2.

Elizabethan prose and poetry

Elizabethan literature
refers to bodies of work produced during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603), and is
one of the most splendid ages of English literature. In addition to drama and the theatre, it saw
a flowering of poetry, with new forms like the sonnet, the Spenserian stanza, and
dramatic blank verse, as well as prose, including historical chronicles, pamphlets, and the first
English novels. Major writers include William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, Christopher
Marlowe, Richard Hooker, Ben Jonson, Philip Sidney and Thomas Kyd.
The Wars of the Roses (1453-85) between two rival branches of the royal House of
Plantagenet: the houses of Lancaster and York. A new dynasty emerged from the wars: the
Tudors.
The greatest of the Tudor Monarchs was Henry VIII. (1509-47) who made his own Anglican
Church of which he was the head (England became Protestant). The Virgin Mary’s worship
is diminished (later on, Elizabeth, “the virgin queen,” replaces her).
Henry’s one son and two daughters became King Edward VI. (died at the age of 15, in 1553),
Queen Mary I. (1553-58), and Queen Elizabeth I. (1558-1603).
The Routledge History of Literature in English: Britain and Ireland: “New worlds, both
geographical and spiritual, are the key to the Renaissance, the ‘rebirth’ of learning and
culture, which reached its peak in Italy in the early 16th century and in Britain during the reign
of queen Elizabeth.”

Historical context
Elizabeth I presided over a vigorous culture that saw notable accomplishments in the arts,
voyages of discovery, the "Elizabethan Settlement" that created the Church of England, and
the defeat of military threats from Spain.
During her reign, a London-centred culture, both courtly and popular, produced great poetry
and drama. English playwrights combined the influence of the Medieval theatre with
the Renaissance's rediscovery of the Roman dramatists, Seneca, for tragedy,
and Plautus and Terence, for comedy. Italy was an important source for Renaissance ideas in
England and the linguist and lexicographer John Florio (1553–1625), whose father was
Italian, a royal language tutor at the Court of James I, who had furthermore brought much of
the Italian language and culture to England. He also translated the works of Montaigne from
French into English.

Prose
Two of the most important Elizabethan prose writers were John Lyly (1553 or 1554 – 1606)
and Thomas Nashe (November 1567 – c. 1601). Lyly is an English writer, poet, dramatist,
playwright, and politician, best known for his books Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit (1578)
and Euphues and His England (1580). Lyly's mannered literary style, originating in his first
books, is known as euphuism. Lyly must also be considered and remembered as a primary
influence on the plays of William Shakespeare, and in particular the romantic comedies.
Lyly's play Love's Metamorphosis is a large influence on Love's Labour's Lost,
[5]
and Gallathea is a possible source for other plays. Nashe is considered the greatest of the
English Elizabethan pamphleteers. He was a playwright, poet, and satirist, who is best known
for his novel The Unfortunate Traveller.
George Puttenham (1529–1590) was a 16th-century English writer and literary critic. He is
generally considered to be the author of the influential handbook on poetry and rhetoric, The
Arte of English Poesie (1589).

Johny Lyly
 born in Kent, Englang 1553 – 1606
 was dramatist, courtier, parliamentarian, English writer and had quite the distinctive
literary style
 Eupheus: The anotomy of Wit was his most monumental work, it was didactic
romance, was followed by Eupheus and his England,
 wrote several comedies: Endymion, Campsaspe, Sapho and Phao, Gallathea, Midas,
Mother Bombie

Thomas Nashe
 playwright, satirist, poet, significant pamphleteer
 most famous is his novel The Unfortunate Traveller
 Pierce Penniless – tall tale, prose satire, published in 1592, very popular pamphlet,
complex story with wits, anecdotes, latin phrases and such
 The choise of Valentines, The Terrors of the Night

Poetry
 mostly sonnets from Italy, translated from Petrarch (Francesco Petrarcha) – his
sonnets consist of octave (abba abba) followed by a turn (volta) in a sense by a sestet
with various rhyme schemes – this affected English renaissance poets
 literary styles were influenced by Renaissance humanism
 later in poetry the English sonnet came to be with 3 quatrains and a closing couplet

Sir Thomas Wyatt – English politican, ambassador, lyric poet

 Wyatt experimented in stanza forms including the rondeau, epigrams, terza
rima, ottava rima songs, and satires, as well as with monorime, triplets with refrains,
quatrains with different length of line and rhyme schemes, quatrains with codas, and
the French forms of douzaine and treizaine.
 imitated Petrarcha’s sonnets
 master of iambic tetrameter, Alexandrine (12-syllable iambic line) and fourteener (14-
syllable iambic line)
 admired works of Geoffrey Chaucer
 They flee from Me – autobiographical poetry work
 Egerton Manuscript - 123 texts, collection of personal selection of his own poems and
translations
 Edmund Spenser
 The Faerie Queen – epic poem and fantastical allegory of the Tudor Dynasty and
Elizabeth I.
 Shepheardes Calender – first major work, pastroal poems, each poem represents
month in a year, nature inspired
 in his works he used distinctive verse form – Spenserian stanza (iambic pentameter
with final line iambic hexameter),
Sir Philip Sidney
 English poet, courtier, scholar and soldier, one of the most prominent figures of the
elizabethan age
 Astrophil and Stella – English sonnet sequence with 108 sonnets and 11 songs, used
petrarchan rhyme scheme, love sonnets
 An apology for poetry (The Defence of Poesy) – literary criticism, 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.
Willam Shakespeare – Sonnets
 Sonnet = 14-line poem that rhymes in particulat patter (for shakespear i tis:
abab,cdcd, efef, gg + final couplet used to summarize previous 12 lines)
 the rhymic pattern of the sonnets is imabic (metrical foor consisting of one stressed
syllable and one unstressed syllable) pentameter – shakespeare uses 5 of these in
each line making it pentameter
 first 126 sonnets are believed to be addressed to a man (aka fair youth) and the rest
addressed to a woman (aka the dark lady)
 154 sonnets in total
 Basic themese within sonnets: 1-17 = Procreation of Fair Youth, 18-126
Friendship of Fair Youth, 78 – 86 Sick Muse/Rival Poet, 127 – 154 Love of Dark
Lady
 All sonnets are about love, nature, time, art, immortality, philosophy and human
emotion
 We can also find praise, absence, longing, vision, beauty, death, self doubt,
atuobiographical hinty, arrogance, lust, jealousy and human failing in these
sonnets
 motives: Time is the biggest enemy of love, time destroys love because its beauty
starts to fade
 symbols: flowers and trees – they appear throughout the sonnets to illustrate the
passage of time, the aging process

 The Fair youth/Lovely Boy/Young man – sonnets 1-126 =

o Sonnets 1-17 have a specific message imploring marriage and offspring!!
Taken as a whole these seventeen poems are saying: Time waits for no
man, even a beautiful man! Marry! Have children! Then when you start
aging, your kids will still retain your own youthful beauty.
o There's an urgency in some of these poems that sometimes borders on the
desperate. It's as if the poet is demanding the young man get married as
soon as possible, to start a family. To end the agony of the ecstasy so to
speak, it would be better for all if the young man simply hitched up with a
female and sowed his seed.

o As to the reasons why Shakespeare was so adamant about his cause, well,
he must have been in love, or, as some think, sponsored by someone to
write such verses.