lecture 1. historical and cultural background

7/27/2019 Lecture 1. Historical and Cultural Background

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LECTURE 1.

THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE. HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL BACKGROUND

The sixteenth century is undeniably a period of great developments in English literature. The first

half of the century witnessed the revival of lyrical poetry through the introduction of the sonnet(Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard), the rise of the secular drama (the early comedies and

tragedies) and the emergence of urbane prose (Sir Thomas Morus). Moreover, the second half of the

century, and particularly its final decades, brought about an unprecedented surge of creativity,

especially in poetry and drama writing:

In the brief space of some ten to fifteen years, what had been until then an essentially imitative

literature looking towards the continent for its models came suddenly into its own, and the poetry of

Sidney and Spenser, Marlowe and Shakespeare not only projected England to the forefront of the

European scene, but set new standards against which the drama and poetry of future generations

would be judged. (Roston, 1982: 1)

Modern scholarship has been trying to reconstruct the context of the age in order to

convincingly explain the phenomenon. Thus, on the one hand, interest was taken in the changes

affecting various societal levels – social, economic, political, religious – under the Tudors. On the

other hand, special attention was paid to the larger cultural frames, partly marked by the revival of

the interest in the classical antiquity culture, which favoured radical shifts in thought patterns and

the creation of new models.

1.1. The Tudors

Henry VII (1485-1509)

In 1485, Henry Tudor won the battle of Bosworth against Richard III, becoming Henry VII, thefounder of one of the greatest dynasties of English history. His victory marked the end of the civil

war between the noble houses of York and Lancaster known as the War of the Roses (1455-1485).

To reinforce his position on the throne, the newly-risen king, who strongly believed in the political

benefits of dynastic marriages, married, in 1486, Elizabeth of York, the daughter of Edward IV.

Henry VII turned out to be a cautious and thrifty politician, trusting nobody, and concerned,

above all, about reinforcing the centralised national state. That is why, he created the Court of Star

Chamber, a new institution developed out of a judicial committee of the King’s Council; he

protected the interests of the rising bourgeoisie and of the new nobility (instead of those of the ‘old’

noble houses) and created the merchant fleet. The ensuing economic development and political

stability at home caused literacy to extend among the people at large: reading and writing ceased to

be the monopoly of the clergy, and prosperous towns founded grammar schools with the materialsupport of the local authorities.

Henry VII’s foreign policy may be described as peaceful, but clearly oriented towards

bringing England within the mainstream of European affairs and seems to be essentially underlain by

the same belief in the efficiency of dynastic marriages. In 1489, by the Treaty of Medina del Campo,

the Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon and Henry VII’s eldest son Arthur were to be betrothed.

The two would get married in 1501, but their marital ‘bliss’ would be abruptly interrupted by Arthur’s

untimely death in 1502. As in 1496 England joined the Holy League against France, the English king

sought to maintain the ‘bond’ with Spain by having Catherine of Aragon betrothed to Prince Henry,

his second son and the future king of England. In 1503, Pope Julius granted a papal dispensation to

allow their marriage. Moreover, two years before his death, in 1507, Henry VII signed a marriage

treaty between his daughter Mary and the Archduke Charles, son of Philip I of Spain.



Henry VIII (1509-1547)

Though initially resisting the idea of marrying his former sister in law, under the pressure of his

councillors, Henry began his reign by marrying, in 1509, Catherine of Aragon. The only surviving

child of the couple, Princess Mary, was born in 1515.

An ambitious young man, Henry VIII seemed, from the early days of his reign, more

interested in turning England into a key-player on the stage of European politics. That may partly

account for the fact that, despite his dislike of popery, monks, image or relic worship, he wrote, in1521, a book against Martin Luther for which he was named ‘Fidei Defensor’ (Defender of the

Faith) by Pope Leo X.

