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To the beauty of Spenser's imagination, ideal and sensuous, corresponds his
magnificent command of rhythm and of sound. As a verbal melodist,
especially a melodist of sweetness and of stately grace, and as a harmonist
of prolonged and complex cadences, he is unsurpassable. But he has full
command of his rhythm according to the subject, and can range from the most
delicate suggestion of airy beauty to the roar of the tempest or the
strident energy of battle. In vocabulary and phraseology his fluency
appears inexhaustible. Here, as in 'The Shepherd's Calendar,' he
deliberately introduces, especially from Chaucer, obsolete words and forms,
such as the inflectional ending in _-en_, which distinctly contribute
to his romantic effect. His constant use of alliteration is very skilful;
the frequency of the alliteration on _w_ is conspicuous but apparently
accidental.

5. _The Spenserian Stanza._ For the external medium of all this beauty
Spenser, modifying the _ottava rima_ of Ariosto (a stanza which rimes
_abababcc_), invented the stanza which bears his own name and which is
the only artificial stanza of English origin that has ever passed into
currency. [Footnote: Note that this is not inconsistent with what is said
above, p. 102, of the sonnet.] The rime-scheme is _ababbcbcc_, and in
the last line the iambic pentameter gives place to an Alexandrine (an
iambic hexameter). Whether or not any stanza form is as well adapted as
blank verse or the rimed couplet for prolonged narrative is an interesting
question, but there can be no doubt that Spenser's stanza, firmly unified,
in spite of its length, by its central couplet and by the finality of the
last line, is a discovery of genius, and that the Alexandrine, 'forever
feeling for the next stanza,' does much to bind the stanzas together. It
has been adopted in no small number of the greatest subsequent English
poems, including such various ones as Burns' 'Cotter's Saturday Night,'
Byron's 'Childe Harold,' Keats' 'Eve of St. Agnes,' and Shelley's
'Adonais.'

In general style and spirit, it should be added, Spenser has been one of
the most powerful influences on all succeeding English romantic poetry. Two
further sentences of Lowell well summarize his whole general achievement:
'His great merit is in the ideal treatment with which he glorified common
things and gilded them with a ray of enthusiasm. He is a standing protest
against the tyranny of the Commonplace, and sows the seeds of a noble
discontent with prosaic views of life and the dull uses to which it may be
put.'

ELIZABETHAN LYRIC POETRY. 'The Faerie Queene' is the only long Elizabethan
poem of the very highest rank, but Spenser, as we have seen, is almost
equally conspicuous as a lyric poet. In that respect he was one among a
throng of melodists who made the Elizabethan age in many respects the
greatest lyric period in the history of English or perhaps of any
literature. Still grander, to be sure, by the nature of the two forms, was
the Elizabethan achievement in the drama, which we shall consider in the
next chapter; but the lyrics have the advantage in sheer delightfulness
and, of course, in rapid and direct appeal.

The zest for lyric poetry somewhat artificially inaugurated at Court by
Wyatt and Surrey seems to have largely subsided, like any other fad, after
some years, but it vigorously revived, in much more genuine fashion, with
the taste for other imaginative forms of literature, in the last two
decades of Elizabeth's reign. It revived, too, not only among the courtiers
but among all classes; in no other form of literature was the diversity of
authors so marked; almost every writer of the period who was not purely a
man of prose seems to have been gifted with the lyric power.

The qualities which especially distinguish the Elizabethan lyrics are
fluency, sweetness, melody, and an enthusiastic joy in life, all
spontaneous, direct, and exquisite. Uniting the genuineness of the popular
ballad with the finer sense of conscious artistic poetry, these poems
possess a charm different, though in an only half definable way, from that
of any other lyrics. In subjects they display the usual lyric variety.
There are songs of delight in Nature; a multitude of love poems of all
moods; many pastorals, in which, generally, the pastoral conventions sit
lightly on the genuine poetical feeling; occasional patriotic outbursts;
and some reflective and religious poems. In stanza structure the number of
forms is unusually great, but in most cases stanzas are internally varied
and have a large admixture of short, ringing or musing, lines. The lyrics
were published sometimes in collections by single authors, sometimes in the
series of anthologies which succeeded to Tottel's 'Miscellany.' Some of
these anthologies were books of songs with the accompanying music; for
music, brought with all the other cultural influences from Italy and
France, was now enthusiastically cultivated, and the soft melody of many of
the best Elizabethan lyrics is that of accomplished composers. Many of the
lyrics, again, are included as songs in the dramas of the time; and
Shakspere's comedies show him nearly as preeminent among the lyric poets as
among the playwrights.

