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Sidney and Spenser displayed the highly figured style
characteristic in their lyrical and narrative works, but there were two
other poetic tendencies in their end of the 16th century and in the early
part of the 17th century. The first tendency is by the poetry of John Donne
and the other so-called Metaphysical Poets. George Herbert is one of Donne's
followers, and he distinguished himself for religious lyrics expressing the
emotions of appropriate to all true Christians with the personal humility.
Henry Vaughan,
Richard Crashaw, Andrew Marvell also belonged to this
school. The metaphysical style remained fashionable until the late in the
17th century. The second poetic tendency in English Renaissance was a
classically pure and restrained style that had strong influence on the late
figures such as Robert Herrick and the other Cavalier poets and gave the
direction for the poetic development of the succeeding neoclassical period.
Without any disputation, Shakespeare is the greatest poet of
the Elizabethan Age, whose poetry represents the summit of the poetic
utterance. The last great poet of the English Renaissance was the
Puritan writer John Milton. With his sophisticated poetic power John
Milton created two completed epics (Paradise Lost and Paradise
Regained) and one classically patterned tragedy Samson Agonistes.
The poetry of the English Renaissance indicates the
unexhausted energy of the age. Yet it is the drama that stands highest in
popular estimation. The works of William Shakespeare have achieved worldwide
reputation. Two influences, the native medieval drama and classical drama
(ancient Greek and Roman drama) contributed to the flourishing of English
drama in the Renaissance. Like so much non-dramatic literature of the
Renaissance, most of these plays were written in an elaborate verse style,
but the popular taste required sensationalism largely different from the
spirit of the mediaeval plays or Greek and Roman plays. Only the Roman
tragedian
Lucius Annaeus Seneca could provide a model for the earliest
popular tragedy of blood and revenge, which directly led to the production
of The Spanish Tragedy (1589) of
Thomas Kyd. Kyd’s skillfully
managed, complicated, but sensational plot influenced in turn later revenge
tragedies, from which Shakespeare’s Hamlet derived. Christopher
Marlowe began the tradition of the 20chronicle play, about the fatal deeds
of kings and potentates, a few years later with the tragedies Tamburlaine
the Great. Marlowe’s plays, such as The Tragical History of Dr.
Faustus (1588) and The Jew of Malta (1589), are remarkable for
their brave depictions of world-shattering characters who try to go beyond
the normal human limitations. These works are written in a poetic style
worthy in many ways of comparison to Shakespeare’s.
Elizabethan tragedy and comedy reached its true towering in
Shakespeare’s works. Shakespeare was the best playwright among the
Elizabethan dramatists. His understanding of humanism made him the
representative figure of English literature for the whole world. His
comedies depict human nature while his great tragedies look deeply into
human soul. In his last plays so called dramatic romances he accepts the
reality of social evil for his literary career. Because of their mysterious,
foreign atmosphere and their quick, surprising changes of bad and good
fortune, these plays come close to the spirit of the drama of the later
century.
Ben Jonson was the most influential figure in shaping the
immediate future course of English drama. His comedies are written in a
careful and sober style more than most Elizabethan and early 17th century
dramatists. He is good at satirizing with inimitable vigor and imagination.
Those qualities define the character of most of later Restoration comedies.
The best comedies of Jonson’s are Volpone (1606) and The Alchemist
(1610). The dramatists Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher write together on
a number of so-called tragic-comedies (for example, Philaster, 1610?)
in which morally uncertain situations, surprising reversals of fortune, and
sentimentality combine with hollow rhetoric.
The outstanding prose works of the Renaissance are not so
numerous, but the great translation of the Bible, called the King James
Bible, or Authorized Version, published in 1611, is significant. It was
the peak of two centuries of effort to produce the best English translation
of the original texts, and also because its vocabulary, imagery, and rhythms
have influenced writers of English ever since. Similarly the prose of Sir
Thomas Browne is impressive and grand. More’s prose work written in English
and Bacon’s philosophical writings and essays continued the style initiated
by Thomas Malory, characterized by lucidity and straightforwardness, and
ushered in the coming of the essays as an independent literary genre in the
18th century.
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