Cardinal Thomas Wolsey was Henry VIII’s first minister (Lord Chancellor), appointed in

1515, and “the fourteen years of that proud but efficient prelate’s ascendency (1515-1529) saw the

king in a comparatively restrained mood” (Guy and Morrill, 1992: 19): a handsome young man,

who liked hunting, dancing, dallying, playing the lute and occasionally writing songs, who

(seemingly) took interest in the developments of arts and sciences (especially of theology and

astronomy), Henry VIII turned, in his mature and old age, into a monster of selfishness, obsessed

with consolidating his royal prominence, even if that meant, more often than not, engaging in

warfare (that he considered the ‘sport of kings’ – Guy and Morrill, 1992: 18). It is in the light of

these changes in the king’s personality that the ‘rise and fall’ of Cardinal Wolsey should beconsidered. The architect of the first English success in European politics under Henry VIII – i.e.,

the meeting of the Field of the Cloth of Gold held between Henry VIII and Francis I of France in

1520 – he was expected to solve, to the king’s advantage, the ‘crisis’ of the years to come,

motivated by both personal and political reasons. Intending to get rid of an aging wife who could

not give him the male heir he wanted and to marry a younger woman (Anne Boleyn), Henry VIII

summoned, in 1527, the ecclesiastical court established at Westminster to request an annulment of

his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Wolsey was sent to obtain the annulment from the Pope, but

he failed and, the next year (1528), the Pope sent Cardinal Campeggio to hear Henry VIII’s case.

That brought Wolsey the accusation of high treason and he died (in 1530) while en route to London

to be executed, being replaced by Sir Thomas Morus as the Lord Chancellor of England.

The papal resistance to fulfilling Henry’s wish was the perfect excuse for the English king tofinally break with the Roman Catholic Church, consistently interfering in English affairs. So, in

1531, Henry VIII made the English Parliament the instrument of his Royal Reformation: the Act of

Supremacy was passed acknowledging Henry VIII as the Supreme Head of the Church in England.

At a national level, the consequences of the Reformation were immediate and far-reaching: the

Anglican Church was established with the king as its supreme head; monasteries were dissolved and

church lands were seized, part of them being sold to appease the nobility and gentry; people would

have to take the Oath of Supremacy, or they would be charged with treason and executed. In this

context, Sir Thomas Morus resigned from the position of Lord Chancellor (1532), and refused to

commit spiritual ‘suicide’ just to please the king, hence he was beheaded in 1535.

The king used Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, to have his marriage withCatherine of Aragon declared invalid. Pope Clement VII excommunicated Henry VIII, but that did

not prevent him from secretly marrying Anne Boleyn in 1533. The newly-crowned Queen of

England gave birth on the same year to a baby girl, Princess Elizabeth. In 1534, the Parliament

passed the Act of Succession according to which only children of the King’s marriage to Anne

Boleyn were his lawful heirs.

Within a few years (i.e., in 1536), both Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn died: the

former lived her last days in misery, grieving her being misjudged and banished from the court; the

latter failed to give the king the much-desired son and, in her desperate attempts to do so, made

mistakes that led to her being tried for adultery, incest and treason, and executed. Free again, Henry

married Jane Seymour: in 1536, the Parliament passed the Act of Succession according to which

only children of King’s marriage to Jane Seymour would be his lawful heirs. Jane Seymour died inchild-birth (1537), but her son Prince Edward would become the successor to the throne.



Having more or less found peace in his personal life (though, up to the end of his reign, the

king had three more wives – Anne of Clèves, whom he divorced, Catherine Howard, executed for

adultery, and Catherine Parr), the King resolved to focus more on the foreign policy, embarking

again on French and Scottish wars. In 1534 he made peace with James V of Scotland. Several years

later, in 1545, he defeated the French fleet: unlike his father who was interested in the merchant

fleet, Henry VIII encouraged the development of an effective fleet of royal fighting ships better

adapted to the ocean, which he officially chartered in 1546. By the time he died (in 1547), Englandhad already been united with Wales (the union was legally accomplished by Parliament in 1536 and

