◎KEY POINT:

In this period, England became a strong nation and its literature entered the first flourished period. You will learn about those great names like Sidney, More, Bacon, and notably Shakespeare. The word “Renaissance” is side by side with “humanism”, which is to be explored in Renaissance drama, poetry and prose.

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Renaissance: the cultural and artistic movement (from the late 14C to the late 17C )

?? It is usually regarded as the beginning in Italy in the late 14C, while England saw its development until a century later. It is often taken to be in 1485, when the Wars of the Roses ended, with the establishment of the Tudor dynasty. (1485-1603).

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Unlike Italian Renaissance, the English Renaissance heeds less attention to visual arts and focuses more on literature and music.

Liturgical play 禮拜劇

1.Drama appeared in the Medieval period as a way to communicate with the largely illiterate population the stories of the Bible. It might have been developed from the Christian Church in a form called liturgical plays.

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2.Features： simple dialogue and straightforward account解釋說(shuō)明

????? usually in Latin and dialogue in simple monophonic melodies

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Mystery/Miracle plays神跡劇

1.Staged by guilds [association of skilled workers in the Middle Ages]? (中世紀(jì)的)行會(huì)such as the goldsmith's guild, the baker's guild, etc.

2.a medieval drama based on episodes from the life of a saint or martyr

(It deals with the biblical stories)

Morality play

1.The play in the 15C and 16C.

2.It represents some personified abstractions of human virtues and vices in terms of how they struggle for man's soul

Simply put, the morality plays are dramatized allegories, dealing with man's moral quest for salvation

Everyman perhaps the best-known morality play.

(moral message: Only good deeds can accompany a person to a good end.)

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University Wits (the pioneer dramatists)

Marlowe was the most distinguished among them. He had influenced the dramatic poets of the 16th century, in terms of the use of language and especially the blank-verse line.

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?Blank-verse is verse written in unrhymed iambic pentameter

Christopher Marlowe

Among his works, we can find a persistent hint of atheism無(wú)神論 and overreaching 不自量力的 protagonists（overreachers）

The overreachers must be punished and die a tragic ending though, we can't help admiring their ambition and courage to defy the sterile 沒(méi)有實(shí)際價(jià)值的 doctrines of old learning.

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?tamburlaine the Great is about the conqueror tamburlaine who rises from a shepherd to a war-lord. He is thirst for power.

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??The Jew of Malta? about the Jewish merchant Barabas who has a cruel and intoxicating desire for money

When his wealth is under threat, he seeks revenge in all means. He turns first to the Turks, the invaders of Malta to escape the confiscation沒(méi)收，充公 of his wealth by the Christians. Yet later, he makes a deal with the Christian governor against the Turks. He plots the death of his enemies. Yet in the end, he is betrayed and falls into his own Traps.

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?Marlowe's most famous work is Doctor Faustus or the Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus

A daring敢于冒險(xiǎn)的 scholar whose thirst of knowledge motivates him to sell his soul to the Devil in exchange for extraordinary power of magic

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With the Devil's trick, Faustus can bring forth fresh grapes in the dead of winter

And even can conjure變戲法 up the apparition鬼魂 of Helen of Troy

However, he also repents后悔 over his choice

As the time draws near, the Devil comes to claim his soul. Faustus sinks deeper and deeper into despair. Finally, Faustus is carried away to his eternal damnation天譴，罰入地獄.

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Faustus is believed to reflect the Renaissance spirit

For his quest for knowledge, spirit of enquiry探索, individualism, interest in Classics and love of beauty

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Ben Jonson

Known for his comedy of humours---Volpone or the Fox(the most important of his masterpieces)

The work draws the elements of city comedy and beast fable. All the characters in the play get the name of animals in Italian to suggest a kind of fable.

Volpone is an old and childless gentleman in Venice. Just like what his name indicates, he is as cunning and greedy as a fox. He pretends to be seriously ill so that those who crave for his money will give him magnificent gifts to gain his favor得到青睞

Volpone wants to trick others but he himself falls into the scam騙局 of his servants Mosca or the Fly. In order to topple Mosca to retrieve his wealth, Volpone has to expose his deceits. In the end, everyone gets their punishment.

