Book of Common Prayer Growth of PROTESTANTISM, and foundation of numerous GRAM- 1549 England and reëstablishes the use of the English Prayer SACKVILLE writes (with Norton) Gorboduc, or Ferrex and FOXE's Book of Martyrs 1561 1563 1563 HOLINSHED'S Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland 1577 1579 FOREIGN DATES In Europe this was the period of LUTHER (d. 1546), CALVIN (d. 1564), and the REFORMATION. In the fine arts, the RENAISSANCE IN ITALY reached its height in the works of RAPHAEL (d. 1520), MICHAEL ANGELO (d. 1564), and TITIAN (d. 1576); and in poetry, in ARIOSTO (d. 1533), and TASSO (d. 1595). In France literature was influenced by classical models. The ships of MAGELLAN made the first voyage around the world, 1519-1522. COPERNICUS published his discovery of the revolution of the earth round the sun, 1543. CHAPTER III THE CULMINATION OF THE RENAISSANCE THE fact that by one cause or another the coming of the Renaissance to England was delayed was in no way detrimental to the development of English literature. On the contrary, it rather aided it. The new knowledge and enthusiasm, coming as they did in their full power and maturity, combined with the strong moral impulse of the Reformation, gave birth in the latter part of the sixteenth century to one of the most illustrious periods of literature in human history, the great age of Elizabeth. For more than a hundred and fifty years after the death of Chaucer, the English mind had produced but little. Great events had happened in that time, which were later to contribute to the splendid national energy that marked the England of Elizabeth; but in a state of unrest and political disturbance, the nation had directed its mental energies chiefly to other ends than literature. The Wars of the Roses had been followed by the political and religious quarrels of Henry VIII's time, and these, in turn, by the persecutions that marred the reign of Queen Mary. The early years under Elizabeth were years of uncertainty, of promise rather than fulfilment. The young Queen and her counselors were busy putting their house in order; religious dissensions were still rife, and England's future was clouded by the threatening power of Spain. The work of Wyatt and Surrey, of Sackville and Gascoigne, was that of experiment, -the dawn and promise of the coming day. But with the advent of Spenser, the earliest of the great Elizabethan writers, we pass into a period of the most lavish and amazing creative energy. Spenser is the first master poet of the sixteenth century in England. With him begins a succession of great men in whose works the Renaissance finds full and adequate expression. To account for this sudden and splendid outburst of literature after so many years of comparative barrenness, we must know something of the social, political, and educational conditions of the time. The Renaissance, though composed of so many forces, will not alone explain it. No one influence was the cause of this change; it was the result of the fortunate conjunction of many causes within England as well as without. Unity of the Nation. Never before in the history of England had the nation been so united as it was during the latter part of the sixteenth century. The spirit of patriotism, of national pride in England's greatness, which had been growing steadily since the close of the civil wars, was intense among all classes. The Tudor sovereigns, Henry VII and Henry VIII, had ruled with a strong hand, it is true, and had increased the power of the crown, but at the same time they had given England an efficient government. Henry VIII's daring stand against the Pope had roused among the people a sense of national independence and strength; in defiance of the papal authority he had made himself the head of the Church in England, and England had stood by him. Moreover, when Elizabeth came to the throne at the end of Queen Mary's reign, with its bitterness, its confusions, and martyrdoms, she did much to soften the violence of party strife. By her patience and toler ance she united all classes of Englishmen in a common sentiment, and by her statecraft won for her country a distinguished position abroad. In 1588, when the Spanish Armada sailed out of the ports of Spain and Portugal, bent on crushing the power of England, the English people, Catholic and Protestant, stood firm for their country and their queen. With light-hearted confidence itself proof of England's youth - Drake and his captains finished their game of bowls on Plymouth Hoe, and then sailed out of Plymouth harbor to meet and destroy England's greatest enemy. Their victory was a victory for English patriotism, and was one means of awaking England to a sense of her full possibilities. Intellectual Growth and the Extension of Education. The nation's intellectual and spiritual growth, however, was even greater in these years than its political or material advance. By the latter, part of the sixteenth century the full significance of the Renaissance had dawned upon the English mind. The spirit of investigation and of independent criticism which, directed upon church matters and the study of the Bible, had brought about the Reformation, was applied likewise to secular subjects, to the study of government, literature, and philosophy. The result was a new independence and spontaneity of thought, and all England felt the moving, quickening impulse. The voyages of discovery and exploration made by the English sailors who followed in the wake of Columbus stirred men's imagination; England's intellectual horizon was enormously extended. Moreover, as a result of the Renaissance, many free grammar schools had been established throughout the country, by which some tincture of the new classical learning had spread to the middle classes. One historian says that the grammar schools founded in the reigns of Edward VI and of Elizabeth constituted "a system of middle-class education which by the close of the century had changed the very face of England." One result of this was that now for the first time the middle and lower-middle classes were represented in English literature. Before the great literary outburst in Elizabeth's reign, the literature of England had been almost entirely written by ecclesiastics or by men of the aristocratic class. But now we witness the rise of the people in the Kingdom of Letters; the appearance of the third estate." And it is to these men of the "third estate" that the glory of Elizabethan literature is largely due. Spenser, for instance, was the son of a cloth-weaver; Shakespeare, of a provincial dealer in hides and wool; Marlowe, of a shoemaker. All these, and many others, came from a class which hitherto had had almost no part or place in the making of the representative literature of the nation; and all these men, like many of their followers, began their education at one or the other of the free grammar schools. Joy and Splendor of Life. Naturally this sense of national unity and security, and this political, social, and mental growth, resulted in increased prosperity for the nation, and added greatly to the joy and splendor of life. England was extending her commercial and maritime interests. Her trade increased with Flanders, and her merchant ships pushed north and south, east and west. The comforts and luxuries of life became more numerous. And with the ease and wealth that sprang from this growing prosperity came that delight in beauty, that half-pagan pleasure in the splendid adornments of life, which characterized the Italian Renaissance. Life, no longer shut within the heavy masonry |