Definitivna uprava skript AKŠ 1 - Filozofická fakulta Univerzita

UNIVERZITA MATEJA BELA V BANSKEJ BYSTRICI
FAKULTA HUMANITNÝCH VIED
Katedra európskych kultúrnych štúdií a slovanských jazykov
Matej Bel University in Banska Bystrica
Faculty of Humanities
Department of European Cultural Studies and Slavic Languages
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Vysokoškolské učebné texty
PaedDr. Eva Králová
ANGLICKÉ KULTÚRNE ŠTÚDIÁ I.
V EURÓPSKOM KULTÚRNOM KONTEXTE
ENGLISH CULTURAL STUDIES I. IN EUROPEAN
CULTURAL CONTEXT
Banská Bystrica
2008
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©
PaedDr. Eva Králová
Recenzenti: Prof. PhDr. Larisa Anatoljevna Sugay, DrSc. (RF)
PaedDr. Olga Martin (USA)
Vydala:
Fakulta humanitných vied
Univerzita Mateja Bela v Banskej Bystrici
ISBN 978-80-8083-567-5
EAN 9788080835675
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CONTENTS
ÚVOD ........................................................................................................................................5
1. THE OLD ENGLISH PERIOD (449-1066)...................................................................6
1.1 Sub-Roman Britain……………………………………………………………………..6
1.2 Anglo-Saxon Life ………………………………………………………………….…. 7
1.3 The Historic Facts about Breton King…………………………………………………9
1.4 Anglo-Saxon Civilisation……………………………………………………………. 11
1.4.1 Artistic Anglo-Saxons …………………………………………………………….. 13
1.4.2 The Establishment of Christianity ………………………………………………… 14
1.4.3 Anglo-Saxon Literature …………………………………………………………… 16
1.4.3.1 Christian Writers of the Anglo-Saxon Period ……………………………………16
1.4.3.2 Decline of Northumbrian Literature …………………………………………….. 21
2. THE GROWTH OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE ……………………………….. 24
2.1 Brief History of the English Language …………………………………………........24
2.1.1 Old English (500-1100) ……………………………………………………………25
2.1.2 The Norman Conquest and Middle English ………………………………………. 26
2.1.3 Early Modern English (1500-1800) ………………………………………………. 28
2.1.4 Late-Modern English (1800-Present) ………………………………………………30
3. THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD (1066-1485) …………………………………………... 31
3.1 The Norman Conquest ……………………………………………………………….31
3.2 Land and the Feudal System ………………………………………………………... 33
3.2.1 Domesday Book …………………………………………………………………... 35
3.2.1.1 Lady Godiva …………………………………………………………………….. 36
3.3 Medieval Church…………………………………………………………………….. 40
3.4 Medieval Life ……………………………………………………………………….. 44
3.4.1 Magna Charta ……………………………………………………………………... 45
3.5 The Crusades …………………………………………………………………………48
3.6 The Hundred Years´ War …………………………………………………………….51
3.7 Medieval Literature: The Romance …………………………………………….........54
3.7.1 Folk Poetry and the Drama ……………………………………………………….. 55
3.7.2 Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400) …………………………………………………….56
3.7.3 Sir Thomas Malory (1405-1471) …………………………………………………..66
3.8 Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Architecture ……………………………………………67
3.8.1 Anglo-Saxon Architecture …………………………………………………………67
3.8.2 Medieval Architecture (11th – 16th century) ………………………………………69
3.8.2.1 Norman (Romanesque) Architecture……………………………………………..69
3.8.2.2 Gothic Architecture ………………………………………………………………71
3.9 Celtic, Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Art (Painting and Sculpture) …………………73
3.9.1 Anglo-Saxon Architecture and Allied Arts ………………………………………...74
3.9.2 Christianity and Anglo-Saxon Tradition …………………………………………...76
3.9.3 Other Anglo-Saxon Arts: Jewellery, Glass, and Sculpture ………………………...78
3.9.4 The Saxon Norman Overlap: Architecture…………………………………………80
3.9.5 The Saxon-Norman Overlap: Embroidery …………………………………………81
3.9.6 Gothic Painting and Sculpture ……………………………………………………..83
4.
ANGLO-SAXON AND MEDIEVAL MUSIC …………………………………...84
4.1 Celtic Music ……………………………………………………………………….84
4.2
Anglo-Saxon Music (500-1066) ………………………………………………….85
4.3
Gregorian and Ambrosian Chant …………………………………………………86
4.4
Minstrelsy………………………………………………………………………… 88
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4.5
Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Music and Composers ……………………88
4.6
English Madrigal School ………………………………………………………….90
4.7
Middle Age Instruments …………………………………………………………..91
4.7.1 Elizabethan Stringed Instruments ………………………………………………...92
5.
THE RENAISSANCE IN EUROPE AND ENGLAND ………………………….94
5.1
The Renaissance in Europe ……………………………………………………….94
5.2
The Renaissance in England: Henry VIII and Elizabeth I ………………………..95
5.2.1 Thomas More and his “Utopia” …………………………………………………..98
5.2.2 Elizabethan Taste and Attitudes …………………………………………………102
5.2.2.1 Characteristics of the Elizabethan Age ………………………………………….103
5.3
Elizabethan Literary Achievement ………………………………………………104
5.3.1 The Non-Dramatic Poets of the Elizabethan Age………………………………..105
5.3.2 Elizabethan Drama: William Shakespeare ………………………………………110
5.3.3 The Jacobean Era (1603-1625): Transition to a New and Turbulent Century…...118
5.3.3.1 Literature in the Jacobean Era …………………………………………………...119
5.3.3.2 The King James Bible …………………………………………………………...123
5.3.4 Charles I, Civil War, the Protectorate (1625-1660) ……………………………..126
5.3.4.1 Puritan Age: John Milton (1608-1674) ………………………………………….128
5.3.4.2 Stuart London ……………………………………………………………………132
5.4
Elizabethan Architecture ………………………………………………………..141
5.4.1 Elizabethan Playhouses …………………………………………………………145
6.
The Restoration and Eighteenth Century ……………………………………….151
6.1
The Political Background ……………………………………………………….151
6.2
England in the Eighteenth Century ……………………………………………..154
6.3
Restoration England and Scientific Age ………………………………………..155
6.4
An Age of Elegance …………………………………………………………….160
6.4.1 The Arts …………………………………………………………………………161
6.4.1.1 English Art in the 17th and18th Century Painting and Sculpture ………………...164
6.4.1.2 The Music of the 17th and 18th Century England ………………………………..176
6.4.2 Literature: From the Restoration to the Romantic Age …………………………181
6.4.2.1 The Eighteenth Century English Novel ………………………………………....186
Themes for Oral Examination: Winter and Summer Semester ……………………………..190
BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………………...193
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ÚVOD
Tieto učebné texty sú určené predovšetkým pre študentov 1. ročníka bakalárskeho
programu Katedry európskych kultúrnych štúdií a slovanských jazykov ku prednáškam
predmetu Anglické kultúrne štúdiá.
Zachytávajú anglickú kultúru od 5. storočia po 19.
storočie (od starovekej anglickej kultúry po román 18. storočia). Hlavným motívom pre
napísanie vysokoškolských učebných textov bol nedostatok kompaktného materiálu vo forme
vysokoškolskej učebnice alebo skrípt, potreba zhrnúť základné poznatky z vybraných
teoretických okruhov a poskytnúť študentom komplexnejší zdroj informácií.
Predložené učebné texty si nekladú za cieľ zmapovať všetky oblasti anglickej kultúry. Sú
skôr výberom precedentných textov, na základe ktorých má byť študentom táto kultúra
predstavená. Nemáme na mysli len umeleckú kultúru, ale aj mimo umelecké estetično
(pohanské a kresťanské zvyky, rituály, báje a legendy). Anglická kultúra je tu ponímaná ako
súčasť európskeho kultúrneho kontextu.
Autorka
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1. THE OLD ENGLISH PERIOD (5th – 11th century)
1.1 Sub-Roman Britain
Gildas and Patrick are two most important sources of information for sub-Roman Britain.
Patrick left at least two writings which, in unpolished Latin and unsophisticated prose, reveal
something of both his character and of contemporary Irish and British society. The first is a
letter addressed to the soldiers of a British warlord named Coroticus, who was responsible for
kidnapping and murdering many of Patrick's new Irish converts. The Letter to Coroticus
provides personal information about both Patrick and the Briton Coroticus, who Patrick
describes as acting "like a tyrant" (Epistola 6). Patrick's second work, written towards the end
of his life, is a spiritual autobiography or Confession in the form made famous by Augustine
of Hippo (though Patrick's sincere personal statement is hardly a masterpiece of theological
speculation). Here, Patrick describes the Britain of his youth and the British Church which
sponsored but is now having doubts about Patrick's Irish mission.
While Britain appears only occasionally in Patrick's writings, it features prominently in those
of Gildas who lived in the early sixth century. Gildas, also a Briton and a member of the
clergy, penned a substantial work called The Ruin of Britain. The Ruin of Britain begins with
an "historical" prologue which narrates the foreign and domestic wars plaguing Britain since
the departure of the Romans, then turns into an impassioned sermon (a jeremiad – lament - in
the true sense of the word) denouncing (accusing of) the crimes of current British rulers and
the sins of the British clergy. Though his language and imagery is frequently that of the Old
Testament, Gildas occasionally drops clues about Britain's political and ecclesiastical
arrangements, and about his own classical Latin education.
Romano-Britons battling Picts by Angus McBride, Statue of St. Patrick at the Hill of Tara, Ireland
Gildas claims that the Scots and especially the Picts were causing such a serious threat to
Britain that a "council" (consilium) was convened and its members, together with the "proud
tyrant" (superbus tyrannus), elected to hire Saxon merceneries (soldiers who receives salary
for their service) to defend the eastern portion of the island. (The technical military language
employed by Gildas likely means that the Britons were following the Late Roman practice of
hiring barbarian foederati). The Saxons turned against their employers, defeating British
forces and plundering British towns until a Romano-Britain named Ambrosius Aurelianus
assumed military leadership. Thereafter victories were traded by both sides until the siege of
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Badon Hill, traditionally dated in AD 500, which took place in the year of Gildas's birth. The
Britons emerged from Badon victorious, but soon fell into civil war and corruption.
Badon Hill: The site of Athur's greatest
victory over the Saxons (AD 500). It is the last of Arthur's twelve victories, but its exact location has
not been determined.
"The twelfth battle was on Badon Hill and in it nine hundred and sixty men fell in one day,
from a single charge of Arthur's, and no-one lay them low save he alone."
-Nennius, from History of the Britons, 8th Century.
There are a few other sources which, because they were written down later for the most part,
must be used cautiously as evidence for the fifth and sixth centuries. The earliest British
vernacular bardic poetry, such as those verses attributed to Aneirin and Taliesin, is sometimes
used to reconstruct "heroic" society from the late sixth century on. Bede, writing in the eighth
century but drawing on much earlier material (including Gildas), gives us a few additional
clues about the sub-Roman period (including the name of the "proud tyrant" Vortigern).
Another English source, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle composed in Wessex beginning in the
ninth century, records Saxon victories over the British (and the names of both British and
Saxon leaders) which may derive from earlier oral accounts. Two collections of British
historical material from the ninth century, the History of the Britons (attributed to the Welsh
monk Nennius) and the Welsh Annals, may likewise draw on some contemporary records
from the late sixth century on. Finally, there is a vast body of Welsh genealogies and saints'
lives, the earliest of which is probably the Cornish Life of St. Samson written in the early
seventh century.
1.2 Anglo-Saxon Life
Originally the name Anglo-Saxon denotes two of the three Germanic tribes, Jutes, Angles,
and Saxons, who in the middle of the fifth century left their homes on the shores of the North
Sea and the Baltic to conquer and colonize distant Britain. Angeln was the home of one tribe,
and the name still clings to the spot whence some of our forefathers sailed on their
momentous voyage. The old Saxon word angul or ongul means a hook, and the English verb
angle is used invariably by Walton and older writers in the sense of fishing. We may still
think, therefore, of the first Angles as hook-men, possibly because of their fishing, more
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probably because the shore where they lived, at the foot of the peninsula of Jutland, was bent
in the shape of a fishhook. The name Saxon from seax, sax, a short sword, means the swordman, and from the name we may judge something of the temper of the hardy fighters who
preceded the Angles into Britain. The Angles were the most numerous of the conquering
tribes, and from them the new home was called Anglalond. By gradual changes this became
first Englelond and then England.
Map of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms
Angles, Saxons and Jutes invading Britain by sea
More than five hundred years after the landing of these tribes, and while they called
themselves Englishmen, we find the Latin writers of the Middle Ages speaking of the
inhabitants of Britain as Anglisaxones, that is, Saxons of England, to distinguish them from
the Saxons of the Continent. In the Latin charters of King Alfred the same name appears; but
it is never seen or heard in his native speech. There he always speaks of his beloved
"Englelond" and of his brave "Englisc" people. In the sixteenth century, when the old name of
Englishmen clung to the new people resulting from the union of Saxon and Norman, the name
Anglo-Saxon was first used in the national sense by the scholar Camden in his History of
Britain; and since then it has been in general use among English writers. In recent years the
name has gained a wider significance, until it is now used to denote a spirit rather than a
nation, the brave, vigorous, enlarging spirit that characterizes the English-speaking races
everywhere, and that has already put a broad belt of English law and English liberty around
the whole world.
The Germanic Invasions: Britons, Celtic people who were the original inhabitants of
Britain, were conquered (defeated) by the Romans in the first century A.D. and became a part
of the Roman Empire. Around the year 410, when the Roman legions were required at home
to protect the capital, the people of Britain were left unprotected and fell prey to raiding from
their neighbours on the Continent.
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According to tradition, it was in 449 that the first band of people from the great North
Germain plain crossed the North Sea to Britain and settled in what is now the county of Kent.
They were Jutes, from the peninsula of Jutland in Denmark, and they were the first of many
Germanic invaders. Following the Jutes came Angles and Saxons. The legendary King Arthur
may have been the leader of the Celtic people who were driven into Wales.
These Germanic people shared certain myths, traditions, language habits and mythologized
historical past. They brought with them a common language, the ancestor of our present-day
English, called Old English or Anglo-Saxon. Together they created Anglo-Saxon England
(“Angleland”) that lasted until 1066, when the Normans led by William, the Duke of
Normandy, successfully invaded (attacked) and conquered the country. Anglo-Saxon England
was born in warfare, remained an essentially military society, and in Roman eyes they were
“barbarians.” They came to an end in 1066 because of the superior stratedy of another
military power – the Normans.
1.3 The Historic Facts about Breton King
King Arthur is the figure at the heart of the Arthurian legends. He is said to be the son of
Uther Pendragon and Ygraine of Cornwall. Arthur is a near mythic figure in Celtic stories
such as Culhwch and Olwen. In early Latin chronicles he is presented as a military leader, the
dux bellorum. In later romance he is presented as a king and emperor. One of the questions
that have occupied those interested in King Arthur is whether or not he is a historical figure.
The debate has raged since the Renaissance when Arthur's historicity was vigorously
defended, partly because the Tudor monarchs traced their lineage (ancestry) to Arthur and
used that connection as a justification for their reign.
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If there is a historical basis to the character, it is clear that he would have gained fame as a
warrior battling the Germanic invaders of the late fifth and early sixth centuries. Since there is
no conclusive evidence for or against Arthur's historicity, the debate will continue. But what
can not be denied is the influence of the figure of Arthur on literature, art, music, and society
from the Middle Ages to the present. Though there have been numerous historical novels that
try to put Arthur into a sixth-century setting, it is the legendary figure of the late Middle Ages
who has most captured the imagination. It is such a figure, the designer of an order of the best
knights in the world, that figures in the major versions of the legend from Malory to Tennyson
to T. H. White. Central to the myth is the downfall (collapse) of Arthur's kingdom. It is
undermined (threatened) in the chronicle tradition by the treachery (betrayal) of Mordred. In
the romance that treachery is made possible because of the love of Lancelot and Guinevere.
King Arthur and Sir Lancelot by Howard Johnson Lancelot and Guinevere by D. G. Rossetti, 1854
The Mystic King Arthur and his Kingdom: The figure of Arthur begins as a war hero, the
praises of whom are sung in war poems by the Celts and the Welsh. The character of King
Arthur is unique in literature. Most characters are known through their actions and words as
described by the author of a story.
Arthur, however, is a conglomerate of characters described by many different authors over a
fifteen hundred year span. There is no single depiction of him, and one cannot trace his origin
to a single author for the “definitive” description. As such, the character of Arthur is different
depending on the era, culture, and the particular writer who is relating his version of the
Arthurian legend.
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Arthur´s Round Table
There is much debate whether Arthur was an actual historical person. There is no absolute
evidence, but it is possible that Arthur was a Briton or Romano-Briton king who led the Celts
against the Anglo-Saxons in the early eighth century. The kings of the medieval period were
warlords that protected a particular area of land. They surrounded themselves with knights, or
thanes, who swore allegiance in battle in exchange for gifts of gold, armor, and land. There
are stories that depict Arthur in this role, similar to that of Beowulf and Hrothgar in the poem
Beowulf. However, later stories show Arthur in a different light. There are three basic
character descriptions of Arthur.
The earliest depiction of Arthur is that of a fierce, feared warrior, capable of tremendous
prowess in hand-to-hand combat. As described by a Welsh priest named Nennius in his Latin
Historia Brittonum Arthur was “chosen twelve times to lead the Celts, Arthur bore the image
of the Virgin and won twelve battles, the last being at Mt. Badon, in which he killed 960 of
the enemy single-handed”. In a work entitled the Brut by an English priest named Layamon,
Arthur is again depicted as “a warrior, grim and fierce, an object of dread to friend and
enemy; in short, an epic hero”.
Here we see Arthur as a kind of Beowulf: a fearless leader of men, capable of legendary feats
of strength and battle. This Arthur is practically a god; in fact, there is reason to believe that
the figures of the Arthurian romances were originally Welsh gods.
1.4 Anglo-Saxon Civilization
Besides a common language base Anglo-Saxons shared a heroic ideal and set of traditional
heroes. They admired men of outstanding courage, whatever tribe they came from. Loyalty to
the leader and the tribe were necessary for the survival of all. The ruler was supposed to be
generous to those who were loyal, and the followers, in return for his generosity, were to
remain loyal. Everyone was aware of shortness of life and the passing away of all things.
Everything was thought to be determined by powerful fate. Therefore, all competed zealously
for fame, the only thing that lasted.
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If the literature of a people springs directly out of its life, then the stern (hard), barbarous life
of our Saxon forefathers would seem, at first glance, to promise little of good literature.
Outwardly their life was a constant hardship, a perpetual struggle against savage nature and
savage men. Behind them were gloomy forests inhabited by wild beasts and still wilder men,
and people in their imagination with dragons and evil shapes. In front of them, thundering at
the very dikes for entrance was the treacherous North Sea, with its fogs and storms and ice,
but with that indefinable call of the deep that all men hear who live long beneath its influence.
Here they lived, a big, blond, powerful race, and hunted and fought and sailed, and drank and
feasted when their labor was done. Almost the first thing we notice about these big, fearless,
childish men is that they love the sea; and because they love it they hear and answer its call:
... No delight has he in the world,
Nor in aught save the roll of the billows; but always a longing,
A yearning uneasiness, hastens him on to the sea. (From Beowulf)
As might be expected, this love of the ocean finds expression in all their poetry. In Beowulf
alone there are fifteen names for the sea, from the holm, that is, the horizon sea, the
"upmounding," to the brim, which is the ocean flinging its welter of sand and creamy foam
upon the beach at your feet. And the figures used to describe or glorify it "the swan road, the
whale path, the heaving battle plain"--are almost as numerous. In all their poetry there is a
magnificent sense of lordship over the wild sea even in its hour of tempest and fury:
Often it befalls us, on the ocean's highways,
In the boats our boatmen, when the storm is roaring,
Leap the billows over, on our stallions of the foam. (From Beowulf)
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Kingdoms and tribes in Britain, 600 AD
1.4.1 Artistic Anglo-Saxons
Although it is widely known that the Anglo-Saxons were courageous and strong people, it is
not generally realized that they had a highly developed feeling for beauty. They had a passion
for fine ornament, and they produced many beautiful pieces, such as brooches and bracelets of
exquisite design and skill. They were in fact more artistic and poetic people than their
Norman conquerors, who were essentially soldiers and administrators. The Anglo-Saxons also
had very active minds. They had men of great learning such as the Venerable Bede.
1. An Irish style Harp with twenty-two metal rather than gut strings. Gut strings were a tradition of
Anglo-Saxon harp making, and this made them more mellow in tone. 2. Twelve gut string lap harp.
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The Inner Life: A man's life is more than his work; his dream is ever greater than his
achievement; and literature reflects not so much man's deed as the spirit which animates him;
not the poor thing that he does, but rather the splendid thing that he ever hopes to do. In no
place is this more evident than in the age we are now studying. Those early sea kings were a
marvelous mixture of savagery and sentiment, of rough living and of deep feeling, of splendid
courage and the deep melancholy of men who know their limitations and have faced the
unanswered problem of death. They were not simply fearless freebooters who harried every
coast in their war galleys. If that were all, they would have no more history or literature than
the Barbary pirates, of whom the same thing could be said. These strong fathers of ours were
men of profound emotions. In all their fighting the love of an untarnished glory was
uppermost; and under the warrior's savage exterior was hidden a great love of home and
homely virtues, and a reverence for the one woman to whom he would presently return in
triumph. So when the wolf hunt was over, or the desperate fight was won, these mighty men
would gather in the banquet hall, and lay their weapons aside where the open fire would flash
upon them, and there listen to the songs of Scop and Gleeman, men who could put into
adequate words the emotions and aspirations that all men feel but that only a few can ever
express:
Music and song where the heroes sat
The glee-wood rang, a song uprose
When Hrothgar's scop gave the hall good cheer. (From Beowulf)
It is this great and hidden life of the Anglo-Saxons that finds expression in all their literature.
Briefly, it is summed up in five great principles, their love of personal freedom, their
responsiveness to nature, their religion, their reverence for womanhood, and their struggle for
glory as a ruling motive in every noble life.
1.4.2 The Establishment of Christianity
Despite the dominant mood of the Germanic people was fatalism, Christianity came early to
Britain. In 314 A.D. a bishop of London attended the church council at Arles in France. The
spread of Christianity was strengthened by missionaries from the Continent. The most famous
of these, Saint Augustine, came in 597 and established a monastery at Canterbury. He became
the first Archbishop of Canterbury.
St. Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury
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In 664 there was a synod at Whitby Abbey, a famous monastery for men and women under
the leadership of the Abbess Hilda. This synod united the English church with Roman
Christianity. The church began to draw the island kingdoms together and encouraged ties,
intellectual and commercial, with the rest of Europe.
Dramatic and magnificent the ruins of Whitby
Abbey are much more than a spectacular cliff top landmark. Founded in 657 by St. Hilda, the Synod
of Whitby settled the date for Easter in 664.
Saint Augustine was a Roman, the prior of Saint Andrew's monastery on the Coelian Hill in
Rome. In 596, Pope Saint Gregory the Great sent him with thirty-forty of his monks to
evangelize the English. By the time they had reached southern France, they were frightened
by stories of the brutality of the Anglo-Saxons and the dangerous nature of the Channel
crossing and his company wanted to return to civilization.
Augustine sought help from the Pope, who sent encouragement. Gregory said, "It is better
never to undertake any high enterprise (venture) than to abandon it once it has started." He
added, "The greater the labor, the greater will be the glory of your eternal reward."
The green arrow depicts the first
Journey of St. Augustine and his brothers, this followed by the return of St. Augustine to Rome. The
red arrows are the mission routes after 23th of July 596. The dotted red arrows are uncertain but
potential routes.
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Augustine rebuilt a church and laid the foundation for what would become the monastery of
Christ Church. On land given to him by the king, he built a Benedictine monastery at
Canterbury, called Ss. Peter and Paul (later called Saint Augustine's).
1.4.3 Anglo-Saxon Literature
´And sometimes a proud old soldier
Who had heard songs of the ancient heroes
And could sing them all through, story after story,
Would weave a net of words for Beowulf´s
Victory, tying the know of his verses
Smoothly, swiftly, into place with a poet´s
Quick skill, singing his new song aloud
While he shaped it…
This is how the Beowulf poet describes the singing of songs during his day. Anglo-Saxon
poetry was an oral art. Poems were not written down until much later period. Poems were
sung, frequently to the accompaiment of a harp. Poets recited well-known poems from
memory and at times created new ones. The professional poet, called scop, had a very
important function in this society. He was the memory and historian of the tribe. It was he
who remembered the important heroes, the kings, the important battles, and the folklore of the
tribe.
1.4.3.1 Christian Writers of the Anglo-Saxon Period
The literature of this period falls naturally into two divisions, pagan and Christian. The former
represents the poetry which the Anglo-Saxons probably brought with them in the form of oral
sagas, the crude material out of which literature was slowly developed on English soil; the
latter represents the writings developed under teaching of the monks, after the old pagan
religion had vanished. In reading of earliest poetry it is well to remember that all of it was
copied by the monks, and seems to have been more or less altered to give it a religious
coloring.
The coming of Christianity meant not simply a new life and leader for England; it meant also
the wealth of a new language. The scop is now replaced by the literary monk; and that monk,
though he lives among common people and speaks with the English tongue, has behind him
all the culture and literary resources of the Latin language. The effect is seen instantly in our
early prose and poetry.
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The Manuscript Book; after the painting
by John W. Alexander from a Copley Print. Copyright, 1899, Curtis and Cameron
Saint Gildas (494 or 516 – 570) is regarded as the earliest British historian and is quoted by
Bede and Alcuin. His renowned learning and literary style earned him the designation Gildas
Sapiens (Gildas the Wise). Two manuscripts copies of his writings are preserved in
Cambridge University library.
Saint Gildas
The authentic work of St. Gildas, De excidio Britanniae liber querulous (On the Ruins of
Britain), is now usually divided into three parts: (1) The preface; (2) A sketch of British
history from the Roman invasion to his own time; (3) An epistle of severe invective addressed
to five petty British kings: Constantine, Vortipor, Cyneglas, Cynan, and Maelgwn. It is a
sermon in three parts condemning the acts of his contemporaries, both secular and religious.
The first part consists of Gildas' explanation for his work and a brief narrative of Roman
Britain from its conquest under the principle to Gildas' time: Concerning her obstinacy,
subjection and rebellion, about her second subjection and harsh servitude; concerning
religion, of persecution, the holy martyrs, many heresies, of tyrants, of two plundering races,
concerning the defense and a further devastation, of a second vengeance and a third
devastation, concerning hunger, of the letter to Agitius [usually identified with the patrician
Aetius], of victory, of crimes, of enemies suddenly announced, a memorable plague, a
council, an enemy more savage than the first, the subversion of cities, concerning those whose
survived, and concerning the final victory of our country that has been granted to our time by
the will of God.
In the second part, opening with the assertion "Britain has kings, yet they are tyrants; it has
judges, yet they are undutiful", Gildas addresses the lives and actions of five contemporary
rulers: Constantine of Dumnonia, Aurelius Caninus, Vortiporius of the Demetae (now called
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Dyfed), Cuneglasus apparently of 'the Bear's Home' (possibly 'the Bear's Stronghold' - Dinarth
at Llandrillo-yn-Rhôs near Llandudno), and lastly Maglocunus or Maelgwn. Without
exception, Gildas declares each of these rulers cruel, rapacious, and living a life of sin.
The third part begins with the words, "Britain has priests, but they are fools; numerous
ministers, but they are shameless; clerics, but they are wily plunderers." Gildas continues his
jeremiad against the clergy of his age, but does not explicitly mention any names in this
section, and so does not cast any light on the history of the Christian church in this period.
Gildas's work is of great importance to historians, because although it is not intended
primarily as history, it is almost the only surviving source written by a near-contemporary of
British events in the fifth and sixth centuries. The usual date that has been given for the
composition of the work is some time in the 540s, but it is now regarded as quite possibly
earlier, in the first quarter of the sixth century, or even before that.
His writings are clearly the work of a man of no ordinary culture and sanctity, and indicate
that the author was thoroughly acquainted with the Sacred Scriptures.
Northumbrian Literature: In general, two great schools of Christian influence came into
England, and speedily put an end to the frightful wars that had waged continually among the
various small kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxons. The first of these, under the leadership of St
Augustine, came from Rome. It spread in the south and center of England, especially in the
kingdom of Essex. It founded schools and partially educated the rough people, but it produced
no lasting literature. The other, under the leadership of the saintly Aidan, came from Ireland,
which country had been for centuries a center of religion and education for all western
Europe. The monks of this school labored chiefly in Northumbria, and to their influence we
owe all that is best in Anglo-Saxon literature. It is called the Northumbrian School; its center
was the monasteries and abbeys, such as Jarrow and Whitby, and its two greatest names are
Bede and Cædmon.
Initial letter of a copy of St Luke´s Gospel, circa 700 AD
Venerable Bede (673-735): The Venerable Bede, as he is generally called, our first great
scholar and "the father of our English learning," wrote almost exclusively in Latin, his last
work, the translation of the Gospel of John into Anglo-Saxon, having been unfortunately lost.
Much to our regret, therefore, his books and the story of his gentle, heroic life must be
excluded from this history of our literature. His works, over forty in number, covered the
whole field of human knowledge in his day, and were so admirably written that they were
widely copied as text-books, or rather manuscripts, in nearly all the monastery schools of
Europe.
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Venerable Bede Translating the Gospel of John, by J. D. Penrose
The First History of England: The work most important to us is the Ecclesiastical History
of the English People. It is a fascinating history to read even now, with its curious
combination of accurate scholarship and immense credulity. In all strictly historical matters
Bede is a model. Every known authority on the subject, from Pliny to Gildas, was carefully
considered; every learned pilgrim to Rome was commissioned by Bede to ransack the
archives and to make copies of papal decrees and royal letters; and to these were added the
testimony of abbots who could speak from personal knowledge of events or repeat the
traditions of their several monasteries.
Side by side with this historical exactness are marvelous stories of saints and missionaries. It
was an age of credulity, and miracles were in men's minds continually. The men of whom he
wrote lived lives more wonderful than any romance, and their courage and gentleness made a
tremendous impression on the rough, warlike people to whom they came with open hands and
hearts. It is the natural way of all primitive peoples to magnify the works of their heroes, and
so deeds of heroism and kindness, which were part of the daily life of the Irish missionaries,
were soon transformed into the miracles of the saints. Bede believed these things, as all other
men did, and records them with charming simplicity, just as he received them from bishop or
abbot. Notwithstanding its errors, we owe to this work nearly all our knowledge of the eight
centuries of our history following the landing of Cæsar in Britain.
CÆDMON (Seventh Century)
Now must we hymn the Master of heaven,
The might of the Maker, the deeds of the Father,
The thought of His heart. He, Lord everlasting,
Established of old the source of all wonders:
Creator all-holy, He hung the bright heaven,
A roof high upreared, o'er the children of men;
The King of mankind then created for mortals
The world in its beauty, the earth spread beneath them,
He, Lord everlasting, omnipotent God. (by Cædmon, In: Ecclesiastical History by Bede)
If Beowulf and the fragments of our earliest poetry were brought into England, then the hymn
given above is the first verse of all native English song that has come down to us, and
Cædmon is the first poet to whom we can give a definite name and date. The words were
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written about 665 AD and are found copied at the end of a manuscript of Bede's Ecclesiastical
History.
What little we know of Cædmon, the Anglo-Saxon Milton, as he is properly called, is taken
from Bede's account of the Abbess Hilda and of her monastery at Whitby. Here is a free and
condensed translation of Bede's story:
There was, in the monastery of the Abbess Hilda, a brother distinguished by the grace of God,
for that he could make poems treating of goodness and religion. Whatever was translated to
him (for he could not read) of Sacred Scripture he shortly reproduced in poetic form of great
sweetness and beauty. None of all the English poets could equal him, for he learned not the art
of song from men, nor sang by the arts of men. Rather did he receive all his poetry as a free
gift from God, and for this reason he did never compose poetry of a vain or worldly kind.
Until of mature age he lived as a layman and had never learned any poetry. Indeed, so
ignorant of singing was he that sometimes, at a feast, where it was the custom that for the
pleasure of all each guest should sing in turn, he would rise from the table when he saw the
harp coming to him and go home ashamed. Now it happened once that he did this thing at a
certain festivity, and went out to the stall to care for the horses, this duty being assigned to
him for that night. As he slept at the usual time, one stood by him saying: "Cædmon, sing me
something." "I cannot sing," he answered, "and that is why I came hither from the feast." But
he who spake unto him said again, "Cædmon, sing to me." And he said, "What shall I sing?"
and he said, "Sing the beginning of created things." Thereupon Cædmon began to sing verses
that he had never heard before, of this import: "Now should we praise the power and wisdom
of the Creator, the works of the Father." This is the sense but not the form of the hymn that he
sang while sleeping.
When he awakened, Cædmon remembered the words of the hymn and added to them many
more. In the morning he went to the steward of the monastery lands and showed him the gift
he had received in sleep. The steward brought him to Hilda, who made him repeat to the
monks the hymn he had composed, and all agreed that the grace of God was upon Cædmon.
To test him they expounded to him a bit of Scripture from the Latin and bade him, if he could,
to turn it into poetry. He went away humbly and returned in the morning with an excellent
poem. Thereupon Hilda received him and his family into the monastery, made him one of the
brethren, and commanded that the whole course of Bible history be expounded to him. He in
turn, reflecting upon what he had heard, transformed it into most delightful poetry, and by
echoing it back to the monks in more melodious sounds made his teachers his listeners. In all
this his aim was to turn men from wickedness and to help them to the love and practice of
well doing.
Cædmon's Works: The greatest work attributed to Cædmon is the so-called Paraphrase. It is
the story of Genesis, Exodus, and a part of Daniel, told in glowing, poetic language, with a
power of insight and imagination which often raises it from paraphrase into the realm of true
poetry. Though we have Bede's assurance that Cædmon "transformed the whole course of
Bible history into most delightful poetry," no work known certainly to have been composed
by him has come down to us. In the seventeenth century this Anglo-Saxon Paraphrase was
discovered and attributed to Cædmon, and his name is still associated with it, though it is now
almost certain that the Paraphrase is the work of more than one writer.
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Aside from the doubtful question of authorship, even a casual reading of the poem brings us
into the presence of a poet rude indeed, but with a genius strongly suggestive at times of the
matchless Milton. The book opens with a hymn of praise, and then tells of the fall of Satan
and his rebel angels from heaven, which is familiar to us in Milton's Paradise Lost. Then
follows the creation of the world and the Paraphrase begins to thrill with the old AngloSaxon love of nature.
Besides the Paraphrase we have a few fragments of the same general character which are
attributed to the school of Cædmon. The longest of these is Judith, in which the story of an
apocryphal book of the Old Testament is done into vigorous poetry. Holofernes is represented
as a savage and cruel Viking, reveling in his mead hall; and when the heroic Judith cuts off
his head with his own sword and throws it down before the warriors of her people, rousing
them to battle and victory, we reach perhaps the most dramatic and brilliant point of AngloSaxon literature.
CÆDMON CROSS at Whitby Abbey
1.4.3.2 Decline of Northumbrian Literature
The same northern energy which had built up learning and literature so rapidly in
Northumbria was instrumental in pulling it down again. Toward the end of the eighth century,
the Danes swept down on the English coasts and overwhelmed Northumbria. Monasteries and
schools were destroyed; scholars and teachers alike were put to the sword, and libraries that
had been gathered leaf by leaf with the toil of centuries were scattered to the four winds. So
all true Northumbrian literature perished, with the exception of a few fragments, and that
which we now possess is largely a translation in the dialect of the West Saxons. This
translation was made by Alfred's scholars, after he had driven back the Danes in an effort to
preserve the ideals and the civilization that had been so hardly won. With the conquest of
Northumbria the poetic period of Anglo-Saxon literature ends. With Alfred the Great of
Wessex English prose literature makes a beginning.
Alfred the Great (848-901)
"Every craft and every power soon grows
old and is passed over and forgotten, if it
be without wisdom.... This is now to be
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said, that whilst I live I wish to live nobly,
and after life to leave to the men who come
after me a memory of good works."
So wrote the great Alfred, looking back over his heroic life. That he lived nobly none can
doubt who reads the history of the greatest of Anglo-Saxon kings; and his good works
include, among others, the education of half a country, the salvage of a noble native literature,
and the creation of the first English prose.
Life and Times of Alfred: For the history of Alfred's times, and details of the terrific struggle
with the Northmen, the reader must be referred to the histories. The struggle ended with the
Treaty of Wedmore, in 878, with the establishment of Alfred not only as king of Wessex, but
as overlord of the whole northern country. Then the hero laid down his sword, and set himself
as a little child to learn to read and write Latin, so that he might lead his people in peace as he
had led them in war. It is then that Alfred began to be the heroic figure in literature that he had
formerly been in the wars against the Northmen.
Alfred the Great
With the same patience and heroism that had marked the long struggle for freedom, Alfred set
himself to the task of educating his people. First he gave them laws, beginning with the Ten
Commandments and ending with the Golden Rule, and then established courts where laws
could be faithfully administered. Safe from the Danes by land, he created a navy, almost the
first of the English fleets, to drive them from the coast. Then, with peace and justice
established within his borders, he sent to Europe for scholars and teachers, and set them over
schools that he established. Hitherto all education had been in Latin; now he set himself the
task, first, of teaching every free-born Englishman to read and write his own language, and
second, of translating into English the best books for their instruction. Every poor scholar
was honored at his court and was speedily set to work at teaching or translating; every
wanderer bringing a book or a leaf of manuscript from the pillaged (plundered) monasteries of
Northumbria was sure of his reward. In this way the few fragments of native Northumbrian
literature, which we have been studying, were saved to the world. Alfred and his scholars
treasured the rare fragments and copied them in the West-Saxon dialect. With the exception of
Cædmon's Hymn, we have hardly a single leaf from the great literature of Northumbria in the
dialect in which it was first written.
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Works of Alfred: Aside from his educational work, Alfred is known chiefly as a translator.
After fighting his country's battles, and at a time when most men were content with military
honor, he began to learn Latin, that he might translate the works that would be most helpful to
his people. His important translations are four in number: Orosius's Universal History and
Geography, the leading work in general history for several centuries; Bede's History, the first
great historical work written on English soil; Pope Gregory's Shepherds' Book, intended
especially for the clergy; and Boethius's Consolations of Philosophy, the favorite
philosophical work of the Middle Ages.
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: More important than any translation is the English or Saxon
Chronicle. This was probably at first a dry record, especially of important births and deaths in
the West-Saxon kingdom. Alfred enlarged this scant (short) record, beginning the story with
Cæsar's conquest. When it touches his reign the dry chronicle becomes an interesting and
connected story, the oldest history belonging to any modern nation in its own language. The
record of Alfred's reign, probably by himself, is a splendid bit of writing and shows clearly his
claim to a place in literature as well as in history. The Chronicle was continued after Alfred's
death, and is the best monument of early English prose that is left to us. Here and there
stirring (exciting) songs are included in the narrative, like "The Battle of Brunanburh" and
"The Battle of Maldon." The last, entered 991, seventy-five years before the Norman
Conquest, is the swan song of Anglo-Saxon poetry. The Chronicle was continued for a
century after the Norman Conquest, and is extremely valuable not only as a record of events
but as a literary monument showing the development of our language.
Close of the Anglo-Saxon Period: After Alfred's death there is little to record, except the loss
of the two supreme objects of his heroic struggle, namely, a national life and a national
literature. It was at once the strength and the weakness of the Saxon that he lived apart as a
free man and never joined efforts willingly with any large body of his fellows. The tribe was
his largest idea of nationality, and, with all our admiration, we must confess as we first meet
him that he has not enough sense of unity to make a great nation, nor enough culture to
produce a great literature. A few noble political ideals repeated in a score of petty kingdoms,
and a few literary ideals copied but never increased, that is the summary of his literary
history. For a full century after Alfred literature was practically at a standstill, having
produced the best of which it was capable, and England waited for the national impulse and
for the culture necessary for a new and greater art. Both of these came speedily, by way of the
sea, in the Norman Conquest.
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2. THE GROWTH OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
2.1 A Brief History of the English Language
English is a member of the Indo-European family of languages. This broad family includes
most of the European languages spoken today. The Indo-European family includes several
major branches: Latin and the modern Romance languages (French etc.); the Germanic
languages (English, German, Swedish etc.); the Indo-Iranian languages (Hindi, Urdu,
Sanskrit etc.); the Slavic languages (Russian, Polish, Czech etc.); the Baltic languages of
Latvian and Lithuanian; the Celtic languages (Welsh, Irish Gaelic etc.); Greek.
Picture: Indo-European Language Family Tree
The influence of the original Indo-European language can be seen today, even though no
written record of it exists. The word for father, for example, is vater in German, pater in
Latin, and pitr in Sanskrit. These words are all cognates (related), similar words in different
languages that share the same root.
Of these branches of the Indo-European family, two are, as far as the study of the
development of English is concerned, of principal importance, the Germanic and the
Romance (called that because the Romance languages derive from Latin, the language of
ancient Rome). English is a member of the Germanic group of languages. It is believed that
this group began as a common language in the Elbe river region about three thousand years
ago. By the second century BC, this Common Germanic language had split into three distinct
sub-groups:
•
•
•
East Germanic was spoken by peoples who migrated back to southeastern Europe. No
East Germanic language is spoken today, and the only written East Germanic language
that survives is Gothic.
North Germanic evolved into the modern Scandinavian languages of Swedish, Danish,
Norwegian, and Icelandic (but not Finnish, which is related to Hungarian and Estonian
and is not an Indo-European language).
West Germanic is the ancestor of modern German, Dutch, Flemish, Frisian, and
English.
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2.1.1 Old English (500-1100 AD)
West Germanic invaders from Jutland and southern Denmark: the Angles (whose name is the
source of the words England and English), Saxons, and Jutes, began to settle in the British
Isles in the fifth and sixth centuries AD. They spoke a mutually understandable language,
similar to modern Frisian - the language of the northeastern region of the Netherlands - that is
called Old English. Four major dialects of Old English emerged, Northumbrian in the north of
England, Mercian in the Midlands, West Saxon in the south and west, and Kentish in the
Southeast.
These invaders forced the original, Celtic-speaking inhabitants out (expelled them) of what is
now England into Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, and Ireland, leaving behind a few Celtic words.
These Celtic languages survive today in the Gaelic languages of Scotland and Ireland and in
Welsh. Cornish, unfortunately, is, in linguistic terms, now a dead language. (The last native
Cornish speaker died in 1777) Also influencing English at this time were the Vikings. Norse
invasions and settlement, beginning around 850, brought many North Germanic words into
the language, particularly in the north of England. Some examples are dream, which had
meant 'joy' until the Vikings imparted its current meaning on it from the Scandinavian related
word draumr, and skirt, which continues to live alongside its native English cognate shirt.
The majority of words in modern English come from foreign, not Old English roots. In fact,
only about one sixth of the known Old English words have descendants surviving today. But
this is deceptive; Old English is much more important than these statistics would indicate.
About half of the most commonly used words in modern English have Old English roots.
Words like be, water, and strong for example derive from Old English roots.
Picture1: Early Anglo-Saxon Britain: 600-900 AD Picture2: Part of the original manuscript of Beowulf
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Old English, whose best known surviving example is the poem Beowulf, lasted until about
1100, shortly after the most important event in the development and history of the English
language, the Norman Conquest (1066-1485).
2.1.2 The Norman Conquest and Middle English (1100-1500)
William the Conqueror, the Duke of Normandy, invaded and conquered England and the
Anglo-Saxons in 1066 AD. The new overlords spoke a dialect of Old French known as
Anglo-Norman. The Normans were also of Germanic stock ("Norman" comes from
"Norseman") and Anglo-Norman was a French dialect that had considerable Germanic
influences in addition to the basic Latin roots.
