SYLLABUS OF M.A.

ENGLISH
(Ist SEMESTER)
(EACH COURSE CARRIES 75 MARKS)
SEMESTER
Course I History of English Literature from Chaucer to 1800
(Questions will based on movements and trends and not on-individual authors.)
Course II Poetry from Chaucer to Pope :
Chaucer : ‘The Prologue, ‘The Nun’s Priest’s Tale’.
Donne : ‘The Sun Rising; ‘The Extasie,’ The Canonization, ‘The Anniversary,
‘The Flea, “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning.”
Milton : Paradise Lost, BK. I, and ‘Lycidas,’ ‘L’ Allegro’
Pope : The Rape of the Lock, ‘Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot’
Course III Shakespeare and his Contemporaries
Marlowe : Doctor Faustus
Shakespeare : Twelfth Night
Ben Jonson : Volpone
Shakespeare : The Tempest
Course IV Nineteenth Century Fiction
Emily Bronte : Wuthering Heights.
Charles Dickens : Hard Times
George Eliot : The Mill on the Floss
Thomas Hardy : Tess of the D’Urbervilles

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 LESSON-I
THE AGE OF CHAUCER : GEOFFREY CHAUCER

STRUCTURE
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Learning Objectives
1.3 Chaucer
1.3.1 Life
A. Self-Assessment Question
1.3.2 Career
1.3.3 Achievements/Titles
1.3.4 Works
B. Self-Assessment Question
1.3.5 The Canterbury Tales
C. Self-Assessment Question
1.4 Summing Up
1.5 Glossary
1.6 Questions
1.7 Self-Assessment Questions' Answers
1.8 Suggested Readings
1.1 INTRODUCTION
The age of Chaucer represents the late Middle Ages in the history of English literature. We sometimes
think of poets as living outside the pressures and problems of everyday life, concerned only with artistic
creation in a remote world of their own. Nothing could be less true of Geoffery Chaucer, the first great
English poet. He lived at the centre of affairs of his day, having been, among other things, a soldier, a
courtier, a royal emissary to Europe, a controller of customs, a justice of the peace, and a member of Parliament.
1.2 LEARNING OBJECTIVES
The objective of this unit is to provide an idea of the social, cultural and political background of
Chaucer’s age. It also tells about the life of Chaucer and his contribution to English Literature. It tells about
his literary achievements.
1.3 CHAUCER
1.3.1 LIFE
We cannot positively date Chaucer’s birth but the evidence suggests he was born between 1340 and
1344 in London. His father, John Chaucer, a minor official in the court of Edward III, was responsible for the
transmission and disposal of wines for the various royal households. The young Chaucer must have spent
much of his time at the wharves, watching the unloading of the great casks of “the wyn of spaigne that
crepeth subtilly”, or the “whyte wine of Oseye and red wine of Gasciogne” and listening the tales of the

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British dockhands. Chaucer’s introduction to the rank and file of society, which he was later to use as his
material in his poetry, began early. John Chaucer’s position was a respectable one, and his son was awarded
a position of page in a household of royal rank that of prince Lionel, one of the sons of Edward III. Although
the exact extent of Chaucer’s education is unknown, to be a page in such a household was a preparation for
entrance into court society and it was through and valuable education. He was exposed to French and Latin,
which were, respectively, the language of the court and the church. He had encountered the elegant code of
manners and the elaborate ceremonies of court life.
In 1359 Chaucer went with the king’s army to France, where he saw enrolled the brilliant pageant of
medieval war, as the French Chronicler Froissart has pictured it at a time when chivalry courtesy, has flamed
into their greatest splender. He beheld the unsuccessful siege of the city of Rheims was captured by the
French and was held as a prisoner of war until ransomed of March 1, 1360.
A. Self Assessment Question
Who is the father of English Literature?
1. Chaucer 3. Donne
2. Shakespeare 4. Langland
1.3.2 CAREER
On his return to England he became an esquire of the King’s Bedchamber, and spent the next ten
years at Edward’s court, then one of the most brilliant in Europe. The court of Edward still had all the
atmosphere of a French court, and Chaucer, although he decided to use his native tongue, became practically
a French love poet writing in the English language. Aside from the use of eight-syllable lines, rhyming in
couplets, the conventions of the French school which are most evident in Chaucer’s work are those which
belong to the system of courtly love and those structural principles observable in the love visions which
preceded and were contemporary with Chaucer. The conventions of the system of courtly love, indeed,
permeate nearly all medieval non-religious literature. The lover, compelled to be a faithful ‘servant’ of his
lady and of Cupid, must languish in amorous pallor, toss sleepless on his couch, swoon, boast of his lady’s
beauty and compose ballads in her honour, and fight for the glorification of her token. The lady must be as
cold as ice, must impose on her lover incredible trials of his courage and fidelity. After many years of
hopeless service the lover may be accepted, not because of any merit of himself or of his deeds, but purely
because of the lady’s boundless compassion. There are the rules of conduct governing the actors in the love-
vision-poems in which the lover, exhausted by the play of his emotions, falls asleep at dawn to the music of
birds and the melody of brooks, amidst flowers and perfumes, and dreams of knights wooing their ladies.
The most famous work of this French school was the Roman de la Rose, an elaborate allegory, placed in a
dream setting of love, the rose, growing in a mystic garden, warded by Symbolic powers from the lover’s
approach and provoking endless disquisitions, serious or satirical, such as the later Middle Ages loved to
spend upon the subtleties of sentiment. Chaucer manifested his enthusiasm for this work by translating a
portion of it in to English verse. Less than two thousand lines of his translation have survived; indeed, the
whole may never have been completed. But the Roman de la Rose and other poems of its school left a
profound impression upon Chaucer’s work and for years, he thought and wrote in the atmosphere which
they created for him. During these years of French influence he wrote, for the knights and ladies of king
Edward’s court, those “ballads, roundels, virelays, by which his fellow poet Gower says” the land fulfilled
was over all.” The most important work which remains to as from his purely French period, however, is the
Boke of the Duchesse written in 1369 to solace John of Gaunt the King’s fourth son, for the death of his wife,
Blanche. Though working in the strict tradition of the French lovevisions and borrowing freely from poems
by Guiliaume de Machaut, Chaucer gave his elegy freshness and seeming sincerity.
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 Between 1368 and 1387 Chaucer made several journeys on official business to Flanders, to France
and to Italy. Although these journeys are not marks of special favour. Chaucer must have been fairly successful
as a diplomat and certainly the opportunities afforded by wide travel for converse with many types of men,
for observation of widely varying mariners and especially for becoming familiar with Italian literature, were
of the utmost importance in his poetic education.
1.3.3 ACHIEVEMENTS/TITLES
During the remainder of his life, Chaucer-like many others of the King’s esquires- held various
official positions some of which were probably in the nature of political sinecures, for much of the time his
work was performed by deputies. From 1374 to 1386 he was the controller on the customs on wool, leather,
and skins at the port of London. For a while he was simultaneously controller of the petty customs at the
same port, In 1386 he represented the county of Kent as “Knight of the Shire,” a post he held for two years.
In 1389 he was appointed clerk of the King’s works at Vestminister, the Tower, Windsor Castle, and other
places, From 1391 until his death he apparently served as deputy forester of the royal forest of North Fetherton.
Most of the time during the last thirty years of his life we find him also drawing a pension from the national
treasury, as well as the money equivalent of a daily pitches of wine from the King’s cellers. For several years
he and his wife (whom he had married about 1366) also received pensions from John of Gaunt. Chaucer died
in 1400.
The one event in Chaucer’s life which probably produced the profoundest effect on his literary
career was his first visit to Italy, in 1372. Italy was then ap-proaching the Zenith of her artistic energy in the
full splendor of that illuminister which had followed the intellectual twilight of the Middle Ages, and which
we know as the Renaissance, or “New Birth,” Each of her little city-states was a centre of marvellous
activity, and everywhere were being produced those masterpieces of painting, sculpture, and architecture
which still make Italy a pious pilgrimage for all lovers of art. The literary activity was equally great, at least
in Tuscany. Dante had been dead for half a century, but his poetry was just beginning to be widely recognized
as one of the major efforts of the human imagination. Petrach, the grave, accomplished scholar and elegant
poet, was passing his closing years at his villa of Argua, near Padua, Boccacio, poet, tale-writer, pedant and
worlding, was spending the autumn of his life among the cypress and laurel slopes of Fiesole, above Florence.
The world which lay open to Chaucer’s gaze when he crossed the Alps was, therefore, one calculated to
fascinate and stimulate him to the highest degree.
1.3.4 WORKS
B. Self Assessment Question
Which of the following works of Chaucer are colored with Italian renaissance?
1. House of fame 3. Roman de la Rose
2. Parliament of fowls 4. Boke of the Duchess
From Chaucer’s poem we get only an occasional glimpse of his life. One of these reveals his eagerness
for study, which after the day’s work was done, would send him home, regardless of rest and ‘new things’ to
sit “as dumb as any stone” over his book, until his eyes were dazed. The unquenchable curiosity of the men
of the Renaissance really began to effect England. His, too, was their thirst for expression. The great books
he had come to know in Italy made him produce very largely in emulation of the Italian masters, the House
of Fame, The Parliaments of Foules, Troilus and Crisede and the Legend of Goode Women, one version of
which was dedicated to the young Queen, Anne of Bohemia, whom Richard II had married in 1382.

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 Both the House of Fame and Parliaments of Foules are coloured with Italian reminiscence; but the
chief fruit of Chaucer’s Italian journeys aside from his increased literary power through his emulation of the
Italian poets was the long poem adapted from Boccaccio’s Filostrato (The love-stricken One), entitled by
Chaucer Troilus and Criseyde. The story of the love of the young Trojan hero for Cressida, and of her
desertion of him for the Greek diomedes, had been elaborated during the Middle Ages by some writers
before Boccaccio gave it an animated but ornate treatment in facile verse. Chaucer, though pretending only
to translate, radically changed the structure and emphasic of the story. Instead of an almost unmotivated
recital of a mere intrigue, Chaucer had written a psychological novel in verse, analyzing minutely the action
and reaction of character and situation upon the leading persons. In his hands the lover’s go between, Pandarus,
is transformed from a glided youth of Troilu’s own age and temperament to a middleaged man, plausible
good-matured, full of easy worldly wisdom and materialistic ideas-a character as true to type and as vitally
alive as Shakespeare’s Pandarus in his cynical Trolius and Cressida. The growth of the love-passion in
Cressida’s heart is raced through its gradual stages with a subtlety entirely new in English poetry. The action
dialogue and setting of the poem are all created with the magic realism of a master of narrative art. Though
the scene is ancient Troy, though the manners and customs are those of medieval knights and ladies, through
the texture of the whole is stuffy brocaded with conventions of courtly love, we seem, in many passages to
be looking at a modem play or reading from a modem novel, so intimate and actual does it appear.
The Legend of Goode Women, a kind of secular imitation of a collection of saints’ lives, is chiefly
interesting because of its prologue. In the body of the poem Cleopatra, Dido, This be, and other famous
women are celebrated for their steadfastness in love, possibly as a covert tribute to the wifely virtues of the
young Queen. These stories are adopted from a Latin work of Boccaccio, De Claris Mullierbus. But the long
prologue, original with Chaucer, is the most winning of his many passages of personal confession and self-
revelation. In this poem Chaucer uses the heroic couplet for the first lime. He represents himself as wandering
in the fields on Mayday, the only season which can tempt him from his books. The birds arc singing to their
mates their songs of “blessed by Seynt Valentyn” and Zephyrus and Flora as “god and goddesses of the
flowery made”, have spread the earth with fragrant blossom. But the poet has eyes only for one flower, the
daisy, the “emperice (empress) and Hour of floures alle,” All day long he leans and pores upon the flower;
and when at last it has folded its leaves at the coming of night he goes home to rest, with die thought of rising
early to gaze upon it once more. He makes his couch out of doors, in a little arbor, “for deyntee of the new
someres sake,” and here he has a wonderful dream. He dreams that he is again in the fields, “kneeling by the
daisy, and sees approaching a procession of bright forms. First comes the young god of love, clad m silk
embroidered with red rose leaves and sprays of green, his “gelt hair” crowed with, light, in his hand fiery
darts, and his wings spread angle-like. He leads by the hand a queen, clad in green and crowned with a fillet
of daisies under a band of gold. She is Alcestis, type of noblest wifely devotion. Behind her comes an
endless tram of women who have been “trewe of love” They kneel in a circle about the poet, and sing with
one voice honour to women’s faithfulness and to the daisy flower, the emblem of Alcestis. The love-god
then flowers angrily upon Chaucer and upbraids him for having done despite to women, in translating the
Roman de la Rose with its satire upon their foible; and in writing the story of Cressida, so dishonourable to
the steadfastness of the sex. Alcestis comes to his rescue and agrees to pardon his misdeeds if he will spend
the rest of his life in making a “glorious Legend of Goode Women,” and will send it, on her behalf to the
English queen. Chaucer promises sol-emnly, and as soon as he wakes, he betakes himself to his task.

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 In the House of Fame, where, he sets out in search of “Loves, Tidings,” as well as in the ‘Legend of
Goode Women’ Chaucer had apparently entered upon the task of construction a work which would constitute
a setting for a group of tales but after starting, he left both these attempts unfinished. Yet the ambition to
crown his life with some monumental work remained. The drift of his genius, as he grew older, was more
and more towards the imaginative presentation of real life. He had wide experience of men of many ranks
and condition and he had been storing up for years, with his keenly observant, quiet eyes, the material for
literary presenta-tion of contemporary society upon a great scale. Moreover, while Chaucer was growing up,
England had been growing conscious of herself. The struggle with France had unified the people at least into
a homogeneous body, no longer Norman and Saxon, but English; and the brilliancy of Edward Ill’s early
reign had given to this new people their first intoxicating draught of national pride. The growing power of
parliament tended to foster the feeling of solidarity and self-consciousness in the nation. As a member of
parliament, as a Government officer, as an intimate member of the court, Chaucer felt these influences to the
full. It must have seemed more important to him that the crowning work of his life should in some way
represent the brilliant spectacle and complex culture of the actual society in which he moved.
1.3.5 THE CANTERBURY TALES
With the happy fortune of genius he hit, in his Canterbury Tales, upon a scheme wonderfully adapted
to the ends he had in view. Collections of stones, both secular and sacred, articulated into a general frame-work,
has been numerous and popular in the Middle Ages, and the early Italian Renaissance, which inherited the
taste for them, had managed their scope and humanized their content. Boccaccio had furnished one example
of throwing a graceful trellis work of incident and dialogue about the separate stories of a collection. In his
Decameron a company of aristocratic young people are represented as having taken refuge, from the plague
raging in Florence, in a villa on the slopes of Fiesole. They wander through the valleys of oleanders and
myrtles of sit beside the fountains of the villa gardens and begile the time with tales of sentiments and
intrigue. Another Italian, Giovanni Sercambi, had pictured a pilgrimage composed of many classes of people,
presided over by a leader or governor and entertained on their journey with songs, dances, and the telling
tales by an official story-teller who is Sercambi himself. As in the Canterbury Tales, the stories are linked
together by transitional passages, in which the tales are frequently the subject of comment. Chaucer, while
adopt-ing a similar framework, made his setting much more national and racy; individualized his characters
so as to make of them a gallery of living portraits of his time, varied his tales so as to include almost all types
of nar-rative known to literature at the close of the Middle Ages; and most important of all, put his tales into
the mouths of the separate pilgrims.
He represents himself as alighting, one spring evening, at the Tabared Inn, in South work, a suburb
at the southern end of London Bridge, where the famous Elizabethan playhouse, Shakespeare’s among
them, where afterward to arise. South work was the place of departure and arrival for all South-of-England
and travel, and especially for pilgrimages to the world renowned shrine of Thomas Becket, at Canterbury. A
Company went on such a pilgrimage Chaucer find it gathered in the inn: he makes their acquaintance, and
joins himself with them for the journey. Counting the poet, they are thirty in all. There is a Knight lately
come from the foreign wars, a man who has fought in Prussia and in Turkey, jousted in Tramisene; and been
present at the storming of Alexandria a high minded, gentle manned, kingly adventurer, typical of the courteous,
war loving chivalry which was passing rapidly away. With him is his son, a young Squire. Curly haired and
gay, his short, white leved gown embroidered like a mead with red and white flowers he is an epitome of the
gifts and graces of the young courtly lover. Their servant is a yeo-man, in coat and hood of green, a shaft of

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peacock- arrow under his belt, a mighty bow in his hand and a silver image of Saint Christopher upon his
breast; he is the type of that sturdy English yeomanry which with its grey goose safts numbled the pride of
France at Crecy and Gincourt. There is a whole group of ecclesiastical figures, representing in their numbers
and variety the diverse activities of the medieval Church. Most of them are satrical portraits, in their worldliness
and materialism only too faithful representative of the ecclesiastical abuses against which Wyclif struggled.
First of all there is a Monk, who cares only for hunting and good cheer, his bald head shines like glass, his
bright eyes roll in his head; he rides a sleek brown palfrey, and has “many a dainty horse” in his stables; his
sleeves are trimmed with fine fur at the wrists, his hood is fastened under his chin with a gold love-knot as
a companion figure to the hunting Monk, Chaucer gives us the gently satirized” madam Eglaniyne,” the
prioress; she is a teacher of young ladies, speaks French “after the school of Straford-attebowe,” is exquisite
in her table-manners, imitating as well as she can the stately behaviour of the court. Other ecclesiastics are
there, hangers on and caterpillars of the church; the Flair, intimate with hospitable franklins; innkeepers,
and worthily women, and despising beggars and lazers; the summer, a repulsive person with ‘fired chrubim
face,” the pardoner, with his bag full of pardons “come from Rome all hot,” and of buts of cloth and pig’s
bones which he sells as relics of the holy saints. Chaucer’s treatment of those evil churchmen is good
natured and tolerant; he never takes the tone of moral indignation against them. But he does better; he sets
beside them, as the type of true shepherds of the church, a “poor parson,” such as partly under Wyclif’s
influence had spread over England, beginning that great movement for the purification of the church which
was to result, more than a century later, in the Perforation. Chaucer paints the character of the Par son, poor
in this world’s goods, but “rich of holy thought and work,” with loving and reverent touch. The parson’s
brother travels with him, a Plowman, a “true swinker and a good”, who helps his poor neighbors and loves
them as himself; he reminds us of piers die Plowman, in the wonderful vision which in the antitype of
Chaucer’s work. A crowd of other figures fill the canvas. There is shipman from tire west country, a
rep-resentative of those adventurous seamen, halt merchant sailors, half smugglers and pirates, who had
already made England’s name a terror on the seas and paved the ways for her future naval and commercial
supremacy. There is a poor clerk of Oxford, a theological, student, riding a horse as lean as a rake and
dressed in thread bare cloak, who spends all that he can beg or borrow upon his duties; he represents that
passion for learning which was already astir everywhere in Europe, and. which was awaiting only the magic
touch of the newfound classical literature to blossom. There is Merchant, in a Flemish beaver hat, on a high
horse, concealing, with the grave importance of his air, the fact that he is in debt. There is a group of guild
members, in the livery of their guild; all worthy to be elder man together with the merchant, they represent
the mercantile and manufacturing activity which was lifting England rapidly to the rank of a great commercial
power. There is the wife of Bath, almost a modem feminist figure, conceived with masterly husband five at
church door,” and through “somdel deaf”, hopes to live to wed several others; she rides on an ambler with
spurs and scarlet hose on her feet and on her head a hat as abroad as a buckler.
These and a dozen others are painted in vivid colours, and with a psychological truth which reminds
us of the portraits of the Flemish painter. Van Eyck, Chaucer’s contemporary. Taken as a whole they represent
almost the entire range of English society in the fourteenth century, with the exception of the highest aristocracy
and the lowest order of villains or serfs.
At supper this goodly company hears from the host of the Tabard a proposition that on their journey
to Canterbury, to be guile the tedium of the ride, each of them shall tell two tales and on the homeward
journey two more. He agrees to travel with them, to act as mas-ter of ceremonies, and on their returns to

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render judgement as to who has told the best story, the winner to be given a supper at the general expense. So
it is agreed. The next morning they set out bright and early on their journey southward to the cathedral city.
They draw lots to determine who shall tell the first tale. The lot falls to the knight, who tells the chivalric
romance of Palamon and Arcite. When it is finished the Host calls upon the Monk to follow. But the Miller,
who is already drunk and quarrelsome, insists on being heard, and launches forthwith into a very unedifying
tale about a carpenter. The Reeve, who had followed that trade in his youth, is so angry that he retaliates with
a story of an unsavory intrigue in which a miller is badly worsted. The Host rises in his stirrups and calls on
the Parson for a story “by Goddess dignities”. The Parson reproves him for swearing whereupon the Host
cries that he smells a Lollard in the wind “(the followers of Wyclif were called Lollards) and bids them
prepare for a sermon. This is too much for the shipman who breaks impatiently. When the Host calls upon
the prioress, he changes bluff manner to correspond with her rank and her excessive management, speaking
with polite circumlocution, “as courteously had been a maid.” The prioress responds graciously, and the
story of a little “clergion,” or school boy, who after, his coat has been cut by the wicked jews and his body
thrown into pit, still signs with clear young voice his Alma Redemptory’s to the glory of the Virgin.
Overwhelmed with oftener adopting and working his matter freely. Any such thing as “originality” in the
modem sense was undreamed of in the Middle Ages, the material literature was common property, and the
same stories were cordlessly repeated. Whoever would learn the “source” from which Chaucer drew must
ransack the storehouse of medieval fiction, and examine no little of medieval science and philosophy. But
what is more important is that Chaucer improved whatever he borrowed and stamped it with his work which
we value most, however, such as the pro-logues to the Legend of Goode Women and to the Canterbury Tales,
was original in every sense, and some of the Tales have been so radically and vitally remodeled that they
stand as genuinely original. Redemptory’s to the glory of the Virgin. Overwhelmed with emotion, the company
rides silently along when the Host, to break the awe struck mood, turns to Chaucer, and begins to joke him
upon his corpulence:
“What man artow?” quod he;
Thou lookest as thou wouldest find an hare.
For ever upon the ground I see thee stare.
Approach near, and look up merrily.
Now ware you, sirs and let this man have place
He seemeth elvish by his countenance
For unto no weight doeth he dalliance.
Chaucer, thus rallied, begins a travesty of those doggerel rhymes of knightly adventure to which
many of the romances of chivalry had in his day degenerated. The Rhyme of Sir Thopas is a capital burlesque
of the metrical romances which Chaucer himself had come to supplant. He has not got for before the Host
cries out upon the “drasty rhyming”, and Chaucer meekly agrees to contribute instead “a little think in
prose,” a “moral tale,” and he proceeds with the long story of Melibeus and his wife a very tedious story
indeed from the modem point of view. The Squire’s tale, as befits his years and disposition, is highly coloured
oriental tale of love adventure, and magic, in which figure a flying horse of brass and other wonders. The
Pardoner, called on far “some moal think”, relates a vivid and vigorous short story about three “rioters” who
go in search of Death, and who find him in a pile of gold.

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 So the stories continue, the transition passages constantly picturing the vivid dialogue and action of
the pilgrims, at times on theme being carried through several tales in succession. The Wife of Bath, after a
long prologue in which, she describes the vigorous measures by which she has ruled her five husbands, tells
a tale the point of which is that martial happiness results only if sovereignty in marriage is vested in the wife.
After the Friar and the Summoner have, told vulgar stories about each other, the clerk of Oxford resumes the
theme introduced by the wife, with the story of the incredible patience of Griselda under the tests imposed
by her husband Walter- a tale borrowed from the Latin tales of Petrach who had translated it from Boccaccio’s
Decameron. Finally, the Franklin tells a tale of gentilesse, in which the husband and the wife, exhibiting
mutual forbearance and courtesy, appear to solve the problem most satisfactorily of all.
In the sixteenth century and later, when owing to the changes in pronunciation (especially the loss
of the final “e” from thousands of wards and grammatical forms), the secret of Chaucer’s verification was
lost, he was regarded as barbarous writer ignorant of prosody, and with no ear for the melody of verse. The
exact contrary of this was really the case. He was an artist in verse effects, who not only write with a metrical
accu-racy, fluency, and variety that have rarely been surpassed, but also paid constant and delicate heed to
the niceties of rhythm and tone-colour. In a half-humorous address to his scrivener Adam, he calls down
curses upon that unworthy servant for spoiling goods verses by bad copying, and in Troilus he beseeches his
readers not to “mismetre” his book.
From his very earliest poems his work is almost faultess and as he progressed in skill his music
became constantly more varies and flexible. His early manner reaches its height in the exquisite roundel,
intricate in form but handled with great simplicity of effect, which brings the Parliaments of Foules to a
melodious close. A good example of his later music may be found in the description of the temple of Venus
in the Knight’s Tale; or, as a study in a graver key, in the ballad “Flee for the Press,” which marks so
impressively the deepening seri-ousness of Chaucer’s mind in his last years.
Chaucer employed three principle meters: the eight-syllable line, rhyming in couplets, as in the
Bake of the Duchesse; the tensyllablc line, also rhyming in couplets, as in the prologue to the Canterbury
Tales: and the same lipe arranged in sevenline stanzas (known later as “rhyme royal)”, as in Troilus. The
heroic couplet he introduced in English verse; the rhyme royal he invented. In his shorter poems he made,
however, endless metrical experiments, and showed a mastery of intricate verse form remarkable even in an
age when the French had made-verse-writing a matter of almost gymnastic skill.
As for his material, Chaucer did not hesitate to take what suited him; wherever he found it. Sometimes
borrowing wholesale without change, oftener adopting and reworking his matter freely. Any such thing as
“originality” in the modem sense was undreamed of in the Middle Ages, the material of literature was
common property, and the same stories were endlessly repeated., Whoever would learn the “source” from
which Chaucer drew must ransack the storehouse of medieval fiction, and examine no little of medieval
science and philosophy. But what is more important is that Chaucer improved whatever, he borrowed and
stamped it with his individuality of thought and style and structural skill. That part of his work which we
value most, however, such as the Prologues to the Legend of Goode Women and to the Canterbury Tales,
was original in every sense, and some of the Tales have been so radically and vitally embodelled that they
stand as genuinely original.

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 C. Self Assessment Question
How many pilgrims are there in ‘Prologue to Canterbury Tales’ excluding the poet?
1. twenty eight 3. thirty
2. twenty nine 4. thirty one
1.4 SUMMING UP
Geoffrey Chaucer was an English poet and author. Widely considered the greatest English poet of
the middle ages, he is best known for The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer has been called the ‘’Father of English
Literature” and was the first writer buried in Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey. Chaucer also achieved
fame in his lifetime as a philosopher and astronomer for his 10 year old son Lewis. He maintained an active
career in the civil service as a bureaucrat, courtier and diplomat. Among Chaucer’s many other works are
The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, The Legends of Good Women, and Troilus and Criseyde.
1.5 GLOSSARY
1. Splendor -Great light, luster, or brilliance.
2. Rheims - A city in the Champagne- Ardenne region of France.
3. Zenith - The point in the sky vertically above a given position or observer; the point in the celestial
sphere opposite the nadir.
4. Castle - A large building that is fortified and contains many defences; in previous ages often inhabited
by a nobleman or King.
1.6 QUESTIONS
1. Discuss Chaucer as a story teller of 14th century.
2. Discuss various ideas in “The Canterbury Tales”
1.7 SELF ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS’ ANSWER
A (l), B (1,2), C (2)
1.8 SUGGESTED READINGS
1. A Critical History of English Literature by David Daiches
2. History of English Literature by Edward Albert

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 LESSON-2
THE AGE OF CHAUCER: CHAUCER’S CONTEMPORARIES

STRUCTURE
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Learning Objectives
2.3 Chaucer's Contemporaries
2.3.1 John Gower
A. Self Assessment Question
2.3.2 John Wyclif
B. Self Assessment Question
2.3.3 William Langland
C. Self Assessment Question
2.3.4 Metrical Form
2.4 Summing Up
2.5 Glossary
2.6 Questions
2.7 Self-Assessment Question's Answers
2.8 Suggested Readings
2.1 INTRODUCTION
Chaucer lived and wrote in a world where the half-shadows of the Middle Ages were only beginning
to scatter before the clear dawn-light of modem culture. He was the first man to react to that stimulating and
emancipating movement called the Renaissance, as it stirred in the souls of men belong the Alps; and his
artistic consciousness escaped from the rigid bonds, the cramping conventionalities, the narrow inhibitions
of the Middle Age. From them he emerged into the world of living actualities that he exhibits in this powerful
later work. In this he was far beyond his age. The full force of his originality is most evident when he is
compared with John Gower to whom he dedicated his Troiruls.
2.2 LEARNING OBJECTIVES
The objective of this particular lesson is to familiarize you with Chaucer and his contemporaries
like John Gower. John Wycliffe. William Langland etc and their contribution to English Literature.
2.3 CHAUCER’S CONTEMPORARIES
2.3.1 John Gower
John Gower (1330-1408) was an aristocratic, conservative, landed gentleman, with rich manors in
Kent and elsewhere. He was known at court where his poetry met with many appreciations. He was extremely
pious; he became blind in his old age and resided not far from the tabard Inn which Chaucer had made
famous. He wrote the ‘Speculum Meditantis’ in French, the ‘Vox Clamantis’ in Latin, and the ‘Confession
Amantis’ in English. This diversity in the choice of language shows clearly the opinion of the age-that the
11
English tongue was not, as yet, obviously the only instrument of literary expression. For two centuries after
his death, Gower was regarded as the equal of Chaucer and Lydgate, Some think that he was probably more
truly representa-tive of his age than Chaucer.
The Speculum Meditanits, or Mirour del’ Omme, consists of an elaborate allegory of the attacks of
the seven deadly sins and their offspring’s upon mankind’s; a complete review of the state of the world and
of its corruptions from the time of Rome, in which are vividly pictured the wickedness of London, is draw
shops, its chatting merchants and shopkeepers, its slothful monks and friars, its vulture-like lawyers, and its
lazy and rebellious labourers; finally, there is presented a plan of salvation, consisting of the intervention of
the Virgin Mary, whose history is narrated, together with the whole story of the gospel narrative. The work
as a whole is systematically conceived and executed. The tone of moral earnestness, and the vignettes of
con-temporary life are painted with colour and vigour.
The Confessio Amantis, like the Canterbury Tales, is a collection of stories. A lover makes confession
to a priest of Venus, a learned old man named Genius, and the stories narrated by this priest for the purpose
of illustrating the seven deadly sins. Though the design is occasionally marred by digressions, in general the
structure of the poem is carefully planned and executed; each of the seven deadly sins, with five branches, is
shown to be applicable to love and lovers, and one or more stories are told to some of the tales is rather
forced, the collection is noted for the number and variety of its excellent stories. The Confessio Amantis was
Gower’s most popular work, and still exists in three versions in forty-three manuscripts. In one version.
Chaucer, who had decided his Troilus and Criseyde to “Moral Gover” is urged in his later age to write a
testament of love.
The Vox Clamantis is interesting for historical reasons. The second half of the fourteenth century
was a time of revolutionary changes among the peasants of England. Four terrible attacks of the Black
Death, the first in 1348, the last in 1375, swept over the country, destroying over a third of the population.
For a long time the old feudal system known as “villeigns”, according to which all agriculture was carried on
for the lord of the decay, giving way to a combination of rent-ing to free farmers (like Chaucer’s Plowman)
and of hiring landless labourers, who wandered from district to district, wherever attracted by high wages.
The destruction of such a huge number of labourers by the plague resulted in an enormous decrease in the
labour market due to the demand of workers, villeinage practically disappeared. The condition of the survivors,
however, was not very greatly improved, for the short crops, the long periods of idleness between harvest
and plowing, and especially the statues, passed by parliament, attempting to reduce wages to the facile
prevailing before the plague, produced wide-spread hunger and discontent. The exactions of die church, the
extravagances of Edward III, and the heavy cost of his foreign wars added to the burden of the distracted
peasantry. The fearlessness with which the Oxford reformer, John Wyclif, attacked the corruptions of the
clergy and ques-tioned the fundamental rights of property was like flame to the fuel of discontent. In 1381
nationwide uprising of the peasants occurred, under the leadership of Wat Tyler, Jack Straw, and a socialist
priest of Kent, named John Balle. They marched on London, sacked the Tower as if the throne and the whole
social order where about to be overturned. It was this state of things which prompted Gower to write his Vox
Clamantis. As a landowner in Kent, he felt the full burnt of the disturbances. He writes from an aristocratic
point of view, representing the common people as beasts, oxen, dogs, flies, and frogs because of the evil
magic of the time. But he does not hesitate to blame King Richard II for this neglect of his duties and he
agrees on occasion with Wyclif and Lollards, although he warns his readers against them. The poem is full
of horror and dismay at the social volcano which had opened for a moment, and threatened to engulf the
nation.
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A. Self Assessment Question
Who is the writer of “Vox Clamantis”?
1. John Gower 3. William Langland
2. John Wycliffe 4. Shakespeare
2.3.2 John Wycliffe
John Wyclif (1320-1384), the man who by his teaching had helped, though unintentionally, to foment
the peasant revolution was primarily a theologian and religious reformer. His connection with English literature
is, in a sense, accidental, but nevertheless very important. He attacked the temporal power of the church,
advocating, partly in the interest of the overburdened poor, the appropriation by the state of all church
property, especially of land. While waging a war of theory on his and other ecclesiastical questions, he
planned and carried out a great practical movement, known as the Lollard movement, for arousing the
common people to a more vital religious life. He sent out simple devoted men to preach the gospel in the
native tongue, and to bring home to their hearts the living truths of religion which the formalism of the
medieval church had obscured. These “poor priests”, dressed in coarse russet robes and carrying staves,
travelled through the length and breath of the land, as Wesley’s preachers travelled four centuries later,
calling men back to the simple faith of early apostolic times.
Wyclif and his Lollard priests began the great protestant appeal from the dogmas of the church to
the prime authority of the Scriptures which culminated in the sixteenth century, in Luther and the Reformation.
In order to make this appeal effective with masses, Wyclif not only wrote numerous tracts and sermons in
homely, vigrous speech for the common people but also urged the translation of the Bible into English. The
task was completed by Nicholas of Hereford and a corps of assis-tants before Wyclif’s death in 1384. The
translation Wyclif had inspired was revised and rendered into more idiomatic language a few years later by
John Purvey, and received its final form some time before the end of the century. It is one of the first great
prose monuments in English, and its wide popularity in spite of the occa-sional stiff and unidiomatic
“translation English” rendered in influential in gaining for the vernacular a position of dignity and honour.
B. Self Assessment Question
Who is known as ‘‘Morning star of Reformation”
1. William Langland 3. John Wycliffe
2. Shakespeare 4. John Gower
2.3.3 William Langland
The peasant rebellion and the Lollard agnation give us glimpses of an England which Chaucer, in
spite of the many sidedness of his work, did not reveal. The Canterbury Tales contain few references to the
plague, only one to the peasant revolution, and only one to Lollardy, and these references are casual or
jesting. Chaucer wrote for the court and cultivated classes, to whom the sufferings of the poor were a matter
of utmost indifference. He is often serious, sometimes nobly so; but intense moral indignation and exalted
spiritual rapture were foreign to his artistic, gay, tolerant disposition. In his graceful world lines, his delight
in the bright pageantry of life, he shows himself to be an adherent of the nobility of life, he shows himself to
be an adherent of the nobility, a follower of the Norman-French literary school; the other side of the English
nature its somber, puritanical, moralizing side found expression in a group of poems which have recently
been ascribed to one author William Langland, and which have been called the Vision Concerning Piers the
Plowman. Although the question of the unity or diversity of authorship of these poems is still involved in
13
controversy, the position of the adherents of the older view has been so seriously undermined that we are
now obliged at least to discard completely the inferential biography of the author, which had been based
solely on half hints and imagination details contained in the poems. The three poems comprise of an ordinal
version and two successive revision, the two latter being about three times as long as the former. It is
profitable to consider the earliest version (1362) first.
The poem is a series of dreams or visions such as the Roman de la Rose had made fashionable. On
a May morning the tired poet leans beside a brook in the Malvern hills, and, lulled by the soft music of the
water, falls sleep. In a dream he sees a high Tower in the east, a dark Dungeon in a deep dale in the west, and
in be-tween a fair Field full of fold, working and wandering. There are plowmen and masters, proud ladies
and gentlemen of fashion, hermits, peddlers, minstrels, lazy beggars, lying pilgrims, preaching friars, a
fraudulent pardoner, absentee priest, unscrupulour lawyears, barons, townspeople, and serfs; some are good,
some are wicked, most are greedy, lazy rapacious. Suddenly a lovely Lady, Holy church, desernds from the
mountains, and explains to the dreamer that the Tower is the abode of God the Father, who is the spirit of
truth. Truth, she says, consists in loving God and being charitable to men. From the Tower the dreamer turns
to die Dungeon, from which streams a retinue of rascals in the train of falsehood, the son of Wrong, who is
the lord of evil. Falsehood is about to marry Lady Meed, the allegorical representative of the greed of the
people in the Field, but Theology forbids the marriage, and in order to ob-tain leave Meed and Falsehood are
required to go to the King’s court. On their way the king orders the arrest of the mob of rascals, who disperse
in a panic, and Lady Meed is brought to trial. Here she attempts to marry the King’s greatest Knight, who is
named Conscience but the latter refuses until she obtains the consent of reason. Before reason can render
judgement, Meed is caught red handed in the act of bribing the king’s officials to release a criminal, and in
a stinging speech of denuncia-tion by Reason is forever debarred from pleading before the king. Reason
concludes with the assertion that the royal domain can be made righteous and happy only if he and Conscience
rule over it. Immediately the dreamer sees Conscience and Repentance preaching to the Field full of folk,
who in the form of personified. Deadly Sins, confess, repent, and promise to seek, Truth. But no one knows
the way thither, nor even a palmer who has visited every shrine on earth, till Peirs, the old, faithful plowman,
ventures to tell them how to find and follow the path. It leads through Meekness, Conscience, love of God
and man and the Ten Commandments (represented as almost impassable rivers, mountains and forests),
after which will be seen the Tower of, surrounded by a most of Mercy, and guarded by Grace. Entrance can
be secured only through the seven Virtues the antitheses of the Deadly sins. The pilgrims despair over the
difficult and beg Piers to lead them, but he refuses until he was finished his plowing, sowing, and harvesting,
and in the meantime commands them all to assist him. Many refuse to work and Piers calls, Hunger, who
beats them and feeds them only on beans, barley bread, and water. At the harvest some be- come arrogant
and refuse to work save for high wages in spite of the renewed warnings of Hunger. Finally, Truth sends
Piers a pardon, under the terms of which only those who aid him are to be admitted to the Tower, The pardon
reads, “Those who do good shall enter eternal life, but those who do evil suffer in eternal fire.” In a dispute
over the meaning of the pardon Peirs and the priest talk so loudly that the dreamer awakes.
Even to the shortest form of the poem as just given several cantos were added, which however, in
vigour and structural power, fall for below the work of the first writer. Twice afterward (1377, 1386-1398)
the poem was augmented by many more cantos, and was extremely remodelled. A definitely planned allegory,
with the systematic action of its living and moving figures, however, was beyond the power of the latter
writers. Neither did they see or understand the social abuses so clearly, nor could they propose so definite a
remedy. Their work is full of poetic lines find powerful short passages but it lacks form and structure.

