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English Literature I

Renaissance Love Poetry

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English Renaissance

The English Renaissance was a cultural and artistic movement in England dating from the late 15th to the early 17th century. It is
associated with the pan-European Renaissance that is usually regarded as beginning in Italy in the late 14th century. Like most of
northern Europe, England saw little of these developments until more than a century later. The beginning of the English
Renaissance is often taken, as a convenience, to be 1485, when the Battle of Bosworth Field ended the Wars of the Roses and
inaugurated the Tudor Dynasty. Renaissance style and ideas, however, were slow to penetrate England, and the Elizabethan era in
the second half of the 16th century is usually regarded as the height of the English Renaissance.
Queen Elizabeth I standing on a map of England

The English Renaissance is different from the Italian Renaissance in several ways. The dominant art forms of the English
Renaissance were literature and music. Visual arts in the English Renaissance were much less significant than in the Italian
Renaissance. The English period began far later than the Italian, which is usually considered to begin in the late 14th century, and
was moving into Mannerism and the Baroque by the 1550s or earlier. In contrast, the English Renaissance can only be said to
begin, shakily, in the 1520s, and continued until perhaps 1620.

Literature

England had a strong tradition of literature in the English vernacular, which gradually increased as English use of the printing press
became common by the mid 16th century. By the time of Elizabethan literature a vigorous literary culture in both drama and poetry
included poets such as Edmund Spenser, whose verse epic The Faerie Queene had a strong influence on English literature but was
eventually overshadowed by the lyrics of William Shakespeare, Thomas Wyatt and others. Typically, the works of these playwrights
and poets circulated in manuscript form for some time before they were published, and above all the plays of English Renaissance
theatre were the outstanding legacy of the period.

The English theatre scene, which performed both for the court and nobility in private performances, and a very wide public in the
theatres, was the most crowded in Europe, with a host of other playwrights as well as the giant figures of Christopher Marlowe,
Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. Elizabeth herself was a product of Renaissance humanism trained by Roger Ascham, and
wrote occasional poems such as On Monsieur’s Departure at critical moments of her life. Philosophers and intellectuals included
Thomas More and Francis Bacon. All the 16th century Tudor monarchs were highly educated, as was much of the nobility, and
Italian literature had a considerable following, providing the sources for many of Shakespeare’s plays. English thought advanced
towards modern science with the Baconian Method, a forerunner of the Scientific Method. The language of the Book of Common
Prayer, first published in 1549, and at the end of the period the Authorised Version (“King James Version” to Americans) of the Bible
(1611) had enduring impacts on the English consciousness.

Criticism of the idea of the English Renaissance

Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury, circa 1610-14

The notion of calling this period “The Renaissance” is a modern invention, having been popularized by the historian Jacob
Burckhardt in the 19th century. The idea of the Renaissance has come under increased criticism by many cultural historians, and
some have contended that the “English Renaissance” has no real tie with the artistic achievements and aims of the Italian artists
(Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Donatello) who are closely identified with Renaissance visual art. Whereas from the perspective
of literary history, England had already experienced a flourishing of literature over 200 years before the time of Shakespeare, during
the last decades of the fourteenth century. Geoffrey Chaucer’s popularizing of English as a medium of literary composition rather
than Latin occurred only 50 years after Dante had started using Italian for serious poetry, and Chaucer translated works by both
Boccaccio and Petrarch into Middle English. At the same time William Langland, author ofPiers Plowman, and John Gower were
also writing in English. In the fifteenth century, Thomas Malory, author of Le Morte D’Arthur, was a notable figure. For this reason,
scholars find the singularity of the period called the English Renaissance questionable; C. S. Lewis, a professor of Medieval and
Renaissance literature at Oxford and Cambridge, famously remarked to a colleague that he had “discovered” that there was no
English Renaissance, and that if there had been one, it had “no effect whatsoever.”

Historians have also begun to consider the word “Renaissance” as an unnecessarily loaded word that implies an unambiguously
positive “rebirth” from the supposedly more primitive Middle Ages. Some historians have asked the question “a renaissance for
whom?,” pointing out, for example, that the status of women in society arguably declined during the Renaissance. Many historians
and cultural historians now prefer to use the term “early modern” for this period, a term that highlights the period as a transitional
one that led to the modern world, but attempts to avoid positive or negative connotations.