Prior to (earlier) the Norman Conquest, Latin had been only a minor influence on the English
language, mainly through the evidence of the Roman occupation and from the conversion of
Britain to Christianity in the seventh century (ecclesiastical terms such as priest, vicar, and
mass came into the language this way), but now there was a wholesale (large-scale) infusion
of Romance (Anglo-Norman) words.
The influence of the Normans can be illustrated by looking at two words, beef and cow. Beef,
commonly eaten by the aristocracy, derives from the Anglo-Norman, while the Anglo-Saxon
commoners, who grew the cattle, kept the Germanic cow. Many legal terms, such as indict,
jury, and verdict have Anglo-Norman roots because the Normans ran the courts. This split,
where words commonly used by the aristocracy have Romantic roots and words frequently
used by the Anglo-Saxon commoners have Germanic roots, can be seen in many instances.
Sometimes French words replaced Old English words; crime replaced firen and uncle
replaced eam. Other times, French and Old English components combined to form a new
word, as the French gentle and the Germanic man formed gentleman. On the other hand, two
different words with almost the same meaning, survive into modern English. Thus we have
the Germanic doom (death) and the French judgment, or wish and desire.
It is useful to compare various versions of a familiar text of the prayer Our Father to see the
differences between Old, Middle, and Modern English. Take for instance this Old English (c.
1000) sample:
Fæder ure þu þe eart on heofonum
si þin nama gehalgod tobecume þin rice gewurþe þin willa on eorðan swa swa on heofonum
urne gedæghwamlican hlaf syle us to dæg
and forgyf us ure gyltas swa swa we forgyfað urum gyltendum
and ne gelæd þu us on costnunge ac alys us of yfele soþlice.
Translated in Middle English (Wyclif, 1384), the same text is recognizable to the modern eye:
Oure fadir þat art in heuenes halwid be þi name;
þi reume or kyngdom come to be. Be þi wille don in herþe as it is doun in heuene.
yeue to us today oure eche dayes bred.
And foryeue to us oure dettis þat is oure synnys as we foryeuen to oure dettouris þat is to men
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þat han synned in us.
And lede us not into temptacion but delyuere us from euyl.
Finally, in Early Modern English (King James Version, 1611) the same text is completely
understandable:
Our father which art in heauen, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth as it is in heauen.
Giue us this day our daily bread.
And forgiue us our debts as we forgiue our debters.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliuer us from euill. Amen.
The period of Middle English begins with the Norman invasion of 1066. King Edward the
Confessor had died without heirs, and William, Duke of Normandy, believed that he would
become the next king. However, upon learning that Harold was crowned king, William
invaded England, killed Harold and crowned himself king during the famous Battle of
Hastings. William spoke only French. As a result, the upper class in England began to speak
French while the lower classes spoke English.
But by 1250, French began to lose its prestige. King John (Lackland) had lost Normandy to
the French in 1204, and after him, King Edward I spoke only English. At this time, many
foreigners entered England which made the nobility feel more "English" and so encouraged
more use of the English language. The upper class tried to learn English. However, they still
used French words what was considered somewhat snobbish. French still maintained its
prestige elsewhere, and the upper class did not want to lose it completely. Nevertheless, the
Hundred Year's War (1337-1453) intensified hatred of all things French. The Black Death
also played a role in increasing English use with the emergence of the middle class. Several of
the workers had been killed by the plague, which increased the status of the peasants, who
only spoke English. By 1362, the Statute of Pleading (although written in French) declared
English as the official spoken language of the courts. By 1385, English was the language of
instruction in schools. 1350 to 1400 is known as the Period of Great Individual Writers (most
famously, Chaucer), but their works included an apology for writing in English.
Although the popularity of French was decreasing, several words (around ten thousand) were
borrowed into English between 1250 and 1500 (though most of these words were Parisian
rather than Norman French). Many of the words were related to government (sovereign,
empire), law (judge, jury, justice, attorney, felony, larceny), social life (fashion, embroidery,
cuisine, appetite) and learning (poet, logic, physician). Furthermore, the legal system retained
parts of French word order (the adjective following the noun) in such terms as fee simple,
attorney general and accounts payable.
27
This mixture of the two languages came to be known as Middle English. The most famous
example of Middle English is Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Unlike Old English, Middle
English can be read, although with difficulty, by modern English-speaking people.
By 1362, the linguistic division between the nobility and the commoners was largely over. In
that year, the Statute of Pleading was adopted, which made English the language of the courts
and it began to be used in Parliament.
The Middle English period came to a close around 1500 AD with the rise of Modern English.
2.1.3 Early Modern English (1500-1800)
The next wave of innovation in English came with the Renaissance. The revival of classical
scholarship brought many classical Latin and Greek words into the Language. These
borrowings were intentional and many lamented the adoption of these terms, but many
survive to this day. Shakespeare's character Holofernes in Loves Labor Lost is a satire of an
overenthusiastic schoolmaster who is too fond of Latinisms.
Many students having difficulty understanding Shakespeare would be surprised to learn that
he wrote in modern English. But, as can be seen in the earlier example of the Lord's Prayer,
Elizabethan English has much more in common with our language today than it does with the
language of Chaucer. Many familiar words and phrases were made up or first recorded by
Shakespeare, some two thousand words and countless idioms are his. Beginners to
Shakespeare are often shocked at the number of cliches contained in his plays, until they
realize that he made up them and they became cliches afterwards. Cliches like "Vanish into
thin air" and "flesh and blood" are Shakespeare's. Words he gave to the language include
"critical," "leapfrog," "majestic," "dwindle," (decrease) and "pedant."
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Elizabeth I (1533-1603)
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Words in the Elizabethan Language: The number of words used in the Elizabethan
language was constantly developing during Elizabethan times - their vocabulary was
expanding. The average number of words used in a 'commoners' vocabulary during
Elizabethan times was less than five hundred, compared with at least seven thousand words
that are used in modern day English. Elizabethan writers and playwrights invented new
words. William Shakespeare invented many of the words that he used in his plays.
Shakespeare is credited with contributing more new words to the English language than any
other single person - approximately two thousand. Some of the many new words he invented
to enhance the Elizabethan language and vocabulary is as follows:
Accused Addiction Amazement Arouse Assassinate Blushing Champion Circumstantial
Compromise Courtship Countless Critic Dawn Epileptic Elbow Excitement Exposure Frugal
Generous Gossip Hint Impartial Invulnerable Jaded Label Lonely Luggage Majestic
Negotiate Obscene Premeditated Puke Scuffle Torture Tranquil Varied and Worthless
The Elizabethan language and vocabulary had not been formalised. New words were being
invented. Elizabethan dictionaries were not available. Elizabethan words were therefore
written in a variety of different formats. The name of William Shakespeare provides an
excellent illustration of the confusion that this caused! The name Shakespeare was spelt in an
astonishing variety of ways during Elizabethan times including Shakspere, Shakespere,
Shakkespere, Shaxpere, Shakstaff, Sakspere, Shagspere, Shakeshafte and even Chacsper!
Shakespeare himself always wrote “Shakspere.” However, in many formal documents his
name generally appears as Shakespeare. Interestingly, another derivation of the name "Shakespeare" appears on the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays.
29
Two other major factors influenced the language and served to separate Middle and Modern
English. The first was the Great Vowel Shift. This was a change in pronunciation that began
around 1400. While modern English speakers can read Chaucer with some difficulty,
Chaucer's pronunciation would have been completely unintelligible to the modern ear.
Shakespeare, on the other hand, would be accented, but understandable. Vowel sounds began
to be made further to the front of the mouth and the letter "e" at the end of words became
silent. Chaucer's Lyf (pronounced "leef") became the modern life. In Middle English name
was pronounced "nam-a," five was pronounced "feef," and down was pronounced "doon." In
linguistic terms, the shift was rather sudden, the major changes occurring within a century.
The shift is still not over however vowel sounds are still shortening although the change has
become considerably more gradual.
The last major factor in the development of Modern English was the advent of the printing
press. William Caxton brought the printing press to England in 1476. Books became cheaper
and as a result, literacy became more common. Publishing for the masses became a profitable
enterprise, and works in English, as opposed to Latin, became more common. Finally, the
printing press brought standardization to English. The dialect of London, where most
publishing houses were located, became the standard. Spelling and grammar became fixed,
and the first English dictionary was published in 1604.
2.1.4 Late-Modern English (1800-Present)
The principal distinction between early and late-modern English is vocabulary. Pronunciation,
grammar, and spelling are largely the same, but Late-Modern English has many more words.
These words are the result of two historical factors. The first is the Industrial Revolution and
the rise of the technological society. This necessitated new words for things and ideas that had
not previously existed. The second was the British Empire. At its height, Britain ruled one
quarter of the earth's surface, and English adopted many foreign words and made them its
own.
The industrial and scientific revolutions created a need for neologisms (new forms of the
words) to describe the new creations and discoveries. For this, English relied heavily on Latin
and Greek. Words like oxygen, protein, nuclear, and vaccine did not exist in the classical
languages, but they were created from Latin and Greek roots. Such neologisms were not
exclusively created from classical roots, though English roots were used for such terms as
horsepower, airplane and typewriter.
This burst of neologisms continues today, perhaps most visible in the field of electronics and
computers. Byte, cyber-, bios, hard-drive, and microchip are good examples.
Also, the rise of the British Empire and the growth of global trade served not only to
introduce English to the world, but to introduce words into English. Hindi, and the other
languages of the Indian subcontinent, provided many words, such as pundit, shampoo,
pajamas, and juggernaut. Virtually every language on Earth has contributed to the
development of English, from Finnish (sauna) and Japanese (tycoon) to the vast contributions
of French and Latin.
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The British Empire was a maritime empire, and the influence of marine terms on the English
language has been great. Phrases like three sheets to the wind have their origins onboard
ships.
Finally, the military influence on the language during the latter half of twentieth century was
significant. Before the Great War, military service for English-speaking persons was rare;
both Britain and the United States maintained small, volunteer militaries. Military slang
existed, but with the exception of marital terms, rarely influenced standard English. During
the mid-20th century, however, a large number of British and American men served in the
military. And consequently military slang entered the language like never before. Blockbuster,
nose dive, camouflage, radar, roadblock, spearhead, and landing strip are all military terms
that made their way into standard English.
3.THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD (1066-1485)
3.1 The Norman Conquest
The Norman Conquest: The official history of the Medieval Period begins in 1066 with the
Battle of Hastings in which Harold, the king of England, was defeated by William “the
Conqueror,” Duke of Normandy. William invaded England to support his claim that he had
been promised the succession to the English throne. The coming of the Normans to England
was not another hit-and-run (piratical) raid, but a real invasion and occupation. The
occupation was imposed systematically and can be described in modern terms. There was a
great property. Martial (militant) law was put into effect. William was an efficient and
ruthless soldier and an able administrator. With his followers, many of whom were
adventurers and soldiers of fortune, he was soon able to conquer the whole country. He
reigned for twenty-one years, and the succession was assured at his death.
THE NORMAN CONQUEST
The Bayeux Tapestry depicts the Battle of Hastings and the events leading to it.
The Normans – a name derived from “Northman” – were in large part descended from the
Vikings who had seized and then remained in northwestern France, which became known as
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Normandy. After more than a hundred years in France, the Normans had adopted many
French customs and had their own variation of French language (Norman-French then spoken
in Normandy). The men who bore the name “Normans” came originally from Scandinavia,
bands of big, blond, fearless men cruising after plunder and adventure in their Viking ships,
and bringing terror wherever they appeared. It was these same "Children of Woden" who,
under the Danes' raven flag, had blotted out Northumbrian civilization in the ninth century.
Later the same race of men came plundering along the French coast and conquered the whole
northern country; but here the results were altogether different. Instead of blotting out a
superior civilization, as the Danes had done, they promptly abandoned their own. Their name
of Normandy still clings to the new home; but all else that was Norse disappeared as the
conquerors intermarried with the native Franks and accepted French ideals and spoke the
French language. They were curious people: superb soldiers, excellent administrators and
lawyers, great borrowers and adapters, but lacking inventiveness and original ideas. The union
of Norse and French (i.e. Roman-Gallic) blood had here produced a race having the best
qualities of both, the will power and energy of the one, the eager curiosity and vivid
imagination of the other. When these Norman-French people appeared in Anglo-Saxon
England they brought with them three noteworthy things: a lively Celtic disposition, a
vigorous and progressive Latin civilization, and a Romance language. Even the architecture
and the ambitious building in stone that they introduced into England originated in northern
Italy. It used to be thought that the Norman conquerors “civilized” the defeated AngloSaxons, but in some respects, notably in their democratic system of government and in their
crafts and designs, the Anglo-Saxons were more advanced than the Normans. We are to think
of the conquerors, therefore, as they thought and spoke of themselves in the Domesday Book
and all their contemporary literature, not as Normans but as “Franci”, that is, Frenchmen.
The dual kingdoms of England and Normandy established by William the Conqueror became
the most powerful force in Europe. William´s descendants greatly increased their land
property in Europe, either through marriage or by conquest. The Norman kings of England
spent much of their time across the English Channel, fighting for their French territories, and
later administering (running) their Continental kingdoms. The court was accompanied by the
king. It is a compliment to the stability of the kingdom and its management that one of its
kings, Richard “the Lion-Hearted,” could spend almost five months of his ten years´ reign
outside of his English kingdom.
The Norman and Anglo-Saxon elements were gradually fused into a national English
character, neither predominately Norman nor Anglo-Saxon but a subtle blend of both. After
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losing their own rulers, the Anglo-Saxons adapted to Norman ways. Many found that they
could raise their ministry (function) through the Church or through the court, and began to
join their Norman overlords. One prominent example is that of Thomas Becket, who became
Henry II ´s Lord Chancellor and later Archbishop of Canterbury.
3.2 Land and the Feudal System
Since most of the great Anglo-Saxon landowners were wiped out by the invasion, William
had a great deal of land at his disposal. Retaining much himself, the rest he granted to those
who had fought faithfully with him. The year 1066 brought the largest change of land
ownership in the history of England. William felt that the land of England was his by right of
conquest and that he was free do sign land to his servants by royal document, expecting
obedience and service in return. Thus, William introduced into England the feudal system as
it was practiced on the Continent.
The Feudal System was introduced to England following the invasion and conquest of the
country by William I (The Conqueror).
The system had been used in France by the Normans from the time they first settled there
in about 900 AD. It was a simple, but effective system, where all land was owned by the
King. One quarter was kept by the King as his personal property, some was given to the
church and the rest was leased out (rented) under strict controls.
A simple plan showing how the Feudal System worked: Feudalism was a complicated system of
landholding. Nobody owned land independently but only as a servant of an overlord, who in turn
owed loyalty either to some great noble or to the king. The system was really an elaborate chain of
loyalties, with rent, so to speak, paid principally in military service to the overlord.
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William was not popular with the people of England and he had to use force to maintain his
control on England. William could not rule every part of the country himself - this was
physically impossible. William spent much of his time in London. He built his own castle –
the Tower of London - so that it dominated the city. It was also his home while in London. He
did not trust the builders of London - or English stone - so he used Norman craftsmen to do
the skilled work while the English acted as labourers and he brought in from Caen (in France)
the stone needed for what we now call the White Tower. He also built the first castle at
Windsor. Castles represented a visible threat to the people of England. Soldiers were kept in
them and they could be used against the English should they cause trouble.
However, he needed a way of actually governing the country. This was the Feudal System.
William divided up England into very large plots of land - similar to our counties today.
These were 'given' to those noblemen who had fought bravely for him in battle. William
argued that those noblemen who were willing to die in battle for him, would also be loyal to
him. The land was not simply given to these nobles. They had to swear an oath of loyalty to
William, they had to collect taxes in their area for him and they had to provide the king with
soldiers if they were told to do so. In the eleventh century, a sworn oath on the Bible was a
very important thing and one which few men would dare to break as it would condemn them
to Hell. The men who got these parcels of land would have been barons, earls and dukes
Within their own area, they were the most important person there. In the terms of the Feudal
System, these men, the barons etc., were known as tenants-in-chief.
Three different orders
Even these pieces of land were large and difficult to govern. The barons etc. had to further
divide up their land and these were 'given' to trusted Norman knights who had also fought
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well in battle. Each knight was given a segment of land to govern. He had to swear an oath to
the baron, duke or earl, collect taxes when told to do so and provide soldiers from his land
when they were needed. The people in their land - or manors - were treated harshly and there
was always the constant threat of Norman soldiers being used against the English people
where ever they lived. The lords had to do their job well as unsuccessful ones could be
removed from their position. Their job was simple - keep the English people in their place
under the control of the Normans. Under the Feudal System, these men, the knights, were
called sub-tenants.
Both groups were officially tenants - a word we associate with land that does not belong to
you. Both all but rented out their land in that they had to provide money or services to the real
owner of all land – William the Conqueror.
3.2.1 Domesday Book
There is no doubt that William´s rule was harsh. But he was a man who had conquered the
country. He was not in England through the popular choice of the people and he had to ensure
that he had full control over them at all times. He ensured that there were obvious signs of his
power - the country saw the building of many Norman castles. He also knew what was owed
to him because he ordered a survey of the whole country – the Domesday Book.
The Domesday Book was commissioned in December
1085 by William the Conqueror, who invaded England in 1066. The first draft was completed in
August 1086 and contained records for more than thirteen thousand settlements in the English
counties south of the rivers Ribble and Tees (the border with Scotland at the time).
The grants William gave were mainly the estates of certain Anglo-Saxons who had died at the
Conquest. The boundaries of these estates were frequently vague, and the first twenty years of
Norman rule saw many disputes about property. Therefore, in 1086, William had a complete
inventory of all property drawn up in the very important Domesday Book (sometimes called
Doomsday), the book of judgments. It listed all the landowners and showed the extent of their
rights.
The Domesday Book is one of Medieval England´s greatest treasures. It is closely linked with
William the Conqueror´s attempt to dominate Medieval England. Along with a string of
castles throughout England, the Domesday Book was to give William huge authority in
England. To further extend his grip on England, William I ordered that a book would contain
information on who owned what throughout the country. This book would also tell him who
owed him what in tax and because the information was on record, nobody could dispute or
argue against a tax demand. This is why the book brought doom and gloom to the people of
England - hence Domesday Book. The decision of what someone owed was final - rather like
Judgement Day when your soul was judged for Heaven or Hell.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a history written by monks hostile to William, says of this great
inventory, “It is a shame to tell though he thought no shame to do it. So very narrowly he
caused it to be traced out that there was not one single yard of land, not even an ox, a cow, a
swine that was not set down in writing.” Taxes in England could now be based on real
property – previously, there had been a uniform tax for all. Everybody had to pay their tax to
the king. This meant that no lord or other nobleman could build up enough money to raise a
private army to challenge William. It also meant that William had money to increase the size
of his own army - paid for by English taxes. William did not live long enough to see the
benefit of the Domesday Book. He died in September 1087 but his successor, William II (also
known as William Rufus) did benefit as he knew as soon as he was crowned who owed him
what and who his troublesome lords might be - because of the wealth they had.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a collection of annals in Old
English narrating the history of the Anglo-Saxons. The annals were created late in the ninth
century, probably in Wessex, during the reign of Alfred the Great. Multiple manuscript copies
were made and distributed to monasteries across England, and were independently updated. In one
case, the chronicle was still being actively updated in 1154.
3.2.1.1 Lady Godiva “Godifu”
Unlike her legendary "cousin" Robin Hood, from up the road in Nottingham, Lady Godiva
definitely existed. She lived in the eleventh century and was the wife of Leofric, Earl of
Mercia, one of the most powerful noblemen in the land.
She is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 as holding many estates in Warwickshire
including Coventry, inherited from Leofric who died in 1057.
The Lady Godgifu, Countess of Mercia by virtue of her marriage to Leofric Earl of Mercia,
and now world famous by the Latin version of her name (Godiva) was born into eleventh
century England. Her origins are wrapped in mystery although she must have been of noble
birth and, in her own right, she owned lands in many English counties. She died in 1067, ten
years after the death of Leofric and one year after the Norman Conquest of England.
Although it is impossible to say exactly when the event which gave rise to the story of Lady
Godiva's ride through Coventry took place, it is likely to have been in the period 1038 and
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1051. The earliest version of the story is that of Roger of Wendover, a monk at the
Benedictine Abbey of St Albans, about 100 years after the death of Godiva.
Documents show that she and her husband were generous benefactors to religious
establishments at Evesham, Worcester, Chester and elsewhere.
The connection with Coventry began in 1043 when Leofric and Godiva founded an Abbey
there after noting the lack of educational facilities for the clergy.
As the town of Coventry grew, so Leofric began assuming a greater
role in its public affairs. He began handling the town's financial
matters and initiated grand public works.
According to the story, Lady Godiva, who was much younger than
Leofric, became a patron of the arts, believing they would raise the
consciousness of the populace.
But a love of aesthetics was of little interest to a peasantry striving to
keep body and soul together. So when Godiva persuaded her reluctant
The Coventry
husband to reduce their tax burden, he agreed to do so at a price.
excavation site where
He pointed out that the ancient Greeks and Romans viewed a nude the glass shards were
human body as one of the highest expressions of the perfection of discovered
nature. If his dear Lady wife truly believed in her crusade for art, she
should lead by example.
If she would ride naked through Coventry market-place at midday as
a celebration of the perfection of God's work, he would in return
abolish all local taxes save those on horses. To his surprise, she
agreed.
On the appointed day, flanked by two fully clothed horsewomen, she
rode naked through the market, straight in her saddle, with a
composed expression, unashamed of her nudity. The taxes were duly
removed.
The story is one with which the City of Coventry has been happy to John Collier's
be associated. Indeed, the current city council's logo depicts the nineteenth century
famous ride.
depiction of Godiva's
ride (1898)
As Margaret Rylatt, the archaeologist behind this latest discovery
points out, "In the eighteenth century, the City held Godiva pageants as a way of enticing
tourists."
Regrettably, though, the story of Lady Godiva's ride is almost certainly a myth. The earliest
written record of it comes from one Roger of Wendover more than a century after Godiva's
death. This medieval scribe is famous for his exaggeration and politically biased
embellishment; more a collector of stories and legends than genuine historian.
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Matthew of Westminster, writing in the fourteenth century, infers that a miracle took place
because the pious lady, in her state of undress, was not observed by anyone.
By the seventeenth century the story had been elaborated to include a local boy named Tom
who took a peek at Lady Godiva in all her natural glory. The expression Peeping Tom comes
from this version of the story - but it was probably puritan propaganda designed to blacken
the reputation of the church before the Reformation.
Chroniclers of the eleventh and twelfth centuries mention Godiva as a respectable religious
woman of some beauty but do not allude to nude excursions in
public.
It has been suggested that Godiva may have been naked in the sense
that she was unadorned by jewels and the trappings of power. This
seems unlikely too, since the ride would still have been noteworthy,
and the word naked has no great record of being ambivalent. The
academics' best guess is that some local church historian may have
borrowed from various aspects of folklore concerning fertility rites
which commonly feature ladies on horseback.
A tale was made up about the pious Lady Godiva in order to attract
pilgrims, and therefore, revenue, to Coventry. Others suggest the Coventry's municipal
myth may have been constructed to disguise pagan activities.
logo depicts Lady
Godiva's ride
The face on the newly-found glass shards is beautiful and crowned
by wavy, golden hair. It was part of the east window of the former cathedral where,
traditionally, the images of benefactors are depicted.
Lady Godiva by Jules Joseph Lefebvre
Glamourous stars like Maureen O'Hara have played Lady Godiva.
As Margaret Rylatt says, "It's the face we would have imagined Lady Godiva to have." As
with most legends, it's what we want to believe that counts.
Alfred Lord Tennyson's (1809-1892) poem of 1842 has been the version used by many artists
as the basis for their own interpretation of the story. Here we enclose the selection from the
poem:
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Godiva by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
I waited for the train at Coventry;
I hung with grooms and porters on the bridge,
To watch the three tall spires; and there I shaped
The city's ancient legend into this:
Not only we, the latest seed of Time,
New men, that in the flying of a wheel
Cry down the past, not only we, that prate
Of rights and wrongs, have loved the people well,
And loathed to see them overtax'd; but she
Did more, and underwent, and overcame,
The woman of a thousand summers back,
Godiva, wife to that grim Earl, who ruled
In Coventry: for when he laid a tax
Upon his town, and all the mothers brought
Their children, clamoring, "If we pay, we starve!"
She sought her lord, and found him, where he strode
About the hall, among his dogs, alone,
His beard a foot before him and his hair
A yard behind. She told him of their tears,
And pray'd him, "If they pay this tax, they starve."
Whereat he stared, replying, half-amazed,
"You would not let your little finger ache
For such as these?" -- "But I would die," said she.
He laugh'd, and swore by Peter and by Paul;
Then fillip'd at the diamond in her ear;
"Oh ay, ay, ay, you talk!" -- "Alas!" she said,
"But prove me what I would not do."
And from a heart as rough as Esau's hand,
He answer'd, "Ride you naked thro' the town,
And I repeal it;" and nodding, as in scorn,
He parted, with great strides among his dogs.
So left alone, the passions of her mind,
As winds from all the compass shift and blow,
Made war upon each other for an hour,
Till pity won. She sent a herald forth,
And bade him cry, with sound of trumpet, all
The hard condition; but that she would loose
The people: therefore, as they loved her well,
From then till noon no foot should pace the street,
No eye look down, she passing; but that all
Should keep within, door shut, and window barr'd.
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3.3 Medieval Church
Roughly from the eleventh to the fifteenth century, the people of Western Europe belonged to
one homogeneous society with a common culture and a common set of beliefs. The single
institution that did most to promote this unity was the Medieval Church. This institution
crossed physical boundaries and differences in language. Latin, the language of the Church,
became the language of all educated persons. Despite national loyalty, every person was also
responsible to the Church. No matter what kingdoms, dukedoms, principalities, or free cities
people belonged to, they were all also sons and daughters of the Church, the Christian
commonwealth of Europe. Church grew and prospered during the period and continued to be
the dominant force in preserving and transmitting culture – in teaching, writing, and
translating, and in copying, collecting, and distributing manuscripts. It was Europe´s chief
publisher, librarian and teacher. Its scholars and philosophers moved freely from university to
university and from one country to another. In England, its abbeys and monasteries were not
only the main centers of learning and the arts in the period before the founding of Oxford and
Cambridge universities in the thirteenth century, but, as economically self-sufficient units,
they were also often immense farms, places where all manner of handicrafts were taught and
practiced.
St Augustine´s Abbey; Canterbury Cathedral in the background / The Norman crypt and the altar of the
Chapel of St. Mary and the Angels
Apart from the manor, the church was the main focus of community life. Church parishes
were usually the manor villages. The parish priest was appointed by the lord of the manor and
was given a house. He was obliged to carry money for alms with him, keep up the church, and
provide hospitality to travelers.
Church Services and Plays: Originally, people stood in the nave to hear the church service.
Pews were not introduced until the fifteenth century. Because few could read, biblical stories
were often acted out for the congregation in the form of miracle plays. These plays evolved
into cycles or collections, beginning with the Creation and ending with the Last Judgement.
The plays were performed in the churchyard or porch. In the fifteenth century morality plays
appeared, in which moral ideas combated (e.g. Virtue vs. Vice).
Monasteries: Monasteries were the other main form of church presence. They were selfcontained enclaves where monks or nuns chose to live a simple life of prayer and work. At
least that was the theory. In practice monks at least were often criticized for their laxity and
concern with worldly affairs.
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The first monasteries adhered to the Benedictine Rule, established by St. Benedict in the sixth
century. Benedictines - founded by St. Benedict in 529 AD. The largest order the
Benedictines were noted for their learning. The four vows of these monks were to obedience,
chastity, poverty, and manual labour for seven hours each day. St. Dunstan, Archbishop of
Canterbury from 960 AD, was responsible for establishing a large number of Benedictine
houses. In the early twelfth century the Cistercians, under St. Bernard of Clairvaux, advocated
a return to simplicity and a rededication to simplicity in monastic life and in the architecture
of the church buildings themselves. Begun in France under the influence of St. Bernard of
Clairvaux, the order chose isolated rural locations to build their monasteries, particularly in
Wales and in the north, where they reclaimed land laid waste by William the Conqueror. They
were not as scholarly as the Benedictines, but concentrated on agriculture and hard manual
labour. Cistercian monasteries were established in remote areas to emphasize this ideal.
Today they are the among the most interesting and evocative ruins of the Middle Ages.
Learning: Throughout the Dark Ages and Medieval period the monasteries were practically
the only repository of scholarship and learning. The monks were by far the best educated
members of society - often they were the only educated members of society. Monasteries
acted as libraries for ancient manuscripts, and many monks were occupied with laboriously
copying sacred texts (generally in a room called the scriptorium).
Illuminated manuscripts: In the areas where Celtic influence was strongest for example in
Northumbria the monks created "illuminated" manuscripts; beautifully illustrated Bibles and
prayer books with painstakingly created images on most pages. These illuminated
manuscripts, such as the Lindisfarne Gospel (now in the British Museum), are among the
most precious remnants of early Christian Britain.
Lindisfarne Abbey
The Ruins of Lindisfarne Abbey twelfth century
The date of building is given between 670 and 690 AD, i.e. just after the death of St. Aidan
and during the time when St. Chad was bishop of Lichfield. Since then it has been used
almost continuously as a place of worship.
The church buildings on the Holy Island are of Norman origin. The ruins of the Benedictine
Priory (built in the twelfth century) replaced an earlier Celtic monastery and church that St.
Aidan had used as his base for mission and where St. Cuthbert was buried in 687. Because of
Viking raids, the monks fled in 875 taking with them the Body of St. Cuthbert. The island
may have been uninhabited for over two hundred years until, in 1082, Benedictine monks
were granted the See of Lindisfarne but they re-named their home ‘Holy Island’. By 1120
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they had re-built the priory and dedicated the church to St. Cuthbert. At the Dissolution of the
Monasteries in 1537, the Crown assumed control and the Island became a military stronghold.
Lindisfarne is often called the cradle of Christianity in this country and St. Aidan has a better
claim to be called the apostle of the English than St. Augustine. As Magnus Magnusson says:
Saint Aidan, the first Bishop of Lindisfarne, kindled the lamp of Christianity in the North of
England. It was a lamp whose rays would illume the civilisation of Western Europe and give
Lindisfarne a Golden Age whose afterglow confers upon the little island still an aura, an
ambience, of remembered graces.
"The 7th century Lindisfarne Gospels is one of Britain's most famous and beautiful treasures.
The Lindisfarne Gospels was written and illuminated 'for God and St Cuthbert' by Eadfrith,
Bishop of Lindisfarne (698-721), probably in honour of the original Translation of the Saints
relics in 698. Its decoration includes miniatures of the four Evangelists, intricate cross-carpet
pages and full-page initials. It is a masterpiece of book production and a historic and artistic
document of the first rank. The manuscript was given to the nation in 1702 with the other
manuscripts from the collection of the Elizabethan antiquary Sir Robert Cotton. It passed into
the care of the British Museum on its foundation in 1753" (from "Portico" - The Online
Information Server of the British Library).
Saint Matthew
St Mark
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St Luke
St John
Medieval manuscripts were usually the work of more than one hand: scribes wrote the text
and illuminators added pictures and decoration. However, the Lindisfarne Gospels is the work
of one remarkably gifted artist who produced both words and images, giving the manuscript a
particularly coherent sense of design. According to a note added at the end of the manuscript
less than a century after its making, that artist was a monk called Eadfrith, who was Bishop of
Lindisfarne between 698 and 721. His superb skill and power of invention are strikingly
evident in the opening pages of each gospel. A painting of the gospel’s Evangelist is followed
by a ‘carpet’ page, so-called because the whole page is covered with intricate pattern. Next is
the ‘incipit’ page, that is, an opening page in which the first letters of the gospels are greatly
elaborated with interlacing and spiral patterns strongly influenced by Anglo-Saxon jewellery
and enamel work.
Apart from its intrinsic value as a remarkable survival of an ancient and astonishingly
beautiful work of art, the manuscript displays a unique combination of artistic styles that
reflects a crucial period in England’s history. Christianity first came to Britain under the
Romans, but after the fall of the Roman Empire, waves of invasion by non-Christian Saxons,
Angles, and Vikings drove the faith to the western and northern fringes of the British Isles.
The country was gradually re-converted from 597, when St Augustine arrived from Rome on
a mission to convert the pagan “Angles into angels”.
Religious differences between the indigenous ‘Celtic’ Church and the new ‘Roman’ Church
were settled at the Synod of Whitby in 664, little more than a generation before the
Lindisfarne Gospels was made. That religious accommodation is echoed in the design of the
manuscript. Native Celtic and Anglo-Saxon elements blend with Roman, Coptic and Eastern
traditions to create a sublimely unified artistic vision of the cultural melting pot of
Northumbria in the seventh and eighth centuries.
The Lindisfarne Gospels, and others like it, helped define the growing sense of ‘Englishness’
- a spirit of national identity that was consolidated by the Venerable Bede, the historian monk,
in his ‘History of the English Church and People’, completed in 731.
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Decline of the monasteries: Monasteries were most numerous in Britain during the early
fourteenth century, when there were as many as five hundred different houses. The Black
Death of 1348 dealt the monasteries a major blow, decimating (undermining) the number of
monks and nuns, and most never fully recovered.
When Henry VIII engineered his break with Rome in the 1530's, the rich monastic houses
were one of his first targets. A few of the abbey churches near large centres of population
survived as cathedrals or parish churches (for example Canterbury Cathedral, Durham
Cathedral, and Westminster Abbey), but those that were isolated, including almost all the
Cistercian monasteries, were demolished. Throughout the Tudor and later periods these shells
of buildings were used by local people as a source of building material.
3.4 Medieval Life
Most people lived in the country and were hired to a feudal manor. There they worked their
own fields and the lands of the lord of the manor, to whom they owed their allegiance. As the
period progressed, however, farming became less important than herding. The wool produced
by English sheep was considered preferable to that of almost any other part of Europe. It
became profitable, therefore, to turn cornfields into pasture land for sheep. By the end of the
thirteenth century there were probably as many as fifteen or eighteen million sheep in
England – four or five for every person. This economic development greatly changed the life
of the common people. Instead farmers, many people became herders, but also a large
percentage of the population became involved in the wool industry. Cottages became small
mills involved in combing, spinning and weaving – some even in dyeing the finished cloth.
The ordinary people now paid what they owed their overlords from their wages rather than in
farm labor.
This famous portrait was painted by Jan Van Eyck in 1435 (towards the end of the Medieval period).
It shows a rich nobleman and his wife dressed in the typical fashion of the day.
Earlier, some large towns and cities had grown up, mainly in the south and related to the
court. London is an example. However, the widespread production of wool and woolen fabric,
and its wide-scale exportation, encouraged the growth of cities in the north. More and more
people began to live in towns and cities rather than on manors. A whole new class of
merchants grew up. Many became immensely rich, and through favors to the court many of
them entered the gentry; some, even the nobility. These populous centers, far from the
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influence of the French court, developed native forms of literature, songs and ballads, and a
native drama.
MIDDLE ENGLISH DRAMA: The first people to form guilds
(societies to regulate prices and standards) were the merchants. Later the cottage workers also formed
guilds to assure fair wages and prices and good standards of material and workmanship. Masters
passed their apprenticeship to the apprentices.
This is also the period of the great English cathedrals, Winchester and Lincoln, Salisbury and
Durham. For example Yorkminster was begun as a Norman church in 1070 and was not
completed until 1472. Guilds were founded for many of these workers: stonecutters and
masons, carpenters and woodcarvers, glass blowers etc.
Life in the Middle Ages was austere in many ways. Travel was difficult and often dangerous.
There was lack of sugar and potatoes and many other things), food even for the rich, probably
offered little variety. Winters brought a very limited diet for most people. The countryside and
to some extend the towns were probably fresh, colorful, and beautiful without the smoke of
modern industrial factories. Also the dress of the period seems to have been bright and varied,
as evidenced by the paintings of the time: great lords in expensive robe and their
accompaniment in colorful dress; even the guild members, in clothes characteristic of their trade.
3.4.1 Magna Charta
Magna charta cum statutis angliae (XIVth century).
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... here is a law which is above the King and which even he must not break. This reaffirmation
of a supreme law and its expression in a general charter is the great work of Magna Carta;
and this alone justifies the respect in which men have held it.
Winston Churchill, 1956
The first champion of popular right in England was the sainted Thomas a Becket, Archbishop
of Canterbury, himself, however, of Norman lineage, who led the first combination against
the Plantagenet tyranny, and who in consequence was basely assassinated by the contrivance
of the monarch, Henry II (A.D. 1170). He has been characterized as an ambitious churchman,
solicitous only to advance his own personal interest and the interest of the Church, by
ignorant men who had only a superficial knowledge of the history of the time. Those who
really know the history of England of that day know only too well that Thomas a Becket was
an honest, upright, heroic champion of Anglo-Saxon right and the sacred cause of humanity
against the ablest and probably the most unscrupulous monarch of the Angevin, or
Plantagenet race. He was not more a martyr of religion than he was of freedom and justice.
Thomas a Becket found a worthy successor in Stephen Langton, also Archbishop of
Canterbury, Primate of England, and Cardinal of the Roman Church. In his time, in the reign
of King John, who has usually been designated as the weakest and the worst of the
Plantagenet race - although it is not very apparent that, though he may have been weaker, he
was any worse than his unprincipled father Henry II, or his equally unprincipled brother
Richard Coeur de Lion - the aggressions of the monarch became intolerable, and the barons
and the clergy and the forces of the city of London combined to resist them.
The combination culminated on that famous day at Runnymede (A.D. 1215), when Langton,
ably assisted by Pandolfo, the Papal Legate in England, and by all the archbishops and
bishops of England, and by a large body of the barons, constrained King John to sign the
Magna Charta, or Great Charter, ordinarily and perhaps not without justice assumed to be the
foundation of English freedom. Stephen Langton, who was undoubtedly the author of the
document, had the degree of Doctor of Laws from the University of Bologna, and was
therefore a doctor of the Roman Civil Law. From this source, and not from English
Feudalism, he derived his inspiration.
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Magna Charta
King John granting Magna Charta, 1215. From the Fresco in the Royal Exchange, by Ernest
Normand.
The Magna Charta may be said to stand in the same relation to English Law and English
institutions as does our Federal Constitution to the jurisprudence and the institutions of the
United States. It is understood that it did not receive the name of the Great Charter which it
bears on account of any supposed intrinsic merit, but that it was so called to distinguish it
from another charter granted at or about the same time, and sometimes printed and included in
it as part of it, which is designated as the Charter of the Forests.
The Magna Charta, as usually given, contains thirty-eight articles - with the Charter of the
Forests included, sixty-three articles. Of these many have become obsolete, having passed
away with the Feudal System, the abuses of which they were intended to remedy. Only three
can be regarded as of paramount and permanent importance. These were: 1. That the Church
should be free; 2. That the city of London and all the other cities and boroughs of the kingdom
should enjoy their ancient rights and privileges unimpaired; 3. That no freeman should be
deprived of life, liberty or property, except by the legal judgment of his peers or by the law of
the land. There was nothing in either of these three provisions of the charter, or indeed in any
other provision of it, which was not already established law everywhere else in Europe. And
so, although England is justly proud of its Magna Carta, its pride should be tempered by the
consideration that at that time, England was far behind all the remainder of Europe in the
amount of liberty which it enjoyed.
The provision for the freedom of the Church appears in the very first Article, and is again
reiterated in the last Article of the charter. It means greatly more than it appears on its face to
mean, while it shows that the charter was the work of Stephen Langton and the bishops to a
far greater extent than it was that of the barons. In England, as everywhere else in Europe
during the days of Feudalism and Feudal tyranny, the Church was always the champion of the
people and of popular right against the feudal barons and the kings and emperors of the time.
Only gross ignorance or blind bigotry can deny this fact. The freedom of the Church therefore
also meant the freedom of the people; and this in England meant mainly the freedom of the
Anglo-Saxon people as distinguished from the Norman barons and their retainers. In fact, it is
not at all certain that the majority of the Norman barons of England were opposed to King
John at Runneymede. It is evident from Magna Charta itself that it was Langton and the
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bishops, and the representatives of the city of London, aided by the Papal Legate Pandolfo,
and not the Norman barons, who wrung the Great Charter of English freedom from a reluctant
monarch. The Norman barons deserve very little credit for it.
There was significance also in the confirmation of the ancient rights and privileges of the city
of London. It is unnecessary to go beyond the work of Blackstone to ascertain that the city of
London was not governed by the law of Feudalism, or by the Common Law of England, but
was a law unto itself, with its own usages and customs, and its own special courts to enforce
them. It is necessary, however, to go a little beyond the work of that able, but not wholly
honest commentator, to learn the fact that the usages and customs of London were traceable to
a Roman source and to the Roman Civil Law. The city of London was a body corporate, like
all the other great municipalities founded by the Romans; and the Feudal Law was incapable
of comprehending corporations, either public or private. Municipal corporations in fact were
an abomination to Feudalism. The confirmation of the privileges of the city of London,
therefore, meant not merely a check to monarchical tyranny, but even more a check to
Feudalism and to the law evolved from Feudalism. It is curious to note that, although the
reasons for the perpetuation of the special privileges of the city of London have long since
ceased in consequence of the general adoption of the principles of civil liberty throughout the
country, there are remnants of those special privileges yet in existence.
But by far the most important provision of Magna Charta, not perhaps in the day of its
promulgation, nor for many ages afterwards, but in consequence of its remarkable
development in comparatively recent times, was the article which provided that no freeman
should be deprived of life, liberty or property, except by the law of the land or by the
judgment of his peers. From the standpoint of the time the provision was no doubt all that
could be devised at that day; but from our standpoint it is grossly deficient in the feature that
it allows that life, liberty and property might be taken without due process of law, or any
process whatever of law, merely by the judgment of one's peers.
3.5 The Crusades
The Crusades were a series of military campaigns during the time of Medieval England
against the Muslims of the Middle East. In 1076, the Muslims had captured Jerusalem - the
most holy of holy places for Christians. Jesus had been born in nearby Bethlehem and Jesus
had spent most of his life in Jerusalem. He was crucified on Calvary Hill, also in Jerusalem.
There was no more important place on Earth than Jerusalem for a true Christian which is why
Christians called Jerusalem the "City of God".
However, Jerusalem was also extremely important for the Muslims as Muhammad, the
founder of the Muslim faith, had been there and there was great joy in the Muslim world
when Jerusalem was captured. A beautiful dome - called the Dome of the Rock - was built on
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the rock where Muhammad was said to have sat and prayed and it was so holy that no Muslim
was allowed to tread on the rock or touch it when visiting the Dome.
Therefore the Christian fought to get Jerusalem back while the Muslims fought to keep
Jerusalem. These wars were to last nearly two hundred years.
Despite of the valuable memory of great heroes like King Richard “the Lion-Hearted,” the
history of the Crusades makes frightening reading.
The first crusade was proclaimed in 1095 by Pope Urban II. Other crusades followed in 1191,
1202, 1217 and 1270. Each Crusade began in high hope, in a genuine desire to rescue
Jerusalem from the Turks, but most ended wretchedly in raiding, plundering, and a chaotic
power politics. In the end, however, Western Europe gained much from these expeditions to
the Near East. Christian Europe was exposed to Arabic culture – especially mathematics and
medicine. Commercial and intellectual horizons were greatly broadened, and both knowledge
and all manners of refinements in living were brought back from the East. It was the Crusades
too, even though they ended so badly, that encouraged the ideal of true nightly behavior
known as chivalry.
Today we use the term chivalrous to describe the conduct of well-mannered and sensitive
men toward women, but the medieval idea of chivalry, though it included the relations
between the sexes, went far beyond this. They wanted with the help of the Church, to make
the knightly warrior as devoted and compassionate outside the battlefield, because he was
bold and fearless on it. The bloodstained, ferocious history of the Crusades suggests that
chivalry was an ideal rather than an actual code of conduct. It was, however, of considerable
importance in literature, where it was joined to the companion idea of romance.