14
 The name of Piers the Plowman was used as revolutionary cry in the peasant uprising. But the poem
aims not at revolution but at reform. Its remedy is neither physical violence nor an ascetic with drawal form
the social conflict, but the gospel of Truth, Love Duty, and Work. The poet’s sense of equality of all men
before God, his hatred of social falsities and hypocrisy, his belief in the dignity of labour given an almost
modem tone to his poem, in spite of its archaic metrical form and its medieval allegorical machinery. His
deep religious sense and the power of his feeling of social duty are neither ancient nor modem, but of all
time.
C. Self Assessment Question
Who writes “Piers and Plowman”
1. Shakespeare 3. John Wycliffe
2. William Langland 4. John Gower
2.3.4 Metrical Form
The metrical form which the poet chose again contrasts him sharply with Chaucer. Chaucer threw in
his lot from the first with the new versification imported from France, depending upon regular accent, a
fixed number of syllables, and rhyme; and he developed this in such a way as to produce with it a rich and
finished music. By his choice of the French system he puts himself in line with the future of English verse,
even though the tradition he began was lost for a time in the fifteenth century. The author of Piers the
Plowman, because he knew that his popular audience would be more deeply moved by the ancient and
traditional would be more deeply moved by the ancient and traditional rhythms of the nation, or because
these were more natural to himself, adopted the old system of native versifi-cation which depended upon a
fixed number of accents (four) and alliteration for its metrical structure, and allowed great irregularity both
in the position of stressed syllables and the number of syllables in the line. The opening vases of the poem
will serve as a specimen;
In a somer season. When soft nm we sonne,
I shape me in shroudes, as I a shepe were
In habit as an hermit, unholy of workers;
went wide in this worlde wondres to here.
The caesura, or heavy pause in the middle of each line, is marked by a dot. The alliterative syllabus
of which there are usually two in the first half, and one in the second half, are stressed. There are normally
four stresses in the line.
This matter, is hi a modem ear, somewhat monotonous and uncouth. It adapts itself much better to
recita-tion than reading with the eye. However, we account for it, the fact that the Vision is written in this
antique and rapidly dying verse from has told against it. From Chaucer, form France and Italy, flows the
whole stream of later verse. Peirs and Plowman has had to modem literary offspring, though it was considered
one of the most valuable pieces of literature in English and was imitated a number of times in its own and the
following century.
But the work of the poet who wrote the earliest version has suffered most in modem criticism
because it has not been carefully distinguished from that the later continuators and adapters. Their work is
confused in plan, bewildered with detail full of reaks and structureless transitions. Its total effect is majestic
only because of the force of imagination behind it, but is not artisde. It lacks the clear, firm outline and the

15
harmonious proportion, which the first poet attained, and which likewise Chaucer’s supreme artistic sense
enables him to attain in his later years. But it is probably the greatest piece of Middle English literature,
except for the Canterbury Tales.
2.4 SUMMING-UP
The period between 1343 and 1450 is known as the Age of Chaucer. It marked the first significant
literary Age in English Literature.
It heralded a new era of learning. Chaucer’s age also witnessed many social, political, arc religious
challenges. There was a strong dislike for the Papal or Church’s interference, which previously been the
citadel of moral authority, social prestige but now suffered from corruption turpitude and superstitions.
There were strong nationalistic passions due to the 100 year’s war between England and France.
2.5 GLOSSARY
1. Culminate of a heavenly body, to be at the highest point, reach its greatest altitude.
2. Engulf to overwhelm
3. Feudal of, or relating to feudalism (A social system based on personal ownership of resources and
personal fealty between a suzerain (lord) and a vessel.
2.6 QUESTIONS
1. Discuss the literary contribution of Chaucer’s contemporaries.
2. Discuss the metrical forms used by Chaucer and his contemporaries.
2.7 SELF ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS’ ANSWERS
A (1), B (3), C (2)
2.8 SUGGESTED READINGS
1. A Short History of English Literature by Harry Blamires
2. History of English Literature by W.H Longfellow

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16
 LESSON-3
CHAUCER’S IMITATORS AND THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY

STRUCTURE
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Learning Objectives
3.3 Contemporaries of Chaucer
3.3.1 John Lydgate
A. Self-Assessment Questions
3.3.2 Thomas Occleve
3.3.3 James I
B. Self-Assessment Questions
3.3.4 Bishop Percy
3.3.5 Thomas Malory
C. Self-Assessment Questions
3.4 Summing - Up
3.5 Glossary
3.6 Questions
3.7 Self-Assessment Questions' Answers
3.8 Suggested Readings
3.1 INTRODUCTION
That Chaucer was far in advance of his time becomes clear when we note how persistently his
fifteenth- century successors turned back to him for inspiration, as to their “Fader dere and master reverent,”
and found themselves unable to do more than awkwardly or pallidly imitate him.
3.2 LEARNING OBJECTIVES
The objective of this lesson is to make you familiar with the imitators of Chaucer and their contribution
to English Literature. It also explains social, political, and literary features of fifteenth century
3.3 CONTEMPORARIES OF CHAUCER
3.3.1 John Lydgate
The chief among these imitators was John Lydgate, a monk of Bury st. Edmunds, who began making
verses before Chaucer’s death, and died before the outbreak of the Wars of the Roses. Lydgate, who was
primarily a translator and compiler, was the most voluminous mediaeval English poet. His major works
were the Troy-Book The Falls of Princes, the Temple of Glass, the pilgrimage of the Life of Man, and the
Story of Thebes. His Story of Thebes, based on Boccacio and Stutius, pretend to be told as one of the
Canterbury Tales; the poet in his prologue feigns to have joined the pilgrims at Canterbury, and at the Host’s
request tells the story on the homeward journey. The device illustrates clearly the lack of originality of
Lydgate and his brother poets. Lydgate’s verse, moreover, is markedly halting and tuneless. But in his own
day he was ranked with Chaucer and Gower as a brisk teller of stories.
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A. Self Assessment Question
‘The Falls of Princes’ is written by?
1. Bishop Percy 3. Thomas Occleve
2. Thomas Malory 4. John Lydgate
3.3.2 Thomas Occleve
In this respect Thomas Occleve (or Hoiccleve, 1373-1450) a better disciple. He perhaps had the
benefit of Chaucer’s personal acquaintance and instruction, loved and mourned his deeply, and preserved, in
manuscript of his Governail of Princes of De Regimine principum (written for the Prince of Wallon, afterward
Henry V), the well known portrait of Chaucer as a grey-haried old man, hooded and gowned. This treatise on
courtly morals and manners is probably his major work.
3.3.3 James
A third poet who continued the master’s tradition (with a good sprinkling of Gower, to be sure) has
lived in literary history as much by the picture sequences of his personal story has by his poetry, which is
nevertheless charming in his own style of presentation. This is the young Stuart prince, afterward James I of
Scotland, who was captured by English sailors in 1405, and spent the next nineteen years in England, as a
prisoner in the Tower of London, Windsor Castle, and other strong holds. At the time of his capture he was
a child of eleven. As he grew up in solitude, he turned for division to poetry and music arts in which the
Scottish kings were traditionally proficient. One day, from the windows of Windsor Castle, he saw a beautiful
young girl walking in the garden below, as Palamon saw the fair Emile in the Knight’s Tale. The story of his
love for Jane Beau-fort and its happy outcome the young prince told with tenderness and fancy in his King’s
Quair. It is written in the seven- line pentameter stanza invented by Chaucer and repeatedly used by him,
though, in deference to the princely poet, it has since been known as “rhymeroyal.” Both the style and plan
of the King’s Quair are limited from the artificial French poetry from which Chaucer more and more departed
as he grew in original power, but from which neither Gower nor the failure of these imitators delivered
themselves. It is significant of the failure of these imitators to perceive the immense originality of Chaucer’s
later work, that they frequently put Gower on level with him. In the Envoy of the King’s Quair James
recommends his “litel boke, nakit of elo-quence.”
Unto the ympnes (hymns) of any matsters dere
Gowere and Chaucers, that on stappies satt
Of rhetorike will they were lyvand here
Superlative as poets laureate.
And he brings the poem to a close with a prayer that their souls may together enjoy the bliss of
heaven. When in 1424 the prince, on the eve of his release from his long activity, was married to the lady
whom he had celebrated in King’s Quair, his reverence for Gower prompted him to have the wedding held in
the church of St Saviour’s where the old poet lay buried, James assassination at Perth in 1437 is the subject
of Rossetti’s literary ballad, The King’s Tragedy.
The fifteenth century is often characterized as a period barren of poetic production. This is true only
so far as it implies the absence of genius. Quantitatively the fifteenth century was more prolific of English
poetry (and prose) than any preceding century. The enormous growth of English commerce and industry,
and consequent rise of the middle classes in number, wealth and leisure resulted in a voracious public

18
appetite for the output of literary mediocrity, a large part of which is purely utilitarian. The number of third-
rate writers is very large the works of over three hundred have been quantity of their output is surprising. But
the fact re-mains that the freshest and most spontaneous work is of popular origin. Songs and carols, ballads
and new and remodelled plays of all sorts constitute the finest literature of the century.
The English popular ballad used to be regarded as a variety of folk-art communally produced. It was
then defined as a narrative poem without any known author or any marks of individual authorship, such as
sentiment and reflection, meant in the first instance for singing, and connected, as its name implies, with the
communal dance, but submitted to a process of oral tradition among people free from literary influence and
fairly homogeneous.” In recent years, scholars have emphasized the importance of the individual, though
usually an unknown author and have minimized the communal element. These ballads appeared to have
flourished lumuriantly among the fold in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, after which their composition
ceased.
B. Self Assessment Question
The ‘King’s Quair’ by James 1 of Scotland is the story of his love for?
1. Emile 3. Cleopatra
2. Blanche 4. Jane Beaufort
3.3.4 Bishop Percy
Over three hundred of them, in 1300 versions, have survived, and have been collected and printed,
the earliest collection being that in Bishops Percy’s Reliques of Ancient Populat Poetry, the publication of
which in 1795 aroused the keenest interest. These ballads in the main are of two different types one presenting
an emotional situation, often tragic, in short stanzas, with a refrain and with much repetition; the other, as in
the case of the Robin Hood ballads offering a rather extended narrative in stanzas of four lines, the second
and fourth lines rhyming. The first type-the fold ballad- shows some signs of group composition although
the originals were probably composed by individuals. The second type the minstrel ballad is certainly the
result of individual composition. The former may be illustrated by the following:
Lully, lulley, lulley, lully,
The jaw con hath born by make male away.
He bare-hym up, he bare hym down.
He bare hym into on orchard browned Refrain)
In that orchard there are an halle,
That was hanged with pupil and pall. (Ref)
And in that hall there wm a bede;
Hit was hanged with gold so rede.(Ref)
And in that bed there lythe a knyght.
His wownd is bledyng and unght.(Ref)
By that bede side kneleth a may (maid).
And she wepeth both nyght and day.(Ref).
One of the best known of the Robin Hood ballads, entitled Robin Hood and the Monk, opens with
the following musical and picturesque stanzas:
19
 In somer, when the shawes (groves) be sheyne (beautiful),
And leaves be large and long,
Hit is full mery (pleasant) in feyure foreste
To here the foulys (little birds) song.
To se the dere drawe to the dale,
And leve the leaves hee(high)
And shadow hem in the leaves grene,
Under the grenewood tre.
The ballad has a well-constructed plot, with fighting, imprisonment, disguise and escape. Interest in
the ballads is one of the features of the romantic period and from that period date most of the “literary
ballads” poems written consciously in the manner of the ancient ballad.
3.3.5 Thomas Malory
In prose the fifteenth century produced one work which has much of delevation and imaginative
splendour of great poetry the Morteh d’ Arthur (The Death of Arthur) of Sir Thomas Malory. Malory was a
knight, a gentleman of an ancient house, with its seat at New bold Re veil, Warwickshire. As a young man he
served in France, in the military retinue of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, a warrior in whom lived
again the knightly ideal of a former age, and who was known by the romantic title of “Father of Courtesy.”
Malory himself seems to have had an unusually turbulent and contentious carrier, but it did not disqualify
him from the task of combining in one great prose mosaic almost all the legands and tales of King Arthur and
his knights of the Round Table, which had been richly elaborated by the poets and prose-writers of England
and France. Here, in an enchanted realm, detached from actuality, we hear of high deeds of love, loyalty and
revenge performed by tire great personifications of chivalry-Gawain, Lancelot, Percival and Galahad. Very
largely by virtue of his imitating the style of his French originals, Malory became the master of a simple,
flowing English primitive in structure, but ca-pable of considerable flexibility and falling into pleasant
nature rhymes. The morte ‘d’ Author was finished by 1470; it was printed in 1485, when Caxton, the first
English printer, published it with an interesting preface from his own hand.
C. Self Assessment Question
Who wrote the famous poetry ‘Morte d’ Arthur’?
1. James I 3. John Lydgate
2. Thom as Malory 4. Gower
3.4 SUMMING - UP
Geoffrey Chaucer was one of the most prominent poets. Widely considered the greatest English
poet of Middle Ages, he is best known for The Canterbury Tales. Other writers from Chaucer’s time were
William Langland author of Piers Plowman. John Gower was another close contemporary of Chaucer’s.
Boccaccio was an Italian, several of Chaucer’s poems notably his ‘Trodus and Criseyde” and “The Knight’s
Tale”, are based on the works of Boccaccio. Thomas Occleve, Bishop Percy, Thomas Malory were few more
important writers of fifteen century.

20
3.5 GLOSSARY
a. Imitate- to copy.
b. Gowned- A loose, flowing upper garment.
c. Solitude- Aloneness. state of being alone, by oneself.
d. Leisure- Freedom provided by the cessation of activities.
3.6 QUESTIONS
1. What is the social religious and political background of the Age of Chaucer?
2. Who were Chaucer’s Contemporaries?
3. What is the modern note in the age of Chaucer?
3.7 SELF ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS’ ANSWERS
A (4), B (4), C (2)
3.8 SUGGESTED READINGS
1. A Short History of English Literature by Ifor Evans
2. The Short Oxford History of English Literature by Andrew Sanders.

*****

21
 LESSON-4
THE RENAISSANCE: GENERAL INTRODUCTION

STRUCTURE
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Learning Objectives
4.3 Renaissance
A. Self-Assessment Question
4.3.1 Its Birth in Italy
B. Self-Assessment Question
4.3.2 Birth of New Culture of Humanism
4.3.3 New Philosophy
4.4 The Reign of Stability
4.4.1 Catholic Vs. Protestants
4.4.2 Age of Enlightenment and Discovery
4.4.3 Literary Features
4.5 Summing - Up
4.6 Glossary
4.7 Questions
4.8 Self-Assessment Questions' Answers
4.9 Suggested Readings
4.1 INTRODUCTION
In the history of English literature the period from 1516 to 1660 is variously designed by different
critics. It has been called the Age of Shakespeare. Though Shakespeare was born in 1554, and started his
career towards the end of the sixteenth century, yet his works are fully representative of the political, social
and literary tendencies of this great age. It is designated as the Elizabethan Age because queen Elizabeth was
responsible for the unity, security and strength of England. She was possessed of strong judgement, tact and
prudence with a remarkable insight into the psychology of her subject, which made her a living symbol of
English patriotism and national aspirations. Very often it is referred to as the age of English Renaissance
because it was during this period only that the full impact of the great intellectual movement known as the
renaissance was felt on the social, culture, and intellectual life of the English people.
4.2 LEARNING OBJECTIVES
In this lesson we will tell you about the birth of Renaissance and life and contribution of Shakespeare.
Some aspects of Humanism, Age of Enlightenment and literary features of 15Ih century will also be discussed.
4.3 RENAISSANCE
Whatever name we may give to this age, the fact remains that this is one of the most significant
periods in the literary and social history of England. We see an England totally different from that of Middle

22
Ages. Many factors were responsible for giving a new personality to the English men who now followed a
different set of ideals in their personal, social and political life. A new intellectual and social climate was
there and hence the literature produced during this age is also tremendously different from whatever was
written before. A proper appreciation of the literature of his age is possible only if we acquaint ourselves
with the age first.
Attempts have been made to divide this period into three parts. The first part is the time of preparation
for the Renaissance (1516 to 1578); the second is the flowering of the Renaissance (1578 to 1625); the final
part closes with the deterioration of literature on account of lack of inspiration.
The word Renaissance means revival or rebirth. It was the human spirit that was reborn or awakened
after the long slumber of the Middle Ages. The idea of the rebirth of the arts, or of letter and learning goes
back of the fourteenth century and was part of the consciousness of the very first generation of Renaissance
humanists and artists. The term “Renaissance” is however, used to cover the whole movement whose essence
was according to Taine, that man, “so long blinded had suddenly opened his eyes and seen. “It is specially
used to denote the great spiritual and mental rebirth which marked the end of the Middle Ages and the
beginning of the modem world. In the words of Joseph Anthony Mazzeo in his Renaissance, and Revolution,”
Renaissance was a process of recovery of past achievements, a search for pristine ideals. Of Course, much
that was new was coming to birth during the Renaissance, but it was validated, not as a fresh creation but as
the resurrection of some better ancient teaching, institution, moral or aesthetic idea.”
A. Self Assessment Question
When did Renaissance started and when did it end?
1. 1500-1600 3. 1553-1589
2. 1516-1660 4. 1516-1600
4.3.1 Its Birth in Italy
Renaissance had its birth in Italy. From Italy it came to Germany and France and then to England.
Dante (1265-1321) is the last representative of the Middle Ages. In his Divine Comedy he roams through
heaven and hell and purgatory, Petrach (1304-74) his immediate successors, changed all that. He turned
away from such gloomy subjects and wrote of more agreeable thinks of love, of nature, and of the glories of
ancient Rome. He was soon joined by his young friend Boccacio (1313-75) who delighted his countrymen
with rollicking stories of love and laughter, and poems of romance and passion.
Petrach and Boccacio had a tremendous interest in the past achievements of their country, the relics
of ancient buildings the beautiful statues. Simultaneously another event took place which gave a further
fillip to the revival of classical learning. In 1453 Constantinople, the last stronghold of Greek language and
Greek culture, fell to the Turks. The Greek and Latin scholars with their precious manuscripts of ancient
learning field from there and found welcome in Italy, particularly in Florence. The Italians who had only
heard of the great names of Homer, of Plato and Aristotle, and were anxious to know them first hand, now
satisfied their curiosity at the feet of the refugee scholars. Classical learning was by no means totally defunct
in the Middle Ages; Latin was the official language of the church and of the world of scholarship; Plato and
Aristotle were dominant influences on the great philosophers and classical mythology, had already invaded
the religious as well as the secular life of the Christian world and started the process of moral and religious
interpretation of the old myths. Virgil and Cicero came to command great respect as important links between
the classical and the Christian outlooks of life. But the wave of Renaissance coloured the thoughts and idea
of the Elizabe-than people in shades and hues unknown to the Middle Ages.
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B. Self Assessment Question
Where had Renaissance started from?
1. Italy 3. Paris
2. Germany 4. England
4.3.2 Birth of New Culture of Humanism
This rediscovery and reinterpretation of antiquity gave birth to a new culture that of humanism. It
had two main forms” the classical humanist sought to revive the art, literature and learning of antiquity,
while the Christian humanist, using the new philological and historical discipline procreated by the secular
humanist sought to return to the authentic pristine Gospel, unencumbered by the massive complexities of
scholastic theology. Humanism, broadly defined and understood, is the master key for the understanding of
the civilization of the Re-naissance.
The term “Humanism” was coined only during the nineteenth century to refer to the revival of
classical learning which began in the fourteenth century. Humanism was, in fact an educational movement
in the broadest of the term. The great humanists of the Renaissance were impelled to revolutionize the
curriculum out of the conviction that the classical world had been through a complete cycle of human
experience-moral intellectual and imaginative and that the ancients had given a luminiously intelligent
account of that the ancients had given a luminiously intelligent account of that the experience in perfect
form in imperishable works of thought, art and literature. Thus, the entire curriculums of studies in Renaissance
was based on the ancient Greek and Latin culture as against the old professional scholastic curriculum
developed during the Middle Ages. The Renaissance humanist chose a new set of subjects for study and
teaching and formulated a new curriculum whose highest intention was to make the liberally educated man
the citizen, fit to perform with distinction the duties of peace and war. This curriculum was based mainly on
grammer, rhetoric, poetry, history and philosophy.
4.3.3 New Philosophy
By turning away from “divine” literature the humanist deliberately altered the focus of intellectual
and moral concern. They emphasized a new, scholar philosophy of life. This philosophy was directly opposed
to the ascetic philosophy of the Christian Church. While the Christian outlook was other worldly, based
upon the vanitatum of earthy pomp, power and glory and horror of the world, the Flesh and the devil and die
manifold temptations of the senses, the Renaissance humanism on the contrary was practically a glorification
of human life on the planet; of material property success and comforts. They placed their emphasis on man,
man as he is revealed in the written records, intellectual and imaginative. They discussed questions like the
dignity of man, the conditions and possibilities of happiness in human efforts and ability to contact it.
Whether the highest human activity was to be found in contemplation or in a life of political and social
action, the relative merits of different kinds of government, whether government by one or by many under
the new creed life no longer seemed a penance to be endured by good Christians in preparation for heaven.
People begin to take interest in this life and stove hard to make it larger and happier.
So long the discussion has been regarding the great intellectual movement which swept over the
whole continent changing the attitude of masses as well as of classes towards human life in general. The
people of England came under its influence and saw life from an entirely different angle hitherto unknown
to them. Apart from the foreign influences the political and religious situation in England did contribute
tremendously in creating the new spirit of the age.

24
4.4 THE REIGN OF STABILITY
“In the Age of Elizabeth all doubt seems to vanish from English history,” says W.J. Long. England
did not enjoy political stability in the reigns of Edward and Mary. England had to face defeat and humiliation
abroad and persecutions and rebellion at home. When Queen Elizabeth I came to the throne it was like the
sunrise after a long night. In Milton’s words, we suddenly see England, “a noble and Pussiant nation, rousing
herself, like a strong man after sleep and Shaking her invincible locks.” Elizabeth loved England and England’s
greatness. She inspired all her people with the unbounded patriotism which exuls in Shakespeare and with
the personal devotion which finds voice in the Fairie Queene. Under her administration the English national
life progressed by gigantic leaps and English Literature reached the very Zenith of its development. Her
Court showed an uninhibited interest in intellectual pursuits and she herself had failing regard for learning
and literature. She was surrounded by a band of brilliant courtiers, products of the humanist education,
adept in the art of peace and war, patrons of the mysteries of the creative literature. Southampton, Pembrok,
Earl of Oxford, Raleigh, Sir Philip Sidney and the Earl of Essex.
The queen’s physical decline and her ultimate death caused waning of this glory. With the accessions
of King James during the early years of the 17th century a mood of disillusionment, cynicism and boredom
entered into the English court. Consequently it had its repercussions on output also. The last phase of
Renais-sance, which is sometimes designated as the Jacobean period, marked the phase of sobriety and
realism, The mind descended from the height of exaltation to the solid earth underfoot, high hope yielded
place to de-spair, cynicism and melanotroly, passion for life gave way to brooding upon death, on ever the
corpses in the grave undergoing the process of decay and putrefaction. The atmosphere was congenial for
the growth of satire and the creative minds turned to the exposure of the follies and corruptions of the age,
of the insatiable lust for gold that had permeated the whole society.
4.4.1 Catholic vs Protestants
Queen Elizabeth’s influence was responsible for another great characteristic of the age—the
comparative religious tolerance. At the time of the Queen’s accession to the throne the whole kingdom was
divided against itself. A strong controversy between the Catholics and Protestants was raging. The north was
largely Catholic, while the Southern countries were staunch Protestants. The Queen’s Court had members of
both groups who vied with each oilier to gain the royal favour. Elizabeth favoured both the religious parties
and created an atmosphere where the Catholics and Protestants acted together as trusted counselors of the
Queen. Men’s minds were free from intense religious questions and controversies, fears and persecutions.
They now had the lime and energy to turn to other forms of activity. Tins religious tolerance provided great
stimulus to literary activity and the development of great national literature. The renaissance brought a new
spirit of inquiry into the ideals of the Church. Saturated with the new spirit of the renaissance, the religious
minded men civilization the faith of the Church in the light of their new reading of Christian scriptures. Thus
gradually came into being a schism from Rome and the supreme authority of the Pope was questioned and
challenged. This spirit of reformation forced men to think in terms of nationality. The Church of Rome had
held Western Europe together throughout the Middle Ages. But as the Middle Ages drew to their end men
stopped giving primary importance to this common spiritual allegiance. England when its people took pride
in their being Englishmen, no longer wanted to be subservient in religion to Rome. Naturally a growth of a
national spirit meant a great deal to literature, the spiribic of England undoubtedly pervades the final work
of Chaucer. But when in the last quarter of the century, English literature shows the full effect of the
Renaissance, there can be no denying that the work produced has the stamp of English nationality well
marked on it. University of Shakespeare has not stopped him from being an Englishman through and through.
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 4.4.2 Age of Enlightenment and Discovery
It was an age of comparative contentment, in strong contract with, the days of Langland. The rapid
increase of manufacturing towns gave employment it thousands who had been idle and discontented before
me. Increased trade brought enormous wealth to England. The increase of wealth improved the living and
gave confidence and contentment to the people. These factors also account for the great literary activity of
the period.
It was an age of dreams, of adventure, of unbounded enthusiasms springing from the new lands of
fabulous riches revealed by English explorers, it was an era of adventurous knights and enterprising navigators
and sea dogs who set out to explore new lands, plant new colonies, plunder enemy shops and returned home
with heaps of treasures and incredible reports about remote lands. While her poets created literary works for
the fountain of Youth her poets created literary works that are young forever.
From the intellectual point of view the age of Elizabeth was a transitional period. Medievalism was
breaking but the medieval ideas and beliefs still had some hold on the minds of men. Belief in the influence
of stars of comments and eclipses; in the completion of human personality, out of the blending of the four
humours; belief in magic, in witchcraft, in ghosts and fairies had not yet vanished completely. The medieval
picture of the cozy universe, with its chain of being and universal order and interpretation of natural and
super-natural was being challenged from different directions. The new discoveries in the field of astronomy
were not accepted suddenly and totally. Copernicus, Montague and Machiavelli are the three great personalities
who made men see the hollowness and falsity of many a belief. Copernicus initiated a revolution in the field
of Astronomy by discovery that the hub of the universe was the sun and the earth was a tiny and dark planet
spinning round that luminary; Montaigue, the French sceptic directed his polished irony against the proud
position of man and his belief m the inability of his reason.
The noble picture of the universe where the king was the representative of God, the fountain of
justice and mercy to his subject; who were duty bound to obey and respect him, was being demolished by
Machiavelli, the author of The Prince. Machiavelli saw men as they are. His basic assumption, like that of
Hobbes was that they are bad by nature and can most effectively be governed by force and fraud, the force
of the lion and the fraud of the fox. Machiavelli was a monster in the eyes of many, He was denounced in
public but read in private by those who wanted to learn the art of the statecraft. He was political teacher to
people like Bacon.
Printing, which Caxton had introduced in the previous age, and new literature, was welcomed by
the people.
To sum up, this period is generally regarded as the greatest in the history of English literature.
Historically, there is in this age the tremendous impetus received from the Renaissance, from the reformation,
and from the exploration of the new world. It was marked by a strong national spirit, by partriotism, by
religious tolerant, by social content, by intellectual progress, and by undowned enthusiasm. Man made
sincere and fruitful attempts to free himself from the rigid institutions of the Middle Agesteudalism and the
church and to assert his right to live, to think and to express himself in accordance with a more flexible
secular code. As men gained this freedom they felt less inclined to ascribe to the medieval view that this life
should be sacrificed to the future one. They turned more and more to the present world, to the problem of
gaining mastery of it through wealth or Statecraft, of discovering its secret through exploration and scientific
experiment, of heightening its enjoyment through art and literature.

26
 4.4.3 Literary Features
The literature produced during this age was greatly different from the literature of the earlier ages.
Because of the influence of the New Learning, there was an ardent revival in the study of Greek and Latin.
It had its impact both on the style and the themes. The rudeness of English language was polished and
tempered.
Original though the great period of the English Renaissance was, it had its rise in a multitude of
ancient or foreign influences and translations. In the words of Emile Legous. ‘’The rich soiled was fertilized
by the deep layer of translations. By 1579 many of the great workers of ancient and modem times had been
translated into English almost all of them by 1603; the end of Elizabeth’s region” many of the translations
enjoyed as great a popularity as if they had been original works. This was true of Pultarch’s Lives, translated
by Thomas Nor, and of Elono’s translation of Montaigues Essays. These translations helped to make supple
the prose and verse of English writers as well as to enrich the minds of the people.
The prodigal literary output of the age of Shakespeare is simply amazing. The historical and
intel-lectual tendencies of the age encouraged the dramatic writings and hence the maximum number of
plays were produced in this age. But even other forms of literature like poetry, prose and even pamphlet
writing were quite popular.
The age of Shakespeare is regarded as the great romantic epoch of literature. The romantic quest is
for the remote, the wonderful and the beautiful, and all these desires were abundantly fed during the age of
Shakespeare.
Italy exerted by far the greatest possible influence on, English mind and literature. Elizabethan
“literature,” before it became the expression of the national genius, had its inspirations in Italianism. Italy
gave the key note to the new culture and theories and style to the new literature. The development of the
theatre and of the English novel owes much to the stories and lively dra-matic tales of Boccacio, Cinihio,
Bandello, Straparolia and others.
Though there was considerable influence of foreign literature, yet the strict application of the rules
was overlooked. The writer set at naught tyrannical rules of grammar and versification and attempted new
styles and manners.
All the important literary genre like Poetry, Drama and Prose became popular and advanced with
rape speed. The social, historical and intellectual climate England in this age proved especially beneficial
for the growth and development of drama. Various types of dramas were produced in great abundance.
4.5 SUMMING - UP
The English Renaissance was a cultural and artistic movement in England which dated from the late
15th century to the early 17th century. It is associated with the pan-European Renaissance that is usually
regarded as beginning in Italy in the late 14th century. As in most of northern Europe. England saw’ little
developments until more than a century later.
4.6 GLOSSARY
a. Slumber - A very light state of sleep, almost awake.
b. Antiquity- Ancient times; faraway history; former ages.
c. Pomp- Show of magnificence; parade; display; power.
d. Zenith-The point in the sky vertically above a given position or observer; the point in the celestial
sphere opposite the nadir.
27
4.7. QUESTIONS
1. What are the characteristics of Renaissance literature?
2. Why was literature important during the Renaissance?
3. How did literature impact the Renaissance?
4.8 SELF ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS’ ANSWERS
A (2), B (l)
4.9. SUGGESTED READINGS:
1. History of English literature by Edward Albert.
2. English Literature (Third Edition) by Andrew Sanders.