Some of the finest of the lyrics are anonymous. Among the best of the known
poets are these: George Gascoigne (about 1530-1577), a courtier and
soldier, who bridges the gap between Surrey and Sidney; Sir Edward Dyer
(about 1545-1607), a scholar and statesman, author of one perfect lyric,
'My mind to me a kingdom is'; John Lyly (1553-1606), the Euphuist and
dramatist; Nicholas Breton (about 1545 to about 1626), a prolific writer in
verse and prose and one of the most successful poets of the pastoral style;
Robert Southwell (about 1562-1595), a Jesuit intriguer of ardent piety,
finally imprisoned, tortured, and executed as a traitor; George Peele (1558
to about 1598), the dramatist; Thomas Lodge (about 1558-1625), poet,
novelist, and physician; Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), the dramatist;
Thomas Nash (1567-1601), one of the most prolific Elizabethan hack writers;
Samuel Daniel (1562-1619), scholar and critic, member in his later years of
the royal household of James I; Barnabe Barnes (about 1569-1609); Richard
Barnfield (1574-1627); Sir Walter Ralegh (1552-1618), courtier, statesman,
explorer, and scholar; Joshua Sylvester (1563-1618), linguist and merchant,
known for his translation of the long religious poems of the Frenchman Du
Bartas, through which he exercised an influence on Milton; Francis Davison
(about 1575 to about 1619), son of a counsellor of Queen Elizabeth, a
lawyer; and Thomas Dekker (about 1570 to about 1640), a ne'er-do-weel
dramatist and hack-writer of irrepressible and delightful good spirits.

THE SONNETS. In the last decade, especially, of the century, no other lyric
form compared in popularity with the sonnet. Here England was still
following in the footsteps of Italy and France; it has been estimated that
in the course of the century over three hundred thousand sonnets were
written in Western Europe. In England as elsewhere most of these poems were
inevitably of mediocre quality and imitative in substance, ringing the
changes with wearisome iteration on a minimum of ideas, often with the most
extravagant use of conceits. Petrarch's example was still commonly
followed; the sonnets were generally composed in sequences (cycles) of a
hundred or more, addressed to the poet's more or less imaginary cruel lady,
though the note of manly independence introduced by Wyatt is frequent.
First of the important English sequences is the 'Astrophel and Stella' of
Sir Philip Sidney, written about 1580, published in 1591. 'Astrophel' is a
fanciful half-Greek anagram for the poet's own name, and Stella (Star)
designates Lady Penelope Devereux, who at about this time married Lord
Rich. The sequence may very reasonably be interpreted as an expression of
Platonic idealism, though it is sometimes taken in a sense less consistent
with Sidney's high reputation. Of Spenser's 'Amoretti' we have already
spoken. By far the finest of all the sonnets are the best ones (a
considerable part) of Shakspere's one hundred and fifty-four, which were
not published until 1609 but may have been mostly written before 1600.
Their interpretation has long been hotly debated. It is certain, however,
that they do not form a connected sequence. Some of them are occupied with
urging a youth of high rank, Shakspere's patron, who may have been either
the Earl of Southampton or William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, to marry and
perpetuate his race; others hint the story, real or imaginary, of
Shakspere's infatuation for a 'dark lady,' leading to bitter disillusion;
and still others seem to be occasional expressions of devotion to other
friends of one or the other sex. Here as elsewhere Shakspere's genius, at
its best, is supreme over all rivals; the first recorded criticism speaks
of the 'sugared sweetness' of his sonnets; but his genius is not always at
its best.

JOHN DONNE AND THE BEGINNING OF THE 'METAPHYSICAL' POETRY. The last decade
of the sixteenth century presents also, in the poems of John Donne,
[Footnote: Pronounced _Dun_] a new and very strange style of verse.
Donne, born in 1573, possessed one of the keenest and most powerful
intellects of the time, but his early manhood was largely wasted in
dissipation, though he studied theology and law and seems to have seen
military service. It was during this period that he wrote his love poems.
Then, while living with his wife and children in uncertain dependence on
noble patrons, he turned to religious poetry. At last he entered the
Church, became famous as one of the most eloquent preachers of the time,
and through the favor of King James was rapidly promoted until he was made
Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral. He died in 1631 after having furnished a
striking instance of the fantastic morbidness of the period
(post-Elizabethan) by having his picture painted as he stood wrapped in his
shroud on a funeral urn.