The First Crusade played a very important part in Medieval England. The First Crusade was
an attempt to re-capture Jerusalem. After the capture of Jerusalem by the Muslims in 1076,
any Christian who wanted to pay a pilgrimage to the city faced a very hard time. Muslim
soldiers made life very difficult for the Christians and trying to get to Jerusalem was filled
with danger for a Christian. This greatly angered all Christians.
Those who volunteered to go to fight the Muslims cut out red crosses and sewed them on their
tunics. The French word "croix" means cross and the word changed to "croisades" or
crusades. The fight against the Muslims became a Holy War.
The Crusader attack on Jerusalem
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Many people did volunteer to fight on the First Crusade. There were true Christians who
wanted to reclaim Jerusalem for their belief and get the Muslims out of the city. There were
those who knew they had committed sin and that by going on the Crusade they might be
forgiven by God. They had also been told by the pope that if they were killed, they would
automatically go to heaven as they were fighting for God. There were those who thought that
they might get rich by taking the wealth that they thought existed in Jerusalem. Any crusader
could claim to be going on a pilgrimage for God - pilgrims did not have to pay tax and they
were protected by the Church. The capture of Jerusalem did not end the Crusades as the
Crusaders wanted to get rid of the Muslims from the whole region and not just Jerusalem.
This desire led to the other crusades. Only the First Crusade achieved any real or lasting
success. It established Christian settlements, the so-called "Crusader States," which endured
for a century or so along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean. The remaining Crusades were
failures of one sort or another and, instead, contributed to the heightened tensions still visible
in the Middle East today.
The Third Crusade: Things weren’t looking much better for the Crusader kingdoms by the
latter half of the twelfth century. England and France were at war with each other, and not
focused on the Holy Lands. In the 1170s, the greatest foe (enemy) of the Crusaders was
gaining power in Egypt – Saladin (1138-1193). In July of 1187, near the Sea of Galilee,
Saladin defeated the Crusader armies at the Battle of Hattin. The Knights Templar sustained
especially high losses in this battle.
On October 2, 1187, Saladin seized Jerusalem. While Saladin allowed most of the Christian
inhabitants to be ransomed, some of his actions were provocative – the cross from the Church
of the Holy Sepulcher was dragged through the streets for two days, and the bells of Christian
churches were melted down.
In two years, Saladin took fifty Crusader castles.
Pope Gregory VIII, and the archbishop of Tyre issued appeals for help. Three of the most
famous Christian figures of the Crusades responded to that appeal – Richard the Lionhearted
(1157-1199) of England (the first time England joined the Crusades), Philip (Augustus) II of
France (1165-1223), and Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa (1122-1190). The
Crusade got off to an unfortunate start - in June 1190, Frederick drowned in a river on his way
to the Holy Lands.
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Richard and Philip took Acre in 1191 after a long siege, which made use of huge, stonethrowing catapults. As part of the negotiated settlement, the Moslems were suppose to return
the relic of the True Cross, seized by Saladin’s troops in 1187, as well as some Christian
prisoners. When progress was too slow for Richard’s liking, he had almost three thousand
Moslems massacred in site of Saladin’s army.
Richard quickly went on to capture Arsuf (September 7, 1191) where he gained the sobriquet
“Lion-Heart”, and Jaffa (September 19, 1191). When he was within site of Jerusalem, he
received news that his brother John (the Lackland) was plotting with King Philip of France
against him (the source of the Robin Hood legends). Richard signed a three-year truce with
Saladin (September 2, 1192), and started back for England. En route, he was captured by
Leopold, Duke of Austria, who turned him over to the Holy Roman Emperor. Richard was
kept in captivity until 1194, when he was released for ransom, and returned to England. He
died in a battle in France at the age of forty-one.
Saladin had a reputation. Once in the heat of a battle, Saladin saw that Richard’s horse had
been killed. Saladin sent a groom with two fresh horses. Another time, upon learning that
that Richard was ill, Saladin sent him some fruit and ice. Saladin, perhaps the greatest of all
Moslem military leaders, died on March 4, 1193, just six months after the truce with Richard I
was signed.
The Third Crusade, while not as effective as the First Crusade, was the first significant gain
(or reclamation) of territory by the Christian Crusaders in a hundred years. Richard I
cemented his place in history as the greatest of the Crusader kings, with the possible
exception of Godfrey of Bouillon.
3.6 The Hundred Years´ War
It took about two hundred and fifty years for Normans and Saxons to unite their individual
identities into one English nation. Unfortunately for both England and France, the English
monarchy never voluntarily gave up of its French possessions. As a result there were
numerous costly wars in France, culminating in the series of wars now known as the
“Hundred Years´ War” (1337 – 1453).
One of the main causes of the Hundred Years War centered on the relationship between the
Kings of France and England regarding the duchy of Aquitaine located in Southwestern
France. In 1259, the Treaty of Paris designated that Henry III (1216 - 1270) held the duchy as
a fief of the French King. Henry was a vassal of the King of France and, therefore, was
required to pay liege homage to the king. (This meant that the King of England was required
to do homage whenever the kingship of either England or France changed hands.) However,
Henry was the King of England; how could a king be a in turn be a vassal?
Control over the French throne further complicated matters. In 1328, Charles IV, King of
France, died without a male heir. Edward III, the King of England, held claim to the throne
via his mother who was Charles' sister. The other important claimant was head of the Valois
house (Philip VI) grandson of Philip III. Philip VI gained the throne and moved to confiscate
Aquitaine in order to consolidate his power. Edward III led a raid into French territory in 1338
to defend his claim and two years later declared himself the true king of France.
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The Edwardian War was the first phase of the Hundred Years´ War, lasting from 1337 to
1360, from the outbreak of hostilities until the signing of the Treaty of Brétigny. This twentythree year period was marked by the startling victories of Edward III of England, for whom
the war is named, and his son, the Black Prince, over the French at the Battles of Crécy and
Poitiers. In the latter battle, John II of France was captured, and in the following years France
came close to complete descent into anarchy and civil war. As a result, France was forced to
sign a humiliating peace treaty. The peace lasted only nine years until the second phase of
the Hundred Year´s War broke out: The Caroline War.
Edward (the Black Prince of Wales) receiving Acquaitane from his father, Edward III
The Caroline War was the second phase of the Hundred Year´s War between France and
England, following the Edwardian War. It was so-named after Charles V of France, who
resumed the war after the Treaty of Brétigny (signed 1360). In May 1369, the Black Prince,
son of Edward III of England, refused an illegal summons from the French king demanging
he come to Paris and Charles responded by declaring war. He immediately set out to reverse
the territorial losses imposed at Brétigny and he was largely successful in his lifetime. His less
capable successor, Charles VI, made peace with the less capable son of the Black Prince,
Richard II, in 1389. This truce was extended many times until the war was resumed in 1415.
Edward III gives battle at Crecy
Edward receives blessing from his father (by Joseph Kronheim)
It is also during this period that the French saw their first rise in nationalistic pride during the
Hundred Years War. This can mainly be attributed to Charles V for rallying the French to rid
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the English from their lands. Before Charles did this, the Treaty of Bretigny had allowed
English nobility to keep their lands in Gascony and Aquitaine, lands that had been
traditionally under the possession of the French Crown. When Charles sought to and
successfully reclaimed most of this land, it re-ignited French nationalism and pride for
defending their land. Conversely, this period saw the opposite for the English as the deaths of
their two best military commanders, Edward III (1377) and the Black Prince (1376), left their
army without a competent leader. This was a result of Richard II succeeding Edward at the
age of only eleven. It would not be until Henry V that the English would have a competent
leader who wished to invade France once again.
Henry V's almost accidental victory at the Battle of Agnicourt in 1415 resulted in his being
accepted as the heir of King Charles VI of France, whose daughter, Catherine of Valois, he
married. A civil war in France between the Burgundians and the Armagnacs was exploited by
Henry V, who allied with the Burgundians.
On January 19, 1419 Rouen surrendered to Henry V of England which made Normandy a part
of England.
After Henry's early death in 1422, almost simultaneously with that of his father-in-law, his
baby son was crowned King Henry VI of England and also King of France, but the French
(Armagnacs) remained loyal to Charles VI's son, dauphin Charles. War continued halfheartedly until the raising of the siege of Orleans in 1429, which brought Joan of Arc to the
fore and led to dauphin Charles being crowned King Charles VII of France.
In 1425, the Burgundians under Philip the Good switched sides, returning Paris to the King of
France. In 1450, the counts of Clermont and Richmont caught the English and destroyed it
using cannons to break up the archers. By 1453 Charles VII had finally created an army as
opposed to a group of knights and at the final battle of the hundred years war at Castillone
east of Bordeaux, the Bureau brothers used cannon to good effect against the Earl of Talbot
who was killed.
Following Henry VI's episode of insanity in 1453, the Wars of the Roses broke out, and the
English were no longer in any position to pursue their claim to the French throne and lost all
their land on the continent (except Calais). Ill feeling between the two nations continued well
into the sixteenth century. England did not formally renounce rights to the French throne until
1800.
The Hundred Years War, lasting from 1337 until 1453, was a defining time for the history of
both England and France. The war started in May 1337 when King Philip VI of France
attempted to confiscate the English territories in the duchy of Aquitaine (located
Southwestern France). It ended in July 1453 when the French finally expelled the English
from the continent (except for Calais) by force. The Hundred Years War were a series of
chevauchees (plundering raids), sieges and naval battles variated with uneasy peace.
From the beginning of the war (1337) until the battle of Orleans (1428-29), the English won
many victories including the decisive battles of Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt. The English
used a new method of warefare by combining forces of longbowmen with dismounted menat-arms with much success.
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Jeanne d'Arc - a
peasant girl inspired by "voices of angels" rouses the demoralised french troops and saves Orléans
from an English siege
3.7 Medieval Literature: The Romance
The form of literature much popular by the Anglo-Normans was the romance. Medieval
romance consisted largely of tales of chivalry to which were added a love interest and all sorts
of wonders and miracles – fairy fascinations, giants, dragons, wizards, and witches.
Knight is the English term for a
social position originating in the Middle Ages. In the British Commonwealth of Nations, knighthood is
a non-heritable form of gentility, but is not nobility.
The medieval concept of romantic love came from France. Indeed the first English romances
– verse, and later prose tales relating the searching knights committed to their ladies – were
translations from the French. These romantic tales came from three principal sources – Britain
(the story of King Arthur and his knights), France (the court of Charlemagne), and Rome
(classical stories such as the conquest of Troy). In the famous legends of King Arthur and his
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Knights of the Round Table, collected and retold by Sir Thomas Malory in his Morte
d´Arthur, chivalry and romance play equal parts.
King Arthur´s Britain is based on Celtic folklore and has almost no historical basis. The
Round Table is not the usual military and political alliance, but an ideal aristocratic
brotherhood. Its knights ride forth to realize themselves through individual acts of arms and
acts of courtesy, and service to women. The finest verse romance in English, Sir Gawain and
the Green Knight, is about one of the knights at Arthur´s court.
Geoffrey Chaucer and the Romance: The first great figure in English literature was
Geoffrey Chaucer. Although the romance was very popular in these days, he obviously was
quite skeptical about it, being as sharply realistic as a modern novelist in much of his work.
Because Chaucer is so far removed (distant) from us, and his manner and language, especially
in the original Middle English, seem so old-time (ancient), we can easily underestimate this
extraordinary writer. He was not only an excellent poet and a fine storyteller but also the first
of the impenetrable humorists. There is just a twinkle in his eye because he seriously, often
ironically, adds one descriptive stroke to another, never failing, if we are alert, to make his
points. This writer, whether moving as a diplomat from one royal court to another or talking
to ordinary people, missed nothing. And his greatest work belongs not to romance but to
poetic and humorous realism. With Chaucer, the writer is no longer anonymous but emerges
in all the variety and elegance of an impressive individual.
3.7.1 Folk Poetry and the Drama
From the ordinary people of early England and Scotland came ballads – songs not written
down but recited and sung in countless households. This folk poetry prospered in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries but it was not until the middle of the eighteenth century that
it was carefully collected and published. Through the German poet Herder, who had a passion
for folk poetry, these English and Scottish ballads came to influence the whole German
Romantic movement and then later, the English Romantic poets. But most of them originally
belong (as their settings and themes suggest) to the later Middle Ages, to whose unknown
wandering minstrels and many future generations of poets were indebted.
In mediaeval times plays were performed on carts that the players pushed around from village
to village; the actors were known as 'Strolling Players' because they walked or 'strolled' round
from place to place, setting up their cart as a stage in the market place or the village square.
They were actors, tumblers, jugglers, all rolled into one: they performed plays, they walked
on stilts, they juggled, they created slapstick scenes - anything to please, to entertain and, of
course, to earn themselves not only applause hut money to live on. At the end of their
performance they appealed to the audience to be generous and they went round with their hats
collecting whatever was thrown to them. If their performance pleased, they would be well
rewarded; if they did badly they would not have much for supper that night.
The beginning of the drama in England is not sure. The earliest records of acting in the
Middle Ages are concerned not with plays but with individual players. Of these the most
important is the minstrel who sang long poems in the honour of great heroes. Officially, the
church was against him but must have realised that the stories of minstrel encourage pilgrims.
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The English priests had to find some ways of teaching the people the principles of Christian
doctrines. The religious services were conducted in Latin. Very few people could read the
Bible. So, in very early times the Gospel stories were shown as a series of living pictures in
which the performers acted in dumb shows.
At first the liturgical plays were merely a part of the church service but by the thirteenth
century it had grown. Between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the dramas became
secularized. The words were not spoken in Latin but in English. These early plays were
known as Miracles or Mysteries. The Mysteries were acted by priests and the Miracles by the
trade guilds of the cities. These plays were performed on cars or scaffolds in open spaces.
Later the Morality plays came into existence, in which the characters were abstract vices and
virtues. Apart from the Morality play, there exist short plays named Interludes. They were
comedies which were rude and clumsy.
3.7.2 Geoffrey Chaucer (1340 – 1400)
Thomas Hoccleve: portrait of Chaucer in Hoccleve's "Regiment of Princes".
Today Chaucer is acclaimed not only as “the father of English poetry” but also as the father of
English fiction – in short as the father of English literature. Literary scientists and keen
readers are thankful to him for vivid contemporary description of fourteenth-century England.
Born into a middle class, Chaucer obtained a position as page in a household closely
associated with the court of King Edward III. His knowledge of Latin, French and Italian
enabled him to translate literary works in these languages what was an important factor in his
development as a writer.
Throughout his life he served his country as diplomat, civil administrator, and translator. On
his diplomatic missions he often traveled to France and Italy, and his journeys abroad played
an important role in his literary and intellectual development. Subsequently he served as the
Member of Parliament; Justice of the Peace; Clerk of the Works at Westminster Abbey, and
elsewhere; he was a highly valued public servant. During his long public career, he became
acquainted with the most important men of his day – diplomats and rulers as well as writers.
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Today, in the history of English literature, Chaucer´s name stands second only to that of
Shakespeare.
One of Chaucer´s most important contributions to English literature is his development of the
resources of the English language for literary purposes. In his day, English was still
considered primarily a rough peasant language. England´s Norman rulers had introduced
French to England, and this language was still spoken in court circles and by the aristocracy.
Church Latin was used in the monasteries, the centers of learning. There was very little
English literature when he began to write. He started by trial and error, taking his models first
from French and Italian sources. Chaucer spoke late Middle English, the London speech of
his day and by using this language, instead of the more fashionable French for his poetry, he
added to its prestige.
He was a prolific writer. The influence of French poetry is seen in his first early short lyrics as
The Last Book of the Duchess. In his later works such as Parliament of Fowls, his writing
reflected the influence of the Italian masters Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio.
By 1386 when he began The Canterbury Tales, his most ambitious work, he had become
master of his craft. Chaucer used the structural device of the frame story, a popular one which
was used for example in one hundred tales of Boccaccio´s Decameron. As a frame around
which to group his tales, Chaucer chose a springtime pilgrimage to Canterbury Cathedral, the
site of the splendid shrine of St. Thomas Becket, who had been murdered there two centuries
ago. In his day it was common to travel to religious shrines to seek miraculous cures, or to
gain forgiveness of sins. By using the device of a journey, it was possible to bring together
quite naturally persons of varied occupations and different social position. Thus he was able
to present in his work a pattern of medieval society, drawing its characters from the three
most important groups of his day:
The characters who are members of the feudal system are related to the land: the
Knight, the Squire, the Yeoman, the Franklin, the Reeve, the Miller, and the Plowman.
Those in the ecclesiastical order represent individuals belonging to the medieval
church: the Parson, the Summoner, the Monk, the Prioress, the Friar, the Pardoner, and
the Student.
The characters from the urban group are: the Physician, the Lawyer, the Manciple,
the Merchant, the Shipman, the tradesmen, the Cook, the Wife of bath (a clothmaker),
and the Innkeeper.
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Chaucer planned to write one hundred twenty-four stories, but he died and instead, he wrote
only twenty-four. However, it is a masterpiece of vivid and realistic writing. Setting his work
in his own time, he established a realistic style of writing that was to persist for centuries.
Chaucer´s descriptions of the pilgrims in his Prologue are considered by historians as our best
picture of life in fourteenth-century England. The author shows a profound understanding of
human motivation and comments the most critical social problems of his day. His tone ranges
from comic to ironic to satirical, but always Chaucer reveals himself as a warm-hearted
person with sympathy for his fellow human beings.
Though The Canterbury Tales is often referred to as the first collection of short stories in
English literature, these stories, unlike the modern short story, are written in poetry rather than
in prose. His prose, like his vocabulary, is easy and informal.
Chaucer died in 1400 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. He was the first English poet to
be buried in what has come to be known as the Poets´ Corner.
The most famous and important text of English literature is Wife of Bath´s Prologue and Tale
by Geoffrey Chaucer (The Canterbury Tales).
Wife of Bath´s Tale in Modern English:
Now in the olden days of King Arthur,
Of whom the Britons speak with great honour,
All this wide land was land of faery.
The elf-queen, with her jolly company,
Danced oftentimes on many a green mead;
This was the old opinion, as I read.
I speak of many hundred years ago;
But now no man can see the elves, you know.
For now the so-great charity and prayers
Of limiters and other holy friars
That do infest each land and every stream
As thick as motes are in a bright sunbeam,
Blessing halls, chambers, kitchens, ladies' bowers,
Cities and towns and castles and high towers,
Manors and barns and stables, aye and dairiesThis causes it that there are now no fairies.
For where was wont to walk full many an elf,
Right there walks now the limiter himself
In noons and afternoons and in mornings,
Saying his matins and such holy things,
As he goes round his district in his gown.
Women may now go safely up and down,
In every copse or under every tree;
There is no other incubus, than he,
And would do them nothing but dishonour.
And so befell it that this King Arthur
Had at his court a lusty bachelor
Who, on a day, came riding from river;
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And happened that, alone as she was born,
He saw a maiden walking through the corn,
From whom, in spite of all she did and said,
Straightway by force he took her maidenhead;
For which violation was there such clamour,
And such appealing unto King Arthur,
That soon condemned was this knight to be dead
By course of law, and should have lost his head,
Peradventure, such being the statute then;
But that the other ladies and the queen
So long prayed of the king to show him grace,
He granted life, at last, in the law's place,
And gave him to the queen, as she should will,
Whether she'd save him, or his blood should spill.
The queen she thanked the king with all her might,
And after this, thus spoke she to the knight,
When she'd an opportunity, one day:
"You stand yet," said she, "in such poor a way
That for your life you've no security.
I'll grant you life if you can tell to me
What thing it is that women most desire.
Be wise, and keep your neck from iron dire!
And if you cannot tell it me anon,
Then will I give you license to be gone
A twelvemonth and a day, to search and learn
Sufficient answer in this grave concern.
And your knight's word I'll have, ere forth you pace,
To yield your body to me in this place."
Grieved was this knight, and sorrowfully he sighed;
But there! he could not do as pleased his pride.
And at the last he chose that he would wend
And come again upon the twelvemonth's end,
With such an answer as God might purvey;
And so he took his leave and went his way.
He sought out every house and every place
Wherein he hoped to find that he had grace
To learn what women love the most of all;
But nowhere ever did it him befall
To find, upon the question stated here,
Two, persons who agreed with statement clear.
Some said that women all loved best riches,
Some said, fair fame, and some said, prettiness;
Some, rich array, some said 'twas lust abed
And often to be widowed and re-wed.
Some said that our poor hearts are aye most eased
When we have been most flattered and thus pleased
And he went near the truth, I will not lie;
A man may win us best with flattery;
And with attentions and with busyness
We're often limed, the greater and the less.
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And some say, too, that we do love the best
To be quite free to do our own behest,
And that no man reprove us for our vice,
But saying we are wise, take our advice.
For truly there is no one of us all,
If anyone shall rub us on a gall,
That will not kick because he tells the truth.
Try, and he'll find, who does so, I say sooth.
No matter how much vice we have within,
We would be held for wise and clean of sin.
And some folk say that great delight have we
To be held constant, also trustworthy,
And on one purpose steadfastly to dwell,
And not betray a thing that men may tell.
But that tale is not worth a rake's handle;
By God, we women can no thing conceal,
As witness Midas. Would you hear the tale?
Ovid, among some other matters small,
Said Midas had beneath his long curled hair,
Two ass's ears that grew in secret there,
The which defect he hid, as best he might,
Full cunningly from every person's sight,
And, save his wife, no one knew of it, no.
He loved her most, and trusted her also;
And he prayed of her that to no creature
She'd tell of his disfigurement impure.
She swore him: Nay, for all this world to win
She would do no such villainy or sin
And cause her husband have so foul a name;
Nor would she tell it for her own deep shame.
Nevertheless, she thought she would have died
Because so long the secret must she hide;
It seemed to swell so big about her heart
That some word from her mouth must surely start;
And since she dared to tell it to no man,
Down to a marsh, that lay hard by, she ran;
Till she came there her heart was all afire,
And as a bittern booms in the quagmire,
She laid her mouth low to the water down:
"Betray me not, you sounding water blown,"
Said she, "I tell it to none else but you:
Long ears like asses' has my husband two!
Now is my heart at ease, since that is out;
I could no longer keep it, there's no doubt."
Here may you see, though for a while we bide,
Yet out it must; no secret can we hide.
The rest of all this tale, if you would hear,
Read Ovid: in his book does it appear.
This knight my tale is chiefly told about
When what he went for he could not find out,
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That is, the thing that women love the best,
Most saddened was the spirit in his breast;
But home he goes, he could no more delay.
The day was come when home he turned his way;
And on his way it chanced that he should ride
In all his care, beneath a forest's side,
And there he saw, a-dancing him before,
Full four and twenty ladies, maybe more;
Toward which dance eagerly did he turn
In hope that there some wisdom he should learn.
But truly, ere he came upon them there,
The dancers vanished all, he knew not where.
No creature saw he that gave sign of life,
Save, on the greensward sitting, an old wife;
A fouler person could no man devise.
Before the knight this old wife did arise,
And said: "Sir knight, hence lies no travelled way.
Tell me what thing you seek, and by your fay.
Perchance you'll find it may the better be;
These ancient folk know many things," said she.
"Dear mother," said this knight assuredly,
"I am but dead, save I can tell, truly,
What thing it is that women most desire;
Could you inform me, I'd pay well your hire."
"Plight me your troth here, hand in hand," said she,
"That you will do, whatever it may be,
The thing I ask if it lie in your might;
And I'll give you your answer ere the night."
"Have here my word," said he. "That thing I grant."
"Then," said the crone, "of this I make my vaunt,
Your life is safe; and I will stand thereby,
Upon my life, the queen will say as I.
Let's see which is the proudest of them all
That wears upon her hair kerchief or caul,
Shall dare say no to that which I shall teach;
Let us go now and without longer speech."
Then whispered she a sentence in his ear,
And bade him to be glad and have no fear.
When they were come unto the court, this knight
Said he had kept his promise as was right,
And ready was his answer, as he said.
Full many a noble wife, and many a maid,
And many a widow, since they are so wise,
The queen herself sitting as high justice,
Assembled were, his answer there to hear;
And then the knight was bidden to appear.
Command was given for silence in the hall,
And that the knight should tell before them all
What thing all worldly women love the best.
This knight did not stand dumb, as does a beast,
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But to this question presently answered
With manly voice, so that the whole court heard:
"My liege lady, generally," said he,
"Women desire to have the sovereignty
As well upon their husband as their love,
And to have mastery their man above;
This thing you most desire, though me you kill
Do as you please, I am here at your will."
In all the court there was no wife or maid
Or widow that denied the thing he said,
But all held, he was worthy to have life.
And with that word up started the old wife
Whom he had seen a-sitting on the green.
"Mercy," cried she, "my sovereign lady queen!
Before the court's dismissed, give me my right.
'Twas I who taught the answer to this knight;
For which he did plight troth to me, out there,
That the first thing I should of him require
He would do that, if it lay in his might.
Before the court, now, pray I you, sir knight,"
Said she, "that you will take me for your wife;
For well you know that I have saved your life.
If this be false, say nay, upon your fay!"
This knight replied: "Alas and welaway!
That I so promised I will not protest.
But for God's love pray make a new request.
Take all my wealth and let my body go."
"Nay then," said she, "beshrew us if I do!
For though I may be foul and old and poor,
I will not, for all metal and all ore
That from the earth is dug or lies above,
Be aught except your wife and your true love."
"My love?" cried he, "nay, rather my damnation!
Alas! that any of my race and station
Should ever so dishonoured foully be!"
But all for naught; the end was this, that he
Was so constrained he needs must go and wed,
And take his ancient wife and go to bed.
Now, peradventure, would some men say here,
That, of my negligence, I take no care
To tell you of the joy and all the array
That at the wedding feast were seen that day.
Make a brief answer to this thing I shall;
I say, there was no joy or feast at all;
There was but heaviness and grievous sorrow;
For privately he wedded on the morrow,
And all day, then, he hid him like an owl;
So sad he was, his old wife looked so foul.
Great was the woe the knight had in his thought
When he, with her, to marriage bed was brought;
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He rolled about and turned him to and fro.
His old wife lay there, always smiling so,
And said: "O my dear husband, ben'cite!
Fares every knight with wife as you with me?
Is this the custom in King Arthur's house?
Are knights of his all so fastidious?
I am your own true love and, more, your wife;
And I am she who saved your very life;
And truly, since I've never done you wrong,
Why do you treat me so, this first night long?
You act as does a man who's lost his wit;
What is my fault? For God's love tell me it,
And it shall be amended, if I may."
"Amended!" cried this knight, "Alas, nay, nay!
It will not be amended ever, no!
You are so loathsome, and so old also,
And therewith of so low a race were born,
It's little wonder that I toss and turn.
Would God my heart would break within my breast!"
"Is this," asked she, "the cause of your unrest?"
"Yes, truly," said he, "and no wonder 'tis."
"Now, sir," said she, "I could amend all this,
If I but would, and that within days three,
If you would bear yourself well towards me.
"But since you speak of such gentility
As is descended from old wealth, till ye
Claim that for that you should be gentlemen,
I hold such arrogance not worth a hen.
Find him who is most virtuous alway,
Alone or publicly, and most tries aye
To do whatever noble deeds he can,
And take him for the greatest gentleman.
Christ wills we claim from Him gentility,
Not from ancestors of landocracy.
For though they give us all their heritage,
For which we claim to be of high lineage,
Yet can they not bequeath, in anything,
To any of us, their virtuous living,
That made men say they had gentility,
And bade us follow them in like degree.
"Well does that poet wise of great Florence,
Called Dante, speak his mind in this sentence;
Somewhat like this may it translated be:
'Rarely unto the branches of the tree
Doth human worth mount up: and so ordains
He Who bestows it; to Him it pertains.'
For of our fathers may we nothing claim
But temporal things, that man may hurt and maim
"And everyone knows this as well as I,
If nobleness were implanted naturally
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Within a certain lineage, down the line,
In private and in public, I opine,
The ways of gentleness they'd alway show
And never fall to vice and conduct low.
"Take fire and carry it in the darkest house
Between here and the Mount of Caucasus,
And let men shut the doors and from them turn;
Yet will the fire as fairly blaze and burn
As twenty thousand men did it behold;
Its nature and its office it will hold,
On peril of my life, until it die.
"From this you see that true gentility
Is not allied to wealth a man may own,
Since folk do not their deeds, as may be shown,
As does the fire, according to its kind.
For God knows that men may full often find
A lord's son doing shame and villainy;
And he that prizes his gentility
In being born of some old noble house,
With ancestors both noble and virtuous,
But will himself do naught of noble deeds
Nor follow him to whose name he succeeds,
He is not gentle, be he duke or earl;
For acting churlish makes a man a churl.
Gentility is not just the renown
Of ancestors who have some greatness shown,
In which you have no portion of your own.
Your own gentility comes from God alone;
Thence comes our true nobility by grace,
It was not willed us with our rank and place
"Think how noble, as says Valerius,
Was that same Tullius Hostilius,
Who out of poverty rose to high estate.
Seneca and Boethius inculcate,
Expressly (and no doubt it thus proceeds),
That he is noble who does noble deeds;
And therefore, husband dear, I thus conclude:
Although my ancestors mayhap were rude,
Yet may the High Lord God, and so hope I,
Grant me the grace to live right virtuously.
Then I'll be gentle when I do begin
To live in virtue and to do no sin.
"And when you me reproach for poverty,
The High God, in Whom we believe, say I,
In voluntary poverty lived His life.
And surely every man, or maid, or wife
May understand that Jesus, Heaven's King,
Would not have chosen vileness of living.
Glad poverty's an honest thing, that's plain,
Which Seneca and other clerks maintain.
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Whoso will be content with poverty,
I hold him rich, though not a shirt has he.
And he that covets much is a poor wight,
For he would gain what's all beyond his might,
But he that has not, nor desires to have,
Is rich, although you hold him but a knave.
"True poverty, it sings right naturally;
Juvenal gaily says of poverty:
'The poor man, when he walks along the way,
Before the robbers he may sing and play.'
Poverty's odious good, and, as I guess,
It is a stimulant to busyness;
A great improver, too, of sapience
In him that takes it all with due patience.
Poverty's this, though it seem miseryIts quality may none dispute, say I.
Poverty often, when a man is low,
Makes him his God and even himself to know.
And poverty's an eye-glass, seems to me,
Through which a man his loyal friends may see.
Since you've received no injury from me,
Then why reproach me for my poverty.
"Now, sir, with age you have upbraided me;
And truly, sir, though no authority
Were in a book, you gentles of honour
Say that men should the aged show favour,
And call him father, of your gentleness;
And authors could I find for this, I guess.
"Now since you say that I am foul and old,
Then fear you not to be made a cuckold;
For dirt and age, as prosperous I may be,
Are mighty wardens over chastity.
Nevertheless, since I know your delight,
I'll satisfy your worldly appetite.
"Choose, now," said she, "one of these two things, aye,
To have me foul and old until I die,
And be to you a true and humble wife,
And never anger you in all my life;
Or else to have me young and very fair
And take your chance with those who will repair
Unto your house, and all because of me,
Or in some other place, as well may be.
Now choose which you like better and reply."
This knight considered, and did sorely sigh,
But at the last replied as you shall hear:
"My lady and my love, and wife so dear,
I put myself in your wise governing;
Do you choose which may be the more pleasing,
And bring most honour to you, and me also.
I care not which it be of these things two;
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For if you like it, that suffices me."
"Then have I got of you the mastery,
Since I may choose and govern, in earnest?"
"Yes, truly, wife," said he, "I hold that best."
"Kiss me," said she, "we'll be no longer wroth,
For by my truth, to you I will be both;
That is to say, I'll be both good and fair.
I pray God I go mad, and so declare,
If I be not to you as good and true
As ever wife was since the world was new.
And, save I be, at dawn, as fairly seen
As any lady, empress, or great queen
That is between the east and the far west,
Do with my life and death as you like best.
Throw back the curtain and see how it is."
And when the knight saw verily all this,
That she so very fair was, and young too,
For joy he clasped her in his strong arms two,
His heart bathed in a bath of utter bliss;
A thousand times, all in a row, he'd kiss.
And she obeyed his wish in everything
That might give pleasure to his love-liking.
And thus they lived unto their lives' fair end,
In perfect joy; and Jesus to us send
Meek husbands, and young ones, and fresh in bed,
And good luck to outlive them that we wed.
And I pray Jesus to cut short the lives
Of those who'll not be governed by their wives;
And old and querulous niggards with their pence,
And send them soon a mortal pestilence!
3.7.3 Sir Thomas Malory (1405 – 1471)
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Thomas Malory wrote Morte d´Arthur (Death of Arthur) in a prison cell. The accusations
against him ranged from extortion, robbery, and cattle rustling, to “waylaying the Duke of
Buckingham.” It is possible, however, that few of the crimes were real. He was a Lancastrian
in a time of Yorkist ascendancy, and law is always a ready weapon to those in power. In 1468
two general amnesties were declared by King Edward IV, Malory, unlike the other prisoners
in jail at the time, was not set free. This may indicate that Malory had been singled out as a
particular enemy by the Crown because of his opposing role in the Wars of the Roses.
He fought in the Hundred Years´ War and was elected to Parliament in 1445. It was during
the days of civil disorder that preceded the Wars of the Roses that his fortune took a
downward course from which it never recovered. It is thought that he was serving a twentyyear prison term when he wrote Morte d´Arthur and that he remained in jail until his death in
1871, one year after completing his great work. Malory´s literary achievement was the
recapitulation, arrangement, and rewriting from the original Latin, French, and English
sources of the tales of King Arthur and the Knights of his Round Table. This work is the last
great collection of medieval romances and it is a faithful representation of chivalric ideas and
medieval life and thought that has inspired later writers to deal with the same theme.
3.8 Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Architecture
3.8.1 Anglo-Saxon Architecture
England is not blessed with a lot of surviving Anglo-Saxon buildings, because of the frequent
warfare and violent invasions (particularly by the Vikings) in the period 800-950. These
invaders burned and destroyed most of the settlements they came across. For this reason the
most surviving examples of Anglo-Saxon architecture date from either 600-725 or 900-1050.
Unfortunately for the future generation, most Saxon buildings were constructed of wood with
wattle and painted walls. The attacks of the Danes left very few of these flammable buildings
standing. The only buildings the Anglo-Saxons tended to build in more permanent stone were
their monasteries and churches.
There are two regions where the earliest Saxon work is concentrated; in the southeast around
the county of Kent and in Northumbria. In Kent the best surviving churches are those of St.
Peter and St. Paul, Canterbury (in 600). These churches are heavily influenced by the Roman
basilican tradition, with a rounded chancel in the east and plain walls.
In Northumbria the Celtic churches and the monastic buildings give up their Celtic origins,
with tall aisles naves and a rectangular chancel. After the Synod of Whitby (664) the northern
churches were inspired by the basilican plan.
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Whitby Abbey where in 664 the Synod of Whitby took place
Surprisingly few large churches remain from the later period of Saxon building (900-1050).
These buildings were generally rebuilt in the Norman period, and only little Saxon work
remains. The smaller churches are extremely simple in design; basically a simple nave
divided from a rectangular chancel by a narrow arch. The chancel and nave are small.
Examples include St. Lawrence and Hampshire.
Winchester Cathedral at Winchester in Hampshire is one of the largest cathedrals in
England, said to be the second longest, and with the longest nave, in Europe. It is dedicated to
the Holy Trinity, Saint Peter, Saint Paul and Saint Swithun and is the seat of the Bishop of
Winchester. This cathedral was originally founded in 642 and was known as the Old Minster.
It became the part of a monastic settlement in 971. The Old Minster was demolished in 1093.
Nowadays the cathedral draws many tourists as a result of its association with Jane Austen,
who died in the city and is buried in the cathedral´s north aisle of the nave.
Winchester Cathedral 642 AD.
Another common Anglo-Saxon element, particularly in the north, is the stone cross. These
crosses were often used to mark points where paths intersected. Later on, churches were built
at the same places. Circle crosses can be found in Wales and Ireland. The patterns on the
surface of crosses show elements of both Christian and pagan worship, from Biblical figures
to various leaves etc.
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Domestic Architecture: Most domestic structures in the Saxon period were built in wood,
even the halls of nobles were very simple with a central fire and a hole in the roof to let the
smoke escape. Even the largest buildings rarely had more than one floor, and one room.
Roofing materials varied, with thatch being the most common, though grassy and even
wooden shingles were also used. Windows were rare, but when they were used they would
have been covered with thin animal skins to allow light to penetrate.
3.8.2 Medieval Architecture (Eleventh-Sixteenth century)
Art in the Medieval England was inseparable from religion and was infused with spiritual
symbolism and meaning. The aim of art was to awe and inspire the viewer with the grandeur
of God. Pope Gregory the Great said, “Painting can do for the illiterate what writing does for
those who read.”
Church Sculpture: Its mission was to educate as well as decorate. Sculptors brought Biblical
tales and moral lessons to life in stone. However, carvings were not just religious. There are
lots of examples of pre-Christian symbology in church sculpture; animals real and imaginary,
and scenes of everyday life. Sculpture flourished in the Romanesque era, with little regard for
classical conventions of proportions of figures.
During the Middle Ages (eleventh–mid–sixteenth centuries), two styles dominated English
architecture: Norman (or Romanesque) – in eleventh – twelfth centuries and Gothic in late
twelfth –mid-sixteenth centuries.
3.8.2.1 Norman (Romanesque) Architecture
After the Norman Conquest William I (the Conqueror) began a huge building programme;
fifty castles were constructed in England between 1066 and 1086. Surviving buildings of the
eleventh – twelfth centuries consist almost entirely of churches, cathedrals, and castles. At the
beginning of the Norman era the style of architecture that was in vogue was known as
Romanesque, because it copied the pattern of the architecture of the Roman Empire. The main
characteristics of the Romanesque style were: round arches, few windows, churches were
heavy and solid, church walls were hung with tapestries or painted richly. The interiors of
these buildings are dark. Windows were kept small, in part for defensive purposes, and in part
to avoid weakening the walls. Buttresses were extremely simple.
Major Romanesque buildings to visit in England:
They include the White Tower, the oldest part of the Tower of London, on the banks of the
River Thames, London. The tower was constructed from 1078 by the followers of William the
Conqueror.
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The Tower of London built in 1078 by William the Conqueror
Durham Castle is a Norman castle in the city of Durham, England and it stands opposite
Durham Cathedral, on top of a hill above the River Wear. It was originally built in the
eleventh century to protect the Bishop of Durham from attacks.
Durham Cathedral in the city of Durham was founded in 1093 AD and remains a centre for
Christian worship today. It is generally regarded as one of the finest examples of a Norman
cathedral in Europe and has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site along with
nearby Durham Castle. It houses the remains of the Venerable Bede.
Sculpture: Statues of the saints were gilded, and the service books were inlaid with gold,
jewels, and ivory.
Durham Cathedral was founded in AD 1093 and remains a centre for Christian worship today
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3.8.2.2 Gothic Architecture
Gothic style was used for all secular buildings as well as for cathedrals, churches, and
monasteries. English Gothic architecture is divided into three overlapping phases:
a) EARLY ENGLISH GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE (late twelfth – late thirteenth
century):
It evolved in France, thus it was called “The French Style”. This style emphasized simple
lines, preferring fine symmetry to elaborate decoration. Early English emphasizes height, as if
the builders were reaching for the sky. The main distinction between the Early English and
the Norman period is the use of the pointed arch. Vaults were taller and wider. Towers were
topped with steeply pitched roofs.
Major Early English buildings to visit in England:
This style began with the French east end of Canterbury Cathedral, built in the mid 1170s
by William of Sens. It is one of the most famous Christian structures in England and forms
part of a World Heritage Site. It houses the remains of St. Augustine. Early English Gothic
reached a peak in the Salisbury Cathedral.
Canterbury Cathedral
b) DECORATED ARCHITECTURE (late thirteenth – fourteenth century):
It introduced a greater richness in carving, and detailed window tracery (vyrezávané okná).
The best example of this architecture is Exeter Cathedral in Exeter. It is notable for its heavy
Norman towers, its Gothic west façade covered in weathered sculptures, and its beautiful
nave. It is called “the decorated cathedral par excellence.” Inside it is sheltered by the longest
Gothic ceiling in the world. On the north wall there is blue-faced astronomical clock,
donated by Bishop Peter Courtenay (1478-87). The minute hand was added in 1759. The gold
ball in the centre represents the earth.
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Gothic Nave of the Exeter Cathedral
c) PERPENDICULAR (VERTICAL) ARCHITECTURE (fourteenth – mid - sixteenth
century):
As its name suggests, the chief characteristic of Perpendicular architecture is the emphasis on
strong vertical lines, seen most markedly in window tracery and wall paneling. It brought
gridded and paneled design of windows which made buildings cages of flight. A dramatic
contrast to decorated architecture, they represent an impressive sense of unity, space, and
power, although they lack the richness and invention of the fourteenth century. The best
example of this architecture is King´s College Chapel which was built over a period of years
in three stages.
The Chapel features the painting The Adoration of the Magi by Rubens. It is seen as a symbol
of Cambridge and was founded in 1441 by King Henry VI. The work on the building
proceeded by the founder´s nephew King Henry VII. The interior was completed by 1544 by
the aid of King Henry VIII.
King’s College Chapel
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3.9. Celtic, Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Art
(Painting and Sculpture)
The Real Celtic Art: Celtic Art is a subject that is often misunderstood and even more often
mislabelled. Of all the artwork that I will mention only one pattern dates from the Iron Age,
the time of the true Celts.
Iron Age Celtic art was based on flowing lines, curves and spirals. Britons developed their
own unique styles and this is typical art from before the Roman invasion of Britainnia. Under
Roman influences some strains of this idea survive but in a neater more symmetrical fashion
as can be seen in the circular design in the following picture.
Romano-Briton Art: Now I will continue with the Anglo-Saxons, when Rome took back the
legions and the Romano-Britons were invaded. The Saxons who populated the Britain also
brought with them their own art like the circular design in the following picture. We can start
to see the over-under motif that will develop into the familiar knot like images that are most
often misnamed “Celtic”.
The animal/zoomorphic designs are also set to influence and be influenced by the native
British art.
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Anglo-Saxon Art: By the seventh century the people of these isles are more easily described
as Anglo-Saxons living in Angleland. The old Romano-British mainly live in the far West and
North and are labelled as foreigners or Welas by the Saxons. This is the root of the word
Welsh. The Anglo-Saxon art shows many influences: the animals are more stylised and
exaggerated. The knotwork motif has developed but there can be also found the spirals taken
directly from the last examples of true Celtic art.
Saxons were about to gain new influences from the Vikings. The Vikings, like the earlier
Saxons, favoured animal designs but with a wilder less formal sweep to the lines. When
Saxon and Viking art met the result was a excellent combination of the best of both worlds.
This continuous development has led many to suppose that it is all “Celtic” but without the
impact of the other Germanic cultures the native art of Britain would have been very different
indeed.
3.9.1 Anglo-Saxon Architecture and Allied Arts
The Anglo-Saxon verb “to build” is “timbran”, and as this suggests, wood was initially the
favoured building material. However, because wood is perishable, very little physical
evidence survives of its use. We know from sources such as the poem Beowulf and the
writings of the chronicler Bede (both eighth century) that early chieftains held court in great
communal wooden halls, but our knowledge of their appearance now has to come from
excavation rather than from anything visible above ground. The main remains are at
Yeavering in Northumberland, where King Edwin built a palace in the early seventh century.
Its site was discovered in 1949, and excavation has revealed that the great hall was more than
twenty metres (sixty-five feet) long. There was also a theatre-like building, with concentric
rows of banked seating for about three hundred people focused on a small dais
(stage/platform). It was perhaps used as a royal assembly or for preaching.
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Great Hall “Northumbria´s Palace” at Yeavering
Saxon kings and lords often lived in big wooden buildings known as 'Great Halls'. They
looked a bit like huge barns. They were built of big wooden beams. The walls were filled in
with wattle & daub (wickerwork covered in mud and animal poo). Later, extremely rich kings
built them of stone. King Edwin of Northumbria´s palace at Yeavering had two great halls
(see the picture above).
