DRAMA IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

Early Developments

I. The Rise of the Secular Drama

Medieval Drama Mysteries Miracles They began to incorporate more and more non religious material and reached a point when it is impossible distinguish clearly between them and the early secular interludes. after 1500: interlude = used indiscriminately for any play Interludes maintaining its character of secular humour: 1) a brief play between the courses of a banquet; 2) a play performed outdoors in summer. It is out of the interlude that the wholly secular drama in English developed in the further years. Moralities The scholarly revival of interest in the ancient drama contributed to a vigorous playwriting in England's schools and colleges, in the noblemen's houses and at the Inns of Court. E.g. Henry Medwall (a teacher in the household of Cardinal Morton): a morality, Nature, written in the old allegorical traditions; the play Fulgens and Lucres the earliest known English secular play (written about 1497 and published about 1515): no traces of allegory; meant for acting between the courses of a banquet; characters that are far from the abstractions of the typical morality plays (i.e. Lucretia, her father senator Fulgentio, the suitors: the noble and wealthy Cornelius and the poor but honest Flaminius); the appearance of the love-triangle drama for the first time in English; the parallel humorous subplot (two servants designated A and B rivalling each other for the hand of Lucretia's maid) Early Renaissance

"With love as a central theme the play is neither Biblical, nor allegorical, but strikingly secular"

The First Comedies

after 1550: Drama embarked upon a period of tremendous flourishing. Plays were performed at Court, in the halls of the noblemen, at the Inns of Court and in colleges, generally but not exclusively by professional actors. folk plays, moralities and interludes; the academic drama emerging in schools; major classic models: Plautus, Terence and Seneca Written by humanist scholars first in Latin than in English, academic drama was an educational device to instruct in moral lessons and literary style. E.g. Nicholas Udall (headmaster of Eaton and of Westminster School) : a selection of phrases from Terence, Flowers of Latin Speaking Selected and Gathered out of Terence, used as a text book of style by schoolboys in Tudor times; the first English comedy Ralph Roister Doister (written in 1535 and published about 1567). Ralph Roister Doister written in in short rhymed doggerel (= rough, heavy-footed and jerky versification, monotonously regular in meter and tritely conventional in sentiment M. H. Abrams, Glossary of Literary Terms, 1999: 69) inspired by the comedies of Plautus and Terence (the five act division and observing the unities of time, place and action); main characters: widow Custance; Gawin Goodluck; Ralph Roister; Merrygreek; classical types of stock characters: Ralph Roister Doister: the classical "milles gloriosus (the cowardly braggart soldier) the remote ancestor of Shakespeare's Sir John Falstaff in Henry IV ; Merrygreek: the classical parasite. Humour derives from the social satire addressed at the avarice of the middle classes, from the lovely language of the play, puns, significant names of the characters, proverbs. Gammer Gurton's Needle (written about 1555 and published in 1575) the second English comedy in verse (uncertain authorship: A "Mr. S." of Christ Church College, Cambridge); classical in form (five classical acts, observing unities of time, space and action); action laid in the English countryside; characters typical of the villages of the late feudal times: Hodge, his wife Gammer Gurton, the parasitical Diccon, Dame Chat - the alehouse keeper, Doctor Rat - the curate.

The greatest merit of the play consists in its realism presenting the genuine local colour of an English village in the 16th century. [] This combination of lively, vivid native English material put into the regular form of the Latin comedies of Plautus and Terence looked forward to the comedies of Shakespeare.

The First Tragedies

modelled on Seneca (translated in 1581) features of the Senecan tragedy: five acts, violent and bloody plots, rhetorical speeches and the presence of ghosts among the characters. Gorboduc or Ferrex and Porrex presented at the Christmas feast of the Inner Temple (1501-62) where young men studied law. Later it was acted before the queen; authors: two young lawyers, Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton; Inspired by a legendary tale of ancient Britain derived from Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae; characters: king Gordoduc; his sons, Porrex and Ferrex; queen Videna. The play voices the popular aspirations for unity and order. Senecan elements: five acts, each ending with a chorus of five old Britons, the scenes of horror and violence (taking place off the stage); a "dumb show or pantomime preceding each act; The most important innovation of Gorboduc is the blank verse here employed in drama for the first time. The first chronicle play (based on the historical materials in the English Chronicles by Raphael Holinshed and others) - King Johan (c. 1538) by John Bale

