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HALLECKS'S NEW ENGLISH LITERATURE
by REUBEN POST HALLECK, M.A., LL.D.
Author of "History of English Literature" and "History of American
Literature"
PREFACE
In this _New English Literature_ the author endeavors to preserve the
qualities that have caused his former _History of English Literature_
to be so widely used; namely, suggestiveness, clearness, organic
unity, interest, and the power to awaken thought and to stimulate the
student to further reading.
The book furnishes a concise account of the history and growth of
English literature from the earliest times to the present day. It lays
special emphasis on literary movements, on the essential qualities
that differentiate one period from another, and on the spirit that
animates each age. Above all, the constant purpose has been to arouse
in the student an enthusiastic desire to read the works of the authors
discussed. Because of the author's belief in the guide-book function
of a history of literature, he has spent much time and thought in
preparing the unusually detailed _Suggested Readings_ that follow each
chapter.
It was necessary for several reasons to prepare a new book. Twentieth
century research has transformed the knowledge of the Elizabethan
theater and has brought to light important new facts relating to the
drama and to Shakespeare. The new social spirit has changed the
critical viewpoint concerning authors as different as Wordsworth,
Keats, Ruskin, Dickens, and Tennyson. Wordsworth's treatment of
childhood, for instance, now requires an amount of space that would a
short time ago have seemed disproportionate. Later Victorian writers,
like Meredith, Hardy, Swinburne, and Kipling, can no longer be
accorded the usual brief perfunctory treatment. Increased modern
interest in contemporary life is also demanding some account of the
literature already produced by the twentieth century. An entire
chapter is devoted to showing how this new literature reveals the
thought and ideals of this generation.
Other special features of this new work are the suggestions and
references for a literary trip through England, the historical
introductions to the chapters, the careful treatment of the modern
drama, the latest bibliography, and the new illustrations, some of
which have been specially drawn for this work, while others have been
taken from original paintings in the National Portrait Gallery,
London, and elsewhere. The illustrations are the result of much
individual research by the author during his travels in England.
The greater part of this book was gradually fashioned in the
classroom, during the long period that the author has taught this
subject. Experience with his classes has proved to him the
reasonableness of the modern demand that a textbook shall be definite
and stimulating.
The author desires to thank the large number of teachers who have
aided him by their criticism. Miss Elizabeth Howard Spaulding and Miss
Sarah E. Simons deserve special mention for valuable assistance. The
entire treatment of Rudyard Kipling is the work of Miss Mary Brown
Humphrey. The greater part of the chapter, _Twentieth-Century
Literature_, was prepared by Miss Anna Blanche McGill. Some of the
best and most difficult parts of the book were written by the author's
wife. R.P.H.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION--LITERARY ENGLAND
CHAPTERS:
I. FROM 449 A.D. TO THE NORMAN CONQUEST, 1066
II. FROM THE NORMAN CONQUEST, 1066, TO CHAUCER'S DEATH 1400
III. FROM CHAUCER'S DEATH 1400, TO THE ACCESSION OF ELIZABETH, 1558
IV. THE AGE OF ELIZABETH 1558-1603
V. THE PURITAN AGE, 1603-1660
VI. FROM THE RESTORATION, 1660, TO THE PUBLICATION OF PAMELA, 1740
VII. THE SECOND FORTY YEARS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 1740-1780
VIII. THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM, 1780-1837
IX. THE VICTORIAN AGE, 1837-1900
X. TWENTIETH-CENTURY LITERATURE
SUPPLEMENTARY LIST OF AUTHORS AND THEIR CHIEF WORKS
INDEX
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS:
1. Woden.
2. Exeter Cathedral.
3. Anglo-Saxon Gleeman. (From the tapestry designed by H.A. Bone).
4. Facsimile of beginning of Cotton MS. of Beowulf.(British Museum).
5. Facsimile of Beginning of Junian MS. of Caedmon.
6. Anglo-Saxon Musicians. (From illuminated MS., British Museum).
7. The Beginning of Alfred's Laws. (From illuminated MS., British
Museum).
8. The Death of Harold at Hastings. (From the Bayeux tapestry).
9. What Mandeville Saw. (From Edition of 1725).
10. John Wycliffe. (From an old print).
11. Treuthe's Pilgryme atte Plow. (From a MS. in Trinity College,
Cambridge).
12. Gower Hearing the Confession of a Lover. (From Egerton MS.,
British Museum).
13. Geoffrey Chaucer. (From an old drawing in the MS. of Occleve's
Poems, British Museum).
14. Canterbury Cathedral.
15. Pilgrims Leaving the Tabard Inn. (From Urry's Chaucer).
16. Facsimile of Lines Describing the Franklyn. (From the Cambridge
University MS.).
17. Franklyn, Friar, Knight, Prioress, Squire, Clerk of Oxford. (From
the Ellesmere MS.).
18. Morris Dancers. (From MS. of Chaucer's Time).
19. Henry VIII, giving Bibles to Clergy and Laity. (From frontispiece
to Coverdale Bible).
20. Book Illustration, Early Fifteenth Century. (British Museum).
21. Facsimile of Caxton's Advertisement of his Books. (Bodleian
Library, Oxford).
22. Malory's _Morte d'Arthur_. (From DeWorde's Edition, 1529).
23. Early Title Page of _Robin Hood_. (Copland Edition, 1550).
24. William Tyndale. (From an old print).
25. Sir Thomas Wyatt. (After Holbein).
26. Facsimile of Queen Elizabeth's Signature.
27. Sir Philip Sidney. (After the miniature by Isaac Oliver, Windsor
Castle).
28. Francis Bacon. (From the painting by Van Somer, National Portrait
Gallery).
29. Title page of _Bacon's Essays_, 1597.
30. John Donne. (From the painting by Jansen, South Kensington
Museum).
31. Edmund Spenser. (From a painting in Dublin Castle).
32. Miracle Play at Coventry. (From an old print).
33. Hell Mouth in the Old Miracle Play. From a Columbia University
Model.
34. Fool's Head.
35. Air-Bag Flapper and Lath Dagger.
36. Fool of the Old Play.
37. Thomas Sackville.
38. Theater in Inn Yard. (From Columbia University model).
39. Reconstructed Globe Theater, Earl's Court, London.
40. The Bankside and its Theaters. (From the Hollar engraving, about
1620).
41. Contemporary Drawing of Interior of an Elizabethan Theater.
42. Marlowe's Memorial Statue at Canterbury.
43. William Shakespeare. (From the Chandos portrait, National
Portrait Gallery).
44. Shakespeare's Birthplace. Stratford-on-Avon.
45. Classroom in Stratford Grammar School.
46. Anne Hathaway's Cottage, Shottery.
47. View of Stratford-on-Avon.
48. Inscription over Shakespeare's Tomb.
49. Shakespeare--The D'Avenant Bust. (Discovered in 1845).
50. Henry Irving as Hamlet.
51. Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth (From the painting by Sargent).
52. Falstaff and his Page. (From a drawing by B. Westmacott).
53. Ben Jonson. (From the portrait by Honthorst, National Portrait
Gallery).
54. Ben Jonson's Tomb in Westminster Abbey.
55. Francis Beaumont.
56. John Fletcher.
57. Cromwell Dictating Dispatches to Milton. (From the painting by
Ford Maddox Brown).
58. Thomas Fuller.
59. Izaak Walton.
60. Jeremy Taylor.
61. John Bunyan. (From the painting by Sadler, National Portrait
Gallery).
62. Bedford Bridge, Showing Gates and Jail. (From an old print).
63. Bunyan's Dream. (From Fourth Edition _Pilgrim's Progress_, 1680).
64. Woodcut from the First Edition of Mr. Badman.
65. Robert Herrick.
66. John Milton. (After a drawing by W. Faithorne, at Bayfordbury).
67. John Milton, AEt. 10.
68. Milton's Visit to Galileo in 1638. (From the painting by T.
Lessi).
69. Facsimile of Milton's Signature. 1663.
70. Title Page to _Comus_, 1637.
71. Milton's Motto from _Comus_, with Autograph, 1639.
72. Milton Dictating _Paradise Lost_ to his Daughter. (From the
painting by Munkacsy).
73. Samuel Butler.
74. John Dryden. (From the painting by Sir Godfrey Kneller, National
Portrait Gallery).
75. Birthplace of Dryden. (From a print).
76. Daniel Defoe. (From a print by Vandergucht).
77. Jonathan Swift. (From the painting by C. Jervas, National
Portrait Gallery).
78. Moor Park. (From a drawing).
79. Swift and Stella. (From the painting by Dicksee).
80. Joseph Addison. (From the painting by Sir Godfrey Kneller,
National Portrait Gallery.)
81. Birthplace of Addison.
82. Richard Steele.
83. Sir Roger de Coverley in Church. (From a drawing by B.
Westmacott).
84. Alexander Pope. (From the portrait by William Hoare).
85. Pope's Villa at Twickenham. (From an old print).
86. Rape of the Lock. (From a drawing by B. Westmacott).
87. Alexander Pope. (From a contemporary portrait).
88. Horace Walpole.
89. Thomas Gray.
90. Stoke Poges Churchyard.
91. A Blind Beggar Robbed of his Drink. (From a British Museum MS.)
92. Samuel Richardson. (From an original drawing).
93. Henry Fielding. (From the drawing by Hogarth).
94. Laurence Sterne.
95. Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim. (From a drawing by B. Westmacott).
96. Tobias Smollett.
97. Edward Gibbon. (From the painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds).
98. Edmund Burke. (From the painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds, National
Portrait Gallery).
99. Oliver Goldsmith. (From the painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds,
National Portrait Gallery).
100. Goldsmith and Dr. Johnson. (From a drawing by B. Westmacott).
101. Goldsmith's Lodgings, Canonbury Tower, London.
102. Dr. Primrose and his Family. (From a drawing by G. Patrick
Nelson).
103. Samuel Johnson. (From the painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds).
104. Samuel Johnson's Birthplace. (From an old print).
105. James Boswell.
106. Cheshire Cheese Inn To-day.
107. Robert Southey.
108. Charles Lamb. (From a drawing by Maclise).
109. Bo-Bo and Roast Pig. (From a drawing by B. Westmacott).
110. William Cowper. (From the portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence).
111. Cowper's cottage at Weston.
112. John Gilpin's Ride. (From a drawing by R. Caldecott).
113. Robert Burns. (From the painting by Nasmyth National Portrait
Gallery).
114. Birthplace of Burns.
115. Burns and Highland Mary. (From the painting by James Archer).
116. Sir Walter Scott. (From the painting by William Nicholson).
117. Abbotsford, Home of Sir Walter Scott.
118. Scott's Grave in Dryburgh Abbey.
119. Loch Katrine and Ellen's Isle.
120. Walter Scott. (From a life sketch by Maclise).
121. Scott's Desk and "Elbow Chair" at Abbotsford.
122. Jane Austen. (From an original family portrait).
123. Jane Austen's Desk.
124. William Wordsworth. (From the portrait by B.R. Haydon).
125. Boy of Winander. (From the painting by H.O. Walker, Congressional
Library).
126. Wordsworth's Home at Grasmere--Dove Cottage.
127. Grasmere Lake.
128. William Wordsworth. (From a sketch in _Fraser's Magazine_).
129. Rydal Mount near Ambleside.
130. Samuel Taylor Coleridge. (From a pencil sketch by C.R. Leslie).
131. Coleridge's Cottage at Nether-Stowey.
132. Coleridge as a Young Man. (From a sketch made in Germany).
133. Lord Byron. (From a portrait by Kramer).
134. Byron at Seventeen. (From a painting).
135. Newstead Abbey, Byron's Home.
136. Castle of Chillon.
137. Byron's Home at Pisa.
138. Percy Bysshe Shelley. (From the portrait by Amelia Curran,
National Portrait Gallery).
139. Shelley's Birthplace, Field Place.
140. Grave of Shelley, Protestant Cemetery, Rome.
141. Facsimile of Stanza from _To a Skylark_.
142. John Keats. (From the painting by Hilton, National Portrait
Gallery).
143. Keats's Home, Wentworth Place.
144. Grave of Keats, Rome.
145. Facsimile of Original MS. of _Endymion_.
146. Endymion. (From the painting by H.O. Walker, Congressional
Library).
147. Thomas de Quincy. (From the painting by Sir J.W. Gordon, National
Portrait Gallery).
148. Room in Dove Cottage.
149. Charles Darwin.
150. John Tyndall.
151. Thomas Huxley. (From the painting by John Collier, National
Portrait Gallery).
152. Dante Gabriel Rossetti. (From the drawing by himself, National
Portrait Gallery).
153. Thomas Babington Macaulay. (From the painting by Sir. F. Grant,
National Portrait Gallery).
154. Cardinal Newman. (From the painting by Emmeline Deane).
155. Thomas Carlyle. (From the painting by James McNeill Whistler).
156. Craigenputtock.
157. Mrs. Carlyle. (From a miniature portrait).
158. John Ruskin. (From a photograph).
159. Charles Dickens. (From a photograph taken in America, 1868).
160. Dicken's Home, Gads Hill.
161. Facsimile of MS. of _A Christmas Carol_.
162. William Makepeace Thackeray. (From the painting by Samuel
Laurence, National Portrait Gallery).
163. Caricature of Thackeray by Himself.
164. Thackeray's Home where _Vanity Fair_ was Written.
165. George Eliot. (From a drawing by Sir F.W. Burton, National
Portrait Gallery).
166. George Eliot's Birthplace.
167. Robert Louis Stevenson. (From a photograph).
168. Stevenson as a Boy.
169. Edinburgh Memorial of Robert Louis Stevenson. (By St. Gaudens).
170. George Meredith. (From the painting by G.F. Watts, National
Portrait Gallery).
171. Thomas Hardy. (From the painting by Winifred Thompson).
172. Max Gate. (The Home of Hardy).
173. Matthew Arnold. (From the painting by G.F. Watts, National
Portrait Gallery).
174. Robert Browning. (From the painting by G.F. Watts, National
Portrait Gallery).
175. Elizabeth Barrett Browning. (From the painting by Field Talfourd,
National Portrait Gallery).
176. Facsimile of MS. from _Pippa Passes_.
177. Alfred Tennyson. (From a photograph by Mayall).
178. Farringford.
179. Facsimile of MS. of _Crossing the Bar_.
180. Algernon Charles Swinburne. (From the painting by Dante Gabriel
Rossetti).
181. Rudyard Kipling. (From the painting by John Collier).
182. Mowgli and his Brothers. (From _The Jungle Book_).
183. The Cat That Walked. (From Kipling's drawing for _Just-So
Stories_).
184. Joseph Conrad.
185. Arnold Bennett.
186. John Galsworthy.
187. Herbert George Wells.
188. William Butler Yeats.
189. John Masefield.
190. Alfred Noyes.
191. Henry Arthur Jones.
192. Arthur Wing Pinero.
193. George Bernard Shaw. (From the bust by Rodin).
194. James Matthew Barrie.
195. Stephen Phillips.
196. Lady Gregory.
197. John Synge.
[Illustration: LITERARY MAP OF ENGLAND]
[Illustration: LITERARY MAP OF ENGLAND]
NEW ENGLISH LITERATURE
INTRODUCTION
LITERARY ENGLAND
Some knowledge of the homes and haunts of English authors is necessary
for an understanding of their work. We feel in much closer touch with
Shakespeare after merely reading about Stratford-on-Avon; but we seem
to share his experiences when we actually walk from Stratford-on-Avon
to Shottery and Warwick. The scenery and life of the Lake Country are
reflected in Wordsworth's poetry. Ayr and the surrounding country
throw a flood of light on the work of Burns. The streets of London are
a commentary on the novels of Dickens. A journey to Canterbury aids us
in recreating the life of Chaucer's Pilgrims.
Much may be learned from a study of literary England. Whether one does
or does not travel, such study is necessary. Those who hope at some
time to visit England should acquire in advance as much knowledge as
possible about the literary associations of the places to be visited;
for when the opportunity for the trip finally comes, there is usually
insufficient time for such preparation as will enable the traveler to
derive the greatest enjoyment from a visit to the literary centers in
which Great Britain abounds.
Whenever an author is studied, his birthplace should be located on the
literary map. Baedeker's _Great Britain_ will be indispensable in
making an itinerary. The _Reference List for Literary England_ is
sufficiently comprehensive to enable any one to plan an enjoyable
literary pilgrimage through Great Britain and to learn the most
important facts about the places connected with English authors.
The following suggestions from the author's experience are intended to
serve merely as an illustration of how to begin an itinerary. The
majority of east-bound steamships call at Plymouth, a good place to
disembark for a literary trip. From Plymouth, the traveler may go to
Exeter (a quaint old town with a fine cathedral, the home of _Exeter
Book_,) thence by rail to Camelford in Cornwall and by coach four
miles to the fascinating Tintagel (King Arthur), where, as Tennyson
says in his _Idylls of the King_:--
"All down the thundering shores of Bude and Bos,
There came a day as still as heaven, and then
They found a naked child upon the sands
Of dark Tintagil by the Cornish sea,
And that was Arthur."
Next, the traveler may go by coach to Bude (of which Tennyson
remarked, "I hear that there are larger waves at Bude than at any
other place. I must go thither and be alone with God") and to unique
Clovelly and Bideford (Kingsley), by rail to Ilfracombe, by coach to
Lynton (Lorna Doone), and the adjacent Lynmouth (where Shelley passed
some of his happiest days and alarmed the authorities by setting
afloat bottles containing his _Declaration of Rights_), by coach to
Minehead, by rail to Watchet, driving past Alfoxden (Wordsworth) to
Nether-Stowey (Coleridge) and the Quantock Hills, by motor and rail to
Glastonbury (Isle of Avalon, burial place of King Arthur and Queen
Guinevere), by rail to Wells (cathedral), to Bath (many literary
associations), to Bristol (Chatterton, Southey), to Gloucester (fine
cathedral, tomb of Edward II), and to Ross, the starting point for a
remarkable all day's row down the river Wye to Tintern Abbey
(Wordsworth), stopping for dinner at Monmouth (Geoffrey of Monmouth).
After a start similar to the foregoing, the traveler should begin to
make an itinerary of his own. He will enjoy a trip more if he has a
share in planning it. From Tintern Abbey he might proceed, for
instance, to Stratford-on-Avon (Shakespeare); then to Warwick,
Kenilworth, and the George Eliot Country in North Warwickshire and
Staffordshire.
Far natural beauty, there is nothing in England that is more
delightful than a coaching trip through Wordsworth's Lake Country
(Cumberland and Westmoreland). From there it is not far to the Carlyle
Country (Ecclefechan, Craigenputtock), to the Burns Country (Dumfries,
Ayr), and to the Scott Country (Loch Katrine, The Trossachs,
Edinburgh, and Abbotsford). In Edinburgh, William Sharp's statement
about Stevenson should be remembered, "One can, in a word, outline
Stevenson's own country as all the region that on a clear day one may
in the heart of Edinburgh descry from the Castle walls."
If the traveler lands at Southampton, he is on the eastern edge of
Thomas Hardy's Wessex, Dorchester in Dorsetshire being the center. The
Jane Austen Country (Steventon, Chawton) is in Hampshire. To the east,
in Surrey, is Burford Bridge near Dorking, where Keats wrote part of
his _Endymion_, where George Meredith had his summer home, and where
"the country of his poetry" is located.
In London, it is a pleasure to trace some of the greatest literary
associations in the world. We may stand at the corner of Monkwell and
Silver streets, on the site of a building in which Shakespeare wrote
some of his greatest plays. Milton lived in the vicinity and is buried
not far distant in St. Giles Church. In Westminster Abbey we find the
graves of many of the greatest authors, from Chaucer to Tennyson.
London is not only Dickens Land and Thackeray Land, but also the
"Land" of many other writers. We may still eat in the Old Cheshire
Cheese, where Johnson and Goldsmith dined.
Those interested in literary England ought to include the cathedral
towns in their itinerary, so that they may visit the wonderful "poems
in stone," some of which, _e.g_., Canterbury (Chaucer), Winchester
(Izaak Walton, Jane Austen), Lichfield (Johnson), have literary
associations. For this reason, all of the cathedral towns in England
have been included in the literary map.
REFERENCE LIST FOR LITERARY ENGLAND:
Baedeker's _Great Britain_ (includes England and Scotland).
Baedeker's _London and its Environs_.
Adcock's _Famous Houses and Literary Shrines of London_.
Lang's _Literary London_.
Hutton's _Literary Landmarks in London_.
Lucas's _A Wanderer in London_.
Shelley's _Literary By-Paths in Old England_.
Baildon's _Homes and Haunts of Famous Authors_.
Bates's _From Gretna Green to Land's End_.
Masson's _In the Footsteps of the Poets_.
Wolfe's _A Literary Pilgrimage among the Haunts of Famous British
Authors_.
Salmon's _Literary Rambles in the West of England_.
Hutton's _A Book of the Wye_.
Headlam's _Oxford (Medieval Towns Series)_.
Winter's _Shakespeare's England_.
Murray's _Handbook of Warwickshire_.
Lee's _Stratford-on-Avon, from the Earliest Times to the Death of
Shakespeare_.
Tompkins's _Stratford-on-Avon_ (Dent's _Temple Topographies_).
Brassington's _Shakespeare's Homeland_.
Winter's _Grey Days and Gold_ (Shakespeare).
Collingwood's _The Lake Counties_ (Dent's County Guides).
Wordsworth's _The Prelude_ (Books I.-V.).
Rawnsley's _Literary Associations of the English Lakes_.
Knight's _Through the Wordsworth Country_.
Bradley's _Highways and Byways in the English Lakes_.
Jerrold's _Surrey_ (Dent's County Guides).
Dewar's _Hampshire with Isle of Wight_ (Dent's County Guides).
Ward's _The Canterbury Pilgrimage_.
Harper's _The Hardy Country_.
Snell's _The Blackmore Country_.
Melville's _The Thackeray Country_.
Kitton's _The Dickens Country_.
Sloan's _The Carlyle Country_.
Dougall's _The Burns Country_.
Crockett's _The Scott Country_.
Hill's _Jane Austen: Her Homes and Her Friends_.
Cook's _Homes and Haunts of John Ruskin_.
William Sharp's _Literary Geography and Travel Sketches_ (Vol. IV. of
_Works_) contains chapters on _The Country of Stevenson, The Country
of George Meredith, The Country of Carlyle, The Country of George.
Eliot, The Bronte Country, Thackeray Land_, The Thames from Oxford to
the Nore_.
Hutton's _Literary Landmarks of Edinburgh_.
Stevenson's _Picturesque Notes on Edinburgh_.
Loftie's _Brief Account of Westminster Abbey_.
Parker's _Introduction to the Study of Gothic Architecture_.
Stanley's _Memorials of Westminster Abbey_.
Kimball's _An English Cathedral Journey_.
Singleton's _How to Visit the English Cathedrals_.
Bond's _The English Cathedrals_ (200 illustrations).
Cram's _The Ruined Abbeys of Great Britain_ (6 illustrations).
Home's _What to See in England_.
Boynton's _London in English Literature_.
GENERAL REFERENCE LIST FOR THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE[1]:
_Cambridge History of English Literature_, 14 vols.
Garnett and Gosse's _English Literature_, 4 vols.
Morley's _English Writers_, 11 vols.
Jusserand's _Literary History of the English People_.
Taine's _English Literature_.
Courthope's _History of English Poetry_, 6 vols.
Stephens and Lee's _Dictionary of National Biography_ (dead authors).
_New International Cyclopedia_ (living and dead authors).
_English Men of Letters Series_ (abbreviated reference, E.M.L.)
_Great Writers' Series_ (abbreviated reference. G.W.).
Poole's _Index_ (and continuation volumes for reference to critical
articles in periodicals).
_The United States Catalogue_ and _Cumulative Book Index_.
SELECTIONS FROM ENGLISH LITERATURE[2]:
*Pancoast and Spaeth's _Early English Poems_. (P. & S.)[3]
*Warren's _Treasury of English Literature, Part I_. (Origins to
Eleventh Century: London, One Shilling.) (Warren.)
*Ward's _English Poets_, 4 vols. (Ward.)
*Bronson's _English Poems_, 4 vols. (Bronson.)
_Oxford Treasury of English Literature_, Vol. I., _Beowulf to
Jacobean_;
*Vol. II., _Growth of the Drama_; Vol. III., _Jacobean to Victorian_.
(Oxford Treasury.)
*_Oxford Book of English Verse_. (Oxford.)
*Craik's _English Prose_, 5 vols. (Craik.)
*Page's _British Poets of the Nineteenth Century_. (Page.)
Chambers's _Cyclopedia of English Literature_. (Chambers.)
Manly's _English Poetry_ (from 1170). (Manly I.)
Manly's _English Prose_ (from 1137). (Manly II.)
_Century Readings for a Course in English Literature_. (Century.)
CHAPTER I: FROM 449 A.D. TO THE NORMAN CONQUEST, 1066
Subject Matter and Aim.--The history of English literature traces
the development of the best poetry and prose written in English by the
inhabitants of the British Isles. For more than twelve hundred years
the Anglo-Saxon race has been producing this great literature, which
includes among its achievements the incomparable work of Shakespeare.
This literature is so great in amount that the student who approaches
the study without a guide is usually bewildered. He needs a history of
English literature for the same reason that a traveler in England
requires a guidebook. Such a history should do more than indicate
where the choicest treasures of literature may be found; it should
also show the interesting stages of development; it should emphasize
some of the ideals that have made the Anglo-Saxons one of the most
famous races in the world; and it should inspire a love for the
reading of good literature.
No satisfactory definition of "literature" has ever been framed.
Milton's conception of it was "something so written to after times, as
they should not willingly let it die." Shakespeare's working
definition of literature was something addressed not to after times
but to an eternal present, and invested with such a touch of nature as
to make the whole world kin. When he says of Duncan:--
"After life's fitful fever he sleeps well,"
he touches the feelings of mortals of all times and opens the door for
imaginative activity, causing us to wonder why life should be a fitful
fever, followed by an incommunicable sleep. Much of what we call
literature would not survive the test of Shakespeare's definition; but
true literature must appeal to imagination and feeling as well as to
intellect. No mere definition can take the place of what may be called
a feeling for literature. Such a feeling will develop as the best
English poetry and prose: are sympathetically read. Wordsworth had
this feeling when he defined the poets as those:--
"Who gave us nobler loves and nobler cares."
The Mission of English Literature.--It is a pertinent question to
ask, What has English literature to offer?
In the first place, to quote Ben Jonson:--
"The thirst that from the soul cloth rise
Doth ask a drink divine."
English literature is of preeminent worth in helping to supply that
thirst. It brings us face to face with great ideals, which increase
our sense of responsibility for the stewardship of life and tend to
raise the level of our individual achievement. We have a heightened
sense of the demands which life makes and a better comprehension of
the "far-off divine event" toward which we move, after we have heard
Swinburne's ringing call:--
"...this thing is God,
To be man with thy might,
To grow straight in the strength
of thy spirit, and live out thy life
as the light."
We feel prompted to act on the suggestion of--
"...him who sings
To one clear harp in divers tones,
That men may rise on striping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things."[4]
In the second place, the various spiritual activities demanded for the
interpretation of the best things in literature add to enjoyment. This
pleasure, unlike that which arises from physical gratification,
increases with age, and often becomes the principal source of
entertainment as life advances. Shakespeare has Prospero say:--
"...my library
Was dukedom large enough."
The suggestions from great minds disclose vistas that we might never
otherwise see. Browning truly says:--
"...we're made so that we love
First when we see them painted, things we have passed
Perhaps a hundred tunes nor cared to see."
Sometimes it is only after reading Shakespeare that we can see--
"...winking Mary buds begin
To ope their golden eyes.
With everything that pretty is."
and only after spending some time in Wordsworth's company that the
common objects of our daily life become invested with--
"The glory and the freshness of a dream."
In the third place, we should emphasize the fact that one great
function of English literature is to bring deliverance to souls weary
with routine, despondent, or suffering the stroke of some affliction.
In order to transfigure the everyday duties of life, there is need of
imagination, of a vision such as the poets give. Without such a vision
the tasks of life are drudgery. The dramas of the poets bring relief
and incite to nobler action.
"The soul hath need of prophet and redeemer.
Her outstretched wings against her prisoning bars
She waits for truth, and truth is with the dreamer
Persistent as the myriad light of stars."[5]
We need to listen to a poet like Browning, who--
"Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed, tho' right were worsted, wrong would triumph.
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
Sleep to wake."
In the fourth place, the twentieth century is emphasizing the fact
that neither happiness nor perpetuity of government is possible
without the development of a spirit of service,--a truth long since
taught by English literature. We may learn this lesson from _Beowulf_,
the first English epic, from Alfred the Great, from William Langland,
and from Chaucer's _Parish Priest_. All Shakespeare's greatest and
happiest characters, all the great failures of his dramas, are sermons
on this text. In _The Tempest_ he presents Ariel, tendering his
service to Prospero:--
"All hail, great master! grave sir, hail! I come
To answer thy best pleasure."
Shakespeare delights to show Ferdinand winning Miranda through
service, and Caliban remaining an abhorred creature because he
detested service. Much of modern literature is an illuminated text on
the glory of service. Coleridge voiced for all the coming years what
has grown to be almost an elemental feeling to the English-speaking
race:--
"He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small."
The Home and Migrations of the Anglo-Saxon Race.--Just as there was
a time when no English foot had touched the shores of America, so
there was a period when the ancestors of the English lived far away
from the British Isles. For nearly four hundred years prior to the
coming of the Anglo-Saxons, Britain had been a Roman province. In 410
A.D. the Romans withdrew their legions from Britain to protect Rome
herself against swarms of Teutonic invaders. About 449 a band of
Teutons, called Jutes, left Denmark, landed on the Isle of Thanet (in
the north-eastern part of Kent), and began the conquest of Britain.
Warriors from the tribes of the Angles and the Saxons soon followed,
and drove westward the original inhabitants, the Britons or Welsh,
_i.e._ foreigners, as the Teutons styled the natives.
Before the invasion of Britain, the Teutons inhabited the central part
of Europe as far south as the Rhine, a tract which in a large measure
coincides with modern Germany. The Jutes, Angles, and Saxons were
different tribes of Teutons. These ancestors of the English dwelt in
Denmark and in the lands extending southward along the North Sea.
The Angles, an important Teutonic tribe, furnished the name for the
new home, which was called Angle-land, afterward shortened into
England. The language spoken by these tribes is generally called
Anglo-Saxon or Saxon.
The Training of the Race.--The climate is a potent factor in
determining the vigor and characteristics of a race. Nature reared the
Teuton like a wise but not indulgent parent. By every method known to
her, she endeavored to render him fit to colonize and sway the world.
Summer paid him but a brief visit. His companions were the frost, the
fluttering snowflake, the stinging hail. For music, instead of the
soft notes of a shepherd's pipe under blue Italian or Grecian skies,
he listened to the north wind whistling among the bare branches, or to
the roar of an angry northern sea upon the bleak coast.
The feeble could not withstand the rigor of such a climate, in the
absence of the comforts of civilization. Only the strongest in each
generation survived; and these transmitted to their children
increasing vigor. Warfare was incessant not only with nature but also
with the surrounding tribes. Nature kept the Teuton in such a school
until he seemed fit to colonize the world and to produce a literature
that would appeal to humanity in every age.
The Early Teutonic Religion.--In the early days on the continent,
before the Teuton had learned of Christianity, his religious beliefs
received their most pronounced coloring from the rigors of his
northern climate, from the Frost Giants, the personified forces of
evil, with whom he battled. The kindly, life-bringing spring and
summer, which seemed to him earth's redeeming divinity, were soon
slain by the arrows that came from the winter's quivers. Not even
Thor, the wielder of the thunderbolt, nor Woden, the All-Father,
delayed the inevitable hour when the dusk of winter came, when the
voice of Baldur could no longer be heard awaking earth to a new life.
The approach of the "twilight of the gods," the _Goetterdaemmerung_, was
a stern reality to the Teuton.
[Illustration: WODEN.]
Although instinct with gloomy fatalism, this religion taught bravery.
None but the brave were invited to Valhalla to become Woden's guest.
The brave man might perish, but even then he won victory; for he was
invited to sit with heroes at the table of the gods. "None but the
brave deserves the fair," is merely a modern softened rendering of the
old spirit.
The Christian religion, which was brought to the Teuton after he had
come to England, found him already cast in a semi-heroic mold. But
before he could proceed on his matchless career of world conquest,
before he could produce a Shakespeare and plant his flag in the
sunshine of every land, it was necessary for this new faith to develop
in him the belief that a man of high ideals, working in unison with
the divinity that shapes his end, may rise superior to fate and be
given the strength to overcome the powers of evil and to mold the
world to his will. The intensity of this faith, swaying an energetic
race naturally fitted to respond to the great moral forces of the
universe, has enabled the Anglo-Saxon to produce the world's greatest
literature, to evolve the best government for developing human
capabilities, and to make the whole world feel the effect of his
ideals and force of character. At the close of the nineteenth century,
a French philosopher wrote a book entitled _Anglo-Saxon Superiority,
In What Does it Consist?_ His answer was, "In self-reliance and in the
happiness found in surmounting the material and moral difficulties of
life." A study of the literature in which the ideals of the race are
most artistically and effectively embodied will lead to much the same
conclusion.
The History of Anglo-Saxon England.--The first task of the
Anglo-Saxons after settling in England was to subdue the British, the
race that has given King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table to
English literature. By 600 A.D., after a century and a half of
struggle, the Anglo-Saxons had probably occupied about half of
England.
They did not build on the civilization that Rome had left when she
withdrew in 410, but destroyed the towns and lived in the country. The
typical Englishman still loves to dwell in a country home. The work of
Anglo-Saxon England consisted chiefly in tilling the soil and in
fighting.
The year 597 marks an especially important date, the coming of St.
Augustine, who brought the Christian faith to the Anglo-Saxons.
Education, literature, and art followed finding their home in the
monasteries.
For nearly 400 years after coming to England, the different tribes
were not united under one ruler. Not until 830 did Egbert, king of the
West Saxons, become overlord of England. Before and after this time,
the Danes repeatedly plundered the land. They finally settled in the
eastern part above the Thames. Alfred (849-900), the greatest of
Anglo-Saxon rulers, temporarily checked them, but in the latter part
of the tenth century they were more troublesome, and in 1017 they made
Canute, the Dane, king of England. Fortunately the Danes were of the
same race, and they easily amalgamated with the Saxons.
These invasions wasted the energies of England during more than two
centuries, but this long period of struggle brought little change to
the institutions or manner of life in Anglo-Saxon England. The
_witan_, or assembly of wise men, the forerunner of the present
English parliament, met in 1066 and chose Harold, the last Anglo-Saxon
king.
During these six hundred rears, the Anglo-Saxons conquered the
British, accepted Christianity, fought the Danes, finally amalgamating
with them, brought to England a lasting representative type of
government, established the fundamental customs of the race, surpassed
all contemporary western European peoples in the production of
literature, and were ready to receive fresh impetus from the Normans
in 1066.
The Anglo-Saxon Language.--Our oldest English literature is written
in the language spoken by the Angles and the Saxons. This at first
sight looks like a strange tongue to one conversant with modern
English only; but the language that we employ to-day has the
framework, the bone and sinew, of the earlier tongue. Modern English
is no more unlike Anglo-Saxon than a bearded man is unlike his former
childish self. A few examples will show the likeness and the
difference. "The noble queen" would in Anglo-Saxon be _s=eo aeethele
cw=en_; "the noble queen's," _eth=aere aeethelan cw=ene_. _S=eo_ is the
nominative feminine singular, _eth=aere_ the genitive, of the definite
article. The adjective and the noun also change their forms with the
varying cases. In its inflections, Anglo-Saxon resembles its sister
language, the modern German.
After the first feeling of strangeness has passed away, it is easy to
recognize many of the old words. Take, for instance, this from
_Beowulf_:--
"...eth=y h=e ethone f=eond ofercw=om,
gehn=aegde helle g=ast."
Here are eight words, apparently strange, but even a novice soon
recognizes five of them: _h=e, f=eond_ (fiend), _ofercw=om_
(overcame), _helle_ (hell), _g=ast_ (ghost). The word _ethone_, strange
as it looks, is merely the article "the."
...therefore he overcame the fiend,
Subdued the ghost of hell.
Let us take from the same poem another passage, containing the famous
simile:--
"...l=eoht inne st=od,
efne sw=a of hefene h=adre sc=ineeth
rodores candel."
Of these eleven words, seven may be recognized: _l=eoht_ (light),
_inne_ (in), _st=od_ (stood), _of_, _hefene_ (heaven),_sc=ineeth_
(shineth), _candel_ (candle).
...a light stood within,
Even so from heaven serenely shineth
The firmament's candle.
Some prefer to use "Old English" in place of "Anglo-Saxon" in order to
emphasize the continuity of the development of the language. It is,
however, sometimes convenient to employ different terms for different
periods of development of the same entity. We do not insist on calling
a man a "grown boy," although there may be no absolute line of
demarcation between boy and man.
Earliest Anglo-Saxon Literature.--As with the Greeks and Romans, so
with the Teutons, poetry afforded the first literary outlet for the
feelings. The first productions were handed down by memory. Poetry is
easily memorized and naturally lends itself to singing and musical
accompaniment. Under such circumstances, even prose would speedily
fall into metrical form. Poetry is, furthermore, the most suitable
vehicle of expression for the emotions. The ancients, unlike modern
writers, seldom undertook to make literature unless they felt so
deeply that silence was impossible.
The Form of Anglo-Saxon Poetry.--Each line is divided Into two parts
by a major pause. Because each of these parts was often printed as a
complete line in old texts, _Beowulf_ has sometimes been called a poem
of 6368 lines, although it has but 3184.
A striking characteristic of Anglo-Saxon poetry is consonantal
alliteration; that is, the repetition of the same consonant at the
beginning of words in the same line:--
"Grendel gongan; Godes yrre baer."
Grendel going; God's anger bare.
The usual type of Anglo-Saxon poetry has two alliterations in the
first half of the line and one in the second. The lines vary
considerably in the number of syllables. The line from _Beowulf_
quoted just above has nine syllables. The following line from the same
poem has eleven:--
"Flota f=amig-heals, fugle gel=icost."
The floater foamy-necked, to a fowl most like.
This line, also from _Beowulf_ has eight syllables:--
"N=ipende niht, and norethan wind."
Noisome night, and northern wind.
Vowel alliteration is less common. Where this is employed, the vowels
are generally different, as is shown in the principal words of the
following line:--
"On =ead, on =aeht, on eorcan st=an."
On wealth, on goods, on precious stone.
End rime is uncommon, but we must beware of thinking that there is no
rhythm, for that is a pronounced characteristic.
Anglo-Saxon verse was intended to be sung, and hence rhythm and accent
or stress are important. Stress and the length of the line are varied;
but we usually find that the four most important words, two in each
half of the line, are stressed on their most important syllable.
Alliteration usually shows where to place three stresses. A fourth
stress generally falls on a word presenting an emphatic idea near the
end of the line.
[Illustration: EXETER CATHEDRAL.]
The Manuscripts that have handed down Anglo-Saxon Literature.--The
earliest Anglo-Saxon poetry was transmitted by the memories of men.
Finally, with the slow growth of learning, a few acquired the art of
writing, and transcribed on parchment a small portion of the current
songs. The introduction of Christianity ushered in prose translations
and a few original compositions, which were taken down on parchment
and kept in the monasteries.
The study of Anglo-Saxon literature is comparatively recent, for its
treasures have not been long accessible. Its most famous poem,
_Beowulf_, was not printed until the dawn of the nineteenth century.
In 1822 Dr. Blume, a German professor of law, happened to find in a
monastery at Vercelli, Italy, a large volume of Anglo-Saxon
manuscript, containing a number of fine poems and twenty-two sermons.
This is now known as the _Vercelli Book_. No one knows how it happened
to reach Italy. Another large parchment volume of poems and miscellany
was deposited by Bishop Leofric at the cathedral of Exeter in
Devonshire, about 1050 A.D. This collection, one of the prized
treasures of that cathedral, is now called the _Exeter Book_.
Many valuable manuscripts were destroyed at the dissolution of the
monasteries in the time of Henry VIII., between 1535 and 1540. John
Bale, a contemporary writer, says that "those who purchased the
monasteries reserved the books, some to scour their candlesticks, some
to rub their boots, some they sold to the grocers and soap sellers,
and some they sent over sea to the bookbinders, not in small numbers,
but at times whole ships full, to the wonder of foreign nations."
The Anglo-Saxon Scop and Gleeman.--Our earliest poetry was made
current and kept fresh in memory by the singers. The kings and nobles
often attached to them a _scop_, or maker of verses. When the
warriors, after some victorious battle, were feasting at their long
tables, the banquet was not complete without the songs of the _scop_.
While the warriors ate the flesh of boar and deer, and warmed their
blood with horns of foaming ale, the _scop_, standing where the blaze
from a pile of logs disclosed to him the grizzly features of the men,
sang his most stirring songs, often accompanying them with the music
of a rude harp. As the feasters roused his enthusiasm with their
applause, he would sometimes indulge in an outburst of eloquent
extempore song. Not infrequently the imagination of some king or noble
would be fired, and he would sing of his own great deeds.
We read in _Beowulf_ that in Hrothgar's famous hall--
"...eth=aer was hearpan sw=eg,
swutol sang scopes."
...there was sound of harp
Loud the singing of the scop.
In addition to the _scop_, who was more or less permanently attached
to the royal court or hall of a noble, there was a craft of gleemen
who roved from hall to hall. In the song of _Widsieth_ we catch a
glimpse of the life of a gleeman:--
"Sw=a scriethende gesceapum hweorfaeth
gl=eomen gumena geond grunda fela."
Thus roving, with shaped songs there wander
The gleemen of the people through many lands.
The _scop_ was an originator of poetry, the gleeman more often a mere
repeater, although this distinction in the use of the terms was not
observed in later times.
The Songs of Scop and Gleeman.--The subject matter of these songs
was suggested by the most common experiences of the time. These were
with war, the sea, and death.
[Illustration: ANGLO-SAXON GLEEMAN. _From the tapestry designed by
H.A. Bone_.]
The oldest Anglo-Saxon song known, which is called _Widsieth_ or the
_Far Traveler_, has been preserved in the _Exeter Book_. This song was
probably composed in the older Angle-land on the continent and brought
to England in the memories of the singers. The poem is an account of
the wanderings of a gleeman over a great part of Europe. Such a song
will mean little to us unless we can imaginatively represent the
circumstances under which it was sung, the long hall with its tables
of feasting, drinking warriors, the firelight throwing weird shadows
among the smoky rafters. The imagination of the warriors would be
roused as similar experiences of their own were suggested by these
lines in Widsieth's song:--
"Ful oft of eth=am h=eape hw=inende fl=eag
giellende g=ar on grome eth=eode."
Full oft from that host hissing flew
The whistling spear on the fierce folk.
The gleeman ends this song with two thoughts characteristic of the
poets of the Saxon race. He shows his love fur noble deeds, and he
next thinks of the shortness of life, as he sings:--
"In mortal court his deeds are not unsung,
Such as a noble man mill show to men,
Till all doth flit away, both life and light."
A greater _scop_, looking at life through Saxon eyes, sings:--
"We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."[6]
The _scop_ in the song called _The Wanderer (Exeter Book)_ tells how
fleeting are riches, friend, kinsman, maiden,--all the "earth-stead,"
and he also makes us think of Shakespeare's "insubstantial pageant
faded" which leaves "not a rack behind."
Another old song, also found in the _Exeter Book_, is the _Seafarer_.
We must imagine the _scop_ recalling vivid experiences to our early
ancestors with this song of the sea:--
"Hail flew in hard showers.
And nothing I heard
But the wrath of the waters,
The icy-cold way
At times the swan's song;
In the scream of the gannet
I sought for my joy,
In the moan of the sea whelp
For laughter of men,
In the song of the sea-mew
For drinking of mead."[7]
To show that love of the sea yet remains one of the characteristics of
English poetry, we may quote by way of comparison a song sung more
than a thousand years later, in Victoria's reign:--
"The wind is as iron that rings,
The foam heads loosen and flee;
It swells and welters and swings,
The pulse of the tide of the sea.
Let the wind shake our flag like a feather,
Like the plumes of the foam of the sea!
* * * * *
In the teeth of the hard glad a weather,
In the blown wet face of the sea."[8]
Kipling in _A Song of the English_ says of the sea:--
"...there's never a wave of all her waves
But marks our English dead."
Another song from the _Exeter Book_ is called _The Fortunes of Men_.
It gives vivid pictures of certain phases of life among the
Anglo-Saxons:--
"One shall sharp hunger slay;
One shall the storms beat down;
One be destroyed by darts,
One die in war.
Orre shall live losing
The light of his eyes,
Feel blindly with his fingers;
And one lame of foot.
With sinew-wound wearily
Wasteth away.
Musing and mourning;
With death in his mind.
* * * * *
One shall die by the dagger,
In wrath, drenched with ale,
Wild through the wine, on the mead bench
Too swift with his words
Too swift with his words;
Shall the wretched one lose."[9]
The songs that we have noted, together with _Beowulf_, the greatest of
them all, will give a fair idea of _scopic_ poetry.
BEOWULF
The Oldest Epic of the Teutonic Race.--The greatest monument of
Anglo-Saxon poetry is called _Beowulf_, from the name of its hero. His
character and exploits give unity and dignity to the poem and raise it
to the rank of an epic.
The subject matter is partly historical and partly mythical. The deeds
and character of an actual hero may have furnished the first
suggestions for the songs, which were finally elaborated into
_Beowulf_, as we now have it. The poem was probably a long time in
process of evolution, and many different _scops_ doubtless added new
episodes to the song, altering it by expansion and contraction under
the inspiration of different times and places. Finally, it seems
probable that some one English poet gave the work its present form,
making it a more unified whole, and incorporating in it Christian
opinions.
We do not know when the first _scop_ sang of Beowulf's exploits; but
he probably began before the ancestors of the English came to England.
We are unable to ascertain how long _Beowulf_ was in process of
evolution; but there is internal evidence for thinking that part of
the poem could not have been composed before 500 A.D. Ten Brink, a
great German authority, thinks that Beowulf was given its present form
not far from 700 A.D. The unique manuscript in the British Museum is
written in the West Saxon dialect of Alfred the Great's time
(849-901).
The characters, scenery, and action of _Beowulf_ belong to the older
Angle-land on the continent of Europe; but the poem is essentially
English, even though the chief action is laid in what is now known as
Denmark and the southern part of Sweden. Hrothgar's hall, near which
the hero performed two of his great exploits, was probably on the
island of Seeland.
[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF BEGINNING OF COTTON MS. OF BEOWULF.]
TRANSLATION
Lo! we, of the Gar-Danes in distant days,
The folk-kings' fame have found.
How deeds of daring the aethelings did.
Oft Scyld-Scefing from hosts of schathers,
From many men the mead seats [reft].
The student who wishes to enter into the spirit of the poem will do
well to familiarize himself with the position of these coasts, and
with a description of their natural features in winter as well as in
summer. Heine says of the sea which Beowulf sailed:--
"Before me rolleth a waste of water ... and above me go rolling
the storm clouds, the formless dark gray daughters of air, which
from the sea in cloudy buckets scoop up the water, ever wearied
lifting and lifting, and then pour it again in the sea, a mournful,
wearisome business. Over the sea, flat on his face, lies the
monstrous, terrible North Wind, sighing and sinking his voice as in
secret, like an old grumbler; for once in good humor, unto the ocean
he talks, and he tells her wonderful stories."
Beowulf's Three Great Exploits.--The hero of the poem engaged in
three great contests, all of which were prompted by unselfishness and
by a desire to relieve human misery. Beowulf had much of the spirit
that animates the social worker to-day. If such a hero should live in
our time, he would probably be distinguished fur social service, for
fighting the forces of evil which cripple or destroy so many human
beings.
