Elizabethan Age

The Renaissance

HI

(1558-1603)

Queen Elizabeth I

Elizabeth, the daughter of Henry VIII, became the Queen of England at the age of twenty-five. That was the time of English Renais­sance. Elizabethan age is often called the golden age of England on the grounds that art, music, poetry and drama flourished.

The dark Middle Ages were followed by a time known in art and literature as the Renaissance. The word "Renaissance" means "rebirth" and this word marked a new step in the cultural development in Europe in the 15th-17th centuries. People got interested in the ancient culture of Greece and Rome, they studied the works of the philosophers, artists and writers of the ancient times. On the basis of both the most progressive achievements of the culture of the Middle Ages and the ancient cultural heritage the new outlook began to dom­inate, the culture of Renaissance began to develop. The epoch of Humanism came. That ideology was progres­sive, because the main subject of Humanism was a great interest to human feelings, thoughts, human happiness and human life.

Elizabethan Age was introduced by prose which de­veloped in several very different forms. One kind of style was used at court by ladies. That style was very arti­ficial, but it was necessary for every young lady to know not only French but also Euphuism. Euphuism was a fashionable manner of speech. The sentences were com­plicated and long, and while speaking the speaker often forgot the main idea of his utterance. The style was filled with alliteration and a great number of similes behind which the reader forgot the thought. The word "Euphuism" came from John Lyly's novel "Euphues" (1578-1580), which started a fashion which spread in conversation as well as in books. Queen Elizabeth her­self used it.

That novel was the first one in English literature. It was a love story where the characters were imaginary.

The second trend in the development of Elizabethan prose was quite the opposite to Euphuism. Thomas Nash didn't want to write in such a style and invented his own independent novel "The Life of Jacke Wilton", a story about men of bad character.

The third kind of prose was created by Francis Bacon, who wrote "Essays", a composition on general subject. It happened in 1597. The sentences in "Es­says" are short and laconic: "All colours will agree in the dark," or "Revenge is a kind of wild justice." Some of the sentences from the "Essays" became famous sayings: "A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds."

In Elizabethan Age many courtiers became either writers or poets. The writing of poetry was part of the education of a gentleman. In 1557 "Songs and Son­nets", a book of poems, was published, and it contained a lot of good lyrics by Wyatt, Surrey and others.

William Dunbar (1460-1520), a great poet of the Scottish Renaissance, exposed the social wrongs of the time. In one of his poems he called on the merchants who controlled the Edinburgh Council to save the rep­utation of their "nobill toun" by dealing with disorder in the streets. The greatest Scottish Latinist and scholar, known as a Prince of Poets, George Buchanan (1506-1582), wrote the history of Scotland.

English humanists dreamed of social changes. The most progressive people of the country could not help seeing the growing power of landowners and the injus­tice caused by it. The rich drove thousands of peasants off their lands and captured those lands, made pastures for sheep. There was no work for the poor. A great number of peasants became homeless and miserable. Wool production became the leading industry, but it served the interests of the rich, because the poor had nothing. The peculiarity of English humanism was that it was both anti-feudal and anti-bourgeois. These ideas were best expressed by the first English humanist Tho­mas More.

Thomas More (1478-1535)

Thomas More was born in London in 1478. He was a well-educated man. He studied in Oxford, knew Latin and started his life as a lawyer. Being the first English humanist, Thomas More was extremely interested in the rea­sons of the social evil. He was an active-minded man. He wrote articles on social and political subjects. Tho­mas More worked in the Parliament during the reign of Henry VII (1485-1509), but he wasn't liked by the Pope and the priests on account of his progressive political views. In the reign of Henry VIII (1509-1547) Thomas More was made Lord Chancellor, because Hen­ry VIII had quarrelled with the Pope and gathered around himself all the enemies of the Head of the Catholic Church. Thomas More was one of them. But very soon he fell a victim to the king's anger, because he was against the king's absolute power. Thomas More was also against the Pope's power in England. Both were the reasons why Thomas More was arrested and thrown into prison, the Tower, where he was beheaded in 1535.

Edmund Spenser (1552-1599)

Edmund Spenser was born in London in 1552. He was of noble origin. Spenser began to write at seven­teen and made a great contribution to poetry: he invent­ed "The Spenserian Stanza", a special metre rhymed in a particular pattern: ababbcbcc. "The Faerie Queene" (1589-1596) was written in such a way. It was devoted 38

In (_v)ueen Elizabeth. The wonderful music of the lines, Hi»¹ magic of the sound create the atmosphere of sweet-. though it is rather difficult to read because of its allegorical form.

Spenser praised Queen Elizabeth in his great poem "The Shepherd's Calendar". This poem is written in twelve books, one for each month of the year. They are.ni.iiiged in the form of discussion. Besides praising Queen Elizabeth, the shepherd speak on various sub- licts. That's why the English accepted the book as the I и '^inning of a great literary age.

One of the beautiful Irish castles built soon after Nor-iii;in invasion (1171) and repaired by Sir Henry Wallop in Elizabethan time was leased to Edmund Spenser.

In 1594 Spenser married Elizabeth Boyle and devot­ed to her his perfect marriage song "Epithalamion" (1595) and 88 Sonnets under the title "Amoretti". It's worth attention that Spenser's friend, Sir Philip Sid­ney, was also a writer and a poet whose book of son­nets was published in 1591 after his death.

Another poet of those times was Sir Walter Raleigh. His poems have been lost, but the short pieces which remain show his real gift for lyrics:

If all the world and love were young And truth in every shepherd's tongue, These pretty pleasures might me move To live with thee and be thy love.

In those times comedies and tragedies began to appear. Drama was born. Drama was the main literary glory of the great Elizabethan age. It is important to mention the fact that comedies were much better than tragedies.

Elizabethan Drama

Дата добавления: 2014-01-07