Yeavering, in north Northumberland, is arguably one of the most important Anglo-Saxon sites
in the country. Northumbria was one of four main Anglo-Saxon kingdoms during the 7th
century, and Ad Gefrin (as Yeavering was known) is the best-known excavated example of a
royal centre of the kings of Northumbria. It was here that Christianity first found a foothold in
the north; events that were subsequently recorded by the Venerable Bede in his Ecclesiastical
History of the English People.
Church of St Laurence, in Bradford-on-Avon, built probably between the seventh and the
tenth centuries, is one of the most completely preserved Saxon churches in England. The thick
walls, narrow rounded arches and small windows are typical of Anglo-Saxon church
architecture. The angels over the chancel arch within are a rare survival of Anglo-Saxon
sculpture. We know that some Anglo-Saxon churches were much larger, but unfortunately
none of these has survived.
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Church of St Laurence in Bradford-on-Avon (seventh-tenth centuries)
3.9.2 Christianity and Anglo-Saxon Tradition
The art and architecture of the Anglo-Saxons, the Germanic peoples who began settling in
England in the fifth century AD, gradually conquered the country, and ruled until the Norman
Conquest in 1066. Most Anglo-Saxon art is Christian, and the date 597, when St Augustine of
Canterbury made the first evangelizing mission from Rome to England, is sometimes taken as
a convenient (appropriate) starting point from which to discuss the subject. Neither this date
nor 1066, however, is a rigid boundary. There was Anglo-Saxon art before the coming of
Christianity, and although the Norman Conquest brought England rapidly into the mainstream
of Romanesque art and architecture, Anglo-Saxon traditions were not completely submerged
and influenced the art of the Normans into the twelfth century.
Manuscript Illumination: Anglo-Saxon illuminated books have, in general, survived in much
better condition than architecture, sculpture, or large-scale painting, so it is in them that the
artistic genius of the people can best be appreciated. In the early period, Northumbria was the
leading centre of production. The celebrated masterpiece of the time is the Lindisfarne
Gospels (British Library, London), which was written and decorated in the monastery at
Lindisfarne in about 698. It includes figures of the four Evangelists, but the most striking
illuminations in this manuscript are complete pages of pure ornament and elaborate enlarged
initial letters at the beginning of various passages. The exuberant (colourful and vivid),
spiralling, intertwined ornament is influenced by the Celtic art of Ireland.
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Lindisfarne Gospels were produced in 698-721 by monks in Northumberland
The illuminated books known as the Lindisfarne Gospels were produced in 698-721 by
monks in Northumberland. The first page of the Gospel According to St Matthew, with a
large illuminated capital, is shown here. The interlacing motifs intertwined with fantastic
creatures have their origin in Viking art and were adopted by Irish and Anglo-Saxon
illuminators. The Lindisfarne Gospels are now part of the collection of the British Library,
London.
The artistic genius of the Anglo-Saxons can best be appreciated in illuminated manuscripts,
since they have survived far better than architecture, sculpture, or other forms of painting. The
Grimaldi Gospels are in the style of the Winchester School of manuscript illumination: the
rich colours, animated poses, heavy draperies (cloth or textiles used for decorative purposes),
and embellished borders seen in the title page to the Gospel According to St Matthew, is
characteristic of the style.
St Matthew from Grimaldi Gospels:
The St. Augustine Gospels is an illuminated Gospel Book which probably dates from
the sixth century. This manuscript is one of the oldest bound European books in
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existence and is thus invaluable (precious) to the history of book creation. It is
traditionally considered to be one of the volumes brought by St. Augustine to England
(Canterbury) in 597 AD, and it was in England in the late seventh or early eighth
century when corrections were made to the text in an English hand.
St Augustine Gospels, sixth century, it contains twelve scenes from the Passion
The earliest surviving manuscripts produced in southern England date from about the mid-8th
century. St Augustine's Abbey at Canterbury was an important centre of production. The style
of the illustrations in Canterbury books is more classical than those of Northumbria, with
more naturalistic figures and less lavish ornament.
3.9.3 Other Anglo-Saxon Arts: Jewellery, Glass and Sculpture
Among the other arts that flourished in Anglo-Saxon England were metalwork (including
jewellery) and textiles (including ecclesiastical vestments and altar hangings). We know that
the Anglo-Saxons loved bright colours and rich ornament, and these are fields in which they
could be vividly expressed. They include gold jewellery, sword fittings set with garnets, a
purse, a buckle, and shoulder clasps. There are also some outstanding items of Anglo-Saxon
metalwork made for the Church.
The broad depiction of the development of Anglo-Saxon art can be distinguished
reasonably clearly. There were two main periods of achievement, with between them a bleak
(hopeless) time when the country was overrun (occupied) by invaders from Scandinavia.
Remains dating from before the seventh century are extremely scanty (poor) and belong more
to the realm of archaeology than to art. The first great achievements are the magnificent
jewelled objects found in a ship burial at Sutton Hoo (Royal Burial Site) in Suffolk, dating
from about 625.
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Early Anglo-Saxon Jewellery, seventh century.
Anglo-Saxon Art covers artwork produced within the Anglo-Saxon period of English history,
particularly from the time of King Alfred (871-899), when there was a revival of English
culture after the end of the Viking invasions, to the early twelfth century, when Romanesque
art became the new movement. Prior to King Alfred there had been the Hiberno-Saxon
culture.
Ardagh Chalice, silver and glass (Irish, early eighth century).
Anglo-Saxon glass has been found across England during archaeological excavations of both
settlement and cemetery sites. Glass in the Anglo-Saxon period was used in the manufacture
of a range of objects including vessels, beads, windows and was even used in jewellery. A
variety of materials other than glass were available for Anglo-Saxon beads (pearls)
including; amber, rock crystal, amethyst, bone, shells, coral and even metal. These beads are
usually considered to have been decorative but may also have a social or ritual function.
Anglo-Saxon glass beads show a wide variety of bead manufacturing techniques, sizes,
shapes, colours and decorations.
Anglo-Saxon Sculpture – Ivory Carvings: Ivory carving was used for various purposes,
secular as well as religious, in Anglo-Saxon England. The secular uses included seals,
scabbard mounts, and clasps and strap-ends for clothing. However, the most impressive
products were made in the service of the Church, including altar crosses, book covers, and
pyxes (small boxes in which the consecrated bread of the Eucharist is placed). Most AngloSaxon carvings of this type were made from walrus rather than elephant ivory, and one of the
most famous pieces is made of whalebone. In the following picture there is the Franks Casket
(named after Sir A. W. Franks, who presented it to the British Museum, London). It dates
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from about 700 and is remarkable for being decorated with scenes from ancient history and
northern mythology as well as the Bible. Its original purpose is unknown.
Whalebone Casket, seventh century
3.9.4 The Saxon-Norman Overlap: Architecture
The Norman Conquest of England in 1066 was a cultural as well as a political event, but it did
not change the art of the country overnight. There had been a good deal of cultural
interchange between England and Normandy before the Conquest, so there were already
Norman features in some late Anglo-Saxon art, and certain Anglo-Saxon traditions survived
long after 1066. It was in architecture that the Conquest had the most dramatic effect. The
Normans built mighty castles and cathedrals to impose their authority, and these buildings
have a massive grandeur that we do not find in any Anglo-Saxon work. However, in less
ambitious buildings, Anglo-Saxon features continued. Round church towers, for example, are
not found in Normandy, but they were built in England before and well after the Conquest,
especially in East Anglia.
The present eleventh century castle was a Norman stronghold which survived many sieges
and welcomed many English kings as guests. Bamburgh Castle, Northumberland is probably
the finest castle in England. First evidence of it fifth century and was rebuilt in 1095, and was
restored during eighteenth - nineteenth century.
Sir Thomas Mallory (1471), the author of "Le Morte D'Arthur" (one of the first histories of
King Arthur), believed that Bamburgh Castle was the most likely site of Lancelot's castle
"The Joyous Gard".
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Bamburgh Castle (Northumbria), fifth century, rebuilt in 1095.
Windsor Castle was first built by William the Conqueror, following his invasion of England
in 1066. The original structure was built from timber with earth fortifications. The Castle held
an obvious strategic position on a steep hill overlooking the River Thames, and was part of a
ring of castles around London, with the Tower of London, one day's march away, at its heart.
The Castle was later rebuilt in stone, and grew in importance over the years. Henry II
constructed the Round Tower and the original stone outer wall. Following the English Civil
War, the Castle's primary role became that of a royal palace. The Castle has remained largely
unchanged since the early nineteenth century, apart from the restoration work following the
fire in 1992.
Windsor Castle has been named one of the Seven Wonders of Britain in a major survey and
backed by the English Tourism Council. Windsor Castle is considered one of the 'must see'
sites for visitors from Britain and overseas.
Windsor Castle
3.9.5 The Saxon-Norman Overlap: Embroidery
The complexity of the Saxon-Norman overlap is shown by the fact that it is often difficult to
say whether certain works of the period are pre- or post- Conquest or of English or Norman
workmanship. The most famous work of art associated with the Conquest is of course the
Bayeux Tapestry (actually an embroidery rather than a tapestry), which was almost certainly
made for Bishop Odo of Bayeux, half-brother of William the Conqueror, and is still in
Bayeux, in the Musée de la Tapisserie.
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Romanesque, Normannic Art: "Romanesque" is known in Great Britain as "Normannic",
deriving from the Norman attack on England in 1066, known as the Battle of
Hastings. Perhaps the best known piece of Anglo-Saxon art is the Bayeux Tapestry in the
traditional Anglo-Saxon style.
The Bayeux Tapestry long embroidered cloth which depicts the events leading up to the
1066 Norman invasion of England as well as the events of the invasion itself. The Tapestry is
annotated in Latin. It is presently exhibited in a special museum in Bayeux, Normandy,
France. The Bayeux tapestry is embroidered in wool thread. The main thread colors are
terracotta, blue-green, dull gold, olive green, and blue, with small amounts of dark blue or
black and light green. The Battle of Hastings was fought on October 14, 1066. The English
fight on foot behind a shield wall, whilst the Normans are on mounted cavalry. The first to fall
are named as Leofwine Godwinson and Gvrth Godwinson, Harold's brothers.
The tapestry tells the story of the Norman conquest of England. The two combatants are the
Anglo-Saxon English, led by Harold Godwinson, recently crowned as King of England
(before that a powerful earl), and the Normans, led by William the Conqueror. The two sides
can be distinguished on the tapestry by the customs of the day. The Normans shaved the back
of their heads, while the Anglo-Saxons had mustaches.
This piece is conventionally referred to as a "Tapestry", although it is not a true woven
tapestry. The Bayeux tapestry is embroidered in wool thread.
Detail showing outlines in stem or outline stitch and fillings in laid work
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3.9.6 Gothic Painting and Sculpture
Gothic Painting: Gothic architecture and art structures (largely cathedrals and churches) and
works of art first created in France in the twelfth century that spread throughout Western
Europe through the fifteenth century and in some locations into the sixteenth century.
Monumental fresco painting was rare in the Gothic period except in Italy, where the massive
walls remained instead of yielding to the tall skeletal structure found elsewhere. In the rest of
Europe stained glass and tapestry assumed greater importance and showed a stylistic
development analogous to that of sculpture.
Another aspect of Gothic painting was manuscript illumination, in which text and pictures
formed a united composition. From the beginning of the thirteenth century, illuminations were
done for the courts by lay schools. The Paris school achieved a perfection which made it the
center of Gothic painting for nearly two centuries. English miniatures are often identical to the
French in this period.
Gothic Sculpture: Sculpture and stained glass were formally and spiritually integrated within
the Gothic cathedral to express a theological program or scheme. The Royal Portal at Chartres
(mid – twelfth century) exemplifies the early achievements in the development toward a
coherent sculptural scheme; the tympanum, archivolts, and jamb figures are newly united
structurally and iconographically to emphasize the importance of Christ on earth. Images of
Christ begin to reveal a tendency toward greater humanization.
By the first half of the thirteenth century, the role of the Virgin Mary as the intermediary
between God and humanity is stressed in the sculptural programs of Laon, Notre-Dame de
Paris.
From the mid - thirteenth century onward, mannerisms in gesture developed, such as the "hipshot" pose, notable in the statue of the Virgin and Child at Amiens. In the Eton College chapel
the frescoes of the miracles of the Virgin (1480-1488), by William Baker are reminiscent of
van der Weyden and Bouts. Royal iconography was enriched by portraits of various
sovereigns. This swaying posture further separated sculpture from architecture. In the
fourteenth cent., after the completion of the great cathedrals, sculpture became an independent
artistic form. Mannerisms were exaggerated into an elegant style that continued into the
sixteenth century.
The Virgin and Child, fourteenth century, Oxford
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4. ANGLO-SAXON AND MEDIEVAL MUSIC
4.1 Celtic Music
The term Celtic music increasingly used in Britain and the United States to represent 'Irish'. In
Europe it may denote Breton or Galician music in addition to Irish, Scottish and Welsh. The
music of Brittany is different to Irish music, but is within the playing and listening experience
of many Irish traditional musicians. Isle of Man, England and Wales are connected cultures,
but Scotland has particularly strong linguistic and music links with Ireland, as has the ScotsIrish diaspora in Canada (Cape Breton, Newfoundland, etc.)
This takes us to the other side of the spectrum Celtic New Age. In the early 1980's "Celtic
music" took a new direction. Enya and Clannad introduced a new sound that is now known as
Celtic New Age. This style of "Celtic music" is largely based more around synthesizers and
heavy effects. It attempts to capture the "feel" of "Celtic music". Clannad was followed by
Loreena McKennit, Sara McLaughlin and many more artists.
Paddy Moloney of the Chieftains, one of the best-known Celtic musical groups
What do people mean when they say music is Celtic? It's a question with many answers.
"They're songs which are frequently more melancholy, where people listen to the words and
perhaps it makes them dream of home," maintains John Falstaff, a Celtic radio host. "Then
there are the fast jigs and reel stuff, which makes people want to get up and dance."
Other Celtic musicians agree that their tunes might make you want to tap your foot - that the
music can be played in the back of a bus or the back of a pub. Whatever it is, by definition it
must be "the traditional music of Celtic peoples" from Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Phoenecia,
Cornwall, Brittany and the Isle of Man, experts say.
For Irish traditional music, which has long been poised uneasily between the folk music and
world music markets, the arrival of Celtomania has been a mixed blessing. It's undoubtedly
easier for musicians to make and sell recordings these days, and longtime loyalists like the
Chieftains or the Green Linnet label have surely benefited. The other example of good Celtic
music is Windham Hill´s style tranquillity with a sexy accent and also Enya, The Corrs, Moya
Brennan, Clannad or an Irish choral group Anúna.
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4.2 Anglo-Saxon Music (500-1066)
Unlike its trivial place in today's society, in the early middle ages music was a valued part of
the four sciences, or quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy). The possible
effects of this science were both useful and dangerous. While no Anglo-Saxon theoretical
publication survives which deals with music, there are two Latin works De institutione musica
(Boethius, sixth century) and Institutiones (Cassiodorus, sixth century) which deal extensively
with music’s ability to "ennoble or corrupt the character". Boethius identified three types of
music: musica mundana, (secular music) the philosophical and astrological celestial music,
musica humana, the music of human bodies and emotions, and musica instrumentalis,
musical sounds created with instruments. These three classes of music were related by
numerology; since they were similar by nature, musica instrumentalis had sympathetic
influence over a listener by appealing to musica humana, his own physical music, both
emotional and physiological. According to this system of influence, the type of music played
could exert specific physical and emotional responses. Soft sounding instruments were played
to encourage sleep, and faster songs and dances to promote physical vigor. The erotic
shivaree was performed as a newly wed couple retired for the evening, and soft sounding
music during the dinner hour was said to aid digestion. The musical performance in each of
the above examples is a meaningful event, and intended to have a very specific effect beyond
its value as entertainment.
Boethius, 6th century; the autor of De institutione musica
Along with the beneficial potential of music came the threat that a musician would play
intervals calculated to rob the listener of his or her rational ability, leaving the listener
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vulnerable to the devil’s temptation. Despite sounding somewhat weirdly to modern
individuals, music’s practical, physical and moral influence was treated very seriously in the
middle ages. Members of the clergy often suspected music’s persuasive powers of demonic
origin, especially when attempts were made to influence the natural world through secular
musical acts. As a result, instructions were written outlining punishments for the practice of
sinful superstitions. The use of music in religious context (though not undisputed) was looked
upon with words of praise.
Outside of music for church services which was conducted only by clergy members, AngloSaxon musicians probably knew and performed both sacred and secular repertoire, choosing
instruments, styles and songs that were appropriate for each event.
Music occupied a unique position for the Anglo Saxon. It was entertainment and a danger, a
tool, and a potential weapon. Musicians were both valued and mistrusted for their skills.
4.3 Gregorian and Ambrosian Chant
Gregorian chant is often taken as synonymous with plainchant or plainsong, and is a form of
monophonic, unaccompanied singing, which was developed in the Catholic Church, mainly
during the period 800-1000. The name Gregorian chant is taken from Pope St. Gregory the
Great (590-604).
This music was traditionally sung by monks or other male clerics and was used during
religious services. It is the music of the Roman Rite of the Mass, also known as the Gregorian
rite or Tridentine rite.
Gregorian Chant: Missa I - Lux et origo; Tempore Paschali. KYRIE
Ambrosian Chant is the liturgical plainchant repertory of the Ambrosian rite of the Roman
Catholic Church, and is also known as Milanese chant. It is named after St. Ambrose (the
Archdiocese of Milan). This chant is monophonic and a cappella, sung primarily by males.
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St. Ambrose (c. 338 – 4 April 397);
St. Gregory I the Great (540-604) by Francisco de Zurbarán
Stylistically, the Ambrosian chant repertoire is not generally as musically constant
(unvariable) as the Gregorian.
Celtic Liturgy: For more than two centuries Scotland had been united if not unified kingdom:
four peoples – Pict, Celt, Briton and Angle – had been growing together. The Celtic Liturgy
had been founded as long ago as the late fourth century. It is unrecorded, but was almost
certainly related to Eastern Church (Ambrosian chant), and it shows strong resemblances to
the Mozarabic chant of Spain. We can find the elaborate melismatic vocal style of Greek
chant, Spanish folk music, Celtic song, and even Gaelic psalm-singing.
In the thirteenth century a distinctive “Scottish” literature first appears (romance Sir Tristrem)
– and it was sung and accompanied by harp. It was the returning Crusaders who were
responsible for some of exotic instruments such as rebec (it was mounted/fastened with three
strings) which was derived from the Arabian rabab. The next exotic instruments used by Celts
were: the fiddle and the lute.
4.4 Minstrelsy
In England before the Norman Conquest, the professional poet was known as a scôp ("shaper"
or "maker"), who composed his own poems, and sang them to the accompaniment of a rude
harp. Another type of performers, in a rank much beneath the scôp, were the gleemen, who
had no settled dwelling, but wandered from place to place, earning what they could from their
performances. Late in the thirteenth century, the term minstrel began to be used to designate a
performer who amused his lord with music and song.
In a complex way involving invasions, wars, conquests, etc., two categories of composers
originated. Poets like Chaucer appeared in one category wherein music was not a part.
Minstrels, on the other hand, went to feasts and festivals in great numbers with harps, fiddles,
bagpipes, flutes, citterns, and kettledrums.
As early as 1321, the minstrels of Paris were formed into a guild. A guild of royal minstrels
was organized in England in 1469. Some were women, or women who followed minstrels in
their travels. Minstrels throughout Europe also employed trained animals, such as bears.
Minstrelsy in Europe died out slowly, having gone nearly extinct by about 1700, though
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isolated individuals working in the tradition were said to exist well into the nineteenth
century.
4.5 Late Medieval and Early Renaissance: Music and Composers
Genres: Principal liturgical forms which endured throughout the entire Renaissance period
were masses and motets, with some other developments towards the end, especially as
composers of sacred music began to adopt secular forms (such as the madrigal) for their own
designs. Common sacred genres were the mass, the motet, the madrigale spirituale, and the
laude.
John Dunstaple or Dunstable (1390-1453) was an English composer of polyphonic music of
the late medieval era and early Renaissance. He was one of the most famous composers active
in the early fifteenth century.
Of the works attributed to him only about fifty survive, among which are two complete
masses, three incomplete but multi-section masses, fourteen individual mass sections, twelve
complete motets (including the famous one which combines the hymn Veni creator spiritus
and the sequence Veni sancte spiritus), as well as twenty-seven separate settings of various
liturgical texts, including three Magnificats and seven settings of Marian antiphons, such as
Salve Regina misericordie.
Dunstaple was one of the first to compose masses using a single melody as cantus firmus. A
good example of this technique is his Missa Rex seculorum.
Leonel Power (1370-1445) was an English composer of the late Medieval and early
Renaissance eras. Along with John Dunstaple, he was one of the major figures in English
music in the early fifteenth century.
While Power's production was slightly less than Dunstaple's, his influence was similar. He is
the composer best-represented in the Old Hall Manuscript, (The Old Hall Manuscript is the
largest, most complete, and most significant source of English sacred music of the late
fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, and as such represents the best source for English
music of the late Medieval era. It is named for its prior location in the Old Hall at the College
of St Edmund (near Ware), and rather miraculously survived the destruction of manuscripts
carried out by King Henry VIII during the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530, one of
the only undamaged sources of English music from the early fifteenth century (most
manuscripts were destroyed by Henry VIII. He wrote in a variety of styles, bridging the late
medieval and early Renaissance eras.
Late Renaissance Music (1534-1600): The brief but intense flowering of the musical
madrigal in England, mostly from 1588 to 1627, along with the composers who produced
them, is known as the English Madrigal School. The English madrigals were a cappella,
predominantly light in style, and generally began as either copies or direct translations of
Italian models. Most were for three to six voices.
William Byrd (1540 –1623) was an English composer of the Renaissance. He lived until well
into the seventeenth century without writing music in the new Baroque fashion, but his
keyboard works are said to have marked the beginning of the Baroque organ and harpsichord
style.
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William Byrd
Part of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book (the folio
of Catholic composers' works copied from divers sources, probably by Francis Tregian between 1609
and 1619).
Even as he won fame for his Anglican music, though, he was writing Latin motets, many of
them publicly printed in his books of Cantiones, about the plight of the English Catholic
community.
The three Masses and the two books of Gradualia, published over fifteen years, were Byrd's
major contribution to the Roman rite. These were written for the intimate, even secretive,
atmosphere of domestic worship, to be performed for a small group of skilled amateurs
(which included women, according to contemporary accounts) and heard by a small
congregation.
Sacred Music: Music was important in Church rituals from before the Renaissance. Older
forms such as the Gregorian Chant continued, but now more complex masses, motets and
hymns were being composed, usually based on the older tunes. The Magnificat (a canticle in
honor of the Virgin Mary) also gained in popularity.
The motet form was incorporated into the Church for masses and the Magnificat . The piece
usually had three or four voices,with the top being the most important and the others serving
as background. Sometimes the lower voices were played on instruments while the upper voice
sang the Latin text. The background line was often based on part of an old Gregorian chant.
William Byrd: The Second Service & Consort Anthems, 2007
Masses and three organ fantasias, 2000.
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The Renaissance excelled in a capella music (voice without instrumental accompaniment)
and most church music was written in this style. "Word painting", a technique of using the
music to create a picture from the text, became very popular. For example, an ascending line
of notes might coincide with the words of "the heavens" or "the stars". Similarly, a harsh
sound might be heard with "death" or "evil". Additional symbolism was found in the use of
triple meter, which reflected the Trinity. When religious symbolism became less important,
duple meter was often used.
Early Renaissance Mass: The part of the Mass that was sung every day was called the
Ordinary. It consisted of five sections: Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei.
Kyrie: "A prayer for mercy"… This section dates from the earliest days of Christianity. It
consisted of nine invocations. First: three "Kyrie eleison" (Lord, have mercy), then was
followed by three "Christe eleison" (Christ, have mercy), and then, following the A-B-A
form, a repeat of the original "Kyrie eleison".
Gloria: "Glory to God in the highest"… This is a joyful hymn that was omitted during
Advent and Lent.
Credo: "I believe in one God, the Father Almighty"… This section also includes the Et
incarnatus est (And He became flesh), the Crucifixus (He was crucified) and the Et resurrexit
(And He rose again).
Sanctus: "Holy, Holy, Holy"… This section ends with the Hosanna (Hosanna in the highest)
and the Benedictus (Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord), with the Hosanna
often repeated.
Agnus Dei: "Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world"
This, the last section, is sung three times. The first two times it ends with "Miserere nobis"
(Have mercy on us) and in the final repeat, it ends with "Dona nobis pacem" (Grant us peace).
High Renaissance Mass: After Martin Luther's revolt, a new desire began for reform within
the Catholic Church (as opposed to those who broke away and founded new forms of
religious worship altogether). The Church wanted to recapture the minds of the people and
called the Council of Trent to discuss just how to accomplish that. The main goal was to
control and regulate every aspect of the Church, including the music.
4.6 English Madrigal School
The English Madrigal School was the brief but intense flowering of the musical madrigal in
England, mostly from 1588 to 1627, along with the composers who produced them. The
English madrigals were a cappella, predominantly light in style, and generally began as either
copies or direct translations of Italian models. Most were for three to six voices.
While William Byrd, probably the most famous English composer of the time, experimented
with the madrigal form, he never actually called his works madrigals, and shortly after writing
some secular songs in madrigalian style returned to writing mostly sacred music.
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The most influential composer of madrigals in England, and the one whose works have
survived best to the present day, was Thomas Morley.
Thomas Morley (1557 - 1602) was an English composer, theorist, editor and organist of the
Renaissance, and the foremost member of the English Madrigal School. He was the most
famous composer of secular music in Elizabethan England, and the composer of the only
surviving contemporary settings of verse by Shakespeare. Usually his madrigals are light,
quick-moving and easily singable, like his well-known "Now is the Month of Maying"; he
took the aspects of Italian style that suited his personality and anglicized them.
He was a versatile musician and publisher. He composed both religious and secular music (he
was organist at Saint Paul's Cathedral), and wrote a treatise on counterpoint, A Plaine and
Easie Introduction to Practicall Musick (1597); in addition, the work provides some
information about the way music was performed at the time.
Morley´s pieces include:
-
It Was a Lover and His Lass," from As You Like It is one of the few original pieces of
music from the plays which have survived.
One of his many madrigals, "Springtime," is played by a trio of recorders (flutes).
The song "O mistris mine".
Thomas Morley famous English madrigalist.
4.7 Middle Age Instruments
Among the Anglo-Saxon works that contain descriptions of the presence of the harp during
celebrations is the heroic poem Beowulf. The harp played a regular role in the entertainment
of the upper class. For the uneducated lower class, churchyard carol dancing and singing on
feast days was common, as was the singing of work songs to lessen the monotony of labor.
Guitars: A guitar is a stringed musical instrument played with the fingers or a plectrum.
Guitars usually have six strings although there are variations on this, the most common being
a twelve-string guitar. Then the ukuele which has four strings and the bass guitar which
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usually has four strings, but also exists in five, six and twelve-string versions. Instruments like
the guitar have been popular for at least five thousand years. Egyptian frescos show women
playing instruments like the guitar, but the name “guitar” appears first in Spain in thirteenth
century and was used in Scottish music too.
The Shawm (Pipe)
The Shawm (pipe): was a Renaissance musical instrument of the woodwind family and was
made in Europe from the late thirteenth until the seventeenth century. It was ancestral to the
modern oboe and was used by military bands during the Crusades, as well as in ordinary life
for dancing.
The Cittern: is a stringed instrument dating from the Renaissance. The modern use of the
term “cittern” is attributed to British luthier Stefan Sobell who devised eight-string instrument
influenced by designs of English and Portuguese guitars. It was useful for both simple song
accompaniment and dances.
The Recorder: is a flute-like woodwind musical instrument. It is held vertically from the lips.
4.7.1 Elizabethan Stringed Instruments
The Elizabethan era was a time when music and art were growing more and more each day.
This time period, also known as the English Renaissance, is still well known for its styles and
sound of music. Queen Elizabeth herself was a skillful player of both the lute and the virginal.
She said that she never played for performance, "but only to shun melancholy." It was thought
that the virginal was named after Elizabeth, the "Virgin Queen." Other instruments that were
popular during this time period were the spinet and the viol. All of these are stringed
instruments.
There are many different kinds of stringed instruments. The lute is played by plucking the
strings with the fingers. The viol is played with a bow made out of string that is played against
the strings on the instrument. The spinet is a piano-like instrument in which each key has a
string that is hit with a soft mallet when the key is pressed.
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The viol and the spinet
The popularity of stringed instruments grew tremendously during the Renaissance period
because of the amount of expression that is possible when a musician is playing one of these
beautiful instruments.
Probably the most popular instrument of these days was the lute, which was used in storytelling as well as for musical purposes. The wooden instrument looks somewhat like a guitar,
except the head is bent backwards. There are frets on the lute, as on the guitar, also. Unlike
the guitar, though, the lute can have as many as thirteen pairs of strings running the length of
the body. This characteristic makes it very difficult to play and almost impossible to keep in
tune. The lute fell out of popularity fairly quickly because of these problems with tuning and
playing.
The Renaissance era was one of the most productive time periods in history as far as the
advancement of music goes. Music became much more expressive, and the sound and quality
of the instruments became more refined and more pleasant to listen to. Instruments such as the
harpsichord, the spinet, and the lute became more than just accompaniment for singers; they
became an outlet for emotions. A modern listener can almost picture what the Renaissance
composer or musician was feeling when he or she was writing a piece of music. The music of
the Elizabethan era had a large influence on the advancement of all music which came after it.
Music was of great importance in both secular and sacred life in Tudor times. Musicians were
supported by the Church, city and state, and particularly in royal and aristocratic courts. As
interest in music widened, there were many more job opportunities and possibilities for
apprenticeship. For example, there were now jobs for choirmasters, singers, teachers,
composers, and instrument builders. The rising merchant class of the later Tudor period also
gave rise to more musical patrons. With the invention of music printing, music books became
more affordable and therefore more available.
Several of the Tudor kings and queens were skilled at the lute and Elizabeth I was particularly
good at the virginals. Henry VIII was also a composer of several songs.
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Virginals that belonged to Elizabeth I
A gittern given from Elizabeth I to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester
5. The Renaissance in Europe and England
5.1 The Renaissance in Europe
The period of European history and culture traditionally known as the Renaissance began in
Italy during the fourteenth century and extended in England in the middle of the seventeenth
century. Renaissance means “rebirth” – the “rebirth” of those intellectual and artistic energies
that characterized Greek and Roman civilisation, and with this awakening of a whole range of
new interests in human beings and the world they lived in. Of course Renaissance, like other
very broad historical terms, must not be understood too literally. People in the Middle Ages
were not entirely ignorant of those aspects of Greek and Roman culture supposedly “reborn”
during the Renaissance. Historians have taught us not to think of the Middle Ages as the
“Dark Ages” anymore. However, it is truth that in the Renaissance people came to take a
revitalized interest in Greek and Roman civilisation and often thought of their own times as a
return to the glorious achievements of classical antiquity. Erasmus of Rotterdam, the great
Dutch thinker who strongly influenced England at the beginning of the sixteenth century, told:
“I anticipate the approach of a golden age, I am led to a confident hope that not only morality
and Christian piety, but also a genuine and purer literature, may come to renewed life or
greater splendor.” This is the spirit of hopeful renewal which justifies us to call this period
Renaissance.
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Erasmus, a.k.a. Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536)
The Renaissance had its origins in Italy, in the writing of Petrarch (1304-1374) and Boccaccio
(1313-1375), in the painting of Giotto (1267-1337), in the architecture of Brunelleschi (13771446), and in the sculpture of Donatello (1386-1466). The city of Florence established itself at
this time as a central point of intellectual trends and artistic accomplishments that we think of
as essentially Renaissance. Scholars and educators who called themselves Humanists began to
emphasize the capacities of the human mind and the achievements of human culture, in
contrast to the medieval emphasis on God and scorn for the things of this world. The visual
arts flourished as never before: both Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) and Michelangelo (14751564) began their careers in the Florence. Gradually this enthusiasm of intellectual and artistic
excitement spread northward to other European countries – to France, to Germany, and
eventually to England. All these countries had their own native literary and artistic traditions,
and it would be wrong to see the progress of the Renaissance in northern Europe as a matter
of totally Italian influence. But Italy was the origin and to Italy later Renaissance writers and
artists looked for inspiration.
Renaissance was not only a period of new artistic and intellectual enterprise but also a time of
territorial exploration and discovery. In 1492 Christopher Columbus reached the New World.
Columbus was but one of many adventurous seamen whose voyages of discovery
dramatically expanded the world that Europeans had previously known.
5.2 The Renaissance in England: Henry VIII and Elizabeth I
There is considerable truth in the observation that England was slow to participate in the
European Renaissance. The reasons for this are largely political. During the fifteenth century,
the great period of the Renaissance in Italy, England experienced terrible internal (domestic)
turmoil and instability. With the two dominant aristocratic houses, the Yorks and the
Lancasters, battling each other for the throne in the Wars of the Roses (1455-1485), the
country was hardly in a condition to respond to the new artistic and intellectual currents. In
1476 William Caxton establishes the first printing press, which was one of the most
significant of all Renaissance inventions. With the establishment of the Tudor dynasty, which
was to rule the country for more than a century, England began to move toward the stability
and confidence necessary for enduring artistic achievement.
But the progress of the Renaissance in England was to be slow and interrupted. Henry VIII
came to the throne when his father died in 1509. A stubborn and fearless man, Henry VIII
(1509-1547) saw himself mainly as a powerful political leader. However, he was aware of
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what the Renaissance had achieved in Europe, and he wanted also to be thought of as an
enlightened Renaissance prince. Erasmus spoke of Henry VIII in this way, and under Henry´s
rule Erasmus´ friend, Sir Thomas More (1478-1535), became the center of an active and
brilliant circle of English Humanists. More´s Utopia (1516) may be thought of as the first
literary masterpiece of the English Renaissance.
The beginning of the sixteenth century, the movement of religious protest against the
authority and corruption of the Roman Catholic Church had been here for several years. This
movement known, as the Protestant Reformation, was hastened in 1517 when Martin Luther
knocked on the door of a church in Wittenberg, Germany, his famous Ninety-five Theses,
declaring his objections to certain long-running abuses (misuses) in the Church. The
Protestant Reformation deeply modified the course of the Renaissance in England. Henry VIII
had always presented himself as a loyal supporter and protector of the Roman Catholic
Church, and there was no religious motive for England to join the Protestant revolt against the
Pope and Rome. There were, however, political and personal motives. Henry VIII´s first wife,
Catherine of Aragon, had not produced a male heir to the throne. When Henry asked for a
divorce, the Pope refused. Henry not only opposed the Pope and remarried – he also declared
himself Supreme Head of the Church in England (also known as the Anglican Church).
Martin Luther (1483 - 1546)
The long-lasting consequences of England´s break with Rome and Catholicism were intense.
England came to have a new and more independent national identity. But there were more
consequences of Henry VIII´s decision. When Sir Thomas More opposed Henry´s divorce and
refused to swear oaths of loyalty to him as Supreme Head of the English church, he was
imprisoned and executed: the leading figure of the early Renaissance in England was
sacrificed to what the king saw as political necessity. More´s death remains a reminder of the
way in which the cultural and artistic spirit of the Renaissance was savagely subordinated to
the drive for dynastic power and authority.
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Henry VIII (1491 – 1547)
On the death of Henry VIII in 1547, the cause of the Reformation in England was advanced
under the rule of his nine-year-old son, Edward VI, who was guided in all governmental
affairs by a council of senior officials. But when the boy king died prematurely in 1553, the
crown fell to his older sister Mary (1553-1558), the offspring of Henry VIII´s marriage to
Catherine of Aragon. Mary was half Spanish and a pious Catholic. She became the wife of
Philip II of Spain and instituted a reign of terror against English Protestants in an attempt to
return England to Catholic authority. The reign of “Bloody Mary” was a double threat to
England´s developing national identity because Spain, the country of her mother and her
husband, had become dominant and the most imperialistic power in sixteenth century Europe.
However, Mary died after only five years on the throne, and her half-sister Elizabeth, Henry
VIII´s daughter by his second wife, Anne Boleyn, became queen. Elizabeth I (1558-1603),
only twenty-five when she came to the throne, was to lead her country forward again in the
direction of the strong national unity and triumphant cultural achievement begun, however,
imperfectly, by her father.
Elizabeth had a very good Renaissance education. Her teacher was Roger Ascham (15151568) – a leading figure in the second generation of English humanists. Elizabeth was a good
linguist and poet, and she encouraged literary and artistic developments that would finally
allow the Renaissance in England to grow and flourish. England was still troubled by internal
tension between Protestants and Catholics, and by the external threat of Spanish imperialism.
Elizabeth promoted peace and prosperity by directing a moderate religious course between
Protestant extremism and capitulation to Catholicism, and by directing the country´s insecure
financial affairs with realistic creativity. In foreign affairs she became the wonder of her age.
England had not been a leader in exploring the New World, but by the second half of the 16th
century, daring English seamen, most notably Sir Francis Drake (1540?-1596), had begun to
prey upon Spanish ships returning with wealth from America and Asia. These raids brought
much-needed funds into Elizabeth´s treasury. (Drake was knighted in 1580 for returning from
the Pacific with a million pounds in loot). These raids were in fact undeclared war against
Spain, England´s major foreign enemy. Only Elizabeth´s diplomacy prevented disastrous war
from breaking out.
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Elizabeth I (1558–1603)
In 1588 the Spanish Armada (Navy), the strongest naval force of the age, sailed against
England. But the smaller and more maneuverable English ships sent the Armada back in
inferior defeat, aided by a timely storm that helped scatter and destroy the Spanish fleet. The
storm was afterward interpreted as an act of divine intervention on England´s behalf. The
victory over the Armada marked the culmination of Elizabeth´s authority in a country that had
become, in less than a century, one of the most powerful in the world.
5.2.1 Thomas More and His “Utopia”
(1516 in Latin; Ralph Robinson´s First English Translation, 1551)
Thomas More's Utopia, originally written in Latin, was published in 1516. More gives a
detailed and realistic description of a perfectly organized society located on an island in the
"New World". More's story is a revision of Plato's "Republic" and can be seen as influencing
later works such as Swift's "Gulliver's Travels".
Utopia, published in 1516, attempts to offer a
practical response to the crises of the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries by carefully defining an
ideal republic. Unlike Plato's Republic, a largely
abstract dialogue about justice, Utopia focuses
on politics and social organization in stark detail.
The books begin a conversation between Thomas
More and Raphael (Hebrew for 'God has
healed'). Raphael is a traveler who has seen
much of the world yet is impressed by little of it.
Even monsters are hardly worthy of concern.
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After all "There is never any shortage of horrible creatures who prey on human beings,
snatch away their food, or devour whole populations; but examples of wise social planning
are not so easy to find" (p. 40). Before long, it becomes clear that Raphael offers shrewd
analysis of various communities around the globe - and that he finds most of them to be faulty
in some way. Even Tudor England offers little in the form of civilization. Raphael illustrates
this rebuke by noting that thieves in English society are executed when, instead, they should
be pitied and helped. The seizure of land by oligarchs, the maintenance of a wasteful standing
army, the practice of gambling and gratuitous ornamentation - all of these social ills lead to a
sick society, according to Raphael. Moreover, these ills produce a subjugated people: "you
create thieves, and then punish them for stealing" (p. 49).
Of course, Raphael remains an outsider to civilization - despite his wisdom. When More asks
if he might serve as counselor to some king, Raphael responds that no king or court would
tolerate a counselor who might challenge their strongly (and wrongly) held assumptions.
Referring to Plato's Republic, Raphael notes that the likelihood of a king acting as a
philosopher, or merely tolerating one, is coincidental at best: "I'd be promptly thrown out, or
merely treated as a figure of fun" (p. 57). More responds that social reform is a pleasant ideal,
but that conservatism is more appropriate to these precarious days: "what you can't put right
you must try to make as little wrong as possible. For things will never be perfect, until human
beings are perfect - which I don't expect them to be for quite a number of years" (p. 64)!
Raphael concludes Book One of Utopia by responding that cures for social ills demand
systematic healing of the body politic. No improvement in public life can occur without the
elimination of social illness at its deepest level. This is not mere fancy, Raphael reminds his
friend; the good life can be realized, if it can be visualized. Throughout the second book,
Raphael helps More visualize the perfected story by sketching his recollection of a distant
island: Utopia. I've chosen to organize his narrative according to four principles
•
•
•
•
elimination of private property
universal labor
moderated pleasure
family as microcosm of state
This primary organizing principle of Utopia is the elimination of private property. All goods
are held in common and dispensed freely. The implications of this form of public life are
significant:
In other 'republics' practically everyone knows that, if he doesn't look out for himself,
he'll starve to death, however prosperous his country may be. He's therefore
compelled to give his own interests priority over those of the public; that is, of other
people. But in Utopia, where everything's under public ownership, no one has any fear
of going short, as long as the public storehouses are full. Everyone gets a fair share,
so there are never any poor men or beggars. Nobody owns anything, but everyone is
rich - for what greater wealth can there be than cheerfulness, peace of mind, and
freedom from anxiety? (p. 128)
There are no shortages in this community because so few things have value, as compared to
English society in which valued things are necessarily in short supply. Gold and silver, prized
among English possessions, are used in chamber pots and slave fetters in Utopia. Because
everyone has a job producing basic staples of society, there is little reason for long workdays.
Utopians produce only what the community needs to survive.
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This leads to a second key principle: the universal nature of labor. In this way, Utopia is
different from Plato's Republic. All people (with the exception of a handful of scholars and
officials) must work - and all must benefit from their communal labor. Sullivan (1983)
illuminates this key distinction: "Whereas the common life is led only by the soldiers and
guardians of the Republic who are also exempt from manual labor, all the Utopians share in
the goods produced and all [with those exceptions noted above] work as farmers or
craftsmen" (p. 33). In contrast to the Republic, More's Utopia seeks to create a largely
classless society (with the key exception of slaves), rather than a society in which many work
to sustain public life for a few.
In More's ideal community, labor serves as a means of social cohesion and control. Someone
who leaves his or her town and workplace without permission will be severely punished. Even
when a person visits another town on the island, s/he must work in order to eat:
Wherever you are, you always have to work. There's never any excuse for idleness.
There are also no wine-taverns, no ale-houses, no brothels, no opportunities for
seduction, no secret meeting-places. Everyone has his eye on you, so you're
practically forced to get on with your job, and make some proper use of your spare
time. (p. 84)
Despite this constant surveillance, utopian ethics and religion emphasize that a good life is
spent in pleasurable pursuits - and that work is pleasurable. When not at labor, utopians read,
enjoy conversations, play games, or attend public lectures.
This leads to the third principle of society in More's Utopia: the role of moderated pleasure in
social life. Public life is organized around the principle that one can be happy on this earth
insofar as one is moderate in one's pleasures and doesn't seek to limit the pleasures of others.
Indeed, the highest pleasures follow those who willingly sacrifice their own happiness for the
happiness of others. Religious tolerance follows this principle - people may believe in God
however they wish, as long as they don't foist their views on other people who may believe
differently. Most Utopians believe in some sort of God, but none are forced to follow a
specific manner of faith. While this notion might seem common to the contemporary reader,
one should remember that More wrote his philosophy in a age when the desires of individuals
were easily thwarted by church and state. More, himself, was executed for his unwillingness
to bow to a religious edict made by his king, Henry VIII. In Utopia, one may practice any
religion because, right or wrong, faith in some manner of God serves to unite the community.
Only an atheist who does not fear judgement in the afterlife is ostracized from the Utopian
community.
A fourth principle of Utopia is the role of family as the microcosm of state. Family life is
organized around the needs of the state, patterned according to trades more than biological
lineage. Thus, a child who prefers to be a woodworker would be moved to a family of
woodworkers. Families are patriarchal: "When a girl grows up and gets married, she joins her
husband's household, but the boys of each generation stay at home, under the control of their
oldest male relative" (p. 79). This patriarchy manifests itself in utopian religion where women
must admit their sins to their husbands even before attending church. As Hertzler (1965)
notes: "More departed from Plato and most communist writers who have held the family as
the complement or bulwark of property. They held that the abandonment of property meant
the destruction of the family. However, More was satisfied with a supervised mating and
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family life" (p. 139). In contrast to book five of the Republic, More's Utopian family
represents the state at its smallest level in the individual lives of its citizens.