1543), had triumphed over Scotland and Ireland, and had definitely proven its growing power at the

international level. (See Gavriliu, 2002: 74-77; Guy and Morrill, 1992: 17-37)

Edward VI (1547-1553)

As Edward VI was only 9 years old when he was crowned King at Westminster (1547), the country

was actually ruled by a Regency Council, led by the king’s uncle Edward Seymour, First Duke of

Somerset. That young Edward was raised as a bigoted Protestant and his uncle was the leader of the

Protestant faction in the Privy Council favoured the evolution of the Church of England along

clearly Protestant lines. In 1549, the Act of Uniformity was passed by the House of Lords, making

the Catholic Mass illegal and introducing the Book of Common Prayer, which embodied Protestantdoctrines. (A more radical Book of Common Prayer was passed in the Second Act of Uniformity in

1552.) The architect of these reforms was Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury. In addition,

Somerset finalised the destruction that had begun under Henry VIII, “ensuring that the native art,

sculpture, metalwork, and embroidery associated with Catholic ritual were comprehensively wiped

out” (Guy and Morrill, 1992: 40).

The difference in religious beliefs made even brother – sister relationships difficult. In 1551,

Mary Tudor, Henry VIII’s elder (Catholic) daughter, met her (Protestant) brother Edward, hoping

for reconciliation. Unfortunately, that turned out impossible and, when his disease was discovered

to be terminal in 1553, shortly before his death, King Edward VI signed a statement naming his

cousin Lady Jane Grey as his successor and excluding his half-sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, from the

line of succession. (See also Guy and Morrill, 1992: 37-41)

Mary I (1553-1558)

Though appointed the successor to the throne by a dying Protestant king who hated his sisters, Jane

Grey ruled for only nine days in July 1553. Mary had gained on her side part of the gentry,

persuaded of her Tudor legitimism. Her loyal troops marched south and entered London, Jane Grey

was imprisoned in the Tower of London and Mary was proclaimed Queen. Parliament was

summoned to legitimise the marriage of her father Henry VIII and her mother Catherine of Aragon.

The queen was also quick to get rid of her rival to the throne: in November 1553, Lady Jane Grey

was tried for treason and, though the queen initially pardoned her, she was eventually executed

together with her husband (1554).Soon the English were to learn the hard way the terrible extent of Mary I’s Catholicism. The

queen took all the steps she thought necessary in order to attain her goal, i.e., England’s (re-)union

with Rome. Thus, the queen released the Catholic Bishop Stephen Gardiner from the Tower, where

he had been imprisoned during Edward’s reign, and appointed him Lord Chancellor of England. In

1554, she married Prince Philip of Spain and sent her sister Elizabeth to the Tower under suspicion

of complicity in Sir Thomas Wyatt’s rebellion against her pro-Catholic and pro-Spanish policy.

(Elizabeth was then transferred to Woodstock.) Just like her father, Mary I did not hesitate to use

persecution to return the country to the Catholic faith and that won her the nickname of ‘Bloody

Mary’: “Mary burned a minimum of 287 persons after February 1555, and others died in prison”

(Guy and Morrill, 1992: 42). In particular, the former architects of Protestantism in England, chief

among which Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, fell victims to “straightforward political vengeance”(Guy and Morrill, 1992: 42): Cranmer was degraded from his office and, when he renounced Rome,

he was burned at the stake.



That Mary’s decision of marrying a Spanish Catholic prince was a mistake was also

confirmed by the failure of the English involvement in a war against France: stirred by Philip of

Spain, Mary I declared war on Henry II of France in 1557. The result was shameful loss for the

English: in January 1558, the French captured Calais which had belonged to England for more than

200 years. In November 1558, Mary I died childless and unloved by her subjects. (See also Guy and

Morrill, 1992: 41-45)

Elizabeth I (1558-1603)

The only surviving descendant of Henry VIII, the highly educated and intelligent Princess Elizabeth

had learnt the bitter lesson of disgrace, imprisonment and even the danger of death in the years

preceding her coming to the throne. She was 25 when she was crowned Queen of England in 1558.

