Literature of the Renaissance

(end of the 15^th –beginning of the 17^th century )

Questions:

1. Poetry and prose: T.Wyatt, E.Surrey, E.Spencer, Ch.Marlowe etc.

2. Drama: W.Shakespear.

1. Poetry and prose: T.Wyatt, E.Surrey, E.Spencer, Ch.Marlowe etc.

During the early years of the 16^th century, the ideas of Renaissance were rapidly replacing those of the Middle Ages.

The classical Renaissance (Renascence), or rediscovery of classical thought and literature, implied both knowledge of the classical writers and ability to use the Greek and Latin languages, as there was a revival of interests in the ancient culture of Greece and Rome. Italy gave it birth, and it gradually spread beyond the Alps into Germany, France and England. The study of the works of the ancient philosophers, artists and writers helped people to widen their outlook, to know the world and man`s nature. On the bases of both the ancient culture and the most progressive elements of the culture of the Middle Ages, the fine arts, literature and science of the Renaissance began to develop. The culture of the Renaissance was the 1<sup>st</sup> stage of bourgeois culture and the bourgeoisie as a class was being born. Humanism was the main progressive ideology of the Renaissance. The creators of this new outlook called themselves humanists. The word “humanist” was first used by Italian scholars to refer to a teacher of the language and literature of Ancient Rome and Greece. The aim of such teachers was to bridge the gap between the “classical” period and their own. The greatest of the European humanists were the Dutchman Erasmus and his English friend Sir Thomas More. Their activity was characterized by denial of the Christian church philosophy and criticism of the whole feudal system, which did not correspond to the human interests. The works of humanists proclaimed the equality of people, regardless of their social origin, race and religion. The development of a new social order presented great possibilities for man`s creative power. That is why humanists` outlook was marked with bright optimism, with belief in man`s great abilities and his high mission. The humanists` ideal is an all-round developed man, whose physical beauty and spiritual wealth are in harmony with each other. They are sure that the main aim of humanity is happiness all over the world. It was contrary to the medieval ideology and especially to that of the Catholic Church. The bearers of the progressive outlook greatly contributed to the development of every branch of the world’s art, culture and science. The Renaissance was the greatest progressive revolution that mankind had ever experienced. The Renaissance gave mankind such great men as Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, Petrarch, Cervantes and Shakespeare.

The English Renaissance was a cultural and artistic movement in England dating from the early 16th century to the early 17th century. This era in English cultural history is sometimes referred to as "the age of Shakespeare" or "the Elizabethan era," taking the name of the English Renaissance's most famous author and most important monarch, respectively; however it is worth remembering that these names are rather misleading: Shakespeare was not an especially famous writer in his own time, and the English Renaissance covers a period both before and after Elizabeth's reign.

The Renaissance period in England is divided into 3 periods: 1^st-the rise of the Renaissance under the Early Tudor monarchs (1500-1557); 2^nd-the height of the Renaissance under Elizabeth I (1558-1603); 3^rd –the decline of the Renaissance under the Stuart monarchs (1603-1649).

Early Tudor Age (1500-1557)

English part in the European movement known as humanismalso belongs to this time. Humanism encouraged greater care in the study of the literature of classical antiquity and reformed education in such a way as to make literary expression of paramount importance for the cultured person. Literary style, in part modeled on that of the ancients, soon became a self-conscious preoccupation of English poets and prose writers. Thus, the richness and metaphorical abundance of style at the end of the century indirectly owed much to the educational force of this movement. The most immediate effect of humanism lay, however, in the dissemination of the cultivated, clear, and sensible attitude of its classically educated supporters, who rejected medieval theological misteaching and superstition.

The most outstanding people of the period are William Tyndale, Sir Thomas More, Sir Thomas Wyatt, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey,

William Tyndale (circa 1492-1536) was an English biblical translator, religious reformer, and writer. Born in Gloucestershire, Tyndale received his master's degree from the University of Oxford. He was ordained in 1515 and then went to the University of Cambridge. There he determined to translatethe Bible from the Greek into English in order to combat corruption in the English church and extend scriptural knowledge among the common people of England. Receiving no support from the bishop of London, however, he traveled to Germany, where he met Martin Luther, espoused Reformation principles, and, in Cologne, began (1525) the printing of his English version of the New Testament; it was completed in Worms. He published his annotated translation of the Pentateuch in 1530.