Hrothgar, the king of the Danes, built a hall, named Heorot, where his
followers could drink mead, listen to the scop, enjoy the music of the
harp, and find solace in social intercourse during the dreary winter
evenings.
"So liv'd on all happy the host of the kinsmen
In game and in glee, until one night began,
A fiend out of hell-pit, the framing of evil,
And Grendel forsooth the grim guest was hight,
The mighty mark-strider the holder of moorland,
The fen and the fastness."[10]
This monster, Grendel, came from the moors and devoured thirty of the
thanes. For twelve winters he visited Heorot and killed some of the
guests whenever he heard the sound of festivity in the hall, until at
length the young hero Beowulf, who lived a day's sail from Hrothgar,
determined to rescue Heorot from this curse. The youth selected
fourteen warriors and on a "foamy-necked floater, most like to a
bird," he sailed to Hrothgar.
Beowulf stated his mission, and he and his companions determined to
remain in Heorot all night. Grendel heard them and came.
"...he quickly laid hold of
A soldier asleep, suddenly tore him,
Bit his bone-prison, the blood drank in currents,
Swallowed in mouthfuls."[11]
Bare-handed, Beowulf grappled with the monster, and they wrestled up
and down the hall, which was shaken to its foundations. This terrible
contest ended when Beowulf tore away the arm and shoulder of Grendel,
who escaped to the marshes to die.
In honor of the victory, Hrothgar gave to Beowulf many presents and a
banquet in Heorot. After the feast, the warriors slept in the hall,
but Beowulf went to the palace. He had been gone but a short time,
when in rushed Grendel's mother, to avenge the death of her son. She
seized a warrior, the king's dearest friend, and carried him away. In
the morning, the king said to Beowulf:--
"My trusty friend AEschere is dead... The cruel hag has wreaked
on him her vengeance. The country folk said there were two of them,
one the semblance of a woman; the other the specter of a man. Their
haunt is in the remote land, in the crags of the wolf, the
wind-beaten cliffs, and untrodden bogs, where the dismal stream
plunges into the drear abyss of an awful lake, overhung with a dark
and grizzly wood rooted down to the water's edge, where a lurid
flame plays nightly on the surface of the flood--and there lives not
the man who knows its depth! So dreadful is the place that the
hunted stag, hard driven by the hounds, will rather die on the bank
than find a shelter there. A place of terror! When the wind rises,
the waves mingle hurly-burly with the clouds, the air is stifling
and rumbles with thunder. To thee alone we look for relief."[12]
Beowulf knew that a second and harder contest was at hand, but without
hesitation he followed the bloody trail of Grendel's mother, until it
disappeared at the edge of a terrible flood. Undaunted by the dragons
and serpents that made their home within the depths, he grasped a
sword and plunged beneath the waves. After sinking what seemed to him
a day's space, he saw Grendel's mother, who came forward to meet him.
She dragged him into her dwelling, where there was no water, and the
fight began. The issue was for a time doubtful; but at last Beowulf
ran her through with a gigantic sword, and she fell dead upon the
floor of her dwelling. A little distance away, he saw the dead body of
Grendel. The hero cut off the head of the monster and hastened away to
Hrothgar's court. After receiving much praise and many presents,
Beowulf and his warriors sailed to their own land, where he ruled as
king for fifty years.
He engaged in his third and hardest conflict when he was old. A
firedrake, angered at the loss of a part of a treasure, which he had
for three hundred years been guarding in a cavern, laid waste the land
in the hero's kingdom. Although Beowulf knew that this dragon breathed
flames of fire and that mortal man could not long withstand such
weapons, he sought the cavern which sheltered the destroyer and fought
the most terrible battle of his life. He killed the dragon, but
received mortal hurt from the enveloping flames. The old hero had
finally fallen; but he had through life fought a good fight, and he
could say as the twilight passed into the dark:--
"I have ruled the people fifty years; no folk-king was there of them
that dwelt about me durst touch me with his sword or cow me through
terror. I bided at home the hours of destiny, guarded well mine own,
sought not feuds with guile, swore not many an oath unjustly."[13]
The poem closes with this fitting epitaph for the hero:--
"Quoth they that he was a world-king forsooth,
The mildest of all men, unto men kindest,
To his folk the most gentlest, most yearning of fame."[14]
Wherein Beowulf is Typical of the Anglo-Saxon Race.--_Beowulf_ is by
far the most important Anglo-Saxon poem, because it presents in the
rough the persistent characteristics of the race. This epic shows the
ideals of our ancestors, what they held most dear, the way they lived
and died.
I. We note the love of liberty and law, the readiness to fight any
dragon that threatened these. The English _Magna Charta_ and _Petition
of Right_ and the American _Declaration of Independence_ are an
extension of the application of the same principles embodied in
_Beowulf_. The old-time spirit of war still prevails in all branches
of the race; but the contest is to-day directed against dragons of a
different type from Grendel,--against myriad forms of industrial and
social injustice and against those forces which have been securing
special privileges for some and denying equal opportunity for all.
II. _Beowulf_ is a recognition in general of the great moral forces of
the universe. The poem upholds the ideals of personal manliness,
bravery, loyalty, devotion to duty. The hero has the ever-present
consciousness that death is preferable to dishonor. He taught his
thane to sing:--
"Far better stainless death
Than life's dishonored breath."
III. In this poem, the action outweighs the words. The keynote to
_Beowulf_ is deeds. In New England, more than a thousand years later,
Thoreau wrote, "Be not simply good; be good for something." In reading
other literatures, for instance the Celtic, we often find that the
words overbalance the action. The Celt tells us that when two bulls
fought, the "sky was darkened by the turf thrown up by their feet and
by the foam from their mouths. The province rang with their roar and
the inhabitants hid in caves or climbed the hills."
Again, more attention is paid to the worth of the subject matter and
to sincerity of utterance than to mere form or polish. The literature
of this race has usually been more distinguished for the value of the
thought than for artistic presentation. Prejudice is felt to-day
against matter that relies mainly on art to secure effects.
IV. Repression of sentiment is a marked characteristic of _Beowulf_
and it still remains a peculiarity of the Anglo-Saxon race. Some
people say vastly more than they feel. This race has been inclined to
feel more than it expresses. When it was transplanted to New England,
the same characteristic was prominent, the same apparent contradiction
between sentiment and stern, unrelenting devotion to duty. In _Snow
Bound_, the New England poet, Whittier, paints this portrait of a New
England maiden, still Anglo-Saxon to the core:--
"A full, rich nature, free to trust,
Truthful and almost sternly just,
Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act,
And make her generous thought a fact,
Keeping with many a light disguise
The secret of self-sacrifice."
No matter what stars now shine over them, the descendants of the
English are still truthful and sternly just; they still dislike to
give full expression to their feelings; they still endeavor to
translate thoughts into deeds, and in this world where all need so
much help, they take self-sacrifice as a matter of course. The spirit
of _Beowulf_, softened and consecrated by religion, still persists in
Anglo-Saxon thought and action.
THE CAEDMONIAN CYCLE
Caedmon.--In 597 St. Augustine began to teach the Christian religion
to the Anglo-Saxons. The results of this teaching were shown in the
subsequent literature. In what is known as Caedmon's _Paraphrase_, the
next great Anglo-Saxon epic, there is no decrease in the warlike
spirit. Instead of Grendel, we have Satan as the arch-enemy against
whom the battle rages.
Caedmon, who died in 680, was until middle life a layman attached to
the monastery at Whitby, on the northeast coast of Yorkshire. Since
the _Paraphrase_ has been attributed to Caedmon on the authority of
the Saxon historian Bede, born in 673, we shall quote Bede himself on
the subject, from his famous _Ecclesiastical History_:--
"Caedmon, having lived in a secular habit until he was well advanced
in years, had never learned anything of versifying; for which
reason, being sometimes at entertainments, where it was agreed for
the sake of mirth that all present should sing in their turns, when
he saw the instrument come toward him, he rose from table and
returned home.
"Having done so at a certain time, and gone out of the house where
the entertainment was, to the stable, where he had to take care of
the horses that night, he there composed himself to rest at the
proper time; a person appeared to him in his sleep, and, saluting
him by his name, said, 'Caedmon, sing some song to me.' He answered,
'I cannot sing; for that was the reason why I left the entertainment
and retired to this place, because I could not sing.' The other who
talked to him replied, 'However, you shall sing.' 'What shall I
sing?' rejoined he. 'Sing the beginning of created beings,' said the
other. Hereupon he presently began to sing verses to the praise of
God."
Caedmon remembered the poetry that he had composed in his dreams, and
repeated it in the morning to the inmates of the monastery. They
concluded that the gift of song was divinely given and invited him to
enter the monastery and devote his time to poetry.
Of Caedmon's work Bede says:--
"He sang the creation of the world, the origin of man, and all the
history of Genesis: and made many verses on the departure of the
children of Israel out of Egypt, and their entering into the land of
promise, with many other histories from Holy Writ; the incarnation,
passion, resurrection of our Lord, and his ascension into heaven;
the coming of the Holy Ghost, and the preaching of the Apostles;
also the terror of future judgment, the horror of the pains of hell,
and the delights of heaven."
The Authorship and Subject Matter of the Caedmonian Cycle.--The
first edition of the _Paraphrase_ was published in 1655 by Junius, an
acquaintance of Milton. Junius attributed the entire _Paraphrase_ to
Caedmon, on the authority of the above quotations from Bede.
[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF BEGINNING OF JUNIAN MANUSCRIPT OF
CAEDMON.]
TRANSLATION
For us it is mickle right that we should praise with words, love
with our hearts, the Lord of the heavens, the glorious King of the
people. He is the mighty power, the chief of all exalted creatures,
Lord Almighty.
The _Paraphrase_ is really composed of three separate poems: the
_Genesis_, the _Exodus_, and the _Daniel_; and these are probably the
works of different writers. Critics are not agreed whether any of
these poems in their present form can be ascribed to Caedmon. The
_Genesis_ shows internal evidence of having been composed by several
different writers, but some parts of this poem may be Caedmon's own
work. The _Genesis_, like Milton's _Paradise Lost_, has for its
subject matter the fall of man and its consequences. The _Exodus_, the
work of an unknown writer, is a poem of much originality, on the
escape of the children of Israel from Egypt, their passage through the
Red Sea, and the destruction of Pharaoh's host. The _Daniel_, an
uninteresting poem of 765 lines, paraphrases portions of the book of
_Daniel_ relating to Nebuchadnezzar's dreams, the fiery furnace, and
Belshazzar's feast.
Characteristics of the Poetry.--No matter who wrote the
_Paraphrase_, we have the poetry, a fact which critics too often
overlook. Though the narrative sometimes closely follows the Biblical
account in _Genesis_, _Exodus_, and _Daniel_, there are frequent
unfettered outbursts of the imagination. The _Exodus_ rings with the
warlike notes of the victorious Teutonic race.
The _Genesis_ possesses special interest for the student, since many
of its strong passages show a marked likeness to certain parts of
Milton's _Paradise Lost_. As some critics have concluded that Milton
must have been familiar with the Caedmonian _Genesis_, it will be
instructive to note the parallelism between the two poems. Caedmon's
hell is "without light and full of flame." Milton's flames emit no
light; they only make "darkness visible." The following lines are from
the _Genesis_:--
"The Lord made anguish a reward, a home
In banishment, hell groans, hard pain, and bade
That torture house abide the joyless fall.
When with eternal night and sulphur pains,
Fullness of fire, dread cold, reek and red flames,
He knew it filled."[15]
With this description we may compare these lines from Milton:--
"A dungeon horrible, on all sides round.
As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames
No light; but rather darkness visible.
...a fiery deluge, fed
With ever burning sulphur unconsumed."[16]
In Caedmon "the false Archangel and his band lay prone in liquid fire,
scarce visible amid the clouds of rolling smoke." In Milton, Satan is
shown lying "prone on the flood," struggling to escape "from off the
tossing of these fiery waves," to a plain "void of light," except what
comes from "the glimmering of these livid flames." The older poet
sings with forceful simplicity:--
"Then comes, at dawn, the east wind, keen with frost."
Milton writes:--
"...the parching air
Burns frore, and cold performs the effect of fire."[17]
When Satan rises on his wings to cross the flaming vault, the
_Genesis_ gives in one line an idea that Milton expands into two and a
half:--
"Swang ethaet f=yr on tw=a f=eondes craefte."
Struck the fire asunder with fiendish craft.
"...on each hand the flames,
Driven backward, slope their pointing spires, and, rolled
In billows, leave i' th' midst a horrid vale."[18]
It is not certain that Milton ever knew of the existence of the
Caedmonian _Genesis_; for he was blind three years before it was
published. But whether he knew of it or not, it is a striking fact
that the temper of the Teutonic mind during a thousand years should
have changed so little toward the choice and treatment of the subject
of an epic, and that the first great poem known to have been written
on English soil should in so many points have anticipated the greatest
epic of the English race.
THE CYNEWULF CYCLE
Cynewulf is the only great Anglo-Saxon poet who affixed his name to
certain poems and thus settled the question of their authorship. We
know nothing of his life except what we infer from his poetry. He was
probably born near the middle of the eighth century, and it is not
unlikely that he passed part of his youth as a thane of some noble. He
became a man of wide learning, well skilled in "wordcraft" and in the
Christian traditions of the time. Such learning could then hardly have
been acquired outside of some monastery whither he may have retired.
[Illustration: ANGLO-SAXON MUSICIANS. _Illuminated MS., British
Museum._]
In variety, inventiveness, and lyrical qualities, his poetry shows an
advance over the Caedmonian cycle. He has a poet's love for the beauty
of the sun and the moon (_heofon-condelle_), for the dew and the rain,
for the strife of the waves (_holm-ethroece_), for the steeds of the sea
(_sund-hengestas_), and for the "all-green" (_eal-gr=ene_) earth. "For
Cynewulf," says a critic, "'earth's crammed with heaven and every
common bush afire with God.'"
Cynewulf has inserted his name in runic characters in four poems:
_Christ_, _Elene_, _Juliana_, a story of a Christian martyr, and the
least important, _The Fates of the Apostles_. The _Christ_, a poem on
the Savior's Nativity, Ascension, and Judgment of the world at the
last day, sometimes suggests Dante's _Inferno_ or _Paradiso_, and
Milton's _Paradise Lost_. We see the--
"Flame that welters up and of worms the fierce aspect,
With the bitter-biting jaws--school of burning creatures."[19]
Cynewulf closes the _Christ_ with almost as beautiful a conception of
Paradise as Dante's or Milton's,--a conception that could never have
occurred to a poet of the warlike Saxon race before the introduction
of Christianity:--
"...Hunger is not there nor thirst,
Sleep nor heavy sickness, nor the scorching of the Sun;
Neither cold nor care."[20]
_Elene_ is a dramatic poem, named from its heroine, Helena, the mother
of the Roman emperor Constantine. A vision of the cross bearing the
inscription, "With this shalt thou conquer," appeared to Constantine
before a victorious battle and caused him to send his mother to the
Holy Land to discover the true cross. The story of her successful
voyage is given in the poem _Elene_. The miraculous power of the true
cross among counterfeits is shown in a way that suggests kinship with
the fourteenth century miracle plays. A dead man is brought in contact
with the first and the second cross, but the watchers see no divine
manifestation until he touches the third cross, when he is restored to
life.
_Elene_ and the _Dream of the Road_, also probably written by
Cynewulf, are an Anglo-Saxon apotheosis of the cross. Some of this
Cynewulfian poetry is inscribed on the famous Ruthwell cross in
Dumfriesshire.
Andreas and Phoenix.--Cynewulf is probably the author of _Andreas_,
an unsigned poem of special excellence and dramatic power. The poem,
"a romance of the sea," describes St. Andrew's voyage to Mermedonia to
deliver St. Matthew from the savages. The Savior in disguise is the
Pilot. The dialogue between him and St. Andrew is specially fine. The
saint has all the admiration of a Viking for his unknown Pilot, who
stands at the helm in a gale and manages the vessel as he would a
thought.
Although the poet tells of a voyage in eastern seas, he is describing
the German ocean:--
"Then was sorely troubled,
Sorely wrought the whale-mere. Wallowed there the Horn-fish,
Glode the great deep through; and the gray-backed gull
Slaughter-greedy wheeled. Dark the storm-sun grew,
Waxed the winds up, grinded waves;
Stirred the surges, groaned the cordage,
Wet with breaking sea."[21]
Cynewulf is also the probable author of the _Phoenix_, which is in
part an adaptation of an old Latin poem. The _Phoenix_ is the only
Saxon poem that gives us the rich scenery of the South, in place of
the stern northern landscape. He thus describes the land where this
fabulous bird dwells:--
"Calm and fair this glorious field, flashes there the sunny grove;
Happy is the holt of trees, never withers fruitage there.
Bright are there the blossoms...
In that home the hating foe houses not at all,
* * * * *
Neither sleep nor sadness, nor the sick man's weary bed,
Nor the winter-whirling snow...
...but the liquid streamlets,
Wonderfully beautiful, from their wells upspringing,
Softly lap the land with their lovely floods."[22]
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF ANGLO-SAXON POETRY
Martial Spirit.--The love of war is very marked in Anglo-Saxon
poetry. This characteristic might have been expected in the songs of a
race that had withstood the well-nigh all-conquering arm of the vast
Roman Empire.
Our study of _Beowulf_ has already shown the intensity of the martial
spirit in heathen times. These lines from the _Fight at Finnsburg_,
dating from about the same time as _Beowulf_, have only the flash of
the sword to lighten their gloom. They introduce the raven, for whom
the Saxon felt it his duty to provide food on the battlefield:--
"...hraefen wandrode
sweart and sealo-br=un; swurd-l=eoma st=od
swylce eal Finns-buruh f=yrenu w=aere."
...the raven wandered
Swart and sallow-brown; the sword-flash stood
As if all Finnsburg were afire.
The love of war is almost as marked in the Christian poetry. There are
vivid pictures of battle against the heathen and the enemies of God,
as shown by the following selection from one of the poems of the
Caedmonian cycle:--
"Helmeted men went from the holy burgh,
At the first reddening of dawn, to fight:
Loud stormed the din of shields.
For that rejoiced the lank wolf in the wood,
And the black raven, slaughter-greedy bird."[23]
_Judith_, a fragment of a religious poem, is aflame with the spirit of
war. One of its lines tells how a bird of prey--
"Sang with its horny beak the song of war."
This very line aptly characterizes one of the emphatic qualities of
Anglo-Saxon poetry.
The poems often describe battle as if it were an enjoyable game. They
mention the "Play of the spear" and speak of "putting to sleep with
the sword," as if the din of war were in their ears a slumber melody.
One of the latest of Anglo-Saxon poems, _The Battle of Brunanburh_,
937, is a famous example of war poetry. We quote a few lines from
Tennyson's excellent translation:--
"Grimly with swords that were sharp from the grindstone,
Fiercely we hack'd at the flyers before us.
* * * * *
Five young kings put asleep by the sword-stroke
Seven strong earls of the army of Anlaf
Fell on the war-field, numberless numbers."
Love of the Sea.--The Anglo-Saxon fondness for the sea has been
noted, together with the fact that this characteristic has been
transmitted to the more recent English poetry. Our forefathers rank
among the best seamen that the world has ever known. Had they not
loved to dare an unknown sea, English literature might not have
existed, and the sun might never have risen on any English flag.
The _scop_ sings thus of Beowulf's adventure on the North Sea:--
"Swoln were the surges, of storms 'twas the coldest,
Dark grew the night, and northern the wind,
Rattling and roaring, rough were the billows."[24]
In the _Seafarer_, the _scop_ also sings:--
"My mind now is set,
My heart's thought, on wide waters,
The home of the whale;
It wanders away
Beyond limits of land.
* * * * *
And stirs the mind's longing
To travel the way that is trackless."[25]
In the _Andreas_, the poet speaks of the ship in one of the most
charming of Saxon similes:--
"Foaming Ocean beats our steed: full of speed this boat is;
Fares along foam-throated, flieth on the wave,
Likest to a bird."[26]
Some of the most striking Saxon epithets are applied to the sea. We
may instance such a compound as _=ar-ge-bland_ (_=ar_, "oar";
_blendan_, "to blend"), which conveys the idea of the companionship of
the oar with the sea. From this compound, modern poets have borrowed
their "oar-disturbed sea," "oared sea," "oar-blending sea," and
"oar-wedded sea." The Anglo-Saxon poets call the sun rising or setting
in the sea the _mere-candel_. In Beowulf, _mere-str=aeta_,
"sea-streets," are spoken of as if they were the easily traversed
avenues of a town.
Figures of Rhetoric.--A special characteristic of Anglo-Saxon poetry
is the rarity of similes. In Homer they are frequent, but Anglo-Saxon
verse is too abrupt and rapid in the succession of images to employ
the expanded simile. The long poem of _Beowulf_ contains only five
similes, and these are of the shorter kind. Two of them, the
comparison of the light in Grendel's dwelling to the beams of the sun,
and of a vessel to a flying bird, have been given in the original
Anglo-Saxon on pages 16, 17. Other similes compare the light from
Grendel's eyes to a flame, and the nails on his fingers to steel:
while the most complete simile says that the sword, when bathed in the
monster's poisonous blood, melted like ice.
On the other hand, this poetry uses many direct and forcible
metaphors, such as "wave-ropes" for ice, the "whale-road" or
"swan-road" for the sea, the "foamy-necked floater" for a ship, the
"war-adder" for an arrow, the "bone-house" for the body. The sword is
said to sing a war song, the slain to be put to sleep with the sword,
the sun to be a candle, the flood to boil. War is appropriately called
the sword-game.
Parallelisms.--The repetition of the same ideas in slightly
differing form, known as parallelism, is frequent. The author, wishing
to make certain ideas emphatic, repeated them with varying
phraseology. As the first sight of land is important to the sailor,
the poet used four different terms for the shore that met Beowulf's
eyes on his voyage to Hrothgar: _land, brimclifu, beorgas,
saen=aessas_ (land, sea-cliffs, mountains, promontories).
This passage from the _Phoenix_ shows how repetition emphasizes the
absence of disagreeable things:--
"...there may neither snow nor rain,
Nor the furious air of frost, nor the flare of fire,
Nor the headlong squall of hail, nor the hoar frost's fall,
Nor the burning of the sun, nor the bitter cold,
Nor the weather over-warm, nor the winter shower,
Do their wrong to any wight."[27]
The general absence of cold is here made emphatic by mentioning
special cold things: "snow," "frost," "hail," "hoar frost," "bitter
cold," "winter shower." The absence of heat is emphasized in the same
way.
Saxon contrasted with Celtic Imagery.--A critic rightly says: "The
gay wit of the Celt would pour into the song of a few minutes more
phrases of ornament than are to be found in the whole poem of
_Beowulf_." In three lines of an old Celtic death song, we find three
similes:--
"Black as the raven was his brow;
Sharp as a razor was his spear;
White as lime was his skin."
We look in Anglo-Saxon poetry in vain for a touch like this:--
"Sweetly a bird sang on a pear tree above the head of Gwenn before
they covered him with a turf."[28]
Celtic literature shows more exaggeration, more love of color, and a
deeper appreciation of nature in her gentler aspects. The Celt could
write:--
"More yellow was her head than the flower of the broom, and her
skin was whiter than the foam of the wave, and fairer were her hands
and fingers than the blossoms of the wood anemone amidst the spray
of the meadow fountain."[29]
King Arthur and his romantic Knights of the Round Table are Celtic
heroes. Possibly the Celtic strain persisting in many of the Scotch
people inspires lines like these in more modern times:--
"The corn-craik was chirming
His sad eerie cry [30]
And the wee stars were dreaming
Their path through the sky."
In order to produce a poet able to write both _A Midsummer Night's
Dream_ and _Hamlet_, the Celtic imagination must blend with the
Anglo-Saxon seriousness. As we shall see, this was accomplished by the
Norman conquest.
ANGLO-SAXON PROSE
When and where written.--We have seen that poetry normally precedes
prose. The principal part of Anglo-Saxon poetry had been produced
before much prose was written. The most productive poetic period was
between 650 and 825. Near the close of the eighth century, the Danes
began their plundering expeditions into England. By 800 they had
destroyed the great northern monasteries, like the one at Whitby,
where Caedmon is said to have composed the first religious song. As
the home of poetry was in the north of England, these Danish inroads
almost completely silenced the singers. What prose there was in the
north was principally in Latin. On the other hand, the Saxon prose was
produced chiefly in the south of England. The most glorious period of
Anglo-Saxon prose was during Alfred's reign, 871-901.
Bede.--This famous monk (673-735) was probably the greatest teacher
and the best known man of letters and scholar in all contemporary
Europe. He is said to have translated the _Gospel of St. John_ into
Saxon, but the translation is lost. He wrote in Latin on a vast range
of subjects, from the _Scriptures_ to natural science, and from
grammar to history. He has given a list of thirty-seven works of which
he is the author. His most important work is the _Ecclesiastical
History of the English People_, which is really a history of England
from Julius Caesar's invasion to 731. The quotation from Bede's work
relative to Caedmon shows that Bede could relate things simply and
well. He passed almost all his useful life at the monastery of Jarrow
on the Tyne.
Alfred (849-901).--The deeds and thoughts of Alfred, king of the
West Saxons from 871 until his death in 901, remain a strong moral
influence an the world, although he died more than a thousand years
ago. Posterity rightly gave him the surname of "the Great," as he is
one of the comparatively few great men of all time. E.A. Freeman, the
noted historian of the early English period, says of him:--
"No man recorded in history seems ever to have united so many
great and good qualities... A great part of his reign was taken up
with warfare with an enemy [the Danes] who threatened the national
being; yet he found means personally to do more for the general
enlightenment of his people than any other king in English history."
After a Danish leader had outrageously broken his oaths to Alfred, the
Dane's two boys and their mother fell into Alfred's hands, and he
returned them unharmed. "Let us love the man," he wrote, "but hate his
sins." His revision of the legal code, known as _Alfred's Laws_, shows
high moral aim. He does not forget the slave, who was to be freed
after six years of service. His administration of the law endeavored
to secure the same justice for the poor as for the rich.
Alfred's example has caused many to stop making excuses for not doing
more for their kind. If any one ever had an adequate excuse for not
undertaking more work than his position absolutely demanded, that man
was Alfred; yet his ill health and the wars with the Danes did not
keep him from trying to educate his people or from earning the title,
"father of English prose." Freeman even says that England owes to
Alfred's prose writing and to the encouragement that he gave to other
writers the "possession of a richer early literature than any other
people of western Europe" and the maintenance of the habit of writing
after the Norman conquest, when English was no longer used in courtly
circles.
[Illustration: THE BEGINNING OF ALFRED'S LAWS. _Illuminated MS.,
British Museum_.]
Although most of his works are translations from the Latin, yet he has
left the stamp of his originality and sterling sense upon them all.
Finding that his people needed textbooks in the native tongue, he
studied Latin so that he might consult all accessible authorities and
translate the most helpful works, making alterations and additions to
suit his plan. For example, he found a Latin work on history and
geography by Orosius, a Spanish Christian of the fifth century; but as
this book contained much material that was unsuited to Alfred's
purposes, he omitted some parts, changed others, and, after
interviewing travelers from the far North, added much original matter.
These additions, which even now are not uninteresting reading, are the
best material in the book. This work is known as Alfred's _Orosius_.
Alfred also translated Pope Gregory's _Pastoral Rule_ in order to show
the clergy how to teach and care for their flocks. Alfred's own words
at the beginning of the volume show how great was the need for the
work. Speaking of the clergy, he says:--
"There were very few on this side Humber who would know how to
render their services in English, or so much as translate an epistle
out of Latin into English; and I ween that not many would be on the
other side Humber. So few of them were there, that I cannot think of
so much as a single one, south of Thames, when I took to the
realm."[31]
Alfred produced a work on moral philosophy, by altering and amending
the _De Consolatione Philosophiae_ of Boethius, a noble Roman who was
brutally thrown into prison and executed about 525 A.D. In simplicity
and moral power, some of Alfred's original matter in this volume was
not surpassed by any English writer for several hundred years. We
frequently find such thoughts as, "If it be not in a man's power to do
good, let him have the good intent." "True high birth is of the mind,
not of the flesh." His _Prayer_ in the same work makes us feel that he
could see the divine touch in human nature:--
"No enmity hast Thou towards anything... Thou, O Lord,
bringest together heavenly souls and earthly bodies, and minglest
them in this world. As they came hither from Thee, even so they also
seek to go hence to Thee."
AElfric, 955?-1025?--The most famous theologian who followed
Alfred's example in writing native English prose, and who took Alfred
for his model, was a priest named AElfric. His chief works are his
_Homilies_, a series of sermons, and the _Lives of the Saints_.
Although much of his writing is a compilation or a translation from
the Latin Fathers, it is often remarkably vigorous in expression and
stimulating to the reader. We find such thoughts as:--
"God hath wrought many miracles, and He performs them every day,
but these miracles have become much less important in the sight of
men because they are very common... Spiritual miracles are greater
than the physical ones."
To modern readers the most interesting of Aelfric's writings is his
_Colloquium_, designed to teach Latin in the monastery at Winchester.
The pupils were required to learn the Latin translation of his
dialogues in the Anglo-Saxon vernacular. Some of these dialogues are
today valuable illustrations of the social and industrial life of the
time. The following is part of the conversation between the Teacher
and the Plowman:--
"_Teacher_. What have you to say, plowman? How do you carry on
your work?
"_Plowman_. O master, I work very hard; I go out at dawn, drive
the oxen to the field, and yoke them to the plow. There is no storm
so severe that I dare to hide at home, for fear of my lord, but when
the oxen are yoked, and the share and coulter have been fastened to
the plow, I must plow a whole acre or more every day.
* * * * *
"_Teacher_. Oh! oh! the labor must be great!
"_Plowman_. It is indeed great drudgery, because I am not free."[32]
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.--This is the first history of any branch
of the Teutonic people in their own tongue. The _Chronicle_ has come
down to us in several different texts, according as it was compiled or
copied at different monasteries. The _Chronicle_ was probably begun in
Alfred's reign. The entries relating to earlier events were copied
from Bede's _Ecclesiastical History_ and from other Latin authorities.
The _Chronicle_ contains chiefly those events which each year
impressed the clerical compilers as the most important in the history
of the nation. This work is a fountainhead to which writers of the
history of those times must turn.
A few extracts (translated) will show its character:--
"A.D. 449. This year ... Hengist and Horsa, invited by Vortigern,
King of Britons, landed in Britain, on the shore which is called
Wappidsfleet; at first in aid of the Britons, but afterwards they
fought against them."
"806. This year the moon was eclipsed on the Kalends of September;
and Eardulf, King of the Northumbrians. was driven from his
kingdom; and Eanbert, Bishop of Hexham, died."
Sometimes the narrative is extremely vivid. Those who know the
difficulty of describing anything impressively in a few words will
realize the excellence of this portraiture of William the Conqueror:--
"1087. If any would know what manner of man King William was,
the glory that he obtained, and of how many lands he was lord; then
will we describe him as we have known him... He was mild to
those good men who loved God, but severe beyond measure to those
withstood his will... So also was he a very stern and a wrathful
man, so that none durst do anything against his will, and he kept
in prison those earls who acted against his pleasure. He removed
bishops from their sees, and abbots from their offices, and he
imprisoned thanes, and at length he spared not his own brother.
Odo... Amongst other things, the good order that William
established is not to be forgotten; it was such that any man, who
was himself aught, might travel over the kingdom with a bosom-full
of gold, unmolested; and no man durst kill another... He made large
forests for the deer, and enacted laws therewith, so that whoever
killed a hart or a hind should be blinded ... and he loved the tall
stags as if he were their father."
SUMMARY
The Anglo-Saxons, a branch of the Teutonic race, made permanent
settlements in England about the middle of the fifth century A.D. Like
modern German, their language is highly inflected. The most
flourishing period of Anglo-Saxon poetry was between 650 and 825 A.D.
It was produced for the most part in the north of England, which was
overrun by the Danes about 800. These marauders destroyed many of the
monasteries and silenced the voices of the singers. The prose was
written chiefly in the south of England after the greatest poetic
masterpieces had been produced. The Norman Conquest of England,
beginning in 1066, brought the period to a close.
Among the poems of this age, we may emphasize: (1) the shorter
_scopic_ pieces, of which the _Far Traveler, The Wanderer, The
Seafarer, The Fortunes of Men_, and _The Battle of Brunanburh_ are
important examples; (2) _Beowulf_, the greatest Anglo-Saxon epic poem,
which describes the deeds of an unselfish hero, shows how the
ancestors of the English lived and died, and reveals the elemental
ideals of the race; (3) the _Caedmonian Cycle_ of scriptural
paraphrases, some of which have Miltonic qualities; and (4) the
_Cynewulf Cycle_, which has the most variety and lyrical excellence.
Both of these _Cycles_ show how the introduction of Christianity
affected poetry.
The subject matter of the poetry is principally war, the sea, and
religion. The martial spirit and love of the sea are typical of the
nation that has raised her flag in every clime. The chief qualities of
the poetry are earnestness, somberness, and strength, rather than
delicacy of touch, exuberance of imagination, or artistic adornment.
The golden period of prose coincides in large measure with Alfred's
reign, 871-901, and he is the greatest prose writer. His translations
of Latin works to serve as textbooks for his people contain excellent
additions by him. AElfric, a tenth century prose writer, has left a
collection of sermons, called _Homilies_, and an interesting
_Colloquium_, which throws strong lights on the social life of the
time. The _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_ is an important record of
contemporaneous events for the historian.
REFERENCES FOR FURTHER STUDY
HISTORICAL
In connection with the progress of literature, students should obtain
for themselves a general idea of contemporary historical events from
any of the following named works:--
Gardiner's_ Students' History of England_.
Green's _Short History of the English People_.
Walker's _Essentials in English History_.
Cheney's _A Short History of England_.
Lingard's _History of England_.
Traill's _Social England_, Vol. I.
Ramsay's _The Foundations of England_.
LITERARY
_Cambridge History of English Literature_, Vol. I.
Brooke's _History of Early English Literature to the Accession of King
Alfred_.
Morley's _English Writers_, Vols. I. and II.
Earle's _Anglo-Saxon Literature_.
Ten Brink's Early English Literature, Vol. I.
_The Exeter Book_, edited and translated, by Gollancz (Early English
Text Society).
Gurteen's _The Epic of the Fall of Man: A Comparative Study of
Caedmon, Dante, and Milton_.
Cook's _The Christ of Cynewulf_. (The _Introduction of 97 pages gives
a valuable account of the life and writings of Cynewulf.)
Kennedy's_ Translation of the Poems of Cynewulf_.
Bede's _Ecclesiastical History of England and the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle_, I vol., translated by Giles in Bohn's _Antiquarian
Library_.
Snell's _The Age of Alfred._
Pauli's _Life of Alfred_ (Bohn's Antiquarian Library).
Gem's _An Anglo-Saxon Abbot: AElfric of Eynsham_.
_Mabinogion_ (a collection of Welsh fairy tales and romances,
_Everyman's Library_), translated by Lady Charlotte Guest.
Pancoast and Spaeth's _Early English Poems_ (abbreviated reference)
("P & S.").
Cook and Tinker's _Select Translations from Old English Poetry_ ("C. &
T.").
Cook & Tinker's _Select Translations from Old English Prose_
("C. & T. _Prose_").
SUGGESTED READINGS WITH QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
The student who is not familiar with the original Anglo-Saxon should
read the translations specified below:--
Scopic Poetry.[33]--_Widsieth_ or the _Far Traveler_, translated in
Morley's _English Writers_, Vol. II, 1-11, or in C. & T.,[34] 3-8.
_The Wanderer_, translated in P. & S., 65-68; C. & T., 50-55; Brooke,
364-367.
_The Seafarer_, translated in P. & S., 68-70; C. & T., 44-49; Morley,
II., 21-26; Brooke, 362, 363.
_The Fortunes of Men_, trans. in P. & S., 79-81; Morley, II., 32-37.
_Battle of Brunanburh_, Tennyson's translation.
What were the chief subjects of the songs of the scop? How do they
reveal the life of the time? Is there any common quality running
through them? What qualities of this verse appear in modern poetry?
Beowulf.--This important poem should be read entire in one of the
following translations:
Child's _Beowulf (Riverside Literature Series)_;
Earle's _The Deeds of Beowulf, Done into Modern Prose_ (Clarendon
Press);
Gummere's _The Oldest English Epic_;
Morris and Wyatt's _The Tale of Beowulf_;
Hall's _Beowulf, Translated into Modern Metres_;
Lumsden's _Beowulf, an Old English Poem, Translated into Modern
Rhymes_ (the most readable poetic translation).
Translations of many of the best parts of _Beowulf_ may be found in
P. & S. 5-29; C. & T., 9-24; Morley, I. 278-310; Brooke 26-73.
Where did the exploits celebrated in the poem take place? Where was
Heorot? What was the probably time of the completion of _Beowulf_?
Describe the hero's three exploits. What analogy is there between the
conflict of natural forces in the Norseland and Beowulf's fight with
Grendel? What different attitude toward nature is manifest in modern
poetry? What is the moral lesson of the poem? Show that its chief
characteristics are typical of the Anglo-Saxon race.
Caedmonian Cycle.--Some of the strongest passages may be found in P.
& S., 30-45; C. & T., 104-120; Morley, II. 81-101; Brooke, 290-340.
Read at the same time from Milton's _Paradise Lost_, Book I., lines
44-74, 169-184, 248-263, and _passim_.
What evidence do we find in this cycle of the introduction of
Christianity? Who takes the place of Grendel? What account of Caedmon
does Bede give? What is the subject matter of this cycle?
Cynewulf Cycle.--_The Poems of Cynewulf_, translated by C.W.
Kennedy. Translations of parts of this cycle may be found in Whitman's
_The Christ of Cynewulf_, and _The Exeter Book_, translated by
Gollancz. Good selections are translated in P. & S., 46-55; C. & T.,
79-103; and 132-142: Morley, II., 206-241; Brooke, 371-443. For
selections from the _Phoenix_, see P & S, 54-65; C.& T., 143-163.
What new qualities does this cycle show? What is the subject matter of
its most important poems? What is especially noticeable about the_
Andreas and the Phoenix_?
_General Characteristics of the Verse._--What is its usual form? What
most striking passages (a) in Beowulf; (b) elsewhere, show the Saxon
love of war and of the sea? Instance some similes and make a list of
vivid metaphors. What are the most striking parallelisms found in your
readings? What conspicuous differences are there between Saxon and
Celtic imagery? (See Morley, l, 165-239, or Guest's _Mabinogion_).
What excellencies and defects seem to you most pronounced in
Anglo-Saxon verse?
Prose_--The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_ and Bede's _Ecclesiastical
History_ are both translated in one volume of Bohn's _Antiquarian
Library_. The most interesting part of Bede for the student of
literature is the chapter relating to Caedmon (Chap. XXIV., pp.
217-220).
In the _Chronicle_, read the entries for the years 871, 878, 897, 975,
1087, and 1137.
Alfred's _Orosius_ is translated into modern English in the volume of
Bohn's_ Antiquarian Library_ entitled, _Alfred the Great, his Life and
Anglo-Saxon Works_, by Pauli. Sedgefield's translation of the_
Consolations of Boethius_ distinguishes the original matter by Alfred
from the translation. Selections from Alfred's works are given in C. &
T.(_Prose_), 85-146, and in Earle's _Anglo-Saxon Literature_, 186-206.
For selections from AElfric, see C. & T. (_Prose_), 149-192. Read
especially the _Colloquies_, 177-186.
What was Bede's principal work? Why has Alfred been called the "father
of English prose"? What were his ideals? Mention his chief works and
their object. What is the character of AElfric's work? Why are modern
readers interested in his _Colloquium_?
Why is the _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_ important?
FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER I:
[Footnote 1: For special references to authors, movements and the
history of the period, see the lists under the heading, _Suggestions
for Further Study_, at the end of each chapter.]
[Footnote 2: School libraries should own books marked *.]
[Footnote 3: The abbreviation in parentheses after titles will be used
in the _Suggested Readings_ in place of the full title.]
[Footnote 4: Tennyson's _In Memoriam_.]
[Footnote 5: Florence Earls Coates's _Dream the Great Dream_.]
[Footnote 6: Shakespeare's _The Tempest_, Act IV., Scene 1.]
[Footnote 7: Morley's translation, _English Writers_, Vol. II., p.
21.]
[Footnote 8: Swinburne's _A Song in Time of Order_.]
[Footnote 9: Morley's _English Writers_, Vol. II., pp. 33, 34.]
[Footnote 10: _Beowulf_, translated by William Morris and A.J. Wyatt.]
[Footnote 11: Translated by J.L. Hall.]
[Footnote 12: Earle's Translation.]
[Footnote 13: Translated by Childs.]
[Footnote 14: Translated by Morris and Wyatt.]
[Footnote 15: Morley's translation.]
[Footnote 16: _Paradise Lost_, Book I., lines 61-69.]
[Footnote 17: _Paradise Lost_, II., 594.]
[Footnote 18: _Ibid_., I., 222-224.]
[Footnotes 19-22: Brooke's translation.]
[Footnote 23: Morley's translation.]
[Footnote 24: Brooke's translation.]
[Footnote 25: Morley's translation.]
[Footnotes 26-27: Brooke's translation.]
[Footnote 28: _Llywarch's Lament for his Son Gwenn_.]
[Footnote 29: Guest's _Mabinogion_.]
[Footnote 30: William Motherwell's _Wearie's Well_.]
[Footnote 31: Earle's translation.]
[Footnote 32: Cook and Tinker's _Select Translations from Old English
Prose.]
[Footnote 33: In his _Education of the Central Nervous System_, Chaps.
VII.-X., the author has endeavored to give some special directions for
securing definite ideas in the study of poetry.]
[Footnote 34: For full titles, see page 50.]
CHAPTER II: FROM THE NORMAN CONQUEST, 1066, TO CHAUCER'S DEATH, 1400
[Illustration: THE DEATH OF HAROLD AT HASTINGS. _From the Bayeaux
tapestry_.]
The Norman Conquest.--The overthrow of the Saxon rule in England by
William the Conqueror in 1066 was an event of vast importance to
English literature. The Normans (Norsemen or Northmen), as they were
called, a term which shows their northern extraction, were originally
of the same blood as the English race. They settled in France in the
ninth century, married French wives, and adopted the French language.
In 1066 their leader, Duke William, and his army crossed the English
Channel and won the battle of Hastings, in which Harold, the last
Anglo-Saxon king, was killed. William thus became king of England.
Characteristics of the Normans.--The intermixture of Teutonic and
French blood had given to the Normans the best qualities of both
races. The Norman was nimble-witted, highly imaginative, and full of
northern energy. The Saxon possessed dogged perseverance, good common
sense, if he had long enough to think, and but little imagination.
Some one has well said that the union of Norman with Saxon was like
joining the swift spirit of the eagle to the strong body of the ox,
or, again, that the Saxon furnished the dough, and the Norman the
yeast. Had it not been for the blending of these necessary qualities
in one race, English literature could not have become the first in the
world. We see the characteristics of both the Teuton and the Norman in
Shakespeare's greatest plays. A pure Saxon could not have turned from
Hamlet's soliloquy to write:--
"Where the bee sucks, there suck I."[1]
Progress of the Nation, 1066-1400.--The Normans were specially
successful in giving a strong central government to England. The
feudal system, that custom of parceling out land in return for
service, was so extended by William the Conqueror, that from king
through noble to serf there was not a break in the interdependence of
one human being on another. At first the Normans were the ruling
classes and they looked down on the Saxons; but intermarriage and
community of interests united both races into one strong nation before
the close of the period.
There was great improvement in methods of administering justice.
Accused persons no longer had to submit to the ordeal of the red-hot
iron or to trial by combat, relying on heaven to decide their
innocence. Ecclesiastical courts lost their jurisdiction over civil
cases. In the reign of Henry II. (1154-1189), great grandson of
William the Conqueror, judges went on circuits, and the germ of the
jury system was developed.
Parliament grew more influential, and the first half of the fourteenth
century saw it organized into two bodies,--the Lords and the Commons.
Three kings who governed tyrannically or unwisely were curbed or
deposed. King John (1199-1216) was compelled to sign the _Magna
Charta_, which reduced to writing certain foundation rights of his
subjects. Edward II. (1307-1327) and Richard II. (1377-1399) were both
deposed by Parliament. One of the reasons assigned far the deposition
of Richard II. was his claim that "he alone could change and frame the
laws of the kingdom."
The ideals of chivalry and the Crusades left their impress on the age.
One English Monarch, Richard the Lion-Hearted (1189-1199) was the
popular hero of the Third Crusade. In _Ivanhoe_ and _The Talisman_ Sir
Walter Scott presents vivid pictures of knights and crusaders.
We may form some idea of the religious spirit of the Middle Ages from
the Gothic cathedrals, which had the same relative position in the
world's architecture as Shakespeare's work does in literature.
Travelers often declare that there is to-day nothing in England better
worth seeing than these cathedrals, which were erected in the twelfth,
thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries.[2]
The religious, social, and intellectual life of the time was
profoundly affected by the coming of the friars (1220), who included
the earnest followers of St. Francis (1182-1226), that Good Samaritan
of the Middle Ages. The great philosopher and scientist, Roger Bacon
(1214-1294), who was centuries in advance of his time, was a
Franciscan friar. He studied at Oxford University, which had in his
time become one of the great institutions of Europe.
The church fostered schools and learning, while the barons were
fighting. Although William Langland, a fourteenth-century cleric,
pointed out the abuses which had crept into the church, he gave this
testimony in its favor:--
"For if heaven be on this earth or any ease for the soul, it is in
cloister or school. For in cloister no man cometh to chide or fight,
and in school there is lowliness and love and liking to learn."
The rise of the common people was slow. During all this period the
tillers of the soil were legally serfs, forbidden to change their
location. The Black Death (1349) and the Peasants' Revolt (1381),
although seemingly barren of results, helped them in their struggle
toward emancipation. Some bought their freedom with part of their
wages. Others escaped to the towns where new commercial activities
needed more labor. Finally, the common toiler acquired more commanding
influence by overthrowing even the French knights with his long bow.
This period laid the foundation for the almost complete disappearance
of serfdom in the fifteenth century. France waited for the terrible
Revolution of 1789 to free her serfs. England anticipated other great
modern nations in producing a literature of universal appeal because
her common people began to throw off their shackles earlier.
This period opens with a victorious French army in England, followed
by the rule of the conquerors, who made French the language of high
life. It closes with the ascendancy of English government and speech
at home and with the mid-fourteenth century victories of English
armies on French soil, resulting in the rapture of Calais, which
remained for more than two hundred years in the possession of England.
At the close of this period we find Wycliffe, "the morning star of the
Reformation," and Chaucer, the first great singer of the welded
Anglo-Norman race. His wide interest in human beings and his knowledge
of the new Italian literature prefigure the coming to England of the
Revival of Learning in the next age.
It will now be necessary to study the changes in the language, which
were so pronounced between 1066 and Chaucer's death.
THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN ENGLISH
Three Languages used in England--For three hundred years after the
Norman Conquest, three languages were widely used in England. The
Normans introduced French, which was the language of the court and the
aristocracy. William the Conqueror brought over many Norman priests,
who used Latin almost exclusively in their service. The influence of
this book Latin is generally underestimated by those who do not
appreciate the power of the church. The Domesday survey shows that in
1085 the church and her dependents held more than one third of some
counties.