Here money works its magic施展魔力 to transform everyone into a kind of beast, put integrity, faithfulness and loyalty into crisis and hollows out our sense of who we are and what is right自我認(rèn)知和是非觀

Moral message from Volpone: What a rare punishment/ is avarice to itself.

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Theater became the interest of all classes in Elizabethan England,

we may say drama is the best expression of the English Renaissance

2.2 Shakespeare: "Leaves living art but page to serve his wit"

Christopher Marlowe's innovation in drama created some of the foundations on which edified Shakespeare to perfect

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• ?It is speculated that Shakespeare was unhappy about his marriage with Anne for he left his wife his "second best bed"

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• ?His formative years enabled him to invest intellectual sophistication—— he gained the access to a good library

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• ?Shakespeare put the political doubts and qualms into his history plays

  (echoes of religious conflicts/ frightening memory of the Wars of Roses and turmoil/ the question of succession of Queen Elizabeth, the virgin queen)

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Usurpation篡位

• ?Arguably, Shakespeare's depiction of the historical figures may not be loyal to history.
  

• Shakespeare's Roman plays present the dilemma and complexity of minds for his time

Examples:

·?????? Julius Caesar explores whether assassination even in a good cause is justified.

·?????? Antony and Cleopatra deals with the question of whether we should admire Antony as he throws away the empire for love of Cleopatra. The judgement is never easy and neat.

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?Tragedies:

·?????? All the tragic heroes here are the greatest slaves of tragic passion:

Hamlet's indecision, Othello's jealousy, Lear's vanity and Macbeth's ambition.

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·?????? However, Hamlet's inaction can be attributed to his humanistic concern and his struggle in the complexity of ideologies like justice, loyalty and morality.

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·?????? When Macbeth goes out to meet his death on the battlefield against the man who is destined to kill him. He delivered the most eloquent pessimistic description of human condition in his agony of conscience and his full experience of despair.

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·?????? The indignation憤慨 suffered by the old Lear reminds us of the essential human values: love and forgiveness as well as the potential cruelty and destruction in human spirit.

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·?????? Othello's crime against his innocent wife challenges our perception over subjects like racism, sexism, love, hate, jealousy, pride and trickery.

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Shakespeare has nearly 40 plays to his credit. It is said that Shakespeare contains all life just as Ben Jonson wrote of him "He was not of an age, but for all time"

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The characters speak in soliloquies (thinking aloud on the stage) during the course of Shakespeare's plays

·?????? One-person speech

·?????? The character gives his inner thought or feeling to the audience

·?????? While the character is alone on the stage or under the impression of being alone

Thus, the internal mind of the character is revealed to the audience, which otherwise cannot be disclose through normal conversation

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Example:

In the play Hamlet, the title character Hamlet speaks in seven soliloquies.

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The story is about Hamlet's revenge on his father's death. Prince Hamlet is in a state of mourning and despair when he is summoned home to Denmark to attend his father's funeral and further disturbed that his mother Gertrude has married his uncle Claudius the new king. Hamlet is angry for he sees this marriage as "foul incest" and his succession to the throne has been usurped.

The ghost of the late king soon appears to Hamlet, telling him about the murder and charging him to avenge his death. Hamlet's plan is to feign madness so as to observe Claudius.

In order to get to the truth, he also employs a troupe of actors to stage a play, which he calls" The Mouse Trap". As Claudius watches players dramatizing the murder of the king, he is stricken with fear and guilt. Though Hamlet finds his proof and resolves himself to kill Claudius.

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He immediately comes into another doubt which is revealed in his "To be, or not to be" soliloquy.

Hamlet's tragic flaw is always attributed to his inability to act decisively. However, on the other hand, he can act impulsively, for example, in his rejecting Ophelia and in stabbing Polonius to death.

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？Whether Hamlet is capable of acting decisively?

