LECTURE 1. THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE.

HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL BACKGROUND The sixteenth century is undeniably a period of great developments in English literature. The first half of the century witnessed the revival of lyrical poetry through the introduction of the sonnet (Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard), the rise of the secular drama (the early comedies and tragedies) and the emergence of urbane prose (Sir Thomas Morus). Moreover, the second half of the century, and particularly its final decades, brought about an unprecedented surge of creativity, especially in poetry and drama writing:
In the brief space of some ten to fifteen years, what had been until then an essentially imitative literature looking towards the continent for its models came suddenly into its own, and the poetry of Sidney and Spenser, Marlowe and Shakespeare not only projected England to the forefront of the European scene, but set new standards against which the drama and poetry of future generations would be judged. (Roston, 1982: 1)

Modern scholarship has been trying to reconstruct the context of the age in order to convincingly explain the phenomenon. Thus, on the one hand, interest was taken in the changes affecting various societal levels social, economic, political, religious under the Tudors. On the other hand, special attention was paid to the larger cultural frames, partly marked by the revival of the interest in the classical antiquity culture, which favoured radical shifts in thought patterns and the creation of new models. 1.1. The Tudors Henry VII (1485-1509) In 1485, Henry Tudor won the battle of Bosworth against Richard III, becoming Henry VII, the founder of one of the greatest dynasties of English history. His victory marked the end of the civil war between the noble houses of York and Lancaster known as the War of the Roses (1455-1485). To reinforce his position on the throne, the newly-risen king, who strongly believed in the political benefits of dynastic marriages, married, in 1486, Elizabeth of York, the daughter of Edward IV. Henry VII turned out to be a cautious and thrifty politician, trusting nobody, and concerned, above all, about reinforcing the centralised national state. That is why, he created the Court of Star Chamber, a new institution developed out of a judicial committee of the Kings Council; he protected the interests of the rising bourgeoisie and of the new nobility (instead of those of the old noble houses) and created the merchant fleet. The ensuing economic development and political stability at home caused literacy to extend among the people at large: reading and writing ceased to be the monopoly of the clergy, and prosperous towns founded grammar schools with the material support of the local authorities. Henry VIIs foreign policy may be described as peaceful, but clearly oriented towards bringing England within the mainstream of European affairs and seems to be essentially underlain by the same belief in the efficiency of dynastic marriages. In 1489, by the Treaty of Medina del Campo, the Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon and Henry VIIs eldest son Arthur were to be betrothed. The two would get married in 1501, but their marital bliss would be abruptly interrupted by Arthurs untimely death in 1502. As in 1496 England joined the Holy League against France, the English king sought to maintain the bond with Spain by having Catherine of Aragon betrothed to Prince Henry, his second son and the future king of England. In 1503, Pope Julius granted a papal dispensation to allow their marriage. Moreover, two years before his death, in 1507, Henry VII signed a marriage treaty between his daughter Mary and the Archduke Charles, son of Philip I of Spain.