In addition to the Latin and the French (which was itself principally
of Latin origin), there was, thirdly, the Anglo-Saxon, to which the
middle and the lower classes of the English stubbornly adhered. The
Loss of Inflections.--Anglo-Saxon was a language with changing
endings, like modern German. If a Saxon wished to say, "good gifts,"
he had to have the proper case endings for both the adjective and the
noun, and his expression was _g=ode giefa_. For "the good gifts," he
said _eth=a g=odan giefa_, inflecting "the" and at the same time
changing the case ending of "good."
The Norman Conquest helped to lop off these endings, which German has
never entirely lost. We, however, no longer decline articles or
ordinary adjectives. Instead of having our attention taken up with
thinking of the proper endings, we are left free to attend to the
thought rather than to the vehicle of its expression. Although our
pronouns are still declined, the sole inflection of our nouns, with
the exception of a few like _ox, oxen_, or _mouse, mice_, is the
addition of _'s, s,_ or _es_ for the possessive and the plural. Modern
German, on the other hand, still retains these troublesome case
endings. How did English have the good fortune to lose them?
Whenever two peoples, speaking different languages, are closely
associated, there is a tendency to drop the terminations and to use
the stem word in all grammatical relations. If an English-speaking
person, who knows only a little German, travels in Germany, he finds
that he can make himself understood by using only one form of the noun
or adjective. If he calls for "two large glasses of hot milk,"
employing the incorrect expression, _zwei gross Glass heiss Milch_, he
will probably get the milk as quickly as if he had said correctly,
_zwei grosse Glaeser heisse Milch_. Neglect of the proper case endings
may provoke a smile, but the tourist prefers that to starvation.
Should the Germans and the English happen to be thrown together in
nearly equal numbers on an island, the Germans would begin to drop the
inflections that the English could not understand, and the German
language would undergo a change.
If there were no books or newspapers to circulate a fixed form of
speech, the alteration in the spoken tongue would be comparatively
rapid.
Such dropping of terminations is precisely what did happen before the
Norman Conquest in those parts of England most overrun by the Danes.
There, the adjectives lost their terminations to indicate gender and
case, and the article "the" ceased to be declined.
Even if the Normans had not come to England, the dropping of the
inflections would not have ceased. Many authorities think that the
grammatical structure of English would, even in the absence of that
event, have evolved into something like its present form. Of course
the Norman Conquest hastened many grammatical changes that would
ultimately have resulted from inherent causes, but it did not exercise
as great an influence as was formerly ascribed to it. Philologists
find it impossible to assign the exact amount of change due to the
Conquest and to other causes. Let us next notice some changes other
than the loss of inflections.
Change in Gender.--Before any one could speak Anglo-Saxon correctly,
he had first to learn the fanciful genders that were attached to
nouns: "trousers" was feminine; "childhood," masculine; "child,"
neuter. During this period the English gradually lost these fanciful
genders which the German still retains. A critic thus illustrates the
use of genders in that language: "A German gentleman writes a
masculine letter of feminine love to a neuter young lady with a
feminine pen and feminine ink on masculine sheets of neuter paper, and
incloses it in a masculine envelope with a feminine address to his
darling, though neuter, Gretchen. He has a masculine head, a feminine
hand, and a neuter heart."
Prefixes, Suffixes, and Self-explaining Compounds.--The English
tongue lost much of its power of using prefixes. A prefix joined to a
well-known word changes its meaning and renders the coining of a new
term unnecessary. The Anglo-Saxons, by the use of prefixes, formed ten
compounds from their verb _fl=owan_, "to flow." Of these, only one
survives in our "overflow." From _sittan_, "to sit," thirteen
compounds were thus formed, but every one has perished. A larger
percentage of suffixes was retained, and we still have many words like
"wholesome-ness," "child-hood," "sing-er."
The power of forming self-explaining compounds was largely lost. The
Saxon compounded the words for "tree," and "worker," and said
_tr=eow-wyrhta_, "tree-wright," but we now make use of the single word
"carpenter." We have replaced the Saxon _b=oc-craeft_, "book-art," by
"literature"; _=aefen-gl=om_, "evening-gloom," by "twilight";
mere-sw=in, "sea-swine," by "porpoise"; _=eag-wraec_, "eye-rack," by
"pain in the eye"; _leornung-cild_, "learning-child," by "pupil." The
title of an old work, _Ayen-bite of In-wit_, "Again-bite of In-wit,"
was translated into "Remorse of Conscience." _Grund-weall_ and
_word-hora_ were displaced by "foundation" and "vocabulary." The
German language still retains this power and calls a glove a
"hand-shoe," a thimble a "finger-hat," and rolls up such clumsy
compound expressions as _Unabhaengigkeits-erklaerung_.
We might lament this loss more if we did not remember that Shakespeare
found our language ample for his needs, and that a considerable number
of the old compounds still survive, as _home-stead, man-hood,
in-sight, break-fast, house-hold, horse-back, ship-man, sea-shore,
hand-work_, and _day-light_.
Introduction of New Words and Loss of Old Ones.--Since the Normans
were for some time the governing race, while many of the Saxons
occupied comparatively menial positions, numerous French words
indicative of rank, power, science, luxury, and fashion were
introduced. Many titles were derived from a French source. English
thus obtained words like "sovereign," "royalty," "duke," "marquis,"
"mayor," and "clerk." Many terms of government are from the French;
for instance, "parliament," "peers," "commons." The language of law
abounds in French terms, like "damage," "trespass," "circuit,"
"judge," "jury," "verdict," "sentence," "counsel," "prisoner." Many
words used in war, architecture, and medicine also have a French
origin. Examples are "fort," "arch," "mason," "surgery." In fact, we
find words from the French in almost every field. "Uncle" and
"cousin," "rabbit" and "falcon," "trot" and "stable," "money" and
"soldier," "reason" and "virtue," "Bible" and "preach," are instances
in point.
French words often displaced Saxon ones. Thus, the Saxon _Haelend_,
the Healer, gave way to the French _Savior_, _wanhope_ and _wonstead_
were displaced by _despair_ and _residence_. Sometimes the Saxon
stubbornly kept its place beside the French term. The English language
is thus especially rich in synonyms, or rather in slightly
differentiated forms of expression capable of denoting the exact shade
of thought and feeling. The following words are instances:--
SAXON FRENCH
body corpse
folk people
swine pork
calf veal
worth value
green verdant
food nourishment
wrangle contend
fatherly paternal
workman laborer
English was enriched not only by those expressions, gained from the
daily speech of the Normans, but also by words that were added from
literary Latin. Thus, we have the Saxon "ask," the Norman-French
"inquire" and "question," and the Latin "interrogate." "Bold,"
"impudent," "audacious"; "bright," "cheerful," "animated"; "earnings,"
"wages," "remuneration," "short," "brief," "concise," are other
examples of words, largely synonymous, from the Saxon, the
Norman-French, and the Latin, respectively. These facts explain why
modern English has such a wealth of expression, although probably more
than one half of the Anglo-Saxon vocabulary has been lost.
The Superiority of the Composite Tongue.--While we insist on the
truth that Anglo-Saxon gained much of its wonderful directness and
power from standing in close relations to earnest life, it is
necessary to remember that many words of French origin did, by an
apprenticeship at the fireside, in the field, the workshop, and the
laboratory, equally fit themselves for taking their place in the
language. Such words from French-Latin roots as "faith," "pray,"
"vein," "beast," "poor," "nurse," "flower," "taste," "state," and
"fool" remain in our vocabulary because they were used in everyday
life.
Pure Anglo-Saxon was a forcible language, but it lacked the wealth of
expression and the flexibility necessary to respond to the most
delicate touches of the master-musicians who were to come. When
Shakespeare has Lear say of Cordelia:--
"Her voice was ever soft,
Gentle, and low; an excellent thing in woman,"
we find that ten of the thirteen words are Saxon, but the other three
of Romance (French) origin are as necessary as is a small amount of
tin added to copper to make bronze. Two of these three words express
varying shades of quality.
Lounsbury well says: "There result, indeed, from the union of the
foreign and native elements, a wealth of phraseology and a
many-sidedness in English, which give it in these respects a
superiority over any other modern cultivated tongue. German is
strictly a pure Teutonic speech, but no native speaker of it claims
for it any superiority over the English as an instrument of
expression, while many are willing to concede its inferiority."
The Changes Slowly Accomplished.--For over a hundred years after the
Conquest, but few French words found their way into current English
use. This is shown by the fact that the _Brut_, a poem of 32,250
lines, translated from a French original into English about 1205, has
not more than a hundred words of Norman-French origin.
At first the Normans despised the tongue of the conquered Saxons, but,
as time progressed, the two races intermarried, and the children could
hardly escape learning some Saxon words from their mothers or nurses.
On the other hand, many well-to-do Saxons, like parents in later
times, probably had their children taught French because it was
considered aristocratic.
Until 1204 a knowledge of French was an absolute necessity to the
nobles, as they frequently went back and forth between their estates
in Normandy and in England. In 1204 King John lost Normandy, and in
the next reign both English and French kings decreed that no subject
of the one should hold land in the territory of the other. This
narrowing of the attention of English subjects down to England was a
foundation stone in building up the supremacy of the English tongue.
In 1338 began the Hundred Years' War between France and England. In
Edward the Third's reign (1327-1377), it was demonstrated that one
Englishman could whip six Frenchmen; and the language of a hostile and
partly conquered race naturally began to occupy a less high position.
In 1362 Parliament enacted that English should thereafter be used in
law courts, "because the laws, customs, and statutes of this realm, be
not commonly known in the same realm, for that they be pleaded,
shewed, and judged in the French tongue, which is much unknown in the
said realm."
LITERATURE OF THE PERIOD 1066-1400
Metrical Romances.--For nearly three hundred years after the Norman
Conquest the chief literary productions were metrical romances, which
were in the first instance usually written by Frenchmen, but sometimes
by Englishmen (_e.g._ Layamon) under French influence. There were four
main cycles of French romance especially popular in England before the
fifteenth century. These were tales of the remarkable adventures of
King Arthur and his Knights, Charlemagne and his Peers, Alexander the
Great, and the heroes at the siege of Troy. At the battle of Hastings
a French minstrel is said to have sung the _Song of Roland_ from the
Charlemagne cycle.
These long stories in verse usually present the glory of chivalry, the
religious faith, and the romantic loves of a feudal age. In _Beowulf_,
woman plays a very minor part and there is no love story; but in these
romances we often find woman and love in the ascendancy. One of them,
well known today in song, _Tristram and Iseult_ (Wagner's _Tristan und
Isolde_), "a possession of our composite race," is almost entirely a
story of romantic love.
The romances of this age that have most interest for English readers
are those which relate to King Arthur and his Knights of the Round
Table. The foundation suggestions for the most of this cycle are of
British (Welsh) origin. This period would not have existed in vain, if
it had given to the world nothing, but these Arthurian ideals of
generosity, courage, honor, and high endeavour, which are still a
potent influence. In his _Idylls of the King_, Tennyson calls Arthur
and his Knights:--
"A glorious company, the flower of men,
To serve as model for the mighty world,
And be the fair beginning of a time."
The _Quest of the Holy Grail_ belongs to the Arthurian cycle. Percival
(Wagner's Parsifal), the hero of the earlier version and Sir Galahad
of the later, show the same spirit that animated the knights in the
Crusades. Tennyson introduces Sir Galahad as a knight whose strength
is as the strength of ten because his heart is pure, undertaking "the
far-quest after the divine." The American poet Lowell chose Sir
Launfal, a less prominent figure in Arthurian romance, for the hero of
his version of the search for the Grail, and had him find it in every
sympathetic act along the common way of life.
The story of _Gawayne and the Green Knight_, "the jewel of English
medieval literature," tells how Sir Gawayne, Arthur's favorite, fought
with a giant called the Green Knight. The romance might almost be
called a sermon, if it did not reveal in a more interesting way a
great moral truth,--that deception weakens character and renders the
deceiver vulnerable in life's contests. In preparing for the struggle,
Sir Gawayne is guilty of one act of deceit. But for this, he would
have emerged unscathed from the battle. One wound, which leaves a
lasting scar, is the result of an apparently trivial deception. His
purity and honor in all things else save him from death. This story,
which reminds us of Spenser's _Faerie Queene_, presents in a new garb
one of the oft-recurring ideals of the race, "keep troth" (truth).
Chaucer sings in the same key:--
"Hold the hye wey, and let thy gost thee lede,
And trouthe shall delivere, it is no drede."
We should remember that these romances are the most characteristic
literary creations of the Middle Ages, that they embody the new spirit
of chivalry, religious faith, and romantic love in a feudal age, that
they had a story to tell, and that some of them have never lost their
influence on human ideals.
A Latin Chronicler.--One chronicler, Geoffrey of Monmouth,
although he wrote in Latin, must receive some attention because of his
vast influence on English poetry. He probably acquired his last name
from being archdeacon of Monmouth. He was appointed Bishop of St.
Asaph in 1152 and died about 1154. Unlike the majority of the monkish
chroniclers, he possessed a vivid imagination, which he used in his
so-called _History of the Kings of Britain_.
Geoffrey pretended to have found an old manuscript which related the
deeds of all British kings from Brutus, the mythical founder of the
kingdom of Britain, and the great-grandson of Aeneas, to Caesar.
Geoffrey wrote an account of the traditionary British kings down to
Cadwallader in 689 with as much minuteness and gravity as Swift
employed in the _Voyage to Lilliput_. Other chroniclers declared that
Geoffrey lied saucily and shamelessly, but his book became extremely
popular. The monks could not then comprehend that the world's greatest
literary works were to be products of the imagination.
In Geoffrey of Monmouth's _History of the Kings of Britain_ we are
given vivid pictures of King Lear and his daughters, of Cymbeline, of
King Arthur and his Knights, of Guinevere and the rest of that company
whom later poets have immortalized. It is probable that Geoffrey was
not particular whether he obtained his materials from old chroniclers,
Welsh bards, floating tradition, or from his own imagination. His book
left its impress on the historical imagination of the Middle Ages. Had
it not been for Geoffrey's _History_, the dramas of _King Lear_ and
_Cymbeline_ might never have been suggested to Shakespeare.
Layamon's Brut.--About 1155 a Frenchman named Wace translated into
his own language Geoffrey of Monmouth's works. This translation fell
into the hands of Layamon, a priest living in Worcestershire, who
proceeded to render the poem, with additions of his own, into the
Southern English dialect. Wace's _Brut_ has 15,300 lines; Layamon's,
32,250. As the matter which Layamon added is the best in the poem, he
is, in so far, an original author of much imaginative power. He is
certainly the greatest poet between the Conquest and Chaucer's time.
A selection from the _Brut_ will give the student an opportunity of
comparing this transition English with the language in its modern
form:--
"And Ich wulle varan to Avalun: And I will fare to Avalon,
To vairest alre maidene To the fairest of all maidens,
To Argante ethere quene, To Argante the queen,
Alven swiethe sceone; Elf surpassing fair;
And heo scal mine wunden And she shall my wounds
Makien alle isunde, Make all sound,
Al hal me makien All hale me make
Mid halweige drenchen. With healing draughts.
And seoethe Ich cumen wulle And afterwards I will come
To mine kineriche To my kingdom
And wunien mid Brutten And dwell with Britons
Mid muchelere wunne." With much joy.
With this, compare the following lines from Tennyson's _The Passing of
Arthur_:--
"...I am going a long way
* * * * *
To the island-valley of Avilion,
Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,
Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies
Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard lawns
And bowery hollows crown'd with summer sea,
Where I will heal me of my grievous wound.
* * * * *
He passes to be King among the dead,
And after healing of his grievous wound
He comes again."
Layamon employed less alliteration than is found in Anglo-Saxon
poetry. He also used an occasional rime, but the accent and rhythm of
his verse are more Saxon than modern. When reading Tennyson's _Idylls
of the King_, we must not forget that Layamon was the first poet to
celebrate in English King Arthur's deeds. The _Brut_ shows little
trace of French influences, not more than a hundred French words being
found in it.
Orm's Ormulum.--A monk named Orm wrote in the Midland dialect a
metrical paraphrase of those parts of the _Gospels_ used in the church
on each service day throughout the year. After the paraphrase comes
his metrical explanation and application of the _Scripture_.
He says:--
"Diss boc iss nemmnedd Orrmulum
Forrethi ethatt Ormm itt wrohhte."
This book is named Ormulum
For that Orm it wrote.
There was no fixed spelling at this time. Orm generally doubled the
consonant after a short vowel, and insisted that any one who copied
his work should be careful to do the same. We shall find on counting
the syllables in the two lines quoted from him that the first line has
eight; the second, seven. This scheme is followed with great precision
throughout the poem, which employs neither rime nor regular
alliteration. Orm used even fewer French words than Layamon. The date
of the _Ormulum_ is probably somewhere between 1200 and 1215.
The Ancren Riwle.--About 1225 appeared the most notable prose work
in the native tongue since the time of Alfred, if we except the
_Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_. Three young ladies who had secluded
themselves from the world in Dorsetshire, wished rules for guidance in
their seclusion. An unknown author, to oblige them, wrote the _Ancren
Riwle_ (Rule of Anchoresses). This book not only lays down rules for
their future conduct in all the affairs of life, but also offers much
religious consolation.
The following selection shows some of the curious rules for the
guidance of the anchoresses, and furnishes a specimen of the Southern
dialect of transitional English prose in the early part of the
thirteenth century:--
"sse, mine leoue sustren,
ne schulen habben no best
bute kat one... sse schulen
beon i-dodded four siethen,
iethe ssere, uorto lihten ower
heaued... Of idelnesse awakeneeth
muchel flesshes fondunge...
Iren ethet lieth stille gedereeth
sone rust."
Ye, my beloved sisters,
shall have no beast
but one cat... Ye shall
be cropped four times
in the year for to lighten your
head... Of idleness ariseth
much temptation of the flesh...
Iron that lieth still soon gathereth
rust.
The keynote of the work is the renunciation of self. Few productions
of modern literature contain finer pictures of the divine love and
sympathy. The following simile affords an instance of this quality in
the work:--
"De sixte kunfort is ethet
ure Louerd, hwon he ietholeth
ethet we beoeth itented, he plaieeth mid
us, ase ethe moder mid hire ssunge
deorlinge; vliheth from him, and
hut hire, and let hit sitten one,
and loken sseorne abuten, and cleopien
Dame! dame! and weopen
one hwule; and etheonne mid ispredde
ermes leapeeth lauhwinde
voreth, and cluppeeth and cusseeth and
wipeeth his eien. Riht so ure
Louerd let us one iwurethen oether
hwules, and wiethdraweeth his grace
and his kunfort, ethet we ne ivindeeth
swetnesse in none ethinge ethet we wel
doeth, ne savor of heorte; and ethauh,
iethet ilke point ne luveeth he us
ure leove veder never ethe lesce,
auh he deeth hit for muchel luve
ethet he haveeth to us."
The sixth comfort is that
our Lord, when he suffers
that we be tempted, he plays with
us, as the mother with her young
darling; she flees from it, and
hides herself, and lets it sit alone
and look anxiously about and cry
"Dame! dame!" and weep
awhile; and then with outspread
arms leaps laughing
forth and clasps and kisses it and
wipes its eyes. Exactly so our
Lord leaves us alone once in a
while and withdraws his grace
and his comfort, that we find
sweetness in nothing that we do well,
no relish of heart; and notwithstanding,
at the same time, he, our dear
Father, loves us nevertheless,
but he does it for the great love
that he has for us.
Professor Sweet calls the _Ancren Riwle_ "one of the most perfect
models of simple, natural, eloquent prose in our language." For its
introduction of French words, this work occupies a prominent place in
the development of the English language. Among the words of French
origin found in it, we may instance: "dainty," "cruelty," "vestments,"
"comfort," "journey," "mercer."
Lyrical Poetry.--A famous British Museum manuscript, known as
_Harleian MS., No. 2253_. which was transcribed about 1310, contains a
fine anthology of English lyrics, some of which may have been composed
early in the thirteenth century. The best of these are love lyrics,
but they are less remarkable for an expression of the tender passion
than for a genuine appreciation of nature. Some of them are full of
the joy of birds and flowers and warm spring days.
A lover's song, called _Alysoun_, is one of the best of these
lyrics:--
"Bytuene Mershe ant[3] Averil[4]
When spray biginneth to spring,
The lutel[5] foul hath hire wyl
On hyre lud[6] to synge."
A famous spring lyric beginning:--
"Lenten[7] ys come with love to toune,[8]
With blosmen ant with briddes[9] roune."[10]
is a symphony of daisies, roses, "lovesome lilies," thrushes, and
"notes suete of nyhtegales."
The refrain of one love song is invigorating with the breath of the
northern wind:--
"Blou, northerne wynd!
Send thou me my suetyng!
Blou norterne wynd! blou, blou, blou!"
The _Cuckoo Song_, which is perhaps older than any of these, is the
best known of all the early lyrics:--
"Sumer is i-cumen in
Lhude sing cuccu
Groweth sed and bloweth med
And springeth the wde nu.
Sing cuccu, cuccu."
Summer is a-coming in,
Loud sing cuckoo,
Groweth seed and bloometh mead,
And springeth the wood now.
Sing cuckoo, cuckoo.
A more somber note is heard in the religious lyrics:--
"Wynter wakeneth al my care,
Nou this leves waxeth bare;
Ofte I sike[11] ant mourne sare[12]
When hit cometh in my thoht
Of this worldes joie, hou hit goth al to noht."
We do not know the names of any of these singers, but they were worthy
forerunners of the later lyrists of love and nature.
Robert Manning of Brunne.--We have now come to fourteenth-century
literature, which begins to wear a more modern aspect. Robert Manning,
generally known as Robert of Brunne, because he was born at Brunne,
now called Bourn, in Lincolnshire, adapted from a Norman-French
original a work entitled _Handlyng Synne_ (_Manual of Sins_). This
book, written in the Midland dialect in 1303, discourses of the Seven
Deadly Sins and the best ways of living a godly life.
A careful inspection of the following selection from the _Handlyng
Synne_ will show that, aside from the spelling, the English is
essentially modern. Most persons will be able to understand all but a
few words. He was the first prominent English writer to use the modern
order of words. The end rime is also modern. A beggar, seeing a beast
laden with bread at the house of a rich man, asks for food. The poem
says of the rich man:--
"He stouped down to seke a stone,
But, as hap was, than fonde he none.
For the stone he toke a lofe,
And at the pore man hyt drofe.
The pore man hente hyt up belyue,
And was thereof ful ferly blythe,
To hys felaws fast he ran
With the lofe, thys pore man."
He stooped down to seek a stone,
But, as chance was, then found he none.
For the stone he took a loaf,
And at the poor man it drove.
The poor man caught it up quickly,
And was thereof full strangely glad,
To his fellows fast he ran
With the loaf this poor man.
Oliphant says: "Strange it is that Dante should have been compiling
his _Inferno_, which settled the course of Italian literature forever,
in the selfsame years that Robert of Brunne was compiling the earliest
pattern of well-formed New English... Almost every one of the Teutonic
changes in idiom, distinguishing the New English from the Old, the
speech of Queen Victoria from the speech of Hengist, is to be found in
Manning's work."
Mandeville's Travels.--Sir John Mandeville, who is popularly
considered the author of a very entertaining work of travels, states
that he was born in St. Albans in 1300, that he left England in 1322,
and traveled in the East for thirty-four years. His _Travels_ relates
what he saw and heard in his wanderings through Ethiopia, Persia,
Tartary, India, and Cathay. What he tells on his own authority, he
vouches for as true, but what he relates as hearsay, he leaves to the
reader's judgment for belief.
[Illustration: WHAT MADEVILLE SAW. _Old print from Edition of
1725._]
No such single traveler as Mandeville ever existed. The work
attributed to him has been proved to be a compilation from the
writings of other travelers. A French critic says wittily: "He first
lost his character as a truthful writer; then out of the three
versions of his book, French, English, and Latin, two were withdrawn
from him, leaving him only the first. Existence has now been taken
from him, and he is left with nothing at all." No matter, however, who
the author was, the book exists. More manuscripts of it survive than
of any other work except the _Scriptures_. It is the most entertaining
volume of English prose that we have before 1360. The sentences are
simple and direct, and they describe things vividly:--
"In Ethiope ben many dyverse folk: and Ethiope is clept[13] Cusis.
In that contree ben folk, that han but o foot: and thei gon so fast,
that it is marvaylle: and the foot is so large, that it schadewethe
alle the body azen[14] the Sonne whanne thei wole[15] lye and reste
hem."[16]
Mandeville also tells of a bird that used to amuse itself by flying
away with an elephant in its talons. In the land of Prester John was a
valley where Mandeville says he saw devils jumping about as thick as
grasshoppers. Stories like these make the work as interesting as
_Gulliver's Travels_.
The so-called Mandeville's _Travels_ was one of the few works that the
unlearned of that age could understand and enjoy. Consequently its
popularity was so great as to bring large number of French words into
familiar use. The native "againbought" is, however, used instead of
the foreign "redeemed."
[Illustration: JOHN WYCLIFFE. _From an old print_.]
John Wycliffe.--Wycliffe (1324-1384) was born at Hipswell, near
Richmond, in the northern part of Yorkshire. He became a doctor of
divinity and a master of one of the colleges at Oxford. Afterward he
was installed vicar of Lutterworth in Leicestershire, where he died.
In history he is principally known as the first great figure in the
English Reformation. He preceded the other reformers by more than a
century. In literature he is best known for the first complete
translation of the _Bible_,--a work that exerted great influence on
English prose. All the translation was not made by him personally, but
all was done under his direction. The translation of most of the _New
Testament_ is thought to be his own special work. He is the most
important prose writer of the fourteenth century. His prose had an
influence as wide as the circulation of the _Bible_. The fact that it
was forced to circulate in manuscript, because printing had not then
been invented, limited his readers; but his translation was,
nevertheless, read by many. To help the cause of the Reformation, he
wrote argumentative religious pamphlets, which are excellent specimens
of energetic fourteenth-century prose.
Of his place in literature, Ten Brink says: "Wycliffe's literary
importance lies in the fact that he extended the domain of English
prose and enhanced its powers of expression. He accustomed it to terse
reasoning, and perfected it as an instrument for expressing rigorous
logical thought and argument; he brought it into the service of great
ideas and questions of the day, and made it the medium of polemics and
satire. And above all, he raised it to the dignity of the national
language of the _Bible_."
The following is a specimen verse of Wycliffe's translation. We may
note that the strong old English word "againrising" had not then been
displaced by the Latin "resurrection."
"Jhesu seith to hir, I am agenrisyng and lyf; he that bileueth in
me, he, if he schal be deed, schall lyue."
Piers Plowman.--_The Vision of William Concerning Piers the
Plowman_, popularly called _Piers Plowman_, from its most important
character, is the name of an allegorical poem, the first draft ("A"
text) of which was probably composed about 1362. Later in the century
two other versions, known as texts "B" and "C" appeared. Authorities
differ in regard to whether these are the work of the same man. _The
Vision_ is the first and the most interesting part of a much longer
work, known as _Liber de Petro Plowman_ (_The Book of Piers the
Plowman_).
The authorship of the poem is not certainly known, but it has long
been ascribed to William Langland, born about 1322 at Cleobury
Mortimer in Shropshire. The author of _Piers Plowman_ seems to have
performed certain functions connected with the church, such as singing
at funerals.
_Piers Plowman_ opens on a pleasant May morning amid rural scenery.
The poet falls asleep by the side of a brook and dreams. In his dream
he has a vision of the world passing before his eyes, like a drama.
The poem tells what he saw. Its opening lines are:--
"In a _s_omer _s_eson * whan _s_oft was the _s_onne
I _sh_ope[17] me in _sh_roudes[18] * as I a _sh_epe[19] were
In _h_abite as an _h_eremite[20] - un_h_oly of workes
_W_ent _w_yde in is _w_orld - _w_ondres to here
Ac on a _M_ay _m_ornynge - on _M_aluerne hulles[21]
Me by_f_el a _f_erly[22] - of _f_airy me thouss te
I _w_as _w_ery for_w_andred[23] - and _w_ent me to reste
Under a _b_rode _b_ank - _b_i a _b_ornes[24] side,
And as I _l_ay and _l_ened[25] - and _l_oked in e wateres
I _s_lombred in a _s_lepyng - it _s_weyved[26] so merye."
[Illustration: TREUTHE'S PILGRYME ATTE PLOW. _From a manuscript in
Trinity College, Cambridge._]
The language of _Piers Plowman_ is a mixture of the Southern and
Midland dialects. It should be noticed that the poem employs the old
Anglo-Saxon alliterative meter. There is no end rime. _Piers Plowman_
is the last great poem written in this way.
The actors in this poem are largely allegorical. Abstractions are
personified. Prominent characters are Conscience, Lady Meed or
Bribery, Reason, Truth, Gluttony, Hunger, and the Seven Deadly Sins.
In some respects, the poem is not unlike the _Pilgrim's Progress_, for
the battle in passing from this life to the next is well described in
both; but there are more humor, satire, and descriptions of common
life in Langland. Piers is at first a simple plowman, who offers to
guide men to truth. He is finally identified with the Savior.
Throughout the poem, the writer displays all the old Saxon
earnestness. His hatred of hypocrisy is manifest on every page. His
sadness, because things are not as they ought to be, makes itself
constantly felt. He cannot reconcile the contradiction between the
real and the ideal. In attacking selfishness, hypocrisy, and
corruption; in preaching the value of a life of good deeds; in showing
how men ought to progress toward higher ideals; in teaching that "Love
is the physician of life and nearest our Lord himself,--" _Piers
Plowman_ proved itself a regenerating spiritual force, a
stepping-stone toward the later Reformation.
The author of this poem was also a fourteenth-century social reformer,
protesting against the oppression of the poor, insisting on mutual
service and "the good and loving life." In order to have a
well-rounded conception of the life of the fourteenth century, we must
read _Piers Plowman_. Chaucer was a poet for the upper classes. _Piers
Plowman_ gives valuable pictures of the life of the common people and
shows them working--
"To kepe kyne In e field, e corne fro e bestes,
Diken[27] or deluen[28] or dyngen[29] vppon sheues,[30]
Or helpe make mortar or here mukke a-felde."
We find in the popular poetry of _Piers Plowman_ almost as many words
of French derivation as in the work of the more aristocratic Chaucer.
This fact shows how thoroughly the French element had become
incorporated in the speech of all classes. The style of the author of
_Piers Plowman_ is, however, remarkable for the old Saxon sincerity
and for the realistic directness of the bearer of a worthy message.
John Gower.--Gower, a very learned poet, was born about 1325 and
died in 1408. As he was not sure that English would become the
language of his cultivated countrymen, he tried each of the three
languages used in England. His first important work, the _Speculum
Meditantis_, was written in French; his second, the _Vox Clamantis_,
in Latin; his third, the _Confessio Amantis_, in English.
[Illustration: EARLY PORTRAIT OF GOWER HEARING THE CONFESSION OF A
LOVER (CONFESSIO AMANTIS). _From the Egerton MS., British Museum._]
The _Confessio Amantis_ (_Confession of a Lover_) is principally a
collection of one hundred and twelve short tales. An attempt to unify
them is seen in the design to have the confessor relate, at the
lover's request, those stories which reveal the causes tending to
hinder or to further love. Gower had ability in story-telling, as is
shown by the tales about Medea and the knight Florent; but he lacked
Chaucer's dramatic skill and humor. Gower's influence has waned
because, although he stood at the threshold of the Renaissance, his
gaze was chiefly turned backward toward medievalism. His contemporary,
Chaucer, as we see, was affected by the new spirit.
GEOFFREY CHAUCER, 1340?-1400.
[Illustration: GEOFFREY CHAUCER. _From an old drawing in Occleve's
Poems, British Museum._]
Life.--Chaucer was born in London about 1340. His father and
grandfather were vintners, who belonged to the upper class of
merchants. Our first knowledge of Geoffrey Chaucer is obtained from
the household accounts of the Princess Elizabeth, daughter-in-law of
Edward III., in whose family Chaucer was a page. An entry shows that
she bought him a fine suit of clothes, including a pair of red and
black breeches. Such evidence points to the fact that he was early
accustomed to associating with the nobility, and enables us to
understand why he and the author of _Piers Plowman_ regard life from
different points of view.
In 1359 Chaucer accompanied the English army to France and was taken
prisoner. Edward III. thought enough of the youth to pay for his
ransom a sum equivalent to-day to about $1200. After his return he was
made valet of the king's chamber. The duties of that office "consisted
in making the royal bed, holding torches, and carrying messages."
Later, Chaucer became a squire.
In 1370 he was sent to the continent on a diplomatic mission. He seems
to have succeeded so well that during the next ten years he was
repeatedly sent abroad in the royal service. He visited Italy twice
and may thus have met the Italian poet Petrarch. These journeys
inspired Chaucer with a desire to study Italian literature,--a
literature that had just been enriched by the pens of Dante and
Boccaccio.
We must next note that Chaucer's life was not that of a poetic
dreamer, but of a stirring business man. For more than twelve years he
was controller of customs for London. This office necessitated
assessing duties on wools, skins, wines, and candles. Only a part of
this work could be performed by deputy. He was later overseeing clerk
of the king's works. The repeated selection of Chaucer for foreign and
diplomatic business shows that he was considered sagacious as well as
trustworthy. Had he not kept in close touch with life, he could never
have become so great a poet. In this connection we may remark that
England's second greatest writer, Milton, spent his prime in attending
to affairs of state. Chaucer's busy life did not keep him from
attaining third place on the list of England's poets.
There are many passages of autobiographical interest in his poems. He
was a student of books as well as of men, as is shown by these lines
from the _Hous of Fame_:--
"For whan thy labour doon al is,
And halt y-maad thy rekeninges,
In stede of rest and newe thinges,
Thou gost hoom to thy hous anoon,
And, also domb as any stoon,
Thou sittest at another boke,
Til fully daswed[31] is thy loke,
And livest thus as an hermyte."[32]
Chaucer was pensioned by three kings,--Edward III., Richard II., and
Henry IV. Before the reign of Henry IV., Chaucer's pensions were
either not always regularly paid, or they were insufficient for
certain emergencies, as he complained of poverty in his old age. The
pension of Henry IV. in 1399 must have been ample, however; since in
that year Chaucer leased a house in the garden of a chapel at
Westminster for as many of fifty-three years as he should live. He had
occasion to use this house but ten months, for he died in 1400.
He may be said to have founded the Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey,
as he was the first of the many great authors to be buried there.
Chaucer's Earlier Poems.--At the age of forty, Chaucer had probably
written not more than one seventh of a total of about 35,000 lines of
verse which he left at his death. Before he reached his poetic prime,
he showed two periods of influence,--French and Italian.
During his first period, he studied French models. He learned much
from his partial translation of the popular French _Romaunt of the
Rose_. The best poem of his French period is _Dethe of Blanche the
Duchesse_, a tribute to the wife of John of Gaunt, the son of Edward
III.
Chaucer's journey to Italy next turned his attention to Italian
models. A study of these was of especial service in helping him to
acquire that skill which enabled him to produce the masterpieces of
his third or English period. This study came at a specially opportune
time and resulted in communicating to him something of the spirit of
the early Renaissance.
The influence of Boccaccio and, sometimes, of Dante is noticeable in
the principal poems of the Italian period,--the _Troilus and Criseyde,
Hous of Fame_, and _Legende of Good Women_. The _Troilus and Criseyde_
is a tale of love that was not true. The _Hous of Fame_, an unfinished
poem, gives a vision of a vast palace of ice on which the names of the
famous are carved to await the melting rays of the sun. The _Legende
of Good Women_ is a series of stories of those who, like Alcestis, are
willing to give up everything for love. In _A Dream of Fair Women_
Tennyson says:--
"'The Legend of Good Women,' long ago
Sung by the morning star of song, who made
His music heard below;
Dan Chaucer, the first warbler, whose sweet breath
Preluded those melodious bursts that fill
The spacious times of great Elizabeth
With sounds that echo still."
In this series of poems Chaucer learned how to rely less and less on
an Italian crutch. He next took his immortal ride to Canterbury on an
English Pegasus.
General Plan of the Canterbury Tales.--People in general have always
been more interested in stories than in any other form of literature.
Chaucer probably did not realize that he had such positive genius for
telling tales in verse that the next five hundred years would fail to
produce his superior in that branch of English literature.
[Illustration: CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL.]
All that Chaucer needed was some framework into which he could fit the
stories that occurred to him, to make them something more than mere
stray tales, which might soon be forgotten. Chaucer's great
contemporary Italian storyteller, Boccaccio, conceived the idea of
representing some of the nobility of Florence as fleeing from the
plague, and telling in their retirement the tales that he used in his
_Decameron_. It is not certain that Chaucer received from the
_Decameron_ his suggestions for the _Canterbury Tales_, although he
was probably in Florence at the same time as Boccaccio.
In 1170 Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, was murdered at the
altar. He was considered both a martyr and a saint, and his body was
placed in a splendid mausoleum at the Cathedral. It was said that
miracles were worked at his tomb, that the sick were cured, and that
the worldly affairs of those who knelt at his shrine prospered. It
became the fashion for men of all classes to go on pilgrimages to his
tomb. As robbers infested the highways, the pilgrims usually waited at
some inn until there was a sufficient band to resist attack. In time
the journey came to be looked on as a holiday, which relieved the
monotony of everyday life. About 1385 Chaucer probably went on such a
pilgrimage. To furnish amusement, as the pilgrims cantered along, some
of them may have told stories. The idea occurred to Chaucer to write a
collection of such tales as the various pilgrims might have been
supposed to tell on their journey. The result was the _Canterbury
Tales_.
Characters in the Tales.--Chaucer's plan is superior to Boccaccio's;
for only the nobility figure as story-tellers in the _Decameron_,
while the Canterbury pilgrims represent all ranks of English life,
from the knight to the sailor.
The _Prologue_ to the _Tales_ places these characters before us almost
as distinctly as they would appear in real life. At the Tabard Inn in
Southwark, just across the Thames from London, we see that merry band
of pilgrims on a pleasant April day. We look first upon a manly figure
who strikes us as being every inch a knight. His cassock shows the
marks of his coat of mail.
"At mortal batailles hadde he been fiftene.
* * * * *
And of his port as meke as is a mayde.
He never yet no vileinye ne sayde
In al his lyf, un-to no maner wight.
He was a verray parfit gentil knight."
His son, the Squire, next catches our attention. We notice his curly
locks, his garments embroidered with gay flowers, and the graceful way
in which he rides his horse. By his side is his servant, the Yeoman,
"clad in cote and hood of grene," with a sheaf of arrows at his belt.
We may even note his cropped head and his horn suspended from green
belt. We next catch sight of a Nun's gracefully pleated wimple,
shapely nose, small mouth, "eyes greye as glas," well-made cloak,
coral beads, and brooch of gold. She is attended by a second Nun and
three Priests. The Monk is a striking figure:--
"His heed was balled, that shoon as any glas,
And eek his face, as he hadde been anoint.
He was a lord ful fat and in good point."
[Illustration: PILGRIMS LEAVING THE TABARD INN. _From Urry's
Chaucer._]
There follow the Friar with twinkling eyes, "the beste beggere in his
hous," the Merchant with his forked beard, the Clerk (scholar) of
Oxford in his threadbare garments, the Sergeant-at-Law, the Franklyn
(country gentleman), Haberdasher, Carpenter, Weaver, Dyer, Tapycer
(tapestry maker), Cook, Shipman, Physician, Wife of Bath, Parish
Priest, Plowman, Miller, Manciple (purchaser of provisions), Reeve
(bailiff of a farm), Summoner (official of an ecclesiastical court),
and Pardoner. These characters, exclusive of Baily (the host of Tabard
Inn) and Chaucer himself, are alluded to in the _Prologue_ to the
_Tales_ as--
"Wel nyne and twenty in a companye,
Of sondry folk, by aventure y-falle
In felawshipe, and pilgrims were they alle,
That toward Caunterbury wolden ryde."
[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF LINES DESCRIBING THE FRANKLYN[33]. _From
the Cambridge University MS._]
[Illustration: THE FRANKLYN[34].]
[Illustration: THE FRIAR.]
The completeness of the picture of fourteenth century English life in
the _Canterbury Tales_ makes them absolutely necessary reading for the
historian as well as for the student of literature.
Certainly no one who has ever read the _Prologue_ to the _Tales_ will
question Chaucer's right to be considered a great _original_ poet, no
matter how much he may have owed to foreign teachers.
The Tales.--Harry Baily, the keeper of the Tabard Inn, who
accompanied the pilgrims, proposed that each member of the party
should tell four tales,--two going and two returning. The one who told
the best story was to have a supper at the expense of the rest. The
plan thus outlined was not fully executed by Chaucer, for the
collection contains but twenty-four tales, all but two of which are in
verse.
[Illustration: THE KNIGHT.]
[Illustration: THE PRIORESS.]
[Illustration: THE SQUIRE.]
The _Knightes Tale_, which is the first, is also the best. It is a
very interesting story of love and chivalry. Two young Theban
nobleman, Palamon and Arcite, sworn friends, are prisoners of war at
Athens. Looking through the windows of their dungeon, they see walking
in the garden the beautiful sister of the queen. Each one swears that
he will have the princess. Arcite is finally pardoned on condition
that he will leave Athens and never return, on penalty of death; but
his love for Emily lures him back to the forbidden land. Reduced
almost to a skeleton, he disguises himself, goes to Athens, and
becomes a servant in the house of King Theseus. Finally, Palamon
escapes from prison, and by chance encounters Arcite. The two men
promptly fight, but are interrupted by Theseus, who at first condemns
them to death, but later relents and directs them to depart and to
return at the end of a year, each with a hundred brave knights. The
king prescribes that each lover shall then lead his forces in mortal
battle and that the victor shall wed the princess.
[Illustration: THE CLERK OF OXFORD.]
On the morning of the contest, Palamon goes before dawn to the temple
of Venus to beseech her aid in winning Emily, while Arcite at the same
time steals to the temple of Mars to pray for victory in war. Each
deity not only promises but actually grants the suppliants precisely
what they ask; for Arcite, though fatally wounded, is victorious in
the battle, and Palamon in the end weds Emily. Although Boccaccio's
_Teseide_ furnished the general plot for this _Knightes Tale_,
Chaucer's story is, as Skeat says, "to all intents, a truly original
poem."
The other pilgrims tell stories in keeping with their professions and
characters. Perhaps the next best tale is the merry story of
_Chanticleer and the Fox_. This is related by the Nun's Priest. The
Clerk of Oxford tells the pathetic tale of _Patient Griselda_, and the
Nun relates a touching story of a little martyr.
Chief Qualities of Chaucer.--I. Chaucer's descriptions are unusually
clear-cut and vivid. They are the work of a poet who did not shut
himself in his study, but who mingled among his fellow-men and noticed
them acutely. He says of the Friar:--
"His eyes twinkled in his heed aright,
As doon the sterres in the frosty night."
Our eyes and ears distinctly perceive the jolly Monk, as he canters
along:--
"And, whan he rood, men might his brydel here
Ginglen in a whistling wind as clere,
And eek as loude as dooth the chapel-belle."
II. Chaucer's pervasive, sympathetic humor is especially
characteristic. We can see him looking with twinkling eyes at the
Miller, "tolling thrice"; at the Monk, "full fat and in good point,"
hunting with his greyhounds, "swift as fowl in flight," or smiling
before a fat roast swan; at the Squire, keeping the nightingale
company; at the Doctor, prescribing the rules of astrology. The Nun
feels a touch of his humor:--
"Ful wel she song the service divyne,
Entuned in hir nose ful semely."
Of the lawyer, he says:--
"No-wher so bisy a man as he ther nas,
And yet he semed bisier than he was."
Sometimes Chaucer's humor is so delicate as to be lost on those who
are not quick-witted. Lowell instances the case of the Friar, who,
"before setting himself softly down, drives away the cat," and adds
what is true only of those who have acute understanding: "We know,
without need of more words, that he has chosen the snuggest corner."
His humor is often a graceful cloak for his serious philosophy of
existence. The humor in the _Prologue_ does not impair its worth to
the student of fourteenth-century life.
III. Although Chaucer's humor and excellence in lighter vein are such
marked characteristics, we must not forget his serious qualities; for
he has the Saxon seriousness as well as the Norman airiness. As he
looks over the struggling world, he says with a sympathetic heart:--
"Infinite been the sorwes and the teres
Of olde folk, and folk of tendre yeres."[35]
In like vein, we have:--
"This world nis but a thurghfare ful of wo,
And we ben pilgrimes, passinge to and fro;
Deeth is an ende of every worldly sore."[36]
"Her nis non hoom, her nis but wildernesse.
Forthe, pylgrime, forthe! forthe, beste out of thi stal!
Knowe thi contree, look up, thank God of al!"[37]
The finest character in the company is that of the Parish Priest, who
attends to his flock like a good Samaritan:--
"But Cristes lore, and his apostles twelve,
He taughte, and first he folwed it him-selve."
IV. The largeness of his view of human nature is remarkable. Some
poets, either intentionally or unintentionally, paint one type of men
accurately and distort all the rest. Chaucer impartially portrays the
highest as well as the lowest, and the honest man as well as the
hypocrite. The pictures of the roguish Friar and the self-denying
Parish Priest, the Oxford Scholar and the Miller, the Physician and
the Shipman, are painted with equal fidelity to life. In the breadth
and kindliness of his view of life, Chaucer is a worthy predecessor of
Shakespeare. Dryden's verdict on Chaucer's poetry is: "Here is God's
plenty."
V. His love of nature is noteworthy for that early age. Such lines as
these manifest something more than a desire for rhetorical effect in
speaking of nature's phenomena:--
"Now welcom somer, with thy sonne softe,
That hast this wintres weders over-shake,
And driven awey the longe nightes blake[38]!"[39]
His affection for the daisy has for five hundred years caused many
other people to look with fonder eyes upon that flower.
VI. He stands in the front rank of those who have attempted to tell
stories in melodious verse. Lowell justly says: "One of the world's
three or four great story-tellers, he was also one of the best
versifiers that ever made English trip and sing with a gayety that
seems careless, but where every foot beats time to the tune of the
thought."
[Illustration: MORRIS DANCERS._From a Manuscript of Chaucer's
Time._]
VII. He is the first great English author to feel the influence of the
Renaissance, which did not until long afterward culminate in England.
Gower has his lover hear tales from a confessor in cloistered quiet.
Chaucer takes his Pilgrims out for jolly holidays in the April
sunshine. He shows the spirit of the Renaissance in his joy in varied
life, in his desire for knowledge of all classes of men as well as of
books, in his humor, and in his general reaching out into new fields.
He makes us feel that he lives in a merrier England, where both the
Morris dancer and the Pilgrim may show their joy in life.
What Chaucer did for the English Language.--Before Chaucer's works,
English was, as we have seen, a language of dialects. He wrote in the
Midland dialect, and aided in making that the language of England.
Lounsbury says of Chaucer's influence: "No really national language
could exist until a literature had been created which would be admired
and studied by all who could read, and taken as a model by all who
could write. It was only a man of genius that could lift up one of
these dialects into a preeminence over the rest, or could ever give to
the scattered forces existing in any one of them the unity and vigor
of life. This was the work that Chaucer did." For this reason he
deserves to be called our first modern English poet. At first sight,
his works look far harder to read than they really are, because the
spelling has changed so much since Chaucer's day.
SUMMARY
The period from the Norman Conquest to 1400 is remarkable (1) for
bringing into England French influence and closer contact with the
continent; (2) for the development of (_a_) a more centralized
government, (_b_) the feudal system and chivalry, (_c_) better civil
courts of justice and a more representative government, _Magna Charta_
being one of the steps in this direction; (3) for the influence of
religion, the coming of the friars, the erection of unsurpassed Gothic
cathedrals; (4) for the struggles of the peasants to escape their
bondage, for a striking decline in the relative importance of the
armored knight, and for Wycliffe's movement for a religious
reformation.