Tyndale's unorthodox translations were strongly opposed by ecclesiastical authorities in England. Nonetheless, his version of the Bible, together with the earlier translations of the English theologian and religious reformer John Wycliffe, formed the foundation of the Authorized (King James) Version of 1611. Tyndale was the author of a number of tracts supporting the English Reformation, and he was engaged in acrimonious controversy with the English statesman and humanist writer Sir Thomas More. He was taken into custody by imperial representatives in Antwerp and, after 16 months of imprisonment, was tried; on October 6, 1536, Tyndale was strangled and burned at the stake.

Sir Thomas More (1478-1535) is an English statesman and writer, known for his religious position against King Henry VIII that cost him his life. More was born in London on February 7, 1478, and educated at Canterbury Hall (now Christ Church), University of Oxford. He studied law after leaving Oxford, but his primary interests were in science, theology, and literature. During his early manhood, he wrote comedies and spent much time in the study of Greek and Latin literature. In 1499 he determined to become a monk. Four years later More gave up this plan, and in 1504 he entered Parliament. One of his first acts was to urge a decrease in a proposed appropriation for King Henry VII. In revenge, the king imprisoned More's father and did not release him until a fine was paid and More himself had withdrawn from public life. After the death of the king in 1509, More became active once more. In 1510, he was appointed undersheriff of London.

During the next decade, More attracted the attention of King Henry VIII, and served frequently on diplomatic missions to the Low Countries (Нидерланды, Бельгия и Люксембург). In 1518 he became a member of the Privy Council (Тайный Совет); he was knighted in 1521. Two years later, More was made Speaker of the House of Commons. During this period Henry VIII made More one of his favorites and often sought his company for philosophical conversations. More became lord chancellor in 1529; he was the first layman to hold the post. His fortunes changed, however, when he refused to support Henry's request for a divorce from Catherine of Aragon. More's religious uncertainty made him unwilling to approve of any defiance of papal authority. He resigned from the chancellorship in 1532 and withdrew from public notice. The king resented the attitude of his former friend and had him imprisoned in 1534. More was tried the following year; he refused to take an oath of supremacy, asserting that Parliament did not have the right to usurp papal authority in favor of the king. Condemned for his stand, More was decapitated on July 7, 1535. In 1935 he was canonized by the Roman Catholic Church.

Thomas More is best known for Utopia (1516), a satirical account of life on the fictitious island of Utopia. “Utopia” comes from a Greek word meaning “Nowhere”. On this island the interests of the individual are subordinate to those of society at large, all people must do some work, universal education and religious toleration are practiced, and all land is owned in common. These conditions are contrasted with those of English society, to the substantial disadvantage of the latter. It consists of 2 parts: in the 1^st part Hislogy speaks with the author describing situation in England and in the 2^nd part Hislogy tells about the ideal country he visited. Utopia was the forerunner of a series of similar books, describing ideal places. But soon people began to see that it was really impossible and the 20^th century brought into life a new genre “distopia” – bad place to live in. an example of a distopia is Orwell’s “1984”, Platonov’s “Kotlovan”.

Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) is an English poet and diplomat, best-remembered for his individualistic poems that deal openly in everyday speech with the trials of romantic love. He was educated at the University of Cambridge, graduating in 1518. In 1524 he was engaged by Henry VIII to fulfill various offices at home and abroad. Wyatt was in and out of jail—and the king's favor—in 1536, either for associating with Anne Boleyn or for quarreling with the duke of Suffolk, and in 1541, on charges of treason. Wyatt (or Wyat) was knighted in 1537 and served as ambassador to the court of Holy Roman Emperor, Wyatt, and his contemporary Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, are credited with introducing the sonnet into English poetry; he translated ten of Petrarch's sonnets, composed original sonnets, and worked in other poetic forms, such as the lyric, song, and rondeau. Wyatt's meter was often irregular, a feature that his critics found crude, but 20th-century critics laud Wyatt's rhythms for their vigor and expressiveness.