Henry VIII (1509-1547) Though initially resisting the idea of marrying his former sister in law, under the pressure of his councillors, Henry began his reign by marrying, in 1509, Catherine of Aragon. The only surviving child of the couple, Princess Mary, was born in 1515. An ambitious young man, Henry VIII seemed, from the early days of his reign, more interested in turning England into a key-player on the stage of European politics. That may partly account for the fact that, despite his dislike of popery, monks, image or relic worship, he wrote, in 1521, a book against Martin Luther for which he was named Fidei Defensor (Defender of the Faith) by Pope Leo X. Cardinal Thomas Wolsey was Henry VIIIs first minister (Lord Chancellor), appointed in 1515, and the fourteen years of that proud but efficient prelates ascendency (1515-1529) saw the king in a comparatively restrained mood (Guy and Morrill, 1992: 19): a handsome young man, who liked hunting, dancing, dallying, playing the lute and occasionally writing songs, who (seemingly) took interest in the developments of arts and sciences (especially of theology and astronomy), Henry VIII turned, in his mature and old age, into a monster of selfishness, obsessed with consolidating his royal prominence, even if that meant, more often than not, engaging in warfare (that he considered the sport of kings Guy and Morrill, 1992: 18). It is in the light of these changes in the kings personality that the rise and fall of Cardinal Wolsey should be considered. The architect of the first English success in European politics under Henry VIII i.e., the meeting of the Field of the Cloth of Gold held between Henry VIII and Francis I of France in 1520 he was expected to solve, to the kings advantage, the crisis of the years to come, motivated by both personal and political reasons. Intending to get rid of an aging wife who could not give him the male heir he wanted and to marry a younger woman (Anne Boleyn), Henry VIII summoned, in 1527, the ecclesiastical court established at Westminster to request an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Wolsey was sent to obtain the annulment from the Pope, but he failed and, the next year (1528), the Pope sent Cardinal Campeggio to hear Henry VIIIs case. That brought Wolsey the accusation of high treason and he died (in 1530) while en route to London to be executed, being replaced by Sir Thomas Morus as the Lord Chancellor of England. The papal resistance to fulfilling Henrys wish was the perfect excuse for the English king to finally break with the Roman Catholic Church, consistently interfering in English affairs. So, in 1531, Henry VIII made the English Parliament the instrument of his Royal Reformation: the Act of Supremacy was passed acknowledging Henry VIII as the Supreme Head of the Church in England. At a national level, the consequences of the Reformation were immediate and far-reaching: the Anglican Church was established with the king as its supreme head; monasteries were dissolved and church lands were seized, part of them being sold to appease the nobility and gentry; people would have to take the Oath of Supremacy, or they would be charged with treason and executed. In this context, Sir Thomas Morus resigned from the position of Lord Chancellor (1532), and refused to commit spiritual suicide just to please the king, hence he was beheaded in 1535. The king used Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, to have his marriage with Catherine of Aragon declared invalid. Pope Clement VII excommunicated Henry VIII, but that did not prevent him from secretly marrying Anne Boleyn in 1533. The newly-crowned Queen of England gave birth on the same year to a baby girl, Princess Elizabeth. In 1534, the Parliament passed the Act of Succession according to which only children of the Kings marriage to Anne Boleyn were his lawful heirs. Within a few years (i.e., in 1536), both Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn died: the former lived her last days in misery, grieving her being misjudged and banished from the court; the latter failed to give the king the much-desired son and, in her desperate attempts to do so, made mistakes that led to her being tried for adultery, incest and treason, and executed. Free again, Henry married Jane Seymour: in 1536, the Parliament passed the Act of Succession according to which only children of Kings marriage to Jane Seymour would be his lawful heirs. Jane Seymour died in child-birth (1537), but her son Prince Edward would become the successor to the throne.

