RENAISSANCE DRAMA v

2 routes of influence on R. drama: 1. native, local, folk; 2. classical, ancient

comedy:

first English comedy - Nicholas Udall Ralph Roister Doister (1553)

"Thus, Ralph Roister Doister is the sole work which remains to illustrate Udalls dramatic powers. The single extant copy of the play is undated, but it probably belongs to the edition entered to Thomas Hacket in the Stationers register in 1566/7. The evidence in favour of its having been written in 15534 is very strong. Thomas Wilson, who had been at Eton under Udall, published in 1550/1 The Rule of Reason; a second edition appeared in 1552, and a third in 1553 or, possibly, 1554. In the third edition only, Wilson uses as an illustration Roister Doisters mispunctuated loveletter in act III, sc. 4. The inference is that the play had been performed for the first time between 1552 and 1553/4, probably by the Westminster boys. That it is in any case later than 1546, and, therefore, cannot have been written when Udall was headmaster of Eton, is suggested by his frequent use of phrases which appear in John Heywoods Proverbs, published in the above year. Apart from its evidential value, this is an interesting link between the two dramatists. But, though Udall could borrow proverbial phrases from his predecessor, he has scarcely a trace, as far as Roister Doister shows, of Heywoods genius for incisive and pregnant expression or of his mordant wit. Nor is any figure in his play drawn with the vitalising art which, in a few scenes, makes of Johan Johan a being of flesh and blood. But, far inferior to Heywood in spontaneous literary gifts, Udall, partly through his scholastic occupations, and partly through a happy instinct, was led to direct English comedy into the path on which, in the main, it was to advance to its later triumphs. In imitation of Plautus and Terence, he substituted for the loosely knit structure of the English morality or dialogue or of French farce, an organic plot divided into acts and scenes. Within this framework, he adjusted figures borrowed from Roman comedy but transformed to suit English conditions, and mingled with others of purely native origin."

? William Stevenson Gammer Gurton's Needle

tragedy:

v Senecan:

" 1. Study, imitation and reproduction of Senecan tragedy.

THE history of renascence tragedy may be divided into three stages, not definitely limited, and not following in strict chronological succession, but distinct in the main: the study, imitation and production of Senecan tragedy; translation; the imitation of Greek and Latin tragedy in the vernacular. This last stage, again, falls into three sub-divisions: the treatment of secular subjects after the fashion of sacred plays long familiar to medieval Europe; the imitation of classical tragedy in its more regular form and with its higher standards of art; the combination of these two types in a form of tragedy at once popular and artistic. 1 It was, perhaps, only in England that the movement thus outlined attained its final development. For it may be questioned whether French classical tragedy was ever truly popular, and it is beyond doubt that renascence tragedy in Italy was not; but the earlier phases of development may be most easily observed in the history of Italian tragedy, in which other nations found not only a spur to emulation, but models to imitate and a body of critical principles laid down for their guidance. 2 All three nations had a share in the edition of Seneca which Nicholas Treveth, an English Dominican who seems to have been educated at Paris, prepared, early in the fourteenth century, at the instance of cardinal Niccol Albertini di Prato, one of the leading figures of the papal court at Avignon. But Italy very soon took the lead in Senecan scholarship, and long maintained it. Lovato de Lovati (d. 1309) discussed Senecas metres; Coluccio Salutati, as early as 1371, questioned the tragedians identity with the philosopher and the Senecan authorship of Octavia; before the end of the century, the tragedies were the subject of rival lecture courses at Florence, and the long list of translations into modern European languages had begun. But, above all, it was in Italy that the important step was taken of imitating Seneca in an original tragedy on a subject derived from medieval history. Albertinos Eccerinis won for its author the laurel wreath, with which, in 1315, he was solemnly crowned in the presence of the university and citizens of Padua, and the cognomen of Mussatus, quasi musis aptus. Other Latin tragedies by Italian authors followed; but two centuries elapsed before a similar achievement was accomplished in France and England. Italy also led the way in printing editions of Senecas text, and in the performance of his tragedies in Latin."

MAJOR CHARACTERISTICS OF SENECAN TRAGEDY

written to be recited not acted the 5-act division of a play is kept chorus' comments on the plot and the characters' behaviour stock characters: a typical set of features ascribed to a character is common messengers report on the fragments of plays that cannot be acted out sensational themes of plays: murder, revenge, betrayal soliloquy a monologue delivered by a character that gives the audience an insight into the character's spiritual life

the plays are written in highly rhetorical style: elevated, figurative and ordered

first - Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton Gorboduc

"No student of our drama, from Sir Philip Sidney onwards, has failed to recognise the enormous step in advance made by Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville in Gorboduc, first acted, before Queen Elizabeth, in January, 1562. Its imitation of Senecas form and style is obvious; yet it shows independence, not only in the choice of a native theme, but in the spirit in which it is treated. Sidney praised it not only as full of stately speeches, and well sounding phrases, clyming to the height of Seneca his stile, but also as full of notable moralitie, which it doth most delightfully teach, and so obtayne the very end of Poesie. It is significant that the publisher of the third edition in 1590 printed Gorboduc as an annex to Lydgates politicomoral tract, The Serpent of Dissension. A modern critic says that the play is rather a political argument than a simple tragedy. This overstates the case; but the didactic intention of the dramatists is obvious enough. [] Nearly all the dialogue of the playfor the incidents occur off the stageis delivered in the council chamber. The opening scene, it is true, consists of a private conversation between Ferrex and his mother; but the longest passage in it is an elaborate political commonplace. After this short introductory scene, containing less than seventy lines in all, we have, in the first act, nothing but discussions in the kings council, his decision to divide the realm between his two sons being all that can properly be described as action. Ferrex and Porrex, each with his good and his evil counsellor, occupy the whole of act II. In act III, we are back in Gorboducs council chamber, and the only incident is recounted by a messenger. With act IV, according to the printer of the first edition, Sackvilles part begins; and this division is borne out by the fact that the remaining acts show greater power of thought and vigour of versification, more variety of tone and richness of character and incident. The speech of Porrex in his own defence has more dramatic significance than anything the English stage had yet known; the incident of the attempted poisoning, introduced by the dramatist into the story for the first time, 7 and not mentioned in acts IIII, and the young princes remorse at his brothers death, engage the sympathy of the audience for his own untimely end, which is recounted with many natural and moving touches by Marcella, an eye-witness of the assassination, and, therefore, able to communicate more passion than the conventional messenger. But, with act V, we are once more in the dull round of political disquisition, broken only by the soliloquy in which Fergus reveals his ambitious designs. The tragedy ends with obvious allusion to the political situation of the day: Such one (my lordes) let be your chosen king, Such one so borne within your native land, Such one preferre, and in no wise admitte The heavie yoke of forreine governaunce: Let forreine titles yelde to publike wealth." Note 7. Sackville perhaps got a hint from Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia Regum Britanniae, bk. II, chap. XVI: At Porrex majori cupiditate subductus, paratis insidiis Ferrecem fratrem interficere parat (ed. San-Marte, p. 30). The treachery here is attributed to the younger brother, who

afterwards kills Ferrex in battle, so that the incident has not, in the History, the dramatic significance given to it by Sackville.

v revenge tragedy Thomas Kyd The Spanish Tragedy

"We know that in 1592 The Spanish Tragedie was enjoying the fullest popular favour. None of the earliest quartosAlldes undated print, Jeffess in 1594, Whites in 1599gives a clue to the authorship. The entry of the licence for The Spanishe tragedie of Don Horatio and Bellmipeia (Bellimperia) on 6 October, 1592, is silent; so, too, the later editions, and the notes in Henslowe of Ben Jonsons additions in 1601 and 1602. It is not till we come to the casual reference by Thomas Heywood to M. Kid as the author that what might have proved another bibliographical crux is fully determined. We may assume, from the hints in the inductions to Cynthias Revels and Bartholomew Fayre, that the play was written between 1585 and 1587. Not only are there no direct references to the great events of 1588, such as could hardly be absent from a Spanish tragedy but the deliberate allusion to older conflicts with England shows that the opportunity which Kyd, as a popular writer, could not have missed had not yet come."

domestic tragedy

anonim. Arden of Feversham University Wits: (16th - 17th)

"As a group, then, these contemporaries illustrate well the possible attitudes of an educated man of their time toward the drama. Midway between Lyly and his successful practice of the drama, which for the most cultivated men and women of his day, maintained and developed standards supplied to him, at least in part, by his university, and Thomas Lodge, who put the drama aside as beneath a cultivated man of manifold activities, stand Nashe, Peele and Greene. Nashe, feeling the attraction of a popular and financially alluring form, shows no special fitness for it, is never really at home in it and gives it relatively little attention. Peele, properly endowed for his best expression in another field, spends his strength in the drama because, at the time, it is the easiest source of revenue, and turns from the drama of the cultivated to the drama of the less cultivated or the uncultivated. Greene, from the first, is the facile, adaptive purveyor of wares to which he is helped by his university experience, but to which he gives a highly popular presentation. Through Nashe and Lodge, the drama gains nothing. Passing through the hands of Lyly, Greene and even Peele, it comes to Shakespeare something quite different from what it was before they wrote.

University-bred one and all, these five men were proud of their breeding. However severe from time to time might be their censures of their intellectual mother, they were always ready to take arms against the unwarranted assumption, as it seemed to them, of certain dramatists who lacked this university training, and to confuse them by the sallies of their wit. One and all, they demonstrated their right to the title bestowed upon themuniversity wits."

