THE RENAISSANCE
The Beginning
(1400 – 1550)
The End
(1625 – 1660)
The Acme
(1559 – 1625)
► The
Beginning
- a revolution of thought:
◦ arts
◦ letters
- an intellectual movement:
◦ Western Europe
. Italy: Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio
. Greek: Plato, Homer, Sophocles
- the invention of printing (1450)
- the outbreak of the Reformation:
◦ translations
- the revival of Learning:
◦ essays:
. Sir Thomas More (1478 – 1535):
Utopia (1516)
the true prologue to the
Renaissance
◦ poetry:
. Thomas Wyatt (1503 -1542):
Petrarchan sonnets
an octave + sestet
abba abba cdc dcc
. Henry Howard/Earl of Surrey (1517 – 1547):
English Sonnet
three quatrains + a couplet
abab cdcd efef gg
◦ drama:
. Nicholas Udall
Comedy
Ralph Roister Doister (1533)
. Thomas Norton
Tragedy
Gorboduc or Ferrex and Porrex (1562)
. Thomas Sackville (1536 – 1608)
The Mirror for Magistrates
The Acme of the Renaissance /
the Elizabethan Age
▪ Poetry
1. Edmund Spenser (1552 – 1599)
- Shepherd’s Calendar (1579)
- Fairie Queene (1589 – 1596)
Spenserian stanza: 8 lines + 1
iambic pentameter
ababbcbc + alexandrine c
- Amoretti (1595)
- Epithalamion
- Prothalamion
2. Sir Philip Sidney (1554 – 1586):
- Astrophel
- Stella
- Arcadia
- Defence of Poesie (an essay)
3. Sir Walter Raleigh (1552 – 1618):
- The Discovery of the Empire of Guiana
- History of yhe World
4. Thomas Campion (1567 – 1620):
- songs
5. Michael Drayton (1563 -1631):
- songs
 Drama
Precursors of Shakespeare:
1. John Lily (1554 – 1606)
- Euphues
- Endymion (myth)
2. George Peele (1558 – 1597)
- David and Bethsabe (old mistery)
3. Robert Green (1560 – 1592)
- Friar Bacon and Friar Bangay (love story)
- James IV (history)
4. Thomas Lodge (1558 – 1625)
- A Looking Glass for London and England
(+Green)
- Rosalinde (pastoral romance)
5. Thomas Nash (1567 – 1601):
- The Life of Jack Wilton (1594)
picaresque novel
6. Thomas Dekker (1570 – 1632):
- The Bachelor’s Banquet (tragic comedy)
7. Thomas Kyd (1558 – 1594):
- The Tragedy of Blood / The Tragedy of
Revenge
- Spanish Tragedy (a pro-Shakespearean
Hamlet)
8. Christopher Marlowe (1564 – 1593):
- Tamburlaine ( 1587)
- Doctor Faustus (1588)
- The Jew of Malta (1590)
- Edward II (1591)
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
(1564 – 1616)
 Concerning the Form:
- Blank verse
- Heroic couplets
 Concerning the Plot:
The idea and the subject of the story are taken from
- the history
- novels (esp. Italy and France)
- romances
-daily life
- heroes from England’s history
 Style of Writing:
- poetic drama
- beauty, spontaneity and passion
to strictness of order
- formal and dignified language of
the classics
- followed the fashion of the time
 Concerning the extent of work:
- 37 plays:
16 comedies
10 tragedies
11 historical
- 2 long narrative poems
- 154 sonnets + other poems
Shakespeare’s Plays
 the Brilliant Apprentice (26 – 30):
- 1590-1594:
Venus and Adonis (1593)
Lucrece (1594)
King Henry
Love Labour’s Lost
The Comedy of Errors (15921594)
Two Gentlemen of Verona
 The Successful Craftsman (30 – 36)
- 1594-1600:
Midsummer Night’s Dream
Much Ado about Nothing
As You Like It
Twelfth Night
Merchant of Venice
Richard II (1596)
Henry V (1598-99)
Romeo and Juliet
Julius Caesar (1598-99)
Taming of the Shrew (1594-97)
Marry Wives of Windsor (1597-1600)
 The Accomplished Master (36 – 43)
- 1600 - 1607:
Hamlet (1600-01)
All’s Well that Ends Well (160004)
Troilus and Cressida (1601-03)
Measure to Measure (1603-04)
Othelo (1604-05)
King Lear (1605-06)
Macbeth (1605-06)
 The Ease of Genius (43 – 49)
- 1607 – 1613:
Antony and Cleopatra (160708)
Timon of Athens (1608-10)
Pericles
Coriolanus
Cymbeline
The Winter’s Tale (1610-11)
The Tempest (1611-12)
Henry VIII (1612-13)
The Great Art of
Shakespeare
 The universality of his genius:
tragedies
comedies
historical plays
narrative verse
sonnets
 His profound insight into the psychology of man, and his
characters are the real men and women with complex
personality
 His characters are as a rule so well conceived
 Enormous dramatic tension
dramatic irony
 The dialogue form
highest perfection in a complete
harmony of poetry and drama
Shakespeare’s
Contemporaries
George Chapman (translator of Homer)
- a pleasant wit
- a sober manner
- a graceful style of in comedies:
1. Al Fooles (1605)
2. Monsieur d’Olive (1606)
3. The Gentleman Usher (1606)
- tragedies:
1. Bussy d’Ambois (1598)
2. The Revenge of Bussy d’Ambois (1613)
3. Conspiracie and Tragedie of Charles (1608)
4. Duke of Byron (1608)
5. Marshall of France (1608)
Ben Jonson (1573 – 1639)
- concept of Humor:
1. Every Man in His Humor (1598)
2. Every Man out of His Humor (1599)
3. Cynthia’s Revels (1601)
4. Poetaster (1602)
5. Volpone, or the Fox
6. Epicaene, or the Silent Woman (1606)
7. The Alchemist (1610)
8. Bartholomew Fayre (1614)
- tragedy:
1. Sejanus (1603)
2. Catiline (1611)
3. Julius Caesar (1599)
4. The Sad Shepherd (unfinished)
John Marston (1575 – 1634)
- melodrama:
1. Antonio and Mellida (1600)
2. Antonio’s Revenge (1600)
- a tragi-comedy
- a violent comedy:
1. The Malcontent (1601)
- cynisism:
1. The Dutch Courtezan (1605)
2. The Honest Whore (with Dekker)
3. Parasitaster, or the Fawne (1606)
- comedy of manner:
1. Eastward Hoe
Thomas Middleton (1580 – 1627)
- comedies:
1. Michaelmas Terme (1604)
2. A Trick to Catch The Old One (1606)
3. A Mad World
4. My Masters, Your Five Gallants
5. A chast Mayd
John Fletcher (1579 – 1625):
1. Tragedie of Valentinian (1614)
2. The Tragedie of Bonduca (1614)
3. The Loyal Subject (1618)
4. The Humorous Lieutenant (1619)
5. Monsieur Thomas (1621)
6. The Pilgrim
7. The Wild-goose Chase
Philip Massinger (1583 – 1639)
- comedies:
1. A New Way to Pay Old Debts (1626)
2. The City Madam (1632)
3. The Guardian (1633)
4. The Fatall Dowry (1619)
5. The Duke of Millaine (1620)
6. The Unnatural Combat (1621)
7. The Maid of Honour (1626)
8. The Bond-Man (1623)
9. The Renegado (1624)
10. The Roman Actor (1626)
11. The Picture (1629)
John Ford (1586 – 1639):
1. Perkin Warback
2. The Lover’s Melancholy
3. ‘Tis Pity Shee’s a Whore
4. The Broken Heart
James Shirley (1596 – 1666):
1. The Traytor (1631)
2. The Cardinall (1631)
3. The Wedding
4. Changes
5. Hyde Park
6. The Gamester
7. The Lady of Pleasure
8. The Young Admirall
9. The Opportunitie
10. The Imposture
METAPHYSICAL POETRY