*****

28
 LESSON-5
THE RENAISSANCE: DRAMA

STRUCTURE
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Learning Objectives
5.3 Beginning of The Drama
5.3.1 Four Cycles of Drama
5.3.2 Mystery Plays
5.3.3 Miracle Plays
5.3.4 Morality Plays
5.3.5 Interludes
5.4 The Revival of Classical Drama
5.4.1 Comedy and Tragedy
5.5 University Wits
5.5.1 John Lyly
5.5.2 George Peele
5.5.3 Robert Greene
5.5.4 Thomas Lodge
5.5.5 Thomas KYD
5.5.6 Christopher Marlowe
5.6 Types of Drama
5.6.1 Chronicle Days
5.6.2 Domestic Drama
5.7 Shakespeare and his Contribution
5.7.1 His Works
5.7.2 Tragedies
A. Self-Assessment Question
5.7.3 Dramatic Romances
B. Self-Assessment Question
5.8 Ben Jonson
5.9 John Webster
5.10 Thomas Middleton
5.11 Thomas Heywood
C. Self-Assessment Question
5.12 Thomas Dekker
29
 5.13 Massinger, Ford, Shirley
5.14 Summing - Up
5.15 Glossary
5.16 Questions
5.17 Self-Assessment Questions' Answers
5.18 Suggested Readings
5.1 INTRODUCTION
The development of drama in England has been slow and gradual before it became the chief glory of
the Elizabethan Age Before we make an attempt to understand and appreciate its development and popularity
as a literary genre during the Elizabethan Age, it will be worthwhile to acquaint ourselves with its origin and
earliest beginnings to the point where Shakespeare took it up.
5.2 LEARNING OBJECTIVES
The objective of this lesson is to provide you with details of the drama and major dramatists of the
Renaissance. We will discuss types of dramas and the cycles of drama. We will also learn about university
wits, and life and works of Shakespeare.
5.3 BEGINNING OF THE DRAMA
The beginnings of the drama in England are obscure. The earliest records of acting in the Middle
Ages are concerned not with plays, but with individual players, jesters clowns, tumblers, coal, the minstrel
must have been a familiar and welcome figure. He could be found at the king’s court, in castles, at tournaments
and weddings or in the market places, gathering a crowd and speeding or singing his stories, But the church
was against him.
Though the Church did not look kindly upon the minstrels and their less reputable companions, yet
it was the Church itself that brought back the drama in England. The drama arose in England; as in other
catholic countries of Europe, in the attempts of the clergy to teach the masses the tenets of the Christian faith
by dramatizing the services of the Church at Christmas and Easter, The plays were in Latin, the language
was of the liturgy, and the actors were priests. At first, the Liturgical play was merely a part of the church
service with the sole intention of making it more impressive or to emphasize moral lessons. By the thirteenth
century such a spectacle was witnesses by many for the sake of the specracle only. The church, which had
reintroduced the drama, was discovering that the dramatic element was growing stronger than its religious
purpose. Between the thirtieth and fourteenth centuries the drama became secularized. The church authorities
when they found that the drama which they had created was an embar-rassment, removed it from the church
itself to the precincts. Thereby, after a number of changes, it became elaborated and secularized. The language
was no more. Latin, but English, and instead of the brief liturgical speeches, a longer drama script was
invented around the Biblical narratives. The actors were no longer clergy, but members of the medieval
guilds, with each guild usually responsible for one play. The guilds, as a cooperative effort prepared for
certain Feast Days, notably for the festival of Corpus Christ!, a series of Biblical plays to be performed at
various ‘Stations’ in a town. Each play would be mounted on a platform, fitted with wheels, and so could be
drawn from one ‘station’ to another. These religious plays made drama a genuine social activity, a cooperative
enterprise, maintained by guilds of craftsmen employing their own members as amateurs.

30
 5.3.1 Four Cycles of Drama
This sort of dramatic activity was very popular in those days. Four main cycles of such plays have
survived, those of Chester York, “Townely” or Wakefield and Koventry.
5.3.2 Mystery Plays
These plays vary in dramatic skill, though they all show sincerity and independence, with pathos
present at times, as in the play of ‘Abraham’s Sacrifice of Issac.
5.3.3 Miracle Plays
“Frequently, homely and comic characters were introduced, as in the treatment of Noah’s wife, as a
shrew. These cycles of plays are called “Miracles” or “Mysteries”. A distention is sometimes made between
‘mysteries’ and ‘miracles,’ the former denoting plays dealing with the life of Christ and the latter dealing
with the lives of the saints. This distinction is true of France, not of England, where all plays were
indiscriminately called miracles, later than these religious dramas were the morality plays, in which the
characters were abstract vices and virtues. These plays were less lively entertain-ment than the Miracle
plays.
5.3.4 Morality Plays
The earliest morality the Castle of Pre-servance date back to the early fifteenth century. The morality
was a sort of allegory of human life showing man struggling between Good and Evil. The morality plays
were effective and successful in the fifteenth century is proved by the long continued suc-cess of every man
which was been recently revived in England and America. The subject of the play is the summoning of every
man by Death; and the moral is that nothing can take away the terror of the inevitable summons, but an
honest life and the comforts of reli-gion. In its dramatic unity it suggests the pure Greek drama, there is no
change of time or scene, and the stage is never empty from the beginning to the end of the performance.
Other well known Moralities are the Pride of Life, Hyckescorner and Castle of Perseverance.
John Skelton, the writer of “Magnificence’ and Sir David Lidsay, “the poet of die Scotch Reformation”
are the two best known authors of moralities. They satirized the abuses of Church and State and introduced
living personages thinly disguised as allegories; so that the stage became a power in shaping events and
correcting abuses.
5.3.5 Interludes
Apart from the morality plays, there exited short plays named” Interludes.” These were not popular
pieces like the religious plays nor were they allegorical as were the moralities. They were mainly pieces to
be performed in the houses of the more intelligent Tudor gentry. These dramatic scenes were given sometimes
at banquets and entertainments where a little fun was wanted and sometimes to enliven the audience after a
solemn scene. Often the humour was crude, the action clumsy and the road back towards moralising and
allegory ever open. One of the most simple and amusing is John Heywoods. The Play of Whether (1533) in
which Jupiter tries to please all the contradictory wishes of mankind.
All these early plays were written, for the most part, in a mingling of prose and wretched doggrel,
and add nothing to our literature, their great aim was to train actors, to keep alive the dramatic spirit, and to
prepare the way for the real drama further. The Miracle plays, the “Moralities” and the “Interludes” remained
popular even when the new, ambitious drama had captured the stage.

31
 When we reach the middle of the sixteenth century some changes of far reaching importance take
place in the social and intellectual life of the English people. Two very different forces, the growth of the
national spirit and the establishment of permanent the atres, combined to influence the group of dramatist
immediately preceding Shakespeare. The Renaissance approach tended to break down the medieval hierarchy
of classes, and to substitute it by a compact national body with the throne as the head and centre of its life.
It was natural that the growing national spirit should leaves its mark on literature, and it should give an
impetus to the forces that were for native growth. Secondly, in the year 1576, the Corporation of London
banned theatrical performance in the public within the city bounds. In this way regular theatres sprang into
existence. The first playhouse in London was established in the year 1576 in Shereditch, well beyond the
reach of the Civic authorities. The other Theatres, the Rose, the Globe, the Fortune and the Swan were built
either in the Shereditch area or to the south of tire Thames.
5.4 THE REVIVAL OF CLASSICAL DRAMA
The revival of interest in Classical drama went a long way in bringing about the artistic stage in the
development of the English drama. The Classical example gave dramatists a boldness and elevation of
purpose which the native drama had not been able to achieve. The artistic drama differed radically from the
morality and miracle drama as its chief purpose was not to point a moral, but to represent human life as it is.
5.4.1 Comedy and Tragedy
The Classical drama gave examples both tor comedy and tragedy, and as far as England is concerned
these models were, with negligible exceptions, Latin English Comedy might well have developed without
any Latin instruction, and what is best in it remains native to the end. Tragedy, on the other hand, could not
well have grown out of the ‘Miracle’ plays and the ‘Moralities’, and here a new start is made in the sixteenth
century with the help of Latin models. The Latin models for Comedy were Terence and Plautus. The English
tragedy developed from the classical models’ of Senceca.
The first true play in English, with a regular plote divided into acts and scenes, is probably the
comedy. Ralph Roistor Doyster. Nicholas Udali, master of Eton, wrote at around 1556. The play is an
adaption of the “Miles Glorious,” a classical comedy by Plautus. ‘Lie story is that of a concerted for in love
with a widow, who is already engaged to another man. Though much of its humour, parallels the ‘interludes’,
the classical model has helped Udall to build a full length play, instead of a comic dialogue dependent on a
few tenuous situations. The next play Gammer Guton’s Needle by William Stevenson was published in
1575. This play shows how strong the native element has been in the field of comedy. It is a domestic
comedy, a true bit of English realism, representing the life of the peasant class. The central situation in the
play is trivial and farcical the loss and discovery of a needle, But the dramatist had a gift for dialogue, a
knowledge of rustic life, and a dim not power in creating characters which include the farm labourer Hodge,
a firmly drawn, comic figure natural and lifelike.
In the field of tragedy the main model was Seneca a philosopher and author of a series of ‘Closet’
dramas.
He had employed the Greek mythological stories but the religious element in the Greek drama he
eliminated, and for the conception of fate he substituted the more, human motive of revenge. The action,
which was usually sanguinary, was conducted by the reports of messengers, and this classical economy
allowed room for his long rhetorical speeches, in which his taste for moral discourse could be exploited.
Seneca was an appealing model to the Elizabethan mind. Their own interest in crime, violence and atrocity
was confirmed fully in this classical authority.
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 Seneca’s own plays were translated published and five of them performed between 1559and 1581.
Mean-while in 1562 there was acted before Queen Elizabeth in the Inner Temple, the first extant tragedy in
English, Gorboduc by Thomas Sackvilla and Thomas Norton. Through Senecan in manner, the play has an
English theme and its main motive of the dangers that follow an unsettled succession could be of topical
interest in Elizabeth’s reign. It is remarkable not only as the first tragedy, but as the first play to be written in
blank verse, the style best suited to the genius of English play-wrights. The plan of the play follows the
classical rules of Seneca. There is very little action on the stage, bloodshed and battle are announced by the
messenger, and the Chorus of four old men of Britain, sums up the situation with few moral observations at
the end of each of the first four acts.
Most important of the Senecan plays was Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, which was followed by
Deniel’s Cleopatra Philotas. The Revenge play, started by Kyd, had many features of the Senecan plays.
Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Richard IV and Macbeth show a strong Senecan influence.
The English drama which began with, schoolmas-ters, like Udall was further developed by regular
play-wrights, Kyd, Nash, Lyly, Peele, Greene and Marlowe. They brought English drama to the point where
Shakespeare began to experiment, upon it. These dramatists are known as University Wits because of their
being associated with Oxford and Cambridge. These dramatists rescued the English drama from the chaotic
condition resulting from the struggle between the will formed chill of the classicists and a structureless
enthu-siasm of the popular dramatist. They were able to unite the classical conception of the drama and
enthusiasm and fervour of the popular dramatist. They came with their poetry and their passion and their
academic training which gave to Shakespeare a pliable and fitting medium for the expression of his genius.
Edward Albert sums up the common features of their plays as follows :
(a) There was a fondness for heroic themes, such as the lives of great figures like Mohammed and
Tamburlaine.
(b) Heroic themes needed heroic treatment, great fullness and variety; splendid descriptions, long
bom-bastic speeches, the handling of violent incidents and emotions.
(c) The style was also ‘heroic.’ The chief aim was to achieve strong and sounding lines, magnificent
epithets, and powerful declamation. This again led to abuse and to mere bombast, and in the worst
cases to nonsense. In the best examples, such as in Marlowe, the result is quite impressive. The
best medium for such expression was blank verse, which was sufficiently elastic to bear the strong
pressure-of these expensive moods.
(d) The themes were usually tragic in nature for the dramatists were as a rule, too much in earnest to
give heed to what was considered to be the lower species of comedy. The general lack of real
humour in tire early drama is one of its most prominent features. Humour when it is early drama is
one of its most prominent features. The only representative of the writers of real comedies is Lyly
who in plays such as Alexander and compaspe, Endymion and The Women in the Moon gives us
the first example of romantic comedy.
During the Elizabethan Age theatre was open of all; the whole town was attracted by it and felt
enthusiastic for it. Even die court was greedy of dramatic representation and some play-wrights addressed
themselves to satisfying the most refined tastes of the Queen and the Countries. It was naturally at the Court
or before the Court that truly artistic drama was first attempted:

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5.5 UNIVERSITY WITS
The University Wits wrote for die court and thus gave to the drama the qualities without which the
drama could not survive as literature.
5.5.1 John Lyly
John Lyly’s plays were the first to provide a model of refinement. For Lyly was the first in date of
the court purveyors. His first play was: indeed performed at Black Friars Theatre before it was given in the
queen’s presence on 31st December 158:, but it seems to have ‘been written with a view to Elizabeth’s
pleasure, as were most of his plays. Lyly writes as a wit catering for an audience which likes what is witty,
a man of letters appealing to cultivated people a courtier flattering his sovereign. He seems largely regardless
of a fixed public, as a defined writer, he addresses himself to fine lords and fair ladies. He gives them the
treat of hearing, on the stage, the antithetic style and decorative similes of that prose which was, and which
remained for two years, the admiration of the fashionable world.
He was the first to choose prose as a medium, and a prose which, for all its artificiality, aimed at
beauty. His dramas consist almost entirely of dialogue, for his plots are usually insignificant. His first known
play Compaspe (1581) is the work of humanist whose matter is almost wholly taken from antiquity but who
re-mains independent in his construction. The play is witty and graceful in high degree and consistently,
there is little construction and no passion, only a series of fine drawn conversation. In itself, as an example
of an artificial genre, this play is exquite the only perfect thing before Shakespeare’s plays.
In the subsequent Comedies the wit persists but it is mingled with mere fancy, and the scene is again
laid in antiquity, with some dreamy romanticism. In Sapho and Phao there is again an allegory which
flatters the queen and more directly than before.
In Endymion (1586) Lyly stages one of the most poetic of ancient myths which he does not rob of all
its original grace. Manifestly this is another eulogy of Elizabeth, to be identified with Cynthia whom Endimion
loves respectfully. The allegory is, however, more complicated than those of the earlier plays and more
difficult to elucidate. The play, however, provided one of the most romantic scenes of Elizabethan drama.
When about 1590 Lyly wrote Midas he abandoned flattery for satire. The play is hardly suited to the
stage since it lacks a plot, and its value depends mainly on the skillfulness of the allegory.
In Gallathea (1587) Lyly amused himself by playing variations on the theme of love. His last plays
are pastorals like Gallathea and Love’s Metamorphosis. The woman in the Moone is his only play in verse.
To Quote Legoius, “Lyly’s composition has defects; there are weak moments in his plays and
ineffective complications, a mingling of the serious and the comic which connects him with the popular
drama but proves his inability to blend these opposites in one plot while, however, there is a general lack of
force, depth and true passion in his work, his language is invariably careful, his dialogue is artificial but
pointed, retort depends mainly on play of words, but are lively and well turned and have a courtliness; there
is originality in his subject, even grace and fancy in his conceptions; and his work because of its artifice and
its pedantry is well fitted to the fashionable society for which it was written.”
Lyly is much inferior to Shakespeare but he clearly anticipates the Shakespeare of Love’s Labour
Lost, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing and especially As you like it.

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 5.5.2 George Peele
George Peele, the poet (1558-98) began his career as a courtier. Like Lyle he had a taste for ornament
and cared for fine language. His first work, the Arraignment of Paris was played in 1580 before the queen.
It is fragrant, lyrical light and melodious. His love of decoration appears even in those of Peele’s plays
which were not written directly for the Court. His ‘David and Bethsabe’ is link with the old religious plays.
His Edward the first is a play on national history and The Old Wives Tale, a clever satire on the popular
drama of the day. Peel’s theatrical activity extended over a period of fifteen years, but he was not an innovator
like Lyly or Marlowe. He can scarcely be said to show the instinct of a true master, whether in plot, portraiture,
or versification. But his versatility, his urbane and graceful treatment of his themes, his command of imagery
and language, his freedom from the sensuous all these combine to give him an honourable place among the
lieutenants, not the leaders, of Elizabe-than drama.
5.5.3 Robert Greene (1558-92)
After getting an education at Cambridge and Oxford Greene took to writing plays in London. His
plays are of sufficient merit to find a place in the development of drama. His plays are four in number :
Alphonus, King of Aragon an imitation of Marlowe’s ‘Tamburlaine’, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, easily
his best and containing some fine representations of Elizabethan life, Orlando Furiso and The Scottish
Historie of James, the Fourth.
The indebtedness of the drama to Greene is by no means confined to the presentation of romantic
settings only. His verse has a quality of its own and is heavily influenced by the first to draw the Roselinds
and Celias of the Elizabethan times.
5.5.4 Thomas Lodge
Thomas Lodge and Thomas Nash : These two did not contribute much to the Elizabethan drama.
They just wrote a play against the attack of Gosson in his School of Abuse.
5.5.5 Thomas Kyd
Daring the Elizabethan times the majority desired romantic melodrama, and the first writer who
fulfilled this desire was Thomas Kyd (1558- 94) with his Spanish Tragedie. The other of his surviving plays
is Correlia. Correlia was never staged.
Seneca’s Tragedies were his habitual reading, though Seneca’s influence on Kyd cannot be questioned,
yet it did not cause his masterpiece on Kyd cannot be questioned, yet it did not cause his masterpiece to
conform to the rules. What Kyd learnt from Seneca was how to produce terror by the ghost of his prologue
who relates past events, by atrocious circumstance, and by speeches heightened with striking lyrical
expressions. He makes no attempt to simplify the construction of the popular drama and he cares nothing for
the unities the takes from the Latin poet only what he thinks the English audience will assimilate and leaves
the loose, facild construction of the national drama intact. He owes to Seneca’s Thystes his theme of vengeance,
one capable of producing the most pathetic and most fearful effects. He learns from him to envelop his
whole work with an atmosphere of gloom, and adds the use of the most powerful stage expedients known to
his own experience.
The play in its original form is emphatic, declamatory, but grips a simple public. It respects neither
the unity of place nor that of time, yet preserves, on the whole unity of action and it also has unity of motive,
and for it all centres round revenge. It retained its popularity long into seventeenth century. He was the first
exponent of the species of play called the Tragedy of Blood and foreshadowed Shakespeare’s Hamelt It gave
rise to a host of similar plays. Examples of the tragedy of blood are Marlowe’s Jew of Malta, Webster’s
White Devil and Duchess of Malfi and Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
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 5.5.6 Christopher Marlowe (1564-93)
He is one of the most important of the University Wits. He was born at Canterbury and educated at
Cambridge. His dramatic career consist of six years, i.e. from 1587-1593. Tamburlaine, in its two parts, of
which the first appealed in 1587 and the second in 1588, astonished the public. He was a young man of
twenty three, entirely without an extraordinary spirit of defiance and revolt which animated his dramatic
work. Arden of Fever sham and Spanish Tragedie bore the imprint of the traditional morality. From beginning
to end they denounced and condemned crime, their murders cried out for vengeance. But the new playwright
dared to claim admiration for the most bloodthirsty of man, to make of his a demigod.
It was Marlowe, more than any other, who helped to draw English drama from the old rut of morality
and rambling interlude and set it firmly on the straight road to greatness Marlowe himself had no doubts
about his mission which was to redeem the drama from its past futility:
From Jigging veins of rhyming mother wits,
And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay,
We’ll lead you to the sately tent of war,
Where you shall hear the Scythain Tamburlaine
Threatening the world with high astounding terms
And scourging kingdoms with his conquering swords.
Nothing is more characteristic of Marlowe than his choice of his first hero. His imagination was
inflamed by the story of the career of this unmatched adventurer who from a mere shepherd became the most
powerful in all the world. What were Alexander and Caesar beside this fourteenth century Tarter, the conqueror
of Persia, and Muscovy who laid Hindustan and Syria waste, vanquished the Ottomans and died at last when
he was fighting in Chine as the head of two hundred thousand warriors.
All this was so grandiose that Marlowe was dazzled. The man capable of so prodigious a destiny, of
such unbridled contempt for human life, seemed to him a superior being, a superman to whom the petty rules
of morality did not apply. Marlowe endows him not the boundless arrogance of an emancipated, virtuous
and courageous man of the Renaissance. Marlowe transfigures him not by omitting or weakening any of his
atrocities, but by exalting them. Tamburlaine is capable of extraordinary love also. He lays the earth at the
feet of his Zenocrate and when death takes her from him threatens heaven with rage.
Tamburlaine is an epic rather than a drama; but one can understand its instant success with a people
only half civilized, fond of military glory, and the instant adoption of its “mighty line” as the instrument of
all dramatic expression, says William J. Long.
Marlowe began his career with a superb contempt for the popular rhymesters. He makes blank
verse, hitherto without brightness of ring, thunder and echo through his play like a drum that never ceases.
The verse for which men had been waiting, completely formed verse, now sounded on the stage for the first
time according to E. Legious.
Faustus (1588), the second play, is one of the best of Marlowe’s works. The story is that of a scholar,
who longs for infinite knowledge, and who turns from. Theology, Philosophy, Medicine and Law to the
study of magic. In order to learn magic he sells himself to the devil, on condition that he shall have sovereign
power for twenty-four years. Like Tamburlaine it is lacking the dramatic construction but has an unusual
number of passages of rare poetic beauty. The last scenes of Faustus are among the most pathetic and most
grandiose in Renaissance drama.
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 Marlowe’s third play is The Jew of Malta, a study of the lust for wealth, which centres about Barabas,
a terrible old moneylender, strongly suggestive of Shy lock in The Merchant of Venice Even Jew of Malta
sometimes reveals his lyrical power.
Marlowe’s last play is Edward II, a tragic study of king’s weakness and misery. In point of style and
dramatic construction, it is by far the best of Marlowe’s plays and is a worthy predecessor of Shakespeare’s
historical drama.
Marlowe’s most important service to English drama is his establishment of blank verse as the Fitting
metre for English poetic tragedy. Blank verse, of course, had been used in drama before Marlowe. It was
introduced in Gorboduc, but it was Marlowe who first unlocked the secrets of blank verse and taught his
successors how to play upon its hundred stops.” He was, indeed the first great poet who handled the new
metre, besides being the first great poet who essayed the dramatic form. As Swinburne has said before this
there was neither genuine blank verse nor a genuine tragedy in our language. After his arrival the way was
prepared, the paths were made straight for Shakespeare.
Let us pause for a moment and look back at this rapid development of drama with a view to find out
the types of plays written during the thirty years between the first regular English lay and Shakespeare’s first
comedy. The variety of plays produced during this period is astonishing.
5.6 TYPES OF DRAMA
According to W.J. Long the following types of drama were written and performed during this time:
5.6.1 Chronicle Plays
(a) The Chronicle Plays: Based upon historical events and characters showed the strong national
spirit of the Elizabethan age; and their popularity was largely due to the fact that audiences came to
the theatres to gratify their awakened national spirit and to get their first knowledge of national
history. Some of the moralities, like Bayle’s King Johan (1538), are crude chronicle plays, and the
early Robin Hood plays and the first tragedy Gorboduc, shows the same awakened popular interest
in English history. During the region of Elizabeth some two hundred and twenty chronicle plays
were’ written. They dealt with almost every important character in English history. Of Shakespeare’s
thirty seven plays ten are true chronicle plays of English kings.
5.6.2 Domestic Drama
(b) The Domestic Drama : Began with crude home scenes in the miracles and developed from the
coarse humour of Gammer Gurton’s Needle to the comedy of manner of Jonson and later dramatists.
Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew and Merry Wives of Windsor belong to this class.
(c) The so-called Courtly Comedy represented a different kind of life and was interned for a different
kind of audience. It was marked by elaborate dialogues, by jests, retorts and an endless play on
words, rather than by action. It was made popular by Lyly and was imitated by Shakespeare in
Love’s Labour Lost and Two/ Gentlemen of Verona.
(d) Romantic comedy and Romantic tragedy suggested the most artistic and finished type of drama
which were experimented upon by Peele, Greene, and Marlowe and were brought to perfection by
Shakespeare.
(e) In addition to the above types were classical plays modeled upon Seneca, the Melodrama, favorite
of the groupings and the Tragedy by Blood, always more or less melodramatic like Kyd’s Spanish
Tragedia, which grew more bloody and thundery in Marlowe.
37
 It is interesting to note that Shakespeare tried all these varied types but since he was the supreme
artist with the Midas touch he turned into gold whatever had been but a base metal in the hands of lesser play
rights. But due credit is to be given to the unguided experiments of our first dramatists who were like men
first setting out in rafts and dugouts on an unknown sea. Shakespeare, no doubt, brought order out of dramatic
chaos. In a few short years he raised the drama from a blundering experiment to a perfection of from and
ex-pression which has since been rivaled”.(W.J. Long).
5.7 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CONTRIBUTION
Very little is known about the world’s most fa-mous dramatist William Shakespeare. He was born in
Strafford-on-Avon, in Warwickshire, on April 23rd, 1564. His father John Shakespeare was a prosperous
citizen of Stratford and his mother Mary Arden, was the daughter of a well-to-do farmer of Warwickshire,
Between the age of seven and fourteen, Shakespeare probably attended the Stratford Grammar School and
received some training in Latin. In the year 1582 he married Anne Hathaway. About the year 1586 he left
Stratford and reached London and went to work at old jobs in a theatre. About 1588 he began revising old
plays and in 1590 he probably wrote his first original drama. In 1594 he was a member of Earl of Leicester’s
Company of players. When the Globe Theatre was built in 1599 Shakespeare was one of the chief shareholders,
and most of his plays were acted in this theatre.
5.7.1 His Works
Usually Shakespeare’s plays are divided into four periods. Shakespeare was trained, like his fellow
playwrights, first as an actor, second as a revisor of old plays and last as an independent dramatis. He
worked with other playwrights and learned their secret. Like them he studied and followed the public taste
and his work indicated gradual changes from his some-what crude experiments to his finished masterpieces.
The authorship of thirty-seven plays is generally attributed to Shakespeare. A careful reading of
these plays leaves, us with an impression of four different periods of work. According to Dr. Dowdown
these are as follows :
(a) 1588-1594 : A period of apprenticeship and experimentation. He was in this workshop learning
the trade as a dramatic craftsman. To this period are assigned the following plays. (1)Thus Andronicus
(2) The First part of Henry VI (3) The second and ‘Third Part of Henry VI (4) Richard II (5) Love’s
Labour Last. (6) The Comedy of E (7) Two Gentlemen of Verona (8) A Mid-summer Night’s Dream
(9) Romeo and Juliet.
(b) 1594-1600: A period of rapid growth and development. It shows a maturity of his dramatic art.
Most of the great comedies and the English historical plays were produced during this age. Such
plays as The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As you like it, and Henry TV, show
more careful and artistic work, better plots, and a marked increase in knowledge of human nature.
(c) 1600 to 1606 : Dr Drowden calls this period of Shakespeare as out of the depths. A period of
gloom and depression which marks the full maturity of his powers. His great tragedies Hamlet;
Lear, Macbeth , Othello and Julius Ceasar belong to this period.
(d) 1606-1612 : Dr. Dowden terms it is as on the heights. A period of resorted serenity, of clam after
the storm which marked the years of the poet’s literary work. The Winter’s Tale and Tempest are
the best examples of this period.
Shakespeare’s plays are usually divided into three Casses, tragedies, Comedies and Dramatic
Romances Comedies :
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 In his comedies Shakespeare deviated from the common orthodox classical view. He was sharply in
contrast with Ben Jonson who was the imitator of Terence and Plautus, and a exponents of classical unities
of time, place and action Shakespeare’s comedy is called the romantic comedy as it is poetic and not satiric.
It is creative, not conservation. The way of it is that of imagination rather than of pure reason. It is an artist’s
vision, not a critic’s exposition.
Shakespeare romantic comedies have their scene of action located in distant untraceable no man’s
land. It is pre-eminently the comedy of love. The plot is saturated with idealized love and the play invariably
ENDS WITH THE RINGING OF MARRIAGE BELLS.
Women are given predominant roles to play. The heroes sometimes pale into insignificance and the
heroines because of their wit and intelligence are responsible for the beginning and development of these
stories.
Humour is the next most important ingredient of Shakespeare comedy. Cruel or harsh lengthen is
almost ruled out. The laughter of joy rings in the earlier and middle comedies, and a smile beautiful in us
wisdom and serenity illuminates the comedies of the closing period. All his important comedies are beautiful
reconciliations of romance to realism. They are great examples of cheerful optimism. They are pictures of
life in its sunnier aspects, its sparkling and vivacious moods.
The characterization is of high order. There are complex moods and subtle characters in these
comedies.
Music is another chief ingredient of his comedies. Music and dance is the very life and soul of
comedy; towards the end it is always music, dance and merry making.
Since the heart of a Shakespearean play ties in characterization he was not much bothered about plot
architecture. Hence his plots are sometimes weak.
5.7.2 Tragedies
His tragedies depict the struggle between good and evil, resulting in serious convulsions and
disturbances, sorrows, sufferings and deaths. The heroic struggle makes us realise the immense spinals
potentiality of man. The calamities of tragedy do not simply happen, but proceed mainly from action of the
persons concerned. The central figures in tragedies are exceptional. They are all built on a grand scale and
their desire, passion and will attain in them a terrible force. They give us a sense of justice by showing that
evil is self-destroying but poetic justice is not found in these days.
A. Self Assessment Question
Gorbuduc, or Ferrex and Porex was written by Thomas Norton and Sackville in which year?
1.1558 3.1562
2. 1560 4. 1564
5.7.3 Dramatic Romances
The attention of the play-wright was now focused on the darker side of human life and human
nature. The style is governed by the powerful overflow of thought and passion and is sometimes obscure.
Shakespeare holds the foremost place in the world’s literature he is the most representative of the
Elizabethan Age. He is bracketed with Horner and Dante, but each of them wrote within narrow limits while
Shakespeare’s genius included all the world of nature and of men. To quote W.J. Long, Shakespeare and
King Jame’s Bible are the two great conservators of the English speech and one who habitually reads them
39
finds himself possessed of a style and vocabulary that are beyond criticism. Even those who read Shakespeare
are still unconsciously guided by him, for his thought and expression have so pervaded our life and literature
that it is impossible, so long as one speaks the English language, to escape his influence.
B. Self Assessment
Ralph Roister Doister, the first regular English Comedy is modeled after?
1. Seneca 3. French
2. Plautus 4. Terence
5.8 BEN JONSON
Among Shakespeare’s contemporaries Ben Jonson (1573-1637) is the most commanding literary
figure among the Elizabethans. With his great learning, his ability, and his commanding position as poet
laureate, he started a literary crusade against Ore romantic tendencies of the age. His aim was to restore the
classical form of drama and to keep the stage free from its downward course. His effects resulted in the so
called classicism of the eighteenth century.
Jonson’s work is in the strong contrast with that of Shakespeare, he was the champion of the classical
unties of time, place and action, thus the whole action of his drama usually covers only a few hours or a
single day, he never takes liberties with historical facts, as Shakespeare does, but is accurate to the smallest
details. His dreams abound in classical learning, are carefully and logically constructed, and comedy and
tragedy are kept apart, instead of covering each other as they do in Shakespeare. His comedies are intensely
realistic, presenting men and women exactly as they are.
Jonson’s first comedy, Every man in His Humour is a key to ah his dramas. The word “homour” in
the Elizabethan age meant some characteristic whim or quality of society. Jonson gives to his characters
some important humour, exaggerates it and so holds it before our attention that all other qualities are lost
sight. Every man in His Humour was written with the special aim of ridiculing the humours of the city. The
second play Cynthias Revels satirizes the humours of the court while the Poetaster of ridicules the false
standards of poets of the age.
The three best known of Jonson’s comedies are Volpone or The Fox. The Alchemist and the Silent
Woman.
Besides these Jonson wrote two great tragedies. Sajanus (1603) and Catiline (1611) noon the classical
lines. He wrote a number of masque also. The best of these are “The Satyr”, “The Penates” “Masque of
Blackness” “Masque of Beauty,” In all these he shows a strong lyrical gift and some of these songs. “The
tri-umph of charts,” “Drink to only with Thine Eyes” are now better known than his greet dramatic works.
Beaumont and Fletcher: Unlike most of the Eliza-bethan. dramatists they both came from noble
and cultured families and were university trained. Their work, in strong contrast with Jonson’; is intensely
romantic. The two dramatists were good friends, living and working together, Beaumont supplied the
judgement and the solid work of the play, while an Elizabethan play would have been incomplete. Of their
joint plays the two best known are Philaster and the Maid’s Tragedy.
5.9 JOHN WEBSTER
Like Shakespeare very little is known about the personal history of John Webster. He was a well
known dramatist under James I, His extraordinary power of expression rank him with Shakespeare. He was
largely attracted by the blood and thunder plays begun by Marlowe. His two best known plays are The White

40
Devil (1617) and The Duchess of Malfi (1623) The Duchess of Malfi has made him stand with greatest
masters of English tragedy. In this play he tries to reproduce the Italian life of the sixteenth century and for
this no imaginary horrose are needed.
5.10 THOMAS MIDDLETON (1570-1627)
Middleton is famous because of his two plays Changeling and Women Beware of Women. In poetry
and fiction they are almost worthy at times to rank with Shakespeare’s plays but their sensationalism and
unkindness hurts the moral sense.
5.11 THOMAS HEY WOOD : (1530-1650)
Hey wood’s life span covers the entire period of Elizabethan drama. He produced a large number of
plays but only a few of his plays are known. The two test are A Woman Tided with Kindness a pathetic story
of domestic life, and The fair Maid of the West, a melodrama of the popular kind.
A. Self Assessment Question
The four P’s by John Heywood is a?
1. Domestic play 3. Interlude
2. Morality play 4. Mystery play
5.12 THOMAS DEKKER
Thomas Dekker is known for The Shoemaker’s Holiday, a humours study of plain working people.
5.13 MASSINGER, FORD, SHIRLEX
These three man mark the end of the Elizabethan drama. Their work produced largely while the
struggle was on between the actors and the corrupt on one side and the puritans on the other, shows a
deliberate turning away not only from puritan standards, but from the high ideals of their own art to cater to
the corrupt taste of the upper classes.
Thus, we see that immediately after Shakespeare the decline of drama started. The decline was a
rapid as its advance in the last quarter of the sixteenth century. It is worthwhile to throw some light on the
reasons that caused the decline of drama in England long before the parliament voted to close the theatres.
1. The drama declined after Shakespeare for the simple reason that there was no genius to fill his
place.
2. In England drama arose from the desire of the people to see something of the life of the times
reflected on the stage. There were no papers or magazines during those days, and people came to
the theatre not only to be amused but to be informed. Like the children they, wanted stories,
Shakespeare gave them those stories. But by the time Shakespeare’s successors came all this was
changed. The audience had changed People were more eager for a story or information; they
wanted amusement only and liked only sensational things. Shakespeare’s successor catered these
tastes and the drama fell on evil days.
3. Shakespeare’s successors, with the exception of Ben Jonson, forgot that man is a moral being and
mere sensational cannot satisfy the whole nature of man. The stage became insincere, frivolous
and bad. Wedster wrote tragedies of blood and thunder, Massinger and Ford produced evil and
licentious scenes consequently people got weary of such plays and players of the time. Parliament
did the best thing by voting to close the theatres in 1642. After Shakespeare’s death the theatres
were nothing but breeders of lies and immorality.
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5.14 SUMMIN - UP
English Renaissance drama is sometimes called Elizabethan Drama, since its most important
developments started when Elizabeth I was the Queen of England from 1558 to 1603. But this title is not
very accurate: the drama continued after Elizabeth’s death, into the reigns of king James I and his son
Charles I. Shakespeare, for example, started writing plays in the later years of Elizabeth’s reign, but continued
into the reign of James. John Webster, Thomas Middleton. Thomas Dekker were other important play wrights
of this age.
5.15 GLOSSARY
A. Liturgy- A predetermined or prewired set of rituals that are performed, usually by a religion.
B. Banquet- A large celebratory mea : a feast
C. Wretched- Very miserable; feeling dear affliction or distress.
D. Doggerel- Of a crude or irregular construction applied to humorous verse.
5.16 QUESTIONS
i. Explain four cycles of drama?
ii. Describe the role of university wits of fifteenth century?
iii. Explain the contribution of John Webster?
5.17 SELF ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS’ ANSWERS
A (3), B (2), C (3)
5.18 SUGGESTED READINGS
1. History of English Literature by Edward Albert.
2. History of English Literature by David Daiches.