Having more or less found peace in his personal life (though, up to the end of his reign, the king had three more wives Anne of Clves, whom he divorced, Catherine Howard, executed for adultery, and Catherine Parr), the King resolved to focus more on the foreign policy, embarking again on French and Scottish wars. In 1534 he made peace with James V of Scotland. Several years later, in 1545, he defeated the French fleet: unlike his father who was interested in the merchant fleet, Henry VIII encouraged the development of an effective fleet of royal fighting ships better adapted to the ocean, which he officially chartered in 1546. By the time he died (in 1547), England had already been united with Wales (the union was legally accomplished by Parliament in 1536 and 1543), had triumphed over Scotland and Ireland, and had definitely proven its growing power at the international level. (See Gavriliu, 2002: 74-77; Guy and Morrill, 1992: 17-37) Edward VI (1547-1553) As Edward VI was only 9 years old when he was crowned King at Westminster (1547), the country was actually ruled by a Regency Council, led by the kings uncle Edward Seymour, First Duke of Somerset. That young Edward was raised as a bigoted Protestant and his uncle was the leader of the Protestant faction in the Privy Council favoured the evolution of the Church of England along clearly Protestant lines. In 1549, the Act of Uniformity was passed by the House of Lords, making the Catholic Mass illegal and introducing the Book of Common Prayer, which embodied Protestant doctrines. (A more radical Book of Common Prayer was passed in the Second Act of Uniformity in 1552.) The architect of these reforms was Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury. In addition, Somerset finalised the destruction that had begun under Henry VIII, ensuring that the native art, sculpture, metalwork, and embroidery associated with Catholic ritual were comprehensively wiped out (Guy and Morrill, 1992: 40). The difference in religious beliefs made even brother sister relationships difficult. In 1551, Mary Tudor, Henry VIIIs elder (Catholic) daughter, met her (Protestant) brother Edward, hoping for reconciliation. Unfortunately, that turned out impossible and, when his disease was discovered to be terminal in 1553, shortly before his death, King Edward VI signed a statement naming his cousin Lady Jane Grey as his successor and excluding his half-sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, from the line of succession. (See also Guy and Morrill, 1992: 37-41) Mary I (1553-1558) Though appointed the successor to the throne by a dying Protestant king who hated his sisters, Jane Grey ruled for only nine days in July 1553. Mary had gained on her side part of the gentry, persuaded of her Tudor legitimism. Her loyal troops marched south and entered London, Jane Grey was imprisoned in the Tower of London and Mary was proclaimed Queen. Parliament was summoned to legitimise the marriage of her father Henry VIII and her mother Catherine of Aragon. The queen was also quick to get rid of her rival to the throne: in November 1553, Lady Jane Grey was tried for treason and, though the queen initially pardoned her, she was eventually executed together with her husband (1554). Soon the English were to learn the hard way the terrible extent of Mary Is Catholicism. The queen took all the steps she thought necessary in order to attain her goal, i.e., Englands (re-)union with Rome. Thus, the queen released the Catholic Bishop Stephen Gardiner from the Tower, where he had been imprisoned during Edwards reign, and appointed him Lord Chancellor of England. In 1554, she married Prince Philip of Spain and sent her sister Elizabeth to the Tower under suspicion of complicity in Sir Thomas Wyatts rebellion against her pro-Catholic and pro-Spanish policy. (Elizabeth was then transferred to Woodstock.) Just like her father, Mary I did not hesitate to use persecution to return the country to the Catholic faith and that won her the nickname of Bloody Mary: Mary burned a minimum of 287 persons after February 1555, and others died in prison (Guy and Morrill, 1992: 42). In particular, the former architects of Protestantism in England, chief among which Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, fell victims to straightforward political vengeance (Guy and Morrill, 1992: 42): Cranmer was degraded from his office and, when he renounced Rome, he was burned at the stake.

That Marys decision of marrying a Spanish Catholic prince was a mistake was also confirmed by the failure of the English involvement in a war against France: stirred by Philip of Spain, Mary I declared war on Henry II of France in 1557. The result was shameful loss for the English: in January 1558, the French captured Calais which had belonged to England for more than 200 years. In November 1558, Mary I died childless and unloved by her subjects. (See also Guy and Morrill, 1992: 41-45) Elizabeth I (1558-1603) The only surviving descendant of Henry VIII, the highly educated and intelligent Princess Elizabeth had learnt the bitter lesson of disgrace, imprisonment and even the danger of death in the years preceding her coming to the throne. She was 25 when she was crowned Queen of England in 1558. Her position on the throne was, however, threatened by her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots and wife of Francis II of France, who also assumed the title of Queen of England (1559). In 1560, the French troops in Scotland tried to assert Queen Marys claim to the English throne. The Treaty of Edinburgh (July 6, 1560) put an end to French interference in Scotland and acknowledged Elizabeth Is right to the throne. That was not, though, the end of Elizabeth Is conflict with her Scottish cousin, but, once the legitimacy of her rule was recognised beyond doubt, the English queen had to focus on the religious feuds that had been tearing the nation apart. According to Guy and Morrill, the young queens coronation slogan was concord (1992: 46). In fact, she may originally have aimed to revive Henry VIIIs religious legislation, to re-establish her royal supremacy and the break with Rome, and to permit communion in both kinds (bread and wine) after the reformed fashion but nothing else (1992: 46). She left the matter into the hands of her chief councillor William Cecil, who baited a trap for the Catholics; so, when the Act of Settlement was passed through the Parliament in 1559 (completed in 1563 and 1571), it re-established royal supremacy and full Protestant worship, turning the Anglican Church into a pillar of the Elizabethan state (Guy and Morrill, 1992: 46-47). It is true, however, that the queen managed to wisely keep England free from the bloody religious wars that were tearing France apart. (In 1561, a treaty was signed at Hampton Court pledging Elizabeths support of the persecuted French Huguenots.) But the split between Protestants and Catholics deepened and would lead, in the long run, to several attempts on the queens life. A shrewd and cautious politician (like her grandfather Henry VII), Elizabeth I mistrusted the old aristocracy, relied on new men like Sir William Cecil (ennobled as Lord Burghley in 1571, who remained the queens chief advisor for most of her reign) and Sir Francis Walsingham (the queens spymaster and Principal Secretary of State from 1573) and she fiercely defended her throne. Some of the most spectacular executions that she pretended to be reluctant with but which she actually approved of were, in fact, the outcome of complex actions motivated by political ambitions and/or religious differences. For example, in the aftermath of the pro-Catholic, pro-papal and pro-Spanish intrigues that culminated in the Northern Rising (1569), Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk was imprisoned in the Tower for attempting to marry Mary, Queen of Scots and was executed in 1572. More than a decade later, the discovery of new Catholic plots aimed at the assassination of Elizabeth and the coronation of Mary (who had meanwhile been her cousins prisoner) as the Queen of England led to the execution of Anthony Babbington (1586), and ultimately of Mary herself in February 1587. (Marys execution turned her into a martyr, the innocent romantic victim of tyrannical jealousy. Gavriliu, 2002: 82) Last but not least, during the last years of Elizabeths reign, after the English failure in Ireland (1598-99) brought disgrace upon one of the queens former favourites, Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex, another plot threatened Elizabeths position on the throne in 1601:
Intelligent, well-educated, handsome, generous and courageous, Essex was, as Ophelia said of Hamlet the expectancy and rose of the fair state. He soon won the heart if not the mind of the aging queen, became a member of the Privy Council and gathered about him a group of brilliant young aristocrats including the Earl of Southampton, Shakespeares patron. Upon his unsuccessful