This period is also specially important because it gave to England a
new language of greater flexibility and power. The old inflections,
genders, formative prefixes, and capability of making self-explaining
compounds were for the most part lost. To supply the places of lost
words and to express those new ideas which came with the broader
experiences of an emancipated, progressive nation, many new words were
adopted from the French and the Latin. When the time for literature
came, Chaucer found ready for his pen the strongest, sincerest, and
most flexible language that ever expressed a poet's thought.
In tracing the development of the literature of this period, we have
noted (1) the metrical romances; (2) Geoffrey of Monmouth's (Latin)
_History of the Kings of Britain_, and Layamon's _Brut_, with their
stories of Lear, Cymbeline and King Arthur; (3) the _Ormulum_, a
metrical paraphrase of those parts of the _Gospels_ used in church
service; (4) the _Ancren Riwle_, remarkable for its natural eloquent
prose and its noble ethics, as well as for showing the development of
the language; (5) the lyrical poetry, beginning to be redolent of the
odor of the blossom and resonant with the song of the bird; (6) the
_Handlyng Synne_, in which we stand on the threshold of modern
English; (7) Mandeville's _Travels_, with its entertaining stories;
(8) Wycliffe's monumental translation of the _Bible_ and vigorous
religious prose pamphlets; (9) _Piers Plowman_, with its pictures of
homely life, its intense desire for higher ideals and for the
reformation of social and religious life; (10) Gower's _Confessio
Amantis_, a collection of tales about love; and (11) Chaucer's poetry,
which stands in the front rank for the number of vivid pictures of
contemporary life, for humor, love of nature, melody, and capacity for
story-telling.
REFERENCES FOR FURTHER STUDY
HISTORICAL
An account of the history of this period may be found in either
Gardiner[40], Green, Lingard, Walker, or Cheney. Volumes II. and III.
of the _Political History of England_, edited by Hunt (Longmans), give
the history in greater detail. For the social side, consult Traill, I.
and II. See also Rogers's _Six Centuries of Work and Wages_. Freeman's
_William the Conqueror_, Green's _Henry II_., and Tout's _Edward I_.
(_Twelve English Statesmen Series_) are short and interesting.
Kingsley's _Hereward the Wake_ deals with the times of William the
Conqueror and Scott's _Ivanhoe_ with those of Richard the
Lion-Hearted. Archer and Kingsford's _The Story of the Crusades_,
Cutt's _Parish Priests and their People in the Middle Ages in
England_, and Jusserand's _English Wayfaring Life in the fourteenth
Century_ are good works.
LITERARY
_Cambridge History of English Literature_, Vols. I. and II.
Bradley's _Making of English_.
Schofield's _English Literature from the Conquest to Chaucer_.
Ker's _Epic and Romance_.
Saintsbury's _The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory_.
Lawrence's _Medieval Story_ (excellent).
Weston's _The Romance Cycle of Charlemagne and his Peers_.
Weston's _King Arthur and his Knights_.
Maynadier's _The Arthur of the English Poets_.
Nutt's _The Legends of the Holy Grail_.
Jusserand's _Piers Plowman_.
Warren's _Langland's Vision of Piers the Plowman, Done into Modern
Prose_.
Savage's _Old English Libraries_.
Schofield's _Chivalry in English Literature_.
Snell's _The Age of Chaucer_.
Root's _The Poetry of Chaucer_.
Tuckwell's _Chaucer_ (96 pp.).
Pollard's _Chaucer_ (142 pp.).
Legouis's _Chaucer_.
Coulton's _Chaucer and his England_.
Lowell's _My Study Windows_ contains one of the best essays ever
written on Chaucer.
Mackail's _The Springs of Helicon_ (Chaucer).
SUGGESTED READINGS WITH QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
Romances.--The student will be interested in reading from Lawrence's
_Medieval Story_, Chapters III., _The Song of Roland_; IV., _The
Arthurian Romances_; V., _The Legend of the Holy Grail_; VI., _The
History of Reynard the Fox_. Butler's _The Song of Roland_ (_Riverside
Literature Series_) is an English prose translation of a popular story
from the Charlemagne cycle. _Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight_ has
been retold in modern English prose by J.L. Weston (London: David
Nutt). A long metrical selection from this romance is given in
Bronson.[41] I., 83-100, in _Oxford Treasury_, I., 60-81, and a prose
selection in _Century_, 1000-1022.
Stories from the Arthurian cycle may he found in Newell's _King Arthur
and the Table Round_. See also Maynadier's _The Arthur of the English
Poets_, and Tennyson's _The Idylls of the King_.
Geoffrey of Monmouth's _History of the Kings of Britain_ is translated
in Giles's _Six Old English Chronicles_ (Bohn Library).
Selections from Layamon's _Brut_ may be found in Bronson, I.; P. & S.;
and Manly, I.
What were the chief subjects of the cycles of Romance? Were they
mostly of English or French origin? What new elements appear, not
found in Beowulf? Which of these cycles has the most interest for
English readers? How does this cycle still influence twentieth-century
ideals? In what respect is the romance of _Gawayne_ like a sermon?
What Shakespearean characters does Geoffrey of Monmouth introduce? How
is Layamon's _Brut_ related to Geoffrey's chronicle? Point out a
likeness between the _Brut_ and the work of a Victorian poet.
Ormulum, Lyrics, and Robert Manning of Brunne.--Selections may be
found in P. & S.; Bronson, I.; Oxford (lyrics, pp. 1-10); Manly, I.;
Morris's _Specimens of Early English_. Among the lyrics, read
specially, "Sumer is i-cumen in," "Alysoun," "Lenten ys come with love
to toune," and "Blow, Northern Wind."
What was the purpose of the _Ormulum_? What is its subject matter?
Does it show much French influence?
What new appreciation of nature do the thirteenth-century lyrics show?
Point out at least twelve definite concrete references to nature in
"Lenten ys come with love to toune." How many such references are
there in the _Cuckoo Song_?
What difference do you note between the form of Robert Manning of
Brunne's _Handling Synne_ and Anglo-Saxon poetry? Can you find an
increasing number of words of French derivation in his work?
Prose.--Manly's _English Prose_, Morris's _Specimens of Early
English_, Parts I. and II., Chambers, I., Craik, I., contain specimens
of the best prose, including Mandeville and Wycliffe. Mandeville's
_Travels_ may be found in modern English in Cassell's _National
Library_ (15c). Bosworth and Waring's edition of the _Gospels_
contains the Anglo-Saxon text, together with the translations of
Wycliffe and Tyndale. No. 107 of Maynard's _English Classics_ contains
selections from both Wycliffe's _Bible_ and Mandeville's _Travels_.
What is the subject matter of the _Ancren Riwle_? What is the keynote
of the work? Mention some words of French origin found in it. What is
the character of Mandeville's _Travels_? Why was it so popular?
In what does Wycliffe's literary importance consist? Compare some
verses of his translation of the _Bible_ with the 1611 version.
Piers Plowman and Gower.--Selections are given in P. & S.; Bronson,
I.; Ward, I.; Chambers, I.; and Manly, I. Skeat has edited a small
edition of _Piers the Plowman_ ("B" text) and also a larger edition,
entitled _The Vision of William concerning Piers the Plowman, in Three
Parallel Texts_. G.C. Macaulay has a good volume of selections from
Gower's _Confessio Amantis_.
What is the difference between the form of the verse in _Piers
Plowman_ and _Handling Synne_? Who is Piers? Who are some of the other
characters in the poem? What type of life is specially described? In
what sort of work are the laborers engaged? Why may the author of
_Piers Plowman_ be called a reformer?
Why was Gower undecided in what language to write? What is the subject
matter of the _Confessio Amantis_?
Chaucer.--Read the _Prologue_ and if possible also the _Knightes
Tale_ (Liddell's, or Morris-Skeat's, or Van Dyke's, or Mather's
edition). Good selections may be found in Bronson, I.; Ward, I.; P.
and S., and _Oxford Treasury_, I. Skeat's Complete Works, 6 vols., is
the best edition. Skeat's _Oxford Chaucer_ in one volume has the same
text. The _Globe Edition of Chaucer_, edited by Pollard, is also a
satisfactory single volume edition. Root's _The Poetry of Chaucer_,
292 pp., is a good reference work in connection with the actual study
of the poetry.
Give a clear-cut description of the six of Chaucer's pilgrims that
impress you most strongly. How has the _Prologue_ added to our
knowledge of life in the fourteenth century? Give examples of
Chaucer's vivid pictures. What specimens of his humor does the
_Prologue_ contain? Do any of Chaucer's lines in the _Prologue_ show
that the Reformation spirit was in the air, or did Wycliffe and
Langland alone among contemporary authors afford evidence of this
spirit? Compare Chaucer's verse with Langland's in point of subject
matter. What qualities in Chaucer save him from the charge of cynicism
when he alludes to human faults? Does the _Prologue_ attempt to
portray any of the nobler sides of human nature? Is the _Prologue_
mainly or entirely concerned with the personality of the pilgrims? Has
Chaucer any philosophy of life? Are there any references to the
delights of nature? Note any passages that show special powers of
melody and mastery over verse. Does the poem reveal anything of
Chaucer's personality? In your future reading see if you can find
another English story-teller in verse who can be classed with Chaucer.
FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER II:
[Footnote 1: _The Tempest_, V., I.]
[Footnote 2: For the location of all the English cathedral towns, see
the _Literary Map_, p. XII.]
[Footnote 3: and.]
[Footnote 4: April.]
[Footnote 5: little.]
[Footnote 6: in her language.]
[Footnote 7: Spring.]
[Footnote 8: in its turn.]
[Footnote 9: birds.]
[Footnote 10: song.]
[Footnote 11: sigh.]
[Footnote 12: sorely.]
[Footnote 13: called.]
[Footnote 14: against.]
[Footnote 15: will.]
[Footnote 16: them.]
[Footnote 17: arrayed.]
[Footnote 18: garments.]
[Footnote 19: shepherd.]
[Footnote 20: hermit.]
[Footnote 21: hills.]
[Footnote 22: wonder.]
[Footnote 23: tired out with wandering.]
[Footnote 24: brook.]
[Footnote 25: reclined.]
[Footnote 26: sounded.]
[Footnote 27: to make dykes or ditches.]
[Footnote 28: to dig.]
[Footnote 29: to thrash (ding).]
[Footnote 30: sheaves.]
[Footnote 31: dazed.]
[Footnote 32: hermit.]
[Footnote 33: _The Prologue_, Lines 331-335.]
[Footnote 34: The cuts of the Pilgrims are from the Fourteenth Century
Ellesmere MS. of _Canterbury Tales_.]
[Footnotes 35-36: _Knightes Tale_.]
[Footnote 37: _Truth: Balade de bon Conseyl_.]
[Footnote 38: black.]
[Footnote 39: _The Parlement of Foules_.]
[Footnote 40: For full titles, see p. 50.]
[Footnote 41: For full titles, see p. 6.]
CHAPTER III: FROM CHAUCER'S DEATH, 1400, TO THE ACCESSION OF
ELIZABETH, 1558
The Course of English History.--The century and a half that followed
the death of Chaucer appealed especially to Shakespeare. He wrote or
helped to edit five plays that deal with this period,--_Henry IV.,
Henry V., Henry VI., Richard III._, and _Henry VIII_. While these
plays do not give an absolutely accurate presentation of the history
of the time, they show rare sympathy in catching the spirit of the
age, and they leave many unusually vivid impressions.
Henry IV. (1399-1413), a descendant of John of Gaunt, Duke of
Lancaster, one of the younger sons of Edward III., and therefore not
in the direct line of succession, was the first English king who owed
his crown entirely to Parliament. Henry's reign was disturbed by the
revolt of nobles and by contests with the Welsh. Shakespeare gives a
pathetic picture of the king calling in vain for sleep, "nature's
tired nurse," and exclaiming:--
"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown."
Henry V. (1413-1422) is one of Shakespeare's romantic characters. The
young king renewed the French war, which had broken out in 1337 and
which later became known as the Hundred Years' War. By his victory
over the French at Agincourt (1415), he made himself a national hero.
Shakespeare has him say:--
"I thought upon one pair of English legs
Did march three Frenchmen."
In the reign of Henry VI. (1422-1461), Joan of Arc appeared and saved
France.
The setting aside of the direct succession in the case of Henry IV.
was a pretext for the Wars of the Roses (1455-1485) to settle the
royal claims of different descendants of Edward III. While this war
did not greatly disturb the common people, it occupied the attention
of those who might have been patrons of literature. Nearly all the
nobles were killed during this prolonged contest; hence when Henry
VII. (1485-1509), the first of the Tudor line of monarchs, came to the
throne, there were no powerful nobles with their retainers to hold the
king in check. He gave a strong centralized government to England.
The period following Chaucer's death opens with religious persecution.
In 1401 the first Englishman was burned at the stake for his religious
faith. From this time the expenses of burning heretics are sometimes
found in the regular accounts of cities and boroughs. Henry VIII.
(1509-1547) broke with the Pope, dissolved the monasteries, proclaimed
himself head of the church, and allowed the laity to read the _Bible_,
but insisted on retaining many of the old beliefs. In Germany, Martin
Luther (1483-1546) was in the same age issuing his famous protests
against religious abuses. Edward VI. (1547-1553) espoused the
Protestant cause. An order was given to introduce into all the
churches an English prayer book, which was not very different from
that in use to-day in the Episcopal churches. Mary (1553-1558) sought
the aid of fagots and the stake to bring the nation back to the old
beliefs.
[Illustration: HENRY VIII. GIVING BIBLES TO CLERGY AND LAITY. _From
frontispiece to Coverdale Bible_.]
While this period did not produce a single great poet or a statesman
of the first rank, it witnessed the destruction of the majority of the
nobility in the Wars of the Roses, the increase of the king's power,
the decline of feudalism, the final overthrow of the knight by the
yeoman with his long bow at Agincourt(1415), the freedom of the serf,
and the growth of manufactures, especially of wool. English trading
vessels began to displace even the ships of Venice.
In spite of the religious persecution with which the period began and
ended, there was a remarkable change in religious belief, the
dissolution of the monasteries and the subordination of church to
state being striking evidences of this change. An event that had
far-reaching consequences on literature and life was the act of Henry
VIII. in ordering a translation of the _Bible_ to be placed in every
parish church in England. The death of Mary may in a measure be said
to indicate the beginning of modern times.
Contrast between the Spirit of the Renaissance and of the Middle
Ages.--One of the most important intellectual movements of the world
is known as the Renaissance or Revival of Learning. This movement
began in Italy about the middle of the fourteenth century and spread
slowly westward. While Chaucer's travels in Italy; and his early
contact with this new influence are reflected in his work, yet the
Renaissance did not reach its zenith in England until the time of
Shakespeare. This new epoch followed a long period, known as the
Middle ages, when learning was mostly confined to the church, when
thousands of the best minds retired to the cloisters, when many
questions, like those of the revolution of the sun around the earth or
the cause of disease, were determined, not by observation and
scientific proof, but by the assertion of those in spiritual
authority. Then, scientific investigators, like Roger Bacon, were
thought to be in league with the devil and were thrown into prison. In
1258 Dante's tutor visited Roger Bacon, and, after seeing his
experiments with the mariner's compass, wrote to an Italian friend:--
"This discovery so useful to all who travel by sea, must remain
concealed until other times, because no mariner dare use it, lest he
fall under imputation of being a magician, nor would sailors put to
sea with one who carried an instrument so evidently constructed by
the devil."
Symonds says: "During the Middle Ages, man had lived enveloped in a
cowl. He had not seen the beauty of the world, or had seen it only to
cross himself and turn aside, to tell his beads and pray." Before the
Renaissance, the tendency was to regard with contempt mere questions
of earthly progress and enjoyment, because they were considered
unimportant in comparison with the eternal future of the soul. It was
not believed that beauty, art, and literature might play a part in
saving souls.
The Schoolmen of the Middle Ages often discussed such subjects as
these: whether the finite can comprehend the infinite at any point,
since the infinite can have no finite points; whether God can make a
wheel revolve and be stationary at the same time; whether all children
in a state of innocence are masculine. Such debates made remarkable
theologians and metaphysicians, developed precision in defining terms,
accuracy in applying the rules of deductive logic, and fluency in
expression. As a result, later scientists were able to reason more
accurately and express themselves with greater facility.
The chief fault of the studies of the Middle Ages consisted in
neglecting the external world of concrete fact. The discussions of the
Schoolmen would never have introduced printing or invented the
mariner's compass or developed any of the sciences that have
revolutionized life.
The coming of the Renaissance opened avenues of learning outside of
the church, interested men in manifold questions relating to this
world, caused a demand for scientific investigation and proof, and
made increasing numbers seek for joy in this life as well as in that
to come.
Causes and Effects of the Renaissance.--Some of the causes of this
new movement were the weariness of human beings with their lack of
progress, their dissatisfaction with the low estimate of the value of
this life, and their yearning for fuller expansion of the soul, for
more knowledge and joy on this side of the grave.
Another cause was the influence of Greek literature newly discovered
in the fifteenth century by the western world. In 1423 an Italian
scholar brought 238 Greek manuscripts to Italy. In 1453 the Turks
captured Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire and
the headquarters of Grecian learning. Because of the remoteness of
this capital, English literature had not been greatly influenced by
Greece. When Constantinople fell, many of her scholars went to Italy,
taking with them precious Grecian manuscripts. As Englishmen often
visited Italy, they soon began to study Grecian masterpieces, and to
fall under the spell of Homer and the Athenian dramatists.
The renewed study of Greek and Latin classics stimulated a longing for
the beautiful in art and literature. Fourteenth-century Italian
writers, like Petrarch and Boccaccio, found increasing interest in
their work. Sixteenth-century artists, such as Leonardo da Vinci,
Michael Angelo, and Raphael show their magnificent response to a world
that had already been born again.
Many of the other so-called causes of the Renaissance should strictly
be considered its effects. The application of the modern theory of the
solar system, the desire for exploration, the use of the mariner's
compass, the invention and spread of printing, were more effects of
the new movement than its causes.
Sir Thomas More (1478-1535), inspired by the spirit of the
Renaissance, wrote in Latin a remarkable book called _Utopia_ (1516),
which presents many new social ideals. In the land of Utopia, society
does not make criminals and then punish them for crime. Every one
worships as he pleases. Only a few hours of work a day are necessary,
and all find genuine pleasure in that. In Utopia life is given to be a
joy. No advantage is taken of the weak or the unfortunate.
Twentieth-century dreams of social justice are not more vivid and
absorbing than Sir Thomas More's. It is pleasant to think that the
Roman Catholic church in 1886 added to her list of saints this lovable
man, "martyr to faith and freedom."
When the full influences of the Renaissance reached England,
Shakespeare answered their call, and his own creations surpass the
children of Utopia.
The Invention of Printing.--In 1344, about the time of Chaucer's
birth, a _Bible_ in manuscript cost as much as three oxen. A century
later an amount equal to the wages of a workman for 266 days was paid
for a manuscript _Bible_. At this time a book on astronomy cost as
much as 800 pounds of butter. One page of a manuscript book cost the
equivalent of from a dollar to a dollar and a half to-day. When a
member of the Medici family in Florence desired a library, he sent for
a book contractor, who secured forty-five copyists. By rigorous work
for nearly two years they produced two hundred volumes.
[Illustration: BOOK ILLUSTRATION, EARLY FIFTEENTH CENTURY. _British
Museum_.]
One of the most powerful agencies of the Renaissance was the invention
of printing, which multiplied books indefinitely and made them
comparatively cheap. People were alive with newly awakened curiosity,
and they read books to learn more of the expanding world.
About 1477 William Caxton, who had set up his press at the Almonry,
near Westminster Abbey, printed the first book in England, _The Dictes
and Notable Wish Sayings of the Philosophers_. Among fully a hundred
different volumes that he printed were Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_,
Malory's _Morte d'Arthur_, and an English translation of Vergil's
_AEneid_.
[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF CAXTON'S ADVERTISEMENT OF HIS BOOKS._
Bodleian Library, Oxford._]
Malory's Morte d'Arthur.--The greatest prose work of the fifteenth
century was completed in 1470 by a man who styles himself Sir Thomas
Malory, Knight. We know nothing of the author's life; but he has left
as a monument a great prose epic of the deeds of King Arthur and his
Knights of the Round Table. From the various French legends concerning
King Arthur, Malory selected his materials and fashioned than into the
completest Arthuriad that we possess. While his work cannot be called
original, he displayed rare artistic power in arranging, abridging,
and selecting the various parts from different French works.
Malory's prose is remarkably simple and direct. Even in the impressive
scene where Sir Bedivere throws the dying King Arthur's sword into the
sea, the language tells the story simply and shows no straining after
effect:--
"And then he threw the sword as far into the water as he might,
and there came an arm and an hand above the water, and met it, and
caught it, and so shook it thrice and brandished, and then vanished
away the hand with the sword in the water... 'Now put me into
the barge,' said the king; and so he did softly. And there received
him three queens with great mourning, and so they set him down, and
in one of their laps King Arthur laid his head, and then that queen
said, 'Ah, dear brother, why have ye tarried so long from me?'"
After the dusky barge has borne Arthur away from mortal sight, Malory
writes: "Here in this world he changed his life." A century before,
Chaucer had with equal simplicity voiced the Saxon faith:--
"His spirit chaunged hous."[1]
Sometimes this prose narrative, in its condensation and expression of
feeling, shows something of the poetic spirit. When the damsel on the
white palfrey sees that her knightly lover has been killed, she
cries:--
"O Balin! two bodies
hast thou slain and one
heart, and two hearts in
one body, and two souls
thou hast lost.' And
therewith she took the
sword from her love that
lay dead, and as she took
it, she fell to the ground
in a swoon."
[Illustration: MALORY'S MORTE D'ARTHUR. _From De Worde's Ed.,
1529_.]
Malory's work, rather than Layamon's _Brut_, has been the storehouse
to which later poets have turned. Many nineteenth-century poets are
indebted to Malory. Tennyson's _Idylls of the King_, Matthew Arnold's
_Death of Tristram_, Swinburne's _Tristram of Lyonesse_, and William
Morris's _Defense of Guinevere_ were inspired by the _Morte d'Arthur_.
Few English prose works have had more influence on the poetry of the
Victorian age.
Scottish Poetry.--The best poetry of the fifteenth century was
written in the Northern dialect, which was spoken north of the river
Humber. This language was just as much English as the Midland tongue
in which Chaucer wrote. Not until the sixteenth century was this
dialect called Scotch.
James I. of Scotland (1406-1437) spent nineteen years of his youth
as a prisoner in England. During his captivity in Windsor Castle, he
fell in love with a maiden, seen at her orisons in the garden, and
wrote a poem, called the _King's Quair_, to tell the story of his
love. Although the _King's Quair_ is suggestive of _The Knightes
Tale_, and indeed owes much to Chaucer, it is a poetic record of
genuine and successful love. These four lines from the spring song
show real feeling for nature:--
"Worshippe, ye that lovers be, this May,
For of your bliss the kalends are begun,
And sing with us, 'Away, Winter, away,
Come, Summer, come, the sweet season and sun!'"
Much of this Scotch poetry is remarkable for showing in that early age
a genuine love of nature. Changes are not rung on some typical
landscape, copied from an Italian versifier. The Northern poet had his
eye fixed on the scenery and the sky of Scotland. About the middle of
the century, Robert Henryson, a teacher in Dunfermline, wrote.--
"The northin wind had purifyit the air
And sched the misty cloudis fra the sky."[2]
This may lack the magic of Shelley's rhythm, but the feeling for
nature is as genuine as in the later poet's lines:--
"For after the rain when, with never a stain
The pavilion of heaven is bare."[3]
William Dunbar, the greatest poet of this group, who lived in the
last half of the fifteenth century, was a loving student of the nature
that greeted him in his northland. No Italian poet, as he wandered
beside a brook, would have thought of a simile like this:--
"The stones clear as stars in frosty night."[4]
Dunbar takes us with him on a fresh spring morning, where--
"Enamelled was the field with all colours,
The pearly droppes shook in silver showers,"[5]
where we can hear the matin song of the birds hopping among the buds,
while--
"Up rose the lark, the heaven's minstrel fine."[6]
Both Dunbar and Gawain Douglas (1474?-1522), the son of a Scotch
nobleman, had keen eyes for all coloring in sky, leaf, and flower. In
one line Dunbar calls our attention to these varied patches of color
in a Scotch garden: "purple, azure, gold, and gules [red]." In the
verses of Douglas we see the purple streaks of the morning, the
bluish-gray, blood-red, fawn-yellow, golden, and freckled red and
white flowers, and--
"Some watery-hued, as the blue wavy sea."[7]
Outside the pages of Shakespeare, we shall for the next two hundred
years look in vain for so genuine a love of scenery and natural
phenomena as we find in fifteenth-century Scottish poetry. These poets
obtained many of their images of nature at first hand, an achievement
rare in any age.
[Illustration: EARLY TITLE PAGE OF ROBIN HOOD.]
"Songs for Man or Woman, of All Sizes."--When Shakespeare shows us
Autolycus offering such songs at a rustic festival,[8] the great poet
emphasizes the fondness for the ballad which had for a long time been
developing a taste for poetry. While it is difficult to assign exact
dates to the composition of many ballads, we know that they flourished
in the fifteenth century. They were then as much prized as the novel
is now, and like it they had a story to tell. The verse was often
halting, but it succeeded in conveying to the hearer tales of love, of
adventure, and of mystery. These ballads were sometimes tinged with
pathos; but there was an energy in the rude lines that made the heart
beat faster and often stirred listeners to find in a dance an outlet
for their emotions. Even now, with all the poetry of centuries from
which to choose, it is refreshing to turn to a Robin Hood ballad and
look upon the greensward, hear the rustle of the leaves in Nottingham
forest, and follow the adventures of the hero. We read the opening
lines:--
"There are twelve months in all the year,
As I hear many say,
But the merriest month in all the year
Is the merry month of May."
"Now Robin Hood is to Nottingham gone,
With a link a down, and a day,
And there he met a silly old woman
Was weeping on the way."
Of our own accord we finish the ballad to see whether Robin Hood
rescued her sons, who were condemned to death for shooting the fallow
deer. The ballad of the _Nut-Brown Maid_ has some touches that are
almost Shakespearean.
Some of the carols of the fifteenth century give a foretaste of the
Elizabethan song. One carol on the birth of the Christ-child contains
stanzas like these, which show artistic workmanship, imaginative
power, and, above all, rare lyrical beauty:--
"He cam also stylle
to his moderes bowr,
As dew in Aprille
that Fallyt on the flour."
"He cam also stylle
ther his moder lay,
As dew in Aprille
that fallyt on the spray"[9]
We saw that the English tongue during its period of exclusion from the
Norman court gained strength from coming in such close contact with
life. Although the higher types of poetry were for the most part
wanting during the fifteenth century, yet the ballads multiplied and
sang their songs to the ear of life. Critics may say that the rude
stanzas seldom soar far from the ground, but we are again reminded of
the invincible strength of Antaeus so long as he kept close to his
mother earth. English poetry is so great because it has not withdrawn
from life, because it was nurtured in such a cradle. When Shakespeare
wrote his plays, he found an audience to understand and to appreciate
them. Not only those who occupied the boxes, but also those who stood
in the pit, listened intelligently to his dramatic stories. The ballad
had played its part in teaching the humblest home to love poetry.
These rude fireside songs were no mean factors in preparing the nation
to welcome Shakespeare.
William Tyndale, 1490?-1536.--The Reformation was another mighty
influence, working side by side with all the other forces to effect a
lasting change in English history and literature. In the early part of
the sixteenth century, Martin Luther was electrifying Germany with his
demands for church reformation. In order to decide which religious
party was in the right, there arose a desire for more knowledge of the
_Scriptures_. The language had changed much since Wycliffe's
translation of the _Bible_, and, besides, this was accessible only in
manuscript. William Tyndale, a clergyman and an excellent linguist,
who had been educated at both Oxford and Cambridge, conceived the idea
of giving the English people the Bible in their own tongue. As he
found that he could not translate and print the Bible with safety in
England, he went to the continent, where with the help of friends he
made the translation and had it printed. He was forced to move
frequently from place to place, and was finally betrayed in his hiding
place near Brussels. After eighteen months' imprisonment without pen
or books, he was strangled and his body was burned at the stake.
Of his translation, Brooke says: "It was this _Bible_ which, revised
by Coverdale, and edited and reedited as _Cromwell's Bible_, 1539, and
again as _Cranmer's Bible_, 1540, was set up in every parish church in
England. It got north into Scotland and made the Lowland English more
like the London English. It passed over into the Protestant
settlements in Ireland. After its revival in 1611 it went with the
Puritan Fathers to New England and fixed the standard of English in
America. Many millions of people now speak the English of Tyndale's
_Bible_, and there is no other book which has had, through the
_Authorized Version_, so great an influence on the style of English
literature and on the standard of English prose."
[Illustration: WILLIAM TYNDALE. _From an old print_.]
The following verses from Tyndale's version show its simplicity
directness, and similarity to the present version:--
"Jesus sayde unto her, Thy brother shall ryse agayne.
"Martha sayde unto hym, I knowe wele, he shall ryse agayne in the
resurreccion att the last day.
"Jesus sayde unto her, I am the resurreccion and lyfe; whosoever
beleveth on me, ye, though he were deed, yet shall he lyve."
Italian Influence: Wyatt and Surrey.--During the reign of Henry
VIII. (1509-1547), the influence of Italian poetry made itself
distinctly felt. The roots of Elizabethan poetry were watered by many
fountains, one of the chief of which flowed from Italian soil. To Sir
Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) and to the Earl of Surrey (1517-1547) belongs
the credit of introducing from Italian sources new influences, which
helped to remodel English poetry and give it a distinctly modern cast.
These poets were the first to introduce the sonnet, which Shakespeare,
Milton, and Wordsworth employed with such power in after times. Blank
verse was first used in England by the Earl of Surrey, who translated
a portion of Vergil's _AEneid_ into that measure. When Shakespeare
took up his pen, he found that vehicle of poetic expression ready for
his use.
[Illustration: SIR THOMAS WYATT._After Holbein_.]
Wyatt and Surrey adopted Italian subject matter as well as form. They
introduced the poetry of the amorists, that is, verse which tells of
the woes and joys of a lover. We find Shakespeare in his _Sonnets_
turning to this subject, which he made as broad and deep as life. In
1557, the year before Elizabeth's accession, the poems of Wyatt and
Surrey appeared in Tottel's _Miscellany_, one of the earliest printed
collections of modern English poetry.
SUMMARY
The first part of the century and a half following the death of
Chaucer saw war with France and the Wars of the Roses, in which most
of the nobles were killed. The reign of Henry VII. and his successors
in the Tudor line shows the increased influence of the crown, freed
from the restraint of the powerful lords. The period witnessed the
passing of serfdom and the extension of trade and manufactures.
The changes in religious views were far-reaching. Henry VIII.
superseded the Pope as head of the English church, dissolved the
monasteries, and placed an English translation of the _Bible_ in the
churches. Henry's son and successor Edward VI., established the
Protestant form of worship, but his half-sister Mary used persecution
in an endeavor to bring back the old faith.
The influences of the Renaissance, moving westward from Italy, were
tending toward their culmination in the next period. The study of
Greek literature, the discovery of the new world, the decline of
feudalism, the overthrow of the armed knight, the extension of the use
of gunpowder, the invention of printing, the increased love of
learning, the demand for scientific investigation, the decline of
monastic influence, shown in the new interest in this finite world and
life,--all figured as causes or effects of the new influence.
The most important prose works are Sir Thomas Malory's _Morte
d'Arthur_, a masterly retelling of the Arthurian legends; Sir Thomas
More's _Utopia_, a magnificent Renaissance dream of a new social
world; and Tyndale's translation of the _Bible_. The best poetry was
written in Scotland, and this verse anticipates in some measure that
love of nature which is a dominant characteristic of the last part of
the eighteenth century. The age is noted for its ballads, which aided
in developing among high and low a liking for poetry. At the close of
the period, we find Italian influences at work, as may be seen in the
verse of Wyatt and Surrey.
REFERENCES FOR FURTHER STUDY
HISTORICAL
An account of the history of this period may be found in either
Gardiner,[10] Green, Lingard, Walker, or Cheney. Vols. IV. and V. of
_The Political History of England_, edited by Hunt (Longmans), gives
the history in greater detail. For the social side, consult Traill's
_Social England_, Vols. II. and III., also Cheney's _Industrial and
Social History of England_, Field's _Introduction to the Study of the
Renaissance_, Einstein's _The Italian Renaissance in England_,
Symonds's _A Short History of the Renaissance_.
LITERARY
_The Cambridge History of English Literature_, Vol. II.
Snell's _The Age of Transition_, 1400-1580.
Morley's _English Literature_, Vols. VI. and VII.
Minto's _Characteristics of English Poets_, pp. 69-130.
Saintsbury's _Short History of English Literature_, pp. 157-218.
_Dictionary of National Biography_, articles on _Malory, Caxton,
Henryson, Gawain Douglas, Dunbar, Tyndale, Wyatt_, and _Surrey_.
Veitch's _The Feeling for Nature in Scottish Poetry_.
Percy's _Reliques of Ancient English Poetry_.
Gummere's _Old English Ballads_.
Child's _The English and Scotch Popular Ballads_.
Collins's _Greek Influence on English Poetry_.
Tucker's _The Foreign Debt of English Literature_.
SUGGESTED READINGS WITH QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
Malory.--Craik,[11] _Century_, 19-33; Swiggett's _Selections from
Malory_; Wragg's _Selections from Malory_,--all contain good
selections. The Globe Edition is an inexpensive single volume
containing the complete text. The best edition is a reproduction of
the original in three volumes with introductions by Oscar Sommer and
Andrew Lang (London: David Nutt). Howard Pyle has retold Malory's best
stories in simple form (Scribner).
Compare the death (or passing) of Arthur in Malory with Tennyson's
_The Passing of Arthur._ What special dualities do you notice in the
manner of Malory's telling a story? Is his work original? Why has it
remained so popular? What age specially shows its influence?
More.--The English translation of the _Utopia_ may be found entire
in _Everyman's Library_ (35c). There are good selections in Craik, I.,
162-167.
What is the etymological meaning of _Utopia_? What is its modern
significance? Did More really give a new word to literature and
speech? The _Utopia_ should be read for an indication of the influence
of the Renaissance and for comparison with twentieth-century ideas of
social improvement.
Tyndale.--Bosworth and Waring's _Gospels_, containing the
Anglo-Saxon, Wycliffe, and Tyndale versions. Specimens of Tyndale's
prose are given in Chambers, I., 130; Craik, I., 185-187.
Why is Tyndale's translation of the _Bible_ important to the student
of literature? What are some special dualities of this translation?
Early Scottish Poetry.--Selections from fifteenth-century Scottish
poetry may be found in Bronson, I, 170-197; Ward, I, _passim_; P. &
S., 246-277; _Oxford_, 16-33.
From the _King's Quair_ and the poems of Henryson, Dunbar, and Gawain
Douglas, select passages that show first-hand intimacy with nature.
Compare these with lines from any poet whose knowledge of nature seems
to you to be acquired from books.
Ballads.--Ward. I., _passim_, contains among others three excellent
ballads,--_Sir Patrick Spens, The Twa Corbies, Robin Hood Rescuing the
Widow's Three Sons_. Bronson, I., 203-254; P. & S., 282-301; _Oxford_,
33-51; and Maynard's _English Classics_, No. 96, _Early English
Ballads_ also have good selections. The best collection is Child's
_The English and Scotch Popular Ballads_, 5 vols.
What are the chief characteristics of the old ballads? Why do they
interest us today? Which of those indicated for reading has proved
most interesting? What influence impossible for other forms of
literature, was exerted by the ballad? What did Autolycus mean
(_Winter's Tale_, IV., 4) when he offered "songs for man or woman, of
all sizes"? Have any ballads been written in recent times?
Wyatt and Surrey.--Read two characteristic love sonnets by Wyatt and
Surrey, P. & S., 313-319; Ward, I., 251, 257; Bronson, II., 1-4. A
specimen of the first English blank verse employed by Surrey in
translating Vergil's, _AEneid_ is given in Bronson, II., 4, 5; in P. &
S., 322, 323; and Chambers, I., 162.
Why are Wyatt and Surrey called amourists? What contributions did they
make to the form of English verse? What foreign influences did they
help to usher in?
FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER III:
[Footnote 1: _Knightes Tale_.]
[Footnote 2: _Testament of Cresseid_.]
[Footnote 3: _The Cloud_.]
[Footnotes 4-6: _The Golden Targe_.]
[Footnote 7: _Prologue to AEneid_, Book XII.]
[Footnote 8: _The Winter's Tale_, IV., 4.]
[Footnote 9: Wright's _Songs and Carols of the Fifteenth Century_, p.
30.]
[Footnote 10: For full titles, see p. 50.]
[Footnote 11: For full titles, see p. 6.]
CHAPTER IV: THE AGE OF ELIZABETH, 1558-1603
The Reign of Elizabeth.--Queen Elizabeth, who ranks among the
greatest of the world's rulers, was the daughter of Henry VIII. and
his second wife Anne Boleyn. Elizabeth reigned as queen of England
from 1558 until her death in 1603. The remarkable allowances which she
made for difference of opinion showed that she felt the spirit of the
Renaissance. She loved England, and her most important acts were
guided, not by selfish personal motives, but by a strong desire to
make England a great nation.
She had a law passed restoring the supremacy of the monarch, "as well
in all spiritual or ecclesiastical things as temporal." The prayer
book of Edward VI. was again introduced and the mass was forbidden.
She was broad enough not to inquire too closely into the private
religious opinions of her subjects, so long as they went to the
established church. For each absence they were fined a shilling. Next
to churchgoing and her country, she loved and encouraged plays.
[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF ELIZABETH'S SIGNATURE TO A LICENSE
FOR THE EARL OF LEICESTER'S COMPANY OF PLAYERS, 1574.]
For more than twenty years she was worried by fear that either France
or Spain would put her Catholic cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, on the
English throne. With masterly diplomacy, Elizabeth for a long time
managed to retain the active friendship of at least one of these great
powers, in order to restrain the other from interfering. She had kept
Mary a prisoner for nineteen years, fearing to liberate her. At last
an active conspiracy was discovered to assassinate Elizabeth and put
Mary on the throne. Elizabeth accordingly had her cousin beheaded in
1587. Spain thereupon prepared her fleet, the Invincible Armada, to
attack England. When this became known, the outburst of patriotic
feeling was so intense among all classes in England that the queen did
not hesitate to put Lord Howard, a Catholic, in command of the English
fleet. The Armada was utterly defeated, and England was free to enter
on her glorious period of influencing the thought and action of the
world.
In brief, Elizabeth's reign was remarkable for the rise of the middle
classes, for the growth of manufactures, for the appearance of English
ships in almost all parts of the world, for the extension of commerce,
for greater freedom of thought and action, for what the world now
calls Elizabethan literature, and for the ascendancy of a great mental
and moral movement to which we must next call attention.
Culmination of the Renaissance and the Reformation.--We have seen
that the Renaissance began in Italy in the fourteenth century and
influenced the work of Chaucer. In the same century, Wycliffe's
influence helped the cause of the Reformation. Elizabethan England
alone had the good fortune to experience the culmination of these two
movements at one and the same time. At no other period and in no other
country have two forces, like the Renaissance and the Reformation,
combined at the height of their ascendancy to stimulate the human
mind. One result of these two mighty influences was the work of
William Shakespeare, which speaks to the ear of all time.
The Renaissance, having opened the gates of knowledge, inspired the
Elizabethans with the hope of learning every secret of nature and of
surmounting all difficulties. The Reformation gave man new freedom,
imposed on him the gravest individual responsibilities, made him
realize the importance of every act of his own will, and emphasized
afresh the idea of the stewardship of this present life, for which he
would be held accountable. In Elizabethan days, these two forces
cooeperated; in the following Puritan age they were at war.
Some Characteristics of Elizabethan Life.--It became an ambition to
have as many different experiences as possible, to search for that
variety craved by youth and by a youthful age. Sir Walter Raleigh was
a courtier, a writer, a warden of the tin mines, a vice admiral, a
captain of the guard, a colonizer, a country gentleman, and a pirate.
Sir Philip Sidney, who died at the age of thirty-two, was an envoy to
a foreign court, a writer of romances, an officer in the army, a poet
and a courtier. Shakespeare left the little town where he was born, to
plunge into the more complex life of London. The poet, Edmund Spenser,
went to turbulent Ireland, where he had enough experiences to suggest
the conflicts in the _Faerie Queene_.
The greater freedom and initiative of the individual and the
remarkable extension of trade with all parts of the world naturally
led to the rise of the middle class. The nobility were no longer the
sole leaders in England's rapid progress. Many of Elizabeth's
councilors were said to have sprung from the masses, but no reign
could boast of wiser ministers. It was then customary for the various
classes to mingle much more freely than they do now. There was absence
of that overspecialization which today keeps people in such sharply
separated groups. This mingling was further aided by the tendency to
try many different pursuits and by the spirit of patriotism in the
air. All classes were interested in repelling the Spanish Armada and
in maintaining England's freedom. It was fortunate for Shakespeare
that the Elizabethan age gave him unusual opportunity to meet and to
become the spokesman of all classes of men. The audience that stood in
the pit or sat in the boxes to witness the performance of his plays,
comprised not only lords and wealthy merchants, but also weavers,
sailors, and country folk.
Initiative and Love of Action.--The Elizabethans were distinguished
for their initiative. This term implies the possession of two
qualities: (1) ingenuity or fertility in ideas, and (2) ability to
pass at once from an idea to its suggested action. Never did action
habitually follow more quickly on the heels of thought. The age loved
to translate everything into action, because the spirit of the
Renaissance demanded the exercise of youthful activity to its fullest
capacity in order that the power which the new knowledge promised
could be acquired and enjoyed before death. As the Elizabethans felt
that real life meant activity in exploring a new and interesting
world, both physical and mental, they demanded that their literature
should present this life of action. Hence, all their greatest poets,
with the exception of Spenser, were dramatists. Even Spenser's _Faerie
Queene_, with its abstractions, is a poem of action, for the virtues
fight with the vices.
ELIZABETHAN PROSE LITERATURE
Variety in the Prose.--The imaginative spirit of the Elizabethans
craved poetry, and all the greatest authors of this age, with the
exception of Francis Bacon, were poets. If, however, an Elizabethan
had been so peculiarly constituted as to wish to stock his library
with contemporary prose only, he could have secured good works in many
different fields. He could, for instance, have obtained (1) an
excellent book on education, the _Scholemaster_ of Roger Ascham
(1515-1568); (2) interesting volumes of travel, such as the
_Navigations, Voyages, and Discoveries of the English Nation_, by
Richard Hakluyt (1552-1616); and _The Discovery of Guiana_, by Sir
Walter Raleigh (1552-1618); (3) history, in the important _Chronicles
of England, Ireland, and Scotland_ (1578), by Raphael Holinshed; the
_Chronicle (Annals of England)_ and _Survey of London_, by John Stow
(1525-1604); and the _Brittania_, by William Camden (1551-1623); (4)
biography, in the excellent translation of _Plutarch's Lives_, by Sir
Thomas North (1535-1601?); (5) criticism, in _The Apologie for
Poetrie_, by Sir Philip Sidney; (6) essays on varied subjects by
Francis Bacon; (7) works dealing with religion and faith: (_a_) John
Foxe's (1516-1587) _Book of Martyrs_, which told in simple prose
thrilling stories of martyrs and served as a textbook of the
Reformation; (_b_) Hooker's _Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity_, a
treatise on theology; (8) fiction,[1] in John Lyly's _Euphues_ (1579),
Robert Greene's _Pandosto_ (1588), Sir Philip Sidney's _Arcardia_
(1590), Thomas Lodge's _Rosalynde_ (1590), Nashe's _The Unfortunate
Traveler_ (1594), and Thomas Deloney's _The Gentle Craft_ (1597).[2]
Shakespeare read Holinshed, North, Greene, Sidney, and Lodge and
turned some of their suggestions into poetry, which we very much
prefer to their prose. We are nearly certain that Shakespeare studied
Lyly's _Euphues_, because we can trace the influence of that work in
his style.
It was the misfortune of Elizabethan prose to be almost completely
overshadowed by the poetry. This prose was, however, far more varied
and important than that of any preceding age. The books mentioned on
page 123 constitute only a small part of the prose of this period.
Lyly, Sidney, Hooker.--In 1579, when Shakespeare was fifteen years
old, there appeared the first part of an influential prose work, John
Lyly's (1554?-1606) _Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit_, followed in 1580 by
a second part, _Euphues and his England_. Much of Lyly's subject
matter is borrowed, and his form reflects the artificial style then
popular over Europe.
Euphues, a young Athenian, goes to Naples, where he falls in love and
is jilted. This is all the action in the first part of the so-called
story. The rest is moralizing. In the second part, Euphues comes to
England with a friend, who falls in love twice, and finally marries;
but again there is more moralizing than story. Euphues returns to
Athens and retires to the mountains to muse in solitude.
In its use of a love story, _Euphues_ prefigures the modern novel. In
_Euphues_, however, the love story serves chiefly as a peg on which to
hang discussions on fickleness, youthful follies, friendship, and
divers other subjects.
Lyly aimed to produce artistic prose, which would render his meaning
clear and impressive. To achieve this object, he made such excessive
use of contrast, balanced words and phrases, and far-fetched
comparisons, that his style seems highly artificial and affected. This
quotation is typical:--
"Achilles spear could as well heal as hurt, the scorpion though he
sting, yet he stints the pain, through the herb _Nerius_ poison the
sheep, yet is a remedy to man against poison... There is great
difference between the standing puddle and the running stream, yet
both water: great odds between the adamant and the pomice, yet both
stones, a great distinction to be put between _vitrum_ and the
crystal, yet both glass: great contrariety between Lais and
Lucretia, yet both women."
Although this selection shows unnatural or strained antithesis, there
is also evident a commendable desire to vary the diction and to avoid
the repetition of the same word. To find four different terms for
nearly the same idea "difference," "odds," "distinction," and
"contrariety," involves considerable painstaking. While it is true
that the term "euphuism" has come to be applied to any stilted,
antithetical style that pays more attention to the manner of
expressing a thought than to its worth, we should remember that
English prose style has advanced because some writers, like Lyly,
emphasized the importance of artistic form. Shakespeare occasionally
employs euphuistic contrast in an effective way. The sententious
Polonius says in _Hamlet_:--
"Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice."
[Illustration: PHILIPPE SIDNEY. _After the miniature by Isaac
Oliver, Windsor Castle._]
Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586) wrote for his sister, the Countess of
Pembroke, a pastoral romance, entitled _Arcadia_ (published in 1590).
Unlike Lyly, Sidney did not aim at precision, emphatic contrast, and
balance. For its effectiveness, the _Arcadia_ relies on poetic
language and conceptions. The characters in the romance live and love
in a Utopian Arcadia, where "the morning did strow Roses and Violets
in the heavenly floor against the coming of the Sun," and where the
shepherd boy pipes "as though he should never be old."
Passages like the following show Sidney's poetic style and as much
exuberant fancy as if they had been written by a Celt:--
"Her breath is more sweet than a gentle southwest wind, which
comes creeping over flowery fields and shadowed waters in the
extreme heat of summer and yet is nothing compared to the
honey-flowing speech that breath doth carry."
The _Arcadia_ furnished Shakespeare's _King Lear_ with the auxiliary
plot of Gloucester and his two sons and inspired Thomas Lodge to write
his novel _Rosalynde_, which in turn suggested Shakespeare's _As You
Like It_.
To Sidney belongs the credit of having written the first meritorious
essay on criticism in the English language, _The Apologie for
Poetrie_. This defends the poetic art, and shows how necessary such
exercise of the imagination is to take us away from the cold, hard
facts of life.