*****

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 LESSON-6
THE RENAISSANCE: POETRY
PART-I
STRUCTURE
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Learning Objectives
6.3 Renaissance Poetry
6.3.1 Lyrical Poetry
6.4 Surrey
6.5 Wyatt
6.6 Sir Phillip Sidney
A. Self-Assessment Question
6.7 Spenser
B. Self-Assessment Question
C. Self-Assessment Question
6.8 Samuel Daniel
6.9 Michael Drayton
6.10 Dramatic Poetry
6.11 Literary Style of Elizabethan Poetry
6.11.1 Edmund Spender
6.11.2 Samuel Daniel
6.11.3 Michael Drayton
6.11.4 Thomas Sackville
6.11.5 John Donne
6.12 Summing - Up
6.13 Glossary
6.14 Questions
6.15 Self-Assessment Questions' Answers
6.16 Suggested Readings
6.1 INTRODUCTION
There is no denying the fact that the drama enjoyed supreme importance and popularly during the
Elizabethan age. It became the main form of expression for the national spirit and love of a life of action.
Nevertheless, poetical production of great and original beauty were there in such abundance that England
was likened to a “nest of singing birds”.
6.2 LEARNING OBJECTIVES
The objective of this lesson is to provide you with an idea of Renaissance poetry and major poets of
the period like Spencer. Phillip Sidney, Wyatt, Samuel Daniel. Michael Drayton etc.
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6.3 RENAISSANCE POETRY
Renaissance poetry is more formal, less autobiographical and less directly related to experience
than the poetry of later periods. Renaissance poets were careful to distinguish themselves from historians
and biographers and to seek instead the formal excellence appropriate to the various kinds of poetry.
Elizabethan verse, although often written without any view of publication, is found to possess the hallmark
of the highest poetry. Moreover, the high conception of poetry was recognized in this epoch only. Sir Philip
Sidney established the superiority of the poet by calling him monarch of all science. Spenser described
poetry as “no art, but a divine gift and heavenly instinct,” This plantonic philosophy seems to have penetrated
more deeply than elsewhere into the spirit of English poetry.
In the beginning of the age of Shakespeare, literary forms of English poetry were still in the making.
At the end of the period there were rich and varied literary forms. Humanism provoked the renewal of poetry
and especially the influence of the Italian.
Before Spenser and Sidney however, everything was in a tentative and experimental stage. The new
way in English poetry came mainly through the imitation of Italian models. The early stages of this Italian
influence can be found in poems by Wyatt and Surrey, the pioneers who endeavored to save the dying lyrical
impulse of England.
6.3.1 Lyrical poetry
The temper of the age was suited to the lyrical mood and so the abundance of the lyric is great. It
begins with the efforts of Wyatt and Surrey. Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-42) who made sojourns in France and
Italy, developed the admiration for lyrical poetry, and a desire to fashion verse on the models from Italy. He
borrowed from the Italians poetic forms which were unknown to his countrymen. Sometimes he uses Dante’s
terza rima, sometimes Serfino’s Stramboti and sometimes he imitates Petrarch’s sonnet. It was through the
sonnet that lyricism entered into English poetry. Wyatt who could write graceful and sad toned lyrics when
he was thinking of Italian models, struggled to render into English the fourteen line Italian form of the
sonnet. His imitations of Petrarch brought bold and new images into English. His ninety six love poems
were published posthumously, in 1557 in a compendium called Tottle’s Miscellany. His thirty one sonnets
are highly praiseworthy. He was also responsible for the introduction of the personal note into English
poetry, for through following his models closely he wrote of his own experiences. His epigrams, songs and
satires are better than his sonnets, and they reveal a care and elegance that were typical of the new romanticism.
6.4 SURREY
Surrey’s (1516-1547) name is usually associated in literature true with that of Wyatt. He was a
nobleman who went to the scaffold at the age of the thirty. Surrey’s work consists of sonnets and miscellaneous
poems in various meters notable for their grace Like Wyatt he studied Italian models, especially Petrach and
shared with Wyatt the merit of bringing the sonnet from Italy into England. But the most important of his
experiments was the translation of the second and fourth books of Virgil’s Aeneid into English blank verse.
The introduced of blank verse has been of capital importance in the history of English literature. Introduced
for the first time into English as a medium for translating from Latin, blank verse was to become, through
Marlowe’s employment the great measure of English prosody drama. Emile Legouis remarks. “Thanks to
Surrey English prosody gained a magnificent tool which when perfected was to be the metre for drama as for
Epic.”

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6.5 WYATT
Wyatt and Surrey could not guess how the sonnet form introduced by them would become the
darling of later poets. Under the influence of petrarch they used sonnets for love poems of a particular type.
Their Tattle’s Misellany is a collection of some three hundred poems. The dominant theme both of the
sonnets and songs is love-sometimes the joy of love, nearly always the adoration of the mistress who is
proud and unreceptive but if the lover is to be believed, very desirable. In all these there is a note of personal
emotion a note not heard very’ often in medieval poetry but the note which is o sound loudly in the lyrical
poetry of the Elizabethans. Where the theme is not love it is generally the transistorizes of earthly pleasure,
the elegiac note never long silent in English literature.
Throughout the Elizabethan age poets imitated the Petrarchan moods of love, and love and used the
sonnet to express them Shakespeare though he satrized sonnet writing, was himself a sonneteer, but he is a
soneteer with a difference. Some of his sonnets are addressed not to a woman but to a young man and they
are in the forms of warmest affection, others are written not with adoration but an air of disillsioned passion
to a ‘dark lady’.
6.6 SIR PHILLIP SIDNEY (1554-1586)
The gentleman and a true courtier, also followed the tradition of songs and sonnets writing. Astrophel
and Stella is a collection of songs and sonnets addressed to lady Penelope Devereux to whom Sidney was
once betrothed. The songs contained in this collection show greater poetic emotion and more exquisite
expression than found in the songs of the other minor writers. To quote Legious and Cazamian, “To express
feeling which had some analogy with Petrarch’s Sidney had recose to the sonnet, which had been neglected
in England since Surrey’s days, within the narrow bounds of its fourteen lines he enshired each movement of
his listened only to his heart ‘look in thy heart and write; The quality of his soul gives them a particular ring.
A. Self Assessment Question
Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella is a?
1. Verse drama 3. Sonnet cycle
2. Epic poem 4. Prose Romance
6.7 SPENSER
The most important poet of Elizabethan age Spenser also, gave due respect and admiration to sonnet
writing in his Amoretti. It contains the sonnets he wrote for Elizabeth Boyle. Spenser’s sonnet comes between
those of Sidney and Shakespeare. They show better than anything else the quality in Spenser which Coleridge
excellently named “maidenliness.” his love for virginal in woman. They have much that is borrowed or
reminiscent. The chastity of these sonnets is neither in shyness nor reticence. In many of them the poet
extols his mistress’s beauty with a great sensual wealth of detail and colour, and does not conceal the ardors
of his desires, even while he restrains their impatience.
B. Self Assessment Question
Edmund Spencer was born in?
1. 1548 3. 1556
2. 1552 4. 1560

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C. Self Assessment Question
The sonnets in Amoretti were addressed to?
1. Queen Elizabeth 3. Lady Rich
2. Elizabeth Boyle 4. The fair lady
6.8 SAMUEL DANIEL
Samuel Daniel was another poet who wrote sonnets to be in the fashion, without conviction and,
probably, without a real mistress to sing to his sonnets in Delia are more chill appeals but the language of
these sonnets in usually pure and their versification correct.
6.9 MICHAEL DRAYTON
Micheal Drayton’s collection Idea is a sort of encyclopedia in which all the familiar themes recur
with others added to them. He hardly gives the impression of nature passion, shows little delicacy, and is
often vulgar yet is versatile and animated and more than once ingenious to the point of the fantastic.
There had been other minor poets who could produce just mediocre sonnets and songs. The real
beauty of emotion as well as of style is to be found only in Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella Spenser’s Amoretti
and Shakespeare’s Sonnets. All the sonneteers from the times of Petrarch shared an idealism which was their
philosophy. Platonic thought, especially as it helped them to deify their mistress’s beauty, make a virtue of
their desire, and assures eternal life at once to their verses and to the lady of their choice.
The sonnet outlived the Elizabethan age Milton and Donne used this form with some different
purpose. Wordsworth, Keats, Meredith and D.G. Rossetti employed the sonnet as vehicle for expressing
their thoughts and emotions.
Sonnet writing enjoyed a sudden and shirt-lived glory, but the writing of the miscellaneous lyric
verse m the courtly tradition continued without interruption until the great outburst of cavalier poetry in the
time of the early Stuarts.
The most important collection of these lyric were. The Paradise of Dainty Devices, The Gorgeous
Gallery of Gallant Inventions, The Passionate Pilgrim, England’s Helicon and Poetical Rhapsody. During
the Elizabethan age dramatic authors wrote a little verse as secondary to their plays, and also the minor poets
who followed the fashion of the age.
In those days the works of single authors were less read than the collection that is why the above
mentioned collections, with these fanciful names became popular.
It was in these collections that some poets placed their best works like the prolific Nicholas Breton
(1545- 1626), whose pastoral vein was displayed m the Helicon and Richard Barnfield (1545-1627 whose
most charming poems appeared in the Passionate Pilgrim. The shortest pieces and, especially, the songs are
what is best in these collections. Songs did not belong to Elizabethan age only. They are of all time and
countries yet they were perhaps never so copious, so various and so winged as in this period. Most of them
were love songs, some very free and profane. But others were religious, many purely fantastic. They were in
every mood-grave, modeling sentimental cynical.
Spenser inserted some very beautiful, slightly over elaborated songs in his Shepherds Calander.
Sidney also wrote songs. The most famous is The Drige of Love, “ Ring out your bell,” “To you, to you, ail
songs of praise is due.”

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 The author of Tamburlaine and Dr. Faustus could also get time to play a pastoral air on a reed pipe.
He sang the shepherd’s call to the shepherds, “Come, live with me and be my love.”
These are true and charming songs. But the period was not satisfied with a few scattered airs, and
there were whole collections which included verse and music. Micholas Yonge’s Musica Transalpina (1588)
and John Dowland’s three Books of Songs or Airs (1597-1603), and Thomas Champions four Books of Airs,
published from 1601 to 1613 are of far greater value. Some of Champion’s greatest songs occur not in his
collection but his mosques.
The songs with which Shakespeare has strewn his work are the most original and spontaneous of
all. With daizies pied in Love’s Labours Lost, ‘Blow, Blow, in As You Like It When Daffodils begin to peer
in Winter’s Tale are just superb. Shakespeare’s many songs cannot be classified. Thomas Dekker, Beaunount
and Fletcher and even Ben Jonson decorated their plays with songs as sweet as Shakespeare’s. The use of
song persisted or the stage until the last in date of the great dramatists.
6.10 DESCRIPTIVE & NARRATIVE POETRY
This is convenient title for a large and important class of poems. In this period it begins with such
works as Sack villa’s Introduction, The Mirror for Magistrates, and continues till Marlowe’s. Hero and
Lander and Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. It culminates in the sumptuous
allegorians of the type of Fletcher and with Drayton’s Endimion and Phoebe. The pastoral, which is a kind
of descriptive poem, is seen in Spenser’s Shepherd Calander, in Browne’s Britantia’s laterals and in Drayton,
almost purely descriptive poetry is represented in Drayton’s Polyolbion and more strongly narrative type is
the same poet’s England’s Heroical Epistles. All these poems are distinguished by strong descriptive power,
freshness of fancy, and sometimes by positive richness of style.
6.10.1 Dramatic Poetry
In the words of E. Albert, “The exuberant adventurous spirit of the age was nowhere more clearly to
be seen than in its dramatic poetry. “Though the heroic couplet was used as in Mid Summer Night’s Dream
by Shakespeare the ascendancy of blank verse was firmly established; variety and flexibility was imparted
to it by Peele and Marlowe made it supreme Shakespeare used die medium with extraordinary power flexibility.
Less than fifty years after in Gorboduc dramatic poetry attained the highest level of which it was capable.
After Shakespeare the decline started.
Religious, Satirical and Didactic poetry. During this period die satirical intent is quite strong, but it
does not produce great poetry. Gascoigne’s Steel Glass is one of the earliest satires; and it is followed by
Donne’s satires and Halis satires Drayton’s. The Harmonnie of the church is religious in motive; so are
several poems of Donne, and also many of those of Robert South well.
6.11 LITERARY STYLE OF ELIZABETHAN POETRY
About die literary style of Elizabethan poetry we notice a few things. The earliest period (from
1550-1580) is die formative and mutative period. This was the period of Wyatt. Surrey and Sidney and die
University Wits. The dependence upon the classical originals is particularly strong. The style has the precision
and the erratic character of the diligent pupil. There are a few deliberate innovations. In tins period appear
the sonnet, blank verse, and many of the lyrical metrical forms. The lyrical impulse is least restrained by the
influence of classical models.
The Spenserian and Shakespearean stage (1580 to 1615) is the stage of highest development. The
native English genius, having absorbed the lessons of foreign writers adds to them tire youth and ordure of
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its own spirits. The result is a fullness, freshness and grandeur of style unequalled in any other period of our
Literature. There are the lyrics and allegories of Spenser, die poems dramas and lyrics of Shakespeare; and
fee innumerable miscellaneous poems and plays of other writers. The style E as varied as the poems; but the
universal note is the romantic note of power and ease.
In the second decade of the seventeenth century, the decline is apparent. The inspired phraseology,
the wealth and flexibility of vocabulary, and the general bloom of the style pass into the lightness of fancy
and the insubstantial verse of the nature of Campion’s. The high seriousness degenerates into the gloomy
manner of the Websterian tragedy. The sinewy Shakespeare an blank verse becomes nerveless; in drama the
use of prose is frequent and it is also coarse. In the lyric much of old technical dexterity survives, but the
deeper qualities of passion and sincerity are less common.
Important Non-dramatic Poets of the Elizabethan Age : Sir Philip Sidney : Sidney the ideal
gentleman, the Sir Calider of Spenser’s “Legend of Courtesy the true Courtier of Castiglione is greatly
interesting as man and important as a writer.
Sidney wrote three principle works, all of them published posthumously. The ‘Aracadia’ is a postrol
romance. It attracted immense popularity during Elizabethan age and was imitated by hundreds of poets.
Astrophel and Stella is a collection of songs and sonnets addressed to Lady Penelope Deverex. The songs
contained in this collection show greater poetic emotion and more exquisite expression than found in the
songs of the other minor writers.
The ‘Arcadia’ is a pastoral, since its action takes place almost entirely in the ideal Arcadia, the most
delightful country in the world. But this is above all a story of love and chivalry. Arcadia figures only as
background; and the peace of the beautiful country is disturbed by bloodthirsty wars. The principal plot is
crossed by many episodes and are in the tradition of chivalrous romances. His fictions are a convenient
frame for his ideas on morals and politics and his observations of life. Sidney marks a progress in character
study. He contrasts his virtuous characters with his vicious characters and shows considerable boldness in
painting of vice.
Sidney enriched the descriptive art of his time, particularly where the painting of love is concerned,
by his search for detail in his portraits, by his analysis of expression and gestures, and by his observation of
the correspondence between altitude and feeling.
Artifice is as much a part of its style as euphuism. But the decoration is not of the mechanical kind.
It is the result of a constantly active fancy. Sidney’s images are woven into the very web of his fabric. The
language of the most sugared courtesy is reached—the name a lady speaks is perfumed by her mouth.
“Plagues whose name was sweetened by your breath are Sidney’s rendering of flanges whose name you
have spoken.”
Sidney, working at language, often by bold and new combinations of words, reaches vigorous
expres-sion. He is the first Englishman who was conscious of all the resources his language held for the
impassioned style. All the energy as well as the preciousness of the Shakespearean style exits, in germ in his
Arcadia.
6.11.1 Edmund Spenser: (1552-99)
Since Sidney’s work could not be published until after his death, it was Spenser who first revealed
poetic beauty to his generation. He was a master of poetic art and recognized by his generation as such. For
the England of 1579, laggin behind the continent, the appearance of the Shepherd’s Calendar inaugurated a
period of self confidence and vast hopes. From the beginning he had a patriotic literary progamme and
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founded his faith on admiration for the old poets of his country. He regarded Chaucer as his revered master
“well of English undefined”. The gap of two centuries between them and their contrasted temperaments did
not allow any resemblances in their works. If initially he modeled himself on Chaucer there was with the
intention not to break with the past, but to stick his roots deep into it.
The Faerie Queene is Spenser’s masterpiece. He worked at it for twenty years and left it unfinished
at his death. Spenser completed only six books. It was his supreme ambition and the supreme pride of
England, which confidently pitted this poem against, the most famous copies of ancient and modem times.
The external complexity and allegorical dress of this poem has turned away many readers from it. Secondly,
the admirable painter and enchanting musician posed as a professor or morals also. Those who read verse
for pure pleasure felt dissatisfaction with this poem.
Spenser’s purpose, as indicated in a letter to Raleigh which introduces the poem is as follows:
“To portrait in Author, before he was king, the image of a brave knight, perfected in the twelve
private moral, virtues as Aristotle hath devised; which is the purpose of these first twelve books: which it I
find to be well accepted, I may be perhaps encouraged to frame the other part of politic virtues in his person,
after that he came to be king.”
Each of the virtues appears as a knight, fighting this opposing vice, and the poem tells the story of
the conflicts. It is therefore purely allegorical not only in its personified virtues but also, in the representation
of life as struggle between good and evil. Spenser completed only six books, Celebrating Holiness, Temperance
life Chastity, Friendship, Justice and Courtesy. There is a fragment of the seventh treating of constancy.
Though he chose the allegorical form he lacks the central idea, the ardent passion, or the unity of
design which are essential conditions of a powerful and effective allegory. Instead of unity he has complication
and his characters are both moral and historical personages. The allegorical story is both moral and political.
In the first three books the shadowy Faerie Queen is sometimes Elizabeth. Una is sometimes religion and
sometimes the Protestant Church, while Duessa represents Mary, Queen of Scot or general Catholicism. As
the story advances the allegory becomes difficult to follow.
The chief glory of this poem consists in its being essentially a picture gallery. It presents Spenser as
great pictorial artist. Many stanzas of the Faerie Queen are descriptions of tapestries and picture: When
Spenser intends to draw a person or a scene from nature, he is inspired by the painter’s method. He is greatly
enamored by the human body, especially the woman’s body. His grotesque monstrous description are not
interior to those in which he aims at absolute Beauty.
For the Faerie Queens Spenser invented a new verse form, which has been called the Spenserian
stanza. Because of its rate, beauty it has been much used by nearly all our great poets in their best works.
The new stanza was an improved form of Aristo’s Ottawa Rima (i.e. eight line stanza) and bears a closed
resemblance to one of Chaucer’s most musical verse form in the “Monk’s Tale “ Spenser’s stanza is nine
lines, eight of five feet each and the last of six feet, ringing ab ab be be.
Shephered’s Calendar (1579) is the next best known of Spenser’s poems.lt consist of twelve pastrol
poems, or ecologues one for each month of the year. The themes are generally rural life, nature, love in the
field and the speakers are Shepherds and Shepherdesses. These poems are written in various styles and
meters.
Other noteworthy poems are Mother Hubbard’s Tale”. A satire on society, “Aristophel” and elegy
on the death of Sidney “Amoretti sonnets to his Elizabeth, the marriage hymn “Epithalamion.” and four
Hymns on love, beauty Heavenly Love and Heavenly.

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 Shepherd’s Calender, the first published work of Spenser, is noteworthy in at least four respects,
first, in marks the appearance of the first national poet in two centuries: second, it shows the variety and
melody of English. verse, third it was the first pastrol, the beginning of a long series of English pastoral
compositions modeled on Spenser, and as such exerted a strong influence on subsequent literature; and
fourth it marks the real beginning of the outburst of great Elizabethan poetry.
After Chaucer he is the second great literary artist in English literature. He has rightly been called
the “poet’s poet.” In his own day he influenced a large number of verse writers.’ Cowley and Dryden at a
later period testified to his inspiring influences as literary artist. Milton paid him warm tributes; and even
Pope whose poetic faculty is so different in kind from that of a Elizabethan, admitted to his compelling
magic.
6.11.2 Samuel Daniel
Among the minor poets of the Elizabethan Age Daniel and Drayton deserve attention. Samuel Daniel:
(1562-1619) Daniel after having passed through Oxford and having visited Italy was Tutor first to William
Herbert, son of the Earl of Perbroke, and of Sidney’s sister. After Spenser’s death he became a sort of
laureate. He was a moralist and historian first of all; he wrote the poetry of reflection rather than of passion.
A correct and pure writer he brought the qualities of prose into verse. Imagination is rare in his subjects and
never disturbs his style.
The Civil Wars is his chief work. Around it are grouped a fair number of miscellaneous poems,
sonnets, epistels, dedications, pamegyrics, funeral eulogies, pastrol songs. He is fond of discourse and
discussions in verse. His talent is happily displayed in a didactic poem in the form of a dialogue, Musophilus
(1599), which constrains a general defense of letters.
Patriotism was Daniel’s dominant feeling and it led him to devote his capital effort to the history of
his country. The eight cantos of Daniels. The Civil Wars treat of the misfortunes of England from the reign
of Richard II until the break between Warwich and Edward IV, and inspite of their seven to eight thousands
lines, they leave the tale unfinished. Danniel’s exposition is more accurate and dignified than the tumults
dramas in which the same stories are told. Daniel’s clearinention is to transfigure nothing.
I versify the truth, not poetize.
The element of the marvelous is exceptional in Daniel’s work. His contemporaries, who loved
ardour, missed in his work the passionate qualities and the movement, brilliancy and variety which they
prized more than anything else.
6.11.3 Michael Drayton (1563-1631)
Drayton is the most voluminous and the most interesting of the minor poets. His career ran parallel
to that of Daniel and his poetry belongs to much the same genre. Yet it is in sharp contrast to Daniel’s poetry.
It has warmth and dash, flights and falls. He made his beginnings with Idea, The Shepherd’s Garland (1593)
was inspired b Spenser. In 1594 he published his first sonnets with the title ideas Mirrour. He wrote historical
poetry also in The Barons War (1603).
His chief work is Polyolbion, an enormous poem of many thousand couplets, describing the mountains
and rivers of Britain, with the interesting legends connected with each. Here his ardent patriotism finds vent
better than anywhere else. The work is imposing because it is so greatly ambitious, and touching because
through all difficulties and the inevitable plan the poet is upheld by lover for his native land.
The poem has an’ erudite character and a puerile mythology decorates the poem. Every hill, every
valley is personified Every river in particular is endowed with life, turned into a nymph.
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 6.11.4 Thomas Sackville (1536-1608)
Sir Thomas Sackville generally classed with Wyatt and Surrey among the predecessors of the
Elizabethan Age. In imitation of Dante’s Inferno. Sackville designed a great poem called the Mirror’s
Magistrates. It was modeled on Lydgate’s Fall of Princes so that the poem could be a mirror in which
present rulers might see themselves and read the warning “who reckless rules right soon may hope true”
Sackville finished only the Induction and the Complaint of the Duke of Bnckingham. These are written m
rhyme loyal and are marked by strong poetic feeling and expression. Unfortunately Sackville turned from
poetry to politics, and the poem was carried on by two interior poets, William Baldwin and George Ferrers.
Ben Jonson and John Donne, who influenced the greatest number of poets down to restoration were
pioneers in different directions. Although Ben Jonson was primarily a dramatist, his poetic work is of
considerable extent and merit. It consists of short pieces written throughout his Life which appeared in three
collections, Epigramones. The Forrest and Under- Woods. The difference of title does not imply any difference
of subjects.
The spirit of satire looms large in them. Jonson presents us with a fair number of short sarcastic
portraits in few or twenty lines not unlike the humorous characters of his comedies.
Ben Jonson wrote stories also. They were nobler in tones and more sincere in expression than those
of Hall and Marson. His Epistle and Edward Sackville is written to satirize those patrons who grant their
favours arrogantly, generally to the undeserving and who are well paid when they reap ingratitude.
These collections include many complimentary lines to the contemporary writers who were the
poet’s friends, if not his rivals Bacon, Camdew, Drayton, Chapman, Donne, William Browne, Sylvestor,
Francis Beaumont, John Fletcher, Shakespeare. Ben Johnson’s verses in honour of Shakespeare are really
beautiful and the first unreserved and worthly celebration of his greatness. He was the first Englishman to
attempt Pindaric odes but the experiment was not a happy one.
Love figures in his collection as a literary theme. The Celebration of Charts is very fanciful and
lively. In general, however his love pieces reproduce poems of antiquity. The learned Ben Johnson translated
more than he invented.
Ben Jonson was the most learned and most convinced of the humanists of his generation. He was
little influenced by French and Italian literature, being ill acquainted with those languages. He had no
sympathy with the Middle Ages. His culture was fundamentally Latin. Latin muse appealed to his genius
with its desire for energy and tendency to moralize. It was he who through his means introduced Neo-
Classicism in seventeenth century English poetry.
Ben Jonson’s personality is reflected clearly in his verses. His pride, his contempt for ignorance and
his love of frankness and loyalty, his strengthens, are all manifest in his poems.
His style lacks spontaneity and fancy; tends to be abstract and lacks imagery. His metres are varied
but his rhythm is not pliable. But he contributed to the poetry of his country some qualities in which it was
then deficient; he aimed at putting much meaning into the metrical line his composition tended to be more
regular. He subordinated fire and dash to logic. He taught soundness, reflections, self control.
After 1600 many admirers grew around him. He spoke as a master who knew the law, and many
listened, following his example, poets cultivated the epigram. Rifled the Greek anthology, and impregnated
themselves with classicism. His influence lasted throughout the century, but was crossed and opposed by
that of his friend John Donne.

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 6.11.5 John Donne
John Donne is perhaps the most singular of English poets. His verse offers examples of everything
castigated by classical writers as bad taste and eccentricity; Donne was precocious poet who wrote many of
his best poems before he was twenty five.
When Donne started his poetic career Spenser had already won his glory Petrarchan sonnets were
produced in abundance. He reacted against these traditions. He despised conventions and the moral of
chivalry and regular metres and harmonious cadences. He subordinates melody to meaning and refuses to
submit to the reigning hierarchy of words. To smoothly flowing lines he often prefers those, freely divided,
in which the accents have an effect of shock, pull the reader up and awaken his attention.
Donne’s style is analogous to common place imagery. He rejects and takes pleasure in being enigmatic
and subtle. Passions, feeling sensuality all are subjected to wit. This play of wit sometimes results in hyperbole.
Donne excuses himself for mistaking his mistress for an angel on the ground that to imagine her other than
she is would be profane. He takes delight in mingling the lofty and the ideal, the sublime and the trivial.
He has sudden impulses of thought which act strangely, for instance the opening lines of his “Good
Marlowe.”
I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I did, till we loved.
Unlike the petrarchains Donne rejects the lefty cult of woman, towards whom he is highly ironical.
Donne holds platonic love to be a lure and seek with subtle sophistry to change it to its contrary. In his
“Ecstasy “ he begs for the fleshly consummation of their passion.
But, O, Alas ! so long so far
Our bodiesm why do we forbear?
They are ours„ though not we...
Thus everything is Donne’s poetry is in revolt against the poetic cannor’s of his age. His muse loves
those sudden flights from the material to the spiritual sphere for which Dryden gave him, and Samuel
Johnson confirmed the title of “Metaphysical.”
Donne wrote religious poems also. They differ only in theme, their spirit remains the same. He is at
his best in short pieces. In his longer poems. The Anatomy of the World and of The Progress of the Soul he is
nothing short of unbearable.
6.12 SUMMING - UP
The renaissance is a historical age generally occurring in the period between 1420-1630. This period
in poetry is preceded by Medieval poetry and succeeded by Modern poetry. Two significant movements of
this and subsequent periods were Enlightenment poetry and Romantic poetry. The English Renaissance, the
age of William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson. John Donne, and John Milton were the most important poets of
Renaissance and Reformation.
6.13 GLOSSARY
a. Platonic- Neither sexual nor romantic in nature; being or exhibiting platonic love
b. Clumsy- Awkward, lacking coordination, not graceful, not dextrous.
c. Hierarchy- A body of authoritative officials organized in nested ranks.
d. Pedantry-An excessive attention to detail or rules.

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6.14 QUESTIONS
i. Explain the contribution of Sir Phillip Sidney & Spenser?
ii. Explain Literary Style of Elizabethan Poetry?
6.15 SELF ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS’ ANSWERS
A (3), B (2), C (2)
6.16 SUGGESTED READINGS
i. Short Oxford History of English Literature (third edition) by Andrew Sanders.
ii. Harry Blamires -A Short History of English Literature.

