My reflections on English literature: essays on the major writers and their works for the students and teachers, who might need my help and whose help I need for better understanding the subject
There are a few variations in English prosody. For the convenience of the readers I explain those briefly below:
Spondee: When both the syllables are accented, the foot is called spondee.
Ere ha'lf / my day's / in this / da'rk wo'rld / and wi'de
Pyrrhic: When both the syllables are unaccented, the foot is called pyrrhic.
Ere ha'lf / my day's / in this / da'rk wo'rld / and wi'de
Catalectic: If at the end of a trochaic line, there is only an accented syllable, it is presumed that an unaccented syllable has been dropped. In this case the foot is called catalectic.
A'll the / jo'ys that / ble'ss thee.
Swee't-er/ fa'r may/ be'.
Acephalous: If in the beginning of an iambic line, there is only one accented syllable, it is presumed that an unaccented syllable has been dropped. In this case the foot is called acephalous.
Ha'te/-ful i's/ the da'rk/ blue sky'.
Hypermetrical: If at the end of an iambic line, there is only an unaccented syllable, it is presumed that the syllable is extra. In this case the line is called extra-metrical or hypermetrical.
During the 16th century English drama settled into a regular entertainment. The stage offered massive opportunities for the dramatists, but it remained in a state of chaos. In the 1580s group of playwrights, who had their education either from Oxford or Cambridge, stepped into the theatre as professional playwrights and reformed it for once and all. They are known as University Wits. The group includes—John Lyly, George Peele, Robert Greene, Thomas Lodge, Thomas Kyd and Marlowe. With their professionalism, while they rescued English drama from the medieval mire of religion, they also paved the way for Shakespeare.
John Lyly was the leader of the group. His receptive mind was hospitable to the more delicate graces of literature.In a series of witty comedies –Campaspe,Sapho and Phao,Endymion,Midas he addressed Elizabeth in delicate flattery praising by turn the charms of the chastity of the woman, the chastity of the virgin, the majority of the queen. It was Lyly who was largely responsible for the first elaboration of romantic sentiment.
Lyly wrote in Euphuistic prose, artificial in structure and language, but refined in manner, witty and graceful. Lyly’s plays with their sparkle and courtly air the first artistic plays. They made ready the way for Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and As You Like It.
Like Lyly, George Peele he flattered Elizabeth in his graceful pastoral, The arraignment of Paris. He used the same ornate manner in his scripture drama The Love of David and Fair Bathsabe in which he followed closely the Bible record. In his play Edward I, he turned to national history. He parodied the romanticists in The Old Wive’s Tale. By far the most original of the peoples’ plays was The Old Wive’s Tale which has a perfect charm of romantic humour.
Robert Greene was a member of both the universities. He tried an imitation entitled Alphonsus after Marlowe’s Tamburlaine. His second play was written with Lodge and entitled The Looking Glass for London and England. It is a mixture of elements from the moralities and modern Elizabethan satire. Then there followed Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay and James IV. With Greene, we find a dramatic form in which realism and idealism meet.
Thomas Lodge was educated at Oxford. He was a facile writer and in a quick succession wrote two plays The Wounds of Civil War and A Looking Glass for London and England. But he is better known as the writer of euphuistic prose romance Rosalynde, the source for Shakespeare’s As You Like It. another University Wit, Thomas Nash is known for his Summers Last Will and Testament and The Unfortunate Traveller.
Among Shakespeare’s predecessors, Thomas Kyd and Marlowe occupy a permanent place. They were both influenced by Seneca, at the same time contributed something of their own towards the development of English tragedy. Though Kyd does not seem to have any of the universities, his contribution to drama is intrinsically as well as historically important. His Spanish Tragedy established itself as a lasting genre in the Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre in the form of revenge tragedy. [The central motive in the drama is the revenge of Hieronimo for the murder of his son, Horatio. The play is a well constructed; and Seneca’s ghosts and revenge themes have freely been borrowed.] He wrote forceful and capable dialogue. He also presented in the hero a new type of vacillating tragic hero.
At the time of Marlowe’s arrival upon the English stage, the English drama was in a chaotic stage. It needed a great genius who could give the drama its shape, direction and stability. And this was fulfilled by Marlowe. In the first place, he raised the subject matter to a higher level. He provided heroic subjects which appealed to his imagination. In his person the spirit of Renaissance—boundless passion or knowledge, power and beauty was incarnated. His heroes are Tamberlaine, Dr. Faustus, Barabas, embodying passion for world conquest, knowledge and wealth respectively. He gave life and reality to these characters. In the next place , he gave the approval of his authority on the blank verse of the classical school and put aside the old rhyming lines of the Romantic or native drama, “ jigging veins of Rhyming mother-wits”, as he says in the Prologue to Tamburlaine.