Richard Hooker's (1554?-1600) _Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity_
shows a third aim in Elizabethan prose,--to express carefully reasoned
investigation and conclusion in English that is as thoroughly
elaborated and qualified as the thought. Lyly's striking contrasts and
Sidney's flowery prose do not appeal to Hooker, who uses Latin
inversions and parenthetical qualifications, and adds clause after
clause whenever he thinks it necessary to amplify the thought or to
guard against misunderstanding. Hooker's prose is as carefully wrought
as Lyly's and far more rhythmical. Both were experimenting with
English prose in different fields, serving to teach succeeding writers
what to imitate and to avoid.
Unlike _Euphues_ and the _Arcadia_, _Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical
Polity_ is more valuable for its thought than for its form of
expression. This work, which is still studied as an authority, is an
exposition of divine law in its relations to both the world and the
church. Hooker was personally a compound of sweetness and light, and
his philosophy is marked by sweet reasonableness. He was a clergyman
of the Church of England, but he shows a spirit of toleration toward
other churches. He had much of the modern idea of growth in both
government and religion, and he "accepts no system of government
either in church or state as unalterable."
FRANCIS BACON, 1561-1626
[Illustration: FRANCIS BACON. _From the painting by Van Somer,
National Portrait Gallery._]
Life.--A study of Bacon takes us beyond the limits of the reign of
Elizabeth, but not beyond the continued influences of that reign.
Francis Bacon, the son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great
Seal under Elizabeth, was born in London and grew up under the
influences of the court. In order to understand some of Bacon's
actions in later life, we must remember the influences that helped to
fashion him in his boyhood days. Those with whom he early associated
and who unconsciously molded him were not very scrupulous about the
way in which they secured the favor of the court or the means which
they took to outstrip an adversary. They also encouraged in him a
taste for expensive luxuries. These unfortunate influences were
intensified when, at the age of sixteen, he went with the English
ambassador to Paris, and remained there for two and a half years,
studying statecraft and diplomacy.
When Bacon was nineteen, his father died. The son, being without
money, returned from Paris and appealed to his uncle, Lord Burleigh,
one of Elizabeth's ministers, for some lucrative position at the
court. In a letter to his uncle, Bacon says: "I confess I have as vast
contemplative ends as I have moderate civil ends; for I have taken all
knowledge to be my province." This statement shows the Elizabethan
desire to master the entire world of the New Learning. Instead of
helping his nephew, however, Lord Burleigh seems to have done all in
his power to thwart him. Bacon thereupon studied law and was admitted
to the bar in 1582.
Bacon entered Parliament in 1584 and distinguished himself as a
speaker. Ben Jonson, the dramatist, says of him "There happened in my
time one noble speaker who was full of gravity in his speaking. No man
ever spoke more neatly, more presly, more weightily, or suffered less
emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. His hearers could not
cough or look aside from him without loss. The fear of every man that
heard him was lest he should make an end." This speaking was valuable
training for Bacon in writing the pithy sentences of his _Essays_. A
man who uses the long, involved sentences of Hooker can never become a
speaker to whom people will listen. The habit of directness and
simplicity, which Bacon formed in his speaking, remained with him
through Life.
Among the many charges against Bacon's personal code of ethics, two
stand out conspicuously. The Earl of Essex, who had given Bacon an
estate then worth L1800, was influential in having him appointed to
the staff of counselors to Queen Elizabeth. When Essex was accused of
treason, Bacon kept the queen's friendship by repudiating him and
taking an active part in the prosecution that led to the earl's
execution. After James I. had made Bacon Lord High Chancellor of
England, he was accused of receiving bribes as a judge. He replied
that he had accepted only the customary presents given to judges and
that these made no difference in his decisions. He was tried, found
guilty, fined L40,000, and sentenced to be imprisoned in the Tower
during the king's pleasure. After a few days, however, the king
released him, forgave the fine, and gave him an annual pension of
L1200.
The question whether he wrote Shakespeare's plays needs almost as much
discussion on the moral as on the intellectual side. James Spedding,
after studying Bacon's life and works for thirty years, said: "I see
no reason to suppose that Shakespeare did not write the plays. But if
somebody else did, then I think I am in a position to say that it was
not Lord Bacon."
After his release, Bacon passed the remaining five years of his life
in retirement,--studying and writing. His interest in observing
natural objects and experimenting with them was the cause of his
death. He was riding in a snowstorm when it occurred to him to test
snow as a preservative agent. He stopped at a house, procured a fowl,
and stuffed it with snow. He caught cold during this experiment and,
being improperly cared for, soon died.
The Essays.--The first ten of his _Essays_, his most popular work,
appeared in the year 1597. At the time of his death, he had increased
them to fifty-eight. They deal with a with range of subjects, from
_Studies_ and _Nobility_, On the one hand, to _Marriage and Single
Life_ and _Gardens_ on the other. The great critic Hallam say: "It
would be somewhat derogatory to a man of the slightest claim to polite
letters, were he unacquainted with the _Essays_ of Bacon. It is,
indeed, little worth while to read this or any other book for
reputation's, sake; but very few in our language so well repay the
pains, or afford more nourishment to the thoughts."
[Illustration: TITLE PAGE OF BACON'S ESSAYS, 1597.]
The following sentence from the essay _Of Studies_ will show some of
the characteristics of his way of presenting thought:--
"Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing
an exact man: and, therefore, if a man write little, he had need
have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present
wit; and if he read little, he need have much cunning to seem to
know that he doth not."
We may notice here (1) clearness, (2) conciseness, (3) breadth of
thought and observation.
A shrewd Scotchman says: "It may be said that to men wishing to rise
in the world by politic management of their fellowmen, Bacon's
_Essays_ are the best handbook hitherto published." In justification
of this criticism, we need only quote from the essay _Of
Negotiating_:--
"It is generally better to deal by speech than by letter... Letters
are good, when a man would draw an answer by letter back again, or
when it may serve, for a man's justification, afterwards to produce
his own letter, or where it may he danger to be interrupted or heard
by pieces. To deal in person is good, when a man's face breedeth
regard, as commonly with inferiors, or in tender cases, where a
man's eye upon the countenance of him with whom he speaketh may give
him a direction how far to go, and generally, where a man will
reserve to himself liberty either to disavow or to expound."
Scientific and Miscellaneous Works.--_The Advancement of Learning_
is another of Bacon's great works. The title aptly expresses the
purpose of the took. He insists on the necessity of close observation
of nature and of making experiments with various forms of matter. He
decries the habit of spinning things out of one's inner consciousness,
without patiently studying the outside world to see whether the facts
justify the conclusions. In other words, he insists on induction.
Bacon was not the father of the inductive principle, as is sometimes
wrongly stated; for prehistoric man was compelled to make inductions
before he could advance one step from barbarism. The trouble was that
this method was not rigorously applied. It was currently believed that
our valuable garden toad is venomous and that frogs are bred from
slime. For his knowledge of bees, Lyly consulted classical authors in
preference to watching the insects. Bacon's writings exerted a
powerful influence in the direction of exact inductive method.
Bacon had so little faith in the enduring qualities of the English
language, that he wrote the most of his philosophical works in Latin.
He planned a Latin work in six parts, to cover the whole field of the
philosophy of natural science. The most famous of the parts completed
is the _Novum Organum_, which deals with certain methods for searching
after definite truth, and shows how to avoid some ever present
tendencies toward error.
Bacon wrote an excellent _History of the Reign of Henry VII_., which
is standard to this day. He is also the author of _The New Atlantis_,
which may be termed a Baconian Utopia, or study of an ideal
commonwealth.
General Characteristics.--In Bacon's sentences we may often find
remarkable condensation of thought in few words. A modern essayist has
taken seven pages to express, or rather to obscure, the ideas in these
three lines from Bacon:--
"Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little,
repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period,
but content themselves with a mediocrity of success."[3]
His works abound in illustrations, analogies, and striking imagery;
but unlike the great Elizabethan poets, he appeals more to cold
intellect than to the feelings. We are often pleased with his
intellectual ingenuity, for instance, in likening the Schoolmen to
spiders, spinning such stuff as webs are made of "out of no great
quantity of matter."
He resembles the Elizabethans in preferring magnificent to commonplace
images. It has been often noticed that if he essays to write of
buildings in general, he prefers to describe palaces. His knowledge of
the intellectual side of human nature is especially remarkable, but,
unlike Shakespeare, Bacon never drops his plummet into the emotional
depths of the soul.
THE NON-DRAMATIC POETRY--LYRICAL VERSE
A Medium of Artistic Expression.--No age has surpassed the
Elizabethan in lyrical poems, those "short swallow flights of song,"
as Tennyson defines them. The English Renaissance, unlike the Italian,
did not achieve great success in painting. The Englishman embodied in
poetry his artistic expression of the beautiful. Many lyrics are
merely examples of word painting. The Elizabethan poet often began his
career by trying to show his skill with the ingenious and musical
arrangement of words, where an Italian would have used color and
drawing on an actual canvas.
We have seen that in the reign of Henry VIII. Wyatt and Surrey
introduced into England from Italy the type of lyrical verse known as
the sonnet. This is the most artificial of lyrics, because its rules
prescribe a length of exactly fourteen lines and a definite internal
structure.
The sonnet was especially popular with Elizabethan poets. In the last
ten years of the sixteenth century, more than two thousand sonnets
were written. Even Shakespeare served a poetic apprenticeship by
writing many sonnets as well as semi-lyrical poems, like _Venus and
Adonis_.
We should, however, remember that the sonnet is only one type of the
varied lyric expression of the age. Many Elizabethan song books show
that lyrics were set to music and used on the most varied occasions.
There were songs for weddings, funerals, dances, banquets,--songs for
the tinkers, the barbers, and other workmen. If modern readers chance
to pick up an Elizabethan novel, like Thomas Lodge's _Rosalynde_
(1590), they are surprised to find that prose will not suffice for the
lover, who must "evaporate" into song like this:--
"Love in my bosom like a bee,
Doth suck his sweet.
Now with his wings he plays with me,
Now with his feet."
There are large numbers of Elizabethan lyrics apparently as
spontaneous and unfettered as the song of the lark. The seeming
artlessness of much of this verse should not blind us to the fact that
an unusual number of poets had really studied the art of song.
Love Lyrics.--The subject of the Elizabethan sonnets is usually
love. Sir Philip Sidney wrote many love sonnets, the best of which is
the one beginning:--
"With how sad steps. O Moon, thou climb'st the Skies!"
Edmund Spencer composed fifty-eight sonnets in one year to chronicle
his varied emotions as a lover. We may find among Shakespeare's 154
sonnets some of the greatest love lyrics in the language, such, for
instance, as CXVI., containing the lines:--
"Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds";
or, as XVIII.:--
"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease bath all too short a date.
* * * * *
But thy eternal summer shall not fade."
Sonnets came to be used in much the same way as a modern love letter
or valentine. In the latter part of Elizabeth's reign, sonnets were
even called "merchantable ware." Michael Drayton (1563-1631), a
prolific poet, author of the _Ballad of Agincourt_, one of England's
greatest war songs, tells how he was employed by a lover to write a
sonnet which won the lady. Drayton's best sonnet is, _Since there's no
help, come let us kiss and part_.
Outside of the sonnets, we shall find love lyrics in great variety.
One of the most popular of Elizabethan songs is Ben Jonson's:--
"Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup,
And I'll not look for wine."
The Elizabethans were called a "nest of singing birds" because such
songs as the following are not unusual in the work of their minor
writers:--
"Sweet air, blow soft; mount, lark, aloft
To give my love good morrow!
Winds from the wind to please her mind,
Notes from the lark I'll borrow."[4]
Pastoral Lyrics.--In Shakespeare's early youth it was the fashion to
write lyrics about the delights of rustic life with sheep and
shepherds. The Italians, freshly interesting in Vergil's _Georgics_
and _Bucolics_, had taught the English how to write pastoral verse.
The entire joyous world had become a Utopian sheep pasture, in which
shepherds piped and fell in love with glorified sheperdesses. A great
poet named one of his productions, _Shepherd's Calendar_ and Sir
Philip Sidney wrote in poetic prose the pastoral romance _Arcadia_.
Christopher Marlowe's _The Passionate Shepherd to his Love_ is a
typical poetic expression of the fancied delight in pastoral life:--
"...we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals."
Miscellaneous Lyrics.--As the Elizabethan age progressed, the
subject matter of the lyrics became broader. Verse showing consummate
mastery of turns expressed the most varied emotions. Some of the
greatest lyrics of the period are the songs interspersed in the plays
of the dramatists, from Lyly to Beaumont and Fletcher. The plays of
Shakespeare, the greatest and most varied of Elizabethan lyrical
poets, especially abound in such songs. Two of the best of these occur
in his _Cymbeline_. One is the song--
"Hark! hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings,"
and the other is the dirge beginning:--
"Fear no more the heat o' the sun."
Ariel's songs in _The Tempest_ fascinate with the witchery of
untrammeled existence. Two lines of a song from _Twelfth Night_ give
an attractive presentation of the Renaissance philosophy of the
present as opposed to an elusive future:--
"What is love? 'tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter."
[Illustration: JOHN DONNE. _From the painting ascribed to Cornelius
Jansen, South Kensington Museum._]
Two of the later Elizabethan poets, Ben Jonson and John Donne
(1573-1631), specially impress us by their efforts to secure ingenious
effects in verse. Ben Jonson often shows this tendency, as in trying
to give a poetic definition of a kiss as something--
"So sugar'd, so melting, so soft, so delicious,"
and in showing so much ingenuity of expression in the cramping limits
of an epitaph:--
"Underneath this stone doth lie
As much beauty as could die,
Which in life did harbor give
To more virtue than doth live."
The poet most famous for a display of extreme ingenuity in verse is
John Donne, a traveler, courtier, and finally dean of St. Paul's
Cathedral, who possessed, to quote his own phrase, an "hydroptic
immoderate desire of human learning." He paid less attention to
artistic form than the earlier Elizabethans, showed more cynicism,
chose the abstract rather than the concrete, and preferred involved
metaphysical thought to simple sensuous images. He made few references
to nature and few allusions to the characters of classical mythology,
but searched for obscure likenesses between things, and for conceits
or far-fetched comparisons. In his poem, _A Funeral Elegy_, he shows
these qualities in characterizing a fair young lady as:--
"One whose clear body was so pure and thin,
Because it need disguise no thought within;
'Twas but a through-light scarf her mind to enroll,
Or exhalation breathed out from her soul."
The idea in Shakespeare's simpler expression, "the heavenly rhetoric
of thine eye," was expanded by Donne into:--
"Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread
Our eyes upon one double string."
Donne does not always show so much fine-spun ingenuity, but this was
the quality most imitated by a group of his successors. His claim to
distinction rests on the originality and ingenuity of his verse, and
perhaps still more on his influence over succeeding poets.[5]
EDMUND SPENSER, 1552-1599
[Illustration: EDMUND SPENSER._From a painting in Duplin Castle_.]
Life and Minor Poems.--For one hundred and fifty-two years after
Chaucer's death, in 1400, England had no great poet until Edmund
Spenser was born in London in 1552. Spenser, who became the greatest
non-dramatic poet of the Elizabethan age, was twelve years older than
Shakespeare.
His parents were poor, but fortunately in Elizabethan times, as well
as in our own days, there were generous men who found their chief
pleasure in aiding others. Such a man assisted Spenser in going to
Cambridge. Spenser's benefactor was sufficiently wise not to give the
student enough to dwarf the growth of self-reliance. We know that
Spenser was a sizar at Cambridge, that is, one of those students who,
to quote Macaulay, "had to perform some menial services. They swept
the court; they carried up the dinner to the fellows' table, and
changed the plate and poured out the ale of the rulers of society." We
know further that Spenser was handicapped by ill health during a part
of his course, for we find records of allowances paid "Spenser
_aegrotanti_."
After leaving Cambridge Spenser went to the north of England, probably
in the capacity of tutor. While there, he fell in love with a young
woman whom he calls Rosalind. This event colored his after life.
Although she refused him, she had penetration enough to see in what
his greatness consisted, and her opinion spurred him to develop his
abilities as a poet. He was about twenty-five years old when he fell
in love with Rosalind; and he remained single until he was forty-two,
when he married an Irish maiden named Elizabeth. In honor of that
event, he composed the _Epithalamion_, the noblest marriage song in
any literature. So strong are early impressions that even in its lines
he seems to be thinking of Rosalind and fancying that she is his
bride.
After returning from the north, he spent some time with Sir Philip
Sidney, who helped fashion Spenser's ideals of a chivalrous gentleman.
Sidney's influence is seen in Spenser's greatest work, the _Faerie
Queene_. Sir Walter Raleigh was another friend who left his imprint on
Spenser.
In 1579, Spenser published the _Shepherd's Calendar_. This is a
pastoral poem, consisting of twelve different parts, one part being
assigned to each of the twelve months. Although inferior to the
_Faerie Queene_, the _Shepherd's Calendar_ remains one of the greatest
pastoral poems in the English language.
In 1580 he was appointed secretary to Lord Gray, Lord Lieutenant of
Ireland. In one capacity or another, in the service of the crown,
Spenser passed in Ireland almost the entire remaining eighteen years
of his life. In 1591 he received in the south of Ireland a grant of
three thousand acres, a part of the confiscated estate of an Irish
earl. Sir Walter Raleigh was also given forty-two thousand acres near
Spenser. Ireland was then in a state of continuous turmoil. In such a
country Spenser lived and wrote his _Faerie Queene_. Of course, this
environment powerfully affected the character of that poem. It has
been said that to read a contemporary's account of "Raleigh's
adventures with the Irish chieftains, his challenges and single
combats, his escapes at fords and woods, is like reading bits of the
_Faerie Queene_ in prose."
In 1598 the Irish, infuriated by the invasion of their country and the
seizure of their lands, set fire to Spenser's castle. He and his
family barely escaped with their lives. He crossed to England and died
the next year, according to some accounts, in want. He was buried, at
the expense of Lord Essex, in Westminster Abbey, near Chaucer.
The Faerie Queene.--In 1590 Spenser published the first three books
of the _Faerie Queene_. The original plan was to have the poem contain
twelve books, like Vergil's _AEneid_, but only six were published. If
more were written, they have been lost.
The poem is an allegory with the avowed moral purpose of fashioning "a
gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline." Spenser
says: "I labour to pourtraict in Arthure, before he was King, the
image of a brave knight, perfected in the twelve private morall
vertues, as Aristotle hath devised." Twelve Knights personifying
twelve Virtues were to fight with their opposing Vices, and the twelve
books were to tell the story of the conflict. The Knights set out from
the court of Gloriana, the Faerie Queene, in search of their enemies,
and meet with divers adventures and enchantments.
The hero of the tale is Arthur, who has figured so much in English
song and legend. Spenser makes him typical of all the Virtues taken
together. The first book, which is really a complete poem by itself,
and which is generally admitted to be the finest, contains an account
of the adventures of the Red Cross Knight who represents Holiness.
Other books tell of the warfare of the Knights who typify Temperance,
Chastity, Friendship, Justice, and Courtesy.
The poem begins thus:--
"A gentle Knight was pricking[6] on the plaine,
Ycladd in mightie armes and silver shielde,
Wherein old dints of deepe woundes did remaine,
The cruell markes of many' a bloody fielde;
Yet armes till that time did he never wield.
* * * * *
"And on his brest a bloodie Crosse he bore,
The deare remembrance of his dying Lord,
For whose sweete sake that glorious badge he wore.
* * * * *
"Upon a great adventure he was bond.
That greatest Gloriana to him gave,
That greatest glorious Queene of Faerie lond."
The entire poem really typifies the aspirations of the human soul for
something nobler and better than can be gained without effort. In
Spenser's imaginative mind, these aspirations became real persons who
set out to win laurels in a fairyland, lighted with the soft light of
the moon, and presided over by the good genius that loves to uplift
struggling and weary souls.
The allegory certainly becomes confused. A critic well says: "We can
hardly lose our way in it, for there is no way to lose." We are not
called on to understand the intricacies of the allegory, but to read
between the lines, catch the noble moral lesson, and drink to our fill
at the fountain of beauty and melody.
Spenser a Subjective Poet.--The subjective cast of Spenser's mind
next demands attention. We feel that his is an ideal world, one that
does not exist outside of the imagination. In order to understand the
difference between subjective and objective, let us compare Chaucer
with Spenser. No one can really be said to study literature without
constantly bringing in the principle of comparison. We must notice the
likeness and the difference between literary productions, or the faint
impression which they make upon our minds will soon pass away.
Chaucer is objective; that is, he identifies himself with things that
could have a real existence in the outside world. We find ourselves
looking at the shiny bald head of Chaucer's Monk, at the lean horse
and threadbare clothes of the Student of Oxford, at the brown
complexion of the Shipman, at the enormous hat and large figure of the
Wife of Bath, at the red face of the Summoner, at the hair of the
Pardoner "yelow as wex." These are not mere figments of the
imagination. We feel that they are either realities or that they could
have existed.
While the adventures in the Irish wars undoubtedly gave the original
suggestions for many of the contests between good and evil in the
_Faerie Queene_, Spenser intentionally idealized these knightly
struggles to uphold the right and placed them in fairyland. This great
poem is the work of a mind that loved to elaborate purely subjective
images. The pictures were not painted from gazing at the outside
world. We feel that they are mostly creations of the imagination, and
that few of them could exist in a real world. There is no bower in the
bottom of the sea, "built of hollow billowes heaped hye," and no lion
ever follows a lost maiden to protect her. We feel that the principal
part of Shakespeare's world could have existed in reality as well as
in imagination. Spenser was never able to reach this highest type of
art.
The world, however, needs poets to create images of a higher type of
beauty than this life can offer. These images react on our material
lives and cast them in a nobler mold. Spenser's belief that the
subjective has power to fashion the objective is expressed in two of
the finest lines that he ever wrote:--
"For of the soule the bodie forme doth take;
For soule is forme, and doth the bodie make."[7]
Chief Characteristics of Spenser's Poetry.--We can say of Spencer's
verse that it stands in the front rank for (1) melody, (2) love of the
beautiful, and (3) nobility of the ideals presented. His poetry also
(4) shows a preference for the subjective world, (5) exerts a
remarkable influence over other poets, and (6) displays a peculiar
liking for obsolete forms of expression.
Spencer's melody is noteworthy. If we read aloud correctly such lines
as these, we can scarcely fail to be impressed with their harmonious
flow:--
"A teme of Dolphins raunged in aray
Drew the smooth charett of sad Cymoent:
They were all taught by Triton to obay
To the long raynes at her commaundement:
As swifte as swallowes on the waves they went.
* * * * *
"Upon great Neptune's necke they softly swim,
And to her watry chamber swiftly carry him.
Deepe in the bottome of the sea her bowre
Is built of hollow billowes heaped hye."[8]
The following lines will show Spenser's love for beauty, and at the
same time indicate the nobility of some of his ideal characters. He is
describing Lady Una, the fair representative of true religion, who has
lost through enchantment her Guardian Knight, and who is wandering
disconsolate in the forest:--
"...Her angel's face,
As the great eye of heaven, shyned bright,
And made a sunshine in the shady place;
Did never mortall eye behold such heavenly grace.
"It fortuned out of the thickest wood
A ramping Lyon rushed suddeinly,
Hunting full greedy after salvage blood.
Soone as the royall virgin he did spy,
With gaping mouth at her ran greedily,
To have att once devoured her tender corse;
But to the pray when as he drew more ny,
His bloody rage aswaged with remorse,
And with the sight amazd, forgat his furious forse.
"In stead thereof he kist her wearie feet,
And lickt her lilly hands with fawning tong,
As he her wronged innocence did weet.
O, how can beautie maister the most strong,
And simple truth subdue avenging wrong!"[9]
The power of beauty has seldom been more vividly described. As we read
the succeeding stanzas and see the lion following her, like a faithful
dog, to shield her from harm, we feel the power of both beauty and
goodness and realize that with Spenser these terms are
interchangeable, Each one of the preceding selections shows his
preference for the subjective and the ideal to the actual.
Spenser searched for old and obsolete words. He used "eyne" for
"eyes," "fone" for "foes," "shend" for "shame." He did not hesitate to
coin words when he needed them, like "mercify" and "fortunize." He
even wrote "wawes" in place of "waves" because he wished it to rime
with "jaws." In spite of these peculiarities, Spenser is not hard
reading after the first appearance of strangeness has worn away.
A critic rightly says that Spenser repels none but the anti-poetical.
His influence upon other poets has been far-reaching. Milton, Dryden,
Byron, Wordsworth, Keats, and Shelley show traces of his influence.
Spenser has been called the poet's poet, because the more poetical one
is, the more one will enjoy him.
THE ENGLISH DRAMA
The Early Religious Drama.--It is necessary to remember at the
outset that the purpose of the religious drama was not to amuse, but
to give a vivid presentation of scriptural truth. On the other hand,
the primary aim of the later dramatist has usually been to entertain,
or, in Shakespeare's exact words, "to please." Shakespeare was,
however, fortunate in having an audience that was pleased to be
instructed, as well as entertained.
Before the sixteenth century, England had a religious drama that made
a profound impression on life and thought. The old religious plays
helped to educate the public, the playwrights, and the actors for the
later drama.
Any one may to-day form some idea of the rise of the religious drama,
by attending the service of the Catholic church on Christmas or Easter
Sunday. In many Catholic churches there may still be seen at Christmas
time a representation of the manger at Bethlehem. Sometimes the
figures of the infant Savior, of Joseph and Mary, of the wise men, of
the sheep and cattle, are very lifelike.
The events clustering about the Crucifixion and the Resurrection
furnished the most striking material for the early religious drama.
Our earliest dramatic writers drew their inspiration from the _New
Testament_.
Miracle and Mystery Plays.--A Miracle play is the dramatic
representation of the life of a saint and of the miracles connected
with him. A Mystery play deals with gospel events which are concerned
with any phase of the life of Christ, or with any Biblical event that
remotely foreshadows Christ or indicates the necessity of a Redeemer.
In England there were few, if any, pure Miracle plays, but the term
"Miracle" is applied indiscriminately to both Miracles and Mysteries.
The first Miracle play in England was acted probably not far from
1100. In the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries these
plays had become so popular that they were produced in nearly every
part of England. Shakespeare felt their influence. He must have had
frequent opportunities in his boyhood to witness their production.
They were seldom performed in England after 1600, although visitors to
Germany have, every ten years, the opportunity of seeing a modern
production of a Mystery in the _Passion Play_ at Oberammergau.
The Subjects.--Four great cycles of Miracle plays have been
preserved: the York, Chester, and Coventry plays, so called because
they were performed in those places, and the Towneley plays, which
take their name from Towneley Hall in Lancashire, where the manuscript
was kept for some time. It is probable that almost every town of
importance had its own collection of plays.
[Illustration: MIRACLE PLAY AT COVENTRY. _From an old print_]
The York cycle contains forty-eight plays. A cycle or circle of plays
means a list forming a complete circle from Creation until Doomsday.
The York collection begins with Creation and the fall of Lucifer and
the bad angels from Heaven,--a theme which was later to inspire the
pen of one of England's greatest poets. The tragedies of Eden and the
Flood, scenes from the lives of Abraham, Isaac, and Moses, the manger
at Bethlehem, the slaughter of the Innocents, the Temptation, the
resurrection of Lazarus, the Last Supper, the Trial, the Crucifixion,
and the Easter triumph are a few of the Miracle plays that were acted
in the city of York.
The Actors and Manner of Presentation.--At first the actors were
priests who presented the plays either in the church or in its
immediate vicinity on sacred ground. After a while the plays became so
popular that the laity presented them. When they were at the height of
their popularity, that is, during the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, the actors were selected with great care from the members
of the various trades guilds. Each guild undertook the entire
responsibility for the presentation of some one play, and endeavored
to surpass all the other guilds.
[Illustration: HELL MOUTH._From a Columbia University Model_.]
Considerable humor was displayed in the allotment of various plays.
The tanners presented the fall of Lucifer and the bad angels into the
infernal regions; the ship carpenters, the play of Noah and the
building of the ark; the bakers, the Last Supper; the butchers, the
Crucifixion. In their prime, the Miracle plays were acted on wooden
platforms mounted on wheels. There were two distinct stories in these
movable stages, a lower one in which the actors dressed, and an upper
one in which they played. The entrance to the lower story, known as
Hell Mouth, consisted of a terrible pair of dragonlike jaws, painted
red. From these jaws issued smoke, flame, and horrible outcries. From
the entrance leaped red-coated devils to tempt the Savior, the saints,
and men. Into it the devils would disappear with some wicked soul.
They would torture it and make it roar with pain, as the smoke poured
faster from the red jaws.
In York on Corpus Christi Day, which usually fell in the first week in
June, the actors were ordered to be in their places on these movable
theaters at half past three in the morning. Certain stations had been
selected throughout the city, where each pageant should stop and, in
the proper order, present its own play. In this way the enormous
crowds that visited York to see these performances were more evenly
scattered throughout the city.
The actors did not always remain on the stage. Herod, for example, in
his magnificent robes used to ride on horseback among the people,
boast of his prowess, and overdo everything. Shakespeare, who was
evidently familiar with the character, speaks of out-Heroding Herod.
The Devil also frequently jumped from the stage and availed himself of
his license to play pranks among the audience.
Much of the acting was undoubtedly excellent. In 1476 the council at
York ordained that four of the best players in the city should examine
with regard to fitness all who wished to take part in the plays. So
many were desirous of acting that it was much trouble to get rid of
incompetents. The ordinance ran: "All such as they shall find
sufficient in person and cunning, to the honor of the City and worship
of the said Crafts, for to admit and able; and all other insufficient
persons, either in cunning, voice, or person, to discharge, ammove and
avoid." A critic says that this ordinance is "one of the steps on
which the greatness of the Elizabethan stage was built, and through
which its actors grew up."[10]
Introduction of the Comic Element in the Miracle Plays.--While the
old drama generally confined itself to religious subjects, the comic
element occasionally crept in, made its power felt, and disclosed a
new path for future playwrights. In the _Play of Noah's Flood_, when
the time for the flood has come, Noah's wife refuses to enter the ark
and a domestic quarrel ensues. Finally her children pull and shove her
into the ark. When she is safe on board, Noah bids her welcome. His
enraged wife deals him resounding blows until he calls to her to stop,
because his back is nearly broken.
The _Play of the Shepherds_ includes a genuine comedy, the first
comedy worthy of the name to appear in England. While watching their
flocks on Christmas Eve, the shepherds are joined by Mak, a neighbor
whose reputation for honesty is not good. Before they go to sleep,
they make him lie down within their circle; but he rises when he hears
them begin to snore, steals a sheep, and hastens home. His wife is
alarmed, because in that day the theft of a sheep was punishable by
death. She finally concludes that the best plan will be to wrap the
animal in swaddling clothes and put it in the cradle. If the shepherds
come to search the house, she will pretend that she has a child; and,
if they approach the cradle, she will caution them against touching it
for fear of waking the child and causing him to fill the house with
his cries. She speedily hurries Mak away to resume his slumbers among
the shepherds. When they wake, they miss the sheep, suspect Mak, and
go to search his house. His wife allows them to look around
thoroughly, but she keeps them away from the cradle. They leave,
rather ashamed of their suspicion. As they are going out of the door,
a thought strikes one of them whereby they can make partial amends.
Deciding to give the child sixpence, he returns, lifts up the covering
of the cradle, and discovers the sheep. Mak and his wife both declare
that an elf has changed their child into a sheep. The shepherds
threaten to have the pair hanged. They seize Mak, throw him on a
canvas, and toss him into the air until they are exhausted. They then
lie down to rest and are roused with the song of an angel from
Bethlehem.
To produce this comedy required genuine inventive imagination; for
there is nothing faintly resembling this incident in the sacred
narrative. These early exercises of the imagination in our drama may
resemble the tattering footsteps of a child; but they were necessary
antecedents to the strength, beauty, and divinity of movement in
Elizabethan times.
[Illustration: FOOL'S HEAD. State properties of the Vice and Fool.]
The Morality.--The next step in the development of the drama is
known as the Morality play. This personified abstractions. Characters
like Charity, Hope, Faith, Truth, Covetousness, Falsehood, Abominable
Living, the World, the Flesh, and the Devil,--in short, all the
Virtues and the Vices,--came on the stage in the guise of persons, and
played the drama of life.
Critics do not agree about the precise way in which the Morality is
related to the Miracle play. It is certain that the Miracle play had
already introduced some abstractions.
In one very important respect, the Morality marks an advance, by
giving more scope to the imagination. The Miracle plays had their
general treatment absolutely predetermined by the Scriptural version
of the action or by the legends of the lives of saints, although
diverting incidents could be introduced, as we have seen. In the
Morality, the events could take any turn which the author chose to
give.
[Illustration: AIR-BAG FLAPPER. Stage properties of the Vice and
Fool.]
In spite of this advantage, the Morality is in general a synonym for
what is uninteresting. The characters born of abstractions are too
often bloodless, like their parents. The Morality under a changed name
was current a few years ago in the average Sunday-school book.
Incompetent writers of fiction today often adopt the Morality
principle in making their characters unnaturally good or bad, mere
puppets who do not develop along the line of their own emotional
prompting, but are moved by machinery in the author's hands.
[Illustration: LATH DAGGER. Stage properties of the Vice and Fool.]
A new character, the Vice, was added as an adjunct to the Devil, to
increase the interest of the audience in the Morality play. The Vice
represented the leading spirit of evil in any particular play,
sometimes Fraud, Covetousness, Pride, Iniquity, or Hypocrisy. It was
the business of the Vice to annoy the Virtues and to be constantly
playing pranks. The Vice was the predecessor of the clown and the fool
upon the stage. The Vice also amused the audience by tormenting the
Devil, belaboring him with a sword of lath, sticking thorns into him,
and making him roar with pain. Sometimes the Devil would be kicked
down Hell Mouth by the offended Virtues; but he would soon reappear
with saucily curled tail, and at the end of the play he would delight
the spectators by plunging into Hell Mouth with the Vice on his back.
[Illustration: FOOL OF THE OLD PLAY.]
Court Plays.--In the first part of the sixteenth century, the court
and the nobility especially encouraged the production of plays whose
main object was to entertain. The influence of the court in shaping
the drama became much more powerful than that of the church. Wallace
says of the new materials which his researches have disclosed in the
twentieth century:--
"They throw into the lime-light a brilliant development of this new
drama through the Chapel Royal, a development that took place
primarily under the direction of the great musicians who served as
masters of the children of the Chapel and as court entertainers, the
first true poets-laureate, through the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward
VI., Mary, and Elizabeth."[11]
In 1509 Henry VIII. appointed William Cornish (died 1523) to be Master
of the Children of the Chapel Royal. This court institution with its
choral body of men and boys not only ministered "by song to the
spiritual well-being of the sovereign and his household," but also
gave them "temporal" enjoyment in dances, pageants, and plays. We must
not forget, however, that the Chapel Royal was originally, as its name
implies, a religious body. Cornish was a capable dramatist, as well as
a musician and a poet; and he, unlike the author of _Everyman_, wrote
plays simply to amuse the court and its guests. He has even been
called the founder of the secular English drama.[12]
The court of Henry VIII. became especially fond of the Interlude,
which was a short play, often given in connection with a banquet or
other entertainment. Any dramatic incident, such as the refusal of
Noah's wife to enter the ark, or Mak's thievery in _The Play of the
Shepherds_, might serve as an Interlude. Cornish and John Heywood
(1497?--1580?), a court dramatist of much versatility, incorporated in
the Interlude many of the elements of the five-act drama. _The Four
P's_, the most famous Interlude, shows a contest between a Pardoner,
Palmer, Pedlar, and Poticary, to determine who could tell the greatest
lie. Wallace thinks that the best Interludes, such as _The Four P's_
and _The Pardoner and the Frere_, were written by Cornish, although
they are usually ascribed to Heywood.
Cornish had unusual ability as a deviser of masques and plays. One of
his interludes for children has allegorical characters that remotely
suggest some that appear in the modern _Bluebird_, by Maeterlinck.
Cornish had Wind appear "in blue with drops of silver"; Rain, "in
black with silver honeysuckles"; Winter, "in russet with flakes of
silver snow"; Summer, "in green with gold stars"; and Spring, "in
green with gold primroses." In 1522 Cornish wrote and presented before
Henry VIII. and his guest, the Roman emperor, a political play,
especially planned to indicate the attitude of the English monarch
toward Spain and France. Under court influences, the drama enlarged
its scope and was no longer chiefly the vehicle for religious
instruction.
Early Comedies.--Two early comedies, divided, after the classical
fashion, into acts and scenes, show close approximation to the modern
form of English plays.
_Ralph Royster Doyster_ was written not far from the middle of the
sixteenth century by Nicholas Udall (1505-1556), sometime master of
Eton College and, later, court poet under Queen Mary. This play,
founded on a comedy of Plautus, shows the classical influence which
was so powerful in England at this time. Ralph, the hero, is a
conceited simpleton. He falls in love with a widow who has already
promised her hand to a man infinitely Ralph's superior. Ralph,
however, unable to understand why she should not want him, persists in
his wooing. She makes him the butt of her jokes, and he finds himself
in ridiculous positions. The comedy amuses us in this way until her
lover returns and marries her. The characters of the play, which is
written in rime, are of the English middle class.
_Gammer Gurton's Needle_, the work of William Stevenson, a
little-known pre-Shakespearean writer, was acted at Christ's College,
Cambridge, shortly after the middle of the sixteenth century. This
play borrows hardly anything from the classical stage. Most of the
characters of _Gammer Gurton's Needle_ are from the lowest English
working classes, and its language, unlike that of _Ralph Royster
Doyster_, which has little to offend, is very coarse.
Gorboduc and the Dramatic Unities.--The tragedy of _Gorboduc_, the
first regular English tragedy written in blank verse, was acted in
1561, three years before the birth of Shakespeare. This play is in
part the work of Thomas Sackville (1536-1608), a poet and diplomat,
the author of two powerful somber poems, the _Induction_ and
_Complaint of the Duke of Buckingham_. In spite of their heavy
narrative form, these poems are in places even more dramatic than the
dull tragedy of Gorboduc, which was fashioned after the classical
rules of Seneca and the Greeks. _Gorboduc_ requires little action on
the stage. There is considerable bloodshed in the play; but the
spectators are informed of the carnage by a messenger, as they are not
permitted to witness a bloody contest on the stage.
[Illustration: THOMAS SACKVILLE.]
If Gorboduc had been taken for a model, the English drama could never
have attained Shakespearean greatness. Our drama would then have been
crippled by following the classical rules, which prescribed unity of
place and time in the plot and the action. The ancients held that a
play should not represent actions which would, in actual life, require
much more than twenty-four hours for their performance. If one of the
characters was a boy, he had to be represented as a boy throughout the
play. The next act could not introduce him as one who had grown to
manhood in the interval. The classical rules further required that the
action should be performed in one place, or near it. Anything that
happened at a great distance had to be related by a messenger, and not
acted on the stage.
Had these rules been followed, the English drama could never have
painted the growth and development of character, which is not the work
of a day. The genius of Marlowe and Shakespeare taught them to
disregard these dramatic unities. In _As You Like It_, the action is
now at the court, and now in the far-off Forest of Arden. Shakespeare
knew that the imagination could traverse the distance. At the
beginning of the play Oliver is an unnatural, brutal brother; but
events change him, so that in the fourth act, when he is asked if he
is the man who tried to kill his brother, Oliver replies:--
"'Twas I; but 'tis not I."
THE PRESENTATION OF ELIZABETHAN PLAYS
[Illustration: THEATER IN INN YARD. _From Columbia University
model._]
The Elizabethan Theater.--Before considering the work of the
Elizabethan dramatists, we should know something of the conditions
which they had to meet in order to produce plays for the contemporary
stage. The courtyard of London inns often served as a playhouse before
sufficient regular theaters were built. The stage was in one end of
the yard, and the unused ground space in front served as the pit. Two
or three tiers of galleries or balconies around the yard afforded
additional space for both actors and spectators. These inn yards
furnished many suggestions which were incorporated in the early
theaters.
The first building in England for the public presentation of plays was
known as The Theater. It was built in London in 1576. In 1598
Shakespeare and his associates, failing to secure a lease of the
ground on which this building stood, pulled it down, carried the
materials across the river, and erected the famous Globe Theater on
the Bankside, as the street running along the south side of the Thames
was called. In late years a careful study of the specifications (1599)
for building the Fortune Theater (see Frontispiece) has thrown much
light on the Globe, which is unusually important from its association
with Shakespeare. Although the Fortune was square, while the Globe was
octagonal, the Fortune was in many essentials modeled after the Globe.
A part of the specifications of the Fortune read as follows:--
"...the frame of the saide howse to be sett square and to conteine
fowerscore foote of lawful assize everye waie square, without, and
fiftie five foote of like assize square, everye waie within ... and
the saide frame to conteine three stories in heigth ... [the] stadge
shall conteine in length fortie and three foote of lawfull assize,
and in breadth to extende to the middle of the yarde of the said
howse: the same stadge to be paled in belowe with goode stronge and
sufficyent new oken boardes... And the said stadge to be in all
other proportions contryved and fashioned like unto the stadge
of the wide Playhowse called the Globe."
[Illustration: RECONSTRUCTED GLOBE THEATER, "SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND,"
EARL'S COURT, LONDON, 1912. _From an original drawing._]
The first part of the twentieth century has made a detailed study of
the stage on which the Great Elizabethan plays were acted. G.F.
Reynolds says:--
"Most students agree that the 'typical' Elizabethan stage consisted
of a platform, uncurtained in front, open as well at the sides,
carpeted, it is generally said, with rushes, and surrounded with a
railing, a space behind this platform closed by a sliding curtain,
and a balcony with its own curtains and entrances. There were also a
space below the stage reached by trap doors, a dressing room behind
the stage, machinery by which characters ascended to and descended
from some place above, and in some theaters at least, a 'heavens,'
or roof over part or all of the stage."[13]
Possibly no single stage had every feature mentioned in the above
description, which gives, however, a good general idea of a typical
stage of the time. We must remember that no one has the right to
assert that different Elizabethan stages did not differ in details. We
are not sure that every stage was so planned as to be divided into two
parts by a sliding curtain. The drawing of the Swan Theater shows no
place for such a curtain, although it is possible that the draftsman
forgot to include it. The specifications of the stage of the Fortune
Theater make no mention of a railing.
The Play and the Audience.--It is impossible to criticize
Elizabethan plays properly from the point of view of the
twentieth-century stage. Many modern criticisms are shown to be
without reason when we understand the wishes of the audience and the
manner of presenting the plays. The conditions of the entry or the
reentry of a player might explain some of those lengthy monologues
that seem so inartistic to modern dramatists. The Elizabethan theaters
and the tastes of their patrons had certain important characteristics
of their own.
I. In the public theaters,[14] the play began in the early afternoon,
usually between two and three o'clock, and lasted for about two hours.
The audience was an alert one, neither jaded by a long day's business
nor rendered impatient by waiting for the adjustment of scenery. The
Elizabethans constituted a vigorous audience, eager to meet the
dramatist and actors more than half way in interpreting what was
presented.
II. In the case of such public theaters as the Globe and the Fortune,
even their roofed parts, which extended around the pit and back of the
stage and which contained the galleries and the boxes, were all
exposed to the open air on the inner side. The pit, which was
immediately in front of the stage, had the sky for a roof and the
ground for a floor. The frequenters of the pit, who often jostled each
other for standing room, were sometimes called the "groundlings."
Occasionally a severe rain would drive them out of the theater to seek
shelter. Those who attended the Elizabethan public theater were in no
danger of being made drowsy or sick by its bad air.
[Illustration: THE BANKSIDE AND ITS THEATERS
1. The Swan Theater. 3. The Hope Theater. 5. Old St. Paul's.
2. The Bear Gardens. 4. The Globe Theater. 6. The Temple.]
III. The audiences did not attend merely for relaxation or amusement.
They often came for information and education, and they were probably
glad to learn about alchemy from one of Ben Jonson's plays. The
audience doubtless welcomed long monologues if they were well
delivered and presented ideas of worth. The theater took the place of
lectures, newspapers, magazines, and, to a certain extent, of books.
We know that in 1608 the Blackfriars Theater acted the part of a
newspaper in presenting a scandal about the French king and that at
another time it gave some humorous information concerning the English
monarch's newly discovered silver mine in Scotland.
IV. The Elizabethans loved good poetry for its imaginative appeal.
Shakespeare was a poet before he was a dramatist. Beautiful poetry
presenting high ideals must have met with vigorous appreciation, or
Shakespeare could not have continued to produce such great work.
V. The Elizabethans also demanded story and incident. Modern critics
have often noticed that the characterization in Shakespeare's fourth
acts, _e.g._, in _Macbeth_, does not equal that in the preceding part
of the play; but the fourth act of _Macbeth_ interested the
Elizabethans because there was progress in the complicated story. To
modern theatergoers this fourth act seems to drag because they have
acquired through novel reading a liking for analysis and dissection.
Shakespeare succeeded in interesting the Elizabethans by embodying in
story and incident his portrayal of character. Because of admiration
for the revelation of character in his greatest plays, modern readers
forget their moving incidents,--for instance, the almost
blood-curdling appearances of a ghost, the actions of a crazed woman,
the killing of an eavesdropper on the stage, two men fighting at an
open grave, the skull and bones of a human being dug from a grave in
full view of the audience, the fighting to the death on the stage,
which is ghastly with corpses at the close. When we add to this the
roar of cannon whenever the king drinks, as well as when there is some
more noteworthy action, and remember that the very last words of
_Hamlet_ are: "Go, bid the soldiers shoot," we shall realize that
there was not much danger of going to sleep even during a performance
of _Hamlet_.
Scenery.--The conditions under which early Elizabethan plays were
sometimes produced are thus described by Sir Philip Sidney:--
"You shall have Asia of the one side, and Africa of the other, and
so many other under-kingdoms, that the player when he comes in, must
ever begin with telling you where he is, or else the tale will not
be conceived. Now shall you have three ladies walk to gather
flowers, and then we must believe the stage to be a garden. By and
by we hear news of a shipwreck in the same place, then we are to
blame if we accept it not for a rock."
[Illustration: CONTEMPORARY DRAWING OF INTERIOR OF AN ELIZABETHAN
THEATER[15].]
Those who remember this well-known quotation too often forget that
Sidney wrote before Shakespeare's plays were produced. We do not know
whether Sidney was describing a private or a public stage, but the
private theaters had the greater amount of scenery.
Modern research has shown that the manner of presenting plays did not
remain stationary while the drama was rapidly evolving. Before
Shakespeare died, there were such stage properties as beds, tables,
chairs, dishes, fetters, shop wares, and perhaps also some artificial
trees, mossy banks, and rocks. A theatrical manager in an inventory of
stage properties (1598) mentions "the sittie of Rome," which was
perhaps a cloth so painted as to present a perspective of the city. He
also speaks of a "cloth of the Sone and Mone." The use of such painted
cloths was an important step toward modern scenery. We may, however,
conclude that the scenery of any Elizabethan theater would have seemed
scant to one accustomed to the detailed setting of the modern stage.
The comparatively little scenery in Elizabethan theaters imposed
strenuous imaginative exercise on the spectators. This effort was
fortunate for all concerned--for the dramatist and for the actor, but
especially for the spectator, who became accustomed to give an
imaginative interpretation and setting to a play that would mean
little to a modern theatergoer.
Actors.--Those who have seen some of the recent performances of
plays under Elizabethan conditions, on a stage modeled after that of
Shakespeare's time have been surprised at the increase of the actors'
power. The stage projects far enough into the pit to bring the actors
close to the audience. Their appeal thus becomes far more personal,
direct, and forceful. The spectator more easily identifies himself
with them and almost feels as if he were a part of the play. This has
been the experience of those who have seen the old-time reproduction
of plays as different as _The Tempest, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The
Merchant of Venice_, and _Much Ado About Nothing_. In the case of _The
Tempest_, a very interesting act was presented when all the scenery
consisted of a board on which was painted "Prospero Isle."