Her position on the throne was, however, threatened by her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots and wife

of Francis II of France, who also assumed the title of Queen of England (1559). In 1560, the French

troops in Scotland tried to assert Queen Mary’s claim to the English throne. The Treaty of

Edinburgh (July 6, 1560) put an end to French interference in Scotland and acknowledged Elizabeth

I’s right to the throne.

That was not, though, the end of Elizabeth I’s conflict with her Scottish cousin, but, once the

legitimacy of her rule was recognised beyond doubt, the English queen had to focus on the religiousfeuds that had been tearing the nation apart. According to Guy and Morrill, the young queen’s

“coronation slogan was ‘concord’” (1992: 46). In fact, “she may originally have aimed to revive

Henry VIII’s religious legislation, to re-establish her royal supremacy and the break with Rome, and

to permit communion in both kinds (bread and wine) after the reformed fashion – but nothing else”

(1992: 46). She left the matter into the hands of her chief councillor William Cecil, who baited a

trap for the Catholics; so, when the Act of Settlement was passed through the Parliament in 1559

(completed in 1563 and 1571), it re-established royal supremacy and full Protestant worship,

turning the Anglican Church into a pillar of the Elizabethan state (Guy and Morrill, 1992: 46-47). It

is true, however, that the queen managed to wisely keep England free from the bloody religious

wars that were tearing France apart. (In 1561, a treaty was signed at Hampton Court pledging

Elizabeth’s support of the persecuted French Huguenots.) But the split between Protestants andCatholics deepened and would lead, in the long run, to several attempts on the queen’s life.

A shrewd and cautious politician (like her grandfather Henry VII), Elizabeth I mistrusted the

old aristocracy, relied on new men like Sir William Cecil (ennobled as Lord Burghley in 1571, who

remained the queen’s chief advisor for most of her reign) and Sir Francis Walsingham (the queen’s

‘spymaster’ and Principal Secretary of State from 1573) and she fiercely defended her throne. Some

of the most spectacular executions that she pretended to be reluctant with but which she actually

approved of were, in fact, the outcome of complex actions motivated by political ambitions and/or

religious differences. For example, in the aftermath of the pro-Catholic, pro-papal and pro-Spanish

intrigues that culminated in the Northern Rising (1569), Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk was

imprisoned in the Tower for attempting to marry Mary, Queen of Scots and was executed in 1572.More than a decade later, the discovery of new Catholic plots aimed at the assassination of

Elizabeth and the coronation of Mary (who had meanwhile been her cousin’s prisoner) as the Queen

of England led to the execution of Anthony Babbington (1586), and ultimately of Mary herself in

February 1587. (Mary’s execution turned her into “a martyr, the innocent romantic victim of

tyrannical jealousy”. – Gavriliu, 2002: 82)

Last but not least, during the last years of Elizabeth’s reign, after the English failure in

Ireland (1598-99) brought disgrace upon one of the queen’s former favourites, Robert Devereux,

the Earl of Essex, another plot threatened Elizabeth’s position on the throne in 1601:

Intelligent, well-educated, handsome, generous and courageous, Essex was, as Ophelia said of

Hamlet “the expectancy and rose of the fair state”. He soon won the heart if not the mind of theaging queen, became a member of the Privy Council and gathered about him a group of brilliant

young aristocrats including the Earl of Southampton, Shakespeare’s patron. Upon his unsuccessful



campaign in Ireland, exiled from the royal presence, Essex conceived a plot to overthrow the queen

and replace her with James VI of Scotland, Mary Stuart’s son.