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 THE RENAISSANCE : PROSE
PART-II
STRUCTURE
6.17 Introduction
6.18 Forms of Prose
6.18.1 Prose Romances
6.18.2 Pamphlets
6.18.3 Dramatic Prose
6.18.4 The Character-Writers
6.19 Miscellaneous Prose Writers
6.19.1 Robert Burton
A. Self-Assessment Question
6.19.2 Bacon
B. Self Assessment Question
6.20 The Authorized Version of Bible
6.21 Literary Criticism
6.22 Questions
6.23 Self Assessment Question’s Answers
6.24 Suggested Readings
6.17 INTRODUCTION
The Elizabethan Age was essentially an age of drama and poetry yet some excellent prose works
were also produced during this age. Before 1579 there was hardly any prose of intrinsic merit. Roger Asehom
was a writer of English prose. His chief writings. Taxophilus a book on archery and the School master are
dull on account of their theme and cumbersome sentences. Painter’s ‘Palace of Pleasure’, a collection of
tales translated from Boccacio and Bandello, is not an original work.
The year 1579 is very eventful from the point of view of the development of English prose. Lyly’s
Euphues and North’s translation of Pultrach’s Lives were published in this year. Both these works paved the
way for the prose writers of Elizabethan age.
6.18 FORMS OF PROSE
6.18.1. Prose Romances
Romances have been a favorite from the thirteenth century onwards. During the sixteenth century
the popularity of the printed page considerably increased the number of readers who de-manded stories in
prose. The model was provided by Lyly’s Euphues, Lyly’s Euphues, made him one of the foremost figures of
the day. The book is provided in two parts. The first part of Euphues, the Anatomy of Evil was published in
1579. The second part, Euphues and his England was published in 1580. The first part tells the familiar tale
of two friends who became rivakin love, purporting to present to English readers a picture of manner and
conversation in polite Naples in the course of a narrative of some psychological interest.
Euphues is often considered the beginning of a new type of English fiction, one specifically adapted
to English readers. There is unmistakably an influence of foreign models upon it. The interest in manner is
54
combined with an attempt at such realistic portrayal of human relations as is found in the Italian novella.
The story has a plot of the triangular type; much overlaid with conversation and moral reflection which
carry out the author’s social purpose. The characters are conventional.
In the second part the scene shifts to England and Lyle gets an opportunity to present an ingratiating
picture of English women, English morals and manners, culminating in a tribute to England’s queen.
The elegant speeches in the book afford an example of a special prose style ornate and calculated
which has come to be called “Euphuism” It is distinguished by parallelism in sentence structure, balance
and antithesis in thought and phrase and by the repetition of ideas in similes and example chosen nature,
classical history and myth.
Among the author’s romance of the first rank was occupied by Sir Philip Sidney. He achieved great
repu-tation by virtue of his Arcadia published in 1590. The style is ornate without the mechanical tricks of
Euphism. Its style is called Arcadian and it often rises to the height of poetic prose.
Robert Greene and Thomas Lodge wrote romances like Lyly and Sir Philip Sidney. Greene’s Pandasto
and Lodge’s Roselind have particularly been remembered because they provided the source for Shakespeare’s
The Winter’s Tale and As you Like it.
The second type of romances produced during this age were realistic and picturesque. These tales
deal with people of lower rank. They are called picturesque because the stories deal with the adventures of
rogues. These were interned for the middle class reader, The best writer who contributed to this type was
Thomas Deloney. His novel ‘Jack of Newbury’ is connected with weavers. He also wrote a collection of
stories about cobblers called The Gentle Craft. His contribution to the art of novel is great as he shifted the
interest of the novel from the court to the lower spheres of life. Sec-ondly, he gives us a vivid, graphic and
realistic picture of the life of London of these days. Another picturesque novel is The Unfortunate Traveler
of life of Jack Wilton.
The story deals with the adventures of a page boy upon the continent of Europe.
6.18.2 Pamphlets
Pamphlet writing was quite a prolific prose from in the Elizabethan period. All through this period
there was a flood of short tracts on religion, politics and literature. The growth of universities and of learning
continually increased their numbers. The most notorious of the pamphleteers were Thomas Nash, Robert
Greene and Thomas Lodge. Sometimes they were full of vulgar personal abuse. But as whole, the pamphlets
were written in vigorous, racy and down right prose.
Sermon Writers : More theological works and sermons were published during the period than any
other kind of literature. Most important among the writers of religious prose are William Perkins with over
a hundred works to his credit. Edward During with about fifty and Thomas Bacon with more than sixty. The
best of these writers was Arhur Dent whose The Palinemans Pathway to Heaven went into twenty-five
editions before 1640. Its earnest simplicity is impressive. James Ussher’s many sermons and discourse show
learning and a plain and easy style. Joseph Hall wrote theological and devotional works in his later years.
Only a few of these sermons were written in admirable pose otherwise most of them hampered literature by
their conventional language.
6.18.3 Dramatic Prose
Dramatic prose developed comparatively late. It was rarely used in tragedy except for special purpose
such as comic relief or the presentation of madness. It is used superbly for mad scenes in Spanish Tragedy
55
and Hamlet. Marlowe used it daringly towards the end of Dr. Faustus of express the pathos and agony of the
hero’s farewell to his friends. Charton Colins is of the opinion that Shakespeare created colloquial prose and
made elastic, dignified without being dramatic, musical without rhetoric, modern without vulgarity. Such
examples of prose can be seen in the dia-logues between Prince Haland and Falstaff in Henry IV, the wit of
Rosalind in As you like it. Hamlet talks with the players. Prose is here used for wit, criticism and reflection.
Webster later used prose for the last scene in The Duchess of Malfi. Ben Jonson’s prose is also praiseworthly
though it lacks the imaginative force and beauty of Shakespeare’.
6.18.4 The Character-Writers
The beginning of the seventeenth century gave rise to a form of essay called the character essay,
these character writers were inspired by the characters of the Greek Theophrastus who flourished about 330
B.C. The character sketches of the Greek were translated into Latin by the French scholar Casaubon in 1592.
The character has been defined as a “short account, usually in prose, of the properties, qualities or pecularities
which serve to individu-alize a type.” Joseph Hall started the Vogue of character writing in England. These
characters are delightful to read and very important from the literacy point of view. They indirectly taught
the would be novelist how to study man, i.e. how he must pay full attention to characterization instead of
prose diction and style.
Joseph Hall was the first to publish a book of characters. His Characters of Virtue and Vices appeared
in 1608. The next was Sir Thomas Overbery who advanced the art of character writing through his collection
of character or witty description of the Properties of Sundry Persons. He does not see deeply into human
nature. He sketches the outside of his characters well. Further development of the form is found in John
Earl’s character portrayals. He advanced towards the portrait of the individual who would at the same time
be the representative of the type. He is the forerunner of the types in the novel as well as in the essay. His
sentences are short and balanced which lend consciousness to the character sketch. The motive is didactic
and the tone satirical.
6.19 MISCELLANEOUS PROSE WRITERS
There are some prose writers who cannot be put under a particular heading. Richard Hopker (1554
to 1600) is one of them. He was educated at Oxford and took orders in 1581. The “Laws of Ecclesiasitcial
Polity’ is his greatest work. The first four of the proposed eight books were published in 1594. He also
finished one more. The remaining three were published under his name after his death and so the authorship
of these three remains doubtful. The book is a master piece both in thought and style. In the first two books
he expounds philosophical principles and in the later books he applies them. Its main thought is “the unity
and all embracing character of law as the manifestation of the divine order of the universe.” In style he is
strongly influenced by classical writers, but he usually writes with homeliness and point. His sentences are
carefully constructed the rhythm moves easily; and there is both precision and melody in the choice of
vocabulary. His style is an early example of scholarly and accomplished English prose.
6.19.1 Robert Burton (1557-1640)
A Self Assessment Question
‘Anatomy of Melancholy’ is written by?
1. Robert Burton 3 John Ford
2. Bacon 4. Thomas Heywood

56
 He was educated at Oxford and passed most of his life in holy orders. His famous work is the
‘Anatomy of Melancholy’. It was published in 1621. Four other editions of this book appeared during the
author’s lifetime, containing some improvements and additions. It conformed to the taste of the time and
hence enjoyed popularity. It is a great medical treastise with a seriousness of purpose. Dr. Johnson declared
that the ‘Anatomy of Melancholy’ was the only book that ever drew him out of bed an hour sooner than he
would otherwise have gotten up. Stem plagiarized freely from Burton and Lamb was an ardent devotee of
the fantastic great old man.
English Essay:
Essay as distinct form was born in the Elizabethan Age with the publication of the Essays by die
French sceptic Montaigne in 1580, which appeared in Florio’s English translation in 1603. Francis Bacon is
the most important essayist of the Elizabethan Age. Fie did not attach much importance to his essays as they
were just “Loose sallies of his mind.” But for the modem reader he is important because of his essays only.
6.21.2 Bacon
The first edition of his ‘essays’ consists of ten essays which were published in 1597. It grew to thirty
eight in the edition of 1612. In the final editions of 1625 fifty eight essays appeared As Bacon said his essays
“Contain brief notes set down rather significantly than seriously, which I have called essays. The words are
late but the thing is ancient.”
Bacon’s position in the history of the English essay is unique and remarkable. He is undoubtedly the
pioneer in his domination of literature. To him belongs the very credit of having written essays first of all in
the languages of England. His essays introduced a new form of compositions into English. Literature which
was destined to have a varied and fruitful development.
Bacon is the first of the aphoristic writers of the English essay. Aphorism means a “short pithy
maxim; a definition.” Bacon’s essays abound in aphorism. His English is terse, pithy and packed with
thought. It is a language that is nothing short of marvelous. Thus the first sentence of his essay “Of revenge
“runs,” revenge is a wild kind of justice.” Each such sentence is capable of expansion in to a paragraph.
Bacon’s use of language underwent a change from the early to the later essays. The change is not
fundamental. It can be termed as stylistic evolution.
In his ‘Essays’ Bacon adopted a style which may be described as one of the longest step in the
evolution of English prose, he set English prose on the road which it continued travelling down to the days
of Swift and Addison. He gave the model of a consistently simple and clear prose. Bacon’s style is lucid and
flexible. Bacon’s is in the habit of quoting profusely. Generally these quotations are from Latin authors.
They are mark of his scholarship and are quoted to the point of beauty.
B. Self Assessment Question
How many essay did Bacon write?
1. 38 3.58
2. 48 4. 68
6.20 THE AUTHORISED VERSION OF BIBLE
It is also called King James Bible. James himself realised the importance of a good translation of the
Bible, he entrusted forty seven chosen men with this work in 1607. The Authorised Version of the Bible was
finished in two years and nine months. These forty seven men, with the help of Wyclif Tyndate and Coverdale.
made a book whose inspiration has lasted through the centuries and which was not only the beginning and
example of all good prose, but greater and more magnificent prose itself than anything it has in-spired.
57
 The Bible has been a potent influence on English Literature. Owing largely to their poetical or
proverbial nature, multitudes of Biblical expressions have become woven into the very tissue of English
language, e.g. “a broken read the eleventh hour”, and so on and so forth. It has greatly affected the style of
the many of the greatest writers in English. Two men, Bunyan and Lincoln, who educated themselves largely
by means of the Bible, serve as examples of many who have become known to posterity, Ruskin’s magnificent
and rich prose owed much to the Bible. Bacon’s prose echoes the poetical consciences of proverbs, Milton
and Browne revealed the Bible’s grandeur, beauty and its great rhythm in their finest passages.
6.21 LITERARY CRITICISM
A considerable number of works dealing with criticism of literature figured during the English
Renaissance. But all these wee of medicore value importance. It lacked originality and was inspired by
theories put forth on the continent which themselves followed antiquity. Very rarely critics wrote with a
direct bearing on the great English works which were produced in great abundance. Those critics were more
or less abstract writers.
In Italy criticism arose out of the need of glorifying literature and proclaiming its laws. Moreover,
the men of letters sought to justify their existence and win honour. In England the moral issue was dominant.
It has a place of honour in Ascham’s School master as early as 1568.
However, the first critical attempt is Sidney’s Apology of Poetry which remained the only important
one till Dryden wrote his ‘Essay of Dramatic Poesy’. Undoubtedly, this critical work has taken its place
among the great critical essays in English. It was an answer to Gossan’s Schools of Abuse, an abusive Purtian
pamphlet. Apology of Poetry defends poetry which is greater than history, philosophy of science. According
to Sidney, Poetry is an art which instructs by pleasing.
Sidney assessed the contemporary literature of England. He wrote at the beginning of the Great age
of English literature. He observed that after Chaucer, Sackville and Surrey there is no English poem of high
merit save The Shepherd’s Calender, that have poetical sinews in them. He strongly condemned the affectations
of style which he found prevalent in his age.
Sidney also criticized the tragedies and comedy of his age. He noted, “the mingling of kings and
clowns in mongrel tragicomedies.” He noted contemptuously the total neglect of the unities in the plays. He
found fault with Gorboduc also on the point of unity of place, and time, “The two necessary components of
all corporal action.”
Sidney’s critical essay is clear and straight forward. His style is free from affectations which to
some extent mar Arcadia.
There was some other critical works also during this period. Webbe and Puttenham supported the
de-fence of romantic literature against the denuscialions of the extreme Puritans in their critical works.
Discourse of English poetry and Art of English poesie. They maintained that English poetry might degenerate
into chaos if considerable attention was not paid to the technique of verse.
Most of the critical works of this time fall back on the classicists like Aristotle and Horace for
guidance. But there was a keen desire for freedom as well. It was the conviction that “all our understanding
is not to be built according to the square of Greece and Rome; we are the children of nature as well as they,”
“In other words slowly and gradually the Elizabethan critics rec-ognized that the genius of the English
language must be taken into account.”

58
 In most of the essays, there was discussion on the metrical rules. Some critics were of the opinion
that rules must not be too rigid. On the other hand, some critics were in favour of discarding the rhyme of
English poetry and adopting the classical metres. Champion supported the use of classical metres in the
critical essay, Art of England Poesie, Which was effectively answered by Daniels’ Defence of Rhyme. Thus
common sense triumphed over the ultra-classical.
Ben Jonson, the presiding genius of the first half of the seventeenth century, leaned towards a strict
though never severe classicism. Sidney’s contemporary had studied the general theory of poetry, not for
enunciating rules or dogmas of criticism but chiefly in order to defend the poetic art, and to understand its
fundamental principles. With Jonson the study of the art of poetry became an inseparable guide to creation;
and it is this element of self-conscious art guided by the rules of criticism which distinguishes him from his
predecessors.
6.22 QUESTIONS
i. Explain forms of prose with suitable examples.
ii. Explain writing style of Bacon.
6.23 SELF ASSESSMENT QUESTION’S ANSWERS
A (1), B (3)
6.24 SUGGESTED READINGS
i. A Short History of English Literature by Emile Legouis.
ii. History of English literature by Edward Albert.

*****

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 LESSON-7
THE PURITAN AGE
STRUCTURE
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Learning Objectives
7.3 Civil War
7.4 Literature of Puritan Age
7.4.1 The Development of Poetry
7.5 Metaphysical Poetry
7.5.1 George Herbert
7.5.2 Richard Crashaw
7.5.3 Henry Vaughan
7.5.4 Thomas Traherne
7.5.5 Abraham Cowley
7.5.6 Andrew Marvell
7.6 The Cavalier Poets
7.6.1 Robert Herrick
7.6.2 Thomas Carew
7.6.3 Sir John Suckling
7.6.4 Richard Lovelace
A. Self-Assessment Question
7.6.5 John Milton
B. Self-Assessment Question
7.7 Prose of the Age of Milton
7.7.1 Sir Thomas Browne
7.7.2 Edward Hyde
7.7.3 Thomas Hobbes
7.7.4 John Milton
7.7.5 Izaak Walton
C. Self Assessment Question
7.7.6 Jeremy Taylor
7.7.7 Richard Buxter
7.7.8 Thomas Fuller
7.8 Summing - Up
7.9 Glossary
7.10 Questions
7.11 Self-Assessment Question's Answers
7.12 Suggested Readings
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7.1 INTRODUCTION
In 1603 James I succeeded Elizabeth to the throne. After his accession to the throne the political
situation in England became shaky and gloomy. He had little of his predecessor’s talent for holding the
kingdom together. He was a bigot, and ill fitted to exemplify “the divine right of the kings.” The Englishmen
soon grew to resent his despotism and the Puritan philosophy gained by leaps and bounds is hold on
Englishmen,
Charles I James’s son succeeded to the throne in 1625. He proved a thoroughly unreliable and
treacher-ous monarch. In 1629 he dissolved the parliament and ruled without it for eleven years. He revived
it again in 1639 but the terrible struggle between the king and the parliament continued and resulted in the
death of Charles and the establishment of the Commonwealth under Cromwell. Cromwell died in 1658. His
weak son proved unequal to the task of guiding the helm of government and anarchy ensured sick of dissension
the public called Charles If to the throne and monarchy was restored.
7.2 LEARNING OBJECTIVES
The objective of this lesson is to give you idea of Puritan age, civil war, and literature of Puritan age.
We will also discuss metaphysical poetry, cavalier poets and prose writers like Izaak Walton. Sir Robert
Burton, Jeremy Taylor, and Thomas Fuller etc in this lesson.
7.3 CIVIL WAR
The most important political event was the civil war that ensued in 1641. The entire period is
dominated by the civil war and almost every writer was affected by this conflict.
On one side the country was tom between political conflicts and upheavels and on the other hand
the Puritan movement was making its impact felt. W.J. long regards this puritan movement as a second and
greater Renaissance, a rebirth of the moral nature of man following the intellectual awakening of Europe in
the fifteenth and sixteenth century. The Puritan movement had two main objects, the first was personal
righteousness; the second was civil and religious liberty.
Though the spirit of the movement was profoundly religious, the puritans were not a religious sect;
neither was the Puritan a narrow minded and gloomy dogmatist. Eliot and Milton were Puritan; and in the
long struggle for human liberty there are few names more honoured by free men. It was a movement against
the political and moral degradation of a cultured nation. Life was stem in those days. In the triumph of
Puritanism under Cromwell severe laws were passed, many simple pleasures were forbidden and an austere
standard of living was forced upon the people.
7.4 LITERATURE OF PURITAN AGE
In literature also the Puritan age is one of confussion due to the breaking up of old ideals. Spenser’s
tradition was fast perishing and the new forms such as metaphysical poetry became popular. During this age
there was the decline of English literature from the high Elizabethan standards. The vigour of the earlier age
was fading away. Drama was totally eclipsed and the reflective and philosophical mood was talking the
place of the natural energy and exuberance of the pervious singer. The output of poetry is much smaller and
the fashion is towards shorter poem, especially the lyric of a peculiar type.
In the field of prose, however, there was an increase in activity which is an almost invariable
accom-paniment of a decline in poetry.
7.4.1 THE DEVELOPMENT OF POETRY
The following are the main forms of poetry in this period :

61
 (a) Lyric : The lyric writing was still in vogue. The theme was chiefly love or religion. These poems
are dedicated to ladies and the language of polite refinement is used in these poems. Love lyrics
are written by Herrick, Lovelace, Suckling and Carew. The religious lyric on the other hand is the
favourite of Crashaw and Vaughan. They are frequently and passionately inspired but the incongruity
disfigures their style. Milton’s lyric are superbly phrased, but they too lack spontaneity.
(b) The Epic: Milton in his Paradise Last attempted to give this new genre to English literature of
this era. The Puritan bias in his nature made him choose the subject of the fall of men. Otherwise
Milton’s treatment of the subject is strictly orthodox. Nominally he adheres to the epic tradition
and its prerequisites.
(c) The Ode: Spenser in his Enithalamion and Prothalamion gave us the irregular ode. In this age,
however, the appearance of the Pindaric Ode is observed. It suited the needs of a transition period
that desires artificiality with a show of freedom. Gowley’s Pindarique Odes (1656) are the first of
their class in English.
(d) Descriptive and Narrative Poetry: In this category we include Milton’s L “Allegro and Penseroso
Harrick’s pastoral poems, and Crawshaw’s religious descriptive pieces, Cooper’s Hill (1642) and
the romantic poem Pharannida (1656) by William Chamber Layne. In all these poems there is a
tendency to avoid contact with actual wild nature, and to seek rather the conventional and bookish
landscapes familiar in the more classical authors. Already the new classicism is declaring itself.
While surveying the poetical style of the age one is again confronted with conflicting tendencies
peculiar to the transitional nature of the times.
The lyric style has lost the spendour of the Eliza-bethan Age but it shows an increase in care and
polish and in actual metrical dexterity. It has a melodious resonance and beauty peculiar to the period.
In blank verse also conflicting movements are apparent. In Milton this style reaches a magnificent
climax, but in the drama of the minor Nights it degenerates.
Then heroic couplet begins to appear in the works of Cowely. Denham and Edmund Waller. The
poets of the Age of Milton were under the dominating influence of Ben Jonson and John Donne. Their revolt
against the polite conventions of the Elizabethan lyric was altogether to the taste of the younger generation.
7.5 METAPHYSICAL POETRY
John Donne is the founder of this school of poetry which had its origin in the last stage of the age of
Shakespeare. It arose as revolt against the conventional poetry of thee Spenserians. It was Dr. Jonson who
christened Donne and his followers “the Metaphysical poets.”
Main characteristics of the Metaphysical Poetry :
Style: Donne and his followers felt disgusted with the poetrical excellences of the Elizabethan
poetry. The straight forward imagery and similes of the Elizabe-thans were replaced by subtle and unexpected
comparisons; from description they turned to analysis; from healthy acceptance of the world to a somewhat
morbid brooding on religion.
It is an intellectual poetry as the metaphysical po-ets had originality and excised their intellects.
Their thoughts were often deep and always sincere. They saw beneath the surface of life illuminated the
deeper places with revealing flashes, and devoted their intellect and imagination to reflection upon God.
Consequently, great religious poetry was also written during the age.

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These poets had certain common features such as.
(a) their poetry is, to a great extent, lyrical.
(b) the subject matter is chiefly religious or amatory.
(c) their poetic style is something starting in a sudden beauty of phrase and melody of diction. Moreover,
there are sudden unexpected turns of language and figure of speech.
Most of the metaphysical poets are often called mystical poets. The mystic is one whose spiritual
vision is strong enough to pierce through those shadows and interpret these symbols. He thus, enters into a
communion with the Eternal spirit of the universe, and by the power of the divinity in his own soul or linked
with die all embracing spirit, which if he is religious he nabs as God. Donne Herbert Crashaw and Vaughan
all have experienced this sense of communion with God. They have seen him with the eyes of the spirit and
their poetry is again and again the expression of their spiritual experience.
In addition to Donne the following are the major metaphysical poets.
7.5.1. George Herbert (1592-1633)
One of the greatest writers of poems on sacred subjects was George Herbert. During his short career
as a priest he wrote the lyrics collected in his volume The Temple published to poems are peculiarly honestly
inumate sincere are modest. They are homely, quiet and colloquial and touched with honour. He is not trying
like Donne to evolve a new said demonstrate how the style already in existence might be out.
Quaintness and extravagance were the prevailing faults of the age and Herbert had his full share of
loom He was considerably influenced by Donne. This is proved by the fact that this work has strong personal
note as in Donne and at time like Ponne he spoils a clear smooth poem by harsh obscurity. His poem
“Prayer” consists of a string of images in’ which prayer is successively called “the church’s banquet,”
“God” breath in man returning to his birth” and so on.
7.5.2 Richard Crashaw:
The principle poetical work of Richard Crawshaw was The Steps to the Temple, a collection of
religious poems. The volume reveals in Crashaw a strain of Italian and Spanish mysticism. He is the most
foreign of the poets of this age. He is also spoken of as an uneven poet. But The Flaming Heart and A Hymn
to the Name, Honour of the Admirable Saint are poems of intense passion and beauty.
Like Donne and Herbert, Crashaw indulges in metaphysical conceits and like them wrote great
reli-gious poetry. In many ways Crashaw is not a metaphysical poet. His poem reveals no complexity of
mind, no conflict or tension, the manner is not colloquial and the images are pictorial rather than intellectual.
In his secular work Delights of the Muses he resembles the cavalier poets. Here we have the graceful courtly
lyricals vain in his well known “Wishes to his supposed Mistress.”
“Come and let us live, my dear, let love and never fear what the sourest fathers say.
7.5.3 Henry Vaughan
The most important works of Vaughan are poems (1646) Olor Iscanus (1651) Silex Scintillans
(1650) and Thalia Rediviva (1678). To Herbert’s influence are due metaphysical conceits, as in the images
“Stars shut up shop” when the poet is describing dawn. But when he ceases to follow his master he rises to
fine poetry. He is at best when he deals with themes of childhood and of communion with nature and with
eternity. Like Wordsworth he too feels nature’s infinite beauty and sees nature as a symbol of God.

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 I was Eternity the other night
Like a great ring of pure and endless light
All clam as it was bright.”
7.5.4 Thomas Traherne
Like Donne and Herbert he was religious poet and won admiration for his few poems. His well
known poem. The Wonder portrays child’s wonder “at the body in which Trapheme is not particularly
metaphysical, but m mood and theme he is close to Vaughan. He idealized childhood and perceived kneely
the beauty of the nature and felt that is spoke to him of God. Slightly a liquid simplicity of rare charm.
7.5.5 Abraham Cowley (1618-1667)
He was an important literary figure of his time though now he is scarcely read. All through his life
he was busy producing various kinds of work poems, essays, plays and histories. His poem The Mistress is
highly metaphysical. It is a collection of love poems but the love depicted in it is cold and artificial. His
metaphysical conceits are sometimes ridiculous and wearisome. His next poetical work is Miscellanies. It
contains Cowley’s Pindaric Odes.
In Cowley the metaphysical strain had become feeble. His work suffered from a lack of deep feelings,
and in him the use of metaphysical wit and conceit deteriorated into mere ingenuity and mannerism.
7.5.6 Andrew Marvell (1621-78)
As a literary man his chief characteristic is his versatility. He could write beautiful lyrics and odes,
pugent satires and telling political pamphlets. He is now remembered only on account of his early poems,
especially his poems upon gardens, in which he shows himself to be a true lover of nature and of his
magnificent Horatain Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland. In his best poem Marwell bears more
affinity to the Elizabethans than to the metaphysical. A few lines are given below from his famous poem. To
His coy Mistress, which indicates Marvell’s metaphysical blend of passion and fantastic conceit, handled by
his distinctive control and poise.
But at my back I always hear
Time’s winged chariot hurrying near.
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast Eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found.
Nor, in the marble vault, shall sound
My echoning songs; then worms shall try,
That long preserved virginity;
And your quaint honour turn to dist;
And into ashes all my lust,
The grave is fine and private place
But none I think to their embreace.
7.6 THE CAVALIER POETS
During the first half of the seventeenth century Ben Jonson’s followers also reacted against the
Elizabe than style. Though the Cavaliers retain the Elizabethan lyrical spirit, yet they possess less spontaneity
and they produced their lyric with more conscious poetic crafts manship. They did not sing quite as naturally

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as their forerunners. Their lyric had lost the fine and voluptuous rapture. But their poems are easily structure
and graceful. They all wrote under the influence of Jonson and gave an orderly structure and finished grace
to their lyric. The language of prostrate adoration which dominates the Petrachain school of poetry was
substituted by a language of courtly gallantry.
The following are the Cavalier lyricists who deal mainly with love and war:
7.6.1 Robert Herrick (1591-1674)
He was the chief of those who callled themselves “Sons of Ben” In his little poem. ‘Prayer’ to Ben
Jonson he invoked “Ben to aid him” His two volumes of poems are Noble Numbers and Hesperides which
were published in 1674 and 1648 respectively. In these short poems, sacred and profane, he reveals lyrical
power of high order; fresh, passionate and felicitously exact, but at the same time meditative and observant.
Few poets are more charming than Herricks. He was an enthusiastic admirer of the Greek and
Romans but he is daintier and more spontaneous than Roman poets. He owed a debt to Marlowe, Shakespeare
and Champion, but especially to Ben Jonson.
His lyrics of love are delightful and lucid. He wrote about a bevy of lovers lightly and gracefully.
His note is not one of passion but of adoring gallantry. He takes pleasure in describing physical beauty. He
does not forget to mention the pretty dresses and lovely features of his friends. Herrick had sincere love for
the country though he admired the town life as well.
Herrick’s reputation grew in the nineteenth century and today he is universally recognized as the
greatest, cavalier lyricist.
7.6.2 Thomas Carew (1598-1639)
He was also a disciple of Ben Jonson in poetry. His principle works are a mosque Coelum Britannic
am and the Rapture which is fine but licentious amatory poem. In addition to this he wrote numerous
graceful songs and lyrics. His chief faults are his weak imagination and a certain lack of boldness. His rage
is far narrower than Herrick’s. But he stands next to Herrick among the Cavalier lyricists on account of
felicity of phrase and tunefulness of verse:
Ask me no more where Jove bestows,
When June in past, fading rose;.
For in your beauty’s orient deep
These flowers, as in their causes, sleep
Ask me no more wither do stray
The golden atoms of the day;
For in pure love heaven did prepare
Those powers to enrich your hair.
7.6.3 Sir John Suckling (1609-1642)
He was a careless writer. Many of his poems are complete rubbish, and even some of his best are
disfigured by weak lines of stanzas. He wrote quite a lot but his best known songs such as the “Ballad upon,
a Wedding” his tune fullness, merriment and impudence are simply irresistible.
7.6.4 Richard Love lace (1681-85)
Lovelace is remem bered chiefly for two poem To Lucasta, Going to the Wars and To Althea from
prison, which reach in perfection the heights he does not elsewhere approach. The former close.
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 I could not love thee, dear so much,
Loved I not honour more,
The second poem contains the following stanza:
Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quite take
That for a Hermitage:
If 1 have freedom in my love
And in my soul am free,
Angles alone, that soar above,
Enjoy such liberty.
Most of his poems are careless in worship, full of affected wit and gallantry, and often rendered
obscure by extravagant and grotesque conceits. But he had the good fortune of writing half a dozen poems
of great excellence.
All the above mentioned poets write in a lighter vein. They do not make a pretence of treading their
art seriously. But ‘what they did, they did extremely well.”
A. Self Assessment Question
Who wrote the poem ‘To Althea from Prison’?
1. John Suckling 3. Thomas Carew
2. Richard Lovelace 4. Robert Herrick
7.6.5 John Milton
The greatest master of verse whose work has glorified this period is John Milton. He is the supreme
poet in whose genius the best of both the Elizabethan as well as the Puritan spirit got mingled to the best
advantage of poetry.
Milton’s work are divided into three periods:
The first covers his poetry up to 1640. This is the period of short poems like ‘Ode on the morning of
Christ’s Nativity’ and poems on Shakespeare and On Arriving at the Age of Twenty three. The minor poems
are clearly the work of a man in love with beauty and broad culture without any trace of fanaticism or
narrowness.
Milton wrote ‘L’ Allegro and II Penseroso in 1632 which mean “The joyful Man” and “The Thoughtful
Man” they are lyrics which dial with the sights and sound of the English country side. But the deception is
not romantic but classical. Nature is viewed by Milton “Not at first hand but through others.”
Lycidas : One of the most famous English elegies. It is written in the convention of a Greek pastrol
elegy.
Lycidas is something more than a mere pastrol elegy. The pastoral conventions, Greek mythology,
and Christian theology are all blended together. Though Lycidas may not be a great elegy, it is certainly great
poetry.
The other poem of this period is “Comus”, a masque and marks an important stage in the development
of Milton’s thoughts. It shows him in the transition from the pastoral idyllic manner of his early poems
towards the greater purpose which formed his mature work. He has by now abandoned rhyme for blank
verse and it echoes the growing Puritan protest against the tamper of Caroline society.
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 It has a dignity and elevation of style; a splendour of diction wedded to an exquisite and unfailing
beauty of verse.
The second period (1640-1660): It is the period of political works and prose writings. He also
composed sonnets in this period. Most of his sonnets are purely personal while some are political. He
adhered to the strict petrachan form in his sonnets.
The Third period (1663- 1674) : It is the period the great poems of Milton, in which he wrote his
epic, “Paradise Lost’. This epic, occupied him for five years. The scope of this poem is vast and extensive.
Perhaps no other poet ever undertook a task of more appalling difficulty than Milton in writing this epic. It
is an epic of art based on the classical conventions. It concerns itself with the fortune not of a city or an
empire but of the whole human race.
Milton’s other two works, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes were published together in
1671. Paradise Regained is a Sequel to show how the son of God comes to redeem man from the consequences
of his earlier sin. It is a dialogue in epic form rather than an epic.
Samson Agonistes is drama on the model of Greek tragedy. It is perhaps the most successful attempts
ever made to reproduce in another language of differing genius the spirit and effect of that kind of tragedy
about which Aristotle wrote in the treatise on poetry.
Milton was strongly influenced by his Age. Puritanism is potent force in his poetry. His last three
works reveal his religious and moral fervor at the best.
But John Milton was a poet of a different kind who belonged to both the Renaissance and the
Reformation. Milton expressed the sense of beauty and culture which distinguished the writer of Renaissance.
He is the most sublime of the English poets and the acknowledged master of grand style. In every
thing he wrote a proud and commanding genius manifests itself, and he is one of those masters who inspire
reverence rather than affection.
To Quote E. Albert: In literature Milton occupies an important central of transitional position. He
can immediately after the Elizabethan epoch, when the Elizabethan methods were crumb link in chaos. His
hand and temper was firm enough to weave together into one system the wearing tendencies of poetry, and
to give theme sureness accuracy, and variety. The next generation, lacking the inspiration of the Elizabethans
found in him the necessary stimulus to order and accuracy; and from him, to a great extent; sprang the new
‘classicism’ that was to be the rule for more than a century.
B. Self Assessment Question
“Paradise lost” is a famous work of?
1. John Donne 3. Thomas Carew
2. Milton 4. Izaak Walton
7.7 PROSE OF THE AGE OF MILTON
The development of prose in this age is carried on from the previous age. Inspite of the hampering
affect of the civil strife, the prose output was copious and excellent in kind. There was a notable advance in
the sermon, pamphlets were abundant; and history, politics, philosophy and miscellaneous kinds were well
represented. There was remarkable advance in prose style.

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 In this age the representative prose writers developed and cultivated grand style which was quiet to
the neglect of Hooker and Bacon, The effect is often that of magnificent music played by a great composer
on a poor instrument. The greatest writer Milton and Jeromy Taylor, are the offenders as they confuse the
sentence with the paragraph and do not known that a sentence is the prose unit as the line is poetical unit.
The prose writers of this age had a strong and marked religious tendency. The Civil War, which led
to the temporary overthrow of the ancient English monarchy, was in many respects a religious as well as a
political contest. It was a struggle for liberty of faith at least as much as for liberty of civil government. The
prose literature of this time, therefore, as well as of period extending considerably beyond it, possesses
strongly religious or theological character.
7.7.1 Sir Thomas Browne (1605-82)
A medical practitioner by profession Sir Thomas Browne produced his works during the civil war
but he was unaffected by the commotion of his time. His first work is ‘Religio Medici’ which was first
published in 1624 and then in 1643. Religio Medici is a confession of Christian faith and is a formal
autobiography. Saintsbury remarks, “Religio Medici has perhaps been a general favourite, a position at least
deserved by the fact that it contains the first fruits of Browne’s extraordinary style, that is a sort of key to
others, and that it displays, as does no other book, the mental attitude of the order and better generation of
the Jacobean and Caroline times.
Valgur Errors as Psecudodoxin is Epidemica then longest work of Browne. In 1658 appeared Urn
Burial or Hydriotaphia which is a short but profoundly mewing essay on funeral customs and death. It is
Browne’s masterpiece. The style has something of the ease on the hand and on the other it is far more highly
wrought richer and gorgeous.
Sir Thomas Browne is an artist rather than a philosopher. He endeavors to mingle his personal
confessions with truth. His writings recall the works of Montaigne and foreshadows pascal.
He by no means confines himself to theological matters but takes the reader into his confidence in
the same artless and undisguised manner as the immortal Montague.
Thomas Browne possessed the quality of humour. His vocabulary is highly Latinised and so he is
sometimes charged again corrupting English by excessive Latinsing.
Nevertheless Browne’s prose style and diction carry great importance in English Litrature. His
prose has influenced the prose writers of the nineteenth century. He is unsurpassable on account of music,
seniority and beauty of words.
7.7.2 Edward Hyde
Edward Hyde’s masterpiece is The History of Rebellion and civil Wars in England. He observed all
the events of civil war his history lacks proportion and completes accuracy. But the narrative is strong and
attractive. He has given graphic character sketches of his chief figures.
The style is generally inclined to be prolific, but despite their length his periods are usually clear,
and he shows frequent vigour and eloquence. There is something grand and spacious about his workmanship.
7.7.3 Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
Hobbe’ chief work is Lenathars of The Matter Form and Power of a Com-monwealth Ecclesiastical
and Civil Which was published in 1651. Most of his philosophy is primarily political. The weakness of
Hobbes theory lies in its being based on conviction of the essential selfishness of mankind. However his
boldly drawn picture of primitive man is one of the best passages.
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 Hobbes was a master of English prose. His prose is distinguished by its clarity, vigour and precision
at a time when the first and third of these qualities were uncommon. He rarely indulges in decoration of any
sort. His similes and illustrations are merely for the purpose of making his meaning clear by example.
7.7.4 John Milton (1608-1674)
With return from Italy and the outbreak of the Civil War, we enter upon the second period of his
writings. His main attention was on the struggle for liberty, and he himself suggests the classification of the
prose works on which he was then working.
(a) Divorce Pamphlets: Milton’s own trouble with his first wife led to his consideration of the
question of domestic freedom. His opinions created scandal. In his Areopagitica he made an open attack on
the censorship of the press. In this pamphlet he denounces the restrictions on liberty of expressions. Opinions
with the stately eloquence and passionate rhetoric of which he was a master.
In his Ecclesiastical pamphlets he deals with the question of religious liberty, believing that the
authority possessed by Bishops led to the suppression of the individual clergyman freedom for preaching.
Finally, he took up political liberty, arguing his own tongue with the English on the true way to
establish a free commonwealth, in defence of the execution of the king and the setting up of the republic.
Throughout his prose we find in abundance passages of lofty eloquence, grim irony, fierce invective and a
persistent passion for freedom. Milton’s prose is not for everyday purpose, it is too rarely pedestrian.
7.7.5 Izzak Walton (l 593-1683)
He is in certain respects a belated Elizabethan. He wrote biographies of Donne, Sir Henry Watton,
Richard Hooker, George Herbert and Robert Sanderson. Walton’s masterpiece is however, The Complete
Angler which first appeared in 1653. Walton was not a prolific writer but whatever he wrote was as good as
he could make it. He was a careful artist who polished his periods meticulously. His biographies show him
in a serious workday routine whereas in The Complete Anger he is in a holiday mood. His style is always
mature and charming and he is a pioneer in the art of writing brief and attractive biographies.
C. Self Assessment Question
Who wrote ‘Compleat Angler”?
1. Jeremy Taylor 3. Thomas Carew
2. Edward Hyde 4. Izaak Walton
7.7.6 Jeremy Taylor (1613-67)
He is the most prominent literary divine of the period. He was the son of a barber and after completing
his education at Cambridge took holy orders and expounded the Royalist cause. Taylor’s most popular
works, in addition to his serious, were The Liberty of Prophesying (1647), Holy living (1650) and Holy
Dying (1651). Coleridge called Taylor, the “most eloquent of divines.” An accurate thinker, as a rhetorician
he is unsurpassed. He is fond of annotations and allusions and of florid, rhetorical figures. He built long,
stately but comprehensible sentences.
7.7.7 Richard Buxter (1615-1691)
He is a very prolific writer. He has written a vast number of tracts and religious works. He was
remarkable for his consistency and uprightness. During the civil war, he preserved his loyalty to the king. He
was a man of vast learning and untiring industry.