In Shakespeare's times, the plays were probably well acted. While the
fame of Elizabethan actors like Edward Alleyn and Richard Burbage has
come down to modern times, the success of plays did not depend on
single stars. Shakespeare is said to have played in minor roles. The
audience discouraged bad acting. The occupants of the pit would throw
apples or worse missiles at an unsatisfactory player, and sometimes
the disgusted spectators would suddenly leap on the stage and chase an
incompetent actor off the boards.
Prior to the Restoration in 1660, the women's parts were taken by
boys. While this must have hampered the presentation of characters
like Lady Macbeth, it is now known to have been less of a handicap
than was formerly thought. The twentieth century has seen feminine
parts so well played by carefully trained boys that the most astute
women spectators never detected the deception. Boys, especially those
of the Chapel Royal, had for a long time acted masculine, as well as
feminine, parts. As late as the beginning of the seventeenth century,
the choir boys were presenting some of the great Elizabethan plays in
a private theater connected with St. Paul's Cathedral. Rosencrantz in
the second act of _Hamlet_ bears witness to the popularity of these
boy actors, when he calls them "little eyases, that cry on the top of
question and are most tyrannically clapped for it." Ben Jonson's
touching lyrical epitaph on a boy actor, Salathiel Pavy, who had for
"three fill'd zodiacs" been "the stage's jewel," shows how highly the
Elizabethans sometimes regarded boy actors. The regular theaters found
the companies of boys such strong rivals that, in 1609, Shakespeare
and other theatrical managers used modern business methods to suppress
competition and agreed to pay the master of the boys of St. Paul's
enough to cause him to withdraw them permanently from competing with
the other theaters.
PRE-SHAKESPEAREAN DRAMATISTS
The "University Wits" and Thomas Kyd.--Five authors, John Lyly,
George Peele, Robert Greene, Thomas Lodge, and Thomas Nashe, all
graduates of Oxford or Cambridge, were sufficiently versatile to be
called "university wits." Amid various other activities, all of them
were impelled by the spirit of the age to write plays. These
intellectual aristocrats hurled the keen shafts of their wit at those
dramatists, who, without a university education, were arrogant enough
to think that they could write plays. Because Shakespeare had never
attended a university, Greene called him "an upstart Crow beautified
with our feathers."
On New Year's, 1584, John Lyly, the author of _Euphues_, presented
in the first Blackfriars Theater[16] his prose comedy, entitled
_Campaspe_. This play relates the love story of Alexander the Great's
fair Theban captive, Campaspe. The twenty-eight characters necessary
to produce this play were obtained from the boys of the Chapel Royal
and St. Paul's Cathedral. Two months later Lyly's _Sapho and Phao_ was
given in the same theater with a cast of seventeen boys. It should be
remembered that these plays, so important in the evolution of the
drama, were acted by boys under royal patronage. _Campaspe_ is little
more than a series of episodes, divided into acts and scenes, but,
unlike _Gorboduc, Campaspe_ has many of the characteristics of an
interesting modern play.
Lyly wrote eight comedies, all but one in prose. In the history of the
drama, he is important for (1) finished style, (2) good dialogue, (3)
considerable invention in the way he secured interest, by using
classical matter in combination with contemporary life, (4) subtle
comedy, and (5) influence on Shakespeare. It is doubtful whether
Shakespeare could have produced such good early comedies, if he had
not received suggestions from Lyly's work in this field.
The chapel boys also presented at Blackfriars in the same year George
Peele's (1558-1597) _The Arraignment of Paris_, a pastoral drama in
riming verse. In Juno's promise to Paris, Peele shows how the
possibilities of the New World affected his imagination:--
"Xanthus shall run liquid gold for thee to wash thy hands;
And if thou like to tend thy flock and not from them to fly,
Their fleeces shall be curled gold to please their master's eye."
While _The Arraignment of Paris_ and his two other plays, _David and
Bathsabe_ and _The Old Wives' Tale_, are not good specimens of
dramatic construction, the beauty of some of Peele's verse could
hardly have failed to impress both Marlowe and Shakespeare with the
poetic possibilities of the drama. Peele writes without effort--
"Of moss that sleeps with sound the waters make,"
and has David build--
"...a kingly bower,
Seated in hearing of a hundred streams."
Robert Greene (1560-1592) showed much skill in (1) the construction
of plots, (2) the revelation of simple and genuine human feeling, and
(3) the weaving of an interesting story into a play. His best drama is
the poetic comedy _Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_. In this play, he
made the love story the central point of interest.
Thomas Lodge (1558-1625), author of the story _Rosalynde_, which
Shakespeare used to such good advantage, wrote in collaboration with
Greene, _A Looking Glass for London and England_, and an independent
play, _The Wounds of Civil War_. Thomas Nashe (1567-1601), best
known for his picaresque novel, _The Unfortunate Traveler_, wrote a
play, _Summer's Last Will and Testament_, but he and Lodge had little
dramatic ability.
Thomas Kyd (1558-1594), although lacking a university education,
succeeded in writing, about 1586, the most popular early Elizabethan
play, _The Spanish Tragedy_, a blank verse drama, in which blood flows
profusely. Although this play is not free from classical influences,
yet its excellence of construction, effective dramatic situations,
vigor of movement, and romantic spirit helped to prepare the way for
the tragedies of Marlowe and Shakespeare.
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, 1564-1593
Life.--The year 1564 saw the birth of the two greatest geniuses in
the English drama, Marlowe and Shakespeare. Marlowe, the son of a
shoemaker, was born at Canterbury, and educated at Cambridge. When he
was graduated, the dramatic profession was the only one that gave full
scope to genius like his. He became both playwriter and actor. All his
extant work was written in about six years. When he was only
twenty-nine he was fatally stabbed in a tavern quarrel. Shakespeare
had at that age not produced his greatest plays. Marlowe unwittingly
wrote his own epitaph in that of Dr. Faustus:--
"Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight,
And burned is Apollo's laurel-bough."
[Illustration: MARLOWE'S MEMORIAL STATUE AT CANTERBURY.]
Works.--Marlowe's great tragedies are four in number _Timberline,
Dr. Faustus, The Jew of Malta, and Edward, II._. No careful student of
English literature can afford to be unacquainted with any of them.
Shakespeare's work appears less miraculous when we know that a
predecessor at the age of twenty-four had written plays like
_Timberline_ and _Dr. Faustus_.
_Timberline_ shows the supreme ambition for conquest, for controlling
the world with physical force. It is such a play as might have been
suggested to an Elizabethan by watching Napoleon's career. _Dr.
Faustus_, on the other hand, shows the desire for knowledge that would
give universal power, a desire born of the Renaissance. _The Jew of
Malta_ is the incarnation of the passion for the world's wealth, a
passion that towers above common greed only by the magnificence of its
immensity. In that play we see that Marlowe--
"Without control can pick his riches up,
And in his house heap pearl like pebble stones,
* * * * *
Infinite riches in a little room."
_Edward II._ gives a pathetic picture of one of the weakest of kings.
This shows more evenness and regularity of construction than any of
Marlowe's other plays; but it is the one least characteristic of him.
The others manifest more intensity of imagination, more of the spirit
of the age.
_Dr. Faustus_ shows Marlowe's peculiar genius at its best. The legend
on which the play is based came from Germany, but Marlowe breathed his
own imaginative spirit into the tragedy. Faustus is wearied with the
barren philosophy of the past. He is impatient to secure at once the
benefits of the New Learning, which seems to him to have all the
powers of magic. If he can immediately enjoy the fruits of such
knowledge, he says:--
"Had I as many souls as there be stars,
I'd give them all."
In order to acquire this knowledge and the resulting power for
twenty-four years, he sells his soul to Mephistopheles. Faustus then
proceeds to enjoy all that the new order of things promised. He
commands Homer to come from the realm of shades to sing his entrancing
songs. He summons Helen to appear before him in the morning of her
beauty. The apostrophe to her shows the vividness and exuberance of
his imagination:--
"Was this the face that launched a thousand ships
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.
* * * * *
Oh! thou art fairer than the evening air
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars."
Marlowe left a fragment of a lyrical poem, entitled _Hero and
Leander_, which is one of the finest productions of its kind in the
language. Shakespeare accorded him the unusual honor of quoting from
this poem.
In What Sense is Marlowe a Founder of the English Drama?--His
success with blank verse showed Shakespeare that this was the proper
versification for the drama. Before Marlowe, rime or prose had been
chiefly employed in writing plays. Sackville had used blank verse in
_Gorboduc_, but his verse and Marlowe's are as unlike as the movements
of the ox and the flight of the swallow. The sentences of _Gorboduc_
generally end with the line, and the accents usually fall in the same
place. Marlowe's blank verse shows great variety, and the major pause
frequently does not come at the end of the line.
Marlowe cast the dramatic unities to the wind. The action in _Dr.
Faustus_ occupies twenty-four years, and the scene changes from
country to country. He knew that he was speaking to a people whose
imaginations could accompany him and interpret what he uttered. The
other dramatists followed him in placing imaginative interpretation
above measurements by the foot rule of the intellect. Symonds says of
him: "It was he who irrevocably decided the destinies of the romantic
drama; and the whole subsequent evolution of that species, including
Shakespeare's work, can be regarded as the expansion, rectification,
and artistic ennoblement of the type fixed by Marlowe's epoch-making
tragedies. In very little more than fifty years from the publication
of _Tamburlaine_, our drama had run its course of unparalleled energy
and splendor."
_General Characteristics_.--As we sum up Marlowe's general qualities,
it is well to note that they exhibit in a striking way the
characteristics of the time. In the morning of that youthful age the
superlative was possible. _Tamburlaine_, _The Jew of Malta_, and _Dr.
Faustus_ show in the superlative degree the love of conquest, of
wealth, and of knowledge. Everything that Marlowe wrote is stamped
with a love of beauty and of the impossible.
Tamburlaine speaks like one of the young Elizabethans--
"That in conceit bear empires on our spears,
Affecting thoughts co-equal with the clouds."
Marlowe voices the new sense of worth of enfranchised man:--
"Thinkest thou heaven glorious thing?
I tell thee, 'tis not half so fair as thou,
Or any man that breathes on earth.
* * * * *
'Twas made for man, therefore is man more excellent."[17]
Marlowe's faults are the faults of youth and of his time. Exaggeration
and lack of restraint are shown in almost all his work. In
_Tamburlaine_, written when he was twenty-two, he is often bombastic.
He has hardly any sense of humor. He does not draw fine distinctions
between his characters.
On the other hand, using the words of Tamburlaine, we may say of all
his dramatic contemporaries, excepting Shakespeare--
"If all the heavenly quintessence they still
From their immortal flowers of poesy,"
were gathered into one vial, it could not surpass the odor from
patches of flowers in Marlowe's garden.
These seven lines represent better than pages of description the
aspiring spirit of the new Elizabethan Renaissance.
"Our souls whose faculties can comprehend
The wondrous architecture of the world,
And measure every wandering planet's course
Still climbing after knowledge infinite,
And always moving as the restless spheres,
Will us to wear ourselves and never rest
Until we reach the ripest fruit of all."[18]
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, 1564-1616
[Illustration: WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. _From the Chandos portrait in
the National Portrait Gallery_.]
Birthplace and Parents.--William Shakespeare, the greatest of the
world's writers, was born in Stratford-on-Avon, Warwickshire. The name
originally meant one skilled in wielding a spear. The first William
Shakespeare of whom mention is made in the records was hanged for
robbery near Stratford; but it is only fair to state that in those
days hanging was inflicted for stealing even a sheep.
[Illustration: SHAKESPEARE'S BIRTHPLACE, STRATFORD-ON-AVON.]
The great dramatist's birthplace lies in the midst of England's
fairest rural scenery. When two Englishmen were asked to name the
finest walk in England, one chose the walk from Stratford to Coventry,
the other, the walk from Coventry to Stratford. A short distance
northeast of Stratford are Warwick with its castle, the home of the
famous king-maker, and Kenilworth Castle, whose historic associations
were romantic enough to stir the imagination of a boy like
Shakespeare.
He was the son of John Shakespeare, an influential merchant, who in
1571 was elected chief alderman of Stratford. The poet's mother was
the daughter of Robert Arden, a well-to-do farmer. We are told that
she was her father's favorite among seven children. Perhaps it was due
to her influence that he had a happy childhood. His references to
plays and sports and his later desire to return to Stratford are
indicative of pleasant boyhood days.
Probably his mother was the original of some of her son's noblest
conceptions of women. His plays have more heroines than heroes. We may
fancy that it was his mother who first pointed out to him--
"...daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes."[19]
We may imagine that from her teaching, as she walked with him over the
Stratford fields, he obtained suggestions which enabled him to hold
captive the ear of the world, when he sang of the pearl in the
cowslip's ear, of the bank where the wild thyme blows, of the
greenwood tree and the merry note of the bird. Many of the references
to nature in his plays are unsurpassed in English verse.
[Illustration: CLASSROOM IN STRATFORD GRAMMAR SCHOOL[20].]
What He Learned at School.--In all probability Shakespeare entered
the Stratford Grammar School at about the age of seven and continued
there until he was nearly fourteen. The typical course in grammar
schools of that period consisted principally of various Latin authors.
One school in 1583 had twenty-five Latin books on its list of studies,
while the only required works in English were the _Catechism, Psalter,
Book of Common Prayer_, and _New Testament_. Children were required to
study Lilly's _Latin Grammar_ instead of their mother tongue. Among
the works that Shakespeare probably read in Latin, AEsop's _Fables_
and Ovid's _Metamorphoses_ may be mentioned.
Although English was not taught, Shakespeare shows wonderful mastery
in the use of his mother tongue. We have the testimony of the
schoolmaster, Holofernes, in _Love's Labor's Lost_ to show that the
study of Latin led to facility in the use of English synonyms:--
"The deer was, as you know, _sanguis_, in blood, ripe as the
pomewater, who now hangeth like a jewel in the ear of _caelo_, the
sky, the welkin, the heaven; and anon falleth like a crab on the
face of _terra_, the soil, the land, the earth."
Three English equivalents are here given for each of the Latin terms
_caelo_ and _terra_. The same schoolmaster uses seven synonyms in
describing the "fashion" of speech of the ignorant constable,
--"undressed, unpolished, uneducated, unpruned, untrained,
or, rather unlettered, or, ratherest, unconfirmed, fashion." When we
remember that it was really Shakespeare who wrote this, we know that
he had been led to study variety of expression. His large vocabulary
could not have been acquired by any one without hard work.
A good translation of the English _Bible_ was accessible to him.
Scriptural phrases and references appear in his plays, and volumes
have been written to show the influence of the _Bible_ on his thought.
Financial Reverses of the Shakespeare Family.--It is probable that
Shakespeare at about the age of fourteen was taken from school to
assist his father in the store. The elder Shakespeare was then
overtaken by financial reverses and compelled to mortgage his wife's
land. His affairs went from bad to worse; he was sued for debt, but
the court could not find any property to satisfy the claim. It is
possible that he was for a short time even imprisoned for debt.
Finally he was deprived of his alderman's gown.
These events must have made a deep impression on the sensitive boy,
and they may have led him to an early determination to try to master
fortune. In after years he showed a business sagacity very rare for a
poet.
Marriage and Departure from Stratford.--The most famous lovers' walk
in England is the footpath from Stratford, leading about one mile
westward through meadows to the hamlet of Shottery. Perhaps William
Shakespeare had this very walk in mind when he wrote the song:--
"Journeys end in lovers' meeting
Every wise man's son doth know."
[Illustration: ANNE HATHAWAY'S COTTAGE, SHOTTERY.]
The end of his walk led to Anne Hathaway's home in Shottery. She was
nearly eight years his senior, but in 1582 at the age of eighteen he
married her.
There is a record that Shakespeare's twin children, Hamnet and Judith,
were baptized in 1585. From this we know that before he was twenty-one
Shakespeare had a wife and family to support.
We have no positive information to tell us what he did for the next
seven years after the birth of his twins. Tradition says that he
joined a group of hunters, killed some of the deer of Sir Thomas Lucy
at Charlecote Park, and fled from Stratford to London in consequence
of threatened prosecution. There is reason to doubt the truth of this
story, and Shakespeare may have sought the metropolis merely because
it offered him more scope to provide for his rapidly increasing
family.
Connects Himself with the London Stage.--The next scene of
Shakespeare's life is laid in London. In 1592 Robert Greene, a London
poet, dramatist, and hack-writer, wrote:--
"There is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with
his _Tyger's heart wrapped in a Player's hide_, supposes he is as
well able to bumbast out a blank verse as the best of you; and being
an absolute _Iohannes fac-totum_, is in his owne conceit the only
Shake-scene in a countrie."[21]
The best critics agree that the "upstart Crow" and "Shake-scene" refer
to Shakespeare. The allusion to "Tyger's heart" is from the third part
of _King Henry VI_. and is addressed by the Duke of York to Queen
Margaret of Anjou:--
"O tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide!"
Greene's satiric thrust shows that Shakespeare was becoming popular as
a playwright. We can only imagine the steps by which he rose to his
ascendancy as a dramatist. Perhaps he first served the theater in some
menial capacity, then became an actor, and assisted others in revising
or adapting plays before he acquired sufficient skill to write a play
entirely by himself.
In 1593 he published the non-dramatic poem, _Venus and Adonis_, which
he dedicated to the Earl of Southampton. This nobleman is said to have
given Shakespeare, on one occasion, "a thousand pounds to enable him
to make a purchase which he heard he had a mind to." This would show
that Shakespeare had a capacity for attracting people and making
lasting friendships. In 1597 he purchased "New Place," the stateliest
house in Stratford, and we hear no more of his father's financial
troubles.
Twentieth-century Discoveries.--In the first decade of the twentieth
century, Professor C.W. Wallace discovered in the London Record Office
a romantic story in which Shakespeare was an important figure. This
story opens in the year 1598 in the London house of a French Huguenot,
Christopher Mountjoy, wig-maker, with whom Shakespeare lived. Mountjoy
took as apprentice for six years, Stephen Bellott, a young Frenchman.
Beside him worked Mary Mountjoy, the proprietor's only daughter, who
looked with favor upon the young apprentice. At the end of his
apprenticeship Stephen left without proposing marriage to Mary; but on
his return Mrs. Mountjoy asked Shakespeare to make a match between
Stephen and Mary,--a task in which he was successful.
Seven and a half years later Shakespeare was called into court to
testify to all the facts leading to the marriage. After a family
quarrel, Mr. Mountjoy declared that he would never leave Stephen and
Mary a groat, and the son-in-law brought suit for a dowry.
Shakespeare's testimony shows that he remembered Mrs. Mountjoy's
commission and the part that he played in mating the pair, but he
forgot the amount of the dowry and when it was to be paid. The puzzled
court turned the matter over for settlement to the French church in
London, but it is not known what decision was reached.
The documents in the case show that Shakespeare was on familiar terms
with tradesmen, that they thought well of him, that he was willing to
undertake to try to make two people happy, and that he lived in the
Mountjoy house at the corner of Silver and Monkwell streets. During
the period of Stephen's apprenticeship (1598-1604), Shakespeare wrote
some of his greatest plays, such as _Hamlet_ and _Othello_. From its
connection with Shakespeare, this is the most important corner in
London for literary associations.
Wallace also found documents showing that Shakespeare owned at the
time of his death a one-seventh interest in the Blackfriars Theater
and a one-fourteenth interest in the Globe. The hitherto unknown fact
that he continued to hold to the end of his life these important
interests, requiring such skilled supervision, makes more doubtful the
former assumption that he spent the last years of his life entirely at
Stratford.
Last Years and Death.--Shakespeare probably bought New Place in
Stratford as a residence for his family and a retreat for himself out
of the theatrical season, but he doubtless continued to live in London
for the greater part of his time until a few years before his death in
1616. The Mountjoy testimony proves that he was in London in May,
1612.
We are positive, however, that he was living in Stratford at the time
of his death. He may for several years have taken only occasional
trips to London to look after his interests in his theaters. It is not
improbable that his health forced him to retire to Stratford, for it
is difficult to see how any one could have produced nearly two
Shakespearean plays a year for almost twenty years without breaking
down under the strain. He had in addition almost certainly helped to
manage the production of the plays, and tradition says that he was
also an actor. Some of the parts which he is said to have played are
the ghost in _Hamlet_, Adam in _As You Like It_, and Old Knowell in
Ben Jonson's _Every Man in his Humor_.
[Illustration: STRATFORD-ON-AVON, SHOWING CHURCH WHERE SHAKESPEARE IS
BURIED.]
In 1616, at the age of fifty-two, this master-singer of the world,
who, in De Quincey's phrase, was "a little lower than the angels,"
died and was buried in the parish church at Stratford. Shakespeare
knew that in the course of time graves were often opened and the bones
thrown into the charnel house. The world is thankful that he
deliberately planned to have his resting place remain unmolested. His
grave was dug seventeen feet deep and over it was placed the following
inscription, intended to frighten those who might think of moving his
bones:--
[Illustration: INSCRIPTION OVER SHAKESPEARE'S TOMB.]
Publication of his Plays.--It is probable that Shakespeare himself
published only two early poems. Sixteen of his plays appeared in print
during his lifetime; but the chances are that they were taken either
from notes or from stage copies, more or less imperfect and
surreptitiously obtained. The twentieth century has seen one of these
careless reprints of a single play sell for more than three times as
much as it cost to build a leading Elizabethan theater.[22] If
Shakespeare himself had seen to the publication of his plays,
succeeding generations would have been saved much trouble in puzzling
over obscurities due to an imperfect text. We must remember, however,
that publishing a play was thought to injure its success on the stage.
One manager offered a printer a sum now equal to $100 not to publish a
copy of a play that he had secured.
The _First Folio_ edition of Shakespeare's works was published in
1623, seven years after his death, by two of his friends, John Heming
and Henry Condell. In their dedication of the plays they say:--
"We have but collected them and done an office to the dead ...
without ambition either of self profit or fame, only to keep the
memory of so worthy a friend and fellow alive, as was our
Shakespeare, by humble offer of his plays."
If Shakespeare had not possessed the art of making friends, we might
to-day be without such plays as _Twelfth Night, As You Like It, The
Winter's Tale, Cymbeline, The Tempest, Julius Caesar, Antony and
Cleopatra, and Macbeth_. These were printed for the first time in the
1623 _Folio_.
Amount and Classification of his Work.--The _First Folio_ edition
contained thirty-five plays, containing 100,120 lines. The Globe
edition, one of the best modern texts of Shakespeare, has thirty-seven
plays. Even if we give him no credit for the unknown dramas which he
assisted in fashioning, and if we further deduct all doubtful plays
from this number, the amount of dramatic work of which he is certainly
the author is only less astonishing than its excellence. His
non-dramatic poetry, comprising _Venus and Adonis, Lucrece_, 154
_Sonnets_, and some other short pieces, amounts to more than half as
many lines as Milton's _Paradise Lost_.
Mere genius without wonderful self-control and a well-ordered use of
time would not have enabled Shakespeare to leave such a legacy to the
world. The pressure for fresh plays to meet exigencies is sufficient
to explain why he did not always do his best work, even if we suppose
that his health was never "out of joint."
The _First Folio_ gives the current contemporary classification of the
plays into "Comedies," "Histories," and "Tragedies." We indicate the
following as some of the best in each class:--
Comedies: _A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, Twelfth Night,
The Merchant of Venice, The Winter's Tale_, and _The Tempest_.
Histories: _Richard III., Henry IV., Henry V., Julius Caesar_.
Tragedies: _Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear, Othello, Romeo and Juliet_.
Four Periods of his Life.--We may make another classification from a
different point of view, according to the period of his development at
the time of writing special plays. In order to study his growth and
changing ideals, it will assist us to divide his work into four
periods.
(1) There was the sanguine period, showing the exuberance of youthful
love and imagination. Among the plays that are typical of these years
are _The Comedy of Errors, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and
Juliet, Richard II._, and _Richard III_. These were probably all
composed before 1595.
(2) The second period, from 1595 to 1601, shows progress in dramatic
art. There is less exaggeration, more real power, and a deeper insight
into human nature. There appears in his philosophy a vein of sadness,
such as we find in the sayings of Jaques in _As You Like It_, and more
appreciation of the growth of character, typified by his treatment of
Orlando and Adam in the same play. Among the plays of this period are
_The Merchant of Venice, Henry IV., Henry V.,_ and _As You Like It_.
(3) We may characterize the third period, from 1601 to 1608, as one in
which he felt that the time was out of joint, that life was a fitful
fever. His father died in 1601, after great disappointments. His best
friends suffered what he calls, in _Hamlet,_ "the slings and arrows of
outrageous fortune." In 1601 Elizabeth executed the Earl of Essex for
treason, and on the same charge threw the Earl of Southampton into the
Tower. Even Shakespeare himself may have been suspected. The great
plays of this period are tragedies, among which we may instance
_Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth,_ and _King Lear_.
(4) The plays of his fourth period, 1608-1613, are remarkable for calm
strength and sweetness. The fierceness of _Othello_ and _Macbeth_ is
left behind. In 1608 Shakespeare's mother died. Her death and the
vivid recollection of her kindness and love may have been strong
factors in causing him to look on life with kindlier eyes. The
greatest plays of this period are _Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale_, and
_The Tempest_.
While the dates of the composition of these plays are not exactly
known, the foregoing classification is probably approximately correct.
It should be followed in studying the development and the changing
phases of Shakespeare's mind. (See table, pp. 188 and 189.)
Development as a Dramatist.--It is possible to study some of
Shakespeare's plays with increased interest, if we note the reasons
for assigning them to certain periods of his life. We conclude that
_Love's Labor's Lost_, for instance, is an early play, because of its
form,--excess of rime, small proportion of blank verse, lack of
mastery of poetic expression,--and also because it suffers from the
puns, conceits, and overdrawn wit and imagery of his early work.
Almost one half of the 2789 lines of _Love's Labor's Lost_ rime, while
there are only 579 lines of blank verse. Of the 2064 lines in _The
Tempest_, one of the last of his plays, 1458 are in blank verse. The
plays of his first period show less freedom in the use of verse. He
dislikes to let his meaning run over into the next line without a
pause, and he hesitates to introduce those extra syllables which give
such wonderful variety to his later work. As he grows older, he also
uses more prose. _Romeo and Juliet_ has 405 lines of prose in a total
of 3052 lines, while _Hamlet_, a tragedy of 3931 lines, has 1208 lines
of prose.
His treatment of his characters is even a more significant index to
his growth than the form of his dramas. In the earlier plays, his men
and women are more engaged with external forces than with internal
struggles. In as excellent an early tragedy as _Romeo and Juliet_, the
hero fights more with outside obstacles than with himself. In the
great later tragedies, the internal conflict is more emphasized, as in
the cases of Hamlet and Macbeth. "See thou character" became in an
increasing degree Shakespeare's watchword. He grew to care less for
mere incident, for plots based on mistaken identity, as in _The Comedy
of Errors_; but he became more and more interested in the delineation
of character, in showing the effect of evil on Macbeth and his wife,
of jealousy on Othello, of indecision on Hamlet, as well as in
exploring the ineffectual attempts of many of his characters to escape
the consequences of their acts.
Sources of his Plots.--We should have had fewer plays from
Shakespeare, if he had been compelled to take the time to invent new
plots. The sources of the plots of his plays may usually be found in
some old chronicle, novel, biography, or older play. Holinshed's
_Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland_, published when
Shakespeare was fourteen years old, gives the stories of Lear,
Cymbeline, Macbeth, and of all the English kings who are the heroes of
the historical plays. As Holinshed is very dry reading, if Shakespeare
had followed him closely, for instance, in _King Lear_, the play would
have lost its most impressive parts. There is not in Holinshed even a
suggestion of the Falstaff of _Henry IV_., that veritable "comic
Hamlet," who holds a unique place among the humorous characters of the
world.
North's translation of Plutarch's _Lives_, published when Shakespeare
was fifteen years old, became his textbook of ancient history and
furnished him the raw material for plays like _Julius Caesar_ and
_Antony and Cleopatra_.
TABLE OF SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS[23]
Play Total Prose Blank Penta- Rimes, Songs Publ- Supp-
of meter Short ished osed
Lines Rimes Lines Date
I.--PLAYS OF FIRST (RIMING) PERIOD
Love's Labor's 2789 1086 579 1028 54 32 1598 1588-9
Lost
Comedy of 1778 240 1150 380 --- --- 1623 1589-91
Errors [24]
Midsummer 2174 441 878 731 138 63 1600 1590-1
Night's Dream
Two Gentlemen 2294 409 1510 116 --- 15 1623 1590-2
of Verona
Romeo and 3052 405 2111 486 --- --- 1597 1591-3
Juliet
Richard II. 2756 --- 2107 537 --- --- 1597 ? 1593
Richard III. 3619 55? 3374 170 --- --- 1597 ? 1594-5
II.--HISTORIES AND COMEDIES OF SECOND PERIOD
King John 2570 --- 2403 150 --- --- 1623 1594-5
Merchant of 2660 673 1896 93 34 9 1600[24]? 1595-6
Venice
1 Henry IV. 3176 1464 1622 84 --- --- 1598 1596-7[25]
2 Henry IV. 3446 1860 1417 74 7 15 1600 1598-9
Henry V. 3380 1531 1678 101 2 8 1600 1599[25]
Merry Wives 3018 2703 227 69 --- 19 1602 1599
Much Ado, &c. 2826 2106 643 40 18 16 1600 1599-1600
As You Like It 2857 1681 925 71 130 97 1623 1599-1600[25]
Twelfth Night 2690 1741 763 120 --- 60 1623 1601[25]
All's Well 2966 1453 1234 280 2 12 1623 1601-2
(Love's Labor's Won, 1590)
III.--TRAGEDIES AND COMEDY OF THIRD PERIOD
Julius Caesar 2478 165 2241 34 --- --- 1623 1601[3]
Hamlet 3931 1208 2490 81 --- 60 1603[24]1602-3[25]
Measure for 2821 1134 1574 73 22 6 1623 ? 1603
Measure
Othello 3316 541 2672 86 --- 25 1622 ? 1604
Macbeth 2108 158 1588 118 129 --- 1623 1605-6[25]
King Lear 3334 903 2238 74 --- 83 1608[24]1605-6[25]
Antony and 3063 255 2761 42 --- 6 1623 1606-7
Cleopatra
Coriolanus 3410 829 2521 42 --- --- 1623 ? 1607-8
IV.--PLAYS OF FOURTH PERIOD
Tempest 2064 458 1458 2 --- 96 1623 1609-10
Cymbeline 3339 638 2585 107 --- 32 1623 1609-10
Winter's Tale 3075 844 1825 --- --- 57 1623 ? 1611
V.--DOUBTFUL PLAYS
Titus 2523 43 2338 144 --- --- 1594 1588-90
Andronicus
1 Henry VI. 2677 --- 2379 314 --- --- 1623 1592-4
2 Henry VI. 3162 448 2562 122 --- --- 1623 1592-4
3 Henry VI. 2904 --- 2749 155 --- --- 1623 1592-4
Contention 1952 381 1571 44 --- --- 1594 1586-8
True Tragedy 2101 --- 2035 66 --- --- 1595 1586-8
VI.--PLAYS IN WHICH SHAKESPEARE WAS NOT SOLE AUTHOR
Taming of the 2649 516 1971 169 15 --- 1623 1596-7
Shrew
Troilus and 3496 1186 2025 196 --- 16 1609 1603
Cressida
Timon of 2373 596 1560 184 18 --- 1623 1607-8
Athens
Pericles 2389 418 1436 225 89 --- 1609[23]1608-9[24]
Henry VIII. 2822 67? 2613 16 --- 12 1623 1610-12[24]
Poems published.--_Venus and Adonis_, 1593; _Lucrece_, 1594;
_Passionate Pilgrim_, 1599; _Phoenix and Turtle_ in Chester's _Loves
Martyr_, 1601; _Sonnets_, 1609, with _A Lover's Complaint_.
Shakespeare recognized the greatness of North's _Plutarch_ and paid it
the compliment of following its thought more closely than that of any
other of his sources.
Shakespeare found suggestions for _As You Like It_ in Thomas Lodge's
contemporary novel _Rosalynde_, but Touchstone and Adam are original
creations.
Our astonishment is often increased to find that the merest hint led
to an imperishable creation, such as the character of Lady Macbeth,
the reference to whom in Holinshed is confined to these twenty-eight
words, "...specially his wife lay sore upon him to attempt the thing,
as she that was very ambitious, burning in unquenchable desire to bear
the name of a queen." His plays are almost as different from the old
chronicles or tales as the rose from the soil which nourished it.
[Illustration: SHAKESPEARE--THE D'AVENANT BUST. _Discovered in 1845
on site of Duke's Theater_.]
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
Sympathy.---His most pronounced characteristic is the broadest
sympathy ever shown by an author. He seems to have been able to
sympathize with every kind of human soul in every emergency. He plays
with the simple rustics in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_. The portrait
of the serving man Adam, in _As You Like It_, is as kindly and as
discriminating as that of king or nobleman. Though he is the scholar
and philosopher in _Hamlet_, he can afterward roam the country with
the tramp Autolycus in _The Winter's Tale_. Women have marveled at the
ease with which his sympathy crosses the barriers of sex, at his
portraits of Portia, Rosalind, Desdemona, Lady Macbeth, Miranda,
Cleopatra, and Cordelia. Great actresses have testified to their
amazement at his discovery of feminine secrets which they had thought
no man could ever divine.
[Illustration: HENRY IRVING AS HAMLET.]
Universality.--Shakespeare's sympathy might have been broad enough
to include all the people of his own time and their peculiar
interests, but might have lacked the power to project itself into the
universal heart of humanity. Sometimes a writer voices the ideals and
aspirations of his own day so effectively that he is called the
spokesman of his age, but he makes slight appeal to future
generations. Shakespeare was the spokesman of his own time, but he had
the genius also to speak to all ages. He loved to present the eternal
truths of the human heart and to invest them with such a touch of
nature as to reveal the kinship of the entire world.
His contemporary, the dramatist, Ben Jonson, had the penetration to
say of Shakespeare:--
"He was not of an age but for all time."
He meant that Shakespeare does not exhibit some popular conceit,
folly, or phase of thought, which is merely the fashion of the hour
and for which succeeding generations would care nothing; but that he
voices those truths which appeal to the people of all ages. The grief
of Lear over the dead Cordelia, the ambition of Lady Macbeth, the
loves of Rosalind and Juliet, the questionings of Hamlet, interest us
as much today as they did the Elizabethans. Fashions in literature may
come and go, but Shakespeare's work remains.
[Illustration: ELLEN TERRY AS LADY MACBETH. _From the painting by
Sargent_.]
Humor.--Shakespeare had the most comprehensive sense of humor of any
of the world's great writers,--a humor that was closely related to his
sympathy. It has been said that he saved his tragedies from the fatal
disease of absurdity, by inoculating them with his comic virus, and
that his sense of humor kept him from ever becoming shrill. This
faculty enabled him to detect incongruity, to keep from overstressing
a situation, to enter into the personality of others, to recover
quickly from "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," and in one
of his last plays, _The Tempest_, to welcome the "brave young world"
as if he would like to play the game of life again. It was largely
because of his humor that the tragedies and pain of life did not sour
and subdue Shakespeare.
He soon wearies of a vacant laugh. He has only one strictly farcical
play, _The Comedy of Errors_. There are few intellects keen enough to
extract all the humor from Shakespeare. For literal minds the full
comprehension of even a slight display of his humor, such as the
following dialogue affords, is better exercise than the solution of an
algebraic problem. Dogberry, a constable in _Much Ado About Nothing_,
thus instructs the Watch:--
"_Dogberry_. You shall comprehend all vagrom men; you are to bid
any man stand in the prince's name.
"_Watch_. How if a' will not stand?
"_Dogberry_. Why, then, take no note of him, but let him go, and
presently call the rest of the watch together, and thank God you are
rid of a knave."
Of all Shakespeare's qualities, his humor is the hardest to describe
because of its protean forms. Falstaff is his greatest humorous
creation. So resourceful is he that even defeat enables him to rise
like Antaeus after a fall. His humor is almost a philosophy of
existence for those who love to use wit and ingenuity in trying to
evade the laws of sober, orderly living. Perhaps it was for this very
reason that Shakespeare consented to send so early to "Arthur's
bosom"[26] a character who had not a little of the complexity of
Hamlet.
[Illustration: FALSTAFF AND HIS PAGE. _From a drawing by B.
Westmacott_.]
Much of Shakespeare's humor is delicately suffused through his plays.
Many of them either ripple with the laughter of his characters or are
lighted with their smiles. We may pass pleasant hours in the company
of his joyous creations, such as Rosalind in _As You Like It_, or
Portia in _The Merchant of Venice_, or Puck as the spokesman for _A
Midsummer Night's Dream_, who good naturedly exclaims:--
"Lord, what fools these mortals be!"
or Viola and her companions in _Twelfth Night_, or Beatrice and
Benedict in _Much Ado About Nothing_, or Ariel in _The Tempest_
playing pranks on the bewildered mariners and singing of the joys of
life which come as a reward for service:--
"Merrily, merrily shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough."
Shakespeare is also the one English author who is equally successful
in depicting the highest type of both comedy and tragedy. He has the
power to describe even a deathbed scene so as to invest it with both
humor and pathos. Dame Quickly's lines in _Henry V_., on the death of
Falstaff, show this capacity.
The next greatest English writer is lacking in this sense of humor.
John Milton could write the tragedies of a _Paradise Lost_ and a
_Samson Agonistes_, but he could not give us the humor of _A Midsummer
Night's Dream_, _The Comedy of Errors_, or _As You Like It_. We have
seen that the next greatest dramatic genius, Marlowe, has little sense
of humor. Mrs. Browning correctly describes the plays of Shakespeare
as filled--
"With tears and laughters for all time."
Moral Ideals.--To show the moral consequences of acts was the work
which most appealed to him. Banquo voiced the comprehensiveness of
moral law when he said, "In the great hand of God I stand." There is
here great divergence between the views of Shakespeare and of Bacon.
Dowden says:--
"While Bacon's sense of the presence of physical law in the universe
was for his time extraordinarily developed, he seems practically to
have acted upon the theory that the moral laws of the world are not
inexorable, but rather by tactics and dexterity may be cleverly
evaded. Their supremacy was acknowledged by Shakespeare in the
minutest as well as in the greatest concerns of human life."
By employing "tactics" in sending Hamlet on a voyage to England, the
king hoped to avoid the consequences of his crime. Macbeth in vain
tried every stratagem to "trammel up the consequence." Goneril and
Regan drive their white-haired father out into the storm; but even in
_King Lear_, where the forces of evil seem to run riot, let us note
the result:--
"Throughout that stupendous Third Act the good are seen growing
better through suffering, and the bad worse through success. The
warm castle is a room in hell, the storm-swept heath a sanctuary...
The only real thing in the world is the soul with its courage,
patience, devotion. And nothing outward can touch that."[27]
Shakespeare makes no pessimists. He shows how misfortune crowns life
with new moral glory. We rise from the gloom of _King Lear_, feeling
that we would rather be like Cordelia than like either of her sisters
or any other selfish character who apparently triumphs until life's
close. And yet Cordelia lost everything, her portion of her father's
kingdom and her own life. When we realize that Shakespeare found one
hundred and ten lines in _King Lear_ sufficient not only to confer
immortality on Cordelia, but also to make us all eager to pay homage
to her, in spite of the fact that the ordinary standard of the world
has not ceased to declare such a life a failure, we may the better
understand that his greatest power consisted in revealing the moral
victories possible for this rough-hewn human life.
Shakespeare made a mistake about the seacoast of Bohemia and the
location of Milan with reference to the sea, but he was always sure of
the relative position of right and wrong and of the ultimate failure
of evil. In his greatest plays, for instance, in _Macbeth_, he sought
to impress the incalculable danger of meddling with evil, the
impossibility of forecasting the tragedy that might thereby result,
the certainty that retribution would follow, either here or beyond
"this bank and shoal of time."
Mastery of his Mother Tongue.--His wealth of expression is another
striking characteristic. In a poem on Shakespeare, Ben Jonson wrote:--
"Thou had'st small Latin and less Greek."
Shakespeare is, however, the mightiest master of the English tongue.
He uses 15,000 different words, while the second greatest writer in
our language employs only 7000. A great novelist like Thackeray has a
vocabulary of about 5000 words, while many uneducated laborers do not
use over 600 words. The combinations that Shakespeare has made with
these 15,000 words are far more striking than their mere number.
Variety of Style.--The style of Milton, Addison, Dr. Johnson, and
Macaulay has some definite peculiarities, which can easily be
classified. Shakespeare, on the contrary, in holding the mirror up to
nature, has different styles for his sailors, soldiers, courtiers,
kings, and shepherds,--for Juliet, the lover; for Mistress Quickly,
the alewife; for Hamlet, the philosopher; and for Bottom, the weaver.
To employ so many styles requires genius of a peculiar kind. In the
case of most of us, our style would soon betray our individuality.
When Dr. Samuel Johnson tried to write a drama, he made all his little
fishes talk like whales, as Goldsmith wittily remarked.
In the same play Shakespeare's style varies from the dainty lyric
touch of Ariel's song about the cowslip's bell and the blossoming
bough, to a style unsurpassed for grandeur:--
"The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind."
In the same passage his note immediately changes to the soft _vox
humana_ of--
"We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."
His Influence on Thought.--With the exception of the _Scriptures_,
Shakespeare's dramas have surpassed all other works in molding modern
English thought. If a person should master Shakespeare and the
_Bible_, he would find most that is greatest in human thought, outside
of the realm of science.
Even when we do not read him, we cannot escape the influence of others
who have been swayed by him. For generations, certain modes of thought
have crystallized about his phrases. We may instance such expressions
as these: "Brevity is the soul of wit." "What's in a name?" "The wish
was father to the thought." "The time is out of joint." "There's the
rub." "There's a divinity that shapes our ends." "Comparisons are
odorous." It would, perhaps, not be too much to say that the play of
_Hamlet_ has affected the thought of the majority of the
English-speaking race. His grip on Anglo-Saxon thought has been
increasing for more than three hundred years.
Shakespeare's influence on the thought of any individual has only two
circumscribing factors,--the extent of Shakespearean study and the
capacity of interpreting the facts of life. No intelligent person can
study Shakespeare without becoming a deeper and more varied thinker,
without securing a broader comprehension of human existence,--its
struggles, failures, and successes. If we have before viewed humanity
through a glass darkly, Shakespeare will gradually lead us where we
can see face to face the beauty and the grandeur of the mystery of
existence. His most valuable influence often consists in rendering his
students sympathetic and in making them feel a sense of kinship with
life. Shakespeare's readers more quickly realize that human nature
shows the shaping touch of divinity. They have the rare joy of
discovering the world anew and of exclaiming with Miranda:--
"How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't!"[28]
When we have really become acquainted with Shakespeare, our lives will
be less prosaic and restricted. After intimate companionship with him,
there will be, in the words of Ariel, hardly any common thing in
life--
"But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange."[29]
BEN JONSON, 1573?-1637
[Illustration: BEN JONSON. _From the portrait by Gerard Honthorst,
National Portrait Gallery_.]
Life.--About nine years after the birth of Shakespeare his greatest
successor in the English drama was born in London. Jonson outlived
Shakespeare twenty-one years and helped to usher in the decline of the
drama.
Ben Jonson, the son of a clergyman and the stepson of a master
bricklayer, received a good education at Westminster School. Unlike
Shakespeare, Jonson learned much Latin and Greek. In one respect
Jonson's training was unfortunate for a poet. He was taught to write
prose exercises first and then to turn them into poetry. In this way
he acquired the habit of trying to express unpoetical ideas in verse.
Art could change the prose into metrical riming lines, but art could
not breathe into them the living soul of poetry. In after times Jonson
said that Shakespeare lacked art, but Jonson recognized that the
author of _Hamlet_ had the magic touch of nature. Jonson's pen rarely
felt her all-embracing touch.
If Jonson served an apprenticeship as a bricklayer, as his enemies
afterward said, he did not continue long at such work. He crossed the
Channel and enlisted for a brief time as a soldier in the Netherlands.
He soon returned to London and became a writer for the theater, and
thenceforth lived the life of an author and a student. He loved to
study and translate the classics. In fact, what a novice might think
original in Jonson's plays was often borrowed from the classics. Of
his relations to the classical writers, Dryden says, "You track him
everywhere in their snow." Jonson was known as the most learned poet
of the age, because, if his plays demanded any special knowledge, no
subject was too hard, dry, or remote from common life for him to
attempt to master it. He knew the boundaries of Bohemia, and he took
pleasure in saying to a friend: "Shakespeare in a play brought in a
number of men saying they had suffered shipwreck in Bohemia, where is
no sea near, by some hundred miles."
Jonson's personal characteristics partly explain why he placed himself
in opposition to the spirit of the age. He was extremely combative. It
was almost a necessity for him to quarrel with some person or with
some opinion. He killed two men in duels, and he would probably have
been hanged, if he had not pleaded benefit of clergy. For the greater
part of his life, he was often occupied with pen and ink quarrels.
When James I. ascended the throne in 1603, Jonson soon became a royal
favorite. He was often employed to write masques, a peculiar species
of drama which called for magnificent scenery and dress, and gave the
nobility the opportunity of acting the part of some distinguished or
supernatural character. Such work brought Jonson into intimate
association with the leading men of the day.
It is pleasant to think that he was a friend of Shakespeare. Jonson's
pithy volume of prose, known as _Discoveries made upon Men and
Matter_, contains his famous criticism on Shakespeare, noteworthy
because it shows how a great contemporary regarded him, "I loved the
man and do honor his memory on this side idolatry as much as any." Few
English writers have received from a great rival author such
convincing testimony in regard to lovable personality.
[Illustration: BEN JONSON'S TOMB IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY.]
In 1616, the year in which Shakespeare died, Jonson was made poet
laureate. When he died in 1637, he was buried in an upright position
in Westminster Abbey. A plain stone with the unique inscription, "O
Rare Ben Jonson," marks his grave.
Plays.--Ben Jonson's comedies are his best dramatic work. From all
his plays we may select three that will best repay reading: _Volpone,
The Alchemist_, and _The Silent Woman_. _Volpone_ is the story of an
old, childless, Venetian nobleman whose ruling passion is avarice.
Everything else in the play is made tributary to this passion. The
first three lines in the first act strike the keynote of the entire
play. Volpone says:--
"Good morning to the day; and next, my gold!--
Open the shrine, that I may see my saint.
Hail the world's soul and mine!"
_The Alchemist_ makes a strong presentation of certain forms of
credulity in human nature and of the special tricks which the
alchemists and impostors of that day adopted. One character wants to
buy the secret of the helpful influence of the stars; another parts
with his wealth to learn the alchemist's secret of turning everything
into gold and jewels. The way in which these characters are deceived
is very amusing. A study of this play adds to our knowledge of a
certain phase of the times. In point of artistic construction of plot,
_The Alchemist_ is nowhere excelled in the English drama; but the
intrusion of Jonson's learning often makes the play tedious reading,
as when he introduces the technical terms of the so-called science of
alchemy to show that he has studied it thoroughly. One character
speaks to the alchemist of--
"Your lato, azoch, zernich, chibrit, heautarit,"
and another asks:--
"Can you sublime and dulcify? calcine?
Know you the sapor pontic? sapor stiptic,
Or what is homogene, or heterogene?"
Lines like the following show that Jonson's acute mind had grasped
something of the principle of evolution:--
"...'twere absurd
To think that nature in the earth bred gold
Perfect in the instant: something went before.
There must be remote matter."