The distinguishing general characteristic of Donne's poetry is the
remarkable combination of an aggressive intellectuality with the lyric form
and spirit. Whether true poetry or mere intellectual cleverness is the
predominant element may reasonably be questioned; but on many readers
Donne's verse exercises a unique attraction. Its definite peculiarities are
outstanding: 1. By a process of extreme exaggeration and minute elaboration
Donne carries the Elizabethan conceits almost to the farthest possible
limit, achieving what Samuel Johnson two centuries later described as
'enormous and disgusting hyperboles.' 2. In so doing he makes relentless
use of the intellect and of verbally precise but actually preposterous
logic, striking out astonishingly brilliant but utterly fantastic flashes
of wit. 3. He draws the material of his figures of speech from highly
unpoetical sources--partly from the activities of every-day life, but
especially from all the sciences and school-knowledge of the time. The
material is abstract, but Donne gives it full poetic concrete
picturesqueness. Thus he speaks of one spirit overtaking another at death
as one bullet shot out of a gun may overtake another which has lesser
velocity but was earlier discharged. It was because of these last two
characteristics that Dr. Johnson applied to Donne and his followers the
rather clumsy name of 'Metaphysical' (Philosophical) poets. 'Fantastic'
would have been a better word. 4. In vigorous reaction against the
sometimes nerveless melody of most contemporary poets Donne often makes his
verse as ruggedly condensed (often as obscure) and as harsh as possible.
Its wrenched accents and slurred syllables sometimes appear absolutely
unmetrical, but it seems that Donne generally followed subtle rhythmical
ideas of his own. He adds to the appearance of irregularity by
experimenting with a large number of lyric stanza forms--a different form,
in fact, for nearly every poem. 5. In his love poems, while his sentiment
is often Petrarchan, he often emphasizes also the English note of
independence, taking as a favorite theme the incredible fickleness of
woman.

In spirit Donne belongs much less to Elizabethan poetry than to the
following period, in which nearly half his life fell. Of his great
influence on the poetry of that period we shall speak in the proper place.




CHAPTER VI

THE DRAMA FROM ABOUT 1550 TO 1642


THE INFLUENCE OF CLASSICAL COMEDY AND TRAGEDY. In Chapter IV we left the
drama at that point, toward the middle of the sixteenth century, when the
Mystery Plays had largely declined and Moralities and Interlude-Farces,
themselves decadent, were sharing in rather confused rivalry that degree of
popular interest which remained unabsorbed by the religious, political, and
social ferment. There was still to be a period of thirty or forty years
before the flowering of the great Elizabethan drama, but they were to be
years of new, if uncertain, beginnings.

The first new formative force was the influence of the classical drama, for
which, with other things classical, the Renaissance had aroused enthusiasm.
This force operated mainly not through writers for popular audiences, like
the authors of most Moralities and Interludes, but through men of the
schools and the universities, writing for performances in their own circles
or in that of the Court. It had now become a not uncommon thing for boys at
the large schools to act in regular dramatic fashion, at first in Latin,
afterward in English translation, some of the plays of the Latin comedians
which had long formed a part of the school curriculum. Shortly after the
middle of the century, probably, the head-master of Westminister School,
Nicholas Udall, took the further step of writing for his boys on the
classical model an original farce-comedy, the amusing 'Ralph Roister
Doister.' This play is so close a copy of Plautus' 'Miles Gloriosus' and
Terence's 'Eunuchus' that there is little that is really English about it;
a much larger element of local realism of the traditional English sort, in
a classical framework, was presented in the coarse but really skillful
'Gammer Gurton's Needle,' which was probably written at about the same
time, apparently by the Cambridge student William Stevenson.

