Facultad de Lenguas y Educación

Dra. Elsa del Campo Ramírez

Grado de Educación
Literature and Culture

UNIT 2
THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE (1485-1660)
Prof. Dra. Elsa del Campo Ramírez,
Materials: Dra. María Porras Sánchez

1.The Renaissance: general background 3

2. The Northern and English Renaissance 4

3. The English Language 6

4. Drama: social context and main authors 6

UNIT 2. THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 2 Sep. 2017

 1. The Renaissance: general background

In religious, political and social terms, the Renaissance is a period of enormous transition. If at the beginning of
the period England is a relatively peripheral kingdom in Europe, by the end of the period it is an established
empire and one of the major political players in Europe.

The Renaissance (lit. “rebirth”) was a cultural movement that began in Italy in the late 14 th century and spread
to the rest of Europe through the 15th and 16th centuries. There was an enormous interest in reviving the art
and learning of the classical world.

The Renaissance is probably best known for its art and for the development of ‘Humanism,’ a movement that
assumed “the central position of human beings in the universe; emphasized the importance in education of
studying classical imaginative and philosophical literature […] and insisted on the primacy of reason […] as
opposed to animal ‘passions’” (Abrams 116-117). Humanism represented a shift from the “contemplative life”
of the Middle Ages to the “active life” of the Renaissance.

In terms of thinking, some key ideas in Renaissance thinking were:

a) Humanism: promoted human knowledge through the study of the texts from Classical antiquity.
b) Secularism: placed greater emphasis on non-religious values and concerns.
c) Individualism: focused on the unique qualities and abilities of the individual person.

In terms of culture, the period is marked by key developments:

a) The New Learning

Renaissance scholars of the classics (humanists), revived the knowledge of the Greek language, discovered and
disseminated a great number of Greek manuscripts, and studied the works of Roman authors that had been
unknown during the Middle Ages.

The new learning spread thanks to new advances in technology, mainly the printing press. With the printing, it
was possible to produce books in large numbers and in a short amount of time. That way, more people could
learn to read and write.

Renaissance also helped spread the courtly ideal of the “Renaissance gentleman.” This notion sets up the ideal
of the completely rounded or "universal" man, developed in all his faculties and skills, physical, intellectual,
and artistic. Leonardo da Vinci in Italy and Sir Philip Sidney in England are often represented as embodying the
many aspects of the courtly ideal. The medieval saint/warrior is replaced by the Renaissance hero, courtier,
gentleman and intellectual.

b) The New Religion

The Reformation led by Martin Luther (1483-1546) was a successful heresy against the Roman Catholic Church.
Luther also wrote the first translation of the Bible into German.

This early Protestantism was grounded on each individual's inner experience of spiritual struggle and salvation.
Faith (based on the word of the Bible) was alone thought competent to save the human soul, and salvation

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itself was regarded as a direct transaction between God and the individual, without the necessity of
intermediation by Church, priest, or sacrament.

c) The New World

Expeditions such as the “discovery” of America by Christopher Columbus (1492), the Western sea route to
India by Vasco da Gama (1498), and Magellan’s travel around the world gave new materials to the literary
imagination (e.g. The Tempest, by W. Shakespeare). The economic exploitation of the new world —devastating
to the native peoples—put England at the centre of the main trade routes, enjoying a commercial prosperity
that was unknown to the country until then.

d) The New Cosmos

The cosmos of medieval astronomy and of medieval Christian theology was based on the works of Ptolemy (2 nd
c.) and pictured a stationary earth around which the heavenly spheres rotated.

Heaven was thought to be situated above the spheres, and Hell to be situated either at the centre of the Earth
(as in Dante's Inferno) or else below the system of the spheres (as in John Milton's Paradise Lost). In 1543
Copernicus published his new hypothesis concerning the astronomic system. He proposed a system in which
the centre was the Sun, not the Earth, and in which the Earth was not stationary, but only one planet among
many others, all of which revolving around the sun. Yet, the universe remained Ptolemaic in most of the
literary works during the Elizabethan era. Furthermore, the cosmos was considered subject to control by the
powers of witchcraft and of magic.

Copernicus’ theories had a tremendous impact in the new science developed in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Galileo confirmed with his telescope Copernicus’s heliocentric theory. This new science was a product of the
scientific procedure of constructing hypotheses capable of being tested by measured observations.

2. The Northern and English Renaissance

More intellectual than artistic, the development of the Italian Renaissance came late to England. It was in the
16th c., as part of the broader Northern Renaissance (which also developed in Germany, France, and the Low
Countries) and did not have its flowering until the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods (1558-1625). However,
we can find Renaissance traces during the reign of Henry VIII.

The Northern Renaissance had its own unique characteristics:

a) The focus of the Renaissance in Northern Europe was more religious than in Italy.
b) Many intellectuals sought religious reform and a return of the Church to its true mission and
spirituality.
c) Many intellectuals were highly critical of the worldliness and corruption in the Church and papacy.
d) Northern Renaissance figures believed that education and literacy were key to social and religious
reform.
e) Many advocated for the translation of the scriptures into vernacular languages.