We can gain some insight of his mind through his soliloquy. It shows Hamlet's softer emotional side when he speaks of suffering and shows his inner turmoil. When Hamlet phrases the question of death in "To be, or not to be" he makes it a question of "being" rather than/as opposed to just "dying". (Issues of humanity v.s. personal matter)

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Hamlet's struggle lies in his efforts in mediating between a continuous process of "suffering" and an active fight against "a sea of troubles". His quest of "which is nobler in the mind" shows his doubts over the conflicting ethics of his days.

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Then he compares dying to sleeping because it is peaceful and lead to dreams. This interpretation of death is popularly used in Christian church together with the idea of "shuffled off this mortal coil" as the image of soul being set free from the degenerated body upon death.

But Hamlet continues to put forward his doubt that death can be a desirable or perfect closure. The proposition of desirable death might go wrong, because death is unknown. In Hamlet's imagination, dying is like crossing the border between the known and unknown. Since Hamlet's depiction of life suffering is rather bleak, it adds to dimension to the fear that death could be worse than life. He finally makes the profound judgement that "conscience does make cowards of us all" that is too much thinking will divert his thought to another direction and prevent him from taking action.

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soliloquies→ Hamlet is contemplating death as much as reflecting on life. This is a sense of agonized frustration in his soliloquy, as he gives a list of all the things that annoy him about life. His fears of the unknown territory of death is based on the subject of voyages of discovery in Renaissance period.

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Shakespeare retains the subject of revenge and the struggle for the throne in his play. But the main purpose is more profound and realistic. Hamlet's indecision is hidden in his self-doubt and intellectual misgivings. His mental struggle is one of his time in terms of the contradiction between humanistic ideas and reality.

2.3 Love and Knowledge: Renaissance Lyric

·?????? In Elizabethan age, it is said that the man could not be regarded as a complete man if he could not write a gracefully turned poem to his mistress' charms as readily as he could use his sword in defense of her honor.

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·?????? The love poem makes it the most romantic of all time.

Romantic adventure→ Arthurian legends in the Medieval metrical romance with the element of courtly love→ the precursor to the Renaissance poetry.

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·?????? This topic finds a strong parallel in British royal culture during Renaissance.

For the Queen Elizabeth was unmarried, strong-willed and unreachable.

The poems evolved for poets to reveal their feelings to the one they loved.

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·?????? In the mid-to-late 16th century, a group of court poets were influenced by the Italian Renaissance.

Characteristics of Italian poetry in early Elizabethan poetry→ Petrarchan Sonnet/ French Sonnet

Henry Howard experimented with his poetic style and introduced the new sonnet form

It takes 12 lines to explore a proposition until it hinges the definitive meaning on the final pair of lines

·?????? Astrophel and Stella by Sir Philip Sidney

"Starlover" and "star". Stella is praised as a virtuous idealized lady and Astrophel is deeply interested in her.

·?????? Apology for Poetry by Sir Philip Sidney

It remained the finest work of Elizabethan literary criticism. In his essay, Sidney refutes the claims of poetry being a corrupting and lying form of literature by poet haters and argues that a poet never lies but uses his Muses創(chuàng)作女神 to inspire the imagination.

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Sidney volunteered to serve in an action against the Spaniards and died of infected wounds at the age of only 32. His early death also helps to create him the romantic image of the Elizabethan ideal of gentlemanly virtue

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Walter Raleigh

He was famous for putting down his cloak over the puddle for the Queen Elizabeth, an act of stereotypical chivalry.

Raleigh wrote a series of love poems and addressed his lover with a romanticized pseudonym "Cynthia", another name for Diana Roman goddess of the hunt and wild animals.

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Edmund Spenser

Known as the Prince of Poets in Elizabethan Age/ and thought as the greatest English poet since Chaucer.

Eclogue:

·?????? Short poems usually cast as pastoral dialogues

·?????? Various characters disguise as innocent and simple shepherds

·?????? Discuss about life and love

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Amoretti and Epithalamion by Edmund Spenser: commemorate the courtship with his wife

The Faerie Queen is his masterpiece, a great allegorical epic to celebrate Queen Elizabeth.

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Christopher Marlowe

Poem: Hero and Leander written in a plague year when theaters in London were closed

It deals with complicated ideas about human relationships and sexuality through the love story between the Greek mythical lovers.