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 7.7.8 Thomas Fuller (1608-61)
Fuller had an original and penetrating mind, a wit apt for consistent comment and an industry that
remained unimpaired till the end of his life. His literary works are therefore of great interest and value. His
important works are The History of the Holy War (1639), and the Church History of Britain (1655). Among
his pamphlets are Good Thoughts in Bad Time (1645), and the work that gave him reputation was ‘The
Worthies of England’ published by his son in 1662.
Thus, the age of Milton shows a considerable interest in the field of prose writing. The conflicting
political, religious and intellectual conditions of the age could not be fully expressed in any other medium
but prose, and hence its popularity even with the greatest of poets like Milton.
7.8 SUMMING - UP
The period between 1625 and 1675 is known as the “Puritan Age”, because during the period,
Puritan standards prevailed in England, and also because the greatest literary figure John Milton was a
Puritan. The Puritans struggled for righteousness and liberty. Puritanism became a great national movement
which included English Churchman as well as extreme Separatists. While the Catholic Church had always
held true to the ideal of the united church the possibility of the ideal of a purely national Protestantism grew.
7.8 GLOSSARY
a. Vigour- Active strength or force of body or mind; capacity for exertion, physically, intellectually,
or morally; energy
b. Vogue-The prevailing fashion or style
c. Gallantry-Courage
d. Sublime-To raise on high; to exalt; to heighten
7.10 QUESTIONS
a. Who were Puritans? And what did they believe in?
b. Why is Milton called a Puritan?
c. What were two characteristics of a Puritans’ life?
7.11 SELF ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS’ ANSWERS
A (2), B (2), C (4)
7.12 SUGGESTED READINGS
a. The Concise Cambridge History of English Literature by George Sampson.
b. The Routledge History of English Literature by Ronald Carte.

*****

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 LESSON-8
RESTORATION LITERAURE

STRUCTURE
8.1 Introduction
8.2 Learning Objectives
8.3 Conflict between Catholic and Protestants
8.4 Cromwell
A. Self-Assessment Question
8.5 Charles II
8.6 French Influence and Development of English
8.7 Age of Prose
8.8 Literature
B. Self-Assessment Question
8.9 Classicism
8.10 Conclusion
8.11 Summing - Up
8.12 Glossary
8.13 Questions
8.14 Self-Assessment Question's Answers
8.15 Suggested Readings
8.1 INTRODUCTION
In many crucial ways, the civil war and years that led to the Restoration of Charles II (1660) mark
the transition from old to modem England. Nothing was the same again in England after those violent years;
with the Restoration began a new society, a new mentality, and a new literature. Politically, of course, the
significance of the Restoration pales before the significance of the Glorious Revolution (1688) which, once
and for all shifted the power from the King to the parliament, indeed the Restoration signified retrogression
to absolute monarchy after the days of the protectorate. All the same, the Restoration coincides with a
revolution in the mental outlook of the English people.
Not all the changes that became manifest in British political, social and moral life were wholesome.
But they were largely inevitable, or a few decades after in a destructive act, the act of rejecting Puritanism.
The Puritan regime had been harsh on too many natural joys and pleasures. Now, released from restraint,
society reacted almost widely against all decencies, disciplines and moral norms. From one kind of excesses
to another kind. It now plunged into excess more unnatural than had been the restraints of Puritanism Excess
inevitably lead to feerish diseased state, and there was indeed something diseased about the nation in the
decades following the Restoration. According to Hudson, the Restoration caused immense changes in the
general temper of the English people; in a sweeping reaction against Puritanism restraints were flung aside,
decencies and moderation were cast aside and corruption became rife “The court of Charles II was the most
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shameless the country had ever known : infidelity and profligacy became fashionable; the moral ideas of.
Puritanism were turned into dust, and those who still upheld the causes of domestic virtue were laughed at
as hypocrites or de-nounced as sour sectaries.”
8.2 LEARNING OBJECTIVES
The objective of this lesson is to give you an idea of the social, cultural, and political background of
restoration literature-the rule of Cromwell and his influence on Puritanism, and then the rule of Charles II.
8.3 CONFLICT BETWEEN CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANTS
While it would be a mistake to assume that the King and his followers reflected the total national
situation indeed they did not. They and their values got reflected in the literature of the age. Most of dramatic
literature of the time is atrocious, and this is due to the fact that it was written for the aristocracy. “Unspeakably
vile in his private life, the king had no redeeming patriotism. No sense of responsibility to his country even
in his public acts. He gave high offices to blackguards, stole from the exchequer like a common thief, played
Catholics and Protestants against each other, disregarding his pledges to both alike, broke his solemn treaty
with the Dutch and with his own pleasures..,. The first parliament, while it contained some noble and patriotic
members, was dominated by young men who... Vied with the king in passing laws for the subjugation of
church and state.... The House of Lords was largely increased by the creation of hereditary titles and estates
for ignoble men and shameless women who had flattered the king’s vanity. Even the Bench, that last strong
refuge of Justice, was corrupted by the appointment of judges like that brutal Jefferies, whose aim, like that
of their royal master, was to get money and to exercise power without personal responsibility. Amid all his
dishonour the foreign influence and authority of Cromwell’s strong government vanished like smoke. The
valiant little Dutch navy except the English fleet from the sea and only the thunder of Dutch guns in the
Thames (1667), under the very windows of London, awoke the nation to realization of how it had failed.”
(Long).
8.4 CROMWELL
The new regime allowed the aristocracy of birth to resume its privileged place. The march towards
democracy was temporarily halted. Provincial England was left out of focus in the new situation; the focus
of power was on the town-London, Fashionable London which provided itself upon the near presence of the
king and his courtiers. Everything thus favoured the creation of an aristocratic, town-centered literature,
Flattery, voluptuousness, pleasure and favour seeking political contro-versies and intellectual arguments, all
got centered on London, and are all reflected in the literature of the period.
The literature of the age, as Hudson remarks was like the social and moral climate, openly and
definitely corrupt. It was generally wanting in moral strength and spiritual fervour, “real earnestness of
purpose has passed away, and with it strong passion and great creative energy.” Its general overall tenor was
intellectual and dry not emotional. Perhaps the change was not all that sudden as the reference to the
Restoration might suggest. The Restoration merely stimulated a tendency which” was beginning to show in
the work of Bacon, Donne and many other poets. Thought was already coming to be prized more and
imagination and emotion were getting more and more complicated. In the wild imaginative excesses of the
Metaphysical and Cavalier poets, one could easily notice languishing and decay of the essential Elizabethan
spirit which had depended for its sustenance on the passionate life of imagination as against analytical
ratiocination which characterized Metaphysical poetry. As a reaction to the Metaphysical and Cavalier
spirit, as a reaction to the labyrinthine prose of Milton, Hooker and Burton, the Restoration writer turned

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against the capricious games of imagination and towards balance in measure. It was now felt that art must
have an intellectual quality because the intellect alone is the chief factor in orderly arrangement and simple
clearness. According to Cazamian “The literary transition from the Renaissance to the Restoration is nothing
more or less than the progressive movement of a spirit of liberty, at once fanciful, brilliant, and adventurous
towards a rule and a discipline both in inspiration and in form.” From Restoration onwards classi-cism, with
its emphasis on realism, becomes the pole which attracts the hidden working of individual minds.
A. Self Assessment Question
Major figure of Restoration Age’ is
1. Cromwell 3. Henry I
2. Charles II 4. James II
8.5 CHARLES II
Classicism and realism do not come to English literature at once after the return of Charles II. In
fact, while the extreme reaction against Puritanism lasted, realism was used as an. excuse for printing realistic
pictures of a corrupt court and society. The Restoration writers emphasized vices rather than virtues and
wrote coarse low plays without interest or moral significance later as the restoration fever subsided, the
tendency to realism became more wholesome. A parallel growth is seen is the writers gradual internalization
of the classical spirit.
The two developments, classicism and realism, need to be viewed against the backdrop of the growing
French influence on England. The intellectual physiognomy of the Restoration was largely shaped by the
influence of France. Since the fourth decade of the seven-teenth century there had been a growing intercourse
between England and Prance. Those banished after the civil war had taken refuge in France The exiles of the
commonwealth period included many writers of the reign of Charles II, and these writers imbibed in France
the spirit of nation’s manners and literature. Restoration merely stimulated a tendency return to England.
They renounced old ideals and demanded that English poetry and drama should follow the style to which
they had become accustomed in the gaiety Paris. Their renunciation of English art was extreme indeed. In an
entry in his dairy, Samuel Pepys records that he has been to see a play called ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’,
but that he will never go against to hear Shakespeare “for it is the most inspired ridiculous play that I ever
saw in my life.” Another diarist, Evelyn, who reflects with accuracy the life and spirit of the Restoration,
similarly reacts to Hamlet: “I saw Hamlet played/ but now the old plays begin to disgust this refined age,
since his Majesty’s been so long abroad.” Rarely says Cazamain “has a literature found itself more openly in
reaction against the general spirit of that which preceded it.” ‘The Restoration passes judgement of the
Renaissance and finds itself superior. For its models, it look away from England: it finds it models not in the
classics of antiquity but in those of contemporary France.
8.6 FRENCH INFLUENCE AND DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH
The French influence, at least for the time being led the English poets and playwrights into wretched
imitations of the French writers. One result of the influence was, however, both positive and welcome. It
was reflected in the tendency of the age towards directness and simplicity of expression. In both the Elizabethan
and the Puritan ages the general tendency of writers was towards extravagance of thoughts and language.
Sentences were often involved and loaded with Latin quotations and classical allusions. The restoration
writers opposed this vigorously. From France they brought back the tendency to disregard established rule
of writing, to emphasize close reasoning rather than romantic fancy, and to use short, clear-cut reasoning

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without an unnecessary word. The men of the Restoration, as Hudson rightly says, were the real creators of
modern English prose. The prose of, say Milton in his ‘Aeropagitica’ looks un-familiar, quaint, intricate and
cumbrous, The construction adopted here is often that of Latin rather than of English syntax. In contrast to
this, the prose of Restoration writer is much after our own way of writing; sentences are short, simple, and
without parentheses or classical inversions Such changes made for ease in writing and reading, as also for
directness and lucidity.
The development of the English language was hastened by a few more factors which deserve mention
here. The founding of the Royal Society in 1662, itself a French influence, was one of them. It was established
for the investigation and discussion of scientific questions but soon included practically all of the literary
and scientific men of age., One of the objects of the society was the reform of English prose by getting rid of
its “swelling of style.” The society required of all its members the use of “a close, makes natural way of
speaking positive expression; positive expression; clear sense; a native easy”. The increasing influence of
science favoured clearness of though and plainness of expression.
In fact, from about 1660, there gradually developed a conscious anxiety about the stability of the
lan-guage and a sense of the need both to reform and fix it. It was felt that without a sable language, the
modem writers too would become as hard to read as was Chaucer with his broken obsolete English. Dryden,
a member of the Royal Society, wrote in 1664. “I am sorry, that speaking so noble a language as we have not
a certain measure of it, as they have in France, where they have an Academy for this purpose, but the idea
was floated many a time. What is clearly reflected was the need many writers felt for the reform of the
language. John Hughes, a minor writer of the time, wrote in an essay called ‘Of style’ (1688) that the
qualities of a good style were Propriety, perpetuity, Elegance and Cadence. The spread of the spirit of
common sense and the critical temper of mind also contributed to the desirability of the reform of the
language. Finally, “a new kind of public was growing up which was far more varied in character than that
which hitherto had possessed the practical monopoly of literary interests, and the tastes and capacities of
this increasingly large body of general readers had to be consulted by those who catered for them. In an age
of unceasing political and religious excitement, there was an immense development of that sort of evanescent
literature which we now class under the head of Journalism; the general reader and the ready writer thus
appeared together; each reacted upon the other; and his change of public necessarily meant that things
which had formerly been treated in difficult way had to be made simple and pleasant. Thus, besides the
influence of France where a prose had already been evolved which in its clearness, flexibility and good taste
served the purpose of ordinary exposition, discussion and social intercourse for stability in the language
served as key factors in the transformation of the English language.
8.7 AGE OF PROSE
Matthew Arnold called the Restoration “the real moment of birth of our modem English prose.” “It
is by its organism-an-organism opposed to length and involvement and enabling us to be clear plan and
short-that English prose after the Restoration broke with the style of times preceding it, finds the true law of
prose, and becomes modem; becomes, spite of superficial difference, the style of our own day.” Arnold’s
judgement is accurate, provided one reminds oneself that the birth was not all that sudden. In fact; was only
the eighteenth century, with the rise of the novel and the arrival of prose writers such as Swift, Addison arid
Steele, and Hazlitt that the new prose got finally established in England. However, a great beginning was
certainly made in the Restoration period.

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 The adoption of the heroic couplet in Restoration poetry and verse drama is also a big event. The
couplet, that is two iambic pentameter lines which rhyme together, came to be considered the most suitable
form of poetry. The epithet ‘heroic’ was derived from the common employment of the measure of poetry. To
a great extent the heroic couplet became fashionable because the Restoration writer was reacting against the
excesses and obscurities of the Metaphysical poets. In favour of good sense and neatness and clearness of
expression as he was, he rejected the rugged and harsh versification of his predecessors.. Dryden praised
Edmund Waller (1606-1687) as the best illustrator of the beauties of the heroic couplet. The excellence and
dignity of time were never fully known till Mr. Waller thought it; he first made wilting easily an art; first
showed us how to conclude the sense most commonly in disfichs which in the verse of those before him runs
on for so many lines together that the readers are out of breath to overtake it.” Waller, the most famous poet
of the Restoration period before Dryden appeared, brought into use the kind of closed form in which the fuel
is that instead of the sense being allowed to flow from couplet to couplet identifinitely, it should habitually
dose with end of the second line, the metrical pause and the rhetorical pause thus coming together. The
adoption of the couplets, in fact, part of the formalisms which made the essence of the literary ethos of the
time here, in the closed couplet, one notices the poet’s disciplining his material and ideas to the requirements
of the close form. For example Waller writes.
The soul’s dark passage battered and decayed
Lets in new light through chinks that time has made
The couplet is epigrammatic, catchy and easy to remember and quote. The restoration writers delighted
in such closed couplets. Soon this mechanical closed form almost excluded all other forms of poetry. It
remained dominant in England for a full century reaching its perfection in the satires of Dryden and Pope. It
is erroneous to assume that the couplet was Waller’s invention. It was in use earlier too. Chaucer had used it
in all its melody and variety. But Waller certainly redis-covered it. Waller was ably followed by Sir John
Denham, Denham is now chiefly remembered for his descriptive poem, Cooper’s Hill. Dryden praised both
Waller and Denham, “Our numbers were nonage till these last appeared.” Four of quoted lines in Denham’s
“Cooper’s Hill” neatly sum up the chief pre-occupation of the Restoration poets.
O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream
My great example, as it my theme.
Though deep, yet clear, though gentle, yet not dull
Strong without range; without a overflowing full’
8.8 LITERATURE
The literature of an age is never uniform or unidirectional. In fact, certain features and tendencies
dominate is much more thoroughly than others. It is on the dominant features and strains that we tend to
offer generalization regarding the character and temperament of the age. But we should not lose sight of the
other relatively minor strains and tendencies of the age if we would have a comprehension portrait of its
literature. In political life, the Restoration marked the beginning of era tranquility, but before long to show
visible signs of protest and revolt, the signs which ultimately precipitated the Bloodless Revolution of 1688.
In literature too such sign of protest were visible right beneath the seemingly calm strain of rationality and
realism, of manners and of artificial formalism and analytical prose. These signs of protest were visible in
the efforts of writers who still attempted forms of pure sensibility, ardent and tragic passion, and ‘creative
imagination. These writers obviously worked against the dominant spirit of their age, but this is not to say

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that they were freaks or oddities. They reflected the under layers of the age. Cazamian is correct when he
says, “From 1660 to 1688, two literary currents are flowing at different depths without merging the first, by
the greater, spreads itself out in the sunshine; it represents the tendencies, the works that are in intimate
harmony with the spirit of the epoch, and alone truly belongs to it. The second appears on the surface at long
intervals only; it continues the past, and announces the future, “The point becomes clear if we remind
ourselves that two great works. ‘Paradise Lost’ and ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress,’ were published in the Restoration
period and both are foreign to the spirit of the Restoration: indeed they are openly defiant of that spirit.
The tranquility that was initiated in the social and political life of England by the Restoration did
not last long. Between 1670 and 1685 there gradually emerged political strife and a spirit and opposition led
the projects of the king and his court. The strife and opposition led to the Revolution of 1688, the setting up
of a new regime and a reaction in public opinion against the manners and special modes of the Revolution of
1688, the setting up of a new regime and a reaction in public opinion against the manners and special modes
of the Restoration. The strife and opposition had a religious touch to them; they represented the revolt of the
national Anglican spirit against the absolutism and Catholic; leanings of the Stuarts. From the literary point
of view of these deep and vigrous movements of the national mind brought about certain progressive changes
in the inner quality to the Restoration. With the revival of function and parties, and the excitement caused by
the Popish plot (1678), a quality of force and ardour revived in civic feeling, and passed naturally into
literature. The Restoration tone was thus modified. In fact, the last years of the century form a distinct
period, a brief but well- marked transition, separating the Restoration from the age of Classicism.
B. Self Assessment Question
When did Theatre closed?
1. 1640 3. 1642
2. 1641 4. 1643
8.9 CLASSICISM
During this transition (1688-1702) the characteristic of the Restoration period still continue to be
dominant, but they also show signs of wearing out. Besides, some new traits appear. They combine to set the
stage for the advent of Classicism. The revolution of 1688, as has already been remarked, was the result of
the struggle between the principle of absolute authority in State and Church and the idea of tolerance and
constitutional liberty. The Revolution finished the principle of absolutism. Henceforth there would prevail
the will of the ruling class as incarnated in parliament. Behind these developments one sees the upper
middle class of businessmen and financiers forcing their presence upon the hitherto ruling hereditary nobility.
Society after 1688 remained aristocratic; but the spirit of the middle classes began to impregnate its tone and
its manners. No doubt the fashionable and cultured world, from which the literary public was recrwas not at
once overthrown; artistic traditions and conventions still continued to exit as before. But during the reign of
William III, the character of literature, without foregoing its Restoration complexion, is nevertheless toned
down, relaxed and forward-looking.
8.10 CONCLUSION
In short the literature of the Restoration is significant as the literature of transitions. To begin with,
it marks the feverish rejection of that the preceding age had stood for; Puritanism and restraints. The subject
matter now turns antipuritan and quite often licentious and corrupt. Satire and parody become fashionable
both as the means of ridiculing the puritan spirit and as a way of participating in political controversies. The

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influence of France is extraordinary and is the revealed in the age’s obsession with realism, formalism and
style. While the literature of the age does not really match the great classic French writers, the French
influence does much good by way of promoting the growth of English prose. In its break from the preceding
age, the age of Metaphysical poets as much as of such prose writers as Milton, Hooker and Browne, the
Restoration literature moves a great deal towards modernity. However, certain hidden tendencies continue
to exist as in Milton and Bunyan. And after the Glorious Revolution, the tone of the Restoration undergoes
gradual modification and lowering, thus making another transition this time be-tween the Restoration and
the age of Queen Anne.
8.11 SUMMING - UP
The period from 1660 to 1700 is known as the Restoration period or the Age of Dryden. Dryden was
the representative writer of this period. The restoration of King Charles II in 1660 marks the beginning of a
new era both in the life and the literature of England. The king was received with wild joy on his return from
exile. The change of government from Commonwealth to kingship corresponded to a change in the mood of
the nation. In this period the Renaissance delight in this world and the unlimited possibilities of the exploration
of the world, and the moral zeal and the earnestness of the puritan period could no more fascinate the people
of England. Moody and Lovett remark: But in the greater part of the Restoration period there was awareness
of the limitations of human experience, without faith in the extension of the resources. The historical events
like the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, the religious controversy and the revolution of 1688 deeply
influenced the social life and the literary movements of the age.
8.12 GLOSSARY
a. Voluptuousness- Sensuality; the quality of being sensuous.
b. Banish- to send someone away and forbid that person from returning
c. Cadence- The act or state of declining or sinking
d. Cumbrous- Unwieldy because of its weight; cumbersom
8.13 QUESTIONS
1. What is the restoration era?
2. In what ways is Restoration literature an “anti-Puritan” literature?
3. John Dryden is considered to be the most important figure in Restoration literature. Why do you
think he was so influential?
8.14 SELF ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS’ ANSWERS
A (l), B (3)
8.15 SUGGESTED READING
1. History of English literature by Edward Albert.
2. History of English literature by David Daiches.

*****

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 LESSON-9
RESTORATION LITERATURE

STRUCTURE
9.1 Introduction
9.2 Learning Objectives
9.3 Restoration Poetry
9.3.1 John Dryden
A. Self-Assessment Question
9.3.2 Samuel Butler
9.4 Restoration Comedy
9.4.1 William Congreve
9.4.2 William Wycherely
9.4.3 Sir John Vanbrugh
9.4.4 George Farquhar
9.5 Restoration Heroic Tragedy
9.6 Restoration Prose
9.6.1 Thomas Hobbes
9.6.2 John Locke
B. Self-Assessment Question
9.6.3 John Evelyn
9.6.4 John Bunyan
C. Self-Assessment Question
9.7 Conclusion
9.8 Summing - Up
9.9 Glossary
9.10 Questions
9.11 Self-Assessment Question's Answers
9.12 Suggested Readings
9.1 INTRODUCTION
In this lesson we shall deal with the forms and the chief figures of Restoration literature. The age is
marked by the evolution of many forms, and most of these forms are pervaded by air of transition from the
preceding age into the age that is to come. The most notable figure in Restoration literature is, of course,
John Dryden (1631- 1700), and in his work we can see the character of the age most clearly. However, it is
convenient to divide the literature of the age under different formal groups.

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9.2 LEARNING OBJECTIVES
The objective of this lesson is to provide an idea of the social, cultural, and political background of
the period. Also we will discuss restoration poetry, restoration comedy and restoration heroic tragedy in the
lesson.
9.3 RESTORATION POETRY
The study of restoration literature must begin with its poetry,” says Cazamian. This is because the
formalism which characterised the age is best reflected in poetry : “form now comes into the foreground the
art of writing, and it is in poetry that the elaboration of form is carried farthest.” The best elaborator of form
in this age is also the most representative figure of age: he is Dryden.
9.3.1 Dryden :
Dryden is however, not as simple a poet as he is commonly made to be by critics. While it is true that
he leads the movement towards classicism, Dryden does not reach classicism; nor does he show any express
desire to settle comfortably in the domain of classicism. He keeps shifting, evolving, moving, even looking
backward”. He is still, as it were, a reveler, hankering after the great free stretches of landscape and preserving
his independence of mind. We must, therefore believe that nature has sown the seeds of the literature of
reason and order which is characteristic of the age; the need for clarity, proportion, and rule the architectural
instinct, the gift of logic, the demand for a definite rhythm, for a symmetrical and distinct cadence. Thus he
is of his time and looks towards the age of classicism. But at the same time his poetry is characterized by the
marks of the past, impetuous flights of the imagination, the love of vigour, a taste for full melody, a weakness
for rare sudden felicities in thought or phrase. Many of the distinctive characteristic of Elizabethan poetry
and the intellectual traits of Metaphysical poetry are found in the early Dryden, and though later on Dryden
tries to curb these, these cling to his verse.
In Dry den’s early couplets one notes the efforts to bend the form to the shape of the dramatic verse
of the age of Donne. It is also marked by awkward conceits and Metaphysical wit :
Wars there no milder way than the smapllpox,
The very filthiness of Pandora’s box
Blisters with pride swelled, which things flesh did sprout,
Like rosebuds, stuck th’Illy skin about.
Each little pimple had a tear in it.
To wail the fault its rising did commit,
(On the Death of Lord Hastings, 1649)
This is writing of the Metaphysical decadence; its wit and imagery arc reminiscent of Metaphysical
poets. But as he developed, Dryden perfected the couplet. It becomes natural, simple and easy in expression.
The Metaphysical traits stayed on in his poetry, but on the whole the progress of Dryden is away from them.
A few lines from his To the Memory of Mr. Oldham (1684) will illustrate Dryden\s development of the
couplet ;
Farewell too little, and. too lately known,
Whom I began to think and call my own,
For sure our souls were near allied, and thine

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 Cast in the same poetic mould with mine
O early ripe; to the abundant store
What could advancing age have added more?
The above lines show Dryden’s freedom from the Metaphysical poets’ influence, as also his
movements towards the polished straight, pointed verse of his preference.
“They say my talent is satire,” wrote Dryden in a letter to the Karl of Abingdon. “If it be so, “he
continued.” its fruitful age and there is an extraordinary crop to gather.” These remarks lead straight to the
heart of Dryden’s verse. Satire is the key for the greatest poem of Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel (1681)
which was written at the request to Charles II to turn opinion against Shaftesbury and the whings. The poem
marks the return of Dryden to the realm of verse after his devotion to the writing of plays for more than
fifteen years. His couplets had taken most of their true shapes as early as 1660, as his piece on the ‘happy
restoration’ Astraea redux (that is, Astraea, Virgin goddess of justice, brought back) show, Annus Mirabillis
(1667), which gives a spirited account of the Great Fire and the war with the Dutch in the previous year,
shows Dryden’s increased ease with the verse form. Dryden returned in verse in 1681, after events both
political and personal drove him back to it, with result both splendid and astonishing, Political passions over
the Exclusion Bills were at their height, and Dryden appeared as the chief literary champion of the monarchy
in Asbsalom and Achitophel.
The poem is a political allegory, perhaps one of the most famous in English literature, Absalom is
the Duke of Mon-mouth the unfortunate aspirant to the throne; and Achitophel is his daring but injudicious
counselor Shaftesbury. These two are surrounded by a cluster of lesser politicians, upon each of whom
Dryden bestows a Bibical name of deadly aptness and transparency. The excellence of the poem lies mainly
in the numerous amazing force and range, rarely stooping to security, but punishing its victims with deadly
scorn. See, for example, this portrait of Shaftes bury (Achitophel) :
Of these the false achitophel was first:
A name to all succeeding ages curt;
For close designs and crooked counsels fit
Sagacious, - bold and turbulent to wit:
Restless, unfix’d in principles and place,
In pow’r unpleased, important of disgrace
A fiery soul, which working out its way,
Fretted the pirgmy body of decay.
And o’ve-informed the treatment of clay.
Here a figure simply described in moral terms is created concrete, positive enough to survive as a
character by the sheer precision of the language energy, the capability of the words. Of such satire as this
Dryden himself says not unfairly, it is not bloddy, but it is able to acknowledge the good points of its victim,
and then it treats his case as pathetic, simply because these good points are perverted in him.
In 1682 Dryden produced another political satire. The medo which called forth a report an old
friend of Dryden’s Shadwell. Dryden reacted to this retort by writing Mac Fleckone, a stinging, destructive,
personal lampoon degraded, with much coarseness and personal spite. The second part of Absalom and
Achitophel, written in 1682 mainly by Nahum Tate, contains a violent attack on Shadwell by Dryden.
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 A new poetical development is manifest in Religio laid (1682) and The Hind and the Panther
(1687). These are didactic poems, the first is a thesis in support of the English Church: the second, more
ample and more explicit, was written after Dryden’s conversion to Roman Catholicism and the accession of
James. It is an allegorical to express Dryden’s comparative reassessment of the Anglican Church ‘the panther,
sue the noblest” and relegates the Anglican Church to status of the hind, the second best. Other beasts
represent various sects “The bloody Bear, an Independent beast...,” “Among the timorous kind the Quaking
Hare....’.” “Next her the buffoon Ape...,” “The bristled Baptist boar....” However, these sects are given very
little action to perform; the poem mainly remains a disputation between the hind and the panther; enlivened
by occasional satirical characterising touches. Dryden also adapted Boceacio and Chaucer in the Fables.
They have a narrative interest.” Dryden never created in his original poems. Finally, Dryden’s lyrical poetry,
the best known of which are two poems, Songs for St. Cecillia’s Day (1687) And Alexander’s Feast (1697),
shows him as a master of melodious verse and a varied and powerful style.
A. Self Assessment Question
‘Absalom and Achitophel’ is written by?
1. Dryden 3. John Gay
2. Joseph Addison 4. Bishop Percy
9.3.2 Samuel Butler
Another important and interesting poet of the age also a great satirist and caricaturist. Samuel Butter
(1612- 1680) best illustrates the Restoration revolt against hypocrisy and its denunciation of all that Puritanism
had stood for. His masterpiece Hudibras (first part; 1663; second part 1664; third part 1678) was in harmony
with the taste of the cultivated public, the greater part of which was hostile to the memory of a defeated
Puritanism. The poem is placed in the Jays of the civil war, when people were massacring each oilier
without knowing why. Its main character is Sir Hudibras, the grotesque, hypocritical and corpulent knight of
a hot headed, quarrelsome cause (Puritanism sallying out in company with squire Ralph, who rides at his
side. The first is Presbyterian, the second an epoch when sect opposed sect in endless strife. Sprinkling their
mishaps with mutual sermons, the two cronies rule forth to court adventure; after his devotion to the writing
pursuing a showman with his bear who stirs up all the puritan anger of Hudibras, now victorious, now
defeated, cudgelled, imprisoned, liberated they pass from episode, just as it pleases the fancy of the poet, in
with some unity.
A poor imitation of Cervantes the author of Don Quixote Butler’s poem also liberally borrows from
many other European satirists. It is a mock-heroic parody and concentrated series of epigrammatic sayings,
as short as they are harsh, bitingly sarcastic. His odd, jiggling octosyllabic couplets, and maxims which have
the touch of proverbs, haunt our memory. The master of Hudibras is remarkable. It is varied and yet uniform,
and it carries the tale with an easy relish though it is sometimes almost doggerel, it has always a kind of
distinction, and each couplet in clenched with an ingenious rime that is the most amusing feature of all. Here
are a few lines from the poem conveying the, hypocrisy of Hudibras:
He was in ligic a great critic,
Profoundly skilled in analytic;
He could distinguish, and divide
A hair twixt sought and south-west side;

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 On either which he would dispute,
Confute, change hands, and still confute
He’d undertake to prove by force
Of argument a man’s no horse:
He’d prove a buzzard is no fowl,
And that a lord be an owl-
A calf, an alderman a goose, a justice-
And rooks, committee-men and trustees.
He’s run in debt by disputation,
And pay with ratiocination:
All this by syllogism, true
For rhetoric, he could not ope
His mouth but out flew a trope,
And when he happneded to break off
I ‘th’ middle of his speech, or cough,
H’had hard words, ready to show why
And tel what rules he did it by
Else, when with greastes art he spoke
You’d thing he talked like other folk;
For all a rhetorician’s rules
Teach nothing but to name his tools.
When Hudibras first appeared in public in 1663, after circulating secretly for years in manuscript, it
became at once an enormous success. It was Butler’s intention to kill puritanism by ridicule, and the intention
was shared by many, many others especially in the court. However, the portrait of Puritanism is not done
justly here; it is widely caricatured. Butler saw only the extravagance and charlatanism which were often
associated with Puritanism in the Restoration period.
John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (often called “That rake Rochester)” (1639-1791), Miss Aphra
Behn (1640-1689), Sir Charles Sedley (1639-1791), Nahum Tate (1652-1715) and Thomas Fiatman (1637-
1688) are some of the minor poets of the Restoration age.
9.4 RESTORATION COMEDY
Restoration drama looks impressive by comparison with the virtual nullity which followed it, but it
is clearly inferior, in range and depth, to the Elizabethan. The course of the deterioration of drama during the
period show the extent to which it has to function. As has already been noted, the age found it possible to
judge its own plays superior to those of the sixteenth century in such self-justifying terms that it did not
notice how much it had gone down from the heights the theatre had touched during the Elizabethan age. The
Restoration playwrights were very self-conscious, particularly about their innovations. They were very
proud of having evolved a new form of comedy which came to be called the ‘Comedy of Manners. This
comedy was evolved in response to the new social practices and values.

