The flowering of Renaissance

The starting point of the great age of Renaissance literature corresponds to the
publication of Shephard’s Calendar by Spenser. In fact, the sonnets had been
introduced in England at the beginning of the 16th century by a group of court poets
during the government of Henry VIII. The most famous ones were Wyatt and
Howard, who were the first to write English sonnets on the Petrarchan model. A
collection of their sonnets can be found in Tottel’s miscellany (1577). Another
important poet is Sidney, together with Daniel, Drayton and Constable. Almast
every sonnets of this period addresses the mythical lady of the petrarchan tradition,
who corresponds to the figure of Elizabeth I.
In the last quarter of the century a new refined style was introduced thanks to Lily
through his works called Euphues:the anatomy of wit and Euphues and his
England, which were popular because of their attack on italian customs and for
their rich, rhetorical prose.
During the Renaissance translation is another type of popular development. We have
translators such as Golding, who translates Ovid’ Metamorphoses, North, who
translates Plutarch’s Lives and Florio, who translates Montaigne’s Essays. But of
course, this activity was very different from today: many authors used foreign
translations instead of the original texts.
Wyatt
Modern english poetry is said to have begun with Wyatt, one of the court poets under
Henry VIII. But their relationship ended when the poets was accused of having an
affair with Anne Boleyn. For this he was imprisoned and almost executed. But he was
also a diplomat who had been in Spain and Italy, where he got in touch with the
sonnet. He translated some sonnets by Petrarch and wrote some himself. Many of
his works such as sonnets, roundeax and lyrics can be found in Tottle's miscellany.
But he also experimented with other types of metric structures, such as short lined
stanzas closed by a refrain and set to music. In these poems he deals with love affairs
adn descriptions of aristocratic life. The most famous work is They flee from me,
which sounds autobiographical but lacks the typical self-commiseration. In the first
two stanzas the roles are reversed: It's the woman who hunts the man. But the last
stanzas portray a rather unhappy present.
Howard
Howard came from a noble family: his father was the Duke of Norfolk, so he was
taught rhetoric and classics and spent a year at the court of France. He would use the
Elizabethan sonnet: in fact, instead of using the italian two quatrains and two
tercets he began to use three quatrains and a final rhyming couplet. The main
themes of his work are: love, friendship and admiration. But he also dealt with the
golden mean, studied through Horace and Martial’s work: it is a philosophy
according to which one must maintain the balance between joy and pain. But his
great invention was the blank verse: which consists of ten syllable unrhymed lined,
inspired by the italian “verso sciolto”. The metric was used for the 2 and 4 book of his
translation of the Eneide.
Sidney
Sidney was born in 1554 and was regarded as the ideal courtier, as a paragon of
virtue. He loved to include political issues in his works, such as Arcadia, modelled
on Sannazzaro’s Arcadia, which not only is a pastoral romance, but it also contains
lessons about the problems and the requirements of the protestant ethics. This work
can be interpreted on two levels:
- On the first, it’s a story of love between tho shephards, expressed through
pastoral metaphors
- On the second, all characters and events represent people and events of the
contemporary England in a pastoral disguise.
He was also responsible for the popularity of the sonnet, thanks to the publication of
Astrophil and Stella, a collection of sonnets and songs dedicated to Penelope
Devereux, who couldn’t return her love since she was married. That’s why the themes
are: unhappy love, fears and hopes. But the collection also contains a passion which
was unusual at the time, not to mention the realization that a powerful love also
implies losing one’s freedom.
Another important work is Defence of Poesie, where he states that while rules are
useful to the writer, they shouldn't restrict the poet’s genius. He also condemns the
theatre’s lack of fidelity to the classical models.
Spenser
Spenser had a troubled relationship with the Court: although he obtained a pension
for The Faerie Queen, he always felt like the Court wasn’t treating him quite the way
he wanted to. One of his most famous works is The shephard’s calendar, a
collection of twelve eclogues, one for each month of the year. In 1580s he beacme
Lord Deputy to Ireland, where he wrote A view of present state of Ireland, a
justification to England’s exploitation of Ireland. But there he also met Elizabeth
Boyle, with whom he fell in love with. The history of their love is recorded in
Amoretti, a collection of sonnets quite different from the others, since the poets
didn’t deal with the suffering of the lover, but instead with the happiness of a chaste
love. He also talks about the passing of time and the attempts to create something
stable through poetry. Epithalamion is a marriage song that describes their
wedding in 23 stanzas.
In 1580 Spenser started his longest poem The Faerie Queen, six books dedicated
to Queen Elizabeth. He was deeply inspired by Tasso’s Gerusalemme Libeata,
Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, the works of Chaucer, Malory and some Christian legends.
The first three books came out in 1596, while the next three in 1596, but the poem
was unfinished. It deals with a series of adventures set in a magical land, in an
invented past. The figure of Elizabeth is reflected in Gloriana, while Arthur
represents the virtuous knight who seeks the mythical lady, Gloriana. The queen
keeps court for twelve days, during which the 12 knights, representing each virtue,
have to show their bravery. Each book deals with a knight. The aim of the poem is
formative, as we can see in Book II, when Sir Guyon reaches the Bower of Bliss,
where everything is false: his temptations go out to show that virtue is not a Heaven’s
gift but a hard-gained acquisition. But the poem also celebrates the glory of the
Church of England. The metre used is called Spenserian stanza and consists of
nine lines, eight decasyllables followed by an alexandrine.
We should also mention a philosophical poem: Hymnes in Honour of love and
Beauty, which can be divided in 2 groups: those written at a young age, celebrating
earthly love and beauty, those written before his death, celebrating celestial love and
beauty. The themes are very neo-platonic since they identify love and truth with
beauty.

Elizabethan theatres
The great age of elizabethan theatres begins with the first performance of Marlow’s
Tamburlaine in 1587 and ends with the closing of theatres in 1642, under puritan
pressure. What contributed to its development was: the importation of foreign plays,
the influence of the Italian Commedia dell’arte, the popularity of Seneca and the
interludes.
This theatre derived from the medieval theatre and was also influenced by A mirror
for magistrates, collection of plays by Norton and Sackville. They were based on
the concept of the mutability of fortune and on the central role that men had in the
ordered universe. But we also have the contribution of the humanistic drama, that
turned plays into literary works, and set the, in a specific time and play.
Furthermore, the stage was separated from the audience.
Between 1559 and 1581 Seneca’s play were collected in Seneca’s ten tragedies
and translated in English. The situations they portray are violent and based on
vengeance; they also depict a cruel tyrant with Machiavellian characteristics and
contain monologues and brief dialogues.
In general, the elizabethan drama didn’t follow Aristotle’s unities and disregarded
the notion of decorum, according to which a tragedy has to be treated in tragically.
That’s why we often wind a mixture of tragedy and comedy.
The first result of this new drama is Gordobuc, by Norton and Sackville, in which
the kind divides his reign between his sons, causing a civil war. The play ends with an
appeal to order. It is written in blank verses and divided in 5 acts.
University Wits is a group of students inspired by classical authors, such as Lyly
and Green, who wrote elegant and refined plays for noblemen. We also have Kyd,
who invents the revenge play on Seneca’s model which contains: the desire for
revenge and the problems linked to it with the stratagem of madness to overcome
them.