Meanwhile students at the universities, also, had been acting Plautus and
Terence, and further, had been writing and acting Latin tragedies, as well
as comedies, of their own composition. Their chief models for tragedy were
the plays of the first-century Roman Seneca, who may or may not have been
identical with the philosopher who was the tutor of the Emperor Nero. Both
through these university imitations and directly, Seneca's very faulty
plays continued for many years to exercise a great influence on English
tragedy. Falling far short of the noble spirit of Greek tragedy, which they
in turn attempt to copy, Seneca's plays do observe its mechanical
conventions, especially the unities of Action and Time, the use of the
chorus to comment on the action, the avoidance of violent action and deaths
on the stage, and the use of messengers to report such events. For proper
dramatic action they largely substitute ranting moralizing declamation,
with crudely exaggerated passion, and they exhibit a great vein of
melodramatic horror, for instance in the frequent use of the motive of
implacable revenge for murder and of a ghost who incites to it. In the
early Elizabethan period, however, an age when life itself was dramatically
intense and tragic, when everything classic was looked on with reverence,
and when standards of taste were unformed, it was natural enough that such
plays should pass for masterpieces.

A direct imitation of Seneca, famous as the first tragedy in English on
classical lines, was the 'Gorboduc, or Ferrex and Porrex,' of Thomas Norton
and Thomas Sackville, acted in 1562. Its story, like those of some of
Shakspere's plays later, goes back ultimately to the account of one of the
early reigns in Geoffrey of Monmouth's 'History.' 'Gorboduc' outdoes its
Senecan models in tedious moralizing, and is painfully wooden in all
respects; but it has real importance not only because it is the first
regular English tragedy, but because it was the first play to use the
iambic pentameter blank verse which Surrey had introduced to English poetry
and which was destined to be the verse-form of really great English
tragedy. When they wrote the play Norton and Sackville were law students at
the Inner Temple, and from other law students during the following years
came other plays, which were generally acted at festival seasons, such, as
Christmas, at the lawyers' colleges, or before the Queen, though the common
people were also admitted among the audience. Unlike 'Gorboduc,' these
other university plays were not only for the most part crude and coarse in
the same manner as earlier English plays, but in accordance also with the
native English tradition and in violent defiance of the classical principle
of Unity, they generally combined tragical classical stories with realistic
scenes of English comedy (somewhat later with Italian stories).
Nevertheless, and this is the main thing, the more thoughtful members of
the Court and University circles, were now learning from the study of
classical plays a sense for form and the fundamental distinction between
tragedy and comedy.

THE CHRONICLE-HISTORY PLAY. About twenty years before the end of the
century there began to appear, at first at the Court and the Universities,
later on the popular stage, a form of play which was to hold, along with
tragedy and comedy, an important place in the great decades that were to
follow, namely the Chronicle-History Play. This form of play generally
presented the chief events in the whole or a part of the reign of some
English king. It was largely a product of the pride which was being
awakened among the people in the greatness of England under Elizabeth, and
of the consequent desire to know something of the past history of the
country, and it received a great impulse from the enthusiasm aroused by the
struggle with Spain and the defeat of the Armada. It was not, however,
altogether a new creation, for its method was similar to that of the
university plays which dealt with monarchs of classical history. It partly
inherited from them the formless mixture of farcical humor with historical
or supposedly historical fact which it shared with other plays of the time,
and sometimes also an unusually reckless disregard of unity of action,
time, and place. Since its main serious purpose, when it had one, was to
convey information, the other chief dramatic principles, such as careful
presentation of a few main characters and of a universally significant
human struggle, were also generally disregarded. It was only in the hands
of Shakspere that the species was to be moulded into true dramatic form and
to attain real greatness; and after a quarter century of popularity it was
to be reabsorbed into tragedy, of which in fact it was always only a
special variety.