Marlowe also added to the conception of tragedy. He broke, partly with medieval conception in which tragedy was the fall of a great man. With him, as later with Shakespeare, tragedy results in catastrophe from some overweening feature of weakness of strength in the character himself. Here we see the medieval conception of the royalty of tragedy being supplanted by the Renaissance ideal of individual worth—virtu. Marlovian heroes are all governed by this virtu which leads them to ultimate tragedy.
Marlowe was a great poet. His poetry raises crude medieval drama to the realm of high tragedy. The poignantly pathetic death scene of Faustus, the scene of King Edward at Kenilworth castle and the rapturous cry over the dying zenocrate remain permanently in the mind of the reader.
As a pragmatic and as an empirical thinker Bacon followed two fundamental Renaissance principles—Sepantia or search for knowledge and Eloquentia, the art of rhetoric. This explains, to some extent, the impassioned presentation of his ideas and views and the aphoristic style of his writing. But the essay Of Friendship is stylistically somewhat different in that it contains passionate and flattering statements along with profuse analogies and examples to support or explain his arguments perhaps because this essay was occasioned by the request of his friend Toby Matthew.
Bacon begins the essay by invoking the classical authorities on basic human nature. First, he refers to Aristotle’s view in Politics: Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god. According to Aristotle, a man by nature and behaviour may be degraded to such an extent that he may be called unfit for society. Again, he may be so self-sufficient that he may not need society. In the first case, he resembles a wild beast and in the second, he resembles gods. Here it should be pointed out that Bacon is not ruling out the value of solitude; in fact, he is reserving solitude for higher kind of life, which is possible for a few great men like Epimenides, Numa, Empedocles, Apollonius and some Christian saints. Here too Bacon is following Aristotelian view on solitude as expressed in Ethics, where Aristotle prefers a contemplative life to an active life:
“It is the highest kind of life, it can be enjoyed uninterruptedly for the greatest length of time...”
Bacon’s logic is that those who live in society should enjoy the bliss of friendship for more than one reason. First of all, friendship is necessary for maintaining good mental health by controlling and regulating the passions of the mind. In other words, Bacon here speaks of the therapeutic use of friendship though which one can lighten the heart by revealing the pent-up feelings and emotions: sorrows, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, advice and the like.
Then in order to justify the value of friendship, Bacon points out the practice of friendship on the highest social level. He informs us that the kings and princes, in order to make friends, would raise some persons who would be fit for friendship. Then Bacon tries to glorify friendship by translating the Roman term for friendship, Participes curarum, which means ‘sharers of their cares’. He gives instances of raising of men as friends from the Roman history: Sylla and Pompey the Great, Julius Caesar and Antonius, Augustus and Agrippa, Tiberius Caesar and Sejanus, Septimius Severus and Plautianus. Bacon also refers to what Comineus wrote of Duke Charles the Hardy’s deterioration of his mental faculty just because of his reserve and loneliness and extends his judgement to the case of Comineus’ second master, Louis XI. The point which Bacon strongly wants to assert is that friendship functions for a man in a double yet paradoxically contrary manner: “...it redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in halfs”.
The second fruit of friendship, according to Bacon, is beneficial for the clarity of understanding. If a man has got a faithful friend, he can be consulted to clarify the confusions of the mind. He calls the counsel of a friend, citing Heraclitus, “drier and purer” than that a man gives himself out of self love, which clouds his judgement. Bacon then counsel of this sort into two kinds: “the one concerning manners and the other concerning business.” A friend’s constructive criticism of the other friend’s behaviour helps him more than a book of morality. In the matter of conducting practical business, Bacon thinks, a true friend’s advice can also be helpful in undertaking a venture or averting a danger.
Finally, Bacon speaks of the last fruit of friendship, which is manifold in the sense that there are so many things in life, which can be fulfilled only with the help of a friend. In fact, at a rare moment Bacon gets emotional and quotes classical maxim that “a friend is another self”. His point is that a man may have many a desire, which may not be realized in his life-time, but if he has got a true friend, his unfulfilled desire will be taken care of by his friend. Not only this, a friend, unlike the near and dear ones and enemies, can talk to him on equal terms whenever situation demands. Keeping all these things, Bacon concludes that if a man does not have a friend, he may well leave this world. That is to say, he is not fit for the human society to live in.