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 “During the forty years’ that followed the Restoration English literature, English culture was “upper
class” to an extent that is had never been before.... “Wrote L.C. knight. On the reopening of the theatres in
1660, two companies sometimes only one, sufficed for London; during the sixteenth century, London although
much smaller than in 1690, had as many as six theatres. The tendency of the drama to appeal less generally
was in line with the “upper class” complexion of the Restoration culture. In the Restoration period the
audience got much more limited and elitistic than in the Elizabethan age. The comic dramatist, on the whole,
tried to please their high audience. Leslie Stephen opined that this is a comedy “written by blackguards for
blackguards” And Dr. Johnson attacked “the wits of Charles” in the following lines :
Themselves they studied, as they felt they write;
Intrigue was plot, obscenity was wit.
Vice always found a sympathetic friend;
They aleas’d their age, and. not aim to mend.
Some comedy writers did try to mend, but sooner or later they succumbed to the pressures of the
audience which did not want to be disturbed in its self- compliances.
The new comedy grew rather slowly. For some years after 1660 comedy was restricted to revivals of
pre-common-wealth plays, but these revivals did not please the decadent licentious audience. The spirit of
the age was alien to the romantic comedy of the Elizabethans. Even so, it was from Elizabethan comedy that
restoration comedy derived. Not from Shakespeare whose romantic comedy appeared atrocious and uncouth
to the new audience, but rather from the more realistic comedy of Ben Jonson and above all from Beaumont
and Fletcher. Beaumont and Fletcher were very popular during the age and Dryden praised them in 1688:
“they understood and imitated the conversation of gentlemen much better; whose wild debaucheries, and
quickness of wit in repartee, no poet before them could paint as they have done.” It was Fletcher who had,
according to Flecknoe, introduced and popularity of Beaumont and Fletcher is significant. There works, as
one critics has pointed out, indicates the collapse of culture, and adult scheme is being broken up and
replaced by adolescent intensities. A similar criticism may be made of Restoration comedy; not only that it
is limited to the social class it portrays, but that it attitudes towards life and experience are immature,
adolescent. The preoccupation with love, the heavy stress on sex and sex battles, the common moral that
marriage is a bore and love mainly sensual, all these are typical and immature attitudes.
The amount of life felt by Restoration, dramatists was severely limited and the feeling was very
often at the level of cliches. Another criticism of Restoration comedy is that it relishes unpleasant subjects,
such as follies, vices and crimes, it lacks the amiable; ennobling or intense passions.
The range of Restoration comedy is thus severely limited. However, within its limited range, certain
situations and character types are seen sharply and amusingly. Moreover, this comedy accurately records the
social achievements and follies of that extraordinary society. Sex antagonism and physical appetite are
certainly not the soul of love, but in dealing with these the restoration dramatists use honesty and nonchalance
that is rarely equaled in other ages. Similarly, Restoration comedy overflows with wit and repartee. Indeed
the most conspicuous quality of restoration comedy is the witty exchanges of words.
Restoration comedy is full of vitality and pace, but is has not much or that exuberance which
distinguished Elizabethan comedy; instead, it has polish, elegance and intellectual control. Emotion here is
replaced by wit, poetry by a clear, concise prose, charity by cynicism. The pervading tone is satirical and the
plays show a close, pointed observation of life and manners. Plots and subplots are intricate and numerous,

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and centre mainly upon amorous intrigues, which reflect an open contempt for ordinary standard of morality,
that in Wycherely and others, often makes the form of gross sensuality. In the hands of the best and most
restrained of the dramatists. Etheredge and Congreve, the immorality still remains, but is purged of its
coarseness and offensiveness. The immorality of Restoration drama was the object of fierce Puritanical
attack, the most sensational of which was the short view of immorality and profane as of English stage
(1698) by Jeremy Collier.
Much of the vitality of Restoration comedy comes from its “gay couples.” Etherdge’s Sir Frederick
Frolick and Widow Rich in The Comical revenge (1964), Dryden’s Loveby and Constance, Calendon and
Florimel, Wildbllod and Jacintha’ in his Wild gallant (1966), Secret Love (1667) and An Evening’s Love
(1668) are some of the famous gay couples. The recent introduction of actress on the English stage contributed,
of course, to the success and popularity of these sharp encounters between the sexes. Many plays of the
period have Proviso-Scene’s in which hero and heroine bargain about the conditions under which each
might contemplate matrimony.
Dryden’s success with these scenes established them as a stereotype and they were much imitated
and parodies, the bargaining of Congreve’s Mirabel and Millament being the most brilliant of the series
Dryden’s gay couples begin from such premises as these ;
Florimel (a mind of Honour). But this marriage is such a bugbear to me. Much might be if we could
invent but and ways make it easy.
Cleadon (a Counter) Some foolish people have made it uneasy by drawing the knot faster than they
need; but we that are wiser will loosen a little.
(Secret Love, or, The Madian Queen)
The couple cover some familiar grounds for marital discord : Florimel hopes that Cleandon may
find ‘marriage as good as wenching’ if they are married, not into the damning title of ‘husband and wife,’ but
“by the more agreeable names of mistress and gallant. “This is bright and Shrewd rather than penetrating,
the premises about human nature, and about the satisfaction and frustrations of marriage are too narrow and
shallow.
9.4.1 William Congreve:
Dryden tried his hand at comedy, but he did not succeed in comedy. It is William Congreve (1670-
1729) who is greatest of the Restoration comedy-writers. His first comedy was The Old Bachelor (1693) and
this was followed by The Double Dealer (1963), Love for Love (1695), and The way of the World (1700)3n
his work the comedy of manners reaches perfection. His plays portray the artificial upper class society in all
its manner. They are also remarkable for their artificial dialogue. The tone is one of cynical vivacity, the
characters are well drawn and the prose is lucid, concise and pointed. In all things, Congreve left the stage at
the age of thirty, anti Dennis wrote in 1717, ‘Congreve quit the stage in disdain, and comedy left it with
him.”
9.4.2 William Wycherely (1640-1715)
Wrote plays only during the 1670s His four plays, Love in a Wood, the Gentleman Dancing Master,
The Country Wife and The Plain Dealer were all produced between 1671 and 1676. He was to his
contemporaries “manly”, the adjective to a boisterous indecency and licentiousness that runs through his
plays, in which nearly every person is fool, and every handling dialogue, his vision is distorted. He is too
narrow and confused in’ his apprehension of moral issues. The Country Wife displays best Wycherley’s
talents for assured characterization, incisive dialogue, and masterly handling of situations.
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 9.4.3 Sir John Vanbrugh, (164-1726)
Was fond of farce and good at caricature. His plots are better constructed titan Congreve’s. His best
plays are The Relapse (1696), The Provok’s wife (1697), and The Confederacy. His plays lack the art and
elegance of Congreve’s but they are full of energy and genial humour.
9.4.4 Georage Farquhar (1678-1707)
Did not live long, and the pathos of his early death has given him a fame of its own. He wrote seven
plays, the best of which are his last two, The Recruiting Officer (1706) and The Beaux Strategem 1707. By
the time Farquhar came to write, the cynical immorality of the age had thinned down His temper is more
genial and his tone is more decorous. In his rapidly developing humanity and his respect for moral standard
Farquhar looks forward to the drama of steel and the succeeding age. Thomas Shad well (1641-1692) is
chiefly remembered on account of Dryden’s portrait of him in ‘MacFlecknoe.’ He wrote many plays which
were immensely popular.
The best of these were The Sullen Lovers (1689). Shadwell was not following the trend of ‘manner’
and imitates Joerson’s comedy of humours. His plays are generally course, but at times they display real wit.
Perhaps better than anyone else, he reflects everyday life of his time, and he has a keen satirical sense.
The best period of Restoration drama was brief. “The plays which followed, though informed with
higher moral intentions, were dull, unlifelike, fundamentally insincere. “Byron was right when he regretted
the absence of a Congreve and a Vanbrugh in his own times. The strengths and limitations of Restoration
comedy were both determined by the particular social and political situation in which it was written. No
equally adequate dramatic form was discovered when wit was replaced, first by sense and then by sensibility
and sentimentalism.
9.5 RESTORATION HEROIC TRAGEDY
It has already been remarked that Restoration comedy was supported by same distinct social forces
and conventions. No such forces and conventions supported the tragedy of the period very little of it survives
today. To begin with, Restoration tragedy was mainly rhymed and heroic, though towards the 1680s the
heroic couplet came under increasing pressure and was eventually replaced by Blank Verse. Sir William
Daveant introduced heroic tragedy and Dryden popularized it. According to Dryden, ‘an heroic play ought
to be an imitation (in little) of the heroic poem, and consequently that love and valour ought to be the subject
of it, “An impossibly idealistic love, in conflict with a strenuously proclaimed honour, led to exaggerated
emotions and to stock characters who were psychologically unconvincing and used bombastic rhetoric on
all occasion. The form was much influenced by the contemporary French prose romances. Another influence
was the romantic drama of Beaumont and Fletcher, Marston and Ford, was also used in scenes of blood and
crime. Sage scatting were lavish is the extreme. And though the heroic couplet was replaced by blank verse,
the heroic motive remained. It is also the period of numerous adaptations from the Elizabethan dramatists,
and especially from Shakespeare. The most notorious of such adaptations was Nahum Tate’s version of
King Lear in which he provided a happy ending to the tragedy.
Dryden is the most important tragedy writer of the age. His tragedies fall into two main groups. The
first is the heroic play which he greatly popularized. The chief features here are the choice of a great heroic
figures for the central character, a succession of sage incidents of an exalted kind, which often appear
ridiculous rather than solemn; a loud, declamatory style; and the rhymed couplet. In fact, it was in the heroic
play that the couplet book possession of the stage. The couplet succeeds in these plays in conferring something
of ceremony, an invitation to elocution, to declamation, which suggests a certain grandeur. The plays are not
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endowed any with sufficient quality of feelings and imagination, and their poetry is negligible even in those
passages where the subject happens to be poetic Dryden’s The Royal Ladies (1663) is a hybrid between the
comic and heroic species of play ; The Indian Emperor (1665), Tyrannick Love (1669). The Conquest of
Granade (in two parts. 1669. 1670) and ‘Aurengzeb’ (1675) show the heroic kind at its best and worst.
Though Dryden is heavily weighted with the ponderous mechanism of the heroic play, his gigantic literary
strength is often able to give it an attraction and a kind of heavy-footed animation.
The appeal of the heroic drama did not last long and a reaction towards other forms set in. Already
in Aurengzebe Dryden admits his weariness with rhyme and heroic mannerisms. In the prologue to this play
he admits that he
Grows weary of his long loved mistress, Rime
Passion’s too fierce to he in fetters found
Ane nature flies him like enchanted ground,
Dryden’s next play, AU for Love or The World Well Lost (1678), is in blank verse and is considered
to be his dramatic masterpiece. For subject he reverted to Shakespeare’s ‘Antony and Cleopatra’. It was a
daring thing to attempt what Shakespeare had already done, but Dryden did not copy it. He produced a play
of a distinctly different kind, and of high merit. The neo-classic unities of time and place are closely observed.
But apparently All for Love nowhere comes near the heights and sublimity of Antony and Cleopatra.
A few other tragedians also deserve a brief mention. Thomas Otway (1651-1685) began his career
in the typical heroic strain of the age and his Don Carlos (1676) is fairly representative of the type. His
reputation rests on two plays. The Orpha (1680) and Venice Preserd’s (1682) In ‘The Orphan Otway’ struck
a deep note of pathos and avoided too much reliance on heroics and rant. Venice Preserved his finest work,
has a rugged and sombre force, and reveals considerable skill in working out a dramatic situation. The play
has been often revived. Nathaniel Lee (1653 (?) 1692), who collaborated with Dryden in the production of
two plays, wrote many tragedies, the best known of which are The Rival Queens (1677) and Mithridente
(1678). His style is raving, wild perhaps a product of his madness. But at times he can write well and have
a command of pathos. Nicholas Rowe (1674-1718) was made poet laureate in 1715. His best known plays
are Tamerlane (1702), The fair Penitent (1703), and the popular Lave Shore (1714). Dr. Johnson says of
Rowe, ‘His reputation comes from the reasonableness of some of his scenes, the elegance of his diction, and
the suavity of his verse.”
9.6 RESTORATION PROSE
Dryden’s place among the prose writers of the Restoration period is very high indeed. They greatly
contributed to the development of a direct, serviceable prose style such as we still cultivate. He had a very
marked influence on English literature in shortening his sentences, and especially in writing naturally, without
depending on literary ornamentation to give effect to what he is saying. Compared with Milton or Browne or
Jeremy Taylor, Dryden cares less for style but takes more pains to state his thought clearly and concisely.
The classical prose writers looked to Dryden as leader, and to him we owe largely that tendency to exactness
of expression which marks modern writings. With the prose Dryden developed his critical ability and became
the foremost literary critic of his age. His critical writing was generally in the form of prefaces of introductions
to his poetry. The best of it is found in the preface to the fables, “of Heroic plays,’’ “Discourse on Satire,”
and especially the “Essay of Dramatic Poesy” (1668) which attempt to lay foundation for all literary criticism.
In his discussions of drama, heroic poetry, translation, satire, and other topics Dryden shows keen interest in
issues relevant to literary principles, techniques, examples, and the clearness of his exposition, the vivacity
of his style, under enjoyable discussions on matters of otherwise little interest today. Dr. Johnson called
Dryden the father of English criticism.
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 9.6.1 Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) does not strictly belong to English literature. His famous book,
Leviathan or The Matter, Form, and Power of Common wealth (1651) is partly philosophical, and combined
two central ideas which both startle and shock us. The first is that self-interest is the only guiding power of
humanity, and the second is that blind submission to rulers is the only basis of government. Hobbes agrees
that all power originates in the people and destroys any democratic interpretation of his doctrine by further
maintaining that the power given to the ruler by people could never be taken away. Hence the Royalists
could use the book to justify the despotism of the Stuarts on the ground that the people have chosen them. As
a reflection of the underlying spirit of Charles and his followers, Leviathan has no equal in any purely
literary work of the age.
John Locke (1632-1704) is famous as the author of a single great philosophical work, The Essay
Concerning Human Understanding (1690). This is study of the human mind and of the origin of ideas,
which Bacon and Hobbes, is the basis upon which English Philosophy has since been built, Locke’s Treatises
on Government has since been built, Ixicke’s Treatises on Government has a definite democratic bias, and
the framers of the American Declaration of Independence and of the American constitution drew ideas from
it. Locks’s work are models of the new prose, direct,simple, convincing for which Drydcn and the Royal
society laboured.
B. Self Assessment Question
‘Essay concerning human understanding’ is written by?
1. John Locke 3. Dryden
2. John gay 4. Bishop Percy
9.6.3 John Evelyn (1620-1706) and Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) are famous as the writers of diaries
in which they jotted down the daily occurrences of their own lives, without any thought that the world would
see and be interested in them. Evelyn’s diary is now read as record of contemporary events as seen from the
point of view of a loyal, truthful, and high-minded Royalist, it is written in a grave, simple style. It gives us
vivid pictures of its time, and especially of the frightful corruption of the royal court. Pepy’s Diary is a very
intimate, very personal document. It is also one of the most entertaining of books, and the most extraordinary
thing of its kind in any literature. It opens on January, 1660 and continues until 31 May 1669, when his
failing eyesight led him to abandon writing at night. Written in cipher, which was decoded only in 1819, it
was intended for no eyes but his own and is the most intimate revelation of a life which is known to us. There
is no reference, and there are innumerable minute details of great personal and historical intersect. It reveals
pepys as a man of the word. Keenly interested in his material advancement as a real lover of music and the
theatre; above all, it shows him as intensely human with many endearing human qualities and many equally
human failings—vanity, ill-temper, a fondness for fine clothes, good food and attractive women—a man
constantly avowing to amend his ways and constantly failing to change. It also includes many noteworthy
occurrences; the Restoration, the Great Plagye; and the Great Lire. As a revelation of character from the
inside the Diary is unique.
9.6.4 John Bunyan (1628-1688) is the only great imaginative prose writer of this unimaginative
age. He wrote much, and his ‘Grace Abounding’ (1660), The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) and ’The Life and
Death of Mr. Bradman ’ (1680) are still very famous. The best known of these is, of course, ‘The Pilgrim’s
Progress’, a long prose allegory full of symbolism and of absorbing interest for all human beings. He combines
vividness and plainness in his style which is directly derived from the authorised version of the English

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Bible. The Pilgrim ’s Progress, like the rest of Bunyan’s work represents the under layer of the Restoration
spirit, and is in line with Elizabethan allegories and especially Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ Bunyan was a pure
Puritan and his allegory is a purer statement of Puritanism than even Paradise Lost.
The Pilgrims progress is an allegory, but it also reads well as a novel because of the amount of felt
and observed reality that it contains. Bunyan was a transcendent genius, the first to appear in English prose
fiction of any kind and his work is as original as anything in literature can be. Its influence like The Bible’s
is incalculable. One can safely say that if it had not been written the English people would love be different
from what they are. It also has a standard in story-telling, vivid characterization, and natural, homely dialogue
which have influenced many later prose writers especially novelists. An allegory of the Christian in search
of salvation, The Pilgrim’s Progress is not very different in form the conventional Picturesque novel. And
yet it is a work that already fulfils Smolett’s definition of a novel as a “large, diffused picture, comprehending
the characters of life, disposed in different groups and exhibited the characters of life, disposed in different
groups and exhibited in various attitudes, for the purpose of uniform plan.” To the making of ‘The Pilgrim’s
Progress’ went a lifetime of passionate observation of men and women, Similar observations and accuracy
in dialogue are found in Bunyan’s The Life and death of Mr. Badrnan.
Among other prose writers of the age, the names of Lord Halifax (1633-1695), Sir William Temple
(1628-1699), and John Tillotson (1630-1694) are worth mentioning here. The fame of Lord Halifax rests
mainly on a small volume called ‘Miscellanies’ which contains a number of political tracts. In his writings
Halmiax adopts the manner and attitude of the typical man of the world: a moderation of statement, a cool
and agreeably acid humour, a style devoid of flourishes. Sir William Temple wrote little and elegantly; he
patronized authors of lesser fortune and greater genius. He is chiefly known for his relations with Jonathan
Swift who, in 1700 and 1905 published Temple’s Lectures. His style resembles that of Halifax in its mundane
cultured reticence; but at times he has higher flights in which he shows some skill in the handing of melodious
and rhythmic prose. Tilloston was one of the popular preachers of time, and his Sermons are mentioned by
Addison as being standard work of its class. He is literary descendant of the great school of Jeremy Taylor
and Thomas Puller; but his style lacks their richness and melody, though it gains in clearness and crispness.
C. Self Assessment Question
‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’ by John Bunyan is a?
1. Moral Allegory 2. Religious allegory
3. Morality Play 4. Miracle Play
9.7 CONCLUSION
To conclude this discussion, it may be said that Restoration literature remains important as the
literature of transition. Its reaction against the Elizabethan and Puritanical ages was strong; but it gradually
came to realize the folly of that negative approach. The puritanical spirit was kept alive by Bunyan, and the
Elizabethan forms and influence began to be acknowledged after the 1680s. The Restoration age is also
important for its attempts to perfect the heroic couplet and adopt realism as the main mode. However, it is in
its stabilizing of English prose, under the inspiration of France and the Royal society, that this age made its
greatest contribution to English literature.
Note: The present writer has drawn liberally from the following books; 1. William J. Long. English
Literature: Its History and its Significance for the Life of the English-Speaking World (1964 edition). 2.
Emile Legous and Louis Cazamain, A History of English Literature; 3. Edward Albert, History of English

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Literature, (1979 edition). 4. The Pelican Guide to English Literature, Vol. 5. Edited by Boris Ford, W.H.
Hudson, An Outline History of English Literature, 6. Sir I for Evans, A short History of English Literature,
and. 7. Walter Allen, The English Novel.
9.8 SUMMING - UP
The restoration poetry was most satirical, realistic and written in heroic couplet: of which Dryden
was the supreme master. He was a dominating figure of the Restoration Age. He wrote poetry prose and also
dramas. For this reason. Restoration Age is also called “Age of Dryden”. The two lasting contributions of
the Restoration period in English literature are realism and preciseness. Writers focused on creating a vivid
and realistic representation of the corruption they saw in their society. English writers tried to create a style
that most resembled the way that people actually spoke and wrote.
9.9 GLOSSARY
a. Reminiscent- Suggestive of an earlier event or times
b. Astonishment- Amazement, great surprise
c. Hostile- Not friendly, appropriate to an enemy; showing the disposition of an enemy
d. Profaneness - Unclean; unholy; ritually impure
9.10 QUESTIONS
1. Describe Restoration poetry with suitable examples.
2. Trace the development of the heroic tragedy in the Restoration period with reference to Dryden’s
work “All for Love”.
9.11 SELF ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS’ ANSWERS
A (1), B (l), C (2)
9.12 SUGGESTED READING
1. English Literature 3rd edition by Andrew Sanders.
2. History of English Literature by William J. Long.

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 LESSON-10
CLASSICISM: THE CLASSICAL SCHOOL OF POETRY

STRUCTURE
10.1 Introduction
10.2 Learning Objectives
10.3 English Rule
10.4 Classical Period
10.5 Poetry
10.5.1 Alexander Pope
A. Self-Assessment Question
10.5.2 Mathew Prior
10.5.3 Sir Samuel Garth
10.5.4 Edward Young
B. Self-Assessment Question
10.6 Summing - Up
10.7 Glossary
10.8 Questions
10.9 Self-Assessment Question's Answers
10.10 Suggested Readings
10.1 INTRODUCTION
The term “Classicism” is used here according to the usual convention to denote a period of literature
with a more or less uniform character of its own. The writers of this period believed themselves to have
achieved the classical virtues of form and style in a degree beyond their predecessors, and they were inclined
to believe that they understood the classical authors better Seeing that every generation since the Renaissance
has believed that it best understood the classics, the eighteenth century need not be blamed for sharing that
opinion, while the other part of their claim that they reproduced the special qualities of classical style in a
superior manner has in it considerable truth, though less than supposed.
Actually speaking literature of every country has at least one period in which an unusual number of
great writers are producing books and that is called the classic period of a nation’s literature. Thus, the reign
of Augustus is the classic or golden age of Rome: the generation of Dante is the classic age of Italian
literature; the age of Louis XIV is the French Classic age and the age of Queen Anne is often called the
classic age of England.
As the conflicts and enthusiasms of the mid-seventeenth century receded into the past, and English
society and culture settled down into a period of relative stability until political revolution in France and
industrial revolution at home helped to produce another era of more rapid change and more violent conflict
of ideas, it becomes possible to distinguish that view of life and letters which those who held it, liked to
consider “Augustan” Hence the period we have before us for studying is known to us by various names. It is
often called the Age of Queen Anne, but the Augustan or Classic Age are more popular names to denote the
period (1702 to 1770) to eighteenth century literature.
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 The word “classic” will be better understood with reference to the study of preceding ages. The
Elizabe-than writers were led by patriotism, enthusiasm and, in general, by romantic emotions. They wrote
natural!’ and had a regard for rules. In the following age patriotism had largely disappeared, from politics
and enthusi-asm from literature. Poets were artificial with strange and fantastic verse forms to give effect,
since fine feeling were wanting in them. And that sums up the general character of the Puritan age. Gradually,
our writers rebelled against the exaggerations of both the natural and fantastic style. They were influenced
by French writers who professed to have discovered those exact rules in the classics of Horace and Aristotle
and hence justify the name of the Classical Age to their era. The general tendency of literature was to look
at life critically, to emphasize intellect rather than imagination, the form rather than the content of a sentence.
Writers strove to repress all emotion and enthusiasm. Appeal wars normally sought to what was variously
called Reason. Nature or Common sense. Polish and elegance of form were of more importance than subtlety
or originality of thought.
10.2 LEARNING OBJECTIVES
The objective of this lesson is to give you idea about classicism. We will also get to know about
major poets of this era, for example Alexander Pope, Jonarthan Swift, Mathew Prior. Samuel Garth, Edward
Young etc.
10.3 ENGLISH RULE
The early eighteenth century shows a continuation of the social and literary forces seen in the
Restoration. The revolution of 1688, which banished the last of the Stuart kings and called William of
Orange to the throne, marks the end of the long struggle for political freedom in England. The free Englishman
had now more energy to improve his government. In order to bring about reforms, votes were now necessary
and to get votes the people of England were to be approached with ideas, facts, arguments, and information.
So the newspaper was born. Literature in its widest sense, including the book, the newspaper and the magazine
became the chief instrument of a nation’s progress. The social development in England was accelerated with
the birth of nearly two thousand public coffee-houses, each a centre of sociability, and almost a equal
number of private clubs. The new social life also had a marked effect in polishing and refining man’s words
and manners in every sphere of activities.
10.4 CLASSICAL PERIOD
In the broadest sense of the term the “Classical Period” comes after the Restoration and extends as
far as the decisive advent of Romanticism. Classicism was fostered and encouraged by the political needs of
the age, but even then the change might have been more gradual, less decisive, had it not been for the fact,
that a brilliant set of writers had arisen in France, actuated by classical methods, who exercised profound
influence upon the literature of Europe. The influence upon England was especially marked. The new spirit
was all critical and analytical, not creative and sympathetic, bringing the intellect rather than the poetic
imagination into play.
Clearness, conciseness and concentration were the key words of this particular kind of literature.
The object of the leading writers to the time was to avoid extravagance and emotionalism. Devoid of
emotionalism, the poetry of the age had to fall back on the epigram. Drifting away from the poetry of passion
was more pronounced than ever, the ideals of ‘wit’ and ‘common sense’ were more enthusiastically pursued
and lyrical note was almost unheard. There was only one form of verse the closed heroic couplet. The
tradition of didactic poetry and of brilliant topical satire also continued. The poetry was essentially ‘gentell’
that is urbane or polished, reflecting the taste and manners of the artificial ‘town’ society.
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 However, the greatest achievements of this era were in the realm of prose. The graceful elegance of
Addison’s essays, the terse vigour of Swift’s satires, the artistic finish of Fielding’s oration-these have no
parallel in the history of literature. Hence we shall not be wrong in saying that the most important contributions
of the eighteenth century proper are the Essay and the Novel.
In prose the outstanding feature is the emergence of the middle style. The chief exponent of this
style is Addison, of whom Johnson says. “His prose is the model of the middle style pure Swift reveals the
style at its best-sure, clean and strong. Another tendency prevalent in the classical age was that of satire.
There had been a good deal of satire composed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but it had not
attained a steady level of excellence. One reason was undoubtedly this, that it was composed under the
impression that satire ought to be rugged, if not with literature. Nearly every writer of the first half of the
century was used and rewarded by Whighs or Tories for satirizing their enemies and for advancing their
special political interest. Pope was marked exception, but he nevertheless followed the prose writers in
using satire too largely for gratifying his personal feelings of revenge and ill-will. The eighteenth century
excelled not only in satire as in Mac Flecknoe and The Dunciad. But it may be founding The Rape of the
Lock. If I were asked why the English eighteenth century did so much better in mock-epic than in the epic
itself, which it nevertheless kept attempting with equal industry and ill success, the answer might suggest
itself that this was just because the century was thoroughly English at heart and in secret rebellion against
the Latin influence. But it must be remembered that in general people parody what they like rather than what
they dislike. The mock-heroic is the tribute that satire pays to the heroic.
So far we have discussed classicism in general and the literary characteristics of this movement in a
nut-shell.
10.5 POETRY
The greatest poet of the period, the direct continuator of the tradition of Dryden and the most
brilliant man of letters of the early part of the century was Alexander Pope (1788-1744). Being the son of
Catholic parents, he was not allowed to enter into public service as it was the prevailing law that Catholics
be kept away from the ordinary career of an Englishman in Parliament, the Church or the army. As a result
of an author who was entirely a man of letters, the events of his life are altogether literary events. He began
his career early. His Pastorals, written when he was only seventeen, were published in 1709. These were the
limitations of Virgil adopted to modern life and English soil with great skill.
10.5.1 Alexander Pope
Never before was the language of poetry more liquid and its measure more even and smooth. The
Es-say on Criticism, two years later, attracted Addison’s notice, and Pope’s other early poems, Windsor
Forest, Elotsa to A Berlard and above all The Rape of the Lock, of which the first draft appeared in 1712,
added to his reputation. Now he set about his ambitious scheme of translating the Iliad which was completed
in 1720. Although it is a brilliant poem, fast moving and full of eloquent speeches as a translation it is faulty,
for Pope had no sound knowledge of Greek. The name of Pope’s Iliad, which was financially the most
successful of his books, was due to the fact that he interpreted Homer in the elegant artificial language of his
own age. The Iliad was followed by the Odyssey in 1725 and 1726. trans-lated with the aid of two classical
scholars, Felton and Broome. Both works were very successful, and made Pope a wealthy man, but brought
upon him jealousy and criticism which eventually led to many quarrels. Still more criticism was evoked by
his edition of Shakespeare, published in 1725. This was a task for which he lacked the necessary Elizabethan
scholarship, but he prefaced the work with a fine appreciation. As revenge for the attacks he had received
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earlier, he published in 1728, a great satire entitled. The Dunciad indeed a coarse and revengeful satire upon
all the literary men of the age. Who had aroused Pope’s anger by their criticism or lack of appreciation of his
genius. The Dunciad is undoubtedly clear and brilliant in its biting abuse and was immensely popular but at
the same time it arouses pity that Pope should have stooped so low as to use his talents for the gratification
of personal spite. An Episile to Dr. Arbuthnot (1735), was the prologue to the satires. He presents himself as
a man of peace goaded into satire by the intolerable behaviors of fools and knaves. It contains Pope’s
revenge for Addison’s support of a rival translation of Homer, the biting lines n which Addison is described
as Atticus. Here, as in the least of all personal satire, the individual Addison becomes the stimulus for moral
indignation of universal significance, for though Addison may or many not have been an envious, coldhearted
critic, there are always such in the world, and hence the satire has a certain universal validity.
The Rope of the Lock is a mock-heroic poem which satirises fashionable society of the eighteenth
century. Around the trivial incident of rude behaviour of Lord Petre in cutting a lock from the head of a
beautiful maid named Arabella Fermor, Pope wove an elaborate story cast in the epic form, it is a witty
parody of the heroic style with shafts of humour and good-natured satire. Mannerisms of society are pictured
in minutest detail and satirized with the most delicate wit.
The Essay on Criticism, published in 1741, also written in polished heroic couplets sums up the art
of poetry as taught first by Horace, then by Bileau and the, eighteenth century classicists. This can hardly be
con-sidered a poem but rather a storehouse of critical maxims : “For fools rush in where Angels fear to
tread,” “To err is human, to forgive divine,” “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” these lines and many
more like them from the same source are used in our everyday usage.
The Essay on Man in which he discusses man’s place in the universe is the best known and the most
quoted of all Pope’s work. Like Milton’s Paradise lost, its object is, “to vindicate the ways of God to Man,”
to show that the scheme of the universe is perfect, that God’s providence is wise and just, that it is our
limited vision which prevents our seeing this perfection, to show in effect that “Whatever is right.” Its
excellence lies in its aphoristic verse. It abounds in quotable lines such as the following :
Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never is but always to be lest.
Know them they self, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of Mankind is man.
Behold the child, by nature’s kindly law.
Pleased with a rattle, Hicked with a straw
Some livelier playing gives his youth delight
A little louder, but as empty quite;
Sc rafts, garters, gold amuse his riper stage,
And beads and prayer books are the toys of age;
Preased with this bauble stills, as that before;
Till tired he sleeps, and Life’s poor play is O’er.
The Essay on Man is a marvelous crystallization of the fluid popular thinking of his day;
Pope’s claim to the first place among the poets of his time cannot be gainsaid, but true place among
the poets of all time has been a matter of dispute. Certain qualities which we expect to find in poetry are
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necessarily absent in Pope. He rarely dips below the surface and when he does so he is not at his best. His
style is almost wholly restricted to the heroic couplet. He is almost, devoid of the lyrical faculty and the
higher artistic emotions. The poet’s aim was not at all self-expression, he strove to utter “what oft was
thought, but never so well expressed.” In other words he avoided obscure drive emotions and all highly
particular personal experience. He valued the universal which unfortunately are likely to be treated as
commonplace with lack of subtlety and poignancy.
The three poems in which Pope is emphatically the spokesman of his age are The Rape of the Lock,
picturing its frivolities; The Dunciad, unveiling its squalor; The Essay on Man, echoing its philosophy. Of
his work as a whole it may be said that he was the master of literary mosaic. One of his earliest friends and
critics. William Walsh, pointed out to him that “though we had several great poets, we never had any one
great poet that was correct.” Correctness, accordingly, Pope made his aim from the very beginning. Correctness
requires patience and genius for taking pains which Pope had in abundance. Nor did he sacrifice to mere
exactness of metre and rhyme the other virtues of couplet, verse, compression, epigrammatic force and
brilliancy of diction.
Among minor verse writers of the age are John Gay, couplet and resembling Pope’s Pastorals. The
Shepard’s Week Whol d’ye Call it and mock-heroic poems The Fan and Trivia. His fame in his own day
rested perhaps chiefly upon ‘The Beggars Opera’ (1728), another burlesque centring about the adventures of
Captain Machealth, a fascinating highway man. Gay filled his opera with bright lyrics set to popular aris,
and his dialogue and situations gave a brilliantly vivid picture of the London underworld of politics and high
society; the immoralities and treacheries of highwaymen, crooks and trollops. John Gay was a good natured
likeable man whose bent of mind was toward broad genial humor rather than bitter satire. Indeed, gay is now
remembered chiefly for his lyrical gift, which produced the two famous songs, “was when the seas were
roaring” and “Black-eyed Susan.”
A. Self Assessment Question
Who is the poet of the poem “Rape of the Lock”
1. Alexander Pope 3. Edward Young
2. Mathew Prior 4. Samuel Garth
10.5.2 Mathew Prior (1644-1712)
From the very beginning of his writing career was engaged on behalf of the Tories, from whom he
received valuable appointments. His first long work is The Hind and The Panther Transvers’d to the story of
the Country and the City Mouse (1687). Other longer works are Alma; or the Progress of the Mind (1718)
and Solomon, on the Vanity of the World. Prior’s chief distinction lies in his miscellaneous verse, which is
varied, bulky and of high quality. He was witty and full of graceful humour. The naturalness of his style
Coupled with epigrammatic archers of phrase gives to his seeming trivialities a charm not equaled in any
other writer of light verse. Some of the best of this shorter pieces are The Chameleon, The Thief and The
Cordelier, and number of poems To Chole where Prior manages to balance elegance and familiarity as he
does in his best poem. He speaks for his age in a rather special way for that balance represented exactly what
the Augustan writer’s sought to be both politic and easy was their ideal.
10.5.3 Sir Samuel Garth (1661-1719)
The physician published The Dispensary in 1699, an amusing description of a doctor’s quarrel,
written in the versification of Dryden. This was the only important work of Samuel Garth. It was written in
a kind of heroic couplet which was the link in style between Dryden and Pope.
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 10.5.4 Edward Young (1683-1765)
Edward Young was born in Hampshire, went to Oxford and produced a large amount of literary
work of variable quality. His chief works include The Last Day (1714) and The Force of Religion (1714)
which were in tune with the age moralizing written in heroic couplet. The Love of Fame, The Complaint,
Death and Immortality were also popular in his days. He is remembered principally by his still famous but
little read Night Thoughts written in blank verse.
Summing up we can say that the poetry of the Augustan age worked within relatively narrow limits.
It was a civilized activity, and civilization demanded a certain kind of perspective in looking at things; a
certain polish and elegance and consciousness of good society, wit, restraint, good taste and the subordination
of personnel idiosyncrasy to a social norm. The heroic couplet obviously was the standard and the only vest
technique partly because it was the best form for conveying that combination of elegance and wit, of case
and polish, which the age demanded, but also because it lent itself to the utterance of “What oft was thought
but ne’er so well expressed” and encouraged a nice balance between individual insight and the rhetoric of
social belief.
B. Self Assessment Question
Who wrote the poem titled “Night Thoughts”
1. Mathew Prior 3. Alexander Pope
2. Edward Young 4. Samuel Garth
10.6 SUMMARY
Classicism, in arts, refers generally to a high regard for a classical period, classical antiquity in the
western tradition, as setting standards for taste which the classicists seek to emulate.
The art of classicism typically seeks to be formal and restrained. Sir Kenneth Clark observes, “if we
object to his restraint and compression, we are simply objecting to the classicism of classic art. A violent
emphasis or a sudden acceleration of rhythmic movement would have destroyed those qualities of balance
and completeness through which it retained until the present century its position of authority in the restricted
repertoire of visual image.”
10.7 GLOSSARY
a. Gratify- To Please, to make content; to satisfy
b. Wit- Sanity, the sense
c. Frivolity- Act of being silly
d. Envious- Careful, cautious
10.8 QUESTIONS
1. What is classicism in English literature?
2. What is the difference between classicism and Neoclassicism?
3. What is classicism in Renaissance?
10.9 SELF ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS’ ANSWERS
A (l), B (2)
10.10 SUGGESTED READINGS
1. History of English Literature (fifth edition) by Edward Albert.
2. A Critical History of English Literature by David Daiches.
*****
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 LESSON-11
CLASSICISM: ITS SURVIVAL

STRUCTURE
11.1 Introduction
11.2 Learning Objectives
11.3 Satire
11.3.1 Jonathan Swift
11.3.2 Addison
11.3.3 Richard Steele
11.3.4 Daniel Defoe
A. Self-Assessment Question
11.3.5 Samuel Richardson
B. Self-Assessment Question
11.3.6 Henry Fielding
11.3.7 Lawrence Sterne
11.3.8 Oliver Goldsmith
C. Self-Assessment Question
11.4 Summing - Up
11.5 Glossary
11.6 Questions
11.7 Self-Assessment Question's Answers
11.8 Suggested Readings
11.1 INTRODUCTION
An age like an individual often values itself most on what is not its strongest point. Classicism,
while it breasted of ‘reforming our number’, was far more successful in reforming our prose. The essay and
the novel are the two chief gifts of the eighteenth century. The age of Queen Anne is especially notable for
its prose writing, for it saw the establishment of the periodical essay by Addison and Steels, and the beginning
of prose fiction, not of the novel proper, in the works of Defoe and Swift.
Lucidity had never been absent from English prose, as the language of The Bible shows, but the
ambitions writers, especially of the early seventeenth century had aimed not at lucidity but at grandeur. But
gradually the spirit of enquiry extended beyond science, plain, unaffected, natural way of writing. If it did
not have many Latin words and constructions it had in a higher degree the classical virtues of definition and
lucidity.
11.2 LEARNING OBJECTIVES
The objective of this lesson is to provide an idea of the social, cultural and political background of
the period. We will discuss classicism and dominance of satire, works and life of Alexander Pope, Jonathan
swift, Addison. Richard Steele, their pamphlets and novelist like Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, Henry
Fielding and Lawrence Sterne etc.