The plotters arranged for a performance of Richard II by Shakespeare’s company on

February 6, 1601, hoping that the precedent of the deposing of a king would stir the citizens of

London into mutiny. On the following day, Essex and his friends stormed into London but the

attempted uprising proved a spectacular failure. He was convicted of treason and executed on

February 25, 1601. Notable scholars have remarked the profound impact that Essex’s career had on

the psychological portrait in Shakespeare’s greatest creation, Hamlet . (Gavriliu, 2002: 82)

Elizabeth’s solid judgement and impressive capacity in the choice of her ministers as well as

in the management of state finances was plainly proven when, with the help of Sir William Cecil

and Sir Thomas Gresham, she “brought England from near bankruptcy in mid-century to economic

prosperity within the course of thirty years, till it rivalled the dominant power, Spain” (Roston,

1982: 1-2). Apart from religious differences, the rivalry between England and Spain was equally

motivated by economic interests and special reference should be made in this respect to Elizabeth’s

support for the ‘privateers’ (merchant pirates) who sought new maritime routes to distant territories

(like America or India) but also attacked Spanish/French/Portuguese treasure-laden ships. Among

the most famous English privateers, the following could be mentioned:

• John Hawkins: In 1561, he introduced tobacco to England and hijacked Portuguese slave

ships, trading the slaves in Brazil for ginger, pearls and sugar, thus beginning England’s

participation in the slave trade.

• Martin Frobisher: Between 1576 and 1578, he made three voyages to the New World

seeking a passage in the North-West.

• Walter Raleigh: Having accompanied Sir Humphrey Gilbert on his voyage to the New

World, he renewed, in 1584, Gilbert’s patent to explore and settle in North America. He

established the colony of Virginia (1587). He brought the potato plant and popularised

tobacco in England (besides being a remarkable Renaissance poet).

• Francis Drake: Considered by far the greatest of the privateers, he was the firstEnglishman to make a voyage around the world between 1577 and 1580. (During this

voyage, he proclaimed England’s sovereignty over the New Albion, i.e., California.)

Knighted in 1581, he seemed to focus, over the years to come, on attacking Spanish

ships (thus bringing gold, silver and gems to the crown’s revenue) and Spanish colonies

(e.g. 1586, the attack on San Domingo). In 1587, Philip II of Spain’s invasion fleet

preparation was interrupted by Drake’s invasion of the Port of Cadiz. In 1588, when the

Spanish Armada (made of 130 ships) sailed for England, he made an outstanding

contribution to the final defeat of the invading fleet.

As a matter of fact, the failure of the Spanish attempt to conquer England (as the Armada was

defeated by the English navy and the coast winds on July 26, 1588) contributed not only to the riseof nationalistic feelings among the English, but also opened the world to English colonisation. The

process of development of trading companies in different corners of the world (e.g. the Muscovy

Company in 1555; the Levant Company in 1581) continued more vigorously after the defeat of the

Spanish Armada and in 1600, the East India Company was chartered in London, challenging Dutch

control of the spice trade. In brief, “all the trade routes and distant markets sketched out by the

daring Elizabethan merchants paved the way for the great British colonial empire of the centuries to

come” (Gavriliu, 2002: 83).

Having repeatedly declined to marry (though the negotiations between Elizabeth and Henry,

Duke of Anjou could have succeeded if it had not been for the opposition of the Privy Council in

1579), Elizabeth I, the last of the Tudors, died childless in 1603, at the age of 69, after a reign of 45

years. She was succeeded to the throne by James VI Stuart, son of the late Mary Queen of Scots,

who became James I, uniting England and Scotland. (See also Gavriliu, 2000: 80-84 and Guy and

Morrill, 1992: 45-70)



As it can be seen from the above presentation of the most important achievements and

failures of the Tudors, life in England during the sixteenth century was not always and for all

English subjects ‘prosperous’: the rise of England’s national self-confidence and the growth of its

economic and military power were incontestable, but, as suggested by Murray Roston, there were

also less ‘attractive’ aspects. The life style of the middle classes, in particular, improved to a certain

extent, but poverty, pushing people to vagrancy and pillaging, remained a major problem. Writers,

especially, benefited very little from the economic boom of the Elizabethan period and most of them struggled desperately against financial privation (1982: 2). Moreover, as Roston rightfully

remarks, “the question remains whether national self-confidence based upon growing economic and

military prowess is itself a prescription for producing great literature” (Roston, 1982: 2). To

substantiate his doubt, the critic mentions that some of Shakespeare’s greatest plays (King Lear,