Cambridge and Oxford graduates writing for a living cultivated blank verse freed the English drama from classical restrictions

the leading figure of the group: Christopher Marlowe (1564 - 93)

"Of the life of Christopher Marlowe, 1 son of a Canterbury shoemaker and a clergymans daughter, there is little on record. To some of his contemporaries, and, unfortunately, to later biographers, interest in his personality has been confined to an exaggerated tale of blasphemy and evil living; above all, to his death at the early age of twenty-nine in a tavern brawl at Deptford, by the hand of a bawdy serving-man, named Archer, or Fraser, or Ingram. The recent elucidation of the facts of the poets career at Cambridge has happily diverted attention from the sordid ending and adjusted the balance of the scanty biography. In this short career there must, of necessity be little available to the antiquary; and yet we know as much of the man Marlowe as of the man Shakespeare, or, indeed, of any of the greater Elizabethans, Jonson excepted. Marlowe proceeded from the Kings school at Canterbury to Benet (now Corpus Christi) college, Cambridge, about Christmas, 1580. He was in residence, with occasional breaks, till 1587, when he took his masters degree, following on his bachelors in 15834. There is evidence that, soon after 1587, he had fallen into disfavour at the university, and was already settled in London. He had probably been there for some time before the production of Tamburlaine in that year or the next. The interval between graduation and the appearance of this play is ingeniously filled in for us by Collier. We must, however, treat the ballad of The Atheists Tragedie, which describes Marlowes actors life and riot in London, as one of Colliers mystifications, and, together with it, the interpolation in Henslowes diary (fol. 19 v.) about addicions to Dr. Faustus and a prolog to Marloes tambelan. Cunninghams suggestion that the young poet sought adventure as a soldier in the Low Countries, as Jonson did later, may be correct; but it must be proved on other grounds than his familiarity with military terms. It is useless to speculate on the causes of the Cambridge quarrel and his alleged restlessness. Malones view that Marlowe had become heretical under the influence of Francis Kett, fellow of Benet, was based on a misconception of Ketts doctrine. If Kett resigned his fellowship in 1580, 2 it would be hard to prove any association between him and Marlowe. The only extant piece which, with some show of reason, may be ascribed to this early

period is the translation of Ovids Amores (Certaine of Ovids Elegies), which was printed posthumously, c. 1597. As an interpretation of the text, it does not reach even the indifferent level of Elizabethan scholarship, but it conveys the sensuous quality of the original. Marlowes early choice of this subject and of another in the same vein (said by Warton to have been The Rape of Helen by Coluthus, non-extant) has many parallels in contemporary literature; but it has greater value as a commentary on the later work of the poet who, unlike Shakespeare, was not allowed time to outlive his youthful passion. We might find in the eighteenth elegy (Ad Macrum) of the second book of his Ovid a motto for his coming endeavour, when, sitting in Venus slothful shade, he says: Yet tragedies and sceptres filld my lines, But, though I apt were for such high designs, Love laughd at my cloak. If, later, he forsook the shade for the stately tent of war, it was because his passion had been transformed, not because he had grown old." Note 1. This is the baptismal form, but the poets father is referred to as Marley o Marlyn, and, in the Cambridge records, the name is spelt Marlin, Marlyn, Marlen, Malyn, In 1588, he is described as Christopher Marley of London, and Peele speaks of Marley, the Muses darling. Note 2. See Dictionary of National Biography, art. Marlowe.

Tamburlaine the Great, The Jew of Malta The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus
"This sudden success confirmed Marlowe in his dramatic ambition. Hard words like Nashes about idiote art-masters who think to outbrave better pens could not deter this young Tamburlaine of the stage. On the heels of his first triumph came The tragicall History of Dr. Faustus, probably produced in 1588, though its entry in the Stationers register is as late as January, 1601, and the earliest known edition is the posthumous quarto of 1604. Interest in this playa boldly drawn study of the pride of intellect, as consuming as the Tartars ambitionhas been seriously warped by speculation on the crude insets of clownage. Many readers have felt that the comic scenes are disturbing factors in the progress of the drama, and that Marlowes text has suffered from playhouse editing. The presumption is supported by the evidence of the printer Jones, who tells us apologetically, in his edition of Tamburlaine, that he purposely omitted some fond and frivolous gestures, digressing, and, in my poor opinion, far unmeet for the matter. He saw the disgrace of mixing these things in print with such matter of worth. The bias for decorum may, however, be too strong, and there may be reasons derived from consideration of the historical sentiment of the popular drama and of Marlowes artistic mood to make us pause in saying that the original has been greatly, and sadly, altered. As bibliography cannot help us, the position of these alleged addicions of tomfoolery and squibs in the Marlowe canon becomes a purely critical matter."

other members of the group: John Lyly Midas; The Woman in the Moon George Peele Old Wives' Tale Thomas Nashe Summer's Last Will and Testament Robert Greene, Thomas Kyd, Thomas Lodge
quoted material taken from: Ward & Trent, Et Al. The Cambridge History Of English
And American Literature. Volumes IV - VII A. R. WALLER, M.A.,New York: G.P. Putnams Sons, 190721; New York: Bartleby.Com, 2000 (Www.Bartleby.Com/Cambridge/). [2001. 06. 05].