DIAZ discovers the Cape of Good Hope 1486 COLUMBUS discovers America 1492 Voyage of JOHN and SEBASTIAN CABOT to North America. 1497 VASCO DA GAMA discovers way to India by sea 1498 LUTHER protests against the sale of INDULGENCES 1517 1521 1543 1370?-1450? COPERNICUS publishes his astronomical theory · Followers of Chaucer in England. THOMAS OCCLEVE JOHN LYDGATE Followers of Chaucer in Scotland. WILLIAM DUNBAR Popular Ballads, Miracle Plays, and Songs. ACCESSION OF HENRY VII. GROCYN and LINACRE teach Greek at Oxford.. . 1370?-1451? .1394-1437 .1425?-1506? .1460?-1520? 1476? 1485 1337-1453 .about 1455-1485 1485 1491-1493 1491-1500 CHAPTER II THE PRELUDE TO THE AGE OF ELIZABETH WE have seen how the "new learning" definitely entered England through the Universities, we must now trace the progress of the Renaissance in England from the beginning of Henry VIII's reign to the middle of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, when the stimulating and varied experiences of the nation found their greatest utterances through literature. We shall see how, as the sixteenth century advanced, the new ideas became more and more widely spread until they reached people of almost every class, and how the whole nation was affected by the vital changes which were taking place in the religious as well as in the intellectual life of Europe during this time. Henry VIII and His Court. The reign of Henry VIII (1509–1547) was not a great literary era, like the age of Queen Elizabeth, Queen Anne, or Queen Victoria. There were able and good men in King Henry's time, like More and Colet, strong, masterful men, like the famous Cardinal Wolsey, or the King himself, but there were no writers of commanding genius, no original literary works of the highest kind. Yet these thirty-eight years of Henry's reign had a very important influence on the future. New methods and new ideas came into literature, a great change was made in the position of the Church, and in many ways England was moving toward the greatest literary era in her history. To some extent this movement was helped forward by the character of the King. In many ways Henry VIII resembles some powerful prince or noble of Renaissance Italy. When he came to the throne, he was young, handsome, rich, expert in manly and martial exercises, high-spirited, and enormously popular. He was learned, too, above the other princes of his time: he loved poetry and music, and he even wrote songs himself. He loved beauty, color, and magnificent entertainments, and his Court was one of the most brilliant in Europe. In his splendid palace at Whitehall, a little beyond the limits of old London, the King had gathered pictures by Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Holbein, and other master-painters of that great age of art. All this was significant of the coming of a new age. Henry VII saved, Henry VIII spent; and as we read of the fantastic pageants, the sumptuous appointments, the costly retinue, and the elaborate ceremonial of the younger Henry's Court, we feel that something, at least, of the warm life and vivid color of the Italian Renaissance had found an entrance into England. The Renaissance in Literature: Wyatt and Surrey. This changed spirit of the English Court did not show itself in outward splendor only; it showed itself in literature also. Throughout the Tudor period, the English were urged forward by a desire to learn from the Continental nations, and they appear to have known instinctively that of all countries Italy was the one best fitted to meet their needs. And so, just as Grocyn and his fellow-students had gone to Italy in search of new ideas in scholarship, English versifiers began to study Petrarch, Dante, and other Italian poets, and to make verses in imitation of these foreign models. Two noblemen of Henry VIII's Court, SIR THOMAS WYATT (1503–1542), and HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY (about 15171547), took the lead in introducing Italian meters, and in giving a touch of the Italian spirit to English verse. Both poets were men of education, high position, and refined tastes. Wyatt was handsome, manly, and accomplished. He excelled in conversation and played beautifully upon the lute. He was considerably older than Surrey, and the first to experiment in the new forms of verse. Not unnaturally his work is less smooth. and finished than that of his follower, but his character seems to have been deeper and more serious. Love was the great theme of Petrarch's famous series of Sonnets, and the greater part of both Wyatt's and Surrey's poems deal with the same subject. When poets tell us that they are dying for love, it does not do to take them too literally, and we may be sure that the doleful songs and sonnets in which Wyatt and Surrey detail their sufferings were largely poetical exercises. Yet in Wyatt, under all his affectations, there are touches of true feeling, a sadness not altogether assumed, and in some of his poems there is a real longing for a life of quiet apart from the falsehoods and distractions of the Court. While Wyatt and Surrey had a genuine love for poetry, it was far from being the chief interest of their lives. They were courtiers, fine gentlemen, to whom verse-making was an elegant accomplishment, an occupation and amusement for their leisure hours. Yet, while they wrote as amateurs, they had a most important influence on the development of English poetry, for they were the first in England to use certain poetic forms and meters, which their successors adopted and improved. Wyatt introduced into England a kind of poem known as the sonnet, a poetic form in which Dante, Petrarch, and other Italian poets had excelled, and it was not long before the sonnet became one of the glories of English literature.1 The service which Surrey performed for English poetry was probably even more important, for he was the first Englishman to use the unrimed measure known as blank verse.2 Surrey, indeed, was not himself a great master of this verse, but he showed the way to his successors, and in their hands this meter became wonderfully melodious and majestic. Marlowe, Shakespeare, and the other great playwrights, used it in the drama; Milton made it the verse of his long narrative poems. It now stands above all rivals as the distinctive dramatic and epic verse-form of English literature. As Wyatt and Surrey were not professional authors, 1 A sonnet, in the modern sense, must consist of exactly fourteen lines, each line must contain five accented syllables, and the rimes must be arranged according to certain strict rules. Wyatt imitated Petrarch's sonnets, or, in some cases, translated them directly into English. Then Surrey, following Wyatt's example, whom he greatly admired, wrote sonnets likewise. 2 The first important feature of blank verse is, that while it possesses the measure, or meter, of verse, it is blank, or free from rime. All unrimed verse is not necessarily blank verse, although all blank verse is unrimed. In addition to the absence of rime, the verses, or lines as we commonly call them, must be in the measure, or meter, known as iambic pentameter. The line: "The thing became a trumpet whence he blew " is an iambic pentameter line. This line contains ten syllables, and if you read it so as to bring out its regular beat or movement, you will naturally emphasize certain syllables. Thus "The thing be-came a trum-pet whence he blew." The accent is not always so regular as this, nor is the number of syllables invariably ten, but this is a good example of the ordinary, or normal, iambic pentameter line. |