campaign in Ireland, exiled from the royal presence, Essex conceived a plot to overthrow the queen and replace her with James VI of Scotland, Mary Stuarts son. The plotters arranged for a performance of Richard II by Shakespeares company on February 6, 1601, hoping that the precedent of the deposing of a king would stir the citizens of London into mutiny. On the following day, Essex and his friends stormed into London but the attempted uprising proved a spectacular failure. He was convicted of treason and executed on February 25, 1601. Notable scholars have remarked the profound impact that Essexs career had on the psychological portrait in Shakespeares greatest creation, Hamlet. (Gavriliu, 2002: 82)

Elizabeths solid judgement and impressive capacity in the choice of her ministers as well as in the management of state finances was plainly proven when, with the help of Sir William Cecil and Sir Thomas Gresham, she brought England from near bankruptcy in mid-century to economic prosperity within the course of thirty years, till it rivalled the dominant power, Spain (Roston, 1982: 1-2). Apart from religious differences, the rivalry between England and Spain was equally motivated by economic interests and special reference should be made in this respect to Elizabeths support for the privateers (merchant pirates) who sought new maritime routes to distant territories (like America or India) but also attacked Spanish/French/Portuguese treasure-laden ships. Among the most famous English privateers, the following could be mentioned: John Hawkins: In 1561, he introduced tobacco to England and hijacked Portuguese slave ships, trading the slaves in Brazil for ginger, pearls and sugar, thus beginning Englands participation in the slave trade. Martin Frobisher: Between 1576 and 1578, he made three voyages to the New World seeking a passage in the North-West. Walter Raleigh: Having accompanied Sir Humphrey Gilbert on his voyage to the New World, he renewed, in 1584, Gilberts patent to explore and settle in North America. He established the colony of Virginia (1587). He brought the potato plant and popularised tobacco in England (besides being a remarkable Renaissance poet). Francis Drake: Considered by far the greatest of the privateers, he was the first Englishman to make a voyage around the world between 1577 and 1580. (During this voyage, he proclaimed Englands sovereignty over the New Albion, i.e., California.) Knighted in 1581, he seemed to focus, over the years to come, on attacking Spanish ships (thus bringing gold, silver and gems to the crowns revenue) and Spanish colonies (e.g. 1586, the attack on San Domingo). In 1587, Philip II of Spains invasion fleet preparation was interrupted by Drakes invasion of the Port of Cadiz. In 1588, when the Spanish Armada (made of 130 ships) sailed for England, he made an outstanding contribution to the final defeat of the invading fleet.