Utopia, like all fanciful works about public life, is really about the contemporary times of its
author. The setting for public life, as in Plato's Republic, is the city - in this case a not-too
veiled description of London as it might have appeared in the early sixteenth century. Of
course, this London-that-isn't is improved and perfected by the Utopian social order:
The streets are well designed, both for traffic and for protection against the wind. The
buildings are far from unimpressive, for they take the form of terraces, facing one another
and running the whole length of the street. The fronts of the houses are separated by a twentyfoot carriageway. Behind them is a large garden, also as long as the street itself, and
completely enclosed by the backs of other streets. Each house has a front door leading into
the street, and a back door into the garden. In both cases, they're double swing-doors, which
open at a touch, and close automatically behind you. So anyone can go in and out - for there's
no such thing as private property. (p. 73)
In this way, Utopia is a sort of Gernsback Continuum - an ideal community that exists just
slightly beyond the world of Thomas More and contemporary readers. This community exists
through the communal longing of its readers to create it. Their artifacts - books, speeches,
drawings, and the like - allow us to pass from the real to the ideal, even if just for a moment.
Taken from: Sir Thomas More's Utopia, 1885.
The island of Utopia is in the middle just 200 miles broad, and holds almost at the same
breadth over a great part of it; but it grows narrower towards both ends. Its figure is not
unlike a crescent: between its horns, the sea comes in eleven miles broad, and spreads itself
into a great bay, which is environed with land to the compass of about five hundred miles,
and is well secured from winds. In this bay there is no great current, the whole coast is, as it
were, one continued harbour, which gives all that live in the island great convenience for
mutual commerce; but the entry into the bay, occasioned by rocks on the one hand, and
shallows on the other, is very dangerous. In the middle of it there is one single rock which
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appears above water, and may therefore be easily avoided; and on the top of it there is a
tower in which a garri-son is kept the other rocks lie under water, and are very dangerous.
The channel is known only to the natives, so that if any stranger should enter into the bay,
without one of their pilots, he would run great danger of shipwreck; for even they themselves
could not pass it safe, if some marks that are on the coast did not direct their way; and if
these should be but a little shifted, any fleet that might come against them, how great soever it
were, would be certainly lost.
There are 54 cities in the island, all large and well-built: the manners, customs, and laws of
which are the same, and they are all contrived as near in the same manner as the ground on
which they stand will allow. The nearest lie at least 24 miles distance from one another, and
the most remote are not so far distant, but that a man can go on foot in one day from it, to that
which lies next it. Every city sends three of their wisest senators once a year to Amaurot [the
capital] to consult about their common concerns; for that is chief town of the island, being
situated near the centre of it, so that it is the most convenient place for their assemblies. The
jurisdiction of every city extends at least twenty miles: and where the towns lie wider, they
have much more ground: no town desires to enlarge its bounds, for the people consider
themselves rather as tenants than landlords. They have built over all the country, farmhouses
for husbandmen, which are well contrived, and are furnished with all things necessary for
country labour. Inhabitants are sent by turns from the cities to dwell in them; no country
family has fewer than forty men and women in it, besides two slaves. There is a master and a
mistress set over every family; and over thirty families there is a magistrate.
More set out three key principles of Utopian religion:
•
•
•
The soul of a person is immortal
God has designed the soul to be happy
God has appointed rewards for good and virtuous acts and punishments for vice.
These rewards and punishments are distributed after this life
These principles shape the attitudes and behaviour of Utopian citizens, who seek happiness in
good and honest pleasures. To be virtuous is to live according to nature and the dictates of
reason.
5.2.2 Elizabethan Taste and Attitudes
Elizabethan attitudes toward literature and art and toward life in general, were a peculiar
combination of old and new, of attachments to the medieval past and anticipations of a more
modern outlook. The most remarkable feature of Elizabethan artistic taste is a delight in
elaborate pattern and complicated ornament and artifice. For us the word “artificial” carries a
negative meaning. It designates those aspects of human conduct or of material surroundings
that are unreal or insincere, and the opposite is the word “natural”. However, for
Elizabethans, “artificial” is a word of praise, a positive extension of the word “art” itself. It
designates that which is made by human skill and ingenuity, that which adds to and improves
upon the order found in the natural world. Elizabethan love of the artificial, the patterned, and
the ornamental appears in every aspect of life: in the fantastically decorated gowns we see in
the portraits of Queen Elizabeth; in the intricate (complex) designs of Elizabethan buildings
and gardens; in musical forms such as the madrigal, where as many as twelve different vocal
parts or lines may be combined to form an amazing texture; in poetic forms like the sonnet,
with its complicated rhyming and rhetorical pattern. In literature this delight in the “artificial”
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was both abstract and functional. It was abstract in that Elizabethans enjoyed following verbal
patterns with their eyes and their ears much as we might enjoy a design dress or a repeated
tune or rhythmic beat in a piece of music. It was functional in that to the Elizabethan mind,
verbal patterning and arrangement were essential means of expressing the true order of the
mental and material universe.
Elizabethans saw the world as a vast, unified, hierarchical order, or “Great Chain of Being,”
created by God. Every existing being or thing was ranked within a category of chain. The
categories were ranked by the attributes of their members, from the lowest group – all matter
and no spirit – to the highest group – all spirit and no matter. Inanimate things were at the
bottom of the chain. Above were the plant and animal kingdoms. Human beings, akin to
animals biologically but possessing souls and free will, were at the midpoint of the chain.
Humans could choose to become either “a little lower than the angels” (the next group up the
ladder) or depraved (animal like). As each group had its place in the chain, so each member
had its place within the group. The lion was considered the highest ranking member of the
animal kingdom, the oyster the lowest. Metals ranged from gold down to lead, and the plant
kingdom was headed by the rose. This perfect order allowed for the doctrine of
correspondences: each member of a group correspond to same-ranking members of other
groups. The lion (head of the animals) could represent a king or queen (head of a nation), and
a rose could represent God. Taking into consideration that any one of these could evoke one
or all of the others, Elizabethan writers had at hand a wealth of symbolic relationships,
references, and allusions. This view of a coherent, harmonious universe had ruled since the
Middle Ages, and during the next century it would undergo substantial (considerable)
questioning and modification.
5.2.2.1 Characteristics of the Elizabethan Age
1. Religious Toleration: The most characteristic feature of the age was the comparative
religious tolerance, which was due largely to the queen's influence. The frightful excesses of
the religious war known as the Thirty Years' War on the Continent found no parallel in
England. Upon her accession Elizabeth found the whole kingdom divided against itself; the
North was largely Catholic, while the southern counties were as strongly Protestant. Scotland
had followed the Reformation in its own intense way, while Ireland remained true to its old
religious traditions, and both countries were openly rebellious. The court, made up of both
parties, witnessed the rival intrigues of those who sought to gain the royal favor. It was due
partly to the intense absorption of men's minds in religious questions that the preceding
century, though an age of advancing learning, produced scarcely any literature worthy of the
name. Elizabeth favored both religious parties, and presently the world saw with amazement
Catholics and Protestants acting together as trusted counselors of a great sovereign. The
defeat of the Spanish Armada established the Reformation as a fact in England and at the
same time united all Englishmen in a magnificent national enthusiasm. For the first time since
the Reformation began, the fundamental question of religious toleration seemed to be settled,
and the mind of man, freed from religious fears and persecutions, turned with a great creative
impulse to other forms of activity. It is partly from this new freedom of the mind that the Age
of Elizabeth received its great literary stimulus.
2. Social contentment: It was an age of comparative social contentment, in strong contrast
with the days of Langland. The rapid increase of manufacturing towns gave employment to
thousands who had before been idle and discontented. Increasing trade brought enormous
wealth to England, and this wealth was shared to this extent, at least, that for the first time
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some systematic care for the needy was attempted. Parishes were made responsible for their
own poor, and the wealthy were taxed to support them or give them employment. The
increase of wealth, the improvement in living, the opportunities for labor, the new social
content these also are factors which help to account for the new literary activity.
3. Enthusiasm: It is an age of dreams, of adventure, of unbounded enthusiasm springing from
the new lands of fabulous riches revealed by English explorers. Drake sails around the world,
shaping the mighty course which English colonizers shall follow through the centuries; and
presently the young philosopher Bacon is saying confidently, "I have taken all knowledge for
my province." The mind must search farther than the eye; with new, rich lands opened to the
sight, the imagination must create new forms to people the new worlds. Hakluyt's famous
Collection of Voyages, and Purchas, His Pilgrimage, were even more stimulating to the
English imagination than to the English acquisitiveness. While her explorers search the new
world for the Fountain of Youth, her poets are creating literary works that are young forever.
Marston writes:"Why, man, all their dripping pans are pure gold. The prisoners they take are
fettered in gold; and as for rubies and diamonds, they goe forth on holydayes and gather 'hem
by the seashore to hang on their children's coates." This comes nearer to being a description of
Shakespeare's poetry than of the Indians in Virginia. Prospero, in The Tempest, with his
control over the mighty powers and harmonies of nature, is only the literary dream of that
science which had just begun to grapple with the forces of the universe. Cabot, Drake,
Frobisher, Gilbert, Raleigh, Willoughby, Hawkins, a score of explorers reveal a new earth to
men's eyes, and instantly literature creates a new heaven to match it. So dreams and deeds
increase side by side, and the dream is ever greater than the deed. That is the meaning of
literature.
4. The Drama: To sum up, the Age of Elizabeth was a time of intellectual liberty, of growing
intelligence and comfort among all classes, of unbounded patriotism, and of peace at home
and abroad. For a parallel we must go back to the Age of Pericles in Athens, or of Augustus in
Rome, or go forward a little to the magnificent court of Louis XIV, when Corneille, Racine,
and Molière brought the drama in France to the point where Marlowe, Shakespeare, and
Jonson had left it in England half a century earlier. Such an age of great thought and great
action, appealing to the eyes as well as to the imagination and intellect, finds but one adequate
literary expression; neither poetry nor the story can express the whole man, his thought,
feeling, action, and the resulting character; hence in the Age of Elizabeth literature turned
instinctively to the drama and brought it rapidly to the highest stage of its development.
5.3 Elizabethan Literary Achievement
Political Summary of the Period: In the Age of Elizabeth all doubt seems to vanish from
English history. After the reigns of Edward and Mary, with defeat and humiliation abroad and
persecutions and rebellion at home, the accession of a popular sovereign was like the sunrise
after a long night, and, in Milton's words, we suddenly see England, "a noble and puissant
nation, rousing herself, like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks." With
the queen's character, a strange mingling of frivolity and strength which reminds one of that
iron image with feet of clay, we have nothing whatever to do. It is the national life that
concerns the literary student, since even a beginner must notice that any great development of
the national life is invariably associated with a development of the national literature. It is
enough for our purpose, therefore, to point out two facts: that Elizabeth, with all her vanity
and inconsistency, steadily loved England and England's greatness; and that she inspired all
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her people with the unbounded patriotism which exults in Shakespeare, and with the personal
devotion which finds a voice in the Faery Queen. Under her administration the English
national life progressed by gigantic leaps rather than by slow historical process, and English
literature reached the very highest point of its development. It is possible to indicate only a
few general characteristics of this great age which had a direct bearing upon its literature.
As Elizabeth led England through difficult times toward increasing national confidence, her
court in London became the center of an exuberant (high-spirited) literary culture that was
“Renaissance”. Many individuals of talent came to the court either to contribute what they
could to the government, to distinguish themselves artistically, or both. In the late 1570´s two
great writers emerged to bring the promising developments of sixteenth century to triumphant
fruition: Sir Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser. They were close friends and they talked
about how to reform English poetry to make it the equal of that produced in Italy and France.
5.3.1 The Non-Dramatic Poets of the Elizabethan Age
Edmund Spenser (1552-1599) saw himself as a professional man of letters, a scholar-poet
who would seek to rival in English the greatest works of his classical, medieval, and
Renaissance predecessors. His masterpiece is a vast allegorical epic called The Faerie Queene
(1590, 1596), which is dedicated to Queen Elizabeth. This work both celebrates and assesses
the values and achievements of her reign.
Because his influence on later poets was considerable, Spenser is often referred to as “the
poet´s poet.” He is generally acknowledged to be the greatest non-dramatic poet of the
Elizabethan Age.
Memorial to Edmund Spenser Canto X, Faerie Queen
Queen Elizabeth I
His life and work seem to center about three great influences, summed up in three names:
Cambridge, where he grew acquainted with the classics and the Italian poets; London, where
he experienced the glamour and the disappointment of court life; and Ireland, which steeped
him in the beauty and imagery of old Celtic poetry and first gave him leisure to write his
masterpiece.
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Life: Of Spenser's early life and parentage we know little, except that he was born in East
Smithfield, near the Tower of London, and was poor. His education began at the Merchant
Tailors' School in London and was continued in Cambridge, where as a poor sizar and fag for
wealthy students he earned a scant living. A close friend of Spenser, Gabriel Harvey appears
to have introduced Spenser to a number of important connections and potential patrons,
including Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. After taking his M.A. (1576), Spenser left
Cambridge for Kent, where he acted as secretary for John Young, recently created Bishop of
Rochester. Here in the glorious world that only a poor scholar knows how to create for
himself he read the classics, made acquaintance with the great Italian poets, and wrote
numberless little poems of his own. Though Chaucer was his beloved master, his ambition
was not to rival the Canterbury Tales, but rather to express the dream of English chivalry,
much as Ariosto had done for Italy in Orlando Furioso. It was in Cambridge that the poet
probably composed The Shepheardes Calender, which was printed in 1579. By spring 1579,
Spenser had been accepted into the employment of the Earl of Leicester, and was living in
Leicester House on the Strand. While in Leicester's home and service, Spenser first became
acquainted with Sir Philip Sidney and other young men at the center of an artistic culture in
Elizabeth's court. With several others, including Gabriel Harvey, Daniel Rogers, and Thomas
Drant, these men seem to have constituted an informal intellectual society called the
'Areopagus', discussing matters of law, philosophy, and poetry (for Sidney's inclusive,
'architectonic' theory of poetry among the disciplines, see his Apology for Poetry).
After leaving Cambridge (1576) Spenser went to the north of England, on some unknown
work or quest.
Upon his friend Harvey's advice he came to London bringing his poems; and here he met
Leicester, then at the height of royal favor, and the latter took him to live at Leicester House.
Here he finished the Shepherd's Calendar, and here he met Sidney and all the queen's
favorites. The court was full of intrigues, lying and flattery, and Spenser's opinion of his own
uncomfortable position is best expressed in a few lines from "Mother Hubbard's Tale":
Full little knowest thou, that has not tried,
What hell it is, in suing long to bide:
To lose good days, that might be better spent;
To waste long nights in pensive discontent;
To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares;
To eat thy heart through comfortless despairs;
To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run,
To spend, to give, to want, to be undone.
In 1580, through Leicester's influence, Spenser, who was utterly weary of his dependent
position, was made secretary to Lord Grey, the queen's deputy in Ireland, and the third period
of his life began. He accompanied his chief through one campaign of savage brutality in
putting down an Irish rebellion, and was given an immense estate with the castle of
Kilcolman, in Munster, which had been confiscated from Earl Desmond, one of the Irish
leaders. His life here, where according to the terms of his grant he must reside as an English
settler, he regarded as lonely exile:
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My luckless lot,
That banished had myself, like wight forlore,
Into that waste, where I was quite forgot.
In Kilcolman, surrounded by great natural beauty, Spenser finished the first three books of the
Faery Queen. In 1589 Raleigh visited him, heard the poem with enthusiasm, hurried the poet
off to London, and presented him to Elizabeth. The first three books met with instant success
when published and were acclaimed as the greatest work in the English language. A yearly
pension of fifty pounds was conferred by Elizabeth, but rarely paid, and the poet turned back
to exile, that is, to Ireland again.
The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser Pictured and Decorated by Louis Fairfax-Muckley. London:
J.M. Dent, 1897. Two Volumes
Soon after his return, Spenser fell in love with his beautiful Elizabeth, an Irish girl; wrote his
Amoretti, or sonnets, in her honor; and afterwards represented her, in the Faery Queen, as the
beautiful woman dancing among the Graces. In 1594 he married Elizabeth Boyle and to
celebrate their marriage wrote his famous Epithalamion, one of the most beautiful wedding
hymns in any language.
Spenser's next visit to London was in 1595, when he published "Astrophel," an elegy on the
death of his friend Sidney, and three more books of the Faery Queen. On this visit he lived
again at Leicester House, now occupied by the new favorite Essex, where he probably met
Shakespeare and the other literary lights of the Elizabethan Age. Soon after his return to
Ireland, Spenser was appointed Sheriff of Cork, a queer office for a poet, which probably
brought about his undoing. In 1598 his castle at Kilcolman was burnt down during an uprising
and he was forced to flee Cork with his wife and two children. He subsequently returned to
London and died, in poverty, in lodgings in King Street, Westminster. It is supposed that
some unfinished parts of the Faery Queen were burned in the castle.
From the shock of this frightful experience Spenser never recovered. He returned to England
heartbroken, and in the following year (1599) he died in an inn at Westminster. According to
Ben Jonson he died "for want of bread"; but whether that is a poetic way of saying that he had
lost his property or that he actually died of destitution, will probably never be known. He was
buried beside his master Chaucer in Westminster Abbey, the poets of that age thronging to his
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funeral and, according to Camden, "casting their elegies and the pens that had written them
into his tomb."
From The Faerie Queene; stanza 41 from Book I, Canto I: a famous description of the House
of Morpheus (sleep).
And more, to lulle him in his slumber soft,
A trickling streame from high rocke tumbling downe
And euer-drizling raine vpon the loft,
Mixt with a murmuring winde, much like the sowne
Of swarming Bees, did cast him in a swowne:
No other noyse, nor peoples troublous cryes,
As still are wont t'annoy the walled towne,
Might there be heard: but carelesse Quiet lyes,
Wrapt in eternall silence farre from enemyes.
Edmund Spenser is buried in 'Poets' Corner', Westminster Abbey, London, next to Chaucer.
(The monument to Spenser was made in 1778 and is a replica of the original one erected by
Ann Clifford, Countess of Dorset, Pembroke and Montgomery in 1620.)
Comparison between Chaucer and Spenser: At the outset it is well to remember that,
though Spenser regarded Chaucer as his master, two centuries intervene between them, and
that their writings have almost nothing in common. We shall appreciate this better by a brief
comparison between our first two modern poets.
Chaucer was a combined poet and man of affairs, with the latter predominating. Though
dealing largely with ancient or mediæval material, he has a curiously modern way of looking
at life. Indeed, he is our only author preceding Shakespeare with whom we feel thoroughly at
home. He threw aside the outgrown metrical romance, which was practically the only form of
narrative in his day, invented the art of story-telling in verse, and brought it to a degree of
perfection which has probably never since been equaled. Though a student of the classics, he
lived wholly in the present, studied the men and women of his own time, painted them as they
were, but added always a touch of kindly humor or romance to make them more interesting.
So his mission appears to be simply to amuse himself and his readers. His mastery of various
and melodious verse was marvelous and has never been surpassed in our language; but the
English of his day was changing rapidly, and in a very few years men were unable to
appreciate his art, so that even to Spenser and Dryden, for example, he seemed deficient in
metrical skill. On this account his influence on our literature has been much less than we
should expect from the quality of his work and from his position as one of the greatest of
English poets.
Like Chaucer, Spenser was a busy man of affairs, but in him the poet and the scholar always
predominates. He writes as the idealist, describing men not as they are but as he thinks they
should be; he has no humor, and his mission is not to amuse but to reform. Like Chaucer he
studies the classics and contemporary French and Italian writers; but instead of adapting his
material to present-day conditions, he makes poetry, as in his Eclogues for instance, more
artificial even than his foreign models. Where Chaucer looks about him and describes life as
he sees it, Spenser always looks backward for his inspiration; he lives dreamily in the past, in
a realm of purely imaginary emotions and adventures. His first quality is imagination, not
observation, and he is the first of our poets to create a world of dreams, fancies, and illusions.
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His second quality is a wonderful sensitiveness to beauty, which shows itself not only in his
subject-matter but also in the manner of his poetry. Like Chaucer, he is an almost perfect
workman; but in reading Chaucer we think chiefly of his natural characters or his ideas, while
in reading Spenser we think of the beauty of expression. The exquisite Spenserian stanza and
the rich melody of Spenser's verse have made him the model of all our modern poets.
Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586): Nearly two hundred poets are recorded in the short period
from 1558 to 1625, and many of them were prolific writers. In a work like this, we can hardly
do more than mention a few of the best known writers; most of them were engaged chiefly in
business or war or politics, and literature was to them a pleasant recreation rather than an
absorbing profession.
Sir Philip Sidney, National Portrait Gallery
Sir Philip Sidney was for his contemporaries a living embodiment of the ideal Renaissance
gentleman, notable as much for his political ideas, his military talent (skill), and his personal
charm as he was for his literary ability. Sir Philip Sidney was a courtier whose poetry
influenced none other than William Shakespeare. He was an epic hero, a statesman, a soldier
and favourite of Elizabeth I. He was also reputed to be the worthiest knight that ever lived.
Sidney, like most Elizabethan aristocrats, wrote for a private circle of friends. Very little of
his work was published until after his tragically early death in 1586. Sidney's Astrophel and
Stella (Starlover and Star) is the first of the great Elizabethan sonnet cycles, which relied
heavily on the conventions established by the much revered Italian poet Petrarch. Sidney's
collection has one hundred and eight sonnets and eleven songs. Astrophel and Stella is a
collection of songs and sonnets addressed to Lady Penelope Devereux, to whom Sidney had
once been betrothed. They abound in exquisite lines and passages, containing more poetic
feeling and expression than the songs of any other minor writer of the age.
Astrophel and Stella: Sonnet 1 by Sir Philip Sydney
Loving in trueth, and fayne in verse my love to show,
That she, deare Shee, might take som pleasure of my paine,
Pleasure might cause her reade, reading might make her know,
Knowledge might pittie winne, and pity grace obtaine,
I sought fit wordes to paint the blackest face of woe;
Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertaine,
Oft turning others leaves, to see if thence would flow
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Some fresh and fruitfull showers upon my sun-burnd brain.
But words came halting forth, wanting Inventions stay;
Invention, Natures childe, fledde step-dame Studies blowes;
And others feet still seemde but strangers in my way.
Thus, great with childe to speak, and helplesse in my throwes,
Biting my trewand pen, beating myselfe for spite,
Fool, said my Muse to me, looke in thy heart, and write.
An Apology for Poetry (also known as The Defence of Poesy) — Sidney wrote the Defence
before 1583. It is generally believed that he was at least partly motivated by Stephen Gosson,
a former playwright who dedicated his attack on the English stage, The School of Abuse, to
Sidney in 1579, but Sidney primarily addresses more general objections to poetry, such as
those of Plato. In his essay, Sidney integrates a number of classical and Italian precepts on
fiction. The essence of his defense is that poetry, by combining the liveliness of history with
the ethical focus of philosophy, is more effective than either history or philosophy in rousing
its readers to virtue. The work also offers important comments on Edmund Spenser and the
Elizabethan stage.
In 1585 he made a secret attempt to join Drake's expedition to Cadiz. Elizabeth summoned
Sidney to court, and appointed him governor of Flushing in the Netherlands.
The next year Sidney took part in a skirmish (battle) against the Spanish at Zutphen and was
wounded of a musket shot that shattered his thighbone. Some twenty-two days later, at the age
of thirty-two, Sidney died of the unhealed wound. He was greatly mourned in England as the
Queen and her subjects grieved for the man who had come to exemplify the ideal courtier.
It is said that Londoners who came out to see the funeral progression cried, "Farewell, the
worthiest knight that lived."
Legend has it that on his death bed, though prey to a burning thirst, he refused a cup of water
that was brought to him, sending it instead to a dying soldier who lay nearby, with the words,
"Thy need is greater than mine".
Sidney's body was returned to London and interred in St. Paul´s Cathedral on 16 February
1587.
5.3.2 Elizabethan drama: William Shakespeare
The greatest and most distinctive achievement of Elizabethan literature is the drama. In
contrast to the poetry we have just been surveying, Elizabethan drama had its origins as much
in native folk culture and popular entertainment as in the sophisticated, aristocratic world of
literary circles and the court. There was a strong tradition of popular religious drama in
medieval England: mystery and miracle plays, and later, mortality plays. By the end of the
fifteenth century, plays with nonreligious plots and characters also began to appear, although
most of these interludes, as they were called, were written for private performances at
aristocratic banquets and other festive occasions. Toward the middle of the sixteenth century,
writers educated at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge began to produce plays
influenced by their study of classical dramatic theory and practice. But the best of these plays
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still contained elements of the native dramatic tradition – scenes of broad provincial comedy,
for example. We may say, then, that the glorious dramatic work of later Elizabethan drama, of
William Shakespeare and his contemporaries, grew from a fusion of native English and
classical traditions. This fusion is deeply characteristic of the Elizabethan Renaissance as a
whole. The triumph of Elizabethan drama is to a large degree the triumph of dramatically
spoken English – of the English language in its capacity to create a full and immediate sense
of a fictional or theatrical situation.
When the nobility began to develop a taste for the theatre, works of higher quality were
demanded. Very few of them survived as most of them were not printed. Now when the
nobility became interested in the work of the playwright, the latter had to write with special
skill and the favorite plays were included in the libraries. Now the dramatist was also
regarded as an artist.
The Latin influence in the plays can be seen in Ralph Roister Doister, by Nicholas Udall, the
first English comedy. Meanwhile in 1561, the first English Tragedy, Gorboduc by Thomas
Sackville and Thomas Norton was enacted.
Christopher Marlowe came next. He wrote some great works in English drama such as Dr.
Faustus, The Jews of Malta, Tamburlaine and Edward II.
In comedy there were dramatists like John Lyly, the author of Euphues, Robert Greene and
George Peele.
By 1592, when Shakespeare began to build up his personal reputation, a set of traditions had
developed. The body of traditions gave the Shakespeare the basic material with which to
work.
At first the plays were held in inn-yards. The actors were considered rough and vagabond.
This profession was not respected.
The other very important dramatic tradition was that of tragedy. The Elizabethan audiences
liked spectacular scenes. The plays were full of action and colour. There were too much
bloody scenes in those plays.
William Shakespeare's Birthplace – a watercolour by John Davis
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William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Two outward influences were powerful in developing
the genius of Shakespeare, the little village of Stratford, center of the most beautiful and
romantic district in rural England, and the great city of London, the center of the world's
political activity. In one he learned to know the natural man in his natural environment; in the
other, the social, the artificial man in the most unnatural of surroundings.
William Shakespeare, an English poet, dramatist, and actor, considered by many to be the
greatest dramatist of all time. Some of Shakespeare's plays, such as Hamlet and Romeo and
Juliet, are among the most famous literary works of the world. However, his early works did
not match the artistic quality of Christopher Marlowe's dramas. Ben Jonson (1572-1637),
another contemporary playwright, wrote that Shakespeare's "wit was in his own power; would
the rule of it had been so too". Shakespeare possessed a large vocabulary for his day, having
used almost thirty thousand different words in his plays. Today the average English-speaking
person uses something like two thousand words in everyday speech.
"It may be that the essential thing with Shakespeare is his ease and authority and that you just
have to accept him as he is if you are going to be able to admire him properly, in the way you
accept nature, a piece of scenery for example, just as it is."
(Ludwig Wittgenstein in Culture and Value, 1980)
There are not much records of Shakespeare´s personal life. Rumors arise from time to time
that he did not write his plays, but the real author was Christopher Marlowe, Queen Elizabeth
or Edward De Vere (1550-1604), whom T. J. Looney identified in 1920 as the author of
Shakespeare's plays. A large body of 'Oxfordians' has since built on this claim and the
reluctance to believe that a man of humble origins could be such a great author.
Very little is known about Shakespeare early life, and his later works have inspired a number
of interpretations. T. S. Eliot wrote that "I would suggest that none of the plays of
Shakespeare has a "meaning," although it would be equally false to say that a play of
Shakespeare is meaningless" (from Selected Essays, new edition, 1960).
Anne Hathaway's Cottage, Shottery.
At the age of eighteenth, Shakespeare married a local girl, Anne Hathaway (died 1623), who
was eight years older. Their first child, Susannah, was born within six months, and twins
Hamnet and Judith were born in 1585. Hamnet, Shakespeare's only son, died at the age of
eleven. It has often been suggested, that the lines in King John, beginning with "Grief fills the
room of my absent child", reflects Shakespeare's grief.
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Hamlet was first printed in 1603. It is Shakespeare's largest drama, based on a lost play
known as the Ur-Hamlet. Prince Hamlet, an enigmatic (mysterious) intellectual, mourns both
his father's death and his mother's remarriage. His father's ghost appears to him and tells that
Claudius, married to Queen Gertrude, Hamlet's mother, poisoned him. Hamlet, fascinated by
cruelly witty games, swears revenge. "The time is out of joint; O cursed spite, That ever I was
born to set it right!" He arranges an old play whose story has a parallel to that of Claudius.
Hamlet's behavior is considered mad. He kills the eavesdropping (listening in) Polonius, the
court chamberlain, by thrusting his sword through a curtain. Polonius's son Laertes returns to
Denmark to avenge his father's death. Polonius's daughter Ofelia loves Hamlet, but the
prince's sadistically brutal behavior drives her to madness. "Get thee to a nunnery (monastery;
another meaning is brothel): why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?" he tells Ophelia who
dies by drowning. Before the slaughter that ends the story, Hamlet says to his friend Horatio:
"I shall win at the odds. But thou wouldst not think how ill all's here about my heart." A duel
takes place and ends with the death of Gertrude, Laertes, Claudius, and Hamlet, whose final
words are "the rest is silence."
By 1584 Shakespeare emerged as a rising playwright in London, and became soon a central
figure in London´s leading theater company, the Lord Chamberlain´s Company, renamed later
as the King´s Men. He wrote many great plays for the group. In 1599 a new theater, called
The Globe, was built.
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Collage of W. Shakespeare
Poetry: Shakespeare was known in his day as a very rapid writer: "His mind and hand went
together," his publishers Heminges and Condell reported, "and what he thought, he uttered
with that easiness that we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers." Shakespeare
wrote also two heroic narrative poems, Venus and Adonis (1593) and Lucrece (1594). His
sonnets were written earliest by 1598 and published in 1609. The sonnets refer cryptically to
several persons, among them a handsome young man, a woman called the 'Dark Lady', and a
rival poet. Shakespeare's name was also on the title page of The Passionate Pilgrim (1599),
issued (edited) by the publisher William Jaggard. The identity of the brunette, who appeared
in Shakespeare's later poems, has been a mystery. According to one theory, she was the
Countess of Pembroke. George Bernard Shaw believed she was one of Elizabeth I's ladies-inwaiting, Mary Fritton. Some have thought she was the mother of Shakespeare's supposed
illegitimate son, Henry Davenant. And there is a theory that the Dark Lady was not a "she" at
all, but Shakespeare's patron Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton.
Sir John Gilbert's 1849 painting: The Plays of
William Shakespeare, containing scenes and characters from several of William Shakespeare's plays.
Plays: Romeo and Juliet was based on real lovers who lived in Verona, Italy, and died for
each other in the year 1303. At that time the Capulets and Montagues were among the
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inhabitants of the town. Shakespeare found the tale in Arthur Brooke's poem 'The Tragical
Historye of Romeus and Juliet' (1562). The play has inspired other works, such as Berlioz's
dramatic symphony (1839), Tchaikovsky's fantasy-overture (1869-80), and Prokofiev's fulllength ballet (1938). The Tempest, often considered Shakespeare's farewell to his theatrical
art, has inspired Berlioz, Tchaikovsky, and Jean Sibelius, who wrote music for it in 1926.
A number of Shakespeare's plays were published during his lifetime, but none of the original
dramatic manuscripts have survived. The original Globe burned down in 1613, but was rebuilt
next year. Shakespeare's later plays were also performed at the Blackfriars Theatre, which
was run by a seven-man syndicate. Shakespeare was one of its members. Shakespeare's
company used the Globe in the summer and the indoor Blackfrian in the winter. Under the
patronage of King James I (The Jacobean era: 1603-1625)), the company also performed at
court, more often than during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The dramatist John Dennis (16571734) claimed, that The Merry Wives of Windsor was written at her command. Macbeth, with
its witches and portrayal of the legendary ancestor of the Stuart kings, Banquo, had a special
appeal to James.
Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616. He is buried in the chancel of Holy Trinity Church in
Stratford-upon-Avon. His widow was legally entitled to a third of the estate. Anne Hathaway
died seven years after her husband. According to a story, she and her daughter wished to be
buried in Shakespeare's grave.
Shakespeare died in Stratford on 23 April
1616, and now lies in Holy Trinity Church Stratford.
Shakespeare has created many dramas including tragedies, comedies and historical plays.
They are listed below according to their type:
Tragedies :
Macbeth , Julius Caesar, King Lear, Hamlet, Timon of Athens, Romeo and Juliet, Othello,
Titus Andronicus, Coriolanus, Antony and Cleopatra
Historical:
Henry IV (Part I & Part II), Henry V, Henry VI (Part I, & Part II), Henry VIII, Richard II,
Richard III, King John
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Comedies and Romance:
As you like it, Merchant of Venice, Love's Labour Lost, Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure,
The Tempest, Troilus and Cressida, Merry Wives of Windsor, All's Well that ends well,
Midsummer Night's Dream, Pericles-prince of Tyre, The Winter's Tale, Taming of the Shrew,
Comedy of Errors, Much Ado About Nothing, Two Gentlemen of Verona.
Though Shakespeare is mainly a dramatist and an author he has written some poems like:
1. A Lover's Companion
2. Venus and Adonis
3. Rape of Lucrece
4. Sonnets
William Shakespeare wrote his plays over a period of twenty-four years from 1588 to 1612
A.D. During this period he wrote about thirty-seven plays which can be grouped in four
periods. The play list is as follows:
The First Period (1588 - 1595)
The productions of this period are Histories, Comedies and Tragedies. In this period the
apprentice hand of Shakespeare can be seen.
Venus and Adonis, Rape of Lucrece, 1594; Titus Andronicus, Henry VI (three parts), 1590 1591; Love's Labour's Lost, 1590; Comedy of Errors, Two Gentlemen of Verona, 1591-1592;
Richard-III, 1593; Richard II, King John, 1594-1595.
Apart from this Shakespeare wrote two poems: Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece
The Second Period (1595 - 1601)
Shakespeare's greatest comedies and historical plays were written during this period. His
genus blossomed forth and the beauty of his literary and imaginative talents achieved a great
height. He now acquired a better knowledge of the world and the affairs.
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Romeo and Juliet, Midsummer Night's Dream, 1595; Merchant of Venice, Henry IV (first
part), 1596; Henry IV (second part), Merry Wives of Windsor, 1597; Much Ado About
Nothing, 1598; As You Like It, Henry V, 1599.
The Third Period (1601 - 1608)
This is the period of some of the greatest tragedies written by Shakespeare. During this period
he wrote four Tragedies, three Roman Plays and two comedies. As a dramatist Shakespeare
reaches the climax. He reached the depth of the human hearts with the help of his pen.
Sonnets (1600-?), Twelfth Night, 1600; Taming of the Shrew, Julius Cæsar, Hamlet, Troilus
and Cressida, 1601-1602; All's Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, 1603; Othello,
1604; King Lear, 1605; Macbeth, 1606; Antony and Cleopatra, Timon of Athens, 1607.
The Fourth Period (1608 - 1611)
The three romantic-tragedies were written during this period. Shakespeare here has triumphed
over the sorrows of life and is at peace with himself. These are the outcome of fortitude and a
recognizing of human frailty (weakness).
Coriolanus, Pericles, 1608; Cymbeline, 1609; Winter's Tale, 1610-1611; The Tempest, 1611;
Henry VIII (unfinished).
A Midsumer Night´s Dream; title page of the first quarto (1600)
Shakespeare's Place and Influence: Shakespeare holds, by general acclamation, the
foremost place in the world's literature, and his overwhelming greatness renders it difficult to
criticise or even to praise him. Two poets only, Homer and Dante, have been named with him;
but each of these wrote within narrow limits, while Shakespeare's genius included all the
world of nature and of men. In a word, he is the universal poet. To study nature in his works is
like exploring a new and beautiful country; to study man in his works is like going into a great
city, viewing the motley crowd as one views a great masquerade in which past and present
mingle freely and familiarly, as if the dead were all living again. And the marvelous thing, in
this masquerade of all sorts and conditions of men, is that Shakespeare lifts the mask from
every face, lets us see the man as he is in his own soul, and shows us in each one some germ
of good, some "soul of goodness" even in things evil. For Shakespeare strikes no uncertain
note, and raises no doubts to add to the burden of your own. Good always overcomes evil in
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the long run; and love, faith, work, and duty are the four elements that in all ages make the
world right. To criticise or praise the genius that creates these men and women is to criticise
or praise humanity itself.
David Garrick as Hamlet in 1769.
The iconic hand gesture expresses his shock at the first sight of the Ghost. (Artist: unknown)
Of his influence in literature it is equally difficult to speak. Goethe expresses the common
literary judgment when he says, "I do not remember that any book or person or event in my
life ever made so great an impression upon me as the plays of Shakespeare." His influence
upon our own language and thought is beyond calculation. Shakespeare and the King James
Bible are the two great conservators of the English speech; and one who habitually reads them
finds himself possessed of a style and vocabulary that are beyond criticism. Even those who
read no 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.
5.3.3 The Jacobean Era (1603-1625)
Transition to a New and Turbulent Century
With the death of Elizabeth I in 1603, the Tudor dynasty came to an end. She was succeeded
by her cousin, James Stuart, already King of Scotland and the son of Elizabeth´s former
archenemy, Mary, Queen of Scots. James I ruled his kingdom of Scotland together with that
of England until 1625, as the period of his reign is known as the Jacobean Era. His reign
initiated a time of deep religious and political unrest in England. It was as if the turbulent
energies in English society that Elizabeth had managed to contain and harness had grown too
intense for the abilities of James who possessed none of Elizabeth´s instinct for practical
politics. The result was religious unrest – it was during James´s reign that the first group of
English Puritans, strict Protestants who wished to “purify” the Church of England, came to
America because they did not feel free to practice their beliefs in England.
In the early part of the seventeenth century, deep philosophical and intellectual changes were
beginning to threaten faith in the older Elizabethan world view. The forefathers of modern
astronomy, Copernicus (1473 – 1543) and Galileo (1564-1642), had argued that the sun, not
the earth, was at the centre of the universe and that there might even be infinity of worlds.
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These and other scientific investigations called into question the very basis of the divinely
ordered, hierarchical universe.
5.3.3.1 Literature in the Jacobean Era
Many Elizabethan writers, including Shakespeare, produced their finest work under James I.
The throne passed from the Tudors to the Stuarts. And writers who are thought as central to
the new century, such as Donne, began their careers at the height of Elizabeth´s reign.
In much Jacobean drama a darker and more disturbing image of life appears: themes of
violence, madness, and corruption. Ben Johnson, the greatest Jacobean playwright after
Shakespeare, produced satirical comedies that fused classical reading with earthy fun. He also
invented elaborate courtly masques – spectacular entertainments that combined music, song,
dance, and costuming.
The theatres were closed in 1642 at the beginning of the Civil War, and Cromwell, with his
Puritan belief in the sinfulness of such public entertainment, kept them closed during the
Protectorate. With the return of Charles II in 1660, drama flourished again, strongly
influenced by the French theatre.
John Donne (1572-1631): The best poet of the seventeenth century is Donne and his
metaphysical poetry. This term was made up by Samuel Johnson, the great eighteenth-century
critic who observed that the “metaphysical poets” were fond of displaying obscure and
specialized learning in their poems. These poets were rediscovered in the twentieth century by
T. S. Eliot and other modern poets. The metaphysical poets make extensive use of paradox,
they wrote both love poems and religious or meditative lyrics.
Donne's works are also witty, employing paradoxes, puns (play on words), and subtle yet
remarkable analogies. His pieces are often ironic and cynical, especially regarding love and
human motives. Common subjects of Donne's poems are love (especially in his early life),
death (especially after his wife's death), and religion. His poetry represented a shift from
classical forms to more personal poetry. Whatever the subject, Donne's poems reveal the same
characteristics that typified the work of the metaphysical poets: dazzling wordplay, often
explicitly sexual; paradox; subtle argumentation; surprising contrasts; intricate psychological
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analysis; and striking imagery selected from nontraditional areas such as law, physiology,
scholastic philosophy, and mathematics.
Donne was born in London to a prominent Roman Catholic family but converted to
Anglicanism during the 1590s. At the age of eleven he entered the University of Oxford,
where he studied for three years. According to some accounts, he spent the next three years at
the University of Cambridge but took no degree at either university. He began the study of
law at Lincoln's Inn, London, in 1592, and he seemed destined for a legal or diplomatic
career. Donne was appointed private secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, Keeper of the Great
Seal, in 1598. His secret marriage in 1601 to Egerton's niece, Anne More, resulted in his
dismissal from this position and in a brief imprisonment. During the next few years Donne
made a meager living as a lawyer. Donne's principal literary accomplishments during this
period were Divine Poems (1607). Donne became a priest of the Anglican Church in 1615 and
was appointed royal chaplain later that year. In 1621 he was named dean of St. Paul's
Cathedral.
Donne's prose, almost equally metaphysical, ranks at least as high as his poetry. The Sermons,
some one hundred and sixty in all, are especially memorable for their imaginative explications
of biblical passages and for their intense explorations of the themes of divine love and of the
decay and resurrection of the body. Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1624) is a powerful
series of meditations, expostulations, and prayers in which Donne's serious illness at the time
becomes a microcosm wherein can be observed the stages of the world's spiritual disease.
Obsessed with the idea of death, Donne preached what was called his own funeral sermon,
"Death's Duel" just a few weeks before he died in London on March 31, 1631.
Holly Sonnets X: Death Be Not Proud
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those, whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy picture[s] be,
Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou'rt slave to Fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke ; why swell'st thou then ?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And Death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
Ben Johnson (1573-1637)
Personally Jonson is the most commanding literary figure among the Elizabethans. For
twenty-five years he was the literary dictator of London, the chief of all the wits that gathered
nightly at the old Devil Tavern. With his great learning, his ability, and his commanding
position as poet laureate, he set himself squarely against his contemporaries and the romantic
tendency of the age. For two things he fought bravely, to restore the classic form of the
drama, and to keep the stage from its downward course. Apparently he failed; the romantic
school fixed its hold more strongly than ever; the stage went swiftly to an end as sad as that of
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the early dramatists. Nevertheless his influence lived and grew more powerful till, aided
largely by French influence, it resulted in the so-called classicism of the eighteenth century.
Ben Johnson
Life: Jonson was born at Westminster about the year 1573. His father, an educated gentleman,
had his property confiscated and was himself thrown into prison by Queen Mary; so we infer
the family was of some prominence. Jonson's father came out of prison, having given up his
estate, and became a minister. He died just before the son's birth, and two years later the
mother married a bricklayer of London. For a short time he may have studied at the university
in Cambridge; but his stepfather soon set him to learning the bricklayer's trade. He ran away
from this, and went with the English army to fight Spaniards in the Low Countries. He soon
returned to England, and married precipitately when only nineteen or twenty years old. Five
years later we find him employed, like Shakespeare, as actor and reviser of old plays in the
theater. Thereafter his life is a varied and stormy one. He killed an actor in a duel, and only
escaped hanging by pleading "benefit of clergy".
In his first great play, Every Man in His Humour (1598), Shakespeare acted one of the parts;
and that may have been the beginning of their long friendship. Other plays followed rapidly.