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, (1517?—1547), is an English soldier and poet. Quick- tempered and quarrelsome, he made many enemies and was imprisoned several times for misconduct. Arrested with his father on trumped-up charges of treason, he was condemned and executed in 1547. Although not primarily a man of letters, Howard greatly enriched English literature by his introduction of new verse forms. His love poems, like those of his contemporary Sir Thomas Wyatt, show the influence of Italian models. The two share the distinction of having introduced the sonnet to English literature. Howard's translationof the second and third books of the Aeneid by Virgil was written in blank verse of five iambic feet, the first use of this form in English.

In literature it was a time of experimentation and of extensive formal borrowings from French and Italian writings by scholars. The native drama continued to develop and gain popularity. Miracle (plays on religious subjects staged by common people) and morality plays (allegorical plays having abstract figures for its characters) remained a favourite form of entertainment, while a new dramatic form, the interlude, developed. It was a short play on everyday subjects designed to be presented between the courses of a banquet.

Elizabethan Age (1558-1603)

This period marked the summit of English Renaissance art and literature which has never been surpassed. It witnessed the flourishing of English poetry and drama.

Elizabeth I (1533-1603), queen of England and Ireland (1558-1603), daughter of Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn. Elizabeth was the longest-reigning English monarch in nearly two centuries and the first woman to successfully occupy the English throne. Called Glorianna and Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth enjoyed enormous popularity during her life and became an even greater legend after her death. Elizabeth firmly established Protestantism in England, encouraged English enterprise and commerce, and defended the nation against the powerful Spanish naval force known as the Spanish Armada. Her reign was noted for the English Renaissance, an outpouring of poetry and drama led by William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, and Christopher Marlowe that remains unsurpassed in English literary history.

Elizabeth was born at Greenwich Palace in London on September 7, 1533. Her parents, Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, wanted a son as heir and were not pleased with the birth of a daughter. When she was two her mother was beheaded for adultery, and Elizabeth was exiled from court. The noted scholar Roger Ascham later served as her tutor, and he educated her as a potential heir to the throne rather than as an insignificant daughter of the monarch. Elizabeth underwent strict training in Greek, Latin, rhetoric, and philosophy and was an intellectually gifted pupil. Later she wrote poetry of meritthat she may have published under a different name.

The nation that Elizabeth inherited was experiencing a steady increase in population. During the 16th century the population of England and Wales would roughly double, and by Elizabeth's death in 1603 would reach 5 million. The continued population growth placed strains on the economy, which was made worse by serious harvest failures in every decade of Elizabeth's reign. Prices for food and clothing skyrocketed in what became known as the Great Inflation.

The 1590s were the worst years of the century, marked by starvation, epidemic disease, and roving bands of vagrants (wanderers) looking for work.

Elizabeth's government enacted legislation known as the Poor Laws, which made every local parish responsible for its own poor, created workhouses, and severely punished homeless beggars. One of the queen's most important economic decisions was to issue a new currency that contained a standard amount of precious metal. This raised confidence in the currency and also allowed businesses to enter into long-term financial contracts.

During Elizabeth's reign, England expanded trade overseas and the merchant community grew. Private shipbuilding boomed and navigational advances made long sea voyages safer. At the same time, new enterprises like the Muscovy Company were chartered to find market for English products. In 1600 the government granted the English East India Company a monopoly to trade in Asia, Africa, and America. The desire to expand overseas trade was also a motive in the ventures of English explorers such as Sir Francis Drake, and Sir Walter Raleigh. Such adventurers established the first English outposts in North America.

In 1570 the pope excommunicated (отлучить от церкви) Elizabeth, approving Catholic efforts to dethrone her. In 1571 an international conspiracy was uncovered to assassinate her in favor of her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots. Although Mary was beheaded in 1587 after years of being at the center of Catholic plots against Elizabeth, such plots did not end until England defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588.

The most outstanding dramatist of the period was W. Shakespeare (1564-1616). But there were writers in this period that opened way to him. His predecessors in poetry were Thomas Wyatt, Henry Howard, Sir Philip Sidney, Michael Drayton and Edmund Spenser in whose works the genre of sonnets produced real masterpieces.

The sonnet was brought to England from Italy where it was invented by great Italian poets Dante and Rotralf. It is a piece of lyrical poetry, having 14 lines and quite definite rules of composing. We differentiate between the Italian sonnet and the English one.

