9
The Arts in the Elizabethan World

During the early Renaissance, an era spanning from the fourteenth century to the seventeenth century, the arts in Europe blossomed into bold new forms, blending the philosophy and creative forms of the ancient civilizations of Rome and Greece with contemporary European style. (For more information on the Renaissance, see Chapter 8.) England, separated from the European continent by the English Channel and caught up in religious upheaval during the fifteenth century, was slow to respond to the new artistic influences of the Renaissance. It was not until the Elizabethan Era, the period associated with the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603) that is often considered to be a golden age in English history, that the English Renaissance began.

Elizabethan artists drew from European Renaissance ideals, but they also brought a unique national sensibility to their work. Among the many influences on their style was Elizabeth herself. Her image was often invoked in painting and literature, and her appreciation of music, dancing, and pageantry raised them to a higher level of artistry. (A pageant is a dramatic presentation, such as a play, that often depicts a historical, biblical, or traditional event.) Like most English people, though, Elizabeth did not distinguish much between popular entertainment and the higher arts. She was as happy to watch a bearbaiting (a form of entertainment in which a bear is tied to a post and attacked by dogs in front of spectators) or view a fireworks display as to listen to her court musicians perform or attend a play.

In modern times we tend to think of art as the expression of the artist's deepest feelings and beliefs. This was not true in Elizabeth's day. All English artists were expected to fulfill their patriotic duty by glorifying the queen. Since it was impossible in the Elizabethan age to support oneself through art, most artists depended on patrons (wealthy sponsors who helped them financially), and they frequently flattered potential patrons in their art, hoping for financial reward. There was no right to

WORDS TO KNOW

allegory:

A story or painting that represents abstract ideas or principles as characters, figures, or events.

alliteration:

Repetition of the same consonant at the beginning of words or syllables.

chiaroscuro:

In drawing or painting, a method of depicting depth and space by contrasting light and dark and creating shadows.

courtier:

A person who serves or participates in the royal court or household as the king's or queen's advisor, officer, or attendant.

epic:

A long poem that relates the deeds of a hero and is of particular importance to a culture or nation.

fresco:

A painting done on wet plaster.

iconoclasm:

The deliberate destruction of religious icons (sacred images, statues, objects, and monuments) usually for religious or political reasons.

lute:

A plucked string instrument similar to a guitar but shaped like a pear, with six to thirteen strings and a deep round back.

madrigal:

A polyphonic love song for four to six voices without musical accompaniment.

martyr:

A person who chooses to be punished or put to death rather than to abandon his or her religious beliefs.

meter:

The pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in poetry.

monopoly:

The exclusive right to trade with a particular market or group of markets.

nationalism:

Patriotism and loyalty to a person's own country.

pageant:

A dramatic presentation, such as a play, that often depicts a historical, biblical, or traditional event.

patron:

Someone who financially sponsors, or supports, an artist, entertainer, or explorer.

perspective:

An artistic technique used to make a two-dimensional (flat) representation appear to be three-dimensional by considering how the objects within the picture relate to one another.

polyphony:

Music with many voices; or the mixing together of several melodic lines at the same time in a musical composition.

progress:

A royal procession, or trip, made by a monarch and a large number of his or her attendants.

prose:

Ordinary speech or writing; not poetry.

retinue:

Group of attendants.

rhyme scheme:

The pattern of rhymes in a poem.

romance:

A literary work about improbable events involving characters that are quite different from ordinary people.

saint:

A deceased person who, due to his or her exceptionally good behavior during life, receives the official blessing of the church and is believed to be capable of interceding with God to protect people on earth.

simile:

A comparison between unlike things usually using the words "like" or "as".

stanza:

A group of lines that form a section of a poem.

symmetrical:

Balanced, with the same-sized parts on each side.

virginal:

A small, legless, and rectangular keyboard instrument related to the harpsichord.

free speech or freedom of the press in Elizabethan England, and it was very dangerous to write, paint, or even sing directly about the issues of the day. Artists and writers often found indirect ways to represent contemporary problems. Most used the ancient art of allegory, a story or painting that represents abstract ideas or principles as characters, figures, or events. Some writers wrote about historical events of the distant past that were similar enough to current events that audiences understood the author was presenting these events as commentary on current social problems.

Visual arts of the Renaissance

In the Middle Ages (c. 500–c. 1500; the period of European history between ancient times and the Renaissance) most Europeans considered the arts to be a means of conveying religious ideas. Paintings, frescoes (paintings done on wet plaster), tapestries, and stained-glass windows were created to show stories or figures from the Bible. Religious art was particularly useful at a time when the majority of the population could not read but could recognize a biblical story in pictures. As the Renaissance began in Europe in the late fourteenth century, however, artists began to turn away from religious themes. With the new study of ancient Greek and Roman texts, the focus became more secular (nonreligious), emphasizing the glory of human beings and the natural world around them. Figures from ancient mythology, or traditional stories featuring Greek and Roman gods and heroes, were mixed with traditional Christian themes.

In technique, too, Renaissance paintings differed from medieval ones. The earlier paintings looked flat because the artists lacked the techniques of perspective and chiaroscuro (kee-ahr-aw-SKEW-roh) that arose in the Renaissance. Perspective is an artistic technique used to make a two-dimensional (flat) representation appear to be three-dimensional by considering how the objects within the picture relate to one another. For example, in a painting, objects meant to be seen as farther away are depicted as smaller and higher than objects meant to be seen as closer to the viewer. Chiaroscuro is a method of depicting depth and space by contrasting light and dark and creating shadows. (Chiaro means "light" in Italian, and oscuro means "dark".)

English painting

The first artistic influence of the Renaissance arrived in England when Henry VIII brought in some of the finest painters from Europe in the early decades of the sixteenth century. Foremost among them was Hans Holbein the Younger (c. 1487–1543) from Germany, who painted portraits of Henry's courtiers and brought realistic, secular portrait painting to England. (Courtiers are people who serve or participate in the royal court or household as the king's advisor, officer, or attendant.) By Elizabeth's reign portrait