Characteristics:
- metaphysical conceit
- obscure language
- metaphor
 Poets
1. John Donne (1572 – 1631)
- Elegies, satyres, divine poems
2. George Herbert (1593 – 1633)
- The Temple
- The Pulley
Andrew Marvell (1621 – 1678):
1.
To His Coy Mistress
Abraham Cowley (1618 – 1667):
1.
Pindarique Odes
2.
Miscellanies
3.
Ode to the Royal Society
John Milton (1608 – 1674)
- religious poem:
1.
Ode on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity
2.
L’Allegro
3.
Il Penseroso
4.
Arcades
5.
Comus (1634)
6.
Lycidas (1637)
7.
Paradise Lost (1667)
8.
Paradise Regained (1671)
9.
Samson Agonistes (1671)
The Anglican Poets

George Herbert (1593 – 1633)

1.
2.
3.
4.
Richard Crashaw (1612 –1649):
Music’s Duel
Wishes to a supposed Mistress
The Weeper
The Flaming Heart

Henry Vaughan (1622 – 1695)
- secular verses, myticism:
Scintillans
The Retreat
1.
2.
 Francis Quarles (1592 – 1644):
1. Emblems (1635)


Andrew Marvell (1621 –1678)
Abraham Cowley (1618 – 1667)
Sir John Denham (1615 – 1669)
- descriptive, didactic poems:
1. Cooper’s Hill (1642)

The Cavalier Poets

1.
Sir John Suckling (1609 – 1642):
A Ballad upon a Wedding

1.
2.
3.
Thomas Carew (1598 – 1639):
Ask me no more
When Thou, poor Excommunicate
Read in These Roses the Sad Story

1.
2.
3.
Robert Herrick (1591 – 1674):
Hesperides/Works both humane and divine (1648)
The Hock-cart or Harvest Home
Corinna’s going a-Maying

1.
Richard Lovelace (1618 – 1658):
To Althea from Prison
The End of the
Renaissance
 Prose
Sir Thomas Browne (1603 – 1682)
- a physician, theologian/preacher:
1. Pseudo-doxia Epidemica (1646)
2. Religio Medici (1643)
3. The Garden of Cyrus
4. Hydriotaphia
Jeremy Taylor (1613 – 1667)
- Anglican prosaist, dreamer:
1. Liberty of Prophesying (1646)
2. Holy Living (1650)
3. Holy Dying (1651)
4. The Marriage Ring
Francis Bacon (1567 – 1626)
- lawyer, statesman, philosopher:
1. Essays
2. The Advancement of Learning

John Bunyan (1628 – 1688)
- a traveling thinker, Puritan preacher, allegorist (49
books):
1. The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678)
2. Everyman
3. The Life and Death of Mr. Badman (1680)
4. Grace Abounding (1666)
5. The Holy War (1682)

Thomas Hobbes (1588 – 1679)
- philosophy:
1. Elements of Law, Natural and Politics (1640)
2. Leviathan (1651)
Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromarty (1611 – 1660)
1. Church History of Britain (1655-6)
2. Holy and Profane State (1642)
3. The History of the Worthies of England (1662)
Izaac Walton (1593 – 1683)
1. The Compleat Angler (1653)
 Drama
- the decay of drama:
no drama produced
closing of the theatres
-Drama was restored by John
Dryden in the Restoration period