Othello, Macbeth) were written at a time of deep societal unrest in the early days of James I’s reign,

which seems to indicate “that it was, if anything, the insecurity of his time rather than the

confidence which deepened his literary sensitivity” (Roston, 1982: 3).

1.2. Renaissance in England

On the European continent, ever since the fourteenth century, artistic developments in many

cultural spaces had been circumscribed to the Renaissance/ re-birth of the interest in the man-centered learning of classical antiquity. Petrarch and Boccaccio had significantly contributed to the

rediscovery of several ancient authors; libraries sought for ancient manuscripts and scribes to copy

them for private collections; “Plato became a model for philosophical speculation, Cicero for prose

‘eloquence’, Ovid’s Metamorphoses a source-book for mythology; and academics were established

for the study of the ancient classics” (Roston, 1982: 3). With its spirit of inquiry and its vision of the

ancient freedom of Greek and Roman thought, the Renaissance was transplanted, in early sixteenth

century, from the continent to bloom afresh in England. The interest in classical learning in England

was boosted by private donations of ancient manuscripts to the Universities of Oxford and

Cambridge. “William Grocyn, the first teacher of Oxford, Thomas Linacre, who taught Greek to

Erasmus and Thomas Morus, John Colet, the founder of St-Paul’s School, the first English

secondary school devoted to the New Learning, established the teaching of Greek on sound principles and wrote grammatical works and translations” (Gavriliu, 2000: 72-3).

But, as Roston rightfully points out, “[th]e Renaissance was far more than a revival of

classical learning or the imitation of an ancient style. It represented, rather, a complex shift in

human thought of which the return to classical models was more a symptom than a cause” (1982:

4). This search for new ‘styles of thought’ of the Renaissance, that would provide a counterweight

to those dominating the Middle Ages, materialised in Humanism, characterised by interest in man,

asserting the intrinsic worth of human life. By placing man as an individual at the centre of human

preoccupation, humanism gave him a new status in the universe. It emphasised the study of man

and regarded such study as the way to elevate human culture and make life on earth more enjoyable.

However, one should not imagine the new ideas in philosophy and arts as fully divorced from those belonging to the medieval period; actually, it may be argued that “the strength of the Renaissance in

all its ramifications and complexity can be traced to its extraordinary duality, its incorporation of

two markedly different concepts, sometimes clashing openly within it, sometimes fruitfully

intermingling, but always ensuring on the part of the writer and thinker a widened range of

perception” (Roston, 1982: 4).

“The great humanist of the age, Desiderius Erasmus, lived in England for a number of years

and wrote his famous work Moriae Encomium (Praise of Folly) in 1510 at the London home of Sir

Thomas Morus to whom the work is dedicated. Erasmus and Thomas Morus were lifelong friends

and their friendship is one of the most touching in the history of literature” (Gavriliu, 2002: 73). A

statesman and an intellectual, Thomas Morus, the great leader of English humanism, reached

literary fame with Utopia (1515-1516), the first great humanistic work by an Englishman. Writtenin Latin in dialogue form (and translated into English in 1551), Morus’s work focused on creating

an ideal ‘no place’, the image of which should function as an incentive for the entire Europe to



reconsider its social institutions in the light of reason. Skilfully placed against the background of the

fervent endeavours to discover new territories and to colonise them that had emerged in many

European societies of the sixteenth century, Morus’s Utopia is revealed, though, as deprived of

corruption, warfare, poverty, crime, cruelty and immorality and is set in utter contrast with Henry

VIII’s absolute monarchy. The targets of Morus’s bitter criticism are: the social and political evils

ensuing from the process of capital accumulation; the cruel and unlawful enclosures; the rapacity of

the trading classes; the oppressive absolute monarchy; the corruption of the magistrates and theking’s councillors. According to the great humanist, the ideal state should be dynamic, liable to

change and improvement, essentially based on people’s productive work rather than private

property, non-violent and tolerant of religious differences. (See also Gavriliu, 2000: 74-5).