Upon the accession of James, Jonson's masques won him royal favor, and he was made poet
laureate. He now became undoubted leader of the literary men of his time, though his rough
honesty and his hatred of the literary tendencies of the age made him quarrel with nearly all of
them. In 1616, soon after Shakespeare's retirement, he stopped writing for the stage and gave
himself up to study and serious work. In 1618 he traveled on foot to Scotland, where he
visited Drummond, from whom we have the scant records of his varied life. His impressions
of this journey, called Foot Pilgrimage, were lost in a fire before publication. Thereafter he
produced less, and his work declined in vigor; but spite of growing poverty and infirmity we
notice in his later work, especially in the unfinished Sad Shepherd, a certain mellowness and
tender human sympathy which were lacking in his earlier productions. He died poverty
stricken in 1637. Unlike Shakespeare's, his death was mourned as a national calamity, and he
was buried with all honor in Westminster Abbey.
Works of Ben Jonson: Jonson's work is in strong contrast with that of Shakespeare and of the
later Elizabethan dramatists. Alone he fought against the romantic tendency of the age, and to
restore the classic standards. 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 detail. In one respect his comedies are worthy of careful reading,
they are intensely realistic, presenting men and women of the time exactly as they were. From
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a few of Jonson's scenes we can understand better than from all the plays of Shakespeare-how men talked and acted during the Age of Elizabeth.
Jonson's first comedy, Every Man in His Humour, is a key to all his dramas. The word
"humour" in his age stood for some characteristic whim or quality of society. Jonson gives to
his leading character some prominent humor, exaggerates it, as the cartoonist enlarges the
most characteristic feature of a face, and so holds it before our attention that all other qualities
are lost sight of; which is the method that Dickens used later in many of his novels. Every
Man in His Humour was the first of three satires. Its special aim was to ridicule the humors of
the city. The second, Cynthia's Revels, satirizes the humors of the court; while the third, The
Poetaster, the result of a quarrel with his contemporaries, was leveled at the false standards of
the poets of the age.
The three best known of Jonson's comedies are Volpone, or the Fox, The Alchemist, and
Epicoene, or the Silent Woman. Volpone is a keen and merciless analysis of a man governed
by an overwhelming love of money for its own sake. The first words in the first scene are a
key to the whole comedy:
(Volpone)
Good morning to the day; and next, my gold!
Open the shrine that I may see my saint.
(Mosca withdraws a curtain and discovers piles of
gold, plate, jewels, etc.)
Hail the world's soul, and mine!
Volpone's method of increasing his wealth is to play upon the avarice of men. He pretends to
be at the point of death, and his "suitors," who know his love of gain and that he has no heirs,
endeavor hypocritically to sweeten his last moments by giving him rich presents, so that he
will leave them all his wealth. The intrigues of these suitors furnish the story of the play, and
show to what infamous depths avarice will lead a man.
The Alchemist is a study of quackery on one side and of gullibility on the other, founded on
the mediæval idea of the philosopher's stone, and applies as well to the patent medicines and
get-rich-quick schemes of our day as to the peculiar forms of quackery with which Jonson
was more familiar. In plot and artistic construction The Alchemist is an almost perfect
specimen of the best English drama. It has some remarkably good passages, and is the most
readable of Jonson's plays.
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Epicoene, or the Silent Woman, is a prose comedy exceedingly well constructed, full of life,
abounding in fun and unexpected situations. Here is a brief outline from which the reader may
see of what materials Jonson made up his comedies. It will be seen that the Silent Woman,
with its rapid action and its unexpected situations, offers an excellent opportunity for the
actors; but the reading of the play, as of most of Jonson's comedies, is marred by low intrigues
showing a sad state of morals among the upper classes.
Besides these, and many other less known comedies, Jonson wrote two great tragedies,
Sejanus (1603) and Catiline (1611), upon severe classical lines. After ceasing his work for the
stage, Jonson wrote many masques in honor of James I and of Queen Anne, to be played
amid elaborate scenery by the gentlemen of the court. The best of these are "The Satyr," "The
Penates," "Masque of Blackness," "Masque of Beauty," "Hue and Cry after Cupid," and "The
Masque of Queens." In all his plays Jonson showed a strong lyric gift, and some of his little
poems and songs, like "The Triumph of Charis," "Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes," and
"To the Memory of my Beloved Mother," are now better known than his great dramatic works.
A single volume of prose, called Timber, or Discoveries made upon Men and Matter, is an
interesting collection of short essays which are more like Bacon's than any other work of the
age.
5.3.3.2 The King James Bible
As the reign of Elizabeth (1558-1603) was coming to a close, we find a draft for an act of
Parliament for a new version of the Bible: "An act for the reducing of diversities of bibles
now extant (existing) in the English tongue to one settled vulgar translated from the original."
The Bishop's Bible of 1568, although it may have eclipsed (outshined) the Great Bible, was
still rivaled by the Geneva Bible. Nothing ever became of this draft during the reign of
Elizabeth, who died in 1603, and was succeeded by James I, as the throne passed from the
Tudors to the Stuarts. James was at that time James VI of Scotland, and had been for thirtyseven years. He was born during the period between the Geneva and the Bishop's Bible.
His wife Anne of Denmark
James I of England from the period 1603–1613, by Paul van Somer (1576–1621)
In 1604, only a year after he had ascended the throne, King James I appointed fifty-four of
England´s most eminent scholars and churchmen to begin work on a new translation of the
Bible (Hampton Court Conference in January 1604). Here were assembled bishops,
clergymen, and professors, along with four Puritan divines, to consider the complaints of the
Puritans. Although Bible revision was not on the agenda, the Puritan president of Corpus
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Christi College, John Reynolds, "moved his Majesty, that there might be a new translation of
the Bible, because those which were allowed in the reigns of Henry the eighth, and Edward
the sixth, were corrupt and not answerable to the truth of the Original." The king rejoined that
he: "Could never yet see a Bible well translated in English; but I think that, of all, that of
Geneva is the worst. I wish some special pains were taken for an uniform translation, which
should be done by he best learned men in both Universities, then reviewed by the Bishops,
presented to the Privy Council, lastly ratified by the Royal authority, to be read in the whole
Church, and none other." Accordingly, a resolution came forth: "That a translation be made
of the whole Bible, as consonant as can be to the original Hebrew and Greek; and this to be
set out and printed, without any marginal notes, and only to be used in all churches of
England in time of divine service."
The next step was the actual selection of the men who were to perform the work. Although
fifty-four men were nominated, only forty-seven were known to have taken part in the work
of translation. The translators were organized into six groups, and met respectively at
Westminster, Cambridge, and Oxford. Ten at Westminster were assigned Genesis through 2
Kings; seven had Romans through Jude. At Cambridge, eight worked on 1 Chronicles through
Ecclesiastes, while seven others handled the Apocrypha. Oxford employed seven to translate
Isaiah through Malachi; eight occupied themselves with the Gospels, Acts, and Revelation.
The completed work was issued in 1611, the complete title page reading:
"THE HOLY BIBLE, Conteyning the Old Testament, and the New: Newly Translated out of
the Originall tongues: & with the former Translations diligently compared and revised, by his
Majesties Special Commandment. Appointed to be read in Churches. Imprinted at London by
Robert Barker, Printer to the Kings most Excellent Majestie. ANNO DOM. 1611."
The New Testament had a separate title page, the whole of it reading:
"THE NEWE Testament of our Lord and Saviour JESUS CHRIST. Newly Translated out of
the Originall Greeke: and with the former Translations diligently compared and revised, by
his Majesties speciall Commandment. IMPRINTED at London by Robert Barker, Printer to
the Kings most Excellent Majestie. ANNO DOM. 1611. Cum Privilegio."
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1611 The King James Bible: The Authorized version of the Bible printed in 1611 had an enormous
influence on the development of the English language. It is often known as the 'King James Bible'
because it was initiated by James VI of Scotland. Produced just 70 years after the very first translation
of the Bible into English, it remains the best-known English version of the Bible.
The first complete English Bible (Coverdale's Bible) was published in 1535, and this was
soon followed by several other versions, principally the Geneva Bible in 1560. The
Authorized Version resulted from a project set up by King James VI in 1604, the year after
the Union of the Crowns; there were about fifty translators and a programme of extensive
criticism and revision. Published in 1611, this book gave English-speaking peoples a Bible
they did not even propose to revise for two hundred and seventy years. Its influence was
immense: 'The beauty of the language commended the teaching of the sacred books and made
them dear to the heart of the people, while it made an indelible (permanent) and enduring
impression alike on literature and on popular speech'.
The significance of the King James Bible lies not only in its own intrinsic merits but in the
fact that it represents the culmination of many efforts throughout several centuries to provide
English-speaking peoples with a Bible written in their own tongue. Throughout most of the
Middle Ages, the Bible was written in Latin and was therefore inaccessible to most people. It
was not until the appearance of the King James Version in 1611, that there existed a simple,
well-translated English Bible that was both authorized by the Church and generally accepted
by the people. It was written at a time when the English language was at its height. Its
simplicity, beauty, and freshness of language, its sheer poetry, has influenced English
literature. As generations of readers have memorized it, quoted it, used its phrases in their
speech, the King James Version has continued, after more than three centuries, to have an
immense effect upon English language. Writers of prose and poetry drew upon it for
vocabulary and imagery, the rhythm of a passage, or the shaping of a phrase.
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Here I enclose an illustration from the Book of Psalms. In its Greek derivation psalm means
“song”; the original Hebrew title means “praise.” Such is the purpose of these poems.
Psalm 8
O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above
the heavens.
Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine
enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.
When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast
ordained;
What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?
For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and
honour.
Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under
his feet:
The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the
seas.
O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!
5.3.4 Charles I, Civil War, the Protectorate (1625-1660)
When James I´s son Charles ascended the throne in 1625, England was well on its way to
civil war. It was only past when Elizabeth had steered a course of moderation and
compromise between Protestant extremism and lingering (remaining) loyalty to Catholicism.
By the second quarter of the seventeenth century, the Puritan movement had developed into a
powerful enemy of the Anglican establishment. When Charles I (1625-1649), following
James, attempted to take action against organized religious protest, he met with violent
opposition.
Charles I was an advocate of the Divine Right of Kings, and many in England feared that he
was attempting to gain absolute power. Many of his actions, particularly the levying of taxes
without Parliament's consent, caused widespread opposition.
Van Dyck came to England in 1632, at Charles's invitation, and in the years which followed
completely transformed the king's image. In Charles I with Henrietta Maria and Prince
Charles and Princess Mary, 1632, the king is presented as the supreme patriarch, a father
figure who commands and protects his people as he does his own family.
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Charles I on a Horseback
Charles I with Henrietta Maria and Prince Charles and Princess Mary, 1632 by Van Dyck
The great equestrian portrait, Charles I on horseback, 1638, depicts him as conquering hero
and emperor of Great Britain at a time when he was preparing to go to war with his rebellious
Scots subjects. In spite of appearances, however, Charles lacked many of the personal
qualities needed by an early modern ruler. He had little skill in the art of man-management
which was crucial when so much depended on the king's relations with leading politicians and
noblemen. He also lacked confidence in the loyalty of his people and from the start of his
reign turned grants of taxation into tests of whether they loved him and trusted him. Another
shortcoming which can again be traced back to his lack of self-assurance was his
unwillingness to bargain and negotiate.
Religious conflicts permeated Charles' reign. He married a Catholic princess, Henrietta Maria
of France, over the objections of Parliament and public opinion. He further allied himself with
controversial religious figures, including the ecclesiastic Richard Montagu and William Laud
whom Charles appointed Archbishop of Canterbury. Many of Charles' subjects felt this
brought the Church of England too close to Roman Catholicism. Charles' later attempts to
force religious reforms upon Scotland led to the Bishops´ Wars that weakened England's
government and helped precipitate his downfall. Between 1630-43 large numbers of people
emigrated from England as Archbishop Laud tried to impose uniformity on the church. Up to
sixty thousand people left, one third of them to the new American colonies. Several areas lost
a large part of their populations, and laws were enacted to curb the outflow.
His last years were marked by the English Civil War, in which he was opposed by the forces
of Parliament, which challenged his attempts to augment (extend) his own power, and by
Puritans, who were hostile to his religious policies and Catholic sympathy. Parliament drew
most of its support from the middle classes, while the king was supported by the nobility, the
clergy, and the peasantry. Parliamentary troops were known as Roundheads because of their
severe hair style. The king's army was known as Cavaliers, from the French for "knight", or
"horseman". The war began as a series of indecisive skirmishes notable for not much beyond
the emergence of a Parliamentary general from East Anglia, Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell
whipped his irregular volunteer troops into the disciplined New Model Army. Charles was
defeated in the first Civil War (1642 - 1645), after which Parliament expected him to accept
demands for a constitutional monarchy. He instead remained defiant by attempting to forge an
alliance with Scotland and escaping to the Isle of Man. This provoked a second Civil War
(1648 - 1649) and a second defeat for Charles, who was subsequently captured, tried,
convicted, and executed for high treason. The monarchy was then abolished and a republic
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called the Commonwealth of England was declared. Charles's son, Charles II, became King
after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660.
5.3.4.1 Puritan Age: John Milton (1608-1674)
The Puritan Movement: In its broadest sense the Puritan movement may be regarded 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 centuries. In Italy, whose influence had
been uppermost in Elizabethan literature, the Renaissance had been essentially pagan and
sensuous. It had hardly touched the moral nature of man, and it brought little relief from the
despotism of rulers. One can hardly read the horrible records of the Medici (The Medici were
one of the richest and most powerful families in Italy. They came to power in 1434) or the
Borgias (Césare Borgia was a cunning and cruel man, much like the one portrayed in
Machiavelli´s The Prince. Although Machiavelli did not truly agree with Borgia's policies, he
found him to be a very effective ruler, admiring him for his boldness, clever ways and expert
use of cruelty), or the political observations of Machiavelli (Niccolò Machiavelli was born in
1469 in Florence. He was a great writer, diplomat, historian, and playwright of the
renaissance period who is most famous today for his views on politics, human nature,
morality, fortune and religion. During his time, he was regarded as immoral and deceitful. In
fact, his nickname in the sixteenth century was „Old Nick“- a popular nickname for Satan.
The term „Murderous Machiavel“ also became a favorite reference in Elizabethan plays,
without marveling at the moral and political degradation of a cultured nation. In the North,
especially among the German and English peoples, the Renaissance was accompanied by a
moral awakening, and it is precisely that awakening in England, "that greatest moral and
political reform which ever swept over a nation in the short space of half a century," which is
meant by the Puritan movement. We shall understand it better if we remember that it had two
chief objects: the first was personal righteousness; the second was civil and religious liberty.
In other words, it aimed to make men honest and to make them free.
Caesare Borgia
Niccolò Machiavelli The Family of Pietro Medici by Boticelli
Wrong Ideas of the Puritans: Such a movement should be cleared of all the misconceptions
which have clung to it since the Restoration, when the very name of Puritan was made
ridiculous by the mocks of the gay courtiers of Charles II. 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, as he is still pictured even in the histories. Eliot and
Milton were Puritans; and in the long struggle for human liberty there are few names more
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honored by freemen everywhere. Cromwell was a Puritan; despite this Cromwell stood like a
rock for religious tolerance.
From a religious view point Puritanism included all shades of belief. The name was first given
to those who advocated certain changes in the form of worship of the reformed English
Church under Elizabeth; but as the ideal of liberty rose in men's minds, and opposed to it were
the king and his evil counselors and the band of intolerant churchmen of whom Laud is the
great example, then Puritanism became a great national movement. It included English
churchmen as well as extreme Separatists, Calvinists, Covenanters, Catholic noblemen, all
bound together in resistance to despotism in Church and State, and with a passion for liberty
and righteousness such as the world has never since seen. Naturally such a movement had its
extremes and excesses, and it is from fanatics that most of our misconceptions about the
Puritans arise. Life was stern in those days, too stern perhaps, and the intensity of the struggle
against despotism made men narrow and hard. 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 an unwilling people. So the criticism is made that the wild outbreak of
immorality which followed the restoration of Charles was partly due to the unnatural
restrictions of the Puritan era. The criticism is just; but we must not forget the whole spirit of
the movement. That the Puritan prohibited Maypole dancing and horse racing is of small
consequence beside the fact that he fought for liberty and justice, that he overthrew despotism
and made a man's life and property safe from the tyranny of rulers. A great river is not judged
by the foam on its surface, and certain austere laws and doctrines which we have ridiculed are
but “bubble” on the surface of the mighty Puritan current that has flowed steadily, like a river
of life, through English and American history since the Age of Elizabeth.
John Milton is the greatest writer of the seventeenth century, and one of the giants of English
literature as a whole. In his life and literary career the two dominant historical movements of
Renaissance and Reformation combine and receive their most intense and intelligent
expression.
John Milton age 62 and 21
Milton was born in London on December 9, 1609 as the son of a wealthy notary. He was
educated at St. Paul's School. Milton received a Masters degree from Cambridge University in
1632. In 1638, he undertook a European tour where he met many of the major thinkers of the
day, especially in Italy.
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On his return to England, Milton became a Puritan, and an opponent of the Catholics and of
the Stuarts. He was also an ardent polemicist, a follower of Cromwell, and the latter's foreign
language secretary. In 1652 he became completely blind. His first wife died in 1652 and he
remarried in 1656.
Milton's Later Poetry: After the restoration of the Stuarts he suffered considerable
persecution. He withdrew from active participation in politics and concentrated on his poetry.
Undoubtedly the noblest of Milton's works written when he was blind and suffering are
Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes. The first is the greatest, indeed the
only generally acknowledged epic in our literature since Beowulf; the last is the most perfect
specimen of a drama after the Greek method in our language.
Paradise Lost: Of the history of the great epic there are some interesting glimpses. In
Cambridge there is preserved a notebook of Milton's containing a list of nearly one hundred
subjects for a great poem, selected while he was a boy at the university. King Arthur attracted
him at first; but his choice finally settled upon the Fall of Man, and we have four separate
outlines showing Milton's proposed treatment of the subject. These outlines indicate that he
contemplated a mighty drama or miracle play; but whether because of Puritan antipathy to
plays and players, or because of the wretched dramatic treatment of religious subjects which
Milton had witnessed in Italy, he abandoned the idea of a play and settled on the form of an
epic poem; most fortunately, it must be conceded, for Milton had not the knowledge of men
necessary for a drama. As a study of character Paradise Lost would be a grievous failure.
Adam, the central character, is something of a prig; while Satan looms up a magnificent
figure, entirely different from the devil of the miracle plays and completely overshadowing
the hero both in interest and in manliness. The other characters, the Almighty, the Son,
Raphael, Michael, the angels and fallen spirits, are merely mouthpieces for Milton's
declamations, without any personal or human interest. Regarded as a drama, therefore,
Paradise Lost could never have been a success; but as poetry, with its sublime imagery, its
harmonious verse, its titanic background of heaven, hell, and the illimitable void that lies
between, it is unsurpassed in any literature.
For a modern reader the understanding of Paradise Lost presupposes two things, knowledge
of the first chapters of the Scriptures, and of the general principles of Calvinistic theology; but
it is a pity to use the poem, as has so often been done, to teach a literal acceptance of one or
the other. Of the theology of Paradise Lost the least said the better; but to the splendor of the
Puritan dream and the glorious melody of its expression no words can do justice. Even a slight
acquaintance will make the reader understand why it ranks with the Divina Commedia of
Dante, and why it is generally accepted by critics as the greatest single poem in our literature.
Argument of Paradise Lost: Book I opens with a statement of the subject, the Fall of Man,
and a noble invocation for light and divine guidance. Then it begins with the account of Satan
and the rebel angels, their banishment from heaven, and their plot to oppose the design of the
Almighty by dragging down his children, our first parents, from their state of innocence. The
book closes with a description of the land of fire and endless pain where the fallen spirits
abide, and the erection of Pandemonium, the palace of Satan. Book II is a description of the
council of evil spirits, of Satan's consent to undertake the temptation of Adam and Eve, and
his journey to the gates of hell, which are guarded by Sin and Death. Book III transports us to
heaven again. God, foreseeing the fall, sends Raphael to warn Adam and Eve, so that their
disobedience shall be upon their own heads. Then the Son offers himself a sacrifice, to take
away the sin of the coming disobedience of man. At the end of this book Satan appears in a
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different scene, meets Uriel, the Angel of the Sun, inquires from him the way to earth, and
takes his journey thither disguised as an angel of light. Book IV shows us Paradise and the
innocent state of man. An angel guard is set over Eden, and Satan is arrested while tempting
Eve in a dream, but is curiously allowed to go free again. Book V shows us Eve relating her
dream to Adam, and then the morning prayer and the daily employment of our first parents.
Raphael visits them, is entertained by a banquet (which Eve proposes in order to show him
that all God's gifts are not kept in heaven), and tells them of the revolt of the fallen spirits. His
story is continued in Book VI. In Book VII we read the story of the creation of the world as
Raphael tells it to Adam and Eve. In Book VIII Adam tells Raphael the story of his own life
and of his meeting with Eve. Book IX is the story of the temptation by Satan, following the
account in Genesis. Book X records the divine judgment upon Adam and Eve; shows the
construction by Sin and Death of a highway through chaos to the earth, and Satan's return to
Pandemonium. Adam and Eve repent of their disobedience and Satan and his angels are
turned into serpents. In Book XI the Almighty accepts Adam's repentance, but condemns him
to be banished from Paradise, and the archangel Michael is sent to execute the sentence. At
the end of the book, after Eve's feminine grief at the loss of Paradise, Michael begins a
prophetic vision of the destiny of man. Book XII continues Michael's vision. Adam and Eve
are comforted by hearing of the future redemption of their race. The poem ends as they
wander forth out of Paradise and the door closes behind them.
It will be seen that this is a colossal epic, not of a man or a hero, but of the whole race of men;
and that Milton's characters are such as no human hand could adequately portray. But the
scenes, the splendors of heaven, the horrors of hell, the serene beauty of Paradise, the sun and
planets suspended between celestial light and gross darkness, are pictured with an imagination
that is almost superhuman. The abiding interest of the poem is in these colossal pictures, and
in the lofty thought and the marvelous melody with which they are impressed on our minds.
The poem is in blank verse, and not until Milton used it did we learn the infinite variety and
harmony of which it is capable. He played with it, changing its melody and movement on
every page, "as an organist out of a single theme develops an unending variety of harmony."
Paradise Lost (his great Biblical epic) was published in 1667, followed by Paradise Regained
and Samson Agonistes in 1671. Among other popular works by Milton are the elegy
"Lycidas", Comus, a masque, and the companion pieces "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso."
Paradise Lost: with unprecedented daring and penetration, Milton draws out all the human
and theological implications of the fall of Adam and Eve as it is told in the Old Testament.
His aim is nothing less than to “justify the ways of God to men,” and in doing so he never
once flinches from the more mysterious or difficult of God´s ways. For Milton, his role as a
poet, not less than his role as a public servant, was a divine “calling.” He was to be “God´s
English Poet”: he felt that his verse originated in and was guided by the Holy Spirit.
Milton died in London on November 12, 1674.
On His Blindness
When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodg'd with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
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My true account, lest he returning chide,
"Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies: "God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts: who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed
And post o'er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait."
5.3.4.2 Stuart London
In the early Stuart years the landscape of London was changed by the extraordinary work of
the self-taught architect, Inigo Jones (1573-1652). In 1631 Jones designed Covent Garden
piazza, the first purpose-built square in the city. Jones' other important work in this period
was at Queen's House (Greenwich), Banqueting Hall (Whitehall), and Queen's Chapel.
Architect Inigo Jones
At the heart of the Covent Garden piazza there is situated the famous market, designed in
1632 by Inigo Jones and now visited by thirty million tourists each year. The history of
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Covent Garden Market is a fascinating story. Now one of London's most popular tourist
attractions, for much of its existence Covent Garden served as a fruit and vegetable market,
the largest in England. The market used to cover the whole of the square and occupied many
of the buildings, but has since been transformed beyond all recognition.
The Covent Garden area reverted to agricultural land until the seventeenth century. It was
then the scene of the first experiment in London of town planning, and the creation of the first
public square in the country. It was the work of three men - the Earl of Bedford the developer,
Charles I, who gave his strong support to the scheme, and Inigo Jones the most important
architect of the day.
The enthusiasm of Jones for classical, especially Palladian, architecture was to have an
enormous effect on London's later buildings. Having seen and studied the many public
squares in Italy, he brought the idea to London and he also surrounded it with a perfectly
straight grid of streets. Architecturally, it was a watershed in English architecture.
The Covent Garden area has long been associated with theatre. The oldest established is the
Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, which had its origins in a patent granted on the Restoration of the
monarchy in 1660. A small theatre was established off Drury Lane in 1663 and this has
evolved via several auditoria to the present famous building. Covent Garden theatre began in
Bow Street in 1732.
Birdseye view of Covent Garden, London, 1640
The Banqueting Hall, Whitehall.
Queen´s Chapel near St. James´ Park
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The Banqueting House is of great architectural importance. James I commissioned Inigo
Jones to create a new building in which to entertain foreign ambassadors, and the house,
completed in 1622, was the first structure in central London to be built in the Classical
Palladian style.
Its stone façade marked a change from the external decoration of Elizabethan and Jacobean
architecture. Today the Banqueting Hall blends perfectly with the other buildings of
Whitehall, erected two hundred years later.
At first the house's Great Hall was used for pageants, theatre and masked balls. In 1635
Charles I engaged the Flemish artist and diplomat Sir Peter Paul Rubens to decorate the Great
Hall with nine magnificent ceiling paintings. These paintings were celebrated the reign of
King James I and the divine right of the Stuart kings. After their no more revelry took place
in the Great Hall, for fear of candle smoke ruining the artwork.
Rubens ceiling painting proclaiming the divine right of kings at the Banqueting House
Unsurprisingly, such glorification of royalty was despised by Oliver Cromwell and the
Parliamentarians. The Banqueting House formed part of the former Whitehall Palace and was
the only survivor of the fire that devastated most of the buildings in 1698. Today the
Banqueting House is used for banquets, concerts and important functions. The Great Hall,
with its marvellous ceiling paintings, provides a backdrop for many of society's glittering
occasions.
In 1536 Henry VIII seized the manor of Hyde from the monks of Westminster Abbey, who
had held it since before the Norman Conquest; it was enclosed as a deer park and used for
hunts. He organised royal hunts to entertain ambassadors and dignitaries. Visitors watched
from grandstands then enjoyed great feasts in temporary banqueting houses. The hunting
tradition continued with Queen Elizabeth I. She also reviewed her troops in Hyde Park on the
parade ground - a flat area next to Park Lane. The appearance of the park remained very much
the same until 1625 when Charles l became king. He created a circular track called the Ring
where members of the royal court could drive their carriages.
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It remained a private hunting ground until James I permitted limited access to gentlefolk,
appointing a ranger to take charge. Charles I created the Ring (north of the present Serpentine
boathouses) and in 1637 he opened the park to the general public. In 1637 Charles I, in one of
the few gestures of his life that may have swayed public opinion his way, opened the royal
reserve of Hyde Park to the public. This was the first royal park to be made public. In 1665,
the year of the Great Plague, many citizens of London fled the City to camp on Hyde Park, in
the hope of escaping the disease.
Hyde Park was created to satisfy a royal passion for hunting. But over the years it became a place
where people have pursued many other pleasures.
If Charles was looking for support, he didn't get it from Londoners. The City helped finance
the Parliamentary war efforts in the English Civil War, and Charles was eventually beheaded
outside Inigo Jones' Banqueting House in Whitehall.
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The Protectorate and Commonwealth that followed Charles' death saw a concerted effort by
Puritan extremists to quench Londoner's appetite for the bawdier aspects of life. Theatre was
banned, as was dancing and just about anything else enjoyable. Churches had their organs and
choirs removed.
But when the Restoration of the Monarchy brought Charles II to the throne in 1660 the
pendulum swung back the other way with a vengeance. Riotous entertainment was once more
in fashion. Theatre was not only admissible, it even earned royal approval - Theatre Royal
Drury Lane gained the royal warrant in 1665.
The interior of the third and largest theatre to stand at Drury Lane, 1808 / Theatre Royal Drury Lane,
Catherine Street
The building standing today is the most recent in a line of four theatres at the same location
dating back to 1663, making it the oldest London theatre. Its original name was "Theatre
Royal in Bridges Street". For its first two centuries, Drury Lane could "reasonably have
claimed to be London's leading theatre" and thus one of the most important theatres in the
English – speaking world. It was destroyed by fire in 1672. Thomas Killigrew (his company
was known as King´s Company) built a larger theatre in the same spot, designed by
Christopher Wren; renamed the "Theatre Royal in Drury Lane," it opened in 1674.
The Queen's Chapel is a Christian chapel in central London England that was designed by
Ingo Jones and built between 1623 and 1625 as an adjunct (addition) to St. James´s Palace. It
is one of the facilities of the British monarch's personal religious establishment, the Chapel
Royal, and should not be confused with the room known as the Chapel Royal in the main part
of the palace, which is just across the road.
It was built as a Roman Catholic chapel at a time when the construction of Catholic churches
was prohibited in England, and was used by Charles I´s Catholic queen Henrietta Maria. From
the 1690s it was used by Continental Protestant courtiers. It was built as an integral part of St
James's Palace, but when the nearby private apartments burned down in 1809 they were not
replaced and in 1856-57 Marlborough Road was built between the palace and the Queen's
Chapel. The result is that physically the chapel now appears to be more part of the
Marlborough House complex than of St James's Palace. It became a Chapel Royal again in
1938.
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Queen´s Chapel of the Savoy, London
General view towards altar
During the Commonwealth the Chapel was probably deprived of its treasures and in 1650 a
Council of State directed that it should be used as a library. In 1662, however, it was
refurnished and restored as a place of worship by Charles II for his Queen, Catherine of
Braganza.
The Stuart period is sadly dominated by two disasters, the Great Plague and the Great Fire. In
1665 the Great Plague (The Black Death) broke out in the city, brought by ship from
Holland. London had been no stranger to the plague since the Middle Ages, but this was
something different - a strain so virulent (deadly) that sufferers could catch it and die within
hours. The city descended into a state of panic.
1. An engraving depicts a heavily wrapped thirty-three years old Samuel Pepys making his way
through London streets during the Great Plague of 1665 (Granger Collection). 2. Great Plague (2001);
a novel written by Pamela Oldfield
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Sufferers were locked in their houses, along with their families. It was thought that dogs and
cats spread the disease, so the Lord Mayor ordered them all killed. Thus, with one stroke, the
natural enemies of the rats who were the true carriers were decimated.
Throughout the very long, dry summer of 1665 the plague raged in London. The court fled,
most doctors and priests followed, and anyone with the means to leave, left quickly. Although
the worst of the plague died by autumn, it was not until the next great calamity cleansed the
filthy streets of London that the plague was truly over. Estimates of the death toll range from
seventy thousand to well over a hundred thousand lives.
An old London Street
Plague Doctors
Plague Doctors: During the Black Death and the Great Plague of London, quacks
(charlatans) known as Plague Doctors would make housecalls to the sick in order to verify
whether or not they were infected with the plague or not. The Plague Doctor wore his own
special "hazmat" (floor length gown type dress) type outfit, which consisted of a squat black
hat - this would indicate that the man was indeed a "doctor" - along with a strange birds beak
type mask that was filled with aromatic herbs and spices so that the good doctor would not
have to breathe in toxins or foul odors and his eyes were hidden behind thick crystal type
goggles. He carried a cane which he would use to throttle at his "patients" in order for them to
keep a safe distance lest they come too close. He wore a sturdy pair of leather gloves, a long,
floor length gown type dress, the surface given a liberal coat of wax in order to "waterproof"
himself from infectious fluids and last but not least, his feet were covered in full length sturdy
leather boots.
The second calamity was the Great Fire of London. It happened just a year after the plague.
On the night of September 2, 1666 a small fire, perhaps started by the carelessness of a maid,
started in the shop of the king's baker in Pudding Lane. Fanned by a strong wind, the fire soon
became an inferno. For four days the fire raged through the close-packed streets of wooden
houses, until the wind died.
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It spread much more quickly than city officials were capable of controlling. Early impressions
of the fire were not always accurate. Samuel Pepys in his famous diary writes that he was
awaken by a maid-servant who informed him of a fire in the city. He got out of bed and went
to a window to inspect the scene. Convincing himself that the fire was not a threat, he
returned to bed. Pepys' impression of the Great Fire was soon to change. Samuel Pepys (16331703) was an English naval administrator and Member of Parliament, who is now most
famous for his diary. The detailed private diary that he kept during 1660–1669 was first
published in the nineteenth century, and is one of the most important primary sources for the
English Restoration period. It provides a combination of personal revelation and eyewiness
accounts of great events, such as the Great Plague of London, and the Great Fire of London.
The Great Fire of London (1666)
Portrait of Samuel Pepys by J. Hayls, 1666; Oil on canvas
The toll of the fire was immense. Although only eight lives were lost, fully four-fifths of the
city was completely destroyed, including thirteen thousand buildings, eighty-nine churches,
fifty-two company halls, and old St. Paul's Cathedral.
The site of the baker's shop where
the Great Fire started is marked today by the Monument built by Christopher Wren - or to be
precise the two hundred and two foot high Monument is two hundred and two feet away from the
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site of the shop. Wren was responsible for a large part of the regeneration of London following the
fire, building forty nine new churches, which included the St Paul´s Cathedral that we see today.
Within days, Christopher Wren (1632-1723) presented a plan for rebuilding the city with
broad boulevards and open squares replacing the warren of alleys and byways. Wren's plan,
though, was simply too costly, and people being people, new buildings were built along the
same street pattern as before.
St Paul´s Cathedral before the Great Fire.
The exterior had been remodelled in the early seventeenthth century when the architect Inigo Jones
added a colossal porch of free-standing columns. The 'Great Fire' put an end to the project when the
old St Paul's was reduced to ruins. Wren was eventually commissioned to build a new cathedral in its
place.
In 1668, Christopher Wren - still only in his thirties - was invited to present proposals for a
new St Paul's to replace the medieval cathedral destroyed in the Great Fire of London. It was
the greatest building project of the age, taking a decade to design and forty years to build. It
survives as London's most iconic building. Wren was given the task of rebuilding many
churches not only St. Paul's Cathedral. Most of the churches in London today are Wren's
work, and it is difficult to find churches that date to the period before the fire.
The final design; much of it was finalised
in the late 1680s and 1690s by Nicolas Hawksmoor, another gifted architect of London churches from
Wren's staff.
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5.4. Elizabethan Architecture
First Renaissance style architecture in England - Hampton Court/Christopher Wren's south front
The Gothic style of architecture moved into the Renaissance style of architecture. And the
first Renaissance style architecture in England was Hampton Court. Hampton Court was
built by Cardinal Wolsey between 1514 and 1528. The style had shifted from the pointed,
ornate Gothic style to the plainer Renaissance style which was symmetrical. The symmetry
was displayed in both the architecture and the gardens. The emphasis was placed on a
horizontal rather than vertical line. Hampton Court also boasted wonderful marble floors
instead of the rushes used as floor coverings during the medieval era. The Renaissance
interest in astrology was also included with a huge clock which was an amazing feature of
Hampton Court.
Thomas Wolsey, then Archbishop of York and Chief Minister to the King, rebuilt the 14thcentury manor house over the next seven years (1515–1521) to form the nucleus of the
present palace. The few remaining Tudor sections of Hampton Court, which were later
overhauled and rebuilt by Henry VIII, suggest that Wolsey intended it as an ideal Renaissance
cardinal's palace in the style of Italian architects such as il Filarete and Leonardo da Vinci:
rectilinear symmetrical planning, grand apartments, classical detailing.
The palace was appropriated by Wolsey's master, Henry VIII, in about 1525, although the
Cardinal continued to live there until 1529. Henry added the Great Hall - which was the last
medieval Great Hall built for the English monarchy - and the Royal Tennis Court, which was
built and is still in use for the game of real tennis, not the present-day version of the game.
In 1604, the Palace was the site of King James I of England's meeting with representatives of
the English Puritans, known as the Hampton Court Conference; while agreement with the
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Puritans was not reached, the meeting led to James's commissioning of the King James
Version of the Bible.
During the reign of William and Mary, parts of Henry's additions were demolished, a new
wing was added (partly under the supervision of Sir Christopher Wren), and the state
apartments came into regular use. After the Queen died, William lost interest in the
renovations, but it was at Hampton Court in 1702 that he fell from his horse, later dying from
his injuries at Kensington Palace. From the reign of George III in 1760, monarchs tended to
favour other London homes, and Hampton Court ceased to be a royal residence. In 1796,
restoration work began in the Great Hall. In 1838, Queen Victoria completed the restoration
and opened the palace to the public. A major fire in the King's Apartments in 1986 led to a
new programme of restoration work that was completed in 1995.
Ghosts: Queen Jane Seymour gave birth to Prince Edward, the future King Edward VI at
Hampton Court in 1537 and died there twelve days later, and her ghost is said to haunt the
staircase in the Palace still. Queen Catherine Howard was arrested there in 1542 and is said to
have run along the Long Gallery screaming for King Henry VIII to save her, before his guards
caught her and dragged her away. A ghost is said to haunt the palace, sometimes screaming in
the same hallway. Others report seeing the notorious King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.
The clock tower straddles the entrance between the inner and outer courts / Hampton Court in 1708
Elizabethan Architecture Upper Class Houses and Mansions of the wealthy followed a
similar renaissance style of Elizabethan architecture. Stone and expensive bricks were used
for durability and appearance (as opposed to the timber and wattle of Lower Class houses).
Classic Greek and Roman architecture was admired by the Elizabethans and sometimes great
columns framed the entrances of many great Elizabethan houses.
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Hardwick Hall
One of the most impressive houses built during the Elizabethan era which made use of such
columns was the magnificent Hardwick Hall. This great, palatial building was built by the
Countess of Shrewsbury, known as Bess of Hardwick (1521 - 1607). Bess started her life
relatively poor. She married four times and was the second most powerful woman in England,
next to Queen Elizabeth. Hardwicke Hall was truly magnificent, four floors tall with prolific
plaster work. One of its major features was many glass windows. The windows created such a
wonderful sight that they were immortalized in and old English Rhyme: 'Hardwick Hall more glass than wall'.
Hardwick's skyline features six rooftop pavilions with Bess of
Hardwick's initials "ES" (Elizabeth Shrewsbury) carved into the balustrade (railing).
Another great house built during the Elizabethan era between 1555 and 1587 was Burghley
House which was built for Sir William Cecil (Lord Burghley).
The power of the wealthier local families, who had bought up church lands, grew in the reign
of Elizabeth I. Burghley House was built by William Cecil (later Lord Burghley), the Queen's
Secretary of State and closest adviser. In 1576 Elizabeth passed the title of Lord Paramount
of the Liberty of Peterborough from the Bishop of Peterborough to Lord Burghley, whose
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descendants still hold this title today. Burghley House is open to the public and welcomes
many visitors. Marvel at the gardens and house, discover a wealth of treasures including
paintings and sculptures.
The courtyard of Burghley House, as drawn by Joseph Nash in the nineteenth century, but with figures
in Elizabethan costume/Lord Burghley.
The Burghley house is one of the principal examples of sixteenth-century English architecture
and also has a suite of rooms remodeled in the baroque style. The main part of the House has
thirty five major rooms on the ground and first floors. There are more than eighty lesser
rooms and numerous halls, corridors, bathrooms and service areas.
In the seventeenth century, the open loggias around the ground floor were enclosed. Although
the House was built in the letter E in honour of Queen Elizabeth, it is now missing its northwest wing. The avenues in the park were all laid out by Capability Brown, paying due respect
to existing plantings, some of which were from the sixteenth century or earlier. Brown also
created the park's lake in 1775 – 1780.
Architecture of Elizabethan Castles: The crenellations which featured in medieval castles
were no longer included for practical defensive or offensive reasons. The feudal system had
broken down and the monarchy no longer relied on great and powerful Lords. The emergence
of such a great noble would have been seen as a threat to the monarchy. Elizabethan mansions
emphasized luxury and comfort - not power and dominance. Artificial crenellations purely for
show ere allowed to be built in private houses, but only with the permission of the reigning
monarch.
Tudor Houses: House designs became more balanced and symmetrical, with E and H shapes
common, (possibly as a tribute to Elizabeth and Henry VIII). For the first time greater
attention was paid to comfort and less to defence. Battlements disappeared, arches became
flattened, and bay windows grew in size. Houses were often built around an inner courtyard.
The hall was still the centre of life, though now space was made in lofts for servants to sleep.
The winter parlour appeared - a forerunner of the modern dining room. It acted as a family
retreat area, and privacy began to be more prized. The walls were commonly decorated with
linen fold panelling and adorned (decorated) with freshly cut boughs (branches) for scent.
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Tudor houses were generally timber-framed. The oak timbers were usually left to the weather
rather than tarred black as is commonly seen in modern restorations and imitations. A new
feature of manor houses was the long gallery running the length of the upper floor. It was a
place for walks, games, and displaying art. There were few passages; one room opened
directly into the next. This also meant that privacy tended to be a foreign concept to most
people.
Houses began to be built with many more windows (for example
Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire). Elaborately carved oak staircases began
to be featured in houses, replacing circular stone stairwells.
Gardens were a vital feature of Tudor life. Both flower and herb
gardens were popular, with formal layouts of straight lines and walks.
Topiary made an appearance.
Tudor Townhouse
5.4.1 Elizabethan Playhouses
English Renaissance theatre is sometimes called "Elizabethan theatre." The term "Elizabethan
theatre", however, covers only the plays written and performed publicly in England during the
reign of Queen Elizabeth I (that is, 1558-1603). As such, "Elizabethan theatre" is
distinguished from Jacobean theatre (associated with the reign of King James I, (1603-1625),
and Caroline theatre (associated with King Charles I, 1625 until the closure of the theatres in
1642). "English Renaissance theatre" or "early modern theatre" refers to all three subclassifications taken together.
The theatre as a public amusement was an innovation in the social life of the Elizabethans,
and it immediately took the general fancy. Like that of Greece or Spain, it developed with
amazing rapidity. In 1574, when Shakespeare was ten years old, the Common Council passed
a law requiring plays and theaters in London to be licensed. In 1576, actor and future Lord
Chamberlain's Man, James Burbage, built the first permanent theater, called The Theatre,
situated in the open fields of Shoreditch outside the city of London. After this many more
theaters were established, including the Globe Theatre, which was where most of
Shakespeare's plays premiered or at Blackfriars. The great popularity of plays of all sorts led
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to the building of playhouses both public and private, to the organization of innumerable
companies of players both amateur and professional, and to countless difficulties connected
with the authorship and licensing of plays. Companies of actors were kept at the big baronial
estates of Lord Oxford, Lord Buckingham and others. Many strolling companies went about
the country playing wherever they could find welcome. They commonly consisted of three or
at most four men and a boy, the latter to take the women's parts. They performed their plays in
the open squares of the town, in the halls of noblemen and other gentry, or in the courtyards
of inns.
Reconstructed Globe Theatre, London
Inn -Yards: In mediaeval times plays were performed on carts that the players pushed around
from village to village; the actors were known as 'Strolling Players' because they walked or
'strolled' round from place to place, setting up their cart as a stage in the market place or the
village square. They performed plays, they walked on stilts, they juggled, they created
slapstick scenes - anything to please, to entertain and, of course, to earn the living. Gradually,
the innkeepers learned that when the Players came to town business was brisk; entertainment
in those days was not easily come by and the arrival of the Players brought everyone out on
holiday. The labourers and their families rubbed shoulders with the farmers and the foremen,
as they all went to watch the plays. Thus, the innkeepers began to offer the shelter of their
inn-yards for the performances and the Players would stand their carts at one end of the innyard whilst the local audience stood around to watch, buying their ale and mead and treating it
as a festive occasion.
It was from this that the more involved role of the inns developed: a temporary stage would be
erected at the end of the yard and the audience would gather, not only in the yard itself, but
would be able to pay for a view, perhaps even a seat inside the inn by a window overlooking
the yard. Many of these inns had tiers of galleries all round the yard and some of them became
for a while almost permanent theatres. Most such inns are long disappeared but the following
picture gives us a modern view of the Oxford Arms in London which remained standing until
a few years back; you can see the present-day St Paul's in the background. It was the innyards that later dictated the shape and form of the custom made open-air theatres built in the
last quarter of the sixteenth century - but more of that later.