The Italian sonnet (Petrarchian) has 2 quatrains (an octave) and 2 tercets (a sextet); the rhyme scheme was: ab ab ab ab cdc cdc

The English sonnet (Shakespearian) acquired the following form: 3 quatrains and 1 couplet (2 lines); the rhyme scheme was ab ab cd cd ef ef gg.

The poets mentioned before used the Italian scheme. Initially a sonnet was a love song. In Shakespeare’s words its contents were enriched by new themes and motives. Though love remained in his sonnets the main theme, it acquires a wide range of various shades: it ranges from admiration to hatred and jealousy. Besides his sonnets are filled with philosophical meditations on various problems of love.

Sir Philip Sidney (1554—1586) is an English poet, courtier, and soldier, who in life was a model of the ideal Renaissance gentleman, and whose devotion to poetry served as an inspiration for the future of English verse.

A favorite of Elizabeth I, he was sent on several diplomatic missions. He retired from court for a time after incurring the queen's displeasure, but in 1583 was restored to favor and knighted. In 1586 he joined an expedition sent to aid the Netherlands against Spain. Sidney died of wounds received in a raid on a Spanish convoy at Zutphen in the Netherlands. None of Sidney's works was published during his lifetime; many of them, however, circulated in manuscript. The best known are Astrophel and Stella (1591), a sequence of 108 sonnets celebrating a hopeless love affair, and Arcadia (1590), a pastoral romance in verse linked by prose passages; the first considerable work in English in this form; it became a model for later pastoral poetry. Sidney's Defence of Poesie (1595; known in a slightly different version as An Apologie for Poetrie, also 1595) was a prose essay that described the nature of poetry and defended it against Puritan objections to imaginative literature.

Michael Drayton (1563-1631) is an English poet, born in Hartshill, Warwickshire. His Harmonie of the Church (1591), a rendering of scriptural passages in verse, offended the archbishop of Canterbury and was publicly burned. Soon thereafter Drayton wrote Idea's Mirror (1594), a collection of love sonnets. Little is known about his life but several of his sonnets rank among the best creations of the period and are second only to Shakespeare's ones.

Edmund Spenser (1552—1599) is a great English poet, who bridged the medieval and Elizabethan periods, and who is most famous for his long allegorical romance, The Faerie Queene. Spenser was born in London, where he attended the Merchant Tailor's School. He then went on to Pembroke College, University of Cambridge, where he took a degree in 1576. In 1579 he entered the service of the English courtier Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and met the English poet Sir Philip Sidney, to whom he dedicated his first major poem, The Shepheardes Calendar (1579). This work demonstrates the great poetic flexibility of the English language. It is a series of 12 pastoral poems written in a variety of meters and employing a vocabulary of obsolete words and coined expressions to give a suggestion of antiquity.

While residing with the Earl of Leicester in London, Spenser began to write The Faerie Queene, and in 1580 he was appointed secretary to the new lord deputy of Ireland. Thereafter, Spenser lived mostly in Ireland, near Cork, where he completed his great allegory. In 1589 he was visited by the English poet, courtier, and explorer Sir Walter Raleigh, who recognized the merit of the poem and brought Spenser to England to publish it and to make the poet known to Queen Elizabeth I. Spenser received an enthusiastic reception, and his poem was hailed on the publication of its first three books in 1590. Unable to secure further patronage, however, he remained in England for about a year and published a collection of short poems entitled Complaints (1591) before returning to Ireland. On his return, in the same year, he wrote Colin Clouts Come Home Againe. This work, published in 1595, was dedicated to Raleigh; in the pastoral mode, it recounts Spenser's experiences at the English court and concludes with praises of the simple country life. In 1594 Spenser married and celebrated the event in his "Epithalamion," a wedding song, considered the most beautiful example of this genre in English literature. It was printed in 1595 in the same volume as a group of love sonnets entitled The Amorettu. In October 1598 his castle was sacked and burned by Irish rebels, and Spenser fled to London, where he died on January 13, 1599.