The traditional date of the beginning of English Renaissance is 1485, when the Battle of Bosworth ended the
Wars of the Roses and inaugurated the Tudor Dynasty. Renaissance style and ideas, however, were slow to
penetrate England, and the Elizabethan era in the second half of the 16 th century is usually regarded as the
height of the English Renaissance.

UNIT 2. THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 4 Sep. 2017

Among the different periods of English Renaissance, two are of particular relevance:

Elizabethan Age. Strictly speaking, it covers the period of the reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603); the
term "Elizabethan," however, is often used loosely to refer to the late sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries, even after the death of Elizabeth. This was a time of rapid development in
English commerce, maritime power, and nationalist feeling. It was a great (in drama, the greatest) age
of English literature, with many other extraordinary writers of prose and of dramatic, lyric, and
narrative poetry.

Jacobean Age. it covers the reign of James I (in Latin, "Jacobus"), 1603-25, which followed that of
Queen Elizabeth. This was the period of many outstanding prose writings and the King James
translation of the Bible. It was also the time of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies and tragicomedies,
and of major writings by other notable poets and playwrights including John Donne, Ben Jonson, John
Webster, and Elizabeth Cary, whose notable biblical drama The Tragedy of Marìam, the Faire Queene
of Jewry was the first long play by an Englishwoman to be published.

3. The English Language

The type of English written and spoken in the Renaissance is known as Early Modern English. There are many
similarities between Early Modern and Late Modern English but significant differences, too.

The fact that early modern English was not standardised was one of the reasons that it was conventionally
regarded as inferior to Latin. The comparatively low status of English was reinforced in the 15th century by the
fact that it was considered too ‘symple and rude’ to be used for sophisticated artistic or intellectual
expression. The perceived deficiency of the vernacular was felt especially keenly by some of the period’s
writers and led to a growing desire to improve English during the 16th century. The mission to improve English
was partly nationalistic. Authors set about improving the language in different ways:

-some encouraged the imitation of classical syntax, and the borrowing of words from Latin and other European
languages.

-others preferred to expand the resources of the language by reviving archaic native words and borrowing
from English dialects.

By the end of the 16th century English had been transformed. Most striking of all was the massive expansion in
its vocabulary: quite often one could find more than one word for exactly the same thing, which is highly
unusual in languages.

4. Drama: social context and main authors

Primitive English Drama

During the Renaissance, drama reached a tremendous popularity and one of the most creative peaks of all
times. It was the age of some of the best English playwrights in English history: William Shakespeare,

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Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson. However, drama was not new in England, as there had been primitive forms
of it. In Medieval times, religious drama had been quite popular. These plays, called offices, were performed
within churches during certain festivities. They were simple representations of some Biblical episodes, and
they were played by priests or other members of the congregation. These forms evolved into mystery plays,
played in the outside of the church during important festivities, involving the participation of the whole town.
With the shift to the streets, acting was transferred from the priesthood to the amateurs of the guilds or
professional players. The mystery plays were organised in cycles or chains of scenes from the Old and New
Testament. Mystery plays became more sophisticated and didactic towards the end of the Middle Ages. They
were now called moralities. They were examples of allegorical drama that became popular in Europe at the
end of the Middle Ages (15th and 16th centuries). In moralities, the characters personify moral qualities (such as
charity or vice) or abstractions (such as death or youth), with the purpose of teaching a moral lesson. With the
Reformation, scripturalist drama was banned from the stages. Interludes were yet another example of early
drama. They began to be performed indoors in great halls by professional actors and they served as a form of
entertainment for the higher classes.

The theatres

Drama is closely linked to the physical space where it is performed. At first, there were no public theatres, and
the first of those were erected during the Renaissance. During the 16th c., the theatre firmly establishes itself in
England as a form of entertainment enjoyed by different social classes.

However, at the very beginning the theatre was something for the commons. Apart from the street
performances, plays were held in the yards of public inns, with the comings and goings of servants and
travellers. The collection of money during open air performances was chancy: people left when the box came
round. This gave the first theatre promoter, James Burbage, the idea of situating the box office at the entry of
a building specifically designed for the purpose of performing.

In 1576, James Burbage erected in Shoreditch the first purpose-built permanent commercial theatre: ‘The
Theatre’. The word was new, first being used in 1548, but without any connotation of plays and acting. The
Greek word means ‘seeing place.’ The new theatres were used for other forms of entertainment besides plays:
e.g. for exhibitions of fencing. By the end of the 16th c. we find 8 theatres in a city of 200,000 inhabitants.

Between 1580-1642, we find more than 1000 plays. Playwrights often worked together in the same
production, and the genres of comedy and tragedy were often combined.

Great people also enjoyed plays, such as the Queen or other noble lords. The way to protect players from the
restrictive laws against vagrancy was making the players their “servants.” This way they were licensed, under
the patronage of some lords. That is the beginning of acting companies. The Lord Chamberlain’s Men (under
James I were renamed The King’s Men) were the leading company after 1594. The famous Richard Burbage
and Shakespeare were actors in this company. Most of Shakespeare’s main roles were created for Burbage and
other players from the company.