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Modern view of the Oxford Arms in
London with the present-day St Paul's in the background
Regulation and licensing of plays: The control of these various companies soon became a
problem to the community. Some of the troupes (companies), which had the impudence to
call themselves "Servants" of this or that lord, were composed of low characters, little better
than vagabonds, causing much trouble to worthy citizens. The sovereign attempted to regulate
matters by granting licenses to the aristocracy for the support of troupes of players, who might
at any time be required to show their credentials. For a time it was also a rule that these
performers should appear only in the halls of their patrons; but this requirement, together with
many other regulations, was constantly ignored. The playwrights of both the Roman and the
Protestant faith uses the stage as a sort of forum for the dissemination (propagation) of their
opinions; and it was natural that such practices should often result in quarrels and
disturbances. During the reign of Mary, the rules were strict. On the other hand, during this
period the performance of the mysteries was urged, as being one of the means of teaching true
religion. Players were forbidden to establish themselves in the city of London (they needed
Queen´s approval), but could not be prevented from building their playhouses just across the
river, outside the jurisdiction of the Corporation and within easy reach of the play-going
public.
Elizabeth granted the first royal patent to the Servants of the Earl of Leicester in 1574. These
"Servants" were James Burbage and four partners; and they were empowered (licensed) to
play "comedies, tragedies, interludes, stage-plays and other such-like" in London and in all
other towns and boroughs in the realm of England. Under Elizabeth political and religious
subjects were forbidden on the stage.
James Burbage (1531-1597) was an English actor, who is said to have been born at
Stratford-on-Avon. He was a member of the earl of Leicester's players, probably
for several years before he is first mentioned (1574) as being at the head of the
company. In 1576, Burbage erected there the successful house which was known
for twenty years as The Theatre from the fact that it was the first ever erected in
London. He seems also to have been concerned in the erection of a second theatre
in the same locality, the Curtain, and later, in spite of all difficulties and a great
deal of local opposition, he started what became the most celebrated home of the
rising drama-the Blackfriars theatre, built in 1596 near the old Dominican friary.
The first public theater in London was erected in Scoreditch, an area just outside the city
limits, in 1576. Others, including the Globe, the home theater of Shakespeare´s company,
were soon built in Southwark across the river Thames in 1599. London had grown
enormously since Chaucer´s time, when it had a population of around 50,000. In 1563 it had
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doubled in size, in 1605, two years after her death, it had a population of 224,275. Indications
are that all the classes made up the theater audiences. There was a growing middle class of
merchants, and shopkeepers, sea captains and sailors of every nationality, skilled artisans and
apprentices; and finally there were noisy ordinary people. Members of the nobility might be
given a special seat right on stage; sophisticated law students from the Inns of Court might be
among those who would have bought a seat under the roofs in the gallery; less well-off
playgoers would fill the “pit” to eat, drink, and applaud the great lines in their own way.
London in sixteenth century
Open air theatres: Despite the smallness of the theatre (e.g. Globe was eighty-six feet wide
and thirty-three feet high), it has been estimated that two thousand and fifty people could be
accommodated inside. The Elizabethans were, in fact, smaller than we are today and had
shorter legs which enabled them to fit into more cramped conditions. A recent experiment has
suggested that it would take at least half an hour for the audience to get in or out - a fact
which has some bearing upon the way in which a play opens or closes - but more of this in a
moment or so.
Outdoor Theatre: Because of its shape the
stage was known as an 'apron stage'. It was raised three or four feet above the ground and was
surrounded on three sides by the audience; shows us in more detail how close to the stage the
audience would be sitting.
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Elizabethan theatres were, in general, round, square, octagonal, or something of the sort. This
is supported both by the specifications for the Fortune Theatre and also by Shakespeare's
words in the Prologue to Henry V:
“… pardon, gentles all,
The flat unraised spirits that hath dared
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object. Can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?”
Notice here "this cockpit" and "this wooden O", both of which indicate Shakespeare's
awareness of the shape of his theatre; you might notice, too, "this unworthy scaffold"
reminiscent of the makeshift (provisional) stage of earlier times. What seems to be certain is
that the buildings were not longer in one dimension than another; it is now, in fact, believed
that the Globe was a twenty-four-sided polygon and we know from the specifications quoted
above, that the Fortune was square (see the following picture).
Fortune – Elizabethan theatre.
Indoor Theatres: Simultaneously with the growth of the outdoor theatres, a number of indoor
ones were built for the companies of Boy Actors. It was these theatres that developed from the
pattern of the Great Halls. They were smaller than the outdoor theatres and, like the Halls
themselves, they were rectangular, roofed and lighted by candles. They were attended by a
somewhat different class of audience; admission was more expensive and they housed
something like seven hundred spectators. In 1596, three years before the Globe was built,
James Burbage had converted an old monastery in London to become the Blackfriars Theatre
and to house performances by a Boys' Company. Various difficulties followed, however, and
when Burbage died in 1597 it had still not been used for the purpose he had intended. His
sons, Richard and Cuthbert then formed a syndicate (company) and by 1600 the 'Children of
the Chapel', a company of Boy Actors, was giving regular performances there. Then, in 1608
the Children's Companies were suppressed and the Blackfriars was taken over for winter
performances by Shakespeare's company, which since the accession of James I in 1603 had
been known as the King's Company. In the out door theatres all performances took place in
the afternoons – at three o'clock in the summer and two o'clock in the winter, but even this on
a dreary English winter day would mean that it would be dark and cold before the play was
over. Thus, the Blackfriars Theatre was an important acquisition for Shakespeare and his
Company and it is probable that several of his later plays were written for performance in this
theatre.
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In this picture we can see is a theoretical
reconstruction of the inside of the Second Blackfriars Theatre.
Performances: There was no curtain across the front of the main stage. Scenes began or
ended when actors came on or left the stage. Although costumes were often rich and
elaborate, by modern standards scene was simple and rudimentary (elementary). One of the
pillars supporting the roof of the stage might serve as a tree, or even as the wall of a building.
Much that is accomplished in the modern theatre through the technology of stagecraft
depended in the Elizabethan theatre almost entirely on language. The main action took place
on the main stage and, because it was surrounded on three sides by the audience. There was
no scenery or scene painting as such, but plenty of stage properties, some simple, some
considerably more elaborate. There were realistic noises off, sometimes from the 'heavens' for example, in the storm in King Lear. Lear's words: "Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!
rage! blow!" would be accompanied by appropriate noises of thunder from above; in other
plays, the sounds of battle would be heard from behind the stage and from under the stage
would come such sounds as the music 'Under the earth' in Antony and Cleopatra or the Ghost
in
Hamlet
saying
"Swear!"
Extensive
music
was
constantly
used.
The actors acted using masks and wigs. Actors were allowed to suggest changes to scenes and
dialogue and had much more freedom with their parts than actors today. Shakespeare's plays
are no exception.
Although it may seem primitive to us today, the Elizabethan theatre provided a lively,
flexible, intimate environment for the magnificent drama written during this period. It can be
useful to remember the basic features of Shakespeare´s theatre when reading his plays.
When the Globe burned down in June 1613, it was rebuilt with a tile roof; when the Fortune
burned down in December 1621, it was rebuilt in brick (Jackobean theatre). Other small
enclosed theatres followed notably the Whitefriars (1608) and the Cockpit (1617). With the
building of the Salisbury Court Theatre in 1629 near the site of the defunct Whitefriars, the
London audience had six theatres to choose from: three surviving large open-air "public"
theatres, the Globe, the Fortune, and the Red Bull, and three smaller enclosed "private"
theatres, the Blackfriars, the Cockpit, and the Salisbury Court. Audiences of the 1630s
benefited from a half-century of vigorous dramatical development; the plays of Marlowe and
Shakespeare and their contemporaries were still being performed on a regular basis (mostly at
the public theatres), while the newest works of the newest playwrights were abundant as well
(mainly at the private theatres).
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One distinctive feature of the companies was that they included only males. Until the reign of
Charles III, female parts were played by adolescent boy players in women's costume.
The rising Puritan movement was hostile to the theatres, which the Puritans considered to be
sinful for several reasons. The most commonly cited reason was that young men dressed up in
female costume to play female roles. Theatres were located in the same parts of the city in
which brothels and other forms of vice proliferated. When the Puritan faction of Parliament
gained control over the city of London at the beginning of the English Civil War, it ordered
the closing of all theatres on September 2, 1542 - though this was largely because the stage
was being used to promote opposing political views. After the monarchy was restored (under
the king Charles III) in 1660 the theatres re-opened. The English King and many writers had
spent years in France and were influenced by the flourishing French theatre of Louis XIV,
especially in tragedy. However, Restoration audiences had no enthusiasm for structurally
simple, well-shaped comedies such as those of Moliere, but demanded bustling, crowded
multi-plot action and fast comedic pace, and the Elizabethan features of multitude of scenes,
multitude of characters, and melange (mixture) of genres lived on in Restoration comedy (it is
the name given to English comedies written and performed in the Restoration period from
1660 to 1710.) The Renaissance classics were the mainstay of the Restoration repertory,
although many of the tragedies were adapted to conform to the new taste.
6. THE RESTORATION AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
It is customary to date the beginning of a new period with the Restoration in 1660, when the
Stuarts returned from exile to the British throne. It was a time when people sought to establish
society and the arts on a firm basis, and a time when dislike of change became a guiding
principle, so there was an attempt to keep things the way they were. But the change is
inevitable, and order cannot survive except by evolving into new kinds of order. In literary
history a significant turning point is the publication of Lyrical Ballads, a deliberately
innovative collection of poems by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge which
marks also the end of this period.
6.1 The Political Background
The crucial year is 1660 when a country fatigued of civil war and Puritan dictatorship brought
back the Stuart heir, King Charles II (1660-1685), from his exile in France. The Civil War
had been fought to win religious freedom, but the Puritans were a minority group and could
not have succeeded without the powerful landowners who hated royal interference and
supported the Puritan case. By the time of the Restoration, the people who controlled power
were convinced that the king´s return would be a lesser evil than continued Puritan rule, and
Charles was brought back without the shedding of a drop of blood.
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Charles II (the Stuart); Charles II´s brother James II; James´s daughter Mary and William of Orange
From this time forward political life was dominated by the desire to assure stability. The
British Civil War had been a traumatic experience that the nation was determined never to
repeat. But before long a new threat emerged: Charles´s brother, who came to the throne as
James II in 1685, was openly committed to favouring Roman Catholicism and forming
dangerous alliances with the Catholic powers of Europe. After three years James was expelled
from the throne, in an upheaval long remembered as the “Glorious Revolution” because it
occurred without bloodshed. It was, in fact, no revolution at all, but an assertion of the status
quo against a monarch who threatened to overthrow it.
The next heir to the throne was James´s daughter Mary, a Protestant who ruled with her
Dutch husband, William of Orange (1689-1702). Popular histories usually refer to the joint
reigns as those of „William and Mary“. Mary, although a sovereign in her own right, did not
wield (hold) power during most of her reign, instead ceding (transferring) it to her husband.
She did, however, govern the realms when William was engaged in military campaigns
abroad. In December 1689 Parliament passed one of the most important constitutional
documents in English history, the Bill of Rights. This measure - which restated and confirmed
many provisions of the earlier Declaration of Right - established restrictions on the royal
prerogative; it declared, amongst other things, that the Sovereign could not withhold laws
passed by Parliament, levy taxes without parliamentary consent, infringe (break) the right to
petition, raise a standing army during peacetime without parliamentary consent, deny the right
to bear arms to Protestant subjects, unduly interfere with Parliamentary elections, punish
members of either House of Parliament for anything said during debates, require excessive
bail or inflict (impose) cruel or unusual punishments. The Bill of Rights also addressed the
question of succession to the Throne. Mary´s sister Queen Anne (1702-1714), who followed,
died childless. Habitually the crown then would have passed to James Stuart, later called the
“Old Pretender,” son of the exiled (and dead) James II. But James, like his father, was a
Catholic, and Parliament had passed an act that the British sovereign must be Protestant. A
crucial decision was made: rather than continue the Stuart succession, Britain would be ruled
by a more distant relative, the German Elector of Hanover, who assumed the throne in 1714
as George I (1714-1727). The powerful Louis XIV of France continued to advocate James
Stuart and to back his claim to the British throne, and in Britain – particularly in Scotland and
Ireland – there were many Stuart supporters, called “Jacobites” (from Latin Jacobus - James).
In 1715, James Edward, soon to be called the Old Pretender, attempted to supplant King
George I on the throne, again with the aid of the French. This Jacobite Rebellion failed
miserably which perhaps is not surprising as the Pretender didn't arrive in England until it was
all over! He retired once more to France. George I was succeeded by his son, George II
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(1727-1760), who like his father did not learn English well and showed greater interest in
little Hanover than in Great Britain. These Georges therefore allowed control of the British
government to fall almost completely into the hands of Parliament, where it remains to this
day. King George III (1760-1820), whose reign spanned sixty years, attempted to be what
neither of the first two Georges had been – a strong English king. His attempt at ruling had
some unfortunate results, notably the loss to Britain of thirteen of its American colonies.
Hanovers: George I
George II
George III
The Hanovers were not exactly admirable men, but two attempts – in 1715 and 1745 – to
restore the Stuarts were failures. (In 1745, however, the Scottish followers of “Bonnie Prince
Charlie,” the Old Pretender´s son, reached the English Midlands before they were defeated. It
is around this rebellion that so many romantic stories have been written.)
James Edward Stuart (The Old Pretender)
Charles Edward Stuart “Bonnie Prince Charlie”
The deportation of James II in 1688 showed that whatever the excesses of the Puritans might
have been, the principle of parliamentary supremacy was becoming firmly established in
England. The king remained highly influential, but real power increasingly moved to the
political parties of Parliament. In Parliament at this time the two-party political system came
into being. The Whigs represented mainly the financial and mercantile interests, the cities and
towns, the progressive element, and were strongly opposed to any interference in politics by
the monarchy. The Tories, many of them Jacobities in these earlier years, represented the
country squires and their people, all of them were people who preferred old traditions.
Though there were general elections then as now, only a comparatively small number of
people were entitled to vote. There was no real political democracy as we know it today, but
the ordinary people of the eighteenth century were public-spirited and often expressed their
dissatisfaction by violent rioting that could be suppressed only by military force.
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Sir Robert Walpole
For the most of the eighteenth century, the Whig party was supreme, especially after Sir
Robert Walpole consolidated its power during his long rule as Prime minister from 1721 to
1742. Many of the greatest writers feared Walpole´s power and sided with the Tory minority
against him; he was brilliantly satirized by Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Samuel Johnson,
and Henry Fielding. However, Walpole was not a dictator, only an able politician who knew
how to use patronage as well as policies to win the broadest possible support. In later years
Samuel Johnson admitted that Walpole had given Britain badly needed tranquility at home
and peace abroad.
Political power was centered in England, but the nation was Great Britain, a quadruple entity
made up of England, Wales, Ireland, and after the Act of Union in 1707, Scotland. Scotland
achieved something like equal partnership; Ireland was less fortunate, treated by England as a
colony for economic gain, and nursing hostilities that finally brought about its independence
in the twentieth century.
6.2 England in the Eighteenth Century
England at the start of the eighteenth century was a small and very traditional country. Its
population numbered about five and a half million. London, the biggest city, had half a
million inhabitants.
Many people were alarmed by the symptoms of urban spread. As Daniel Defoe complained,
London was spreading out “in a most straggling, confused manner, out of all shape, and
unequal, neither long nor broad, round or square.” But he was also deeply impressed by the
spectacle of its wealth and beauty: “gilded with noble palaces, strong fortifications, large
hospitals and public buildings; with the greatest bridge, and the greatest City in the world,
made famous by the opulence of its merchants, the increase and extensiveness of its
commerce; by its invincible navies and by the innumerable fleets of ships, sailing to and from
all parts of the world.”
According to the Defoe, there are seven groups in English society:
The Great, who live profusely.
The Rich, who live in profusion.
The Middle Sort, who live well.
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The Working Trades, who labour hard, but feel no want.
The Country People, Farmers, etc. who fare indifferently.
The Poor that fare hard.
The Penniless that really suffer want.
Education: Oxford and Cambridge were the only two universities in the whole of England
(Scotland had four). The majority of people were illiterate, though the growing middle class
prompted a rapid rise in literacy. Women, even when wealthy, tended to receive a careless
education, could not enter a university, and were prevented from all professions. Only wellto-do males could vote (this was changed in 1832).
Marriage was commonly regarded as an economic arrangement uniting families and estates,
though of course there were many happy marriages. The two most popular novels of the
century, Henry Fielding´s The History of Tom Jones and Samuel Richardson´s Clarissa, both
describe repulsive matches that parents try to force upon their daughters. An early in the next
century, Jane Austen began Pride and Prejudice with the ironic remark, “It is a truth
universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want
of a wife.”
Religious life was dominated by the Anglican Church, with its hierarchy of bishops and its
parish priest in every village (though not in the growing industrial towns). The minority who
remained outside the state church, and were subject to various civil disabilities, were known
as Dissenters. The old passions of the Puritans soon died down, especially after the death of
the generation that had lived through the Civil War. Some of the greatest writers of the period
were Dissenters: Alexander Pope (1688-1744) was a Catholic, Defoe was a Presbyterian; and
William Blake (1757-1827) was a radical Protestant.
6.3 Restoration England and Scientific Age
During the reign of Charles II, the greatest European power was France, where the despotic if
majestic Louis XIV ruled from his new palace at Versailles. What was fashionable in Paris
soon became fashionable in London, with the result that the French classical style and manner
were soon imitated.
Not long after the Restoration, London suffered two main disasters – the Plague in 1665 and
the Great Fire in 1666. The fire devastated the old city, which was then rebuilt under the
direction of the famous architect Christopher Wren (1632-1723). We know a great deal about
the intimate life of London in these times because Samuel Pepys (1633-1703), Secretary of
the Admiralty, kept a diary.
In the London of Charles II, the new scientific and rational age was coming into existence.
In 1662, the Royal Society, composed of distinguished scientists, philosophers, and scholars,
was founded under the direct patronage of the king. London was the city of the great Isaac
Newton (1642-1727), the mathematician and astronomer; of William Harvey (1578-1657),
who discovered the circulation of the blood; and London was also the city of John Locke
(1632-1704) whose Essay Concerning Human Understanding described our mental processes
and whose influence on the eighteenth century was enormous.
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Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
Sir Isaac Newton was the greatest English mathematician of his generation. He laid the
foundation for differential and integral calculus. His work on optics and gravitation make him
one of the greatest scientists the world has known.
As a firm opponent of the attempt by King James II to make the universities into Catholic
institutions, Newton was elected Member of Parliament for the University of Cambridge to
the Convention Parliament of 1689, and sat again in 1701-1702. Meanwhile, in 1696 he had
moved to London as Warden of the Royal Mint. He became Master of the Mint in 1699, an
office he retained to his death. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in
1671, and in 1703 he became President, being annually re-elected for the rest of his life. His
major work, Opticks, appeared the next year; he was knighted in Cambridge in 1705. In
government, and at the Royal Society, he proved an able administrator. He never married and
lived modestly, but was buried with great pomp in Westminster Abbey.
Newton published an edition of Geographia generalis by the German geographer Varenius in
1672. His own letters on optics appeared in print from 1672 to 1676. Then he published
nothing until the Principia (published in Latin in 1687; revised in 1713 and 1726; and
translated into English in 1729). This was followed by Opticks in 1704; a revised edition in
Latin appeared in 1706. Posthumously published writings include The Chronology of Ancient
Kingdoms Amended (1728), The System of the World (1728), the first draft of Book III of the
Principia, and Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St John
(1733).
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William Harvey (1578-1657)
1. William Harvey and the circulation; 2.A nineteenth-century romantic view of Harvey demonstrating
his theory of the circulation of the blood to King Charles I.
One of the most famous doctors associated with the Royal College of Physicians of London,
is William Harvey (1578-1657). He is famous for his discovery that the blood circulates
around the body.
Harvey graduated doctor of arts and medicine from the University of Padua in 1602. He
moved to London later in 1602. In 1604 Harvey married Elizabeth Browne, daughter of a
physician to Queen Elizabeth I and King James I. This meant that Harvey met a lot of rich and
wealthy people and he quickly climbed the career ladder. There were only about forty fully
qualified doctors like Harvey in London at this time and their fees were very high so Harvey
did very well. He was himself selected as a physician to King James I in 1618 and later to
King Charles I. He was appointed physician to St Bartholomew’s Hospital in 1609, although
his Royal duties interrupted his work there.
King Charles I encouraged Harvey’s researches and gave him access to his deer at Hampton
Court for his Experiments.
William Harvey uses a deer to demonstrate the
circulatory system. His research laid the foundation for a scientific approach to medicine.
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It was in 1628, twenty-six years after he graduated from Padua University, that Harvey
published his description of the circulation of the blood in Exercitation anatomica de motu
cordis et sanguinis in animalibus (An anatomical disputation on the movement of the heart
and blood in animals); generally known as De motu cordis. In this book Harvey published his
description of the circulation of the blood. For some years he had experimented on live
animals and dissected the bodies of executed criminals. Through observation and careful
reasoning Harvey was able to prove that the heart acted as a pump forcing blood around the
body through arteries. Veins returned the blood to the heart where it was recycled. Harvey
realised that the valves in the veins prevented blood from travelling back the wrong way to
the heart. ‘The animal’s heart is the bases of its life, its chief member, the sun of its
microcosm: on the heart all activity depends. From the heart all its liveliness and strength
arise’.
Despite having the support of Fellows of the College, Harvey lost patients after his work was
published. His theory threw doubt onto the common practice of bloodletting (a very common
practice by medical practitioners from ancient times through to the eighteenth century) and it
was only after his death that others became convinced that he was right.
John Locke (1632-1704)
John Locke (1632-1704)
John Locke became one of the most influential English philosophers of the Seventeenth
century, and he is credited with developing many of the theories associated with the
Enlightenment. His revolutionary ideas on knowledge, politics, and religious tolerance were
direct responses to the societal landscape in which he lived.
In 1647, Locke attended Westminster School in London. He continued his studies at Christ
Church, Oxford until he received his Bachelor's Degree in Medicine in 1656.
His love for medicine and politics became intertwined in 1666 when Locke was acquainted
with Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper, the first Earl of Shaftesbury. Locke became Lord Ashley's
personal physician, as well as a political advisor and researcher. Locke was appointed to
minor government positions, including Secretary for the Board of Trade in 1668.
In 1674, Locke went to France with Lord Ashley, where the philosopher began to write his
most famous work, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Locke returned to England
in 1679, but only for a short time. He was forced to go into exile in Holland because of his
opposition to the Catholic Church in England, and current authoritarian rule. However, when
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the Glorious Revolution shifted the balance of power in Britain from the King to Parliament,
Locke was able to return to his home country.
In 1690, Locke published his Two Treaties on Civil Government, though he did so
anonymously. Then in 1693, his An Essay on Human Understanding was also completed.
Locke produced other works, and he continued his involvement with the Board of Trade until
his health declined in 1700. The philosopher died in Oates on October 28, 1704.
Passage from An Essay Concerning Human understanding; Book II Of Ideas, Chapter I
Of Ideas in General by John Locke:
1. Idea is the object of thinking. Every man being conscious to himself that he thinks; and that
which his mind is applied about whilst thinking being the ideas that are there, it is past doubt
that men have in their minds several ideas,- such as are those expressed by the words
whiteness, hardness, sweetness, thinking, motion, man, elephant, army, drunkenness, and
others: it is in the first place then to be inquired, How he comes by them?I know it is a
received doctrine, that men have native ideas, and original characters, stamped upon their
minds in their very first being. This opinion I have at large examined already; and, I suppose
what I have said in the foregoing Book will be much more easily admitted, when I have shown
whence the understanding may get all the ideas it has; and by what ways and degrees they
may come into the mind;- for which I shall appeal to every one's own observation and
experience.
2.All ideas come from sensation or reflection. Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say,
white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas:- How comes it to be furnished?
Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on
it with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge?
To this I answer, in one word, from EXPERIENCE. In that all our knowledge is founded; and
from that it ultimately derives itself. Our observation employed either, about external sensible
objects, or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected on by
ourselves, is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking. These
two are the fountains of knowledge, from whence all the ideas we have, or can naturally have,
do spring.
3. The objects of sensation one source of ideas. First, our Senses, conversant about particular
sensible objects, do convey into the mind several distinct perceptions of things, according to
those various ways wherein those objects do affect them. And thus we come by those ideas we
have of yellow, white, heat, cold, soft, hard, bitter, sweet, and all those which we call sensible
qualities; which when I say the senses convey into the mind, I mean, they from external
objects convey into the mind what produces there those perceptions. This great source of most
of the ideas we have, depending wholly upon our senses, and derived by them to the
understanding, I call SENSATION.
4. The operations of our minds, the other source of them. Secondly, the other fountain from
which experience furnisheth the understanding with ideas is,- the perception of the operations
of our own mind within us, as it is employed about the ideas it has got;- which operations,
when the soul comes to reflect on and consider, do furnish the understanding with another set
of ideas, which could not be had from things without. And such are perception, thinking,
doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, willing, and all the different actings of our own
minds;- which we being conscious of, and observing in ourselves, do from these receive into
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our understandings as distinct ideas as we do from bodies affecting our senses. This source of
ideas every man has wholly in himself; and though it be not sense, as having nothing to do
with external objects, yet it is very like it, and might properly enough be called internal sense.
But as I call the other SENSATION, so I Call this REFLECTION, the ideas it affords being
such only as the mind gets by reflecting on its own operations within itself. By reflection then,
in the following part of this discourse, I would be understood to mean, that notice which the
mind takes of its own operations, and the manner of them, by reason whereof there come to be
ideas of these operations in the understanding. These two, I say, viz. external material things,
as the objects of SENSATION, and the operations of our own minds within, as the objects of
REFLECTION, are to me the only originals from whence all our ideas take their beginnings.
The term operations here I use in a large sense, as comprehending not barely the actions of
the mind about its ideas, but some sort of passions arising sometimes from them, such as is
the satisfaction or uneasiness arising from any thought.
5.All our ideas are of the one or the other of these. The understanding seems to me not to have
the least glimmering of any ideas which it doth not receive from one of these two. External
objects furnish the mind with the ideas of sensible qualities, which are all those different
perceptions they produce in us; and the mind furnishes the understanding with ideas of its
own operations.
These, when we have taken a full survey of them, and their several modes, combinations, and
relations, we shall find to contain all our whole stock of ideas; and that we have nothing in
our minds which did not come in one of these two ways. Let any one examine his own
thoughts, and thoroughly search into his understanding; and then let him tell me, whether all
the original ideas he has there, are any other than of the objects of his senses, or of the
operations of his mind, considered as objects of his reflection. And how great a mass of
knowledge soever he imagines to be lodged there, he will, upon taking a strict view, see that
he has not any idea in his mind but what one of these two have imprinted;- though perhaps,
with infinite variety compounded and enlarged by the understanding, as we shall see
hereafter.
6.4 An Age of Elegance
During this period the upper classes lived on a superb scale. Never in European history were
people so elaborately artificial, so far removed from natural appearance, as the men and
women of the eighteenth century. The men wore wigs, which often had to be curled every
day, and with them brightly coloured satin coats and waistcoasts, silk stockings, and buckled
shoes. The women often had immense hairstyle of powdered hair and enormous hooped
skirts, and were carried to their parties in sedan chairs. An evening party in high society,
taking place in a room lit with hundreds of candles, must have been an impressive experience.
We know from pictures of the age and from the eighteenth-century houses, furniture, and
domestic utensils still in existence that the outward equipment of their lives was really
impressive. Only a small minority of people, however, dressed plainly, and wore their own
hair unpowdered.
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6.4.1 The Arts
The most striking characteristic of the art during this period is their practical quality. It was
not a great age of painting or sculpture: Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), aspired to an idea
of grand allegorical scenes, but his best works were portraits of real people. Thomas
Gainsborough (1727-1788) - Reynolds´ main rival - likewise excelled in portraits and familiar
landscapes. William Hogarth excelled as a cartoonist and caricaturist. Music was much
cultivated, but at a level of competence rather than genius: the finest musicians in England
during the eighteenth century were visiting foreigners like George Frederick Handel (1685 –
1759) and Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809). The drama was active, but after the Restoration
there were more great actors than great playwrights. David Garrick´s most brilliant
performances were in the works of Shakespeare and other classics.
David Garrick as Richard III; David Garrick (1717–79): English actor, manager, and dramatist. He
was indisputably the greatest English actor of the eighteenth century, and his friendships with Diderot,
Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, and other notables who made up “The Club” resulted in detailed
records of his life. Garrick made his formal debut in 1742 as Richard III and was an immediate
success. He was noted for his versatility, playing the tragic heroes of contemporary drama as well as
Shakespearean roles. His King Lear was especially praised.
It was everyday life that English arts excelled. The eighteenth century furniture and interior
decoration included the five great styles of English furniture, that is, the Queen Anne, the
Chippendale, the Adam, the Hepplewhite, and the Sheraton. It is for this reason termed the
"Golden Age" of English cabinet making.
Thomas Chippendale (1718-1779) – was a furniture maker. Chippendale's varied output
included desks; mirror frames; hanging bookshelves; settees, with which he was especially
successful; china cabinets and bookcases, frequently with fretted cornices and latticework
glazed doors; and tables with delicately fretted galleries and distinctive cluster-column legs of
Gothic inspiration. Most of his work uses solid mahogany wood with elaborate hand carving.
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Thomas Sheraton (1751-1806) - His designs were intended "to exhibit the present taste of
furniture" and "at the same time to give the workman some assistance." They represent an
advance upon the neoclassic designs of Robert Adam and George Hepplewhite in the
direction of even greater elegance and refinement and in the preference for chair backs and
mirror frames of square shape instead of the oval forms favored by these two predecessors.
18th Century Sheraton Mahogany Cellarette ( 1780 to 1800 ) and chair; Sheraton Piano
Robert Adam (1728-1792) was a Scottish neoclassical architect, interior designer and
furniture designer. He was the son of William Adam (1689–1748), Scotland's foremost
architect of the time, and trained under him. In 1754 he left for Rome, spending nearly five
years on the continent studying architecture under Charles-Louis Clérisseau and Giovanni
Battista Piranesi. On his return to Britain, he established a practice in London, where he was
joined by his younger Brother James. Here he developed the „Adam Style“, and his theory of
"movement" in architecture, based on his studies of antiquity. He became one of the most
successful architects of his day, and held the post of Architect of the Kings Works from 17611769. He is considered by many to be the greatest architect of the late eighteenth century, and
his work influenced the development of Western architecture, both in Europe and in North
America. He was leader of the first phase of the classical revival in England and Scotland
from around 1760 until his death.
Robert Adam rejected the Palladian style, as introduced to England by Ingo Jones. Through
the adoption of classical motifs, Adam developed a new style of architectural decoration.
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1. Etruscan Room, Osterley Park House by Robert Adam, 1761; style: Neoclassicism; 2. One of
Adam's masterpieces: Pulteney Bridge, Bath
This was a time of much building and “improvement” of towns and estates. Handsome streets
and squares were build up, in a style known today as “Georgian,” after the reigning monarchs.
Country houses were designed in the fashionable classical mode.
English Georgian Houses
The English Georgian houses had simple exterior lines and generally fewer of the decorative
devices characteristic of the later Georgian houses. Most were two or three-story rectangular
houses with two large chimneys rising high above the roof at each end.
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Example of Georgian House
6.4.1.1 English Art in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century: Painting
and Sculpture
Painting: The Glorious Revolution of 1688 was followed by a brief flowering of decorative
painting under Sir James Thornhill, which was the closest that Britain ever approached to the
developed Baroque style of the Continent. From the Renaissance until the early eighteenth
century the best painters working in England were imported, often from Flanders. These
included Hans Holbein the Younger, Van Dyck, or Rubens. An exception must be made for
the portrait miniature, where a strong English tradition began with the Elizabethan Nicholas
Hilliard.
Sir James Thornhill (1675-1734) was a British painter of portraits and, more notably, the
first British fresco painter in the Baroque manner. He was one of the first English painters to
earn an international reputation. Although his early training remains obscure, he clearly had
knowledge of architecture and may have mastered the painting techniques of the Italian and
French artists then working in England. He excelled in large-scale decoration of palace
interiors in the grand manner that is, grandiose compositions of figures in animated or
rhetorical postures. His first major commission was the ceiling decoration (1707-1714) of the
Painted Hall at Greenwich, and it was followed by commissions at Hampton Court (17141715). He was also responsible for the decorative work on the cupola, lantern and whispering
gallery of St. Paul's Cathedral. Sir James Thornhill also ran a private art academy where one
of his was William Hogarth, who went on to be a far more famous painter than his master,
and in 1727 married Sir James' daughter.
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1. Painted Hall of Greenwich Hospital, decorated by Sir James Thornhill in nineteen years, 1710;
2. Sir James Thornhill by William Hogarth
Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) was a prolific seventeenth-century Flemish and European
painter, and a proponent of an exuberant Baroque style that emphasized movement, color, and
sensuality. He is well-known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes,
and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. In addition to running a large
studio in Antwerp that produced paintings popular with nobility and art collectors throughout
Europe, Rubens was a classically-educated humanist scholar, art collector, and diplomat who
was knighted by both Philip IV, king of Spain, and Charles I, king of England.
Between 1627 and 1630, Rubens's diplomatic career was particularly active, and he moved
between the courts of Spain and England in an attempt to bring peace between the Spanish
Netherlands and the United Provinces. It was during this period that Rubens was twice
knighted, first by Philip IV of Spain in 1624, and then by Charles I of England in 1630. He
was also awarded an honorary Master of Arts degree from Cambridge University in 1629.
His stay in Antwerp was brief, and he soon traveled on to London. Rubens stayed there until
April, 1630. An important work from this period is the Allegory of Peace and War (1629,
National Gallery, London). It illustrates the artist's strong concern for peace, and was given to
Charles I as a gift.
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1. Rubens: Allegory on the blessings of peace 1629-30;
2. Allegory of Peace and War. 1629
Banqueting House at Whitehall
The ceiling canvasses were painted by the famous seventeenth-century Flemish artist, Sir
Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) and represent the only scheme painted by him to remain in its
original position. They were commissioned by Charles I, probably in 1629-1630 when
Rubens visited him in England. At this time Rubens was acting as an envoy from the Spanish
King, Philip IV. The canvasses were painted by Rubens and members of his studio in
Antwerp. In October 1635 they were shipped to London and by March 1636 they were in
place in the Banqueting House.
Rubens was an influential diplomat, as well as an artist, whose work brought him to England.
A fellow diplomat said he ‘had grown so rich by his profession that he appeared everywhere,
not like a painter but a great cavalier’.
Hans Holbein the Younger (1497-1543) was born in Augsburg (south-central Germany) and
learned painting from his father Hans Holbein the Elder. The Reformation made it difficult for
Holbein to support himself as an artist in Basel, Switzerland, and he set out for London in
1526. Erasmus furnished him with a letter of introduction addressed to the English statesman
and author Sir Thomas More. Holbein painted many portraits at the court of Henry VIII.
While there he designed state robes for the king.
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Portraits by Hans Holbein Younger:
Jane Seymour
Henry VIII
Anne of Cleves
Sir Thomas More
Hans Holbein´s Portrait of Henry VIII. It was completed in 1537, as a mural in the Palace of
Whitehall
Henry VIII is among the English monarchs who most capture our modern imaginations. And
this great portret has helped to determine how we think of him: talented, temperamental and
larger-than-life.
To commemorate the strength and triumphs of the Tudor dynasty, Henry VIII commissioned
from Holbein a wall-painting for Whitehall Palace; this was completed in 1537. The
immediate impetus for the commission may have been the birth or the expectation of the birth
of Henry's son Edward, later Edward VI, in October 1537. The mural may have been in
Henry's Privy Chamber and therefore have had a select, restricted audience rather than being
an image of wider propaganda. This very large drawing is the preparatory drawing or cartoon
for the left-hand section of that wall-painting, and shows Henry with his father Henry VII, the
founder of the dynasty. The right-hand section showed Henry VIII's third wife Jane Seymour
(1509?-37) and his mother Elizabeth of York (1465-1503). Holbein's painting was destroyed
in the Whitehall Palace fire of 1698, and the cartoon for the right-hand side section is lost.
The appearance of the whole painting is however recorded in a mid-seventeenth century copy
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by Remegius van Leemput in the Royal Collection. The cartoon is executed in black ink and
watercolour on several sheets of paper joined together. The figures and faces of the kings are
cut-outs pasted on to the backing paper. The cartoon is exactly the same size as the finished
painting and was used to transfer Holbein's design to its intended position on the palace wall.
To do this the cartoon was pricked along the main outlines of the composition and then fixed
in the intended position on the wall. Chalk or charcoal dust was then brushed into the holes
made by pricking, thus transferring the outline to the wall. Holbein could then proceed with
filling in his design.
Henry VIII by Hans Holbein younger in 1536
This is the quintessential portrait of Henry VIII. It is perhaps the earliest image of the king by
Holbein. It is so beautifully detailed that close inspection is necessary. The cloth of gold
sleeve and the intricate pattern of the cloth of silver doublet are perfectly done. Real gold was
used to detail the sleeve and the king's jewelry.
The portrait was done around the time of Anne Boleyn's execution, in the midst of the
dissolution of the monasteries and before Henry's long-awaited son was born. The king's
figure and magnificent apparel are proof of his authority. But Holbein's portrait is not
flattering; Henry appears guarded and suspicious, and quite unapproachable. This portrait is
part of the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection.
Holbein also designed many of the extravagant monuments and decorations for the coronation
of Henry's second wife, Anne Boleyn, in the summer of 1533. Holbein painted Henry's third
wife, Jane Seymour. He also painted Jane's sister, Elizabeth Seymour, who married the son of
Thomas Cromwell. This portrait was incorrectly identified as Henry's fifth wife, Queen
Catherine Howard, when it was discovered in the Victorian era. Holbein also painted Anne of
Cleves (his fourth wife) for Henry VIII. Henry criticized the portrait as having been too
flattering; and Catherine Howard (Henry´s fifth wife). While Holbein was working on another
portrait of Henry, he died in London.
Sir Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1641) was a Flemish artist who became the leading court
painter in England. He is most famous for his portraits of Charles I of England and his family
and court, painted with a relaxed elegance that was to be the dominant influence on English
portrait-painting for the next a hundred and fifty years. He also painted biblical and
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mythological subjects, displayed outstanding facility as a draftsman, and was an important
innovator in watercolour and etching.
Van Dyck: 1. Self-Portrait with a Sunflower; 2.The triple portrait of Charles I was sent to Rome for
Bernini to model a bust on;
Nicholas Hilliard (1547-1619) was an English goldsmith best known for his portrait
miniatures of members of the courts of Elizabeth I and James I of England. He mostly painted
small oval miniatures, but also some larger cabinet miniatures, up to about ten inches tall, and
at least the two famous half-length panel portraits of Elizabeth.
Nicholas Hilliard
Portrait of a young man by Hilliard
Queen Elizabeth I circa 1575
He enjoyed continuing success as an artist, and continuing financial troubles, for forty-five
years, and his paintings still exemplify the visual image of Elizabethan England, very
different from that of most of Europe in the late sixteenth century. Technically he was very
conservative by European standards, but his paintings are superbly executed (done) and have
a freshness and charm that has ensured his continuing reputation as "the central artistic figure
of the Elizabethan age, the only English painter whose work reflects, in its delicate
microcosm, the world of Shakespeare´s earlier plays".
Nicholas Hilliard, the distinguished miniaturist painter at the court of Elizabeth I and James I,
was the son of a distinguished Exeter citizen. His father was Richard Hilliard, High Sheriff of
the city and county in 1560. In his youth Nicholas had served him as an apprentice goldsmith.
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William Hogarth (1697-1764), the outstanding figure in English painting before Reynolds
and Gainsborough, was, despite his chauvinism and virulently anti-French sentiments, heavily
influenced by the continental Rococo style. Early in his career he succeeded in breaking away
from the straitjacket of portraiture, and his moralizing paintings are superb evocations of life
in the England of George I and George II. His rich, creamy paint handling and brilliant
characterization of textures have a freshness and vitality unequaled in the work of any of his
contemporaries. He invented a new form of secular narrative painting that imparts a moral.
These paintings were often tragicomedies, although dependent upon no texts, and Hogarth's
series of such works were always intended to be engraved for a large public as well as seen in
a private picture gallery (just as plays were intended to be performed as well as read).
William Hogarth was a famous English painter and engraver. He trained as an engraver in the
Rococo tradition and by 1720 was established in London independently as an engraver on
copper of billheads and book illustrations. In his spare time he studied painting, first at the St
Martin's Lane Academy and later under Sir James Thornhill, whose daughter he married in
1729. By this time he had begun to make a name with small conversation pieces, and about
1730 he set up as a portrait painter. At about the same time he invented and popularized the
use of a sequence of anecdotal pictures 'similar to representations on the stage' to point a
moral and satirize social abuses. A Harlot's Progress (six scenes, in 1731; destroyed by fire)
was followed by A Rake´s Progress (eight scenes, Sir John Soane's Museum, London, 1735),
and Marriage á la Mode (six scenes, National Gallery, London, 1743), which each portray the
punishment of vice in a somewhat lurid melodrama. Each series was painted with a view to
being engraved, and the engravings had a wide sale and were popular with all classes.
Marriage à la Mode, 1743
Scene III Orgy from the Rake´s Progress, 1735;
Hogarth was far and away the most important British artist of his generation. He was equally
outstanding as a painter and engraver and by the force of his pugnacious personality as well as
by the quality and originality of his work he freed British art from its domination by foreign
artists. Because so much of his work has a 'literary' element, his qualities as a painter have
often been overlooked, but his more informal pictures in particular show that his brushwork
could live up to his inventive genius. The vigour and spontaneity of The Shrimp Girl
(National Gallery, London, 1740), for example, have made it deservedly one of the most
popular British paintings of the eighteenth century.
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Hogarth William (1697-1764);
The Shrimp Girl, 1740
Leading Classicist Portraitists
Classicism is a movement in art and literature during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
in Europe that favored rationality and restraint and strict forms; "classicism often derived its
models from the ancient Greeks and Romans".
Aesthetic attitudes and principles manifested in the art, architecture, and literature of
ancient Greece and Rome and characterized by emphasis on form, simplicity,
proportion, and restraint.
Adherence to the aesthetic values embodied in ancient Greek and Roman art and
literature.
Classical scholarship.
Greek or Latin expression or idiom.
Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) was the most successful portrait painter of his day in
England as well as a distinguished member of London's intellectual society. Professionally,
Reynolds' career never peaked. He was one of the earliest members of the Royal Society of
Arts, and with Gainsborough established the Royal Academy of Arts. In 1768 he was made
the Royal Academy's first President, a position he held until his death. As a lecturer,
Reynolds' Discourses on Art (delivered between 1769 and 1790) are remembered for their
sensitivity and perception. In one of these lectures he was of the opinion that "invention,
strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been
previously gathered and deposited in the memory."
Reynolds preferred sketching on the margins of his Latin exercises to studying. He also
copied drawings at every chance. Apprenticed at age of seventeen to Thomas Hudson, a
popular London portrait painter, Reynolds studied with him for three years. The next few
years he divided between Plymouth and London. Then he went to Rome, where he studied the
Italian masters for two years. In the drafty galleries of Rome, Reynolds caught a cold that led
to permanent deafness. In 1752 he returned to London. There he established himself as a
portrait painter, and success came quickly. Nearly every distinguished English family of the
time sat for a Reynolds portrait. The artist became especially well known for his portraits of
women and children. He never married but maintained a splendid London house and was
active in society. In 1769 he was knighted by King George III.
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Lady Elizabeth Delme and her Children, 1780
The Age of Innocence, both by Reynolds
Reynolds' portraits give his subjects an appearance of action, though he posed them in
attitudes that imitated the Italian masters. His use of vivid colours also reflects his study in
Italy. Unfortunately many of his pictures have faded badly with time. In 1789 he lost the sight
of his left eye, which finally forced him into retirement, and on 23 February 1792 he died in
his house in Leicester Fields, London. He was buried in St. Paul´s Cathedral.
Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788), with his quality of rhythmic line, his gift of seizing a
likeness and his love of landscape painting and music, was in every way the antithesis to
Reynolds. Trained entirely in England, he had no wish to visit Italy. Instead of the 'grand
style,' his tastes in portraiture lay in the delicate flickering brushwork and evanescent qualities
of the Rococo. Rococo is a style of design, painting, and architecture dominating the
eighteenth century, often considered the last stage of the Baroque. Developing in the Paris
townhouses of the French aristocracy at the turn of the eighteenth century, Rococo was
elegant and ornately decorative, its mood lighthearted. It gave way to Neo-Classicism. He
preferred landscape painting to portraiture, and the strong Dutch influence in his earliest
works later gave way to spontaneous landscapes composed from models.
Under the influence of Rubens' work Gainsborough painted landscapes which were more
Arcadian in mood and were composed rather than observed, for example: the Harvest Wagon
(1771, Barber Institute, Birmingham); Watering Place (1777, National Gallery, London).
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Watering Place, 1777
Harvest Vagon, 1767
In 1774-1788 he was in London, in a rivalry with Reynolds, but he was the favourite painter
of the Royal Family. His best works have a poetic quality combined with rhythmic line and a
personal technique, for example: Mrs Siddons (1785, National Gallery, London); the Morning
Walk (1785, National Gallery, London). His late popular pictures are an extension of his
interest in landscape (Girl feeding Pigs, 1782; the Cottage Door.) This aspect of picturesque
rustic genre was carried on by George Morland (1763-1804), whose works were popularised
through engravings.
Thomas Gainsborough
Mrs Siddons, 1785
The Morning Walk, 1785, Mr and Mrs Hallet
English landscape painting had its beginnings in the eighteenth century. Ultimately it was to
have considerable influence on the Impressionists. Samuel Scott (1700-1772) painted views
along the Thames at London (Old London Bridge; Old Westminster Bridge.)
Part of Old Westminster Bridge 1750, by Samuel Scott
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Sculpture: The word baroque probably derives from the ancient Portuguese noun "barroco"
which is a pearl that is not round but of unpredictable and elaborate shape. Hence, in informal
usage, the word baroque can simply mean that something is "elaborate", with many details,
without reference to the Baroque styles of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In
Baroque sculpture, groups of figures assumed new importance, and there was a dynamic
movement and energy of human forms - they spiraled around an empty central vortex, or
reached outwards into the surrounding space. For the first time, Baroque sculpture often had
multiple ideal viewing angles. The characteristic Baroque sculpture added extra-sculptural
elements, for example, concealed lighting, or water fountains.
Pieter Scheemaker (1691-1770) of Antwerp and Laurent Delvaux of Ghent carved a number
of tombs in Westminster abbey, but it was not until John Michael Rysbrack from Antwerp
settled in England in 1720, followed by the Frenchman Louis-François Roubiliac in 1732,
that two sculptors of European stature were active in England. The busts and tombs of
Rysbrack and Roubiliac have a power and vitality previously unknown in English sculpture;
they were responsible for the revival that took place in the eighteenth century.
The bust of George II, by Roubiliac F.L. Monument to Sir John Dutton, 1749, marble by Rysbrack
The finest sculpture in England during the eighteenth century was done by a sculptor of
French origin, Louis-François Roubiliac (1705-1762). In 1737 he made his reputation with
his statue of Handel for Vauxhall Gardens; towards 1750 he worked as a modeller at the
Chelsea china factory (fine terra-cotta busts of Alexander Pope, Colly Cibber and Hogarth,
and Martin Folkes (1749). His tombs in Westminster abbey include those of the Second Duke
of Argyll (1748) and Lady Elizabeth Nightingale (1761).
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Bust of Alexander Pope
Tomb of Sir Joseph and Lady Elizabeth Nightingale, 1761
John Michael Rysbrack (1694 - 1770): Flemish-born as Jan Michiel Rijsbrack, one of the
principal sculptors and designers in England in the eighteenth century. Rysbrack studied at
Antwerp, probably in the workshop of Michael van de Voort. In 1720 he established himself
in London, where he lived until his death.
Rysbrack worked in a classical, sometimes eclectic manner, avoiding emphatic gestures,
exaggerated asymmetry, and extremes of illusionism. His work includes sixteen monuments
in Westminster Abbey, London; the splendid equestrian statue of William III in Bristol,
Gloucestershire; tombs in parish churches all over England; and innumerable portrait busts. In
some respects Rysbrack outshone Louis-François Roubiliac, his only rival for preeminence in
England at that time. Pyramidal composition and judicious choice of material are
characteristics of his funeral sculpture.
In Baroque architecture, new emphasis was placed on bold massing, colonnades, domes,
light-and-shade (chiaroscuro - is a term in art for a contrast between light and dark),
'painterly' color effects, and the bold play of volume and void. In interiors, Baroque
movement around and through avoid informed monumental staircases that had no parallel in
previous architecture. In England the culmination of Baroque architecture was embodied in
work by Sir Christopher Wren and Nicholas Hawksmoor, from ca. 1660 to 1725.
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6.4.1.2 The Music of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century England
2. The Gottfried Silbermann organ completed in 1714 for the Cathedral in Freiberg, Saxony
Baroque Music in England (seventeenth - eighteenth century) expresses order, the
fundamental order of the universe. However, it is lively and tuneful. During the early-to-mid
1900s, the term baroque was applied by association to music of the seventeenth and early
eighteenth century, and today the term baroque has come to refer to a very clearly definable
type or genre of music which originated, broadly speaking, around 1600 and came to fruition
between 1700 and 1750.
The music of the 1200s - 1300s is relatively primitive in terms of melody and harmony. If we
move to the 1500s we find a great difference, as Italian music began to blossom and English
composers like Morley who produced the wonderful melodies and surprisingly sensitive
poetry which accompanied them - or vice versa. A major theme underlying music at that time
however was the exploration of form. There was still so much new to discover: new melodic
lines and harmonic progressions to be explored, new combinations of instruments, and new
forms in music such as the fugue, canon, and variations, a popular tune or a chorale. As the
1600s progressed, so these different musical forms took on definite shape, and the period
from 1700 to 1750 can clearly be seen as the "high baroque".
The 1600s proved to be a century of political upheaval and change in England - change from
autocratic to parliamentary monarchy. As the century opened Britain was ruled by a highly
autocratic monarch who would have nothing to do with the young and aspiring parliament.
The showdown came with the trial by parliament and subsequent execution of King Charles I
in 1649. This was followed by an attempt at a republic under Cromwell - which proved to be
chaotic and disastrous. The restored monarchs - Charles II and James II - were still somewhat
reluctant to accept the supremacy of parliament, until parliament itself called upon James's
daughter Mary and her Dutch husband William of Orange to rescue the country from its
political instability. This they did in 1689, reigning jointly thereafter as William III and Mary.
This brief history will explain why, after the cultural vacuum and chaos of the revolution, the
republic and its ensuing years, music would once again flourish as the century drew to a close.
The period of Restoration was dominated by Henry Purcell, who was born in 1659, and
though he was to live a very short life (he died in 1695) he was able to enjoy and make full
use of the renewed flowering of music. Purcell was one of the greatest composers of the
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Baroque period and one of the greatest of all English composers. He devoted much his talent
to writing operas, or rather musical dramas, and incidental stage music; but he would also
write chamber music in the form of harpsichord suites and trio sonatas, and became involved
with the growing London public concert scene. For a young London Musical Society he
produced Odes to celebrate Saint Cecilia's day (the Patron Saint of Music) - which any
music-lover so desirous may celebrate on November 22.
Henry Purcell (1659 - 1695)
As the son of a musician at court, a chorister at the Chapel Royal, and the holder of
continuing royal appointments until his death, Purcell worked exclusively in Westminster for
three different kings over twenty-five years, and facts about Purcell's activities at court are
fairly well documented. Among other works written for the Court, he produced Odes for royal
birthdays, among which is the lively and tuneful "Come ye Sons of Art". Much of the theatre
music consists of songs and instrumental pieces for spoken plays, but during the last five
years of his life Purcell collaborated on five 'semi-operas' in which the music has a large
share, with 'divertissements', songs, choral numbers and dances. His only true opera (i.e. with
music throughout) was Dido and Aeneas, written for a girls' school at Chelsea; despite the
limitations of Nahum Tate's libretto it is among the finest of seventeenth-century operas.
When the Queen Mary (the wife of William III of Orange) died in 1695, Purcell was invited
to provide an ode for the death of his (and the country's) beloved Queen Mary. How perfectly
the occasion leant itself to Purcell's evocative and bitter-sweet music. In November of that
same year Westminster Abbey would also be the setting for Purcell's own funeral, at which
the combined choirs of the Abbey and the Chapel Royal would commemorate the premature
passing of 'the English Orpheus'.
The leading figure in British music of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century was a
naturalized Englishman, Georg Friedrich Händel (1685-1759), who had settled in London in
1712; here once again, royalty had played its influential part.
Handel showed great musical talent at an early age, and his father allowed him to study with a
local organist and composer. At age seventeen, the young Händel went to Hamburg, where he
played violin in the opera orchestra. He was soon composing in the Italian style that he heard
and played, and his first opera, Almira, was a rousing success. The next three years were spent
in Italy, where his operas were extremely popular and where he continued to perfect his
operatic style (he composed fifty operas). Following his early studies in Germany, Händel
went to Italy where he spent more than three years, in Florence, Rome, Naples and Venice. In
Rome he studied with Corelli, and may also have met Vivaldi in Venice on his return.
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Händel left Italy early in 1710 and went to Hanover, where he was appointed Capellmeister to
the Elector, George Louis. The Royal Houses of Britain and Europe had always been closely
inter-related, and the Act of Settlement of 1701 which secured the Protestant succession to the
Crown, made George's mother heiress-presumptive to the throne of Great Britain.
Georg Friedrich Händel (1685-1759) and his handwriting; "Händel is the greatest composer who ever
lived. I would bare my head and kneel at his grave"L..v. Beethoven (1824)
In 1705 George had already been naturalized by Act of Parliament, and in August 1714 the
death of Queen Anne made him King. Händel, who had already visited London and
apparently found it to his liking, was to follow the Elector in adopting British nationality, and
indeed part of Handel's success in London was due to the royal patronage of the Elector of
Hanover, now English King George I, first of the Hanoverian kings. It was for his former
employer that Händel wrote his Water Music.
In 1717 Händel succeeded Pepusch as chapel master to the Duke of Chandos. Händel's
London years were occupied primarily with the writing of Italian operas. After suffering a
stroke and the failure of his operas (largely because of the success of the Beggar's Opera),
Händel wrote oratorios (thirty altogether), including Messiah (1741). Händel's eyesight failed
him in later years and he eventually became completely blind. In addition to operas and
oratorios, Händel wrote Psalms, motets, anthems, passions, cantatas, instrumental chamber
Works, and works for keyboard (primarily harpsichord).
Händel's influence both upon the cultural milieu of his day and upon his younger English
contemporaries can hardly be overstated. It was the beginning of the age of the "Grand Tour,"
when educated and wealthy citizens embarked on the "Grand Tour" to Italy, France, Germany
and The Netherlands. As often as not they returned home full of enthusiasm for the
academies, theatres, opera houses and concert life which they had encountered in Europe.
England, in short, became a welcoming host to foreign virtuosos, impresarios, singers and
composers. As the Hamburg theorist, critic and composer Johann Mattheson noted in 1713
(Das Neu-Eröffnete Orchester): "He who in the present time wants to make a profit out of
music betakes himself to England."
The Classical Period (1750 - 1820) in Europe and England: From roughly 1750 to 1820,
artists, architects, and musicians moved away from the heavily ornamented styles of the
Baroque and the Rococo, and instead embraced a clean, uncluttered style they thought
reminiscent of Classical Greece. The newly established aristocracies were replacing monarchs
and the church as patrons of the arts, and were demanding an impersonal, but tuneful and
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elegant music. Dances such as the minuet and the gavotte were provided in the forms of
entertaining serenades and divertimenti.
It is in this period that many familiar "forms" were conceived, and the music of this time was
often thought of as being abstract and pure rather than depicting anything in particular. Indeed
instrumental music was more common than vocal forms. The concept of a Theme and
Variations reached its zenith in this period, Sonata Form was the foundation of Symphonies,
Concertos and String Quartets as well as Sonatas, and works were not given titles but merely
called things like "Piano Concerto No. 1 in C major". The strict definition of form (and the
concept of music being abstract and detached) was seen as a major constraint by some later
composers, but allowed the great composers of the day the creative tools to build many
acknowledged masterpieces.
The Classical period reached its majestic culmination with the masterful symphonies, sonatas,
and string quartets by the three great composers of the Viennese school: Franz Joseph Haydn,
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Ludwig van Beethoven.
Joseph Haydn, as the first of these three composers, and the most prolific, is thought of as
"the Father of the Symphony" and "the Father of the String Quartet". He can also be thought
of as the father of the sonata form as a means of structuring works. His string quartets and
symphonies in particular display not merely the range of applications of the form, but also the
way to exploit its dramatic potential. It is predominantly Haydn who created the transition to
the development and the transition to the recapitulation, as moments of supreme tension and
dramatic interest. It is also Haydn who enabled a more expansive "contour" for works, by
making every aspect of the harmony of a work implicit in its main theme. This is no small
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innovation, in that it creates a homophonic analog to the polyphonic fugue – a seed of
potential from which the composer could later germinate a range of different effects. Haydn's
variety of dramatic effects and ability to create tension was remarked upon in his own time:
his music was increasingly taken as the standard by which other practice might be judged.
Joseph Haydn is not primarily remembered as a composer of opera, yet the genre occupied a
great deal of his time. During 1770's and 1780's, Haydn ran an opera troupe on behalf of his
employer, Prince Nikolaus Esterházy, which put on up to one hundred and fifty performances
per year. A number of the operas were Haydn's own work. Haydn's operas are only
occasionally performed today. London opera L´anima del filosofo (Orfeo and Euridice) 1791 is Haydn's own version of the Orpheus tale, the plot of a great many operas. Haydn's
only post-Esterházy opera, composed for his 1791 trip to London but never performed there,
due to intrigues. After his patron Prince Nicolaus Eszterházy had died in 1790, Haydn
travelled to London where he received a commission to write several symphonies. The
impresario John Gallini also offered him a contract to write an opera for the King's Theatre
but due to a dispute between King George III and the Prince of Wales he was refused
permission to stage it. As a result, the score was never completed and some music appears to
be missing. L'anima del filosofo remained unperformed until June 9, 1951 when it appeared at
the Teatro della Pergola, Florence with a cast including Maria Callas and Boris Christoff,
under the conductor Erich Kleiber. It has been performed and recorded several times since
then. The opera makes extensive use of the chorus. Musically, the visits to England generated
some of Haydn's best-known work, including the Surprise, Military, Drumroll and London
symphonies, the Rider quartet, and the „Gypsy Rondo“ piano trio. The only misstep in the
venture was an opera, Orfeo ed Euridice, also called L'Anima del Filosofo, which Haydn was
contracted to compose, but whose performance was blocked by intrigues.
The London symphonies, sometimes called the Salomon symphonies after the man who
brought Haydn to London, were composed by Joseph Haydn between 1791 and 1795. They
consist of twelve symphonies numbered 93 to 104. They include:
Symphony No 93 in D major (1791)
Symphony No 94 in G major, The Surprise (1791)
Symphony No 95 in C minor (1791)
Symphony No 96 in D major, The Miracle (1791)
Symphony No 97 in C major (1792)
Symphony No 98 in B flat major (1792)
Symphony No 99 in E flat major (1793)
Symphony No 100 in G major, Military (1793-4)
Symphony No 101 in D major, The Clock (1793-4
Symphony No 102 in B flat major (1794)
Symphony No 103 in E flat major, Drumroll (1795)
Symphony No 104 in D major, London (1795).
Haydn died at the end of May in 1809, shortly after an attack on Vienna by the French army
under Napoleon.
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6.4.2 Literature: From the Restoration to the Romantic Age
This period may be divided into three parts:
The Restoration is characterized by a cliquish culture centering on the court and
deeply influenced by French classical taste. It sustains traditional values and admires
“wit” – a brilliance and quickness of perception combined with a cleverness of
expression.
The Age of Pope – during this second era satire increasingly becomes the dominant
form, and there is great concern for moral analysis.
The Age of Johnson – is called after its most noticeable writer. This was the time of
the rise of the novel, and of increasing demand for descriptions of actual life rather
than of imaginary worlds. Much of the best writing was done in such forms as history,
biography, philosophy, and political debate.
English poems of this period are mixture of ornate “poetic diction” and everyday colloquial
language, carefully shaped into balanced couplets.
Similarly, the prose of the period, though based on conversational forms and striving for
perfect clarity, was subtly structured to give pleasure as well as to communicate ideas. The
first task of writers in this period was to replace the ornate prose of their forefathers with a
clear “plain style” that reflected the spirit and ease of actual speech.
Drama: One of the first things Charles II did was to reopen the theatres, which had been
closed by the Puritans. The Restoration Theatre was very different from the Elizabethan one.
It was a theatre for a court, the nobility, the men and women of fashion. Women´s roles were
now played by actresses, like the famous Nell Gwynn. The most characteristic dramas of the
period were comedies of manners, particularly those of William Congreve and William
Wycherley. William Congreve (1670-1729) wrote some of the most popular English plays of
the Restoration period of the late seventeenth century. By the age of thirty, he had written four
comedies, including Love for Love (premiered in 1695) and The Way of the World (premiered
1700), and one tragedy, The Mourning Bride (1697). These comedies have never been
excelled for their brilliant dialogue. Not until Oscar Wilde produced The Importance of Being
Earnest was the English stage to hear such pleasant prose. William Wycherley (1640-1716)
was a dramatist; born at Clive Hall, of a long established Shropshire family. He was educated
in France and at Oxford but spent most of his life in London, where he displayed a marked
preference for the taverns and bawdy houses of the seedier parts of the capital. His plays,
mostly satirical and sometimes savagely so, include Love in a wood, or St. James's Park
(1672), The gentleman dancing master (1673), The plain dealer (1674) and The country wife
(1675). After publication of his Miscellany poems in 1704 he gained the friendship of Pope,
who went on to revise and edit many of his writings.
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William Wycherley and William Congreve
Poetry: Throughout much of this period there was a preference for public and general themes
rather than private and individual ones. After the great lyric poems of the seventeenth century,
the lyric suddenly fell into abandonment. Poets like William Collins (1721-1759) or William
Cowper (1731-1800) struggled to revive it with only partial success. Not until Robert Burns
and William Blake (1757-1827) who foreshadow the Romantic poets, was the poem again a
major form. Robert Burns (1759-1796) is one of the most famous characters in Scottish
Cultural History. His importance is immense, not only in terms of his fascinating story and his
work……but as a living tradition, carried from generation to generation throughout the
World. Everyone, everywhere, who joins in the celebration of Scotland, Scottish Heritage or
Scottish Culture, will witness references to Robert Burns. Burns' rise to fame began in July
1786 when at the age of twenty-seven, his first work was published by John Wilson at
Kilmarnock in Ayrshire, entitled Poems: Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (1786). Whilst this
book (now known famously as "The Kilmarnock Edition") was the catalyst for his celebrity
status, it was far from being the sole contributing factor. Robert's motivation for publishing
his work was initially financial although undoubtedly, being an egotistical man, he relished
the thought of seeing his poems in print.
Poems: Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (1786) was considered to be one of the greatest poetical
collections ever written.
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His last years were clouded by ill health brought on by the chronic rheumatic heart condition
that eventually killed him at the early age of thirty-seven. His best known poems are: To a
Mouse: This poem wonderfully demonstrates Burns' powers of observation, his deep feeling
for humanity and his gentle emotion. One day whilst ploughing a field, he notices he has cut
through the nest of a small field mouse. This clearly upsets Burns. He then writes down his
thoughts in simple verse, as though writing to the mouse, commenting on the destruction he
had caused, his guilt and his sorrow. He remarks on the comparison between the pitiful
mouse, his own wretched life and human frailty. O´my Luve is like a red, red rose: surely the
most famous love poem and a well-known song, which women particularly enjoy. It is simple,
short and tender. This poem uses simple easily understood language, which possibly has
added to its appeal.
To a Mouse, On Turbiny Her Up In Her Nest With The Plough poem by Robert Burns,
1785 - Standard English Translation:
Small, sleek, cowering, timorous beast,
O, what a panic is in your breast!
You need not start away so hasty
With hurrying scamper!
I would be loath to run and chase you,
With murdering plough-staff.
I'm truly sorry man's dominion
Has broken Nature's social union,
And justifies that ill opinion
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth born companion
And fellow mortal!
I doubt not, sometimes, but you may steal;
What then? Poor beast, you must live!
An odd ear in twenty-four sheaves
Is a small request;
I will get a blessing with what is left,
And never miss it.
Your small house, too, in ruin!
It's feeble walls the winds are scattering!
And nothing now, to build a new one,
Of coarse grass green!
And bleak December's winds coming,
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Both bitter and keen!
You saw the fields laid bare and wasted,
And weary winter coming fast,
And cozy here, beneath the blast,
You thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel plough past
Out through your cell.
That small bit heap of leaves and stubble,
Has cost you many a weary nibble!
Now you are turned out, for all your trouble,
Without house or holding,
To endure the winter's sleety dribble,
And hoar-frost cold.
But Mouse, you are not alone,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often askew,
And leaves us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!
Still you are blest, compared with me!
The present only touches you:
But oh! I backward cast my eye,
On prospects dreary!
And forward, though I cannot see,
I guess and fear!
William Blake (1757-1827): one of his earliest biographers called him the “most spiritual of
artists.” His revolt was against the intellectual patternmaking of the eighteenth century. His
achievement – unrecognized in his own time – was a discovery in the Romantic movement.
Blake´s trade as an engraver was an important means of livelihood, for his pictures and his
poetry were not widely accepted during his lifetime. His talent for sketching is seen in his
illustrations not only of his own poems but of specially decorated editions of Milton´s
Paradise Lost, Dante´s Divine Comedy… In his Songs of Innocence (1789), well known
poems are “The Lamb”, The Chimney Sweeper” and Songs of Experience (1794), well
known poem is “The Tiger”, A Poison Tree”… In these two great works this great poet of
contraries pointed out the need for both childhood´s innocence and the wisdom – however,
painful and disillusioning – gained by experience. These two works contain some of the most
beautiful lyrics in the English language. William Wordsworth commented on this
extraordinary artist and writer: “There is something in the madness of this man which
interests me more than the sanity of Lord Byron or Walter Scott.”
The two groups of lyrics in his Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience depict, as Blake
said in 1794, “the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul”. The speakers in the Songs of
Innocence are children or childlike, and the songs express their emotions and their vision. To
them the cosmos is one of “Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love” received and given by all creatures
and by their Creator, who himself became a child and is called a Lamb. Although Blake´s
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lamb and tiger can be thought of as real animals, their function as symbols should be
emphasized. The lamb is used as a symbol of the innocence of childhood, the tiger mainly as a
symbol of the fearful power of worldly experience.
William Blake
His self-portrait and his illustration of Dante’s Divine Comedy
Between 1789 and 1800, when the Blake’s moved to Felpham, Blake was ferociously active,
composing The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790-93), The French Revolution (1791),
America: A Prophecy (1793) etc. Uniting all of these was an extraordinary mixture of
apocalyptic vision, political fervour, revisions of Christian theology and psychological
exploration. Part of the reason for this extraordinary creative energy was that Blake felt forced
to work through his responses to the political changes in Europe and America in this period.
The American Revolution of 1775 and the Declaration of Independence in 1783 was, for
Blake, just one example of youthful energetic rebellion against the forces of Autocratic
Authority.
Songs of the Innocence
Tyger of Wrath (Blake´s illustrations)
In 1800 Blake moved to West Sussex and spent nearly three idyllic years there, until the
dramatic events which led to him being charged with sedition: in 1803 he was charged, at
Chichester, with high treason (for being too vocal in his responses to a soldier he found
urinating in his garden). That year Blake returned to London, where he lived until his death in
1827. Yet the final twenty-four years of his life Blake was producing voluminous amounts of
illustrated work and engraving, including the monumental work Milton (begun in Felpham
but finished only in 1808 and Jerusalem, 1804-1820), and illustrated versions of Dante and
The Book of Job. Blake died in 1827.
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6.4.2.1 The Eighteenth Century English Novel
The novel was a comparatively late arrival in English literature; Italy, Spain, and France
produced what we are entitled to call novels long before England did. However, as soon as
English literature got hold of the novel, in the 1700´s it became famous for its fiction and
influenced writers in many countries.
Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) English novelist, pamphleteer, and journalist, author of Robinson
Crusoe (1719), a story of a man shipwrecked alone on an island. Along with Samuel
Richardson, Defoe is considered the founder of the English novel. Defoe was one of the first
to write stories about believable characters in realistic situations using simple prose. He
achieved literary immortality when in April 1719 he published Robinson Crusoe, which was
based partly on the memoirs of voyagers and castaways, such as Alexander Selkirk, who
spent on his island four years and four months. The first edition was printed in London by a
publisher of popular books, W. Taylor. No author's name was given. At first Defoe had
troubles in finding a publisher for the book. Employing a first-person narrator and apparently
genuine journal entries, Defoe created a realistic frame for the novel, which distinguished it
from its predecessors. The account of a shipwrecked sailor was a comment both on the human
need for society and the equally powerful impulse for solitude. But it also offered a dream of
building a private kingdom, a self-made Utopia, and being completely self-sufficient. By
giving a vivid reality to a theme with large mythic implications, the story have since
fascinated generations of readers as well as authors like Jules Verne, R. L. Stevenson, and
other creators of Robinsonade stories.
At the age of 62 he published Moll Flanders, A Journal of the Plague Year, and Colonel Jack.
His last great work of fiction, Roxana, appeared in 1724. Defoe's choice of a female
protagonist in Moll Flanders reflected his interest in the female experience. Moll is born in
Newgate, where her mother is under sentence of death for theft. Her sentence is commuted to
transportation to Virginia. The abandoned child is educated by a gentlewoman. Moll suffers
romantic disillusionment, when she is ruined at the hands of a cynical male seducer. She
becomes a whore and a thief, but finally she gains the status of a gentlewoman through the
spoils of a successful colonial plantation. Considered one of the great English novels, Defoe's
book follows Moll Flanders as she struggles to avoid the deadly poverty of seventeenthcentury England. From a prison-birth to final prosperity, Moll reckons (considers) love, theft
and prostitution in terms of profit and loss and emerges as an extraordinary character.
This vivid saga of an irresistible and notorious heroine - her high misdemeanors and
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delinquencies (criminalities), her varied careers as a prostitute, a charming and faithful wife, a
thief, and a convict - endures today as one of the liveliest, most candid records of a woman's
progress through the hypercritical labyrinth of society ever recorded.
Samuel Richardson was another novelist who came to prominence during this period.
Richardson's literary career began after he was in his fifties and well-established as a printer,
when two booksellers proposed that he should compile a volume of model letters for unskilled
letter writers. While preparing this, Richardson became fascinated by the project, and a small
sequence of letters from a daughter in service, asking her father's advice when threatened by
her master's advances, formed the germ of Pamela; or Virtue Rewarded (1740-41). Pamela
was a huge success and became something of a cult novel. By May 1741 it reached a fourth
edition and was dramatized in Italy by Goldoni, as well as in England. The popularity of
Pamela was mainly due to the effective technique of revealing the story through letters
written by the protagonist. Because this was combined with the moralistic nature of the story,
which made it acceptable for the century's rapidly growing middle class, the book became a
publishing sensation. The epistolary form was an innovation that was a source of great pride
for Richardson. Pamela thus helped reinvent a literary genre that had developed a very
questionable reputation. Nevertheless, many contemporary readers were shocked by the more
graphic scenes and by some questionable behaviours of the characters. The upper class is not
always portrayed in a positive light, and some have regarded Pamela as a scheming young
woman trying to gain higher social status by making a nobleman marry her.
Richardson's other most popular work, also regarded today as his best work, is Clarissa or,
the History of a Young Lady, published in 1747-8. This novel is a tragic story of a girl who
runs off with her seducer, but is later abandoned.
Samuel Richardson surrounded by his 2nd family
from Pamela
Richardson’s novels were enormously popular in their day. Although he has been accused of
being a verbose and sentimental storyteller, his emphasis on detail, his psychological insights
into women, and his dramatic technique have earned him a prominent place among English
novelists. His last novel, The History of Sir Charles Grandison, appeared in 1753-4.
Richardson received great fame for his writing and had many admirers. He died in 1761, and
is buried in St. Bride's Church, London.
Three more English novelists were very famous during eighteenth century, namely Henry
Fielding (1707-1754) who detested Richardson with his novel Shamela (1741) and then in
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The Adventures of Joseph Andrews (1742). Fielding´s masterpiece is The History of Tom
Jones (1749), which is both a magnificent panorama of eighteenth century life and the
expression, unusual in the novel, of a powerful intellect, quick to observe all the ironies,
absurdities, and hypocrisies of social life. The History of Tom Jones is considered one of the
greatest comic novels in English. The author introduces readers to a young orphan Tom,
brought up by munificent Mr. Allworthy along with young Master Blifil. A complex story of
love and misapprehensions, the narrative also comments on the English class structure and
society. Misunderstanding between characters is created to add to the satire.
Tom Jones (1707-1754)
Selection from Henry Fielding´s The History of Tom Jones, Book I. Containing as Much of
the Birth of the Foundling as Is Necessary or Proper to Acquaint the Reader with in the
Beginning of This History. Chapter X. The Hospitality of Allworthy with a Short Sketch of
the Characters of Two Brothers, a Doctor and a Captain, Who Were Entertained by That
Gentleman:
NEITHER Mr. Allworthy’s house, nor his heart, were shut against any part of mankind,
but they were both more particularly open to men of merit. To say the truth, this was the
only house in the kingdom where you was sure to gain a dinner by deserving it.
1
Above all others, men of genius and learning shared the principal place in his favour;
and in these he had much discernment: for though he had missed the advantage of a
learned education, yet, being blest with vast natural abilities, he had so well profited by a
vigorous though late application to letters, and by much conversation with men of
eminence in this way, that he was himself a very competent judge in most kinds of
literature.
2
It is no wonder that in an age when this kind of merit is so little in fashion, and so
slenderly provided for, persons possessed of it should very eagerly flock to a place where
they were sure of being received with great complaisance; indeed, where they might
enjoy almost the same advantages of a liberal fortune as if they were entitled to it in their
own right; for Mr. Allworthy was not one of those generous persons who are ready most
bountifully to bestow meat, drink, and lodging on men of wit and learning, for which they
3
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expect no other return but entertainment, instruction, flattery, and subserviency; in a
word, that such persons should be enrolled in the number of domestics, without wearing
their master’s cloathes, or receiving wages.
On the contrary, every person in this house was perfect master of his own time: and as
he might at his pleasure satisfy all his appetites within the restrictions only of law, virtue,
and religion; so he might, if his health required, or his inclination prompted him to
temperance, or even to abstinence, absent himself from any meals, or retire from them,
whenever he was so disposed, without even a sollicitation to the contrary: for, indeed,
such sollicitations from superiors always savour very strongly of commands. But all here
were free from such impertinence, not only those whose company is in all other places
esteemed a favour from their equality of fortune, but even those whose indigent
circumstances make such an eleemosynary abode convenient to them, and who are
therefore less welcome to a great man’s table because they stand in need of it.
4
Among others of this kind was Dr. Blifil, a gentleman who had the misfortune of losing
the advantage of great talents by the obstinacy of a father, who would breed him to a
profession he disliked. In obedience to this obstinacy the doctor had in his youth been
obliged to study physic, or rather to say he studied it; for in reality books of this kind
were almost the only ones with which he was unacquainted; and unfortunately for him,
the doctor was master of almost every other science but that by which he was to get his
bread; the consequence of which was, that the doctor at the age of forty had no bread to
eat.
5
Such a person as this was certain to find a welcome at Mr. Allworthy’s table, to whom
misfortunes were ever a recommendation, when they were derived from the folly or
villany of others, and not of the unfortunate person himself. Besides this negative merit,
the doctor had one positive recommendation;—this was a great appearance of religion.
Whether his religion was real, or consisted only in appearance, I shall not presume to
say, as I am not possessed of any touchstone which can distinguish the true from the
false.
Laurence Sterne (1713-1768) was very popular in his own time. His original method,
ruthlessly cutting out everything that is not essential to our understanding of a character and a
situation, is very “modern,” like his extremely artful, intimate, and conversational style. His
humour is “modern” too. His masterpiece is Tristram Shandy (1760) – a wonderful study of a
family in which nobody understands anybody else.
Tobias Smollett (1721-1771), wrote long novels full of rough humour and knockabout
incidents. His masterpiece The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771) appeared shortly before
his death. He had a very considerable influence upon Dickens when he was younger.
189
Themes for Oral Examination: English Cultural Studies
1st graders, Winter Semester
1. THE OLD ENGLISH PERIOD (5th -11th century)
Sub-Roman Britain, Anglo-Saxon Life, Anglo-Saxon Civilization, King Arthur, The
Establishment of Christianity, Anglo-Saxon Literature: Beowulf; St Gildas; Northumbrian
Literature: St Augustine, Venerable Bede, Caedmon; The Decline of Northumbrian
Literature: Alfred the Great.
2. THE GROWTH OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
Old English (500-1100 AD), The Norman Conquest and Middle English (1100-1500), Early
Modern English (1500-1800), Late Modern (1800-Present)
3. THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD (1066-1485)
The Norman Conquest, Land and Feudal System, Lady Godiva, Medieval Church, Medieval
Life, Magna Charta, The Crusades, The Hundred Years´ War, Medieval Literature: Geoffrey
Chaucer (1340-1400) Canterbury Tales, Sir Thomas Malory (1405-1471).
4. ANGLO-SAXON AND MEDIEVAL ARCHITECTURE
Anglo-Saxon Architecture (5th – 11th c.), Medieval Architecture (11th – 16th c.): Norman
Architecture, Gothic Architecture; Celtic, Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Art (Painting and
Sculpture): Christianity and Anglo-Saxon Tradition, Anglo-Saxon Embroidery, Gothic
Painting and Sculpture.
5. ANGLO-SAXON AND MEDIEVAL MUSIC
Celtic Music, Anglo-Saxon Music (500-1066), Gregorian and Ambrosian Chant, Minstrelsy,
Late Medieval and early Renaissance: Music and composers: Leonel Power (1370-1445),
William Byrd (1540-1623), English Madrigal School: Thomas Morley (1557-1602), Middle
Age Instruments, The Elizabethan Stringed Instruments.
6. THE RENAISSANCE IN EUROPE AND ENGLAND
Renaissance in Europe, Renaissance in England: Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, Thomas More
and his “Utopia”.
7. ELIZABETHAN TASTE AND ATTITUDES
Characteristics of the Elizabethan Age, Elizabethan Literary Achievements, The NonDramatic Poets of the Elizabethan Age: Edmund Spenser (1557-1599) The Faerie
Queene,Comparison between Chaucer and Spencer; Sir Paul sidney (1554-1586);
Elizabethan Drama: William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Elizabethan Architecture and
Playhouses.
190
Themes for Oral Examination: English Cultural Studies
1st graders, Summer Semester
1. THE JACOBEAN ERA (1603-1625)
Transition to the New and Turbulent Century, Literature of the Jacobean Era: John Donne
(1572-1631) Holly Sonnets X, Ben Johnson (1573-1637), The King James Bible (1611).
2. CHARLES I, CIVIL WAR, THE PROTECTORATE (1625-1660)
Charles I on Van Dyck´s Paintings; Puritan Movement, John Milton (1608-1674),
Paradise Lost; Stuart London: Inigo Jones (1573-1652), The Great Plague (1665), The
Great Fire of London (1666), Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1723).
3. THE RESTORATION AND 18th CENTURY
The Political Background: From Charles II (1660-1685) to Hannovers: George III (17601820); England in the 18th century, Restoration and Scientific Age: Sir Isaac Newton
(1642-1727), William Harvey (1578-1657), John Lock (1632-1704): An Essay
Concerning Human Understanding (1693).
4. AN AGE OF ELEGANCE
The Arts: 18th century Furniture and Interior: Thomas Chippendale (1718-1779), Thomas
Sheraton (1751-1806), Robert Adam (1728-1792); English Art in the 17-18th century: Sir
James Thornhill (1675-1734), Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), Sir Anthony van Dyck
(1599-1641), Nicolas Hilliard (1547-1619), William Hogarth (1697-1764);Leading
Classist Portraitists: Sir Joshua Reynold (1723-1792), Thomas Gainsborough (17271788); Sculpture: John M. Rysbrack (1694-1770), Louis Francois Roubiliac (1705-1762).
5. THE MUSIC OF THE 17th and 18th CENTURY ENGLAND
Baroque Music in 17th – 18th century England: Henry Purcell (1659-1695), G. F. Handel
(1685-1759); The Classical Period in Europe and England: Joseph Haydn.
6. LITERATURE: FROM THE RESTORATION TO THE ROMANTIC AGE
Poetry: Robert Burns (1759-1796): To a Mouse; William Blake (1757-1827); The 18th
century novel: Daniel Defoe (1660-1731): Robinson Crusoe, Samuel Richardson, Henry
Fielding (1707-1754) The History of Tom Jones (1749).
191
Recommended Literature for Students:
1.
2.
3.
4.
BURGESS, Anthony.1998. English Literature. Addison Wesley: Longman Limited.
McDOWALL, David. 1989. An Illustrated History of Britain. Harlow: Longman.
SOUTHGATE, G.W.1946: An Introduction to English History. Volume 1.
HALE, John. 1994: The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance, Atheneum, New
York.
5. HRČKOVÁ, Naďa. 2003. Dejiny hudby I., Orman.
6. HRČKOVÁ, Naďa. 2004. Dejiny hudby II. Ikar.
7. O´DRISCOLL, James. 1995. Britain: The Country and Its People. Oxford.
8. JOHNSON, Paul. 2004. Dejiny renesance. Barrister and Principal.
9. DAICHES, David – JEWETT, Arno – HAVIGHURST, Walter – SEARLES, John.
1965. English literature from the Old Period to The Twentieth Century. Houghton
Mifflin Company. Boston.
10. PERRY, M. et al. 1089. Western Civilisation: Ideas, Politics and Society. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin Co.
11. DIXON, A. 1996. A History of British Art. London: BBC Books.
192
BIBLIOGRAPHY
GALPIN, Canon. 1965. Old English Instruments of Music, 4th edition, New York: Barnes and
Noble Inc.
LEFFERTS, Peter M. 1998. Music: History and Theory “Medieval England: An
Encyclopedia”. New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 529-533.
1993. ´Shakespeare´, in The Cambridge School Shakespeare. Ed. Rex Gibson. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
BROWN, Ivor. 1960. Shakespeare in His Time. New Jersey: Thomas Nelson and Sons.
HUSSEY, Maurice. 1972. The World of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries. New York.
Viking Press.
DODD, A.H. 1974. Elizabethan England. New York. G.P. Puritan´s Sons.
FORD, Boris. 1988. The Cambridge Cultural History of Britain. New York Press Syndicate
of the University of Cambridge.
DENVIR, Bernard: 1988. From the Middle Ages to the Stuarts: Art, Design, and Society,
before 1689. London, Longman.
FARMER, Norman K. 1984. Poets and the Visual Arts in Renaissance England. Austin:
University of Texas Press.
http://tudorhistory.org/henry7/...
http://www.blakearchive.org/blake/about-blake.html.
http://www.britainexpress.com
http://www.theatrehistory.com/british/bellinger
BAUGH, Alfred C. and CABLE, Thomas. 2002. A History of the English Language, the Fifth
Edition, Prentice Hall.
HODGES, Richard. 1989. The Anglo-Saxon Achievement. Duckworth.
CAMPBELL, James. 1991. The Anglo-Saxons, Penguin, pp. 30-40.
1932. Nennius´s Chronological Chapter, in Antiquity 6, pp. 82-84.
1991. The Historical Arthur, Charles-Edwards, Thomas in The Arthur of the Welsh: The
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1984. Gildas´s Education and the Latin Culture of Sub-Roman Britain, Lapige,
193
KELSEY, Sean. 2003. A Trial of Charles I. In English Historical Review, Vol. 118, No 477,
pp. 583-616.
SALWAY, Peter. 1981. Roman Britain. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Michael in Gildas “New
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THOMPSON, E.A. 1986. Who was Saint Patrick? New York. St. Martin´s.
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KENYON, J.P. 1978. Stuart England, in The Pelican History of England. Penguin Books.
http://www.louisville.edu/-bscurr01/christia/chrcal.html
Chambers Biographical Dictionary, ed. Una McGovern and Melanie Perry. 2003. Edinburgh:
Chambers Harrap.
BLAIR, Peter Hunter. 1977. An Introduction to Anglo-Saxon England. 2nd edition, London,
Cambridge.
The Annotated Milton: Complete English Poems. 1999. edited by Burton Raffael, Bantam
Classic, Random House.
English palaces available on: http://www.theheritagetrail.co.uk/royal%palaces
English architecture available on:
http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings;
http://www.netlondon.com/places/castles_and_palaces/castles
St Augustine of Canterbury from Christdesert Monastery site: http://christdesert.org
The Mission of St Augustine of Canterbury to the English (AD 197-604) available on:
http://users.aol.com/butrousch/augustine/
THOMAS, David. 1989. Restoration and Georgian England, 1660-1788. Cambridge
University Press.
HUME, Robert D. 1988. Henry Fielding and the London Theatre: 1728-1737. Oxford:
Clarendon.
HART, Michael. 2000. The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History.
Citadel.
Internet Modern History Sourcebook: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/modsbook.html
Encyclopaedia of Informal Education: www.infed.org/thinkers/et-marx.htm.
194
SHIRLEY, John W., and HOENIGER, David. 1985. Science and the Arts in the Renaissance.
Washington, D.C: Folger Books.
ALLANDYCE, Nicol. 1952-9. A History of English Drama 1600-1900. 6 vol. Cambridge
University Press.
STEVENS, John E. 1961 Music and Poetry in the Early Tudor Court. London: Methuen.
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Pendragon Press.
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Literature, and Music, 1300-1830. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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London: Weidenfeld.
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Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Murdoch, John, et al. 1981. The English Miniature. Exhibition catalogue. New Haven: Yale
University Press.
Renaissance and Baroque architecture and sculpture available on:
http://www.greatbuildings.com/types/styles/renaissance.html
http://www.lib.virginia.edu/dic/colls/arh102/index.html
http://arthist.cla.umn.edu/aict/html/renbrq.html
HUNTINGTON, Fletcher R. 1916. A History of English Literature. Boston: Richard G.
Badger. Medieval Drama and Plays pp. 85-91.
ACKROYD, Peter. 1992. English Music. Knopf, First American Trade ed edition.
BIGGS, Murray. 1991. Arts of Performance in Elizabethan and Early Stuart Drama: Essays
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HAMILTON, Mary. 1996. A-Z of Opera. Wordsworth Editions Ltd.
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1680-1768. Yale University Press.
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HOPPIN, Richard H. 1978. Medieval Music. New York, W.W. Norton & Co.
195
CALDWELL, John. 1991. The Oxford History of English Music. Vol 1 – From the
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196
Názov:
English Cultural Studies I in European Cultural Context
Anglické kultúrne štúdiá I. v európskom kultúrnom kontexte
Autor:
PaedDr. Eva Králová
Recenzenti: Prof. PhDr. Larisa Anatoljevna Sugay, DrSc. (RF)
PaedDr. Olga Martin (USA)
Rozsah:
197 strán
Náklad:
50 ks
Vydanie:
prvé
Formát:
CD-ROM
Vydavateľ: Univerzita Mateja Bela, Fakulta humanitných vied Banská Bystrica
ISBN 978-80-8083-567-5
EAN 9788080835675
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