_The Silent Woman_ is in lighter vein than either of the plays just
mentioned. The leading character is called Morose, and his special
whim or "humor" is a horror of noise. His home is on a street "so
narrow at both ends that it will receive no coaches nor carts, nor any
of these common noises." He has mattresses on the stairs, and he
dismisses the footman for wearing squeaking shoes. For a long time
Morose does not marry, fearing the noise of a wife's tongue. Finally
he commissions his nephew to find him a silent woman for a wife, and
the author uses to good advantage the opportunity for comic situations
which this turn in the action affords. Dryden preferred _The Silent
Woman_ to any of the other plays.
Besides the plays mentioned in this section, Jonson wrote during his
long life many other comedies and masques as well as some tragedies.
Marks of Decline.--A study of the decline of the drama, as shown in
Jonson's plays, will give us a better appreciation of the genius of
Shakespeare. We may change Jonson's line so that it will state one
reason for his not maintaining Shakespearean excellence:--
"He was not for all time, but of an age."
His first play, _Every Man in his Humor_, paints, not the universal
emotions of men, but some special humor. He thus defines the sense in
which he uses humor:--
"As when some one peculiar quality
Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw
All his affects, his spirits and his powers,
In their confluctions, all to run one way,
This may be truly said to be a Humor."
Unlike Shakespeare, Jonson gives a distorted or incomplete picture of
life. In _Volpone_ everything is subsidiary to the humor of avarice,
which receives unnatural emphasis. In _The Alchemist_ there is little
to relieve the picture of credibility and hypocrisy, while _The Silent
Woman_ has for its leading character a man whose principal "humor" or
aim in life is to avoid noise.
No drama which fails to paint the nobler side of womanhood can be
called complete. In Jonson's plays we do not find a single woman
worthy to come near the Shakespearean characters, Cordelia, Imogen,
and Desdemona. His limitations are nowhere more marked than in his
inability to portray a noble woman.
Another reason why he fails to present life completely is shown in
these lines, in which he defines his mission:--
"My strict hand
Was made to seize on vice, and with a gripe
Squeeze out the humor of such spongy souls
As lick up every idle vanity."
Since the world needs building up rather than tearing down, a remedy
for an ailment rather than fault-finding, the greatest of men cannot
be mere satirists. Shakespeare displays some fellow feeling for the
object of his satire, but Jonson's satire is cold and devoid of
sympathy.
Jonson deliberately took his stand in opposition to the romantic
spirit of the age. Marlowe and Shakespeare had disregarded the
classical unities and had developed the drama on romantic lines.
Jonson resolved to follow classical traditions and to adhere to unity
of time and place in the construction of his plots. The action in the
play of _The Silent Woman_, for instance, occupies only twelve hours.
General Characteristics.--Jonson's plays show the touch of a
conscientious artist with great intellectual ability. His vast
erudition is constantly apparent. He is the satiric historian of his
time, and he exhibits the follies and the humors of the age under a
powerful lens. He is also the author of dainty lyrics, and forcible
prose criticism.
Among the shortcomings of his plays, we may specially note lack of
feeling and of universality. He fails to comprehend the nature of
woman. He is not a sympathetic observer of manifold life, but presents
only what is perceived through the frosted glass of intellect. His art
is self-conscious. He defiantly opposed the romantic spirit of the age
and weakened the drama by making it bear the burden of the classical
unities.
MINOR DRAMATISTS
Beaumont and Fletcher.--Next to Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Ben
Jonson, the two most influential dramatists were Francis Beaumont
(1584-1616) and John Fletcher (1579-1625). They are usually mentioned
together because they collaborated in writing plays. Fletcher had the
great advantage of working with Shakespeare in producing _Henry VIII_.
Beaumont died nine years before Fletcher, and it is doubtful whether
he collaborated with Fletcher in more than fifteen of the fifty plays
published under their joint names.
Two of their greatest plays, _Philaster_ and _The Maid's Tragedy_, are
probably their joint production. _The Faithful Shepherdess_ and
_Bonduca_ are among the best of about eighteen plays supposed to have
been written by Fletcher alone. After Beaumont's death, Fletcher
sometimes collaborated with other dramatists.
[Illustration: FRANCIS BEAUMONT.]
Almost all the so-called Beaumont and Fletcher plays are well
constructed. These dramatists also have, in common with the majority
of their associates, the ability to produce occasional passages of
exquisite poetry. A character in _Philaster_ speaks of death in lines
that suggest _Hamlet_:--
"'Tis less than to be born; a lasting sleep,
A quiet resting from all jealousy;
A thing we all pursue; I know besides
It is but giving over of a game
That must be lost."
Beaumont and Fletcher's work is noteworthy for its pictures of
contemporary life and manners, for wealth of incident, rapidity of
movement, and variety of characters.
Not long after the beginning of the seventeenth century there was a
change in the taste of the patrons of the theater. Shakespeare
declined in popularity. The playwrights tried to solve the problem of
interesting audiences that wished only to be entertained. This attempt
led to a change in dramatic methods.
Changed Moral Ideals.--Under Elizabeth's successors the Puritan
spirit increased and the most religious part of the community seldom
attended the theater. The later dramatists pay little attention to the
moral development of character and its self-revelation through action.
They often merely describe character and paint it from the outside. We
have seen that Shakespeare's great plays are almost a demonstration in
moral geometry, but Beaumont and Fletcher are not much concerned over
the moral consequences of an action. The gravest charge against them
is that they "unknit the sequence of moral cause and effect." After
reading such plays, we do not rise with the feeling that there is a
divinity that shapes our ends.
[Illustration: JOHN FLETCHER.]
Coleridge says, "Shakespeare never renders that amiable which religion
and reason alike teach us to detest, or clothes impurity in the garb
of virtue, like Beaumont and Fletcher." Much of the work of their
contemporary dramatists is marred by such blemishes. Unpleasant as are
numbers of these plays, they are less insidious than many which have
appeared on the stage in modern times.
Love of Surprises.--The dramatists racked their inventive powers to
introduce surprises to interest the audience. Here was a marked
departure from Shakespeare's later method. He plans _Macbeth_ so as to
have his audience forecast the logical result. Consequences of the
most tremendous import, beside which Beaumont and Fletcher's surprises
seem trivial, follow naturally from Macbeth's actions. In his greatest
plays, Shakespeare, unlike the later dramatists, never relies on
illogical surprises to sustain the interest. The witch queen in one of
the plays of Thomas Middleton (1570-1627) suddenly exclaims:--
"...fetch three ounces of the red-haired girl
I kill'd last midnight."
Shakespeare's witches suggest only enough of the weird and the
horrible to transfix the attention and make the beholder realize the
force of the temptation that assails Macbeth. Charles Lamb truly
observes that Middleton's witches "can harm the body," but
Shakespeare's "have power over the soul."
Middleton could, however, write a passage like the following, which
probably suggested to Milton one of the finest lines in _Lycidas_:--
"Upon those lips, the sweet fresh buds of youth,
The holy dew of prayer lies, like pearl
Dropt from the opening eyelids of the morn
Upon a bashful rose."
Large Number of Playwrights.--Beaumont and Fletcher were only two of
a large number of dramatists who were born in the age of Elizabeth,
and who, with few exceptions, lived into the second quarter of the
seventeenth century. Their work was the result of earlier Elizabethan
impulses, and it is rightly considered a part of the great dramatic
movement of the Elizabethan age. The popularity of the drama continued
to attract many authors who in a different age might have produced
other forms of literature.
George Chapman (1559?-1634), who is best known for his fine
translation of Homer's _Iliad_, turned dramatist in middle life, but
found it difficult to enter into the feelings of characters unlike
himself. His best two plays, _Bussy D'Ambois_ and _The Revenge of
Bussy D'Ambois_, are tragedies founded on French history. Thomas
Middleton, gifted in dramatic technique and dialogue and noted for
his comedy of domestic manners, was the author of _Michaelmas Term_,
_A Trick to Catch the Old One_, _The Changeling_ (in collaboration
with William Rowley, 1585?-1640?). John Marston (1576?-1634) wrote
_Antonio and Mellida_, a blood and thunder tragedy, and collaborated
with Jonson and Chapman to produce _Eastward Hoe_, an excellent comic
picture of contemporary life. _The Shoemaker's Holiday_ of Thomas
Dekker (1570?-1640) is also a good comedy of London life and manners.
Philip Massinger (1584-1640), a later collaborator with Fletcher,
wrote _A New Way to Pay Old Debts_, a play very popular in after
times. Thomas Heywood (1572?-1650), one of the most prolific
dramatists, claimed to have had "either an entire hand or at the least
a main finger," in two hundred and twenty plays. His best work is _A
Woman Killed with Kindness_, a domestic drama that appealed to the
middle classes.
A Tragic Group.--Three dramatists: John Webster (1602-1624),
Cyril Tourneur (1575?-1626), and John Ford (1586-1640?), had a
love for the most somber tragedy. In tragic power, Webster approaches
nearest to Shakespeare. Webster's greatest play, _The Duchess of
Malfi_ (acted in 1616), and _The White Devil_, which ranks second,
show the working of a master hand, but Webster's genius comes to a
focus only in depicting the horrible. He loves such gloomy metaphors
as the following:--
"You speak as if a man
Should know what fowl is _coffined_ in a baked meat
Afore you cut it open."
Tourneur's _The Atheist's Tragedy_ is in Webster's vein, but far
inferior to _The Duchess of Malfi_.
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
coarse 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
antitheses, 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 classic stage. Marlowe and Shakespeare threw
off the restraints of the classical 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 amusement, 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 classical
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.
Schelling'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]
Schelling'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 Associates_.
Dowden's _Transcripts and Studies_ (Marlowe).
Symonds's _Ben Jonson_.
Swinburne's _A Study of Ben Jonson_.
Shakespeare
Lee's _A Life of William Shakespeare_.
Furnivall and Munro's _Shakespeare: Life and Work_.
Harris's _The Man Shakespeare and his Tragic Life Story_.
Halliwell-Phillipps's _Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare_.
Raleigh's _Shakespeare_.(E.M.L.)
Baker's _The Development of Shakespeare as a Dramatist_.
MacCracken, Pierce, and Durham's _An Introduction to Shakespeare_.
Bradley's _Shakespearean Tragedy_ (excellent).
Bradley's _Oxford Lectures on Poetry_.
Dowden's _Shakespeare, His Mind and Art_.
Coleridge's _Lectures on Shakespeare_ (pp. 21-58 of Beers's
_Selections from the Prose writings of Coleridge_).
Lowell's _Shakespeare Once More_, in _Among My Books_.
Wallace's _Shakespeare, the Globe, and Blackfriars_.
_How Shakespeare's Senses were Trained_, Chap. X. in Halleck's
_Education of the Central Nervous System_.
Rolfe's _Shakespeare the Boy_.
Boswell-Stone's _Shakespeare's Holinshed_.
Brooke's _Shakespeare's Plutarch_, 2 vols.
Madden's _The Diary of Master William Silence: A Study of Shakespeare
and of Elizabethan Sport_.
Winter's _Shakespeare on the Stage_.
SUGGESTED READINGS WITH QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
Elizabethan Prose.--Good selections from Ascham, Hakluyt, Raleigh,
Holinshed, Stow, Camden, North, Sidney, Foxe, Hooker, Lyly, Greene,
Lodge, and Nashe are given in Craik, I.[31] Chambers, I. and Manly,
II. also give a number of selections. Deloney's _The Gentle Craft_ may
be found in the Clarendon Press edition of his _Works_. For Bacon, see
Craik, II.
These selections will give the student a broader grasp of the
Elizabethan age. The style and subject matter of Lyly's _Euphues_,
Sidney's _Arcadia_, Hooker's _Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity_,
and Bacon's _Essays_ should be specially noted. Which one of these
authors exerted the strongest influence on his own age? Which one
makes the strongest appeal to modern times? In what respects does the
style of any Elizabethan prose writer show an improvement over that of
Mandeville and Malory?
Lyrics.--For specimens of love sonnets, read Nos. 18, 33, 73, 104,
111, and 116 of Shakespeare's _Sonnets_. Compare them with any of
Sidney's Spenser's sonnets. Other love lyrics which should be read are
Spenser's _Prothalamion_, Lodge's _Love in My Bosom Like a Bee_ and
Ben Jonson's _To Celia_. Among pastoral lyrics, read from Spenser's
_Shepherd's Calendar_ for August, 1579, Perigo and Willie's duet,
beginning:--
"It fell upon a holy eve,"
and Marlowe's _The Passionate Shepherd to His Love_. The best pastoral
lyrics from the modern point of view are Shakespeare's two songs:
"Under the Greenwood Tree" (_As you like it_) and "When Icicles Hang
by the Wall" (_Love's Labor's Lost_). The best miscellaneous lyrics
are the songs in Shakespeare's _Cymbeline_, _The Tempest_, and _As You
Like It_. Drayton's _Ballad of Agincourt_ and _Sonnet 61_ are his best
lyrical verse. Read Ben Jonson's _An Epitaph on Salathiel Pavy_ and,
from his Pindaric Ode, the stanza beginning:--
"It is not growing like a tree."
From John Donne, read either _The Funeral_, _The Canonization_, or
_The Dream_.
Good selections from all varieties of Elizabethan lyrics may be found
in Bronson, II., Ward. I., _Oxford, Century_, Manly, I. Nearly all the
lyrics referred to in this list, including the best songs from the
dramatists, are given in Schelling's _Elizabethan Lyrics_ (327 pp., 75
cents). This work, together with Erskine's _The Elizabethan Lyric_ and
Reed's _English Lyrical Poetry from its Origins to the Present Time_,
will serve for a more exhaustive study of this fascinating subject.
From your reading, select from each class the lyric that pleases you
most, and give reasons for your choice. Which lyric seems the most
spontaneous? the most artistic? the most inspired? the most modern?
the most quaint? the most and the least instinct with feeling?
Edmund Spenser.--The _Faerie Queene_, Book I., Canto I., should be
read. Maynard's _English Classic Series_, No. 27 (12 cents) contains
the first two cantos and the _Prothalamion_. Kitchin's edition of Book
I. (Clarendon Press. 60 cents) is an excellent volume. The Globe
edition furnishes a good complete text of Spenser's work. Ample
selections are given in Bronson, II., Ward, I., and briefer ones in
Manly, I., and _Century_.
THE DRAMA
The Best Volumes of Selections.--The least expensive volume to cover
nearly the entire field with brief selections is Vol. II. of _The
Oxford Treasury of English Literature_, entitled _Growth of the Drama_
(Clarendon Press, 412 pp., 90 cents). Pollard's _English Miracle
Plays, Moralities, and Interludes_ (Clarendon Press, 250 pp., $1.90)
is the best single volume of selections from this branch of the drama.
_Everyman and Other Miracle Plays_ (Everyman's Library, 35 cents) is a
good inexpensive volume. Manly's' _Specimens of the Pre-Shakespearean
Drama_ (three volumes, $1.25 each) covers this field more fully.
Morley's _English Plays_ (published as Vol. III. of Cassell's _Library
of English Literature_, at eleven and one half shillings) contains
good selections from nearly all the plays mentioned below, except
those by Shakespeare and Jonson. Williams's _Specimens of the
Elizabethan Drama, from Lyly to Shirley_, 1580-1642 (Clarendon Press,
576 pp., $1.90) is excellent for a comprehensive survey of the field
covered. Lamb's _Specimens of English Poets Who Lived about the Time
of Shakespeare_ (Bohn's Library, 552 pp.) contains a large number of
good selections.
Miracle Plays.--Read the Chester Play of _Noah's Flood_,
Pollard,[32] 8-20, and the Towneley _Play of the Shepherds_, Pollard,
31-43; Manly's _Specimens_, I, 94-119; Morley's _English Plays_,
12-18. These two plays best show the germs of English comedy.
Moralities.--The best _Morality_ is that known as _Everyman_,
Pollard, 76-96; also in _Everyman's Library_. If _Everyman_ is not
accessible, _Hycke-Scorner_ may be substituted, Morley; 12-18; Manly's
_Specimens_, I., 386-420.
Court Plays, Early Comedies, and Gorboduc.--The best _Interlude_ is
_The Four P's_. Adequate selections are given in Morley, 18-20, and in
Symonds's Shakespeare's _Predecessors in the English Drama_, 188-201.
Pollard and Manly give several good selections from other
_Interludes_.
_Ralph Royster Doyster_ may be found in Arber's _Reprints_; in
Morley's _English Plays_, pp. 22-46; in Manly's _Specimens_, II.,
5-92; in _Oxford Treasury_, II., 161-174, and in _Temple Dramatists_
(35 cents).
_Gorboduc_ is given in _Oxford Treasury_, II. pp., 40-54 (selections);
Morley's _English Plays_, pp. 51-64; and, under the title of _Ferrex
and Porrex_, in Dodsley's _Old Plays_.
What were some of the purposes for which _Interludes_ were written?
How did they aid in the development of the drama?
In what different forms are _The Four-P's, Ralph Royster Doyster_, and
_Gorboduc_ written? Why would Shakespeare's plays have been impossible
if the evolution of the drama had stopped with _Gorboduc_?
Pre-Shakespearean Dramatists.--Selections from Lyly, Peele, Green,
Lodge, Nashe, and Kyd may be found in Williams's _Specimens_. Morley
and _Oxford Treasury_ also contain a number of selections. Peele's
_The Arraignment of Paris_ and Kyd's _The Spanish Tragedy_ are in
_Temple Dramatists_. Greene's best plays are in _Mermaid Series_.
What are the merits of Lyly's dialogue and comedy? What might
Shakespeare have learned from Lyly, Peele, Greene, and Kyd? In what
different form did these dramatists write? What progress do they show?
Marlowe.--Read _Dr. Faustus_, in _Masterpieces of the English Drama_
(American Book Company) or in _Everyman's Library_. This play may also
be found in Morley's _English Plays_, pp. 116-128, or in Morley's
_Universal Library_. Selections from various plays of Marlowe may be
found in _Oxford Treasury_, 61-85, 330-356; and in Williams's
_Specimens_, 25-34.
Does _Dr. Faustus_ observe the classical unities? In what way does it
show the spirit of the Elizabethan age? Was the poetic form of the
play the regular vehicle of dramatic expression? In what does the
greatness of the play consist? What are its defects? Why do young
people sometimes think Marlowe the greatest of _all_ the Elizabethan
dramatists?
Shakespeare.--The student should read in sequence one or more of the
plays in each of Shakespeare's four periods of development (pp. 185,
188), such as _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ and _Romeo and Juliet_, for
the first period; _As You Like It_ and _The Merchant of Venice_, for
the second; _Hamlet_ and _King Lear_ or _Macbeth_ or _Julius Caesar_,
for the third; and _The Winter's Tale_ and _The Tempest_, for the
fourth.
Among the many good annotated editions of separate plays are the
Clarke and Wright, Rolfe, Hudson, Arden, Temple, and Tudor editions.
Furness's _Variorum Shakespeare_ is the best for exhaustive study. The
best portable single volume edition is Craig's _Oxford Shakespeare_,
India paper, 1350 pages.
The student cannot do better than follow the advice of Dr. Johnson:
"Let him who is unacquainted with the powers of Shakespeare, and who
desires to feel the highest pleasure that the drama can give, read
every play, from the first scene to the last, with utter negligence of
all his commentators... Let him read on through brightness and
obscurity, through integrity and corruption; let him preserve his
comprehension of the dialogue and his interest in the fable. And when
the pleasures of novelty have ceased, let him attempt exactness and
read the commentators."
Shakespeare's three greatest tragedies, _Hamlet, King Lear_, and
_Macbeth_, should be read several times. After becoming familiar with
the story, the student should next determine the general aim of the
play and analyze the personality and philosophy of each of the leading
characters.
After reading some of all classes of Shakespeare's plays, point out
his (_a_) breadth of sympathy, (_b_) humor, (_c_) moral ideals, (_d_)
mastery of English and variety of style, and (_e_) universality. What
idea of his personality can you form from his plays? If you have read
them in sequence, point out some of the characteristics of each of his
four periods. Why is Shakespeare often called a great dramatic artist?
How did his audience and manner of presentation of his plays modify
his treatment of a dramatic theme?
Ben Jonson and Minor Dramatists.--The best plays of Ben Jonson,
Chapman, Beaumont and Fletcher, Middleton, Massinger, Webster, and
Tourneur may be found in _Masterpieces of the English Drama_ edited by
Schellinq (American Book Company). Selections from all the minor
dramatists mentioned may be found in Williams's _Specimens_. The
teacher will need to exercise care in assigning readings. Most of the
minor dramatists are better suited to advanced students.
Read Jonson's _The Alchemist_ or the selection in Williams's
_Specimens_. A sufficient selection from _Philaster_ may be found in
Vol. II. of _The Oxford Treasury_, in Morley, and in Williams's
_Specimens_.
What points of difference between Shakespeare and Jonson do you
notice? What is his object in _The Alchemist_? Why is its plot called
unusually fine? Wherein does Jonson show a decline in the drama?
Who were Beaumont and Fletcher? What movement in the drama do they
illustrate? What are the characteristics of some other minor
dramatists? What are the chief reasons why the minor dramatists fail
to equal Shakespeare? When and why did this period of the drama close?
FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER IV:
[Footnote 1: For additional mention of Elizabethan novelists, see p.
317.]
[Footnote 2: For references to selections from all these prose
writers, see p. 215.]
[Footnote 3: _Of Youth and Age_.]
[Footnote 4: Thomas Heywood's _Matin Song_.]
[Footnote 5: Suggestions for additional study of Elizabethan lyrics
are given on p. 215.]
[Footnote 6: riding.]
[Footnote 7: _An Hymne in Honour of Beautie_.]
[Footnote 8: _Faerie Queene_, Book III., Canto 4.]
[Footnote 9: _Ibid_., Book I., Canto 3.]
[Footnote 10: Smith's _York Plays_.]
[Footnote 11: C.W. Wallace's _The Evolution of the English Drama up to
Shakespeare_.]
[Footnote 12: Wallace, _op. cit_., p.37.]
[Footnote 13: _What We Know of the Elizabethan Stage_.]
[Footnote 14: Performances were often given at night in private
theaters. From the records in a lawsuit over the second Blackfriars
Theater, we learn that there were in 1608 only three private theaters
in London,--Blackfriars, Whitefriars, and a St. Paul's Cathedral
playhouse, in which boys acted.]
[Footnote 15: This drawing of the Swan Theater, London, was probably
made near the end of the sixteenth century by van Buchell, a Dutchman,
from a description by his friend, J. de Witt. The drawing, found at
the University of Utrecht, although perhaps not accurate in details,
is valuable as a rough contemporary record of an impression
communicated to a draftsman by one who had seen an Elizabethan play.]
[Footnote 16: The lease of the building for the first Blackfriars
Theater, on Ludgate Hill, London, was taken in 1576 by Richard
Farrant, master of the boys of Windsor Chapel, and canceled in 1584.
In 1595 James Burbage bought a building for the second Blackfriars
Theater, near the site of the first. This was a private theater,
competing with the Globe, with which Shakespeare was connected. The
chief dramatists for the second Blackfriars were Ben Jonson, George
Chapman, and John Marston. James I. suppressed the second Blackfriars
in 1608 because its actors satirized him and the French king. A few
months later, Shakespeare and his associates assumed the management of
the Blackfriars and gave performances there as well as at the Globe.
These facts explain Wallace's discovery that Shakespeare at the time
of his death owned a one-seventh interest in the second Blackfriars, a
theater that had formerly been a rival to the Globe.]
[Footnote 17: _Dr. Faustus_, Scene 6.]
[Footnote 18: _Tamburlaine_, Act II., Scene 7.]
[Footnote 19: _The Winter's Tale_, Act IV., Scene 4.]
[Footnote 20: Tradition says that Shakespeare occupied the desk in the
farthest corner.]
[Footnote 21: Greene's _Groatsworth of Wit_, Grosart's edition of
Greene's _Works_, Vol. XII., p. 144.]
[Footnote 22: The contract price for building the Fortune Theater was
L440.]
[Footnote 23: Adapted from Furnivall.]
[Footnote 24: Entered one year before at Stationers' Hall.]
[Footnote 25: May be looked on as fairly certain.]
[Footnote 26: _Henry V_., Act II., Scene 3, line 10.]
[Footnote 27: Bradley's _Shakespearean Tragedy_, p. 327.]
[Footnote 28: _The Tempest_, Act V., Scene 1.]
[Footnote 29: _Ibid_., Act I., Scene 2.]
[Footnote 30: For a list of books of selections from the drama, see p.
216.]
[Footnote 31: For full titles, see p. 6.]
[Footnote 32: For full titles of books of dramatic selections, see the
preceding paragraph.]
CHAPTER V: THE PURITAN AGE, 1603-1660
History of the Period.--James I. (1603-1625), son of Mary Stuart,
Queen of Scots, and the first of the Stuart line to reign in England,
succeeded Elizabeth. His stubbornness and folly not only ended the
intense patriotic feeling of the previous reign, but laid the
foundation for the deadly conflict that resulted. In fifty-four years
after the defeat of the Armada, England was plunged into civil war.
The guiding belief of James I. was that kings governed by divine
right, that they received from the Deity a title of which no one could
lawfully deprive them, no matter how outrageously they ruled, and that
they were not in any way responsible to Parliament or to the people.
In acting on this belief, he first trampled on the religious liberty
of his subjects. He drove from their churches hundreds of clergymen
who would not take oath that they believed that the prayer book of the
Church of England agreed in every way with the _Bible_. He boasted
that he would "harry out of the kingdom" those who would not conform.
During the reign of James I. and that of his son, Charles I.
(1625-1649) a worse ruler on the same lines, thousands of Englishmen
came to New England to enjoy religious liberty. The Pilgrim Fathers
landed at Plymouth in 1620. The exodus was very rapid during the next
twenty years, since those who insisted on worshiping God as they chose
were thrown into prison and sometimes had their ears cut off and their
noses mutilated. In the sixteenth century, the religious struggle was
between Catholics and Protestants, but in this age both of the
contestants were Protestant. The Church of England (Episcopal church)
was persecuting those who would not conform to its beliefs.
Side by side with the religious strife was a struggle for
constitutional government, for legal taxes, for the right of freedom
of speech in Parliament. James I. and Charles I. both collected
illegal taxes. Finally, when Charles became involved in war with
Spain, Parliament forced him in return for a grant of money to sign
the _Petition of Right_ (1628), which was in some respects a new
_Magna Charta_.
Charles did not keep his promises. For eleven years he ruled in a
despotic way without Parliament. In 1642 civil war broke out between
the Puritans, on one side, and the king, nobles, landed gentry, and
adherents of the Church of England, on the other. The Puritans under
the great Oliver Cromwell were victorious, and in 1649 they beheaded
Charles as a "tyrant, traitor and murderer." Cromwell finally became
Protector of the Commonwealth of England. The greatest Puritan writer,
John Milton, not only upheld the Commonwealth with powerful
argumentative prose, but also became the government's most important
secretary. Though his blindness would not allow him to write after
1652, he used to translate aloud, either into Latin or the language of
the foreign country, what Cromwell dictated or suggested. Milton's
under-secretary, Andrew Marvel, wrote down this translation.
[Illustration: CROMWELL DICTATING TO MILTON DISPATCHES TO THE KING OF
FRANCE CONCERNING THE MASSACRE IN PIEDMONT.[1] _From the painting by
Ford Madox Brown._]
The Puritans remained in the ascendancy until 1660, when the Stuart
line was restored in the person of Charles II.
The Puritan Ideals.--The Renaissance had at first seemed to promise
everything, the power to reveal the secrets of Nature, to cause her to
gratify man's every wish, and to furnish a perpetual fountain of happy
youth. These expectations had not been fulfilled. There were still
poverty, disease, and a longing for something that earth had not
given. The English, naturally a religious race, reflected much on
this. Those who concluded that life could never yield the pleasure
which man anticipates, who determines by purity of living to win a
perfect land beyond the shores of mortality, who made the New World of
earlier dreams a term synonymous with the New Jerusalem, were called
Puritans.
Their guide to this land was the _Bible_. Our _Authorized Version_
(1611), the one which is in most common use to-day, was made in the
reign of James I. From this time became much easier to get a copy of
the _Scriptures_, and their influence was now more potent than ever to
shape the ideals of the Puritans. In fact, it is impossible to
estimate the influence which this _Authorized Version_ has had on the
ideals and the literature of the English race. Had it not been for
this _Version_, current English speech and literature would be vastly
different. Such words and expressions as "scapegoat," "a labor of
love," "the eleventh hour," "to cast pearls before swine," and "a
howling wilderness" are in constant use because the language of this
translation of the _Bible_ has become incorporated in our daily
speech, as well as in our best literature.
The Puritan was so called because he wished to purify the established
church from what seemed to him great abuses. He accepted the faith of
John Calvin, who died in 1564. Calvinism taught that no earthly power
should intervene between a human soul and God, that life was an
individual moral struggle, the outcome of which would land the soul in
heaven or hell for all eternity, that beauty and art and all the
pleasures of the flesh were dangerous because they tended to wean the
soul from God.
The Puritan was an individualist. The saving of the soul was to him an
individual, not a social, affair. Bunyan's Pilgrim flees alone from
the wrath to come. The twentieth century, on the other hand, believes
that the regeneration of a human being is both a social and an
individual affair,--that the individual, surrounded by the forces of
evil, often has little opportunity unless society comes to his aid.
The individualism of the Puritan accomplished a great task in
preparing the way for democracy, for fuller liberty in church and
state, in both England and America.
Our study of the Puritan ideals embodied in literature takes us beyond
1660, the date of the Restoration, because after that time two great
Puritan writers, John Milton and John Bunyan, did some of their most
famous work, the one in retirement, the other in jail. Such work,
uninfluenced by the change of ideal after the Restoration, is properly
treated in this chapter. While a change may in a given year seem
sufficiently pronounced to become the basis for a new classification,
we should remember the literary influences never begin or end with
complete abruptness.
THE PROSE OF THE PURITAN AGE
Variety of Subject.--Prose showed development in several directions
during this Puritan age:--
I. The use of prose in argument and controversy was largely extended.
Questions of government and of religion were the living issues of the
time. Innumerable pamphlets and many larger books were written to
present different views. We may instance as types of this class almost
all the prose writings of John Milton (1608-1674).
II. English prose dealt with a greater variety of philosophical
subjects. Shakespeare had voiced the deepest philosophy in poetry, but
up to this time such subjects had found scant expression in prose.
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) is the great philosophical writer of the
age. In his greatest work, _Leviathan; or, The Matter, Form, and Power
of a Commonwealth_, he considers questions of metaphysical philosophy
and of government in a way that places him on the roll of famous
English philosophers.
III. History had an increasing fascination for prose writers. Sir
Walter Raleigh's _History of the World_ (1614) and Lord Clarendon's
_History of the Great Rebellion_, begun in 1646, are specially worthy
of mention.
IV. Prose was developing its capacity for expressing delicate shades
of humor. In Chaucer and in Shakespeare, poetry had already excelled
in this respect. Thomas Fuller (1608-1661), an Episcopal clergyman,
displays an almost inexhaustible fund of humor in his _History of the
Worthies of England_. We find scattered through his works passages
like these:--
"A father that whipped his son for swearing, and swore at him while
he whipped him, did more harm by his example than good by his
correction."
[Illustration: THOMAS FULLER.]
Speaking of a pious short person, Fuller says:--
"His soul had but a short diocese to visit, and therefore might the
better attend the effectual informing thereof."
Of the lark, he writes:--
"A harmless bird while living, not trespassing on grain, and
wholesome when dead, then filling the stomach with meat, as formerly
the ear with music."
Before Fuller, humor was rare in English prose writers, and it was not
common until the first quarter of the next century.
V. Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682), an Oxford graduate and physician,
is best known as the author of three prose works: _Religio Medici
(Religion of a Physician_, 1642), _Vulgar Errors_ (1646), and
_Hydriotaphia_ or _Urn Burial_ (1658). In imagination and poetic
feeling, he has some kinship with the Elizabethans. He says in the
_Religio Medici_:--
"Now for my life, it is a miracle of thirty years, which to relate
were not a history but a piece of poetry, and would sound to common
ears like a fable... Men that look upon my outside, perusing only
my condition and fortunes, do err in my altitude; for I am above
Atlas's shoulders... There is surely a piece of divinity in
us--something that was before the elements and owes no homage unto
the sun."
The _Religio Medici_, however, gives, not the Elizabethan, but the
Puritan, definition of the world as "a place not to live in but to die
in."
_Urn Burial_, which is Browne's masterpiece, shows his power as a
prose poet of the "inevitable hour":--
"There is no antidote against the _opium_ of time... The greater
part must be content to be as though they had not been, to be found
in the register of God, not in the record of man... But man is a
Noble Animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave,
solemnizing nativities and deaths with equal luster, not omitting
ceremonies of bravery, in the infamy of his nature."
Browne's prose frequently suffers from the infusion of too many words
derived from the Latin, but his style is rhythmical and stately and
often conveys the same emotion as the notes of a great cathedral organ
at the evening twilight hour.
VI. _The Complete Angler_ of Izaak Walton (1593-1683) is so filled
with sweetness and calm delight in nature and life, that one does not
wonder that the book has passed through about two hundred editions. It
manifests a genuine love of nature, of the brooks, meadows, flowers.
In his pages we catch the odor from the hedges gay with wild flowers
and hear the rain falling softly on the green leaves:--
"But turn out of the way a little, good
scholar, towards yonder high honeysuckle
hedge; there we'll sit and sing, whilst this
shower falls so gently on the teeming earth,
and gives yet a sweeter smell to the lovely
flowers that adorn these verdant meadows."
[Illustration: IZAAK WALTON.]
[Illustration: JEREMY TAYLOR.]
VII. Of the many authors busily writing on theology, Jeremy Taylor
(1613-1667), an Episcopal clergyman, holds the chief place. His
imagination was so wide and his pen so facile that he has been called
a seventeenth-century prose Shakespeare. Taylor's _Holy Living_ and
_Holy Dying_ used to be read in almost every cottage. This passage
shows his powers of imagery as well as the Teutonic inclination to
consider the final goal of youth and beauty:--
"Reckon but from the sprightfulness
of youth, and the fair cheeks and full
eyes of childhood, from the vigorousness
and strong texture of the joints of five-and-twenty,
to the hollowness and dead
paleness, to the loathsomeness and horror of a three days' burial,
and we shall perceive the distance to be very great and very
strange. But so have I seen a rose newly springing from the clefts
of its hood, and at first it was fair as morning, and full with the
dew of heaven as a lamb's fleece ... and at night, having lost some
of its leaves and all its beauty, it fell into the portion of weeds
and outworn faces."
JOHN BUNYAN, 1628-1688
[Illustration: JOHN BUNYAN. _From the painting by Sadler, National
Portrait Gallery_.]
Life.--The Bedfordshire village of Elstow saw in 1628 the birth of
John Bunyan who, in his own peculiar field of literature, was to lead
the world. His father, Thomas Bunyan, was a brazier, a mender of pots
and pans, and he reared his son John to the same trade. In his
autobiography, John Bunyan says that his father's house was of "that
rank that is meanest and most despised of all the families in the
land."
The boy went to school for only a short time and learned but little
from any books except the _Bible_. The father, by marrying a second
time within a year after his wife's death, wounded the feelings of his
sixteen-year-old son sufficiently to cause the latter to enlist as a
soldier in the Civil War. At about the age of twenty, Bunyan married,
though neither he nor his wife had at the time so much as a dish or a
spoon.
Bunyan tells us that in his youth he was very wicked. Probably he
would have been so regarded from the point of view of a strict
Puritan. His worst offenses, however, seem to have been dancing on the
village green, playing hockey on Sundays, ringing bells to rouse the
neighborhood, and swearing. When he repented, his vivid imagination
made him think that he had committed the unpardonable sin. In the
terror that he felt at the prospect of the loss of his soul, he passed
through much of the experience that enabled him to write the
_Pilgrim's Progress_.
Bunyan became a preacher of God's word. Under trees, in barns, on the
village green, wherever people resorted, he told them the story of
salvation. Within six months after the Restoration, he was arrested
for preaching without Episcopal sanction. The officers took him away
from his little blind daughter. The roisterers of the Restoration
thought a brazier was too coarse to have feelings; yet Bunyan dropped
tears on the paper when he wrote of "the many hardships, miseries, and
wants that my poor family were like to meet with, should I be taken
from them, especially my poor blind child, who lay nearer to my heart
than all besides. Oh, the thoughts of the hardship my poor blind one
might undergo, would break my heart to pieces." In spite of his
dependent family and the natural right of the freedom of speech,
Bunyan was thrust into Bedford jail and kept a prisoner for nearly
twelve years. Had it not been for his imprisonment in this "squalid
den," of which he speaks in the _Pilgrim's Progress_, we should
probably be without that famous work, a part of which, at least, was
written in the jail.
In 1672, as a step toward restoring the Catholic religion, Charles II.
suspended all penal statutes against the dissenting clergy; Bunyan was
thereupon released from jail.
[Illustration: BEDFORD BRIDGE, SHOWING GATES AND JAIL. _From an old
print_.]
After his release, he settled down to his life's work of spreading the
Gospel by both pen and tongue. When he visited London to preach, it
was not uncommon for twelve hundred persons to come to hear him at
seven o'clock in the morning of a week day in winter.
The immediate cause of his death was a cold caught by riding in the
rain, on his way to try to reconcile a father and son. In 1688 Bunyan
died as he uttered these words, "Take me, for I come to Thee."
His Work.--Bunyan achieved the distinction of writing the greatest
of all allegories, the _Pilgrim's Progress_. This is the story of
Christian's journey through this life, the story of meeting Mr.
Worldly Wiseman, of the straight gate and the narrow path, of the
Delectable Mountains of Youth, of the valley of Humiliation, of the
encounter with Apollyon, of the wares of Vanity Fair, "kept all the
year long," of my lord Time-server, of Mr. Anything, of imprisonment
in Doubting Castle by Giant Despair, of the flowery land of Beulah,
lying beyond the valley of the Shadow of Death, through which a deep,
cold river runs, and of the city of All Delight on the other side.
This story still has absorbing interest for human beings, for the
child and the old man, the learned and the ignorant.
Bunyan wrote many other works, but none of them equals the _Pilgrim's
Progress_. His _Holy War_ is a powerful allegory, which has been
called a prose _Paradise Lost_. Bunyan also produced a strong piece of
realistic fiction, the _Life and Death of Mr. Badman_. This shows the
descent of a soul along the broad road. The story is the counterpart
of his great masterpiece, and ranks second to it in point of merit.
[Illustration: BUNYAN'S DREAM. _From Fourth Edition Pilgrim's
Progress, 1680_.]
General Characteristics.--Since the _Pilgrim's Progress_ has been
more widely read in England than any other book except the _Bible_, it
is well to investigate the secret of Bunyan's power.
In the first place, his style is simple. In the second place, rare
earnestness is coupled with this simplicity. He had something to say,
which in his inmost soul he felt to be of supreme importance for all
time. Only a great man can tell such truths without a flourish of
language, or without straining after effect. At the most critical part
of the journey of the Pilgrims, when they approach the river of death,
note that Bunyan avoids the tendency to indulge in fine writing, that
he is content to rely on the power of the subject matter, simply
presented, to make us feel the terrible ordeal:--
"Now I further saw that betwixt
them and the gate was a river; but
there was no bridge to go over, and the
river was very deep... The Pilgrims
then, especially Christian, began
to despond in their minds, and looked
this way and that, but no way could
be found by them by which they might
escape the river... They then addressed
themselves to the water, and
entering, Christian began to sink...
And with that, a great darkness and
horror fell upon Christian, so that he
could not see before him..."
"Now, upon the bank of the river, on the other side, they saw the
two shining men again, who there waited for them... Now you
must note that the city stood upon a mighty hill; but the Pilgrims
went up that hill with ease, because they had these two men to lead
them up by the arms; they had likewise left their mortal garments
behind them in the river; for though they went in with them, they
came out without them."
[Illustration:
Let Badman's broken leg put check
To Badman's course of evil,
Lest, next time, Badman breaks his neck,
And so goes to the devil.
WOODCUT FROM THE FIRST EDITION OF MR. BADMAN]
Of all the words in the above selection, eighty per cent are
monosyllables. Few authors could have resisted the tendency to try to
be impressive at such a climax. One has more respect for this world,
on learning that it has set the seal of its approval on such earnest
simplicity and has neglected works that strive with every art to
attract attention.
Bunyan furthermore has a rare combination of imagination and dramatic
power. His abstractions became living persons. They have warmer blood
coursing in their veins than many of the men and women in modern
fiction. Giant Despair is a living giant. We can hear the clanking of
the chains and the groans of the captives in his dungeon. We are not
surprised to learn that Bunyan imagined that he saw and conversed with
these characters. The _Pilgrim's Progress_ is a prose drama. Note the
vivid dramatic presentation of the tendency to evil, which we all have
at some time felt threatening to wreck our nobler selves:--
"Then Apollyon straddled quite over the whole breadth of the way,
and said, 'I am void of fear in this matter; prepare thyself to die;
for I swear by my infernal den that thou shall go no further; here
will I spill thy soul.'"
It would be difficult to find English prose more simple, earnest,
strong, imaginative, and dramatic than this. Bunyan's style felt the
shaping influence of the _Bible_ more than of all other works
combined. He knew the _Scriptures_ almost by heart.
THE POETRY OF THE PURITAN AGE
Lyrical Verse.--The second quarter of the seventeenth century
witnessed an outburst of song that owed its inspiration to Elizabethan
lyrical verse.
Soon after 1600 a change in lyric poetry is noticeable. The sonnet
fell into disfavor with the majority of lyrists. The two poets of
greatest influence over this period, Ben Jonson and John Donne,
opposed the sonnet. Ben Jonson complained that it compels all ideas,
irrespective of their worth, to fill a space of exactly fourteen
lines, and that it therefore operates on the same principle as the bed
of Procrustes. The lyrics of this period, with the exception of those
by Milton, were usually less idealistic, ethereal, and inspired than
the corresponding work of the Elizabethans. This age was far more
imitative, but it chose to imitate Jonson and Donne in preference to
Shakespeare. The greatest lyrical poet of this time thus addresses
Jonson as a patron saint:--
"Candles I'll give to thee,
And a new altar;
And thou, Saint Ben, shall be
Writ in my psalter."[2]
Cavalier Poets.--Robert Herrick (1591-1674), Thomas Carew
(1598?-1639?), Sir John Suckling (1609-1642), and Richard Lovelace
(1618--1658) were a contemporary group of lyrists who are often called
Cavalier poets, because they sympathized with the Cavaliers or
adherents of Charles I.
[Illustration: ROBERT HERRICK.]
By far the greatest of this school is Robert Herrick, who stands in
the front rank of the second class of lyrical poets. He was a graduate
of Cambridge University, who by an accident of the time became a
clergyman. The parish, or "living," given him by the king, was in the
southwestern part of Devonshire. By affixing the title _Hesperides_ to
his volume of nearly thirteen hundred poems, Herrick doubtless meant
to imply that they were chiefly composed in the western part of
England. In the very first poem of this collection, he announces the
subject of his songs:--
"I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers;
Of April, May, of June, and July flowers.
I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes;
Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal cakes
* * * * *
I write of groves, of twilights, and I sing
The court of Mab, and of the Fairie-king.
I write of hell; I sing and ever shall,
Of heaven, and hope to have it after all."
His lyric range was as broad as these lines indicate. The most of his
poems show the lightness of touch and artistic form revealed in the
following lines from _To the Virgins_:--
"Gather ye rose-buds while ye may:
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles to-day,
To-morrow will be dying."
His facility in melodious poetic expression is evident in this stanza
from _The Litany_, one of the poems in _Noble Numbers_, as the
collection of his religious verse is called:--
"When the passing-bell doth toll
And the furies in a shoal
Come to fright a parting soul,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me."
The lyric, _Disdain Returned_, of the courtier, Thomas Carew, shows
both a customary type of subject and the serious application often
given:--
"He that loves a rosy cheek,
Or a coral lip admires,
Or from starlike eyes doth seek
Fuel to maintain his fires,
As old time makes these decay,
So his flames must waste away."
Carew could write with facility on the subjects in vogue at court, but
when he ventures afield in nature poetry, he makes the cuckoo
hibernate! In his poem _The Spring_, he says:--
"...wakes in hollow tree
The drowsy Cuckoo and the Humble-bee."
In these lines from his poem _Constancy_, Sir John Suckling shows
that he is a typical Cavalier love poet:--
"Out upon it, I have loved
Three whole days together;
And am like to love three more,
If it prove fair weather."
From Richard Lovelace we have these exquisite lines written in
prison:--
"Stone walls do not a prison make
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage."
To characterize the Cavalier school by one phrase, we might call them
lyrical poets in lighter vein. They usually wrote on such subjects as
the color in a maiden's cheek and lips, blossoms, meadows, May days,
bridal cakes, the paleness of a lover, and--
"...wassail bowls to drink,
Spiced to the brink."
but sometimes weightier subjects were chosen, when these lighter
things failed to satisfy.
Religious Verse.--Three lyrical poets, George Herbert (1593-1633),
Henry Vaughan (1622-1695), and Richard Crashaw (1612?-1650?), usually
chose religious subjects. George Herbert, a Cambridge graduate and
rector of Bemerton, near Salisbury, wrote _The Temple_, a book of
religious verse. His best known poem is _Virtue_:--
"Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky:
The dew shall weep the fall to night;
For thou must die."
The sentiment in these lines from his lyric _Providence_ has the
genuine Anglo-Saxon ring:--
"Hard things are glorious; easy things good cheap.
The common all men have; that which is rare,
Men therefore seek to have, and care to keep."
Henry Vaughan, an Oxford graduate and Welsh physician, shows the
influence of George Herbert. Vaughan would have been a great poet if
he could have maintained the elevation of these opening lines from
_The World_:--
"I saw Eternity the other night,
Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
All calm, as it was bright."
Richard Crashaw, a Cambridge graduate and Catholic mystic, concludes
his poem, _The Flaming Heart_, with this touching prayer to Saint
Teresa:--
"By all of Him we have in thee
Leave nothing of myself in me.
Let me so read my life that I
Unto all life of mine may die."
His verse, like that of his contemporaries, is often marred by
fantastic conceits which show the influence of Donne. Although much of
Crashaw's poem, _The Weeper_, is beautiful, he calls the eyes of Mary
Magdalene:--
"Two walking baths, two weeping motions,
Portable and compendious oceans."
JOHN MILTON, 1608-1674
[Illustration: JOHN MILTON. _After a drawing by W. Faithorne, at
Bayfordbury_.]
His Youth.--The second greatest English poet was born in London,
eight years before the death of Shakespeare. John Milton's father
followed the business of a scrivener and drew wills and deeds and
invested money for clients. As he prospered at this calling, his
family did not suffer for want of money. He was a man of much culture
and a musical composer of considerable note.
A portrait of the child at the age of ten, the work of the painter to
the court, still exists and shows him to have been "a sweet, serious,
round-headed boy," who gave early promise of future greatness. His
parents, seeing that he acted as if he was guided by high ideals, had
the rare judgment to allow him to follow his own bent. They employed
the best teachers to instruct him at home. At the age of sixteen he
was fully prepared to enter Christ's College. Cambridge, where he took
both the B.A. and M.A. degrees.
[Illustration: JOHN MILTON, AET. 10.]
His Early Manhood and Life at Horton.--In 1632 Milton left Cambridge
and went to live with his father in a country home at Horton, about
twenty miles west of London. Milton had been intended for the church;
but he felt that he could not subscribe to its intolerance, and that
he had another mission to perform. His father accordingly provided
sufficient funds for maintaining him for over five years at Horton in
a life of studious leisure. The poet's greatest biographer, David
Masson, says "Until Milton was thirty-two years of age, if even then,
he did not earn a penny for himself." Such a course would ruin
ninety-nine out of every hundred talented young men; but it was the
making of Milton. He spent those years in careful study and in writing
his immortal early poems.