JOHN LYLY. The first Elizabethan dramatist of permanent individual
importance is the comedian John Lyly, of whose early success at Court with
the artificial romance 'Euphues' we have already spoken. From 'Euphues'
Lyly turned to the still more promising work of writing comedies for the
Court entertainments with which Queen Elizabeth was extremely lavish. The
character of Lyly's plays was largely determined by the light and
spectacular nature of these entertainments, and further by the fact that on
most occasions the players at Court were boys. These were primarily the
'children [choir-boys] of the Queen's Chapel,' who for some generations had
been sought out from all parts of England for their good voices and were
very carefully trained for singing and for dramatic performances. The
choir-boys of St. Paul's Cathedral, similarly trained, also often acted
before the Queen. Many of the plays given by these boys were of the
ordinary sorts, but it is evident that they would be most successful in
dainty comedies especially adapted to their boyish capacity. Such comedies
Lyly proceeded to write, in prose. The subjects are from classical
mythology or history or English folk-lore, into which Lyly sometimes weaves
an allegorical presentation of court intrigue. The plots are very slight,
and though the structure is decidedly better than in most previous plays,
the humorous sub-actions sometimes have little connection with the main
action. Characterization is still rudimentary, and altogether the plays
present not so much a picture of reality as 'a faint moonlight reflection
of life.' None the less the best of them, such as 'Alexander and Campaspe,'
are delightful in their sparkling delicacy, which is produced partly by the
carefully-wrought style, similar to that of 'Euphues,' but less artificial,
and is enhanced by the charming lyrics which are scattered through them.
For all this the elaborate scenery and costuming of the Court
entertainments provided a very harmonious background.

These plays were to exert a strong influence on Shakspere's early comedies,
probably suggesting to him: the use of prose for comedy; the value of
snappy and witty dialog; refinement, as well as affectation, of style;
lyric atmosphere; the characters and tone of high comedy, contrasting so
favorably with the usual coarse farce of the period; and further such
details as the employment of impudent boy-pages as a source of amusement.

PEELE, GREENE, AND KYD. Of the most important early contemporaries of
Shakspere we have already mentioned two as noteworthy in other fields of
literature. George Peele's masque-like 'Arraignment of Paris' helps to show
him as more a lyric poet than a dramatist. Robert Greene's plays,
especially 'Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay,' reveal, like his novels, some
real, though not very elaborate, power of characterization. They are
especially important in developing the theme of romantic love with real
fineness of feeling and thus helping to prepare the way for Shakspere in a
very important particular. In marked contrast to these men is Thomas Kyd,
who about the year 1590 attained a meteoric reputation with crude
'tragedies of blood,' specialized descendants of Senecan tragedy, one of
which may have been the early play on Hamlet which Shakspere used as the
groundwork for his masterpiece.

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, 1564-1593. Peele and Greene were University men who
wrote partly for Court or academic audiences, partly for the popular stage.
The distinction between the two sorts of drama was still further broken
down in the work of Christopher Marlowe, a poet of real genius, decidedly
the chief dramatist among Shakspere's early contemporaries, and the one
from whom Shakspere learned the most.

Marlowe was born in 1564 (the same year as Shakspere), the son of a
shoemaker at Canterbury. Taking his master's degree after seven years at
Cambridge, in 1587, he followed the other 'university wits' to London.
There, probably the same year and the next, he astonished the public with
the two parts of 'Tamburlaine the Great,' a dramatization of the stupendous
career of the bloodthirsty Mongol fourteenth-century conqueror. These
plays, in spite of faults now conspicuous enough, are splendidly
imaginative and poetic, and were by far the most powerful that had yet been
written in England. Marlowe followed them with 'The Tragical History of Dr.
Faustus,' a treatment of the medieval story which two hundred years later
was to serve Goethe for his masterpiece; with 'The Jew of Malta,' which was
to give Shakspere suggestions for 'The Merchant of Venice'; and with
'Edward the Second,' the first really artistic Chronicle History play.
Among the literary adventurers of the age who led wild lives in the London
taverns Marlowe is said to have attained a conspicuous reputation for
violence and irreligion. He was killed in 1593 in a reckless and foolish
brawl, before he had reached the age of thirty.

If Marlowe's life was unworthy, the fault must be laid rather at the door
of circumstances than of his own genuine nature. His plays show him to have
been an ardent idealist and a representative of many of the qualities that
made the greatness of the Renaissance. The Renaissance learning, the
apparently boundless vistas which it had opened to the human spirit, and
the consciousness of his own power, evidently intoxicated Marlowe with a
vast ambition to achieve results which in his youthful inexperience he
could scarcely even picture to himself. His spirit, cramped and outraged by
the impassable limitations of human life and by the conventions of society,
beat recklessly against them with an impatience fruitless but partly grand.
This is the underlying spirit of almost all his plays, struggling in them
for expression. The Prolog to 'Tamburlaine' makes pretentious announcement
that the author will discard the usual buffoonery of the popular stage and
will set a new standard of tragic majesty:

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