Besides adult companies, there were also boy-companies, who usually performed indoors in certain palaces
and halls. Soon, the adult companies emulated their use of hall playhouses, also known as private playhouses.
These were private theatres, very exclusive and expensive. James Burbage bought a house in Blackfriars, a
select district near the Court, which he turned into a private theatre. It opened in 1608 and housed the King’s
Men.

UNIT 2. THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 6 Sep. 2017

Latin and Italian influences, and first authors

As with poetry, continental Renaissance started to influence English drama at the beginning of the 16th c. Many
works from the Classical antiquity were adapted and/or translated. The first adaptations of Plautus and
Terence took place in the universities and other cultural centres. Elizabethan authors were not only familiar
with these plays, but imitated them is some detail in their own plays. It is the case of Shakespeare’s Comedy of
Errors, and Ben Jonson’s Every Man in His Humour.

Genres

The 1590s saw English drama diverge into three broad types: comedies, histories and tragedies.

Comedy
As Siobahn Keenan explains: “The turn of the century saw the emergence of two new strands of comic writing
which focused on contemporary life more directly: ‘humours’ comedy and ‘city’ comedy. Humours comedies
are defined by their realistic modern settings, their focus on tales of sexual intrigue, and their characterisation
of individuals in terms of a particular humour or eccentricity. Ben Jonson excelled in this field with his well-
known humours comedies: Every Man in His Humour (performed 1598) and Every Man out of His Humour
(performed 1599).

City comedies focus on contemporary urban life and real-life settings (usually in London). Many of the plays
are concerned with the thriving commercial culture associated with the city, but love, sex and marriage are
also important themes.

Tragedy
“Shakespeare and his contemporaries were not generally familiar with Greek tragedy but knew about
Aristotle’s poetic theory, according to which tragedy traces the fall from fortune of a great man as a
consequence of pride or a fatal flaw or mistake in judgement (hamartia, in Greek). This reversal in fortune
(peripeteia) is followed by a moment of recognition (anagnorisis). The play generally ends with the death of
the protagonist, an event which is expected to have a cathartic affect, provoking fear and pity in audiences”
(Renaissance Literature 86).

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The first original plays in English Renaissance (1551 to 1590) had been tragedies, directly influenced by the
Latin author of tragedies Seneca. In later tragedies, the influence of Seneca persisted in the subgenre of the
revenge tragedy and a certain taste for bloody details and supernatural details (e.g. Shakespeare’s Hamlet).
Tragedy will be the prevailing genre at the beginning of the 17th century during the Jacobean period. It is the
height of Shakespeare’s career with tragedies including Hamlet (1600–1), Othello (1603–4), King Lear (1605),
Macbeth (in 1606), and Antony and Cleopatra (1606–7).

History
‘History’ plays were usually tragic in terms of mood, but they are often treated separately. They dramatised
the stories of historical characters and events. As Keenan has pointed out: “Some playwrights wrote dramas
based on Roman, Eastern, or recent Western European events; many more wrote plays about Medieval English
history. When modern critics discuss Renaissance history plays they are usually alluding to the latter. In many
cases playwrights based their plays on the material they found in the historical chronicles produced in
increasing numbers in the sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries” (Renaissance Literature 98).

History plays can be traced back to the early 16th century but enjoyed their biggest popularity at the end of the
century. Christopher Marlowe played an important part in popularising the genre on the professional stage,
but the playwright who contributed most to the 1590s vogue for histories was Shakespeare. Between 1591
and 1600 he wrote nine English history plays.

Main authors

The figure of William Shakespeare (1564-1616) tends to overshadow the rest of Renaissance authors, but
there were other playwrights who excelled in their art, especially Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson.

Christopher Marlowe (1564-93). He adopted literature as a profession and became attached to the Lord
Admiral's players. He led a dissolute life and was accused of atheism and immorality. His premature death took
place in a tavern fight. Marlowe's plays, all tragedies, were written within five years (1587-92), and all of them,
except Edward II, revolve around one figure drawn in bold outlines.

- Tamburlaine, part 1 (c.1587)

- Tamburlaine, part 2 (c.1587–1588)
- The Jew of Malta (c.1589)
- Doctor Faustus (c.1589, or, c.1593)

Ben Jonson (1572-1637). Jonson also lived a turbulent life: he studied at Westminster but ended up working as
bricklayer and then served in the military at Flanders, before working as an actor and playwright. He killed a
man in a duel but escaped the gallows by pleading benefit of clergy (that is, by proving he could read and
write). His learning had saved his life. He wrote 20 plays and 37 masques. The masque was an elaborate form
of court entertainment that combined poetic drama, music, song, dance, splendid costuming, and stage
spectacle. A plot—often slight, and mainly mythological and allegorical—served to hold together these diverse
elements. The speaking characters, who wore masks (hence the title), were often played by amateurs who
belonged to courtly society. The play concluded with a dance in which the players doffed their masks and were
joined by the audience.

His first successful play, Every Man in His Humor, had inaugurated the so-called comedy of humors, which
ridicules the eccentricities or passion of the characters (thought to be caused by physiological imbalance).

UNIT 2. THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 8 Sep. 2017