.

End of the Elizabethan Drama.--James Shirley (1596-1666), "the last of the Elizabethans," endeavored to the best of his ability to continue the work of the earlier dramatists. _The Traitor_ and _The Cardinal_ are two of the best of his many productions. He was hard at work writing new plays in 1642, when the Puritans closed the theaters.

He was thus forced to abandon the profession that he enjoyed and compelled to teach in order to earn a livelihood.

The drama has never since regained its Elizabethan ascendancy. The coa.r.s.e plays of the Restoration (1660) flourished for a while, but the treatment of the later drama forms but a minor part of the history of the best English literature. Few plays produced during the next two hundred years are much read or acted to-day. _She Stoops to Conquer_ (1773), by Oliver Goldsmith, and _The Rivals_ (1775) and _The School for Scandal_ (1777), by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, are the chief exceptions before 1890.

SUMMARY

The Elizabethan age was a period of expansion in knowledge, commerce, religious freedom, and human opportunities. The defeat of the Armada freed England from fear of Spanish domination and made her mistress of the sea.

England was vivified by the combined influence of the Renaissance and the Reformation. Knowledge was expanding in every direction and promising to crown human effort with universal mastery. The greater feeling of individuality was partly due to the Reformation, which emphasized the direct responsibility of each individual for all acts affecting the welfare of his soul.

Elizabethans were noted for their resourcefulness, their initiative, their craving for new experiences, and their desire to realize the utmost out of life. As they cared little for ideas that could not be translated into action, they were particularly interested in the drama.

Although the prose covers a wide field, it is far inferior to the poetry. Lyly's _Euphues_ suffers from overwrought conceits and forced ant.i.theses, but it influenced writers to pay more attention to the manner in which thought was expressed. The flowery prose of Sidney's _Arcadia_ presents a pastoral world of romance. His _Apologie for Poetrie_ is a meritorious piece of early criticism. While Hooker indicates advance in solidity of matter and dignity of style, yet a comparison of his heavy religious prose with the prayer of the king in _Hamlet_ or with Portia's words about mercy in _The Merchant of Venice_ will show the vast superiority of the poetry in dealing with spiritual ideas. Bacon's _Essays_, celebrated for pithy condensation of striking thoughts, is the only prose work that has stood the test of time well enough to claim many readers to-day.

Poetry, both lyric and dramatic, is the crowning glory of the Elizabethan age. The lyric verse is remarkable for its wide range and for beauty of form and sentiment. The lyrics include love sonnets, pastorals, and miscellaneous verse. Shakespeare's _Sonnets_ and the songs in his dramas are the best in this field, but many poets wrote exquisite artistic lyrics.

Edmund Spenser is the only great poet who was not also a dramatist.

His _Faerie Queene_ fashions an ideal world dominated by a love of beauty and high endeavor.

The greatest literary successes of the age were won in writing plays for the stage. In England the drama had for centuries slowly developed through Miracle plays, Moralities, and Interludes to the plays of Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Ben Jonson. These three are the greatest Elizabethan dramatists, but they are only the central figures of a group.

The English drama in the hands of Sackville imitated Seneca and followed the rules of the cla.s.sic stage. Marlowe and Shakespeare threw off the restraints of the cla.s.sical unities; and the romantic drama, rejoicing in its freedom, speedily told the story of all life.

The innyards were used for the public presentation of plays before the erection of theaters in the last quarter of the sixteenth century. The theaters were a great educational force in Shakespeare's time. They not only furnished amus.e.m.e.nt, but they also took the place of periodicals, lectures, and books. The actors, coming into close contact with their audience and unable to rely on elaborate scenery as an offset to poor acting, were equal to the task of so presenting Shakespeare's great plays as to make them popular.

Shakespeare's plays, the greatest ever written, reveal wonderful sympathy, universality, humor, delineation of character, high moral ideals, mastery of expression, and strength, beauty, and variety of poetic form.

Great as is Ben Jonson, he hampered himself by observing the cla.s.sical unities and by stressing accidental qualities. He lacks Shakespeare's universality, broad sympathy, and emotional appeal.

Other minor dramatists, like Beaumont and Fletcher show further decline, because they constructed their plays more from the outside, showed less development of character in strict accordance with moral law, and relied more for effect on sensational scenes. The drama has never since taken up the wand that dropped from Shakespeare's hands.

REFERENCES FOR FURTHER STUDY

HISTORICAL

In addition to the chapters on the time in the histories of Gardiner, Green, Lingard, Walker, and Traill, see Stephenson's _The Elizabethan People_, Creighton's _Queen Elizabeth_, Wilson's _Life in Shakespeare's England_, Stephenson's _Shakespeare's London_, Warner's _English History in Shakespeare's plays_.

LITERARY

General and Non-Dramatic

_The Cambridge History of English Literature_, Vols. IV., V., and VI.

Courthope's _A History of English Poetry_, Vol. II.

Sch.e.l.ling's _English Literature during the Lifetime of Shakespeare_.

Seecombe and Allen's _The Age of Shakespeare_, 2 vols.

Saintsbury's _A History of Elizabethan Literature_.

_Dictionary of National Biography_ for lives of Lyly, Sidney, Hooker.

Bacon, Spenser, and the minor dramatists.

Walton's _Life of Hooker_.

Church's _Life of Bacon_. (E.M.L.)

Church's _Life of Spenser_. (E.M.L.)

Mackail's _The Springs of Helicon_ (Spenser).

Dowden's _Transcripts and Studies_ (Spenser).

Lowell's _Among My Books_ (Spenser).

Erskine's _The Elizabethan Lyric_.

The Drama[30]

Sch.e.l.ling's _Elizabethan Drama, 1558-1642_, 2 vols. Ward's _A History of English Dramatic Literature_, 3 vols.

Brooke's _The Tudor Drama_.

Chambers's _The Mediaeval Stage_.

Allbright's _The Shakespearean Stage_.

Lawrence's _Elizabethan Playhouse and Other Studies_.

Smith's _York Plays_ (Clarendon Press).

Symonds's _Shakespeare's Predecessors in the English Drama_.

Bates's _The English Religious Drama_.

Manly's _Specimens of the Pre-Shakespearean Drama_.

Wallace's _The Evolution of the English Drama up to Shakespeare_.

Ingram's _Christopher Marlowe and his a.s.sociates_.

Dowden's _Transcripts and Studies_ (Marlowe).

Symonds's _Ben Jonson_.