Utopia is the ancestor of a whole range of writings starting with Bacon’s New Atlantis (1626),

through Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726), and Morris’s News from Nowhere (1890), down to

Butler’s Erewhon (1872). More’s book has its own ancestry derived partly from Plato’s Republic and

partly from the accounts of Amerigo Vespucci’s travels. (Gavriliu, 2000: 75)

Clear evidence of the duality characterising the Renaissance is easily found when

considering various developments in scholarly studies of astronomy, with direct impact on the philosophical/metaphysical understanding of man’s place in the universe. Thus, in Europe, the

epoch-making astronomical discoveries of Copernicus, Kepler and Galilei substituted for the

traditional Ptolemaic cosmology the new image of the sun-centred universe. But the Elizabethan

world picture was still largely geocentric with the earth surrounded by the nine spheres beyond

which the ‘coelum empireum’ extended. The universe was hierarchically structured, all the things

constituting one Great Chain of Being that rose from the particles of matter to the Power that had

created them. The cosmic hierarchy reflected the principle of order which in the Renaissance

conception governed the universe and prevented chaos in the society. The Great Chain of Being

would prove a perennial concept to linger on in the intellectual mentality of the English until late in

the eighteenth century.

Equally pursued with vigour and enthusiasm were the historical and classical studies. Withregard to Renaissance historical writing, works like Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles of England,

Scotland, and Ireland (1578) (incorporating large portions of the work of earlier chroniclers that

covered the history of England from the Flood to within four years of the date of publication), John

Stow’s A Summarie of English Chronicles (1565), and William Camden’s Britannia (1586) and

Annales Rerum Anglicarum (1615, 1625) were considered groundbreaking. In classical studies, two

distinct tendencies were manifest among the Renaissance academia and the readership at large

(consisting mainly of upper and middle classes). (See Gavriliu, 2000: 76)

On the one hand, the interest in Latin and Greek determined school masters and university

professors alike to embark on dictionary, grammar and rhetoric book writing. In more and more

cases, though, the question came up whether students should speak and write better Latin/Greek or

better English, and that accounted for the combination of due respect to the Latin masters of rhetoric and humanistic protests against the sterile and slavish imitation of the classics. Relevant

examples in this respect would be:

- Sir Thomas Eliot’s complete Latin-English dictionary – The Boke Named the Governour

(1531) which was also intended a manual for the education of the enlightened Renaissance

ruler. Dedicated to Henry VIII, the book foregrounded a humanistic, morally-biased, liberal

and practical educational system based both on the study of the classics and the Bible, and

on physical training, that could prepare able people for the duties of government.

- Thomas Wilson’s book of English composition – The Arte of Rhetorique (1553) –

advocating a simple, fluent style free of Latin affectation and terms borrowed from other

contemporary languages;

- Roger Ascham’s treatise – The Scholemaster (1570) – defending the use of English in

students’ education. (See Gavriliu, 2000: 76-77)



Moreover, in the same context, there was an impressive upsurge of translations from Latin

and Greek meant to answer the need of the age for access to the ancient sources but also to

encourage developments in the literary English language. “Translations from Greek included much

prose, less poetry and very little drama” (Gavriliu, 2000: 78): e.g. Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble

Grecians and Romans (1571) translated by Sir Thomas North and used by Shakespeare and many

other Renaissance writers as source for their works; Arthur Hall’s Ten Books of Homers. Iliades

(1581) (followed, 30 years later, by a complete translation of The Iliad by George Chapman in 1611and of The Odyssey in 1615). “Nearly all major classic Latin prose was translated into English

during the Renaissance” (Gavriliu, 2000: 78): e.g. Vergil’s Aeneid translated by Henry Howard,

Earl of Surrey (Book II in 1554, and Book IV in 1557) and introducing the blank verse for the first

time in English; Thomas Newton’s Seneca His Tenne Tragedies (1581) and Arthur Golding’s The

XV Bookes of P. Ovidius Naso Entytuled Metamorphosis, Translated into English Meeter (1567),

both assumed to have been served as sources for William Shakespeare.