II. The University Wits (1585-1595)

University Wits = young playwrights fresh from the humanistic training in the universities who moulded the medieval forms of drama into the pattern of their classical education. Most of them seem to have had a taste for dissolute living and encountered untimely deaths. Some of them had a great contempt for unlettered competitors like Shakespeare. In the hands of these wild but gifted writers, the play of human passion and action was expressed for the first time with true dramatic effect. They paved the way for Shakespeare who was to carry the Elizabethan drama to perfection. John Lyly (1554-1606) Life: closely connected with the aristocratic circles;

born in Kent, brought up in Canterbury; studies: Kings School; MA at the University of Oxford; He sought promotion at the court, but his influence decline after 1589. Three times an MP; After 1590 retired in Yorkshire at the Mexborough house of his wife Beatrice Browne (whom he married in 1583). Work: the novel (prose romance) Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit (1578) and its sequel Euphues and His England (1580) the most fashionable writer for a decade the EUPHUISTIC style: sententiousness, preference for moral maximes, overabundant use of comparison by simile, allusion to classical/ mythological figures, syntactic parallelism through balance and antithesis, elaborate pattern of alliteration and assonance. Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit There dwelt in Athens a young gentleman of great patrimony, and of so comely a personage, that it was doubted whether he were more bound to Nature for the lineaments of his person, or to Fortune for the increase of his possessions. But Nature impatient of comparisons, and as it were disdaining a companion or copartner in her working, added to this comeliness of his body such a sharp capacity of mind, that not only she proved Fortune counterfeit, but was half of that opinion that she herself was only current. This young gallant, of more with than wealth, and yet of more wealth than wisdom, seeing himself inferior to none in pleasant conceits, thought himself superior to all in honest conditions, insomuch that he deemed himself so apt to all things, that he gave himself almost to nothing, but practicing of those things commonly which are incident to these sharp wits, fine phrases, smooth quipping, merry taunting, using jesting without mean, and abusing mirth without measure. As therefore the sweetest rose hath his prickle, the finest velvet his brack, the fairest flower his bran, so the sharpest wit hath his wanton will, and the holiest head his wicked way. And true it is that some men write and most men believe, that in all perfect shapes, a blemish bringeth rather a liking every way to the eyes, than a loathing any way to the mind. Venus had her mole in her cheek which made her more amiable: Helen her scar on her chin which Paris called cos amoris, the whetstone of love. Aristippus his wart, Lycurgus his wen: So likewise in the disposition of the mind, either virtue is overshadowed with some vice, or vice overcast with some virtue. Alexander valiant in war, yet given to wine. Tully eloquent in his glozes, yet vainglorious: Solomon wise, yet too wanton: David holy but yet an homicide: none more witty than Euphues, yet at the first none more wicked. Plays:

Comedies based on the theme of courtly love, set against a classical/ mythological background: Campaspe (1584); Sappho and Phao (1584); Endymion, the Man in the Moon (1591) ; Gallathea (1592); Midas (1592) ; Mother Bombie (1594) ; The Woman in the Moon (1597) ; Love's Metamorphosis (1601) . Features: most of them written in prose (except for The Woman in the Moon), for childrens companies and addressing basically the courtly audience; indebted to the Latin comedy through such characters as: the crafty servant, the duped parent, the braggart soldier, the lovesick youth; devices introduced: girls disguised as boys; the ethereal fairies; exquisite effects of song and music. Influence on W. Shakespeare: the above mentioned theatrical devices and the euphuistic style (e.g. Moth in Loves Labours Lost; Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado about Nothing; Polonius in Hamlet ). George Peele (1557-1596) Life: BA and MA in Oxford; living a dissolute life in London, which is why he was turned out of his fathers dwellings. Work: pageants (= spectacular processions/ plays presenting tableaux and including songs, dances and dramatic scenes very close to the masque); occasional or miscellaneous verse; plays: The Arraignment of Paris (written 1581, printed 1584); Edward I (1593); The Old Wives Tale (written about 1589, printed 1595); The Love of King David and fair Bethsabe (written ca. 1588, printed 1599). Innovations: Peele the founder of the Elizabethan romantic comedy; freshness, high spirits and optimism; the enchanted never-never land, remote from reality.

