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The Development of British
Literature
Elizabethan Poetry and Drama
Elizabethan poetry found some of its finest expression in
drama. Plays were mostly written in verse. The predominant
metre was the unrhymed iambic pentameter or‘blank verse’,
which sounded the closest to the rhythm of spoken English.
First Marlowe and then Shakespeare turned this metre into a
perfect instrument for the varied life of the stage.
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Origins of Medieval Drama
The origins of British drama in the Middle Ages began to emerge from the rituals of the
Church. Drama was used to give illiterate peasants a religious education in the mysteries of
faith and the Bible. At first liturgical drama was used to involve the congregation in choral
celebration of religious mysteries and to celebrate the festivals of Christmas and Easter.
Mystery Plays Religious performances moved out of the church when, in the early 14th
century, a new religious festival was introduced in the month of June to celebrate Corpus
Christi (= the body of Christ). On that day, the consecrated Host was carried out of the church
in procession and around the village or town. In time, the processionsdeveloped into a new
form of drama which took place outside the churches and consisted of a number of plays
dealing with stories of the Old and New Testament. These were called ‘Mystery’ (or ‘Miracle’)
plays. A similar kind of performance also developed in Europe, and in Italy it became known
as ‘sacra rappresentazione’.
The Subjects The Mystery plays were single episodes strung together in a Mystery Cycle. The
subjects were either biblical stories, such as Noah and the flood, or events from the life of
Christ, such as the Nativity and the Passion. They were written in the English spoken by local
people and included episodes in which certain human types appeared who could be
immediately recognised by the spectators: for example, Noah’s wife was an impudent English
woman, the shepherds worshipping Christ at his birth were the poor English people of the
time. Similarly, the setting was also not Egypt or Palestine, where the biblical story was set,
but Yorkshire or some
other English county.
The Context
The Performance Each play was financed and performed by the trade or craft guilds of the
town. A Mystery Cycle was staged outdoors; each play was performed on a movable stage
wagon called ‘pageant’ in the central square or next to the town hall. Performances went on
from early morning until late evening to take advantage of the long
daylight hours in June, when the Corpus Christi feast was celebrated. All business and
activities were suspended so that everybody could take part in the festivities. People would
stop in front of a pageant and watch an
episode they wanted to see or move on to another one. Each pageant had its own audience.
The Manuscripts The manuscripts of various versions of the complete Mystery Cycle have
been preserved; they are called the York, Chester, Wakefield, Coventry and Lincoln cycles
from the name of the town where they were probably presented. Their authors are
anonymous.
Morality Plays In the late Middle Ages, other forms of drama became popular. They were
called Morality plays and were also anonymous. At first they were performed by travelling
professional companies on a platform built in an open space. Later they moved indoors into
the banquet halls of noblemen or into the common room of universities. These plays usually
told an allegorical tale, not a biblical one, with the aim of improving common people’s religious
and moral education. Their characters were allegorical personifications of abstractions from
theology or symbols of
various aspects of the human condition.
Everyman The finest Morality play which has come down to us is Everyman (c. 1485). Its
hero, who also giveshis name to the title of the play, is a character representing mankind.
The story offers a moral lesson for the salvation of man’s soul; but the appeal of the play lies
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in the quality of its characters who express themselves with such vivid individuality that the
audience forgets their allegorical significance.
The Importance of Medieval Drama
Medieval drama was important in the development of the genre because it added a human
element to the religious themes of the Mysteries and created characters corresponding to
English social types.In addition it appealed strongly to people of all social classes.
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The End of Medieval Drama
Henry VIII’s schism from Rome in 1534 and the Reformation hastened the end of Medieval
religious drama because of the king’s hostility to Roman Catholics. Mysteries continued to be
performed on religious festivals almost until the end of the 16th century. They were then
banned altogether in order to avoid occasions for conflict between Catholics and Protestants.
Drama of the English Renaissance
Drama flourished again over a period of about a century from 1558, when Elizabeth I
ascended the throne, to 1642, the year when all theatres were closed down by the Puritans
who controlled the City of London. During those years, drama became a major genre for
English writers to express themselves in. The quality of the plays was indeed so exceptional
that they became the major literary contribution to the English Renaissance. The most vital
aspect of English drama was that it broke away from the religious roots of the Middle Ages to
reflect the humanistic spirit of the new age, which exalted human nature in all its aspects and
emphasized man’s life and destiny on earth and his position in the universe. Similarly,
Elizabethan drama presented heroes and heroines larger than life as well as human types
taken from contemporary English society. Its language expressed strong emotions and
disruptive passions but also gave voice to the joyful, sometimes vulgar, humour of common
people. Elizabethan drama also dealt with themes taken from English history in order to
express pride in the nation’s achievements and tradition.