Last but not least, translators also chose to work on more recent masterpieces of European –

Italian, French, Spanish – literatures, chief among which one could mention Montaigne’s Essays,

Cervantes’s Don Quixote or the anonymous Lazarillo de Tormes. In particular, William Painter’s

The Palace of Pleasure (1566-67) included free adaptations of French and Italian, as well as Latin

and Greek writers, providing thus the playwrights of the time with another major source of inspiration.

Yet, for all the humanistic interest in Latin, Greek or contemporary European literatures, the

book of all books remained, for the nobility and the middle classes alike, the Bible. If, at the

beginning of the sixteenth century, there were only two complete English versions of the Bible,

both of which were made by followers of John Wyclif, an increased demand for new translations

produced in successive waves the Great Bible (1539), Cranmer’s Bible (1540), the Geneva Bible

(1560), to culminate with the Authorized Version (1611) which has ever since influenced English

literature through its perfectly balanced archaic style. (See Gavriliu, 2000: 77)

To conclude, it is in this cultural frame that one should consider the achievements in the

fields of poetry, drama and philosophy that reached unprecedented originality and forwardness of

expression in the works of Spenser, Shakespeare, Bacon.

[I]n art and literature of the time that duality of concept, the idealistic and the pragmatic, when

enrichingly integrated, provided the artist with an amazing range, a vision of man reaching as high as

the heavens, yet still rooted in this tactile earth. The Renaissance hero is seen as rivalling the gods

themselves in splendour, yet tripping through some small factual error of human judgement, a

moment’s thoughtlessness, a minor spot or blemish which corrupts his virtues, be they as pure as grace.

He may command the storms in his wrath, yet at the same time is seen realistically as no more than a

poor, forked animal, vulnerable to rain and cold, and succumbing at the last to the cold touch of death.

[…] The astonishing poetic and dramatic spectrum offered by this twofold vision, the empirical and the

spiritual, made possible for the era the breadth and range of its artistic productions. […]

Within our period, that ambivalence of a sharply actualised reality contrasting with,complementing, and merging with the nobly idealised version is a primary source of achievement in all

genres of literature. […] The Renaissance writer at his best embraces both worlds. He possesses an

acute awareness of the handling of a ship’s tackle, the technicalities of falconry, the materialistic greed

of man; but with it he has a sense too of the celestial harmonies to which man may attain, of human

possibilities infinite in their range. (Roston, 1982: 7, 9, 11)

In the literature of the English Renaissance, “the dynamic interplay between an ennobling sense of

man’s infinite possibilities in his ascent to the divine and a sharply pragmatic awareness of the

realities within the human condition” (Roston, 1982: 11) charms and provides food for thought,

always lying at the very heart of the most sublime lyrical poems, the best achieved epic verse or the

most touching plays of the Tudor (and then Jacobean) stage.



References:

Gavriliu, Eugenia (2000) Lectures in English Literature (I). From Anglo-Saxon to Elizabethan,

Galaţi: Galaţi University Press.

Gavriliu, Eugenia (2002) British History and Civilisation. A Student-Friendly Approach Through

Guided Practice, Galaţi: Galaţi University Press.

Guy, John and Morrill, John (1992) The Oxford History of Britain. Vol. III. The Tudors and Stuarts ,

Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.Roston, Murray (1982) Sixteenth-Century English Literature, London: Macmillan Education

Limited.

lecture 1. historical and cultural background

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