influencing W. Shakespeare. Robert Greene (1560-1592) Life: BA and MA in Cambridge; 1578-1583: travelling very extensively abroad, visiting France, Germany, Poland and Denmark; embarking on a dissolute life in London as well as on prose and poetry writing until his death. Work: the first professional reference to Shakespeare in A Groatsworth of Wit Bought with a Million of Repentance: an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tiger's heart wrapped in a Players hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes fac totum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country. passages from Henry VI, The Comedy of errors, The Two Gentlemen of Verona ascribed to Greene; imitating Christopher Marlowe in his dramatic productions. plays: The History of Orlando Furioso (1594); Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (1594); The Scottish History of James the Fourth (1598) introducing for the first time Oberon, king of the fairies on the English stage. allegedly the author of George-a-Greene, the Pinner of Wakefield (written 1588) - the most important expression of the democratic trends in the drama of English humanists. Thomas Kyd (1558-1594) Life: born in London in a prosperous middle-class family; studies: the Merchant Taylors School (Edmund Spenser also attended this school at the same time), thus benefiting from excellent classical training (Virgil and Seneca); an apprentice in his fathers trade and a translator; 1583 - already writing for the stage; persecution by the Queens secret agents who searched his house in 1593 on suspicion of his taking an active part in spreading anti-governmental material (i.e. an atheistic pamphlet) together with his friend and former co-tenant Christopher Marlowe imprisoned tortured on suspicion of spreading heresy and atheism eventually released, but he soon died in utter poverty. Work: The Spanish Tragedy or Hieronimo Is Mad Again! (1586)

plays attributed to him: Ur-Hamlet ; Arden of Feversham. The Spanish Tragedy or Hieronimo Is Mad Again! (1586) WHY? the revenge theme very popular among the Elizabethans. Actually, there was a conflict between the old custom of seeking private revenge for wrongs done to ones family, inherited largely from the Anglo-Saxon and Danish influences on English culture, as well as from the Christian injunction of Vindicta mihi; Vengeance is mine, sayeth the lord; I will repay. the background - the conflict between the Spanish and the Portuguese in 1580 the strong anti-Spanish sentiment. characters: Don Andrea, the spirit of Revenge, Hieronimo, Horatio, Isabella, Bel-Imperia, Lorenzo, the Duke of Castile, Balthazar, the Viceroy of Portugal, Pedringano, Serberine. Main characters: Hieronimo the avenger. Torn apart between his violent urges of a grieving father whose son was brutally murdered and his responsibility as the Knight-Marshal, the top judge for any legal matters concerning the Spanish king or his estate, he links thus two of the plays key themes, justice and revenge. Psychological complexity whether to end his misery by suicide instead of waiting to seek revenge, where to seek revenge against murderers with far more influence over the king than he, how to reconcile his duties as a judge with his inability to find justice for his son, whether to leave revenge to God once his legal means are exhausted, andhaving decided to seek his revengehow to do it in the face of enemies who could easily destroy him with their vastly greater influence and power at court the decision of seeking revenge in a Machiavellian, deceitful manner (the play-within-the-play: Hieronimos revenge seen less as a violent, evil act than as a creative way to find justice in an unjust society) Main characters: Bel-Imperia: an unfortunate young woman: she falls in love with both Andrea and Horatio shortly before they die; she has the misfortune to have an evil brother in Lorenzo; she is the object of Balthazars affection, when Balthazar is the very man who murdered her beloved Andrea and then went on to murder her beloved Horatio; she is forced by both her father, the Duke of Castille, and her uncle, the King of Spainthe two

most powerful men in the countryto wed this very same Balthazar. but not a weak woman: she has the necessary strength of will to act on her desires and motivations; the clearest example of this may be her participation in Hieronimo's revenge playlet, Soliman and Perseda. Main characters: Lorenzo: the Machiavellian villain (other e.g.s of such characters in Elizabethan drama: Richard III of Gloucester in Shakespeares Richard III, Iago in Shakespeares Othello; Barabas in Marlowes The Jew of Malta ) = combining the Elizabethan misinterpretation of Niccolo Machiavellis political philosophy (focused on the picture of a political ruler who uses manipulation over persuasion and fear over love to ensure the loyalty of his subjects) and the traditional Vice figure in English literature. Vice features: use of verbal cleverness to lead a protagonist into sin, using that protagonist's inherent moral weakness, and respectively, to lead the people around him to injustice, playing on their moral weakness as well as their lack of knowledge. The key difference between Vice and the Machiavellian villain: the former is supernatural, the latter is human and, therefore, has weaknesses and can be manipulated.