As a matter of fact, the failure of the Spanish attempt to conquer England (as the Armada was defeated by the English navy and the coast winds on July 26, 1588) contributed not only to the rise of nationalistic feelings among the English, but also opened the world to English colonisation. The process of development of trading companies in different corners of the world (e.g. the Muscovy Company in 1555; the Levant Company in 1581) continued more vigorously after the defeat of the Spanish Armada and in 1600, the East India Company was chartered in London, challenging Dutch control of the spice trade. In brief, all the trade routes and distant markets sketched out by the daring Elizabethan merchants paved the way for the great British colonial empire of the centuries to come (Gavriliu, 2002: 83). Having repeatedly declined to marry (though the negotiations between Elizabeth and Henry, Duke of Anjou could have succeeded if it had not been for the opposition of the Privy Council in 1579), Elizabeth I, the last of the Tudors, died childless in 1603, at the age of 69, after a reign of 45 years. She was succeeded to the throne by James VI Stuart, son of the late Mary Queen of Scots, who became James I, uniting England and Scotland. (See also Gavriliu, 2000: 80-84 and Guy and Morrill, 1992: 45-70)

As it can be seen from the above presentation of the most important achievements and failures of the Tudors, life in England during the sixteenth century was not always and for all English subjects prosperous: the rise of Englands national self-confidence and the growth of its economic and military power were incontestable, but, as suggested by Murray Roston, there were also less attractive aspects. The life style of the middle classes, in particular, improved to a certain extent, but poverty, pushing people to vagrancy and pillaging, remained a major problem. Writers, especially, benefited very little from the economic boom of the Elizabethan period and most of them struggled desperately against financial privation (1982: 2). Moreover, as Roston rightfully remarks, the question remains whether national self-confidence based upon growing economic and military prowess is itself a prescription for producing great literature (Roston, 1982: 2). To substantiate his doubt, the critic mentions that some of Shakespeares greatest plays (King Lear, Othello, Macbeth) were written at a time of deep societal unrest in the early days of James Is reign, which seems to indicate that it was, if anything, the insecurity of his time rather than the confidence which deepened his literary sensitivity (Roston, 1982: 3). 1.2. Renaissance in England On the European continent, ever since the fourteenth century, artistic developments in many cultural spaces had been circumscribed to the Renaissance/ re-birth of the interest in the mancentered learning of classical antiquity. Petrarch and Boccaccio had significantly contributed to the rediscovery of several ancient authors; libraries sought for ancient manuscripts and scribes to copy them for private collections; Plato became a model for philosophical speculation, Cicero for prose eloquence, Ovids Metamorphoses a source-book for mythology; and academics were established for the study of the ancient classics (Roston, 1982: 3). With its spirit of inquiry and its vision of the ancient freedom of Greek and Roman thought, the Renaissance was transplanted, in early sixteenth century, from the continent to bloom afresh in England. The interest in classical learning in England was boosted by private donations of ancient manuscripts to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. William Grocyn, the first teacher of Oxford, Thomas Linacre, who taught Greek to Erasmus and Thomas Morus, John Colet, the founder of St-Pauls School, the first English secondary school devoted to the New Learning, established the teaching of Greek on sound principles and wrote grammatical works and translations (Gavriliu, 2000: 72-3). But, as Roston rightfully points out, [th]e Renaissance was far more than a revival of classical learning or the imitation of an ancient style. It represented, rather, a complex shift in human thought of which the return to classical models was more a symptom than a cause (1982: 4). This search for new styles of thought of the Renaissance, that would provide a counterweight to those dominating the Middle Ages, materialised in Humanism, characterised by interest in man, asserting the intrinsic worth of human life. By placing man as an individual at the centre of human preoccupation, humanism gave him a new status in the universe. It emphasised the study of man and regarded such study as the way to elevate human culture and make life on earth more enjoyable. However, one should not imagine the new ideas in philosophy and arts as fully divorced from those belonging to the medieval period; actually, it may be argued that the strength of the Renaissance in all its ramifications and complexity can be traced to its extraordinary duality, its incorporation of two markedly different concepts, sometimes clashing openly within it, sometimes fruitfully intermingling, but always ensuring on the part of the writer and thinker a widened range of perception (Roston, 1982: 4). The great humanist of the age, Desiderius Erasmus, lived in England for a number of years and wrote his famous work Moriae Encomium (Praise of Folly) in 1510 at the London home of Sir Thomas Morus to whom the work is dedicated. Erasmus and Thomas Morus were lifelong friends and their friendship is one of the most touching in the history of literature (Gavriliu, 2002: 73). A statesman and an intellectual, Thomas Morus, the great leader of English humanism, reached literary fame with Utopia (1515-1516), the first great humanistic work by an Englishman. Written in Latin in dialogue form (and translated into English in 1551), Moruss work focused on creating an ideal no place, the image of which should function as an incentive for the entire Europe to