[Illustration: VISIT OF MILTON TO THE BLIND GALILEO AT THE VILLA
D'ARCETRI NEAR FLORENCE IN 1638. _From the painting by T. Lessi._]
In 1638, when he was in his thirtieth year, he determined to broaden
his views by travel. He went to Italy, which the Englishmen of his day
still regarded as the home of art, culture, and song. After about
fifteen months abroad, hearing that his countrymen were on the verge
of civil war, he returned home to play his part in the mighty tragedy
of the times.
Milton's "Left Hand."--In 1642 the Civil War broke out between the
Royalists and the Puritans. He took sides in the struggle for liberty,
not with his sword, but with his pen. During this time he wrote little
but prose. He regretted that the necessity of the time demanded prose,
in the writing of which, he says, "I have the use, as I may account
it, but of my left hand."
With that "left hand" he wrote much prose. There is one common quality
running through all his prose works, although they treat of the most
varied subjects. Every one of these works strikes a blow for fuller
liberty in some direction,--for more liberty in church, in state, and
in home relations, for the freedom of expressing opinions, and for a
system of education which should break away from the leading strings
of the inferior methods of the past. His greatest prose work is the
_Areopagitica: A Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing_.
Much of his prose is poetic and adorned with figures of rhetoric. He
frequently follows the Latin order, and inverts his sentences, which
are often unreasonably long. Sometimes his "left hand" astonishes us
by slinking mud at his opponents, and we eagerly await the loosing of
the right hand which was to give us _Paradise Lost_.
His Blindness.--The English government from 1649 to 1660 is known as
the Commonwealth. The two most striking figures of the time were
Oliver Cromwell, who in 1653 was styled the Lord Protector, and John
Milton, who was the Secretary for Foreign Tongues.
[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF MILTON'S SIGNATURE IN THE ELEVENTH YEAR
OF HIS BLINDNESS._From his application to wed Elizabeth Minshull.
Feb. 11, 1663._]
One of the greatest of European scholars, a professor at Leyden, named
Salmasius, had written a book attacking the Commonwealth and upholding
the late king. The Council requested Milton to write a fitting answer.
As his eyes were already failing him, he was warned to rest them; but
he said that he would willingly sacrifice his eyesight on the altar of
liberty. He accordingly wrote in reply his _Pro Populo Anglicano
Defensio_, a Latin work, which was published in 1651. This effort cost
him his eyesight. In 1652, at the age of forty-three, he was totally
blind. In his _Paradise Lost_, he thus alludes to his affliction:--
"Thus with the year
Seasons return; but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom or summer's rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But clouds instead and ever-during dark
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off."
Life after the Restoration.--In 1660, when Charles II. was made
king, the leaders of the Commonwealth had to flee for their lives.
Some went to America for safety while others were caught and executed.
The body of Cromwell was taken from its grave in Westminster Abbey,
suspended from the gallows and left to dangle there. Milton was
concealed by a friend until the worst of the storm had blown over.
Then some influential friends interceded for him, and his blindness
probably won him sympathy.
[Illustration: COMUS TITLE PAGE.]
During his old age his literary work was largely dependent on the
kindness of friends, who read to him, and acted as his amanuenses. His
ideas of woman having been formed in the light of the old
dispensation, he had not given his three daughters such an education
as might have led them to take a sympathetic interest in his work.
They accordingly resented his calling on them for help.
During this period of his life, when he was totally blind, he wrote
_Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained_, and _Samson Agonistes_. He died in
1674, and was buried beside his father in the chancel of St. Giles,
Cripplegate, London.
Minor Poems.--In 1629, while Milton was a student at Cambridge, and
only twenty-one years old, he wrote a fine lyrical poem, entitled _On
the Morning of Christ's Nativity_. These 244 lines of verse show that
he did not need to be taught the melody of song any more than a young
nightingale.
Four remarkable poems were written during his years of studious
leisure at Horton,--_L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus,_ and _Lycidas.
L'Allegro_ describes the charms of a merry social life, and _Il
Penseroso_ voices the quiet but deep enjoyment of the scholar in
retirement. These two poems have been universal favourites.
_Comus_ is a species of dramatic composition known as a Masque, and it
is the greatest of its class. It far surpassess any work of a similar
kind by Ben Jonson, that prolific writer of Masques. Some critics,
like Taine and Saintsbury, consider _Comus_ the finest of Milton's
productions. Its 1023 lines can soon be read; and there are few poems
of equal length that will better repay careful reading.
_Comus_ is an immortal apotheosis of virtue. While in Geneva in 1639,
Milton was asked for his autograph and an expression of sentiment. He
chose the closing lines of _Comus_:--
[Illustration: MILTON'S MOTTO FROM COMUS, WITH AUTOGRAPH. _Written
in an album at Geneva_.]
_Lycidas_, one of the world's great elegies, was written on the death
of Milton's classmate, Edward King. Mark Pattison, one of Milton's
biographers, says: "In _Lycidas_ we have reached the high-water mark
of English poesy and of Milton's own production."
He is one of the four greatest English sonnet writers. Shakespeare
alone surpasses him in this field. Milton numbers among his pupils
Wordsworth and Keats, whose sonnets rank next in merit.
Paradise Lost; Its Inception and Dramatic Plan.--Cambridge
University has a list, written by Milton before he was thirty-five, of
about one hundred possible subjects for the great poem which he felt
it was his life's mission to give to the world. He once thought of
selecting Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table; but his final
choice was _Paradise Lost_, which stands first on this special list.
There are in addition four separate drafts of the way in which he
thought this subject should be treated. This proves that the great
work of a man like; Milton was planned while he was young. It is
possible that he may even have written a very small part of the poem
earlier than the time commonly assigned.
All four drafts show that his early intention was to make the poem a
drama, a gigantic Miracle play. The closing of the theaters and the
prejudice felt against them during the days of Puritan ascendancy may
have influenced Milton to forsake the dramatic for the epic form, but
he seems never to have shared the common prejudice against the drama
and the stage. His sonnet on Shakespeare shows in what estimation he
held that dramatist.
Subject Matter and Form.--About 1658, when Milton was a widower,
living alone with his three daughters, he began, in total blindness,
to dictate his _Paradise Lost_, sometimes relying on them but more
often on any kind friend who might assist him. The manuscript
accordingly shows a variety of handwriting. The work was published in
1667, after some trouble with a narrow-minded censor who had doubts
about granting a license.
The subject matter can be best given in Milton's own lines at the
beginning of the poem:--
"Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing, Heavenly Muse..."
The poem treats of Satan's revolt in heaven, of his conflict with the
Almighty, and banishment with all the rebellious angels. Their new
home in the land of fire and endless pain is described with such a
gigantic grasp of the imagination, that the conception has colored all
succeeding theology.
The action proceeds with a council of the fallen angels to devise
means for alleviating their condition and annoying the Almighty. They
decide to strike him through his child, and they plot the fall of man.
In short, _Paradise Lost_ is an intensely dramatic story of the loss
of Eden. The greatest actors that ever sprang from a poet's brain
appear before us on the stage, which is at one time the sulphurous pit
of hell, at another the bright plains of heaven, and at another the
Elysium of our first parents.
In form the poem is an epic in twelve books, containing a total of
10,565 lines. It is written in blank verse of wonderful melody and
variety.
Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes.--After finishing _Paradise
Lost_, Milton wrote two more poems, which he published in 1671.
_Paradise Regained_ is in great part a paraphrase of the first eleven
verses of the fourth chapters of _St. Matthew_. The poem is in four
books of blank verse and contains 2070 lines. Although it is written
with great art and finish, _Paradise Regained_ shows a falling off in
Milton's genius. There is less ornament and less to arouse human
interest.
_Samson Agonistes_ (Samson the Struggler) is a tragedy containing 1758
lines, based on the sixteenth chapter of _Judges_. This poem, modeled
after the Greek drama, is hampered by a strict observance of the
dramatic unities. It is vastly inferior to the _Paradise Lost. Samson
Agonistes_ contains scarcely any of the glorious imagery of Milton's
earlier poems. It has been called "the most unadorned poem that can be
found."
CHARACTERISTICS OF MILTON'S POETRY
Variety in his Early Work.--A line in _Lycidas_ says:--
"He touched the tender stops of various quills,"
and this may be said of Milton. His early poems show great variety.
There are the dirge notes in _Lycidas_; the sights, sounds, and odors
of the country, in _L'Allegro_; the delights of "the studious
cloister's pale," in _Il Penseroso_; the impelling presence of his
"great Task-Master," in the sonnets.
Although Milton is noted for his seriousness and sublimity, we must
not be blind to the fact that his minor poems show great delicacy of
touch. The epilogue of the Spirit at the end of _Comus_ is an instance
of exquisite airy fancy passing into noble imagination at the close.
In 1638 Sir Henry Wotton wrote to Milton this intelligent criticism of
_Comus_: "I should much commend the tragical part, if the lyrical did
not ravish me with a certain Doric delicacy in your Songs and Odes,
whereunto I must plainly confess to have seen yet nothing parallel in
our language _Ipsa mollities_."
Limitations.--In giving attention to Milton's variety, we should not
forget that when we judge him by Elizabethan standards his limitations
are apparent. As varied as are his excellences, his range is far
narrower than Shakespeare's. He has little sense of humor and less
sympathy with human life than either Shakespeare or Burns. Milton
became acquainted with flowers through the medium of a book before he
noticed them in the fields. Consequently, in speaking of flowers and
birds, he sometimes makes those mistakes to which the bookish man is
more prone than the child who first hears the story of Nature from her
own lips. Unlike Shakespeare and Burns, Milton had the misfortune to
spend his childhood in a large city. Again, while increasing age
seemed to impose no limitations on Shakespeare's genius, his touch
being as delicate in _The Tempest_ as in his first plays, Milton's
style, on the other hand, grew frigid and devoid of imagery toward the
end of his life.
Sublimity.--The most striking characteristic of Milton's poetry is
sublimity, which consists, first, in the subject matter. In the
opening lines of _Paradise Lost_ he speaks of his "adventurous song"--
"That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme."
Milton succeeded in his intention. The English language has not
another poem that approaches _Paradise Lost_ in sustained sublimity.
In the second place, we must note the sublimity of treatment. Milton's
own mind was cast in a sublime mold. This quality of mind is evident
even in his figures of rhetoric. The Milky Way appears to him as the
royal highway to heaven:--
"A broad and ample road, whose dust is gold,
And pavement stars."[3]
When Death and Satan meet, Milton wishes the horror of the scene to
manifest something of the sublime. What other poet could, in fewer
words, have conveyed a stronger impression of the effect of the frown
of those powers?
"So frowned the mighty combatants, that Hell
Grew darker at their frown."[4]
George Saintsbury's verdict is approved by the majority of the
greatest modern critics of Milton: "In loftiness--sublimity of
thought, and majesty of expression, both sustained at almost
superhuman pitch, he has no superior, and no rival except Dante."
Mastery of Verse.--Milton's verse, especially in _Paradise Lost_, is
such a symphony of combined rhythm, poetic expression, and thought; it
is so harmonious, so varied, and yet so apparently simple in its
complexity, that it has never been surpassed in kind.
His mastery of rhythm is not so evident in a single line as in a group
of lines. The first sentence in _Paradise Lost_ contains sixteen
lines, and yet the rhythm, the pauses, and the thought are so combined
as to make oral reading easy and the meaning apparent. The conception
of the music of the spheres in their complex orbits finds some analogy
in the harmony of the combined rhythmical units of his verse.
Denied the use of his eyes as a guide to the form of his later verse,
he must have repeated aloud these groups of lines and changed them
until their cadence satisfied his remarkably musical ear. Lines like
these show the melody of which this verse is capable:--
"Heaven opened wide
Her ever-during gates, harmonious sound
On golden hinges moving."[5]
To begin with, he had, like Shakespeare and Keats an instinctive
feeling for the poetic value of words and phrases. Milton's early
poems abound in such poetic expressions as "the frolic wind," "the
slumbring morn," "linked sweetness," "looks commercing with the
skies," "dewy-feathered sleep," "the studious cloister's pale," "a dim
religious light," the "silver lining" of the cloud, "west winds with
musky wing," "the laureate hearse where Lycid lies." His poetic
instinct enabled him to take common prosaic words and, by merely
changing the position of the adjective, transmute them into
imperishable verse. His "darkness visible" and "human face divine" are
instances of this power.
[Illustration: MILTON DICTATING PARADISE LOST TO HIS DAUGHTERS.
_From the painting by Munkacsy_.]
Twentieth century criticism is more fully recognizing the debt of
subsequent poetic literature to Milton. Saintsbury writes:--
"Milton's influence is omnipresent in almost all later English
poetry, and in not a little of later prose English literature. At
first, at second, at third, hand, he has permeated almost all his
successors."[6]
How the Paradise Lost has affected Thought.--Few people realize how
profoundly this poem has influenced men's ideas of the hereafter. The
conception of hell for a long time current was influenced by those
pictures which Milton painted with darkness for his canvas and the
lightning for his brush. Our pictures of Eden and of heaven have also
felt his touch. Theology has often looked through Milton's imagination
at the fall of the rebel angels and of man. Huxley says that the
cosmogony which stubbornly resists the conclusions of science, is due
rather to the account in _Paradise Lost_ than to _Genesis_.
Many of Milton's expressions have become crystallized in modern
thought. Among such we may mention:--
"The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven,
What matter where, if I be still the same?"[7]
"To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven."[8]
"...Who overcomes
By force hath overcome but half his foe."[9]
The effect of _Paradise Lost_ on English thought is more a resultant
of the entire poem than of detached quotations. _L'Allegro_ and _Il
Penseroso_ have furnished as many current quotations as the whole of
_Paradise Lost_.
The Embodiment of High Ideals.---No poet has embodied in his verse
higher ideals than Milton. When twenty-three, he wrote that he
intended to use his talents--
"As ever in my great Taskmaster's eye."[10]
Milton's poetry is not universally popular. He deliberately selected
his audience. These lines from _Comus_ show to whom he wished to
speak:--
"Yet some there be that by due steps aspire
To lay their just hands on that golden key
That opes the palace of eternity.
To such my errand is."
He kept his promise of writing something which speaks for liberty and
for nobility of soul and which the world would not willingly let die.
His ideals react on us and raise us higher than we were. To him we may
say with Wordsworth:--
"Thy soul was like a star and dwelt apart;
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea,
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free." [11]
SUMMARY
The Puritan age was one of conflict in religious and political ideals.
James I. and Charles I. trampled on the laws and persecuted the
Puritans so rigorously that many of them fled to New England. Civil
war, in which the Puritans triumphed, was the result.
The Puritans, realizing that neither lands beyond the sea nor the New
Learning could satisfy the aspirations of the soul, turned their
attention to the life beyond. Bunyan's Pilgrim felt that the sole duty
of life was to fight the forces of evil that would hold him captive in
the City of Destruction and to travel in the straight and narrow path
to the New Jerusalem. Life became a ceaseless battle of the right
against the wrong. Hence, much of the literature in both poetry and
prose is polemical. Milton's _Paradise Lost_ is an epic of war between
good and evil. The book that had the most influence in molding the
thought of the time was the King James (1611) version of the _Bible_.
The minor prose deals with a variety of subjects. There are
argumentative, philosophical, historical, biographical, and
theological prose works; but only the fine presentation of nature and
life in _The Complete Angler_ interests the general reader of to-day,
although the grandeur of Milton's _Areopagitica_, the humor of Thomas
Fuller, the stately rhythmical prose of Sir Thomas Browne, and the
imagery and variety of Jeremy Taylor deserve more readers.
Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_ is the masterpiece of Puritan prose,
written in the simple, direct language of the 1611 version of the
_Bible_. The book is a prose epic of the journey of the Puritan
Christian from the City of Destruction to the New Jerusalem.
The Cavalier poets wrote much lyrical verse, mostly in lighter vein,
but the religious poets strike a deeper note. The work of these minor
poets is often a reflection of the Elizabethan lyrics of Donne and
Jonson.
John Milton, who has the creative power of the Elizabethans, is the
only great poet of the period. His greatest poems are _L'Allegro, Il
Penseroso, Lycidas, Comus,_ and _Paradise Lost_. In sublimity of
subject matter and cast of mind, in nobility of ideals, in expression
of the conflict between good and evil, he is the fittest
representative of the Puritan spirit in literature.
REFERENCES FOR FUTURE STUDY
HISTORICAL
Read the chapters on this period in Gardiner,[12] Walker, Cheney,
Lingard, or Green. For the social life, see Traill, IV. The monumental
history of this time has been written in eighteen volumes by Samuel
Rawson Gardiner. His _Oliver Cromwell_, I vol., is excellent, as is
also Frederick Harrison's _Oliver Cromwell_.
LITERARY
The _Cambridge History of English Literature_, Vol. VII.
Courthope's _History of English Poetry_, Vol. III.
Masterman's _The Age of Milton_.
Saintsbury's _A History of Elizabethan Literature_ (comes down to
1660).
Dowden's _Puritan and Anglican Studies in Literature.
Dictionary of National Biography_ (for lives of minor writers).
Froude's _John Bunyan._
Brown's _John Bunyan, his Life, Times, and Works._
Macaulay's Life of Bunyan in _Encylopaedia Britannica_ or in his
_Essays._
Macaulay's _Essay on Southey's Edition of the Pilgrim's Progress._
Masson's _The Life of John Milton, Narrated in Connection with the
Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary history of his Time_ (6
vols.).
Masson's _Poetical Works of John Milton_, 3 vols., contains
excellent introductions and notes, and is the standard edition.
Raleigh's _Milton_.
Pattison's _Milton_. (E.M.L.)
Woodhull's _The Epic of Paradise Lost_.
Macaulay's _Essay on Milton_.
Lowell's _Milton_ (in _Among My Books_).
Addison's criticisms on Milton, beginning in number 267 of _The
Spectator_, are suggestive.
SUGGESTED READINGS WITH QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
Prose.--The student will obtain a fair idea of the prose of this age
by reading Milton's _Areopagitica_, Cassell's _National Library_ (15
cents), or _Temple Classics_ (45 cents); Craik,[13] II., 471-475; the
selections from Thomas Hobbes, Craik, II., 214-221; from Thomas
Fuller, Craik, II., 377-387; from Sir Thomas Browne, Craik, II.,
318-335; from Jeremy Taylor, Craik, II., 529-542; and from Izaak
Walton, Craik, II., 343-349. Manly, II., has selections from all these
writers; the _Oxford Treasury_ and _Century_, from all but Hobbes. The
student who has the time will wish to read _The Complete Angler_
entire (Cassell's _National Library_, 15 cents; or _Temple Classics_,
45 cents).
Compare (_a_) the sentences, (_b_) general style, and (_c_) worth of
the subject matter of these authors; then, to note the development of
English prose, in treatment of subject as well as in form, compare
these works with those of (1) Wycliffe and Mandeville in the
fourteenth century, (2) Malory in the fifteenth, and (3) Tyndale,
Lyly, Sidney, Hooker, and Bacon (_e.g._ essay _Of Study_, 1597), in
the sixteenth.
Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_ should be read entire (_Everyman's
Library_, 35 cents; Cassell's _National Library_, 15 cents; _Temple
Classics_, 45 cents). Selections may be found in Craik, III., 148-166;
Manly, II., 139-143; _Oxford Treasury_, 83-85; _Century_, 225-235.
In what does the secret of Bunyan's popularity consist--in his style,
or in his subject matter, or in both? What is specially noteworthy
about his style? Point out some definite ways in which his style was
affected by another great work. Suppose that Bunyan had held the
social service ideals of the twentieth century, how might his idea of
saving souls have been modified?
Lyrical Poetry.--Specimens of the best work of Herrick, Carew,
Suckling, Lovelace, Herbert, Vaughan, and Crashaw may be found in
Ward, II.; Bronson, II.; _Oxford Treasury_, III.; Manly, I.; and
_Century_.
What is the typical subject matter of the Cavalier poets? What subject
do Herbert, Vaughan, and Crashaw choose? Which lyric of each of these
poets pleases you most? What difference do you note between these
lyrics and those of the Elizabethan age? What Elizabethan lyrists had
most influence on these poets? What are some of the special defects of
the lyrists of this age?
John Milton.--_L'Allegro_, _Il Penseroso_, _Comus_, _Lycidas_
(American Book Company's _Eclectic English Classics_, 20 cents), and
_Paradise Lost_, Books I. and II. (same series), should be read. These
poems, including his excellent _Sonnets_, may also be found in
Cassell's _National Library_, _Everyman's Library_, and the _Temple
Classics_. Selections are given in Ward, II., 306-379; Bronson, II.,
334-423; _Oxford Treasury_, III., 34-70: Manly, I., and _Century_,
_passim_.
Which is the greatest of his minor poets? Why? Is the keynote of
_Comus_ in accord with Puritan ideals? Are there qualities in
_Lycidas_ that justify calling it "the high-water mark" of English
lyrical poetry? Which poem has most powerfully affected theological
thought? Which do you think is oftenest read to-day? Why? What are the
most striking characteristics of Milton's poetry? Contrast Milton's
greatness, limitations, and ideals of life, with Shakespeare's.
FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER V:
[Footnote 1: See Milton's Sonnet: _On the Late Massacre in Piedmont_.]
[Footnote 2: Robert Herrick's _Prayer to Ben Jonson_.]
[Footnote 3: _Paradise Lost_, Book VII., lines 577-578.]
[Footnote 4: _Ibid_., Book II., lines 719-720.]
[Footnote 5: _Paradise Lost_, Book VII., lines 207-209.]
[Footnote 6: The Cambridge History of English Literature, Vol. VII.,
p.156.]
[Footnote 7: _Paradise Lost_, Book I., line 254.]
[Footnote 8: _Ibid_, line 262.]
[Footnote 9: _Ibid_, line 649.]
[Footnote 10: Sonnet: _On His Having Arrived at the Age of
Twenty-three_.]
[Footnote 11: _Milton: A Sonnet._]
[Footnote 12: For full titles, see list on p. 50.]
[Footnote 13: For full titles, see p.6.]
CHAPTER VI: FROM THE RESTORATION, 1660, TO THE PUBLICATION OF PAMELA,
1740
History of the Period.--This chapter opens with the Restoration of
Charles II. (1660-1685) in 1660 and ends before the appearance, in
1740, of a new literary creation, Richardson's _Pamela_, the novel of
domestic life and character. This period is often called the age of
Dryden and Pope, the two chief poets of the time. When Oliver Cromwell
died, the restoration of the monarchy was inevitable. The protest
against the Puritanic view of life had become strong. Reaction always
results when excessive restraint in any direction is removed.
During his exile, Charles had lived much in France and had become
accustomed to the dissolute habits of the French court. The court of
Charles II. was the most corrupt ever known in England. The Puritan
virtues were laughed to scorn by the ribald courtiers who attended
Charles II. John Evelyn (1620-1706) and Samuel Pepys (1633-1703)
left diaries, which give interesting pictures of the times. The one by
Pepys is especially vivid.
In 1663 Samuel Butler (1612-1680) published a famous satire,
entitled _Hudibras_. Its object was to ridicule everything that
savored of Puritanism. This satire became extremely popular in court
circles, and was the favorite reading of the king.
[Illustration: SAMUEL BUTLER.]
Charles II. excluded all but Episcopalians from holding office, either
in towns or in Parliament. Only those who sanctioned the Episcopal
prayer book were allowed to preach. In order to keep England's
friendship and to be able to look to her for assistance in time of
war, Louis XIV. of France paid Charles II. L100,000 a year to act as a
French agent. In this capacity, Charles II. began against Holland.
From a position of commanding importance under Cromwell, England had
become a third-rate power, a tail to a French kite.
James II. (1685-1688), who succeeded his brother, Charles II.,
undertook to suspend laws and to govern like a despot. He was driven
out in the bloodless revolution of 1688 by his son-in-law, William
(1689-1702), and his daughter Mary. William of Orange, who thus became
king of England, was a prince of Holland. This revolution led to the
_Bill of Rights_ (1689), the "third pillar of the British
Constitution," the two previous being _Magna Charta_ and the _Petition
of Right_. The foundations were now firmly laid for a strictly
constitutional monarchy in England. From this time the king has been
less important, sometimes only a mere figure-head.
This revolution, coupled with the increasing rivalry of France in
trade and colonial expansion, altered the foreign policy of England.
Holland was the head of the European coalition against France; and
William III. was influential in having England join it. For the larger
part of the eighteenth century there was intermittent war with France.
Under Anne (1702-1714) the Duke of Marlborough won many remarkable
victories against France. The most worthy goal of French antagonism,
expansion of trade, and displacement of the French in America and
India, was not at this time clearly apparent.
Anne's successor was the Hanoverian Elector, George I. (1714-1727), a
descendant of the daughter of James I., who had married a German
prince. At the time of his accession, George I. was fifty-four years
old and could speak no English. He seldom attended the meetings of his
cabinet, since he could not understand the deliberations. This
circumstance led to further decline of royal power, so that his
successor, George II. (1727-1760), said: "Ministers are the king in
this country."
The history of the rest of this period centers around the great prime
minister, Robert Walpole, whose ministry lasted from 1715-1717 and
from 1721-1742. His motto was, "Let sleeping dogs lie"; and he took
good care to offend no one by proposing any reforms, either political
or religious. "Every man has his price" was the succinct statement of
his political philosophy; and he did not hesitate to secure by bribery
the adoption of his measures in Parliament. He succeeded in three
aims: (1) in making the house of Hanover so secure on the throne that
it has not since been displaced, (2) in giving fresh impetus to trade
and industry at home by reducing taxation, and (3) in strengthening
the navy and encouraging colonial commerce.
Change in Foreign Influence.--Of all foreign influences from the
beginning of the Renaissance to the Restoration, the literature of
Italy had been the most important. French influence now gained the
ascendancy.
There were several reasons for this change. (1) France under the great
Louis XIV. was increasing her political importance. (2) She now had
among her writers men who were by force of genius fitted to exert wide
influence. Among such, we may instance Moliere (1622-1673), who stands
next to Shakespeare in dramatic power. (3) Charles II. and many
Cavaliers had passed the time of their exile in France. They became
familiar with French literature, and when they returned to England in
1660, their taste had already been influenced by French models.
Change in the Subject Matter of Literature.--The Elizabethan age
impartially held the mirror up to every type of human emotion. The
writers of the Restoration and of the first half of the eighteenth
century, as a class, avoided any subject that demanded a portrayal of
deep and noble feeling. In this age, we catch no glimpse of a Lady
Macbeth in the grasp of remorse or of a Lear bending over a dead
Cordelia.
The popular subjects were those which appealed to cold intellect; and
these were, for the most part, satirical, didactic, and argumentative.
The two greatest poets of the period, John Dryden and his successor,
Alexander Pope, usually chose such subjects. John Locke (1632-1704), a
great prose writer of this age, shows in the very title of his most
famous work, _Of the Conduct of the Understanding_, what he preferred
to discuss. That book opens with the statement, "The last resort a man
has recourse to in the conduct of himself is his understanding." This
declaration, which is not strictly true, embodies a pronounced
tendency of the age, which could not understand that the world of
feeling is no less real than that of the understanding.
One good result of the ascendancy of the intellect was seen in
scientific investigation. The Royal Society was founded in 1662 to
study natural phenomena and to penetrate into the hidden mysteries of
philosophy and life.
The Advance of Prose.--In each preceding age, the masterpieces were
poetry; but before the middle of the eighteenth century we find the
prose far surpassing the poetry. Dryden, almost immediately after the
Restoration, shows noteworthy advance in modern prose style. He avoids
a Latinized inversion, such as the following, with which Milton begins
the second sentence of his _Areopagitica_ (1644):--
"And me perhaps each of these dispositions, as the subject was
whereon I entered, may have at other times variously affected ..."
Here, the object "me" is eighteen words in advance of its predicate.
The sentence might well have ended with the natural pause at
"affected," but Milton adds fifty-one more words. We may easily
understand by comparison why the term "modern" is applied to the prose
of Dryden and of his successors Addison and Steele. To emphasize the
precedence of these writers in the development of modern prose is no
disparagement to Bunyan's style, which is almost as quaint and as
excellent as that of the 1611 version of the _Bible_.
French influence was cumulative in changing the cumbersome style of
Milton's prose to the polished, neatly-turned sentences of Addison.
Matthew Arnold says: "The glory of English literature is in poetry,
and in poetry the strength of the eighteenth century does not lie.
Nevertheless the eighteenth century accomplished for us an immense
literary progress, and its very shortcomings in poetry were an
instrument to that progress, and served it. The example of Germany may
show us what a nation loses from having no prose style... French prose
is marked in the highest degree by the qualities of regularity,
uniformity, precision, balance... The French made their poetry also
conform to the law which was molding their prose... This may have been
bad for French poetry, but it was good for French prose."
The same influence which gave vigor, point, and definiteness to the
prose, necessary for the business of the world, helped to dwarf the
poetry. If both could not have advanced together, we may be thankful
that the first part of the eighteenth century produced a varied prose
of such high excellence.
The Classic School.--The literary lawgivers of this age held that a
rigid adherence to certain narrow rules was the prime condition of
producing a masterpiece. Indeed, the belief was common that a
knowledge of rules was more important than genius.
The men of this school are called _classicists_ because they held that
a study of the best works of the ancients would disclose the necessary
guiding rules. No style that did not closely follow these rules was
considered good. Horace, seen through French spectacles, was the
classical author most copied by this school. His _Epistles_ and
_Satires_ were considered models.
The motto of the classicists was polished regularity. Pope struck the
keynote of the age when he said:--
"True wit is nature to advantage dress'd,
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd."[1]
These two lines show the form of the "riming couplet," which the
classical poets adopted. There is generally a pause at the end of each
line; and each couplet, when detached from the context, will usually
make complete sense.
Edmund Waller (1606-1687), remembered today for his single
couplet:--
"The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed,
Lets in new light through chinks that time has made,"
had used this form of verse before 1630; but it was reserved for
Dryden, and especially for Pope, to bring the couplet to a high degree
of perfection. A French critic advised poets to compose the second
line of the couplet first. No better rule could have been devised for
dwarfing poetic power and for making poetry artificial.
Voltaire, a French classicist, said, "I do not like the monstrous
irregularities of Shakespeare." An eighteenth-century classicist
actually endeavored to improve Hamlet's soliloquy by putting it in
riming couplets. These lines from _Macbeth_ show that Shakespeare will
not tolerate such leading strings nor allow the ending of the lines to
interfere with his sense:--
"...Besides, this Duncan
Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been
So clear in his great office, that his virtues
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued against
The deep damnation of his taking-off."
A later romantic poet called the riming couplet "rocking-horse meter";
and said that the reading of many couplets reminded him of round trips
on a rocking-horse.
Advances are usually made by overstressing some one point. The
classicists taught the saving grace of style, the need of restraint,
balance, clearness, common sense. We should therefore not despise the
necessary lesson which English literature learned from such
teaching,--a lesson which has never been forgotten.
The Drama.--The theaters were reopened at the time of the
Restoration. It is interesting to read in the vivacious _Diary_ of
Samuel Pepys how he went in 1661 to see Shakespeare's _Romeo and
Juliet_, "a play of itself the worst that I ever heard." The next year
he characterizes _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ as "the most ridiculous
play that I ever saw." He liked the variety in _Macbeth_, and calls
_The Tempest_ "the most innocent play that I ever saw."
The Restoration dramatists, who were dominated by French influence, so
often sneered at morality and the virtues of the home, that they have
paid the penalty of being little read in after times. The theater has
not yet entirely recovered from the deep-seated prejudice which was so
intensified by the coarse plays which flourished for fifty years after
the Restoration.
Although John Dryden is best known among a large number of Restoration
dramatists,[2] he did better work in another field. William Congreve
(1670-1729) made the mast distinctive contribution to the new comedy
of manners. Descended from an old landowning family in Staffordshire,
he was for a while a mate of Jonathan Swift at Trinity College,
Dublin. In 1691 Congreve was entered in the Middle Temple, London, to
begin the study of law, but he soon turned playwright. His four
comedies,--_The Old Bachelor, The Double Dealer, Love for Love, The
Way of the World_,--and one tragedy, _The Mourning Bride_, were all
written in the last decade of the seventeenth century. After 1700 he
wrote no more plays, although he lived nearly thirty years longer. On
his death, in 1729, he was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Congreve attempts to picture the manners of contemporary society, and
he does not penetrate far below the surface of life. He is not read
for the depth of his thought, but for his humor and for the clear,
pointed style of his prose comedies. George Meredith says:--
"Where Congreve excels all his English rivals is in his literary
force, and a succinctness of style peculiar to him... He is at once
precise and voluble. If you have ever thought upon style, you will
acknowledge it to be a signal accomplishment. In this he is a
classic, and he is worthy of treading a measure with Moliere."
Congreve's best comedies are _Love for Love_ and _The Way of the
World_. The majority of critics agree with Meredith in calling Miss
Millimant, who is the heroine of the latter play, "an admirable,
almost a lovable heroine." Meredith illustrates one phase of his own
idea of the comic spirit, by the language which Miss Millimant uses in
accepting her lover: "If I continue to endure you a little longer, I
may by degrees dwindle into a wife." Congreve's peculiar genius is
well shown in his ability to make her manner of speech reveal her
characteristics. His plays are unfortunately disfigured with the
coarseness of the age.
The blemishes in the drama did not exist, however, without an emphatic
contemporary protest. Jeremy Collier (1650-1729), a non-conforming
bishop, in his _Short View of the Immorality of the Stage_ (1698),
complains that the unworthy hero of one of Congreve's plays "is
crowned for the man of merit, has his wishes thrown into his lap, and
makes the happy exit."
Such attacks had their weight and prepared the way far the more moral
sentimental comedies of Richard Steele and succeeding playwrights. The
sacrifice of plot to moral purpose and the deliberate introduction of
scenes designed to force an appeal to sentiment caused the later drama
to deteriorate in a different way. We shall see that the natural
hearty humor of Goldsmith's comedy, _She Stoops to Conquer_(1773),
afforded a welcome relief from such plays.
JOHN DRYDEN, 1631-1700
[Illustration: JOHN DRYDEN. _From the painting by Sir Godfrey
Knellwe, National Portrait Gallery_.]
[Illustration: BIRTHPLACE OF DRYDEN. _From a print._]
Life.--John Dryden was born in 1631 in the small village of
Aldwinkle, in the northern part of Northamptonshire. Few interesting
facts concerning his life have come down to us. His father was a
baronet; his mother, the daughter of a rector. Young Dryden graduated
from Cambridge in 1654.
During his entire life, Dryden was a professional literary man; and
with his pen he made the principal part of his living. This necessity
often forced him against his own better judgment to cater to the
perverted taste of the Restoration. When he found that plays had more
market value than any other kind of literature, he agreed to furnish
three plays a year for the king's actors, but was unable to produce
that number. For fifteen years in the prime of his life, Dryden did
little but write plays, the majority of which are seldom read to-day.
His only important poem during his dramatic period was _Annus
Mirabilis_ (_The Wonderful Year_, 1666), memorable for the great
London fire and for naval victories over the Dutch.
By writing the greatest political satire in the language at the age of
fifty, he showed the world where his genius lay. During the last
twenty years of his life, he produced but few plays. His greatest
satires, didactic poems, and lyrics belong to this period. In his last
years he wrote a spirited translation of Vergil, and retold in his own
inimitable way various stories from Chaucer and Boccaccio and _Ovid_.
These stories were published in a volume entitled _Fables, Ancient and
Modern_. Dryden died in 1700 and was buried in Westminster Abbey
beside Chaucer.
It is difficult to speak positively of Dryden's character. He wrote a
poem in honor of the memory of Cromwell, and a little later another
poem, _Astraea Redux_, welcoming Charles II. He argued in stirring
verse in favor of the Episcopal religion when that was the faith of
the court; but after the accession of James II., who was a Catholic,
Dryden wrote another poem to prove the Catholic Church the only true
one. He had been appointed poet laureate in 1670, but the Revolution
of 1688, which drove James from the throne, caused Dryden to lose the
laureateship. He would neither take the oath of fealty to the new
government nor change his religion. In spite of adversity and the loss
of an income almost sufficient to support him, he remained a Catholic
for the rest of his life and reared his sons in that faith.
He seems to have been of a forgiving disposition and ready to
acknowledge his own faults. He admitted that his plays were disfigured
with coarseness. He was very kind to young writers and willing to help
them with their work. In his chair at Will's Coffee House, discoursing
to the wits of the Restoration about matters of literary art, he was
one of the most prominent figures of the age.
His Prose.--Although to the majority of people Dryden is known only
as a poet, his influence on prose has been so far-reaching as to
entitle him to be called one of the founders of modern prose style.
The shortening of sentences has been a striking feature in the
development of modern English prose. Edmund Spenser averages about
fifty words to each of his prose sentences; Richard Hooker, about
forty-one. One of the most striking sentences in Milton's
_Areopagitica_ contains ninety-five words, although he crowds over
three hundred words into some of his long sentences. The sentences in
some of Dryden's pages average only twenty-five words in length.
Turning to Macaulay, one of the most finished masters of modern prose,
we find that his sentences average twenty-two words. Dryden helped
also to free English prose from the inversions, involutions, and
parenthetical intricacies of earlier times. His influence on both
prose and poetry were much the same. In verse he adopted the short,
easily understood unit of the classical couplet; and in prose, the
short, direct sentence.
Dryden's prose deals chiefly with literary criticism. Most of his
prose is to be found in the prefaces to his plays and poems. His most
important separate prose composition is his _Essay of Dramatic Poesy_,
a work which should be read by all who wish to know some of the
foundation principles of criticism.
Satiric Poetry.--No English writer has surpassed Dryden in satiric
verse. His greatest satire is _Absalom and Achitophel_, in which,
under the guise of Old Testament characters, he satirizes the leading
spirits of the Protestant opposition to the succession of James, the
brother of Charles II., to the English throne. Dryden thus satirizes
Achitophel, the Earl of Shaftesbury:--
"Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide;
Else, why should he, with wealth and honor blest,
Refuse his age the needful hours of rest?
Punish a body which he could not please,
Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease?
And all to leave what with his toil he won
To that unfeathered two-legged thing, a son.
* * * * *
In friendship false, implacable in hate,
Resolved to ruin or to rule the state."
Zimri, the Duke of Buckingham, is immortalized thus:--
"Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong,
Was everything by starts, and nothing long."
_Mac Flecknoe_ is another satire of almost as great merit, directed
against a certain Whig poet by the name of Shadwell. He would have
been seldom mentioned in later times, had it not been for two of
Dryden's lines:--
"The rest to some faint meaning make pretence,
But Shadwell never deviates into sense."
_All for Love_, one of Dryden's greatest plays, shows the delicate
keenness of his satire in characterizing the cold-blooded Augustus
Caesar, or Octavius, as he is there called. Antony has sent a
challenge to Octavius, who replies that he has more ways than one to
die. Antony rejoins:--
"He has more ways than one;
But he would choose them all before that one.
_Ventidius._ He first would choose an ague or a fever.
_Antony._ No; it must be an ague, not a fever;
He has not warmth enough to die by that."
Dryden could make his satire as direct and blasting as a thunderbolt.
He thus describes his publisher:--
"With leering looks, bull-faced, and freckled fair,
With two left legs, and Judas-colored hair,
And frowsy pores that taint the ambient air."
Argumentative or Didactic Verse.--Dryden is a master in arguing in
poetry. He was not a whit hampered by the restrictions of verse. They
were rather an advantage to him, for in poetry he could make more
telling arguments in briefer compass than in prose. The best two
examples of his power of arguing in verse are _Religio Laici_, written
in 1682, to uphold the Episcopal religion, and _The Hind and the
Panther_, composed in 1687, to vindicate the Catholic church. Verse of
this order is called didactic, because it endeavors to teach or to
explain something. The age of the Restoration delighted in such
exercises of the intellect vastly more than in flights of fancy or
imagination.
Lyrical Verse.--While most of Dryden's best poetry is either satiric
or didactic, he wrote three fine lyrical poems: _Alexander's Feast, A
Song for St. Cecilia's Day_, and _An Ode to Mrs. Anne Killigrew_. All
are distinguished by remarkable beauty and energy of expression.
_Alexander's Feast_ is the most widely read of Dryden's poems. The
opening lines of the Ode to Mrs. Anne Killigrew seem almost Miltonic
in their conception, and they show great power in the field of lyrical
poetry. Mistress Killigrew was a young lady of rare accomplishments in
both poetry and painting, who died at the age of twenty-five. Dryden
thus begins her memorial ode:--
"Thou youngest virgin daughter of the skies,
Made in the last promotion of the blest;
Whose palms, new plucked from Paradise,
In spreading branches more sublimely rise,
Rich with immortal green above the rest:
* * * * *
Thou wilt have time enough for hymns divine,
Since Heaven's eternal year is thine."
Some of his plays have songs and speeches instinct with lyrical force.
The following famous lines on the worth of existence are taken from
his tragedy of _Aurengzebe:_--
"When I consider'd life, 'tis all a cheat,
Yet, fool'd with hope, men favor the deceit,
Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay:
To-morrow's falser than the former day,
Lies worse; and while it says, we shall be blest
With some new joys, cuts off what we possest.
Strange cozenage! none would live past years again;
Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain.
And, from the dregs of life, think to receive
What the first sprightly running could not give.
I'm tir'd with waiting for this chemic gold,
Which fools us young and beggars us when old."
General Characteristics.--In point of time, Dryden is the first
great poet of the school of literary artists. His verse does not
tolerate the unpruned irregularities and exaggerations of many former
English poets. His command over language is remarkable. He uses words
almost as he chooses, but he does not invest them with the warm glow
of feeling. He is, however, something more than a great word artist.
Many of his ideas bear the stamp of marked originality.
In the field of satiric and didactic poetry, he is a master. The
intellectual, not the emotional, side of man's nature appeals strongly
to him. He heeds not the song of the bird, the color of the rose, nor
the clouds of evening.
Although more celebrated for his poetry than for his prose, he is the
earliest of the great modern prose stylists, and he displays high
critical ability.
DANIEL DEFOE, 1659?-1731
[Illustration: DANIEL DEFOE. _From a print by Vandergucht_.]
Varied Experiences.--Daniel Defoe was born in London, probably the
year before the Restoration. His father, a butcher in good
circumstances, sent the boy to a school in which English, instead of
Latin, was the medium of instruction. He was taught how to express
himself in the simple, forceful English for which he became famous.
His education was planned to make him a dissenting minister; but he
preferred a life of varied activity. He became a trader, a
manufacturer of tiles, a journalist, and a writer of fiction. By also
serving as a government agent and spy, he incurred the severe
criticism of contemporaries. It is doubtful if even Shakespeare had
more varied experiences or more vicissitudes in life.
For writing what would to-day be considered a harmless piece of irony,
_The Shortest Way with Dissenters_, in which Defoe, who was himself a
dissenter, advocated banishment or hanging, he suffered the
mortification of exposure for three days in the pillory and of
imprisonment in the pestilent Newgate jail. His business of making
tiles was consequently ruined. These experiences, with which his
enemies taunted him, colored his entire life and made him realize that
the support of his wife and six children necessitated care in his
choice and treatment of subjects.
His life was a succession of changing fortunes. He died in poverty in
1731 and was buried in Bunhill Fields, London. His grave was marked by
only a small headstone, but the English boys and girls who had read
_Robinson Crusoe_ in the Victorian age subscribed the money for a
monument with a suitable inscription. It is remarkable that Bunhill
Fields, which contains the graves of so many humble dissenters, should
be the final resting place of both Bunyan and Defoe, the authors of
the first two English prose works most often read to-day.
A Journalist and a Prolific Writer.--Defoe has at last come to be
regarded as the first great English journalist. He had predecessors in
this field, for as early as 1622 the _Coranto_, or journal of
"current" foreign news, appeared. In 1641, on the eve of the civil
war, the _Diurnall_ of domestic news was issued. In 1643, when
Parliament appointed a licenser, who gave copyright protection to the
"catchword" or newspaper title, journalists became a "recognized
body." "Newsbooks" and especially "newsletters" grew in popularity.
Only a few years after the Restoration, there appeared _The London
Gazette_, which has been continued to the present time as the medium
through which the government publishes its official news.
From 1704 to 1713 Defoe issued _The Review_, which appeared triweekly
for the greater part of the time, and gave the news current in England
and in much of Europe. _The Review_, an unusual achievement for the
age, shows Defoe to have been a journalist of great ability. This
paper had one department, called _The Scandal Club_, which furnished
suggestions for _The Tatler_ and _The Spectator_.
It has been computed that Defoe wrote for _The Review_ during the nine
years of its publication 5000 pages of essays, in addition to nearly
the same amount of other matter. He also issued many pamphlets, which
performed somewhat the same service as the modern newspaper with its
editorials. It is probable that he was the most prolific of all
English authors. Few have discussed as wide a range of matter. He
wrote more than two hundred and fifty separate works on subjects as
different as social conditions, the promotion of business, human
conduct, travels in England, and ghosts.
Fiction.--Defoe was nearly sixty when he began to write fiction. In
1719 he published the first part of _Robinson Crusoe_, the story of
the adventures of a sailor wrecked on a solitary island. The Frenchman
Daudet said of this work: "It is as nearly immortal as any book can
ever be." The nineteenth century saw more than one hundred editions of
it published in London alone. It has been repeatedly issued in almost
every language of Europe. The secret of the success of _Robinson
Crusoe_ has puzzled hundreds of writers who have tried to imitate it.
The world-wide popularity of _Robinson Crusoe_ is chiefly due (1) to
the peculiar genius of the author; (2) to his journalistic training,
which enabled him to seize on the essential elements of interest and
to keep these in the foreground; (3) to the skill with which he
presents matter-of-fact details, sufficient to invest the story with
an atmosphere of perfect reality; (4) to his style, which is as simple
and direct as the speech of real life, and which is made vivid by
specific words describing concrete actions,--such as hewing a tree,
sharpening a stake, hanging up grapes to dry, tossing a biscuit to a
wild cat, taking a motherless kid in his arms; and (5) to the skill
with which he sets a problem requiring for its solution energy,
ingenuity, self-reliance, and the development of the moral power
necessary to meet and overcome difficulties.
Young and old follow with intense interest every movement of the
shipwrecked mariner when he first swims to the stranded ship,
constructs a raft, and places on it "bread, rice, three Dutch cheeses,
five pieces of dried goat's flesh, a little remainder of European
corn, and the carpenter's chest." Readers do not accompany him
passively as he lands the raft and returns. They work with him; they
are not only made a part of all Crusoe's experience, but they react on
it imaginatively; they suggest changes; they hold their breath or try
to assist him when he is in danger. Defoe's genius in making the
reader a partner in Robinson Crusoe's adventures has not yet received
sufficient appreciation. The author could never have secured such a
triumph if he had not compelled readers to take an active part in the
story.
It was for a long time thought that Defoe was ignorant, that he
accidentally happened to write _Robinson Crusoe_ because he had been
told of the recent experience of Alexander Selkirk on a solitary
island in the Pacific. It is now known that Defoe was well educated,
versed in several languages, and the most versatile writer of his
time. _Robinson Crusoe_ was no more of an accident than any other
creation of genius.
Defoe's other principal works of fiction are: _Memoirs of a Cavalier_,
the story of a soldier's adventures in the seventeenth century; _The
Life, Adventures, and Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton_, a
graphic account of adventures in a journey across Africa; _Moll
Flanders_, a story of a well-known criminal; and _A Journal of the
Plague Year_, a vivid, imaginative presentation, in the most realistic
way, of the horrors of the London plague in 1665. These works are
almost completely overshadowed by _Robinson Crusoe_; but they also
show Defoe's narrative power and his ability to make fiction seem an
absolute reality. I |
