Renaissance Literature: Poetry, Drama, and Prose
During the Renaissance, the creative energy of the English people burst forth into the greatest harvest of literature the Western world had yet known. Poets and playwrights, readers and listeners, all delighted in the vigor and beauty of the English language. The glittering Elizabethan court was a focus of poetic creativity. Members of the court vied with one another to see who could create the most highly polished, technically perfect poems. The appreciative audience for these lyrics was the elite artistic and social circle that surrounded the Queen. Elizabeth I herself wrote lyrics, and she patronized favorite poets and rewarded courtiers for eloquent poetic tributes. Among her proteges were Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Walter Raleigh. Raleigh, in turn, encouraged Edmund Spenser, who wrote the epic The Faerie Queene (1590) in honor of Elizabeth.
Pastoral Poems and Sonnets
Sir Walter Raleigh and his contemporary Christopher Marlowe wrote excellent examples of a type of poetry popular with Elizabeth’s court: the pastoral. A pastoral is a poem that portrays shepherds and rustic life, usually in an idealized manner. The poets did not attempt to write in the voice of a common shepherd, however. Their speakers used courtly language rather than the language of common speech. The pastoral’s form was artificial as well, with meters and rhyme schemes characteristic of formal poetry.
Drama
Drama was the most important form of literary expression of this period, and William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was its most important figure. He was able to write his plays for a very diverse audience. Most of his plays were adaptations from known sources (classical plays or stories), which means that his audience could follow the plot easily; they also had plenty of action (at the end of Hamlet, for example, the following characters die: Hamlet, his father, his mother, his uncle, Laertes, Ophelia and Polonius) and humor (farce, slapstick), which meant that all types of audiences could follow them.
- Universal themes, still relevant to modern-day life (the fragility of the human condition, the individual versus society, love, fate, free will, etc.)
- Several levels of meaning: the texts are clear to follow but complex to understand in depth.
- Use of language: extremely rich and varied (puns, double meanings, references, literary figures). Creator of neologisms (“excellent, obscene, homicide, hint”, etc. It has been said that one in ten words in English was created by Shakespeare). Great use of blank verse (regular rhythm, no rhyme, typically iambic pentameter). Unfortunately, the English language has changed a lot since Shakespeare’s time, which means that his language is difficult to follow even for native speakers.
Works
- Comedies: (light-hearted tone, happy ending, multiple plots, love stories, remember that female characters were played by male actors: ambiguity): The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, The Tempest, etc.
- Histories (based on real kings from the 12th-16th centuries): Henry IV, Henry V, etc.
- Tragedies (heroes who fall from grace due to a flaw in their character, anti-hero): Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, etc.
- Sonnets: 154 sonnets addressed to either a “dark lady” (a married woman for whom the author feels strong physical attraction) or a “fair youth” (a young man the author also loves). Controversial texts (Platonic love, bisexuality, literary convention?)
Other Renaissance playwrights:
Poetry
- Elizabethan Era: Edmund Spenser (1552-1599). Poet, author of The Faerie Queene (1590), an epic poem celebrating, through fantastical allegory, the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. Gentle poetry.
Spiritual and Devotional Writings
Despite the religious turmoil that marked this period in English history, England remained a Christian nation, and its literature reflects the beliefs of its people. Spiritual and devotional writings became some of the most popular and influential works of the day. In fact, the King James Bible likely did more to mold English prose style than any other work. For centuries, the church had resisted calls to translate the Latin Bible into languages the common people could understand, on the grounds that it would diminish church authority and lead to heresy. In fact, when the first English version of the Bible was translated by the 14th-century scholar John Wycliffe, he was attacked by a British archbishop as “that wretched and pestilent fellow…who crowned his wickedness by translating the Scriptures into the mother tongue.” Another English translator, William Tyndale, fled to the continent during the early years of Henry VIII’s reign, only to be condemned as a heretic and burned at the stake.
Ironically, in the meantime, Henry had broken with Rome, and in the following years, English translations of the Bible proliferated. Finally, in 1604, James I commissioned 54 leading biblical scholars to create a new, “authorized” version, one based on the original Hebrew and Greek as well as on earlier translations from the Latin. Masterpieces of literature are not generally created by committee, but the King James Bible, completed in 1611, proved to be an exception. Its beautiful imagery, graceful simplicity, and measured cadences made it the principal Protestant Bible in English for more than 300 years, and it still remains the most important and influential of all the English translations.
The Metaphysical and Cavalier Poets
In the early 17th century, two new groups of poets emerged. The first was inspired by the literary man-of-all-trades Ben Jonson. Like Shakespeare, his friend and rival, Ben Jonson was not just a playwright but also an accomplished poet. Dissatisfied with the extravagant romance of Elizabethan lyrics, Jonson chose instead to imitate the graceful craftsmanship of classical forms. Far from the typical image of a refined poet, however, Jonson was a great bellowing bear of a man who loved an argument and didn’t mind if it turned into a brawl, and his forceful personality won him as many admirers as his considerable talent did. Jonson’s followers, called “sons of Ben,” were sophisticated young aristocrats, among them Robert Herrick, Richard Lovelace, and Sir John Suckling. These poets were known as the Cavaliers, because many of them took the side of Charles I in the civil war between Cromwell’s “Roundheads” (so called for their closely cropped hair) and the long-haired Royalist cavaliers. Lighthearted, charming, witty, and sometimes cynical, Cavalier poetry dealt mainly with themes of love, war, chivalry, and loyalty to the throne and frequently advocated the philosophy of carpe diem, or living for the moment.
Jonson’s contemporary, John Donne, is representative of a second group of poets, the metaphysical poets. These writers broke with convention, employing unusual imagery, elaborate metaphors, and irregular meter to produce intense poems characterized by themes of death, physical love, and religious devotion. Whereas the Cavalier poets tended to treat limited, human-focused subjects, Donne and the other metaphysical poets tried to encompass the vastness of the universe and to explore life’s complexities and contradictions. Some ridiculed Donne for the philosophical tone of his love poems, saying that instead of winning over women he merely succeeded in perplexing them. However, Donne’s unique blend of intellect and passion influenced many other poets, from his own time to the 21st century.