reconsider its social institutions in the light of reason. Skilfully placed against the background of the fervent endeavours to discover new territories and to colonise them that had emerged in many European societies of the sixteenth century, Moruss Utopia is revealed, though, as deprived of corruption, warfare, poverty, crime, cruelty and immorality and is set in utter contrast with Henry VIIIs absolute monarchy. The targets of Moruss bitter criticism are: the social and political evils ensuing from the process of capital accumulation; the cruel and unlawful enclosures; the rapacity of the trading classes; the oppressive absolute monarchy; the corruption of the magistrates and the kings councillors. According to the great humanist, the ideal state should be dynamic, liable to change and improvement, essentially based on peoples productive work rather than private property, non-violent and tolerant of religious differences. (See also Gavriliu, 2000: 74-5).
Utopia is the ancestor of a whole range of writings starting with Bacons New Atlantis (1626), through Swifts Gullivers Travels (1726), and Morriss News from Nowhere (1890), down to Butlers Erewhon (1872). Mores book has its own ancestry derived partly from Platos Republic and partly from the accounts of Amerigo Vespuccis travels. (Gavriliu, 2000: 75)

Clear evidence of the duality characterising the Renaissance is easily found when considering various developments in scholarly studies of astronomy, with direct impact on the philosophical/metaphysical understanding of mans place in the universe. Thus, in Europe, the epoch-making astronomical discoveries of Copernicus, Kepler and Galilei substituted for the traditional Ptolemaic cosmology the new image of the sun-centred universe. But the Elizabethan world picture was still largely geocentric with the earth surrounded by the nine spheres beyond which the coelum empireum extended. The universe was hierarchically structured, all the things constituting one Great Chain of Being that rose from the particles of matter to the Power that had created them. The cosmic hierarchy reflected the principle of order which in the Renaissance conception governed the universe and prevented chaos in the society. The Great Chain of Being would prove a perennial concept to linger on in the intellectual mentality of the English until late in the eighteenth century. Equally pursued with vigour and enthusiasm were the historical and classical studies. With regard to Renaissance historical writing, works like Raphael Holinsheds Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1578) (incorporating large portions of the work of earlier chroniclers that covered the history of England from the Flood to within four years of the date of publication), John Stows A Summarie of English Chronicles (1565), and William Camdens Britannia (1586) and Annales Rerum Anglicarum (1615, 1625) were considered groundbreaking. In classical studies, two distinct tendencies were manifest among the Renaissance academia and the readership at large (consisting mainly of upper and middle classes). (See Gavriliu, 2000: 76) On the one hand, the interest in Latin and Greek determined school masters and university professors alike to embark on dictionary, grammar and rhetoric book writing. In more and more cases, though, the question came up whether students should speak and write better Latin/Greek or better English, and that accounted for the combination of due respect to the Latin masters of rhetoric and humanistic protests against the sterile and slavish imitation of the classics. Relevant examples in this respect would be: - Sir Thomas Eliots complete Latin-English dictionary The Boke Named the Governour (1531) which was also intended a manual for the education of the enlightened Renaissance ruler. Dedicated to Henry VIII, the book foregrounded a humanistic, morally-biased, liberal and practical educational system based both on the study of the classics and the Bible, and on physical training, that could prepare able people for the duties of government. - Thomas Wilsons book of English composition The Arte of Rhetorique (1553) advocating a simple, fluent style free of Latin affectation and terms borrowed from other contemporary languages; - Roger Aschams treatise The Scholemaster (1570) defending the use of English in students education. (See Gavriliu, 2000: 76-77)