Spenser's reputation rests mainly on his skillful blending of religious and historical allegory with chivalric romance in The Faerie Queene. As originally planned, according to his introductory letter addressed to Raleigh, the work was to consist of 12 books, each made up of 12 cantos. Only 6 books were completed, however, in addition to 2 cantos entitled "Mutabilitie" that appeared in 1609, when the 6 books were published together for the first time. As outlined in the introduction, Gloriana, the queen of Fairyland, represents both glory and Queen Elizabeth I, in whose honor 12 knights, who represented the qualities of the chivalric virtues, engage in a series of adventures. Throughout the narrative, the figure of Arthur, the perfect knight, also appears. The six completed books relate the adventures of the knights who represented the qualities of holiness, temperance, chastity, friendship, justice, and courtesy.

For The Faerie Queene, Spenser originated a nine-line verse stanza, now known as the Spenserian stanza —the first eight lines are iambic pentameter, and the ninth, iambic hexameter; the rhyme scheme is ababbcbcc. The melodious verse, combined with Spenser's sensuous imagery and deliberate use of archaic language evocative of the medieval past (as in the earlier Shepheardes Calendar), serve not only to relieve the high moral seriousness of his theme but to create a complex panorama of great splendor. Spenser's lush and expansive imagination and vigorous approach to structure made him a powerful influence on John Milton and the romantic poets, including John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley.

The Elizabethan Age is considered to be the most glorious period in the development of English theatre. Apart from Shakespeare, there were many other playwrights who distinguished themselves in the field. They are, primarily, Robert Green, John Lyly, Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe. They were a group of dramatists known as “University Wits”. They all got a university education where they got acquainted with the masterpieces of ancient Greek and Roman drama and modeled their own works on the works they had studied. Each of them made a big contribution to English drama. J. Lyly introduced several parallel plots in his works, before him there was only one plot in one play. R. Green’s drama was very democratic. He was the 1^st to introduce common people as characters. Th. Kyd is known as the author of “political tragedy”

Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) is an English playwright and poet, considered the first great English dramatist and the most important Elizabethan dramatist before William Shakespeare, although his entire activity as a playwright lasted only six years. Earlier playwrights had concentrated on comedy; Marlowe worked on tragedy and advanced it considerably as a dramatic medium. His masterpiece is The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus.

Born in Canterbury on February 6, 1564, the son of a shoemaker, Marlowe was educated at the University of Cambridge. Going to London, he associated himself with the Admiral's Men, a company of actors for whom he wrote most of his plays. He was reputedly a secret agent for the government and numbered some prominent men, including Sir Walter Raleigh, among his friends, but he led an adventurous and dissolute life and held unorthodox religious views. In 1593 he was denounced as a heretic; before any action could be taken against him, in May of that year he was stabbed to death in a tavern quarrel at Deptford over payment of a dinner bill.

By revealing the possibilities for strength and variety of expression in blank verse, Marlowe helped to establish the verse form as the predominant form in English drama. He wrote four principal plays: the heroic dramatic epic Tamburlaine the Great, Part I (1587), about the 14th-century Mongol conqueror; The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (1588?), one of the earliest dramatizations of the Faust legend; the tragedy The Jew of Malta (1589?); and Edward II (1592?), which was one of the earliest successful English historical dramas and a model for Shakespeare's Richard II and Richard III. In each of these dramas one forceful protagonist with a single overriding passion dominates. Some authorities believe Marlowe also wrote parts of several of Shakespeare's plays. Each of Marlowe's important plays has as a central character a passionate man doomed to destruction by an inordinate desire for power. The plays are further characterized by beautiful, so`norous language and emotional vitality, which is, however, at times unrestrained to the point of pomposity.

As a poet Marlowe is known for "The Passionate Shepherd" (1599), which contains the lyric "Come Live with Me and Be My Love." Marlowe's mythological love poem, Hero and Leander, was unfinished at his death; it was completed by George Chapman and published in 1598. Marlowe also translated works of the ancient Latin poets Lucan and Ovid. If not for Shakespeare, who was also born in 1564, Marlowe could have been the greatest playwright of English literature. There are speculations ascribing Shakespeare’s works among others to Marlowe.