Travelling Companies of Actors
The popularity of drama spread thanks to travelling companies of actors, who held the status
of servants of a Lord and called their companies after him: e.g., the Earl of Leicester’s Men,
the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, the Lord Admiral’s Men, etc. There were no women in these
companies because acting was considered immoral and, therefore, inappropriate for a
woman. Young boys, therefore, played women’s roles in the plays. Performances took place
on movable platforms in innyards or in town squares or in the manor houses of nobles until
playhouses were built, especially in London. When James I came to the throne in 1603 he
became the patron of the main company of actors in London, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men,
which were called the King’s Men from then on.
Renaissance Playwrights
Whatever their literary ambitions may have been, Elizabethan playwrights wrote plays to
provide entertainment and make money. Once written, plays were sold to a company of
players and became the property of that company. If a
printed copy was made, the name of the company and not of the playwright was usually
written on the frontispiece of the text. The group of playwrights who founded the English
drama of the Renaissance, from the 1570s to the 1590s, were called the ‘University Wits’
because they were all men of university education, either from Cambridge (like Marlowe,
Greene, Nashe) or from Oxford (like Lyly,Peele, Lodge). Christopher Marlowe (1564-93) was
the most talented of the University Wits. Unfortunately, he died young in mysterious
circumstances. By the time of his early death, Marlowe had proved his talent as a dramatist in
four tragedies, Tamburlaine, Edward II, Doctor Faustus and The Jew of Malta, which had a
great influence on Shakespeare’s work. Marlowe’s characters are titanic, larger-than-life
figures and prepared the way forShakespeare’s tragic heroes, like Macbeth and King Lear.
Another of Marlowe’s great achievements is to have introduced blank verse to British drama,
showing what a flexible tool it could be for the English language.
Shakespeare was the most extraordinary and prolific playwright of the Renaissance. He was
able to write comedy and tragedy, history and farce, showing outstanding control of
organisation around a central theme, technical command of dramatic conventions and great
skill in the use of rhyme, blank verse, and poetic imagery. He created an unequalled range of
characters, portraying the whole range of human passions with a strength and conviction that
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explain the continuing appeal of his work to all kinds of people throughout the ages and all
over the world. In his plays, he used a vocabulary of some 30,000 words (the average
vocabulary of an educated person today is about 15,000 words). He coined a great amount of
new words and phrases which have entered the language and are still in use today.The Greek
and Latin writers who were most influential on Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights were
Plutarch and Seneca. Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, translated by Sir Thomas North in 1579, was a
source-book for some of Shakespeare’s plays, while Seneca was much admired and imitated
for his tragedies written in a highly rhetorical style and characterised by the frequent inclusion
of blood-thirsty details, ghosts and magic.
Influence of the Classics
on Drama
Jacobean drama derived its name from King James I, though it is sometimes also loosely
used to include plays written under his successor Charles I, which should properly be called
‘Caroline’. Jacobean tragedies show an extreme a taste for horror and sensationalism which
had been a more controlled feature in Elizabethan plays. They are full of shocking details,
images of blood, torture and violent deaths. Italy was often chosen in English plays of this time
as a background for violent crimes or cunning behaviour.
One reason for this negative view of Italy was the influence of Machiavelli’s political treatise
The Prince (1513) from which popular imagination derived the impression that Italian citystates were places dominated by political assassination and intrigue. Another reason was the
hostility between the Protestant Church, established in England after the Reformation and the
Catholic Church of Rome which was seen by Protestants as a nest of corruption.
Public and Private Playhouses
Under the Stuart kings, especially under Charles I, a distinction was increasingly drawn
between public playhouses and private playhouses. The former were frequented by the
common people, the latter by the aristocracy. The types of playsperformed in them also
differed increasingly, reflecting the different tastes of the two audiences, one more popular
and the other more refined. When the Civil War between Charles I and his parliament broke
out in 1642, the Puritans, who by then controlled the capital, closed down all the public
playhouses in London and forbade all public performances.
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