Moreover, in the same context, there was an impressive upsurge of translations from Latin and Greek meant to answer the need of the age for access to the ancient sources but also to encourage developments in the literary English language. Translations from Greek included much prose, less poetry and very little drama (Gavriliu, 2000: 78): e.g. Plutarchs Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (1571) translated by Sir Thomas North and used by Shakespeare and many other Renaissance writers as source for their works; Arthur Halls Ten Books of Homers. Iliades (1581) (followed, 30 years later, by a complete translation of The Iliad by George Chapman in 1611 and of The Odyssey in 1615). Nearly all major classic Latin prose was translated into English during the Renaissance (Gavriliu, 2000: 78): e.g. Vergils Aeneid translated by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (Book II in 1554, and Book IV in 1557) and introducing the blank verse for the first time in English; Thomas Newtons Seneca His Tenne Tragedies (1581) and Arthur Goldings The XV Bookes of P. Ovidius Naso Entytuled Metamorphosis, Translated into English Meeter (1567), both assumed to have been served as sources for William Shakespeare. Last but not least, translators also chose to work on more recent masterpieces of European Italian, French, Spanish literatures, chief among which one could mention Montaignes Essays, Cervantess Don Quixote or the anonymous Lazarillo de Tormes. In particular, William Painters The Palace of Pleasure (1566-67) included free adaptations of French and Italian, as well as Latin and Greek writers, providing thus the playwrights of the time with another major source of inspiration. Yet, for all the humanistic interest in Latin, Greek or contemporary European literatures, the book of all books remained, for the nobility and the middle classes alike, the Bible. If, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, there were only two complete English versions of the Bible, both of which were made by followers of John Wyclif, an increased demand for new translations produced in successive waves the Great Bible (1539), Cranmers Bible (1540), the Geneva Bible (1560), to culminate with the Authorized Version (1611) which has ever since influenced English literature through its perfectly balanced archaic style. (See Gavriliu, 2000: 77) To conclude, it is in this cultural frame that one should consider the achievements in the fields of poetry, drama and philosophy that reached unprecedented originality and forwardness of expression in the works of Spenser, Shakespeare, Bacon.
[I]n art and literature of the time that duality of concept, the idealistic and the pragmatic, when enrichingly integrated, provided the artist with an amazing range, a vision of man reaching as high as the heavens, yet still rooted in this tactile earth. The Renaissance hero is seen as rivalling the gods themselves in splendour, yet tripping through some small factual error of human judgement, a moments thoughtlessness, a minor spot or blemish which corrupts his virtues, be they as pure as grace. He may command the storms in his wrath, yet at the same time is seen realistically as no more than a poor, forked animal, vulnerable to rain and cold, and succumbing at the last to the cold touch of death. [] The astonishing poetic and dramatic spectrum offered by this twofold vision, the empirical and the spiritual, made possible for the era the breadth and range of its artistic productions. [] Within our period, that ambivalence of a sharply actualised reality contrasting with, complementing, and merging with the nobly idealised version is a primary source of achievement in all genres of literature. [] The Renaissance writer at his best embraces both worlds. He possesses an acute awareness of the handling of a ships tackle, the technicalities of falconry, the materialistic greed of man; but with it he has a sense too of the celestial harmonies to which man may attain, of human possibilities infinite in their range. (Roston, 1982: 7, 9, 11)

In the literature of the English Renaissance, the dynamic interplay between an ennobling sense of mans infinite possibilities in his ascent to the divine and a sharply pragmatic awareness of the realities within the human condition (Roston, 1982: 11) charms and provides food for thought, always lying at the very heart of the most sublime lyrical poems, the best achieved epic verse or the most touching plays of the Tudor (and then Jacobean) stage.

References: Gavriliu, Eugenia (2000) Lectures in English Literature (I). From Anglo-Saxon to Elizabethan, Galai: Galai University Press. Gavriliu, Eugenia (2002) British History and Civilisation. A Student-Friendly Approach Through Guided Practice, Galai: Galai University Press. Guy, John and Morrill, John (1992) The Oxford History of Britain. Vol. III. The Tudors and Stuarts, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Roston, Murray (1982) Sixteenth-Century English Literature, London: Macmillan Education Limited.