2. Drama: W.Shakespear.

The most outstanding dramatist of the period is justifiably considered to be W. Shakespeare (1564-1616). Little is known about Shakespeare’s life. We only know that he had a family in his home town, became an actor and came to London before 1589, and spent most of his life in London. His success as a playwright enabled him to retire to Stratford, where he died and was buried in the local church as a wealthy and a much respected citizen. His plays show a great understanding of human activities of all kinds. In them, he very skillfully uses many different literary styles to express a wide range of emotions. Shakespeare’s plays were popular not only with aristocrats, intellectuals and monarchs but also with ordinary people. There was something in them for everyone. The plays are usually described as comedies, tragedies and histories but this is an oversimplification as many of them do not fall neatly into any one category. Shakespeare spent most of his career in London as an actor, playwright, and manager of the Globe Theatre, the theatre, where many of his great plays were first performed. Shakespeare himself acted at the Globe. It burned and was rebuilt shortly before Shakespeare’s death, and was finally pulled down in the middle of the 17^th century. Shakespeare’s poems, especially his sonnets, show his extraordinary powers of expression and his depth of emotional understanding. His work has had a great influence on English and many familiar sayings and quotations come from his works, many of his expressions have become part of the language. He is the author of 2 poems, 37 plays, and 154 sonnets.

Shakespeare’s creative work is traditionally divided into 3 periods differing in genres and dominant mood:

1) The 1^st (1590-1600) was marked by the optimism and cheerfulness. In this decade he produced 9 out of 10 his historical chronicles (plays written on subjects from national history) form another group of plays. They are “King Henry VI”, Parts I, II and III, “The Tragedy of King Richard III”, “The Life and Death of King John”, his sonnets and most of his comedies, and among them “The 12^th Night”, “The Merry Wives of Windsor”, “The Comedy of Errors”, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, “Much Ado About Nothing”, “The Taming of the Shrew”, “The Two Gentlemen of Verona”. The drama “The Merchant of Venice” and the two early tragedies “Romeo and Juliet”, “Julius Caesar” show a change in the playwright’s understanding of life, whose approach to reality becomes more pessimistic.

2) (1601-1608) Main works “Hamlet, Prince of Denmark”, “Macbeth”, “Othello”, “King Lear”. Like his historical chronicles they are based on the same historical material so Shakespeare never converted the plot himself. The main difference between a chronicle and a tragedy is that in chronicles he centered attention at main political and historical events that took place during a reign of some king and traced the main processes that were under way then. While in the tragedies he posed mostly moral universal problems of human relations. His contribution to the art of tragedy lies in the fact that besides the outer conflict that any tragedy had been always based on, he introduced the so-called “inner conflict” which presented no less interest. Tragedy presents events caused by the conflict between the protagonist and some outer antagonistic force which may be embodied by one man or a group of people or Destiny. Shakespeare showed the discord in the heart, soul, mind of the main character, the struggle between Good and Evil inside the protagonist. His tragedies are very psychological: “Hamlet, Prince of Denmark” is a tragedy of mind, “Macbeth” is a tragedy of extreme vanity, “Othello” is a tragedy of deceived faith, “King Lear” is the tragedy of false grandeur. Shakespeare touched upon the moral problems of the universal importance: honesty, cruelty, love, vanity and so on. That is why his tragedies are of great interest to every new generation.

3) (1609-1616) The plays of the period are different from anything written by Shakespeare before. He still touches upon important social and moral problems, but now he suggests utopian solutions to them. He introduces romantic and fantastic elements which have a decisive role in his plays. Due to these peculiarities the works of this period such as “Tempest”, “The Winter’s Tale” are called romantic dramas.

The Decline of the Renaissance (1603-1649)

After Elizabeth I’s death the Stuarts became the rulers of England. At the very beginning of the Stuart`s reign, the religious balance between Anglicans and Puritans was lost. There were several clashes between King Charles and the Parliamentary forces. In 1642 the King was defeated, tried, found guilty in treason, and executed in 1649. England was declared a commonwealth under the jurisdiction of Parliament.

During this period a group of metaphysical poets, led by John Donne appeared. Their poetry was marked by such things as: intense feeling combined with ingenious thought; elaborate, witty images; an interest in mathematics, science and geography; an overriding interest in the soul; and direct, colloquial expression even in sonnets and lyrics.

Apart from John Donne, other metaphysical poets include Henry King, George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, Abraham Cowley, Andrew Marvell and Henry Vaughan.

Drama continued to develop. Drama remained a popular form of entertainment until the Puritan government closed all playhouses in 1649.

Lecture 3

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