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The Passionate Shepherd to His Love is a pastoral love poem→ a shepherd tries to woo a nymph by promising her an idealized picture of rural life

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Ben Jonson

"The first poet laureate" and represent the cavalier strain of poetry which emphasizes grace and clarity of expression

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Song To Celia is the most celebrated poem by Jonson for the general readers

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William Shakespeare

Sonnet 1-126: addressed to an unnamed young man Fair Young

Sonnet 127-153: addressed to a woman of dark complexion Dark Lady

These sonnets reveal the poet's profound meditation on the nature of love and passion, death and time.

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Shakespeare starts the sonnet with a proposition or a flattering question to the beloved[to parallel a person to a summer's day] a far-fetch comparison/a conceit奇思妙喻

He lists some negative aspects of summer in his ideas to establish that his beloved is better. However, his argument suddenly comes to an unexpected thematic "turn". Just like the sun can be overcast by clouds. Even though his beloved is the most beautiful, beauty cannot stay permanent. Yet, this statement does not stay long for he uses three negation s to clear his beloved of worry.

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The couplet in the end introduces a fresh look at the theme when the speaker reminds that the words of this poem" so long as men can breathe or eyes can see" can make beauty and life eternal.

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Unlike the cliché love poems with a pining and yearning narrator, the speaker here is rather smart and confident.

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Sonnet 18 is not only a love poem but also explores the theme of immortality of art or poetry against the transiency of life.

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2.4 Language and Politics: Renaissance Prose

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Thomas More

The strongest English voice on political and social fronts

Utopia: depicts the utopian socialism

It sets up a tradition of writing about imaginary travel

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? ????????? Utopian story and dystopian story

Setting: ideal society v.s. a horrible and degraded society

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John Lyly & Euphuism

One of the University Wits

Thomas Nashe

The unfortunate traveler/ The life of Jack Wilton→ the first important picaresque story in English language and an important forerunner of the novel

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·?????? Picaresque story: the adventure of a roguish hero usually of low social class who lives by his wits in a corrupt society

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Francis Bacon

In literary terms, he is remembered for the sharp worldly wisdom. His works argue a lot about the possibility of scientific knowledge, based on inductive reasoning歸納推理 and careful observation as well as the use of a skeptical approach. His pratical idea or the Baconian method entitled him as the "the Father of Empiricism"

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·?????? Empiricism

[U] (philosophy 哲) 實(shí)證論；經(jīng)驗(yàn)主義；經(jīng)驗(yàn)論

the use of experiments or experience as the basis for your ideas; the belief in these methods

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2.5"Of Studies": "Studies serve for Delights, for Ornament, and for Ability."

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Francis Bacon's essay adopts an aphoristic style which is characterized by the frequent use of parallelism and balanced structure.

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At the beginning of the essay, Bacon avoids meandering and gets right to the point

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1.Yet it tells us that study without thinking or spending too much time without looking for an effective and efficient way. This is a kind of laziness.

Likewise, if one studies for the sake of showing off, this is guilt of affectation, a moral failing.

Finally, if one obtains knowledge merely from books without using experience to help guide his thinking. This is most dangerous in making one a bookworm.

2.Bacon uses natural plants as an analogy to human nature, and argues that study is like pruning a plant, while experience helps to give direction to studies.

Attitudes towards studies

By "crafty men", he means practical men who believes in skills but lack necessary foresight to realize the value of studies. So they contemn them.

"Simple men" though admire studies, focus only on studies themselves.

Only "wise men" can see the value of studies in their utility.

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3.? How to read

·?????? To weigh and consider

·?????? Some books are to be digested

·?????? Distilled books are like common distilled waters

In his ideas, reading supplies a person with information and makes him well-learned.

Conferring with others supplies a person with ready wits and makes him a good speaker.

Writing is a skill demanding precision and sound judgement.

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He suggests studies as a medicine for the defects of the human mind

Bacon's essay adopts a logically rational, objective and didactic tone, and is written in a clear, concise and at times almost epigrammatic style.

source：https://www.icourse163.org/learn/GDUFS-1459759161?tid=1463241452#/learn/content