Other cultural historians have countered that, regardless of whether the name “renaissance” is apt, there was undeniably an artistic
flowering in England under the Tudor monarchs, culminating in Shakespeare and his contemporaries.

Major English Renaissance authors

The major literary figures in the English Renaissance include:

 Francis Bacon
 Francis Beaumont
 George Chapman
 Thomas Dekker
 John Donne
 John Fletcher
 John Ford
 Ben Jonson
 Thomas Kyd
 Christopher Marlowe
 Philip Massinger
  Thomas Middleton
 Thomas More
 Thomas Nashe
 William Rowley
 William Shakespeare
 James Shirley
 Philip Sidney
 Edmund Spenser
 John Webster
 Thomas Wyatt
 William Tyndale

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English Literature I

Renaissance Love Poetry

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Renaissance Sonnets

Renaissance sonnets traditionally come in two types:

1. The Italian (or Petrarchan) sonnet contains the following features:

o An octave (eight lines) rhyming abbaabba
o A sestet (six lines) of varying rhyme patterns, such as cdecde or cdccdc
o Sir Thomas Wyatt in the early 1500s first introduced the Italian sonnet into English. It rapidly became all the
rage.
2. The English (or Shakespearean) sonnet contains the following features:
o Three quatrains (sections of four lines, also called “staves”): abab cdcd efef
o A concluding couplet (two rhyming lines): gg. Sometimes, the concluding couplet after the turn is called
the gemel.

Note that, though this type of sonnet is called “Shakespearean,” Shakespeare did not invent it. It was actually introduced by the Earl
of Surrey and other English experimenters in the 1500s. Normally, the first part of the sonnet introduces a problem or question of
some sort, which is developed in the first octave (in Italian sonnets) or the first three quatrains (in English sonnets). Then, there is a
change in direction, thought, or emotion called a volta or a turn. The last sestet (in Italian sonnets) or the final couplet (in English
sonnets) illustrates this change in direction, thought, or emotion.

ITALIAN SONNET

A               (Octave)

—————– (Volta, or Turn)

C                (Sestet)

 
ENGLISH SONNET

B           (Quatrain #1)

D          (Quatrain #2)

F           (Quatrain #3)

——————(Volta, or Turn)

G         (Couplet)

SONNET #1

1. From fairest creatures we desire increase, (a)

2. That thereby beauty’s rose might never die, (b)
3. But as the riper should by time decrease (a)
4. His tender heir might bear his memory (b) (quatrain 1)
5. But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes (c)
6. Feed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel, (d)
7. Making a famine where abundance lies, (c)
8. Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel. (d) (quatrain 2)
9. Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament, (e)
10. And only herald to the gaudy spring, (f)
11. Within thine own bud buriest thy content, (e)
12. And, tender chorl, mak’st waste in niggarding:  (f) (quatrain 3)
13. Pity the world, or else this glutton be, (g) (turn/volta)
14. To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee. (g)
 

SONNET #29

1. When, in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes (a)

2. I all alone beweep my outcast state, (b)
3. And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, (a)
4. And look upon myself, and curse my fate, (b) (quatrain 1)
5. Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, (c)
6. Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, (d)
7. Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope, (c)
8. With what I most enjoy contented least; (d) (quatrain 2)
9. Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, (e)
10. Haply, I think on thee, and then my state, (f)
11. Like to the lark at break of day arising (e)
12. From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate; (f) (quatrain 3)
13. For thy sweet love rememb’red such wealth brings, (g) (turn/volta)
14. That then I scorn to change my state with kings. (g)

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 English Literature I

Renaissance Love Poetry

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Whoso List to Hunt

By Sir Thomas Wyatt

Whoso list to hunt? I know where is an hind!

But as for me, alas! I may no more,

The vain travail hath wearied me so sore;

I am of them that furthest come behind.

Yet may I by no means my wearied mind

Draw from the deer; but as she fleeth afore

Fainting I follow; I leave off therefore,

Since in a net I seek to hold the wind.

Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt

As well as I, may spend his time in vain!

And graven with diamonds in letters plain,

There is written her fair neck round about;

“Noli me tangere; for Cæsar’s I am,

And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.”

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Rose-Cheeked Laura

by Thomas Campion (1567-1620)

1  Rose-cheek’d Laura, come,

              2 Sing thou smoothly with thy beauty’s
              3 Silent music, either other
              4       Sweetly gracing.
 
              5  Lovely forms do flow
              6 From concent divinely framed;
              7 Heav’n is music, and thy beauty’s
              8       Birth is heavenly.
 
              9  These dull notes we sing
            10 Discords need for helps to grace them;
            11 Only beauty purely loving
            12       Knows no discord,
 
            13 But still moves delight,
            14 Like clear springs renew’d by flowing,
            15 Ever perfect, ever in them-
            16       Selves eternal.

Notes

6 concent: harmony

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 English Literature I

Renaissance Love Poetry

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The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

By Christopher Marlowe

THE PASSIONATE SHEPHERD TO HIS LOVE.

Come live with me and be my love,

And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and vallies, dales and fields,
Woods or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,

Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.
And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cup of flowers and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle.

A gown made of the finest wooll

Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair-linèd slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold.

A belt of straw and ivy-buds,

With coral clasps and amber studs;
An if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.

The shepherd-swains shall dance and sing

For thy delight each May-morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me, and be my love.

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Renaissance Love Poetry

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The Flea

By John Donne

MARKE but this flea, and marke in this,

How little that which thou deny’st me is;

It suck’d me first, and now sucks thee,

And in this flea, our two bloods mingled bee;

Thou know’st that this cannot be said

A sinne, nor shame, nor losse of maidenhead,

Yet this enjoyes before it wooe,

And pamper’d swells with one blood made of two,

And this, alas, is more then wee would doe.

Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,

Where wee almost, yea more then maryed are.

This flea is you and I, and this

Our mariage bed, and mariage temple is;

Though parents grudge, and you, w’are met,

15And cloysterd in these living walls of Jet.

Though use make you apt to kill mee,

Let not to that, selfe murder added bee,

And sacrilege, three sinnes in killing three.

Cruell and sodaine, hast thou since

Purpled thy naile, in blood of innocence?

Wherein could this flea guilty bee,

Except in that drop which it suckt from thee?

Yet thou triumph’st, and saist that thou

Find’st not thy selfe, nor mee the weaker now;

‘Tis true, then learne how false, feares bee;

Just so much honor, when thou yeeld’st to mee,

Will wast, as this flea’s death tooke life from thee.

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Twelfth Night

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William Shakespeare: Biography

The Chandos Portrait of William Shakespeare, long believed to be the only portrait painted from life, until one other recently appeared.

William Shakespeare (26 April 1564 (baptised) – 23 April 1616) was an English poet, playwright, and actor, widely regarded as the
greatest writer in the English language and the world’s pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England’s national poet and the
“Bard of Avon”. His extant works, including some collaborations, consist of around38 plays,  154 sonnets, two long narrative poems,
and a few other verses, of which the authorship of some is uncertain. His plays have been translated into every major living
language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.

Shakespeare was born and brought up in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had
three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an
actor, writer, and part-owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, later known as the King’s Men. He appears
to have retired to Stratford around 1613 at age 49, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare’s private life
survive, and there has been considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, sexuality, religious beliefs,
and whether the works attributed to him were written by others.

Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were mainly comedies and histories and
these works remain regarded as some of the best work produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608,
including Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, considered some of the finest works in the English language. In his last phase,
he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and collaborated with other playwrights.

Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. In 1623, John Heminges andHenry
Condell, two friends and fellow actors of Shakespeare, published the First Folio, a collected edition of his dramatic works that
included all but two of the plays now recognised as Shakespeare’s. It was prefaced with a poem by Ben Jonson, in which
Shakespeare is hailed, presciently, as “not of an age, but for all time”. In the 20th and 21st centuries, his work has been repeatedly
adopted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship and performance. His plays remain highly popular today and are
constantly studied, performed, and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts throughout the world.

Additional information on Shakespeare’s life, work, and influence can be found here. 

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