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11.3 SATIRE
The spirit of satire is present in the prose as it was in the poetry of classical age. The rational
criticism of manners is also being diffused into manifold literary expressions of prose, of novel, of letters
and memories and sermons pamphlets.
11.3.1 Jonathan Swift
When Steel and Addison wrote for their audi-ences, determined not to offend them, Jonathan Swift
(1667-1745) wrote, without regard for any man, the vision of life as he saw it. Born in Ireland of English
parents Swift was posthumous child. After an Irish upbringing, he was admitted to the household of Sir
William Temple. In his company Swift began his literary career in 1700 with the publication of The Battle of
the Books and A Tale of a Tub, which satrized corruption in literature and learning with an effect which
startled every reader The Battle of the Books was a contribution to the controversy which Temple was
carrying on the great scholar Bentley as to comparative merits of ancient and modem writers. The interest of
this work lies entirely in the flashes satirical fancy with which he lights up his subject. With its mock-epic
theme. The Battle of the Books is worth-reading mock for its amusing dialogue of the been and the spider.
The inconclusive finish to battle is a good touch.
At the same time, he also wrote a satire on the division of Christianly, called A Tale of Tub- Peter,
Martin and Jack, allegorically stand for Roman Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans. Swift claimed that the
book was written for “the universal improvement of mankind” and that it satirized not religion but the abuse
of religion. It was earlier directed against the foibles of humanity as a whole-foible which reappear in each
new age under various guises.
Swift has often been presented as a diseased misanthropist, who saw his fellow men as the Yehoos
of the fourth book of Gulliver’s Travels (1726-1727). It deals with imaginary voyages among the pigmies,
the: giants, the moon-struck philosophers and the race of horses with their human serfs the Yahoos. Swift
magnifies man into a giant, and insolent throughout the different volumes.
A quite different side of swift is revealed in his Journal to Stella, letters written daily between 1710
to 1713, to Esther Johnson, illegitimate daughter of Sir William Temple. Swift’s precise relations with Stella
are still argued about by his biographers; they may have been secretly married; but there is doubt of their
mutual love and of the fact that Stella’s death in 1718 left Swift a broken man. The letters give the most
intimate details of political discussions and intrigues of the periods they are sometimes tender and whimsical
and sometimes embarrassingly sentimental. Sometimes one feels that Swift had an impossible idealistic
view of the world and he found that his own experience of men did not bear this out he reversed his original
view with savage masochism.
In an essay with its unpromising title of A Letter to a Young Clergyman he speaks up for English
language and defines the virtues of good writing, and unlike some, advisers he practiced what he preached.
In the same essay he says, “Proper words in proper places make the true definition of a style.” This is
undoubtedly one of the most profound statements ever made about prose or, indeed about writing in general.
Swift’s poetry has a dry ironic force of its own a quality more admired today than it was in earlier
periods. He can he humorous and intimate, as in his poems on Stella’s birthday.’ But he is most impressive
in his strong ironic octosyllabic couplets, notably in “The Beast Confession” and “verses on the Death of
Dr. Swift, “both dating from the early 1730s.

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 That Swift is master of irony, a political pamphleteer of genius a wounded moralist who never
forgave the world for not being what its optimistic philosophers said it was ‘possessor of an imagination
both brilliant and bitter and of a narrative and expository style characterized by clarity, cogency an eloquent
manner is undeniable.
He covered all aspects of life in his writing; religion social, institutions, politics, education, philosophy
and literature. His satire was reformist and instead of the pulpit, he chose the pen to express his views on the
deviation of mankind, in general, from ideal standards.
No character in English letters is better known or more generally admired than Addison. His
temperament and his life reflect a happy balance, undisturbed by any accidents or doubts, The power of
attracting is largely due to a certain classic quality which showed itself in his literary ideals in his pure
regular style, in his just appreciation of his life as in his writing what he did was well done.
11.3.2 Addison
Addison wrote hymen and secular verse and was a popular member of kit-cat club, but his best
contribution of letters arose from the outlook of a scholar and traveler, the good sense, charm and moderation
which he brought to journalism, especially by contributions he made in the two periodicals. The Toiler and
The Spectato.
The Taller was stalled by Sir Richard Steele in 1709. Addison was Steele’s assistant and contributed
42 of the total of 271 papers Although The Taller appealed to the public without distinction of party, it was
coloured by Steel’s Whig views Accordingly, when the author wished to avoid politics altogether, they
abandoned The Taller replacing it by The Spectator (1711 in which Addison was the senior partner and
produced 274 papers to Steele’s 240. The Spectator covered everything necessary for a proper social education
from what kind of hats ladies should wear to how to appreciate Milton. Most of Addison’s essays are more
or less of uniform length, of almost untying excellence of style, and of a wide diversity of subject many of
them are directed against the coarser vices of the timer, against gambling, drinking, swearing, indecency of
conversation, cruelty, practical joking, dwelling other attack the triviality of life, special follies and foibles
of dress, of manners or of, thought; others, the lack of order and comfort in the life of the community. He
also gave importance to the literary cultivation of his readers as shown by a series of papers of criticism on
Milton. Johnson considered his prose “the model of the middle style.” and concluded that “whoever wishes
to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and
nights to the volumes of Addison.”
Addison also wrote poems which were very popular in his day. The Campaign, written in 1704,
gave him the reputation of being one of the major poets of the age. His “Cato”, “Rosamond” and The
Drummer were dramas which met with fair success. Neither he nor Stelle had the dramatic gift. But together
they set their mark upon eighteenth century prose, helping to raise the standard of manners and elegance in
life and letters.
11.3.3 Richard Steels (1627-1729)
Richard Steels was in almost every respect the antithesis of his friend and fellow workers a genius,
impulsive, good natured, emotional lovable Irishman. Steele’s life was a miscellaneous one, filled with all
sorts of ventures, literary, political and commercial. He left Oxford without his degree to enlist as a soldier.
He gave up the army in order to become an active pamphleteer and journalist in the interest of the Whigs, by
whom he was given various government positions. He was elected to Parliament. Altogether his life was a

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thing of fragments. The inconsistency in Steel’s life is reflected in his style. At times he is dignified and
gracious and at times his is careless, flexible and free. Addison and Stelle both wee moralists, and their
doctrine is in high degree characteristic of their time. He started The Taller in 1709 and The Spectator in
1711 and several other short-lived periodicals, such as ‘The Guardian, The Englishman and The Reader,
Steele loved children and had deep respect for womanhood and some of his essays on children are charming
and full of human sympathy. He also ridicules vice and appreciates virtue.
He was a good playwright, and his attempt to redeem the drama from the grossness and license of
the Restoration drama, led him into many sentimental ineptitudes. In fact Addison and Steel were really
suited as co-craft men, for each could give what the other lacked.
11.3.4 Daniel Defoe
If to delight the young, for generation, after generations a proof of vitality, the author of Robinson
Crusoe, the prototype of the desert island story, had it in full measure. I hope you get my points, I am telling
about Daniel Dafoe. Like Bunyan, Defoe’s was dissenter thoroughly man of the people, a stranger to the
ideals and refinements of aristocratic life. The chief characteristics of Defoe’s work are his aristocratic life.
The chief characteristics of difoe’s work are his realistic imagination, his power of giving lucid details and
his interest in the contemporary life of average humanity. He was a novelist with the intention to reduce all
literature to journalism, to tell invented things as though he were a reporter writing an account for the press.
All these facts make his best fiction historically important and intrinsically interesting. His fiction shows
with convincing clarity the way in which the developing English novel was linked with the habits of mind
and literary needs of the rising middle classes. Defoe is not called “the father of the English novel” for
nothing. The greatness of ‘Robinson Crusoe’ is perhaps accidental, but the novel is not only the first full-
length piece of prose fiction written in the plain style of early eighteenth century expository prose with
continuous colloquial overtones; it is also the first English popular novel (as distinct from romance legend,
allegory, and other varieties of narrative) and the first to have as hero a man who seeks comfort and safety
rather than its intrinsic material value.
Over the years a flood of prose poured out from Defoe’s pen controversy commentary, travel, history,
journalism and a series of novels written with detailed verisitimititude and an unfailing flow of narrative
invention. Captain Sigleton, Moll Flanders Journal of the Plaquer Years The Memories of a Cavalier and
the perennial Robinson Crusoe are well known. The stories are all picturesque in matter and in form; the
here, who is the narrator constitutes the chief element of unity; the other characters appear and pass away, no
attempt is being made to work them into a plot. Defoe conceals his personality behind that of his hero, as he
has done in the case of Crusoe, yet his personal attitude towards life appears in the purpose which each tale
clearly has.
A. Self Assessment Question
Which was Defoe’s last novel?
1. Robinson Crusoe 3. Colonel Jack
2. Moll Flanders 4. Roxana
11.3.5 Samuel Richardson
Samuel Richardson, like, Defore is also a representative of the average middle class. His enormous
popularity is due to the fact that he introduces sentimentality into English fiction and popularized it forever.
In his days when sentiment was tabooed in verse, a generous supply of it in fiction proved especially acceptable.
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Richardson was successful printer who turned novelist late in life as the result of circumstances rather than
inner compulsion. At the request of his fellow craftsmen in 1740, he prepared a little volume of letters, in a
com-mon style, on such subjects as might be of use to country readers who are unable to write for themselves.
This was the germ of ‘Pamela’, which developed into story which struck a genuine if overprotected note of
sentiment. It has a maid-servant instead of a fashionable woman as the heroine, and it went straight to the
heart of the common reader. Pamela was followed by Clariso Horlowe, which is generally accounted as
Richardson’s masterpiece and surpassed even its precursor in popu-larity, bringing the author European
fame despite a sad fate for its heroine, and death in duel for the man who abducted her. Richardson composed
a final novel, Sir Charles Gandison, which appeared in 1754, with a happy ending. It expressed his ideal of
a Christian gentleman. The theme of all three works-that only through means of a wedding ring should a
man is ad-mitted to a woman’s bed-chamber-admits of infinite oversells and stratagems to illuminate the
sex-war which was Richardson’s subject. In other words the ide-als Richardson appreciates in his novels are
prudence and virtue, gentility, reputation and character. The rela-tion between them is often complex.
B. Self Assessment Question
Richardson’s Pamela marries to whom?
1. Monsieur Calbrand 3. Mr. B
2. Mr Jewkes 4. Mr. Andrews
11.3.6 Henry Fielding
A contemporary of Richardson was Henry Fielding (1707-54). He was on an aristocratic family,
well educated with a wider and genuine taste for the classic a dramatist, a journalist and a lawyer. In 1742 he
published Joseph Andrews to ridicule Richardson’s Pamela. He contrived this satire by reversing the situation
in Richardson’s novel. Instead of the virtuous serving maid. Fielding presents Joseph, the chaste servant
whom Lady Booby so tempts from the path of virtue that he has to run away.
Then follows a series of adventures on the road where Joseph is accompanied by Parson Adams, a
clerical Don Quixote. It is good moral comedy with its picture of humble contemporary life and genial
humour. Realism is the key note of all his work. He writes of real men and women with a precision that
comes from direct observation. Fielding’s next novel. Jonathan Wild was a loose narrative but his last two
novels Tom Jones and Amelia have genuine plots.
‘Tom Jones’ is comic epic is prose, with mock heroic invocations and description scattered through
the narrative. But the comic and “mock” element serves an important artistic purpose. It is not simply a joke
at the expense of neo-classic categories. It enables Fielding to make certain points about society, to deflate
certain kinds of pretentiousness to communicate his relish of the colour and variety of human life
simultaneously with his relish of the colour and variety of human life simultaneously with his ironic perception
of the under-lining identity of high class dueling or battling and low class brawling, and of other parallels
between the high” and ‘low” which the high would never admit and the low never surmise.
Fielding’s last novel ‘Amelia’ (1751) is altogether different in tone from any of his previous fiction.
Pathos replaces humours. Moral gravity rather than comic violence or irony sets the mood. The heroine is
drawn with a tenderness and a personal sympathy quite new in Fielding. The patient suffering of the virtuous
wife are treated against a background of quietly and precisely drawn attention to a variety of social abuses.
Fielding’s younger contemporary Tobias Smollet (1721-71) is not of an equal stature as Fielding,
for be lacked the necessary genius, humour as well as inherent kindness. His first novel was Roderick
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Random. Here he follows the outlines of his own life, but crammed the story with innumerable invented
incidents and episodes, many of them violent and cruel. The Adventures of Pergrine pickle (1751) is the
longest and most rambling of Smollett’s novel, told in the third person. Though it is less violent and a more
careful art than Roderick Randan, its composition is just as loose. Smollett’s most popular and most attractive
novel is his last. ‘Humprey Clinker (1771),’ written in relaxation in Italy, where he certainly was mellower
in mood than during most of his life before his sudden death in 1771. Smollett’s chief contribution of at least
one special interest, the sea and seamen. They were real, life, and were valuable additions to the portrait
gallery of fiction.
11.3.7 Lawrence Sterne
The two books by which Lawrence Strene (!71T- 176S) is remembered are Tristram Shandy published
in nine volumes between 1759 and 1767. revealed a wholly new consent of form in fiction as well as kind of
sentimental comedy removed from Fielding’s comic epic and didactic humours of ‘Humphery Clinker.’ Told
the first person by a narrator whose personality and tram of association determine the tone and organization
of the narrative (and who is not born until the end of the third volume). Tristram Shandy is on the surface a
rambling and eccentric patchwork of anecdotes, digressions, reflection, jests, parodies and dialogue and
dialogues centering on the sentimental incidents. The perpetuation consists largely of deshes, and the book
is interlarded with asterisk blanks and a variety of hypsographical and other eccentricities. Its strength lies
chiefly in its odd characters like Uncle Tobey and Corporal Trim, which with all their eccentricities are so
humanized by the author’s genius that they belong to the great “creations” of our liter a lure. You may ask
me, “What is Sterne’s contributions to the development of the ‘English novel?” Well if Richardson gave
sentimentality. Fielding humour, Smollett liveliness, then Sterne blends humour and sentiment in a way
peculiarity his own as to advance the art of characterization one step further.
11.3.8 Oliver Goldsmith
A more wholesome view of life is to be found in a book as famous as Tristram Shandy. Oliver
Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), It is a perfect expression of homely English sentiment. It has
been successful from the day of publication until the present. There had to be three editions in a great
strength his in the quality of stoticfal resignation. Trouble and disasters accumulate like threading clouds,
but only to resolve themselves into beneficent showers. Following The Victor of Wakefield came The Good
Natured Man. his first play, The Deserted Village that showed him as poet of no mean order, and his best
comedy, She stoops to Con-quer, These works earned him a contemporary reputation second only to that of
the epitaph that was in-scribed on a tablet beneath his bust in Westminster Abbey the first lines on which
reads :
of Oliver Goldsmith
A poet. Naturalist and Historian
Who left any style of writing untouched.
And touched nothing that he did not adorn,
of all the passons.
Whether smiles were to be moved or teary..
A powerful yet gentle master
In genius. sublime, vivd, versatile.
In style, elevated, clear, elegant.
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C. Self Assessment Question
1. Oliver Goldsmith 3.Charles Dickens
2. Thomas Hardy 4. Jane Austen
11.4 SUMMING - UP
Classicism, in the arts, refers generally to a high regard for a classical period, classical antiquity in
the western tradition, as setting standards for taste which the classicist seek to emulate. The art of classicism
typically seeks to be formal and restrained. Sir Kenneth Clark observes,” if we object to his restraint and
compression we are simply objecting to the Classicism of classic art. A violent emphasis or a sudden
acceleration of rhythmic movement would have destroyed those qualities of balance and completeness
through which it retained until the present century its position of authority in the restricted repertoire of
visual images.”
11.5 GLOSSARY
a. Intrigue- A complicated or clandestine plot or scheme intended to effect some purpose by secret
artifice; conspiracy
b. Adorn- To make more beautiful and attractive
c. Expository- Serving to explain, explicate, or elucidate
d. Epitaph- An inscription on a gravestone in memory of the deceased
11.6 QUESTIONS
1. Why eighteenth century called an age of prose and reason? Discuss critically.
2. Write an elaborate note on the 18th century satiric poetry.
11.7 SELF ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS’ ANSWERS
A (4), B (3), C (1)
11.8 SUGGESTED READINGS
1. History of English Literature by David Daiches.
2. History of English Literature by Edward Albert.

*****

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 LESSON-12
CLASSICISM: MISCELLANEOUS WORKS

STRUCTURE
12.1 Introduction
12.2 Learning Objectives
12.3 Samuel Johnson
A. Self-Assessment Question
12.3.1 Johnson's Dictionary
12.3.2 The Ramble, Idler and Spectator
B. Self-Assessment Question
12.3.3 His Works
12.4 Edmund Burke
C. Self-Assessment Question
12.5 Drama
12.5.1 Oliver Goldsmith
12.5.2 Sheridan
12.6 Summing - Up
12.7 Glossary
12.8 Questions
12.9 Self-Assessment Question's Answers
12.10 Suggested Readings
12.1 INTRODUCTION
There were certain kinds of prose literature which the eighteenth century practiced with special
assiduity and success, such as the Essay, the Dialogue, Oratory. History and above all the Novel. So far we
have discussed the essay and the novel upon which to some extent classical influences were at work, thought
with varying energy, upon all of them. The authority of the doctrine is not shaken, on the contrary it seems
to be definitely established with Johnson the strongest representative of Augustans. His fame is that of
stalwart character and common sense, opinionative and independent, blunt and dogmatic, holding fast by a
robust Tory Patriotism. For nearly fifty years after the death of Pope, Johnson was the dominant figure in the
literary life of the day. He is the triumph of life over litters, for although he left behind him a dictionary, a
few excellent poems, many essays a short novel Rasseles, a dull tragedy, Irene critical notice on Shakespeare
and Lives of Poets, it is not so much for them he is remembered as because of Bosewell, his biographer, who
made him such an engrossing character that he casts his shadow upon an age. It was the Johnson of the later
years that he recorded, working from minute records of his sayings, and his mannerisms and with a realistic
art that has no parallel. The capacity, the wit and down rightness of Johnson, along with his often kindly and
devout approach of life, are the elements of the portrait which Boswell has created, and without his biographer,
Johnson would be a lesser man. In his poetry he followed Pope’s use of the heroic couplet. Like Pope, also
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he modeled his poems on the works of Latin, writers; his ‘London’ for example, is a general attack upon the
evils of society in close imitation of ‘juvenal’ His sympathy with classical ideals led him to observe the
unities in his play, Irene In his prose he continued the works of Dryden and Addison. The seriousness of
Johnson’s moral one in his essays establishes him as the genuine representative of the classical ear. The
morality preached by Johnson in his essays is practical, not theoretical; he is concerned to advice the readers
on how to cultivate a proper slate of mind and to employ their time and their energies properly “The Folly of
misspending time.” Disadvantages of a Bad education, “Idleness an Anxious and Miserable state” are typical
themes. With-out question he accepted the classical dictum that works of arts should both please and instruct.
12.2 LEARNING OBJECTIVES
The objective of this specific lesson is to make you get an idea of classicism. What classicism is all
about and it also introduces Johnson’s Dictionary, magazines like Rambler published by Johnson’s himself
and other important magazines like Idler, Spectator. We will also discuss works of Johnson.
12.3 SAMUEL JOHNSON
A. Self Assessment Question
Johnson’s Lives of Poets comprises of?
1. Three volumes 3. Five volumes
2. Four volumes 4. Six volumes
12.3.1 Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language
In which the words are deduced from these Originals and illustrated in their different significations,
was not a pioneer work Nathemel Bailey’s universal Etymological English Dictionary appeared in 1721 but
it was the first to attempt to stabilize the English language, “to preserve the purity and ascertain the meaning
of our English idiom,” This was an ambitious aim; it was to undertake single handedly what it took the forty
members of the French Academy forty years to accomplish.
Johnson’s intention was not to dictate, it was to discover, define, classify, and standardize, He was
concerned with good usage, which he found in writers of the late sixteenth century, from whom his main
example are chosen. With all its drawbacks the dictionary was a remarkable work of scholarship and of
classification, one of the great works of its kind in English a monument of industry and intellectual conscience.
His most sustained and mature critical work is to be found in his preface, Biographical and critical
to the work of the English poets, generally known as The lives of the Poets, first published between 1779 and
1781 as a series of introduction to a ten volume collection of the English poets from Cowley, Denham,
Milton and Waller at one end to Akenside and Gray at the other. No living poets wee included. According to
Macaulay he “took it to hear praised from his childhood, and which he him-self had written with success,
was the best kind of poetry.”
12.3.2 The Ramble, Idler and Spectator
Led by the great success of the Spectator, Johnson stated two magazines. The Rambler and The
Idler Later The Rambles essays were published m book and ran rapidly through ten editions. When his
mother died in 1750 Johnson, although one of the best known men in London had nominee, and hurriedly
finished Rasselas his only romance, in order it is said to pay for his mother’s burial.

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B. Self Assessment Question
Who represented the country Gentleman in the Spectator
1. Andrew Freeport 3. Captain Sentry
2. Roger de Coverley 4. Will Honeycomb
12.3.2 His Works
In his ‘Preface to Shakespeare’ a brave piece of criticism, he plays a tribute to Shakespeare’s long
continued popularity, which Jonson considered a proper criterion of greatness. It was because of his vast
knowledge of general human nature that Shakespeare was able to fill his plays “with practical axioms and
domestic wisdom.”
For Johnson Shakespeare is above all writers, at least above all modem ‘writers, the poet of nature;
the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirror of manners and of life. His characters are not modified
by the customs of particular places, unpracticed by the rest of the world, by the peculiarities of studies or
professions, which can operate but upon small numbers; or by the accidents of transient fashions or, temporary
opinions; they are the genuine progeny of common humanity, such as the world will always find.
In 1775 he had received his doctor’s degree from Oxford, and was all the height of his popularity
and influence, ill health did not allow him to write much in his last years. In earlier writings, the style he
follows is considered to be pompous, artificial, and full of affections and highly Latinized. By the course of
time he had attained the required ease, lucidity, force and vigorous directness. Both in his original writing
and in his criticism of the writings of oilier Johnson emphasizes dependence upon accepted models and
attained results, as opposed to romantic experiment.
12.4 EDMUND BURKE
With Johnson, who succeeded Dry den and Pope in the chief place of English letters, the classic
movement had largely spent its force. The latter half of the eighteenth century presents a number of writers
who differ so widely that it is almost impossible to classify them.
That oratory is a branch of literature is a dogma of ancient rather than of modem criticism, which
has almost creased to think of the public speaker’s art as a mode of literary expression at all. The eighteenth
century however agreed on this point with the ancients! We too may agree that Burke at least must be
included among the masters of English prose a man who belongs in spirit to the new romantic school, while
in style a model for the formal classicists is Edmund Burke. Hus Irish man was a great orator, statesman and
political writer. Burke’s sense of continuity and tradition was in some respects similar to Johnson’s but it
was neither so pessimistically conservative nor did its application lead to the same practical conclusion. He
is not the slave of the period, but constantly varies the form of his sentences. which are sometimes long and
involved, sometimes short and abrupt Burke’s first published work was’ a ‘A Vindication of natural Society’
(1756), a satire on the views of Boligbroke; aiming to prove that Boligbroke’s theoretical arguments against
Christianity were fundamentally disruptive of ah civil society. A philosophical Enquire into the Origin of
our Ideal:’ if the sublime and the Beautiful followed in 1757. These two works brought him political as well
as literary recognition. In 1766 he entered parliament, and remained a member for the rest of his life. His
speeches and written pamphlets are brilliant, particularly on American Taxation and on Conciliation with
the Colonies and Reflections on the Revolution in France.

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 He always fought for justice and freedom. He condemned repression at home, impeached Warren
Hastings for his misdeeds in India.
At times Burke’s language is pseudoclassic, reflecting the influence of Johnson and his school; but
his thought is always romantic. He is governed by ideal rather than by practical interest, perhaps the most
characteristic of his works. His figures of speech are numerous, vivid and original, his vocabulary enormous
and drawn from a wide range of reading.
It is a matter of some surprise that this country had to wait so long for a true historian like Edward
Gibbon.
There had indeed been a vast amount of historical or quasi historical writing in the Middle ages and
later, but it had been mostly in Latin. What was in English came to little more than chronicles of memoirs or
brochures like More History’ of Richard II of Bacon’s History of Henry VII Even Clrendon’s History of the
Rebellion is not quite a true history of personal reminiscences of lid ward Hyde worked up into a continuous
and reasoned narrative. However, one of the greatest historians of the Classical age was Edward Gibbson
(1773-93). As literary stylist he is remarkable with his clear, imposing, rhythmic prose. He is personally
known to us through his frank account of himself in his Memories a man who looks with satisfaction on the
material side of thing. Who seeks always the easiest path for himself and avoids life’s difficulties and
responsibilities. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, published in six volumes, treats the history of
Rome from the second century to the end of the fifth. For this great task he had adequate knowledge and full
control of handling it properly. The result was a prose eloquent balanced and flexible, more rapid than
Addison’s capable of both descriptive splendour and dry irony.
Other historians of the era were David Hume (1711-76) and Robertson (1721-93). The true historical
writing in England began with Hume’s History and England in six volumes and posessed an excellent if
slightly artificial style; he had as a philosopher trained himself to impartiality, and he had a sure wed though
somewhat abstract understanding of human nature. Yet these qualities did not make him a great historian. He
never troubled to go beyond the primed evidence, out of which he was content of make a dear and continues
narrative, sometimes doubting but never investigating his authorities. Hume and he was followed by another
Scotman. William Robertson, who wrote histories of Scotland, of Charles V and of America. It is certain that
Robertson spent more time upon his authorities than Hume and he has more of the historical imagination.
But essential he belongs to the same school of historians elegant authors who get their materials from books
rather than original document. The style of both flume and Robertson is classical eighteenth century prose.
C. Self Assessment Question
Who wrote The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire?
1. Edmund Burke 3. Edward Young
2. Thomas Gray 4. William Collins
12.5 DRAMA
The drama of the eighteenth century has nothing much to boast about. The brilliant and exotic of
Restoration comedy had withered, and nothing of merit takes its place. One has to wait till late in the
century, for Goldsmith and Sheridan, to find writers who make any permanent contribution to the English
stage. Of a number of reasons which might be invented in explanation, it is at least certain that the Licensing
Act of 1737 restricted the freedom of expression by dramatists and drove a number of good men out of the
theatre. Henry Fielding had been a dramatist before that date, and without Walpole and the Licensing Act,
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his more mature genius might have gene into the theatre instead of the novel. It was only in 1968 that the
Theatre Censorship Act was abolished, further it was clear also that the middle class commercial classes
were gaining sufficient ascendancy to impose their obtuse wives on the themes they would be acceptable in
the theatre.
If one has to look in the theatre for a brilliant comedy that voiced very well the tone of classical
literature, it would be The Reggar’s Opera. Its robust vitality sprightly music and charming songs make it
stand alone in its generation. A beggar who comes on the stage toward the end remarks: “Throughout the
whole piece you may observe such a similitude of manners in high and low life, that it is difficult to determine
whether (in a fashionable Vices) the fine gentleman imitate the gentleman of the road, or the gentlemen of
the road of the fine gentleman.” Gay, a simple minded moralist achieved so many kinds of paralleled between
the underworld and high society in a work of such attrac-tive exuberance.
12.5.1 Oliver Goldsmith
Oliver Goldsmith’s Good Natural Man (1768) intended to excess of false ‘Charity’. It is read feebly
now, but is excellent in parts; ‘She stoops to Conquer (1713) is excellent throughout, with a bright, whimsical
humour and fresh charm of dialogue not attained since the days of Congreve Less Witty than the great
Restoration dramatists, “Goldsmith is greatly superior in his humanity and taste.
Goldsmith’s plays are; a reflection of the idealism which was beginning to manifest itself in the
realistic age. Opposed to him is Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816), whose dramas are written in the
mood of satirical observation of life which the eighteenth-century novel expressed from Fielding to Miss
Burney.
12.5.2 Sheridan
Sheridan wrote The School for scandal, The Rivals and The Critic, in the first two his three great
plays he combines the comedy of manners with a sentimental admixture only partially successful. In The
Rivals the plot involves some absurdities but it is fertile in amusing situation, and the play abounds in clever
dialogue In The School for Scandal it is evident that here we have an amusing mock word, where the
principles, morals and social, on which human life is actually conducted, are subordinated to the necessities
of intrigue. At first sight. The school for scandal, with its opening scenes in which gossip runs wild, seems
to revive the world of the Restoration drama, but there is difference, Light, trifling, involves as in Sheridan’s
society, it is not fundamentally and flagrantly immoral. His people play with fire, but they are not burned. So
much had the moral and social force of the century accomplished, in the years since coiller’s attack on the
stage.
12.6 SUMMING - UP
The term “classicism” is comparatively new, particularly in English. Thomas Carlyle used it in
1831 for the first time, complacently and prematurely reflecting that “we are troubled with no controversies
on Romanticism and Classicism.” in his “Essay on Schiller”. John Stuart Mill, in 1837, explained that the
“insurrection against the old traditions of classicism was called romanticism” in France. Both these early
uses refer to the continental debate. But even there the term cannot be traced back very far. It seems to occur
first in Italy, in 1818. during the discussion waged in Milan.
12.7 GLOSSARY
1. Juvenal- of a young bird, that has its first flying plumage.
2. Peculiar- out of the ordinary; odd; strange, unusual.
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 3. Enormous- Deviating from the norm; unusual, extraordinary.
4. Intrigue- A complicated or clandestine plot or scheme intended to effect some purpose by secret
artifice; conspiracy.
12.8 QUESTIONS
1. Give a detailed account of the revival of Romanticism in the poetry of the later 18th century.
2. All major works of literature in the 18th century combine instruction with delight. Do you agree?
12.9 SELF ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS’ ANSWERS
A(2), B(2), C(l)
12.10 SUGGESTED READING
1. Hudson William Henry: An Introduction to the Study of Literature
2. Trivedi R.D. A Compendiums History of English Literature

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 SUGGESTED READING ON HISTORY OF LITERATURE

Albert, Edward, A History of Literature. Calcutta Oxford University Press, 1980. Revised and enlarged
fifth edition; Paperback.
Compton-Rickett, A History of English Literature. Delhi: Universal Book Stall. 1978. Reprinted
second Indian edition: Paperback.
Evan, Ifor. A Short History of English Literature. New York: Middlesex and Victoria, Pengiun
Books 1979. Reprinted fourth edition: Paperback.
Hudson William Henry. An Introduction to study of Literature. Ludhiana and New Delhi: Kalyani
Diblishers, 1979. Reprinted ninth Indian edition: Paperback.
This book will be helpful in learning some way of studying poetry, fiction, drama and short criticism,
including the evaluation of literature and’ the methods of studying it in general.
Legouis, Emila and Louis Cazamain. A History of English Literature. Delhi Bombay, Calcutta and
Madras : Macmillan Indian Limited, 1981.
Long, William J. ‘English literature, Its History and Its Significance’ Ludhiana and New Delhi:
Kalyani Publishers 1978, Sixth Indian reprint : Paper back.
Trivedi. R.D. A Compendiums History of English Literature. New Delhi, Bombay. Banglore, Calcutta
and Kanpur : Vikas Publishing House. 1978, Second revised edition : Paperback.

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 M.A. English
Ist Semester Course-I
ASSIGNMENTS

Attempt any three of the following questions (each course) in about 250 words.
Each question carries five marks.

Course-I
1. Write an essay on Chaucer as the chronicler of the society of his times.
2. Who are the University Wits? Discuss their contribution to English Drama.
3. Discuss critically the influence of Renaissance of English Literature.
4. Discuss the factors responsible for decline of drama in the Jacobean age.
5. Trace the growth of the rise of the novel in 18th century.

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 CONTENTS
SR.NO. TOPIC PAGE NO.
SYLLABUS 1
LESSON-1 THE AGE OF CHAUCER : GEOFFREY CHAUCER 2
LESSON-2 THE AGE OF CHAUCER: CHAUCER’S CONTEMPORARIES 11
LESSON-3 CHAUCER’S IMITATORS AND THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 17
LESSON-4 THE RENAISSANCE: GENERAL INTRODUCTION 22
LESSON-5 THE RENAISSANCE: DRAMA 29
LESSON-6 THE RENAISSANCE: POETRY PART-I 43
THE RENAISSANCE : PROSE PART-II 54
LESSON-7 THE PURITAN AGE 60
LESSON-8 RESTORATION LITERAURE 71
LESSON-9 RESTORATION LITERATURE 78
LESSON-10 CLASSICISM: THE CLASSICAL SCHOOL OF POETRY 90
LESSON-11 CLASSICISM: ITS SURVIVAL 96
LESSON-12 CLASSICISM: MISCELLANEOUS WORKS 103
SUGGESTED READING ON HISTORY OF LITERATURE 109
ASSIGNMENT/TOPIC 110

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M.A. English Semester-I Course : 101

History of English Literature

From Chaucer to 1800
Lessons 1- 12

International Centre for Distance Education & Open Learning

Himachal Pradesh University, Gyan Path
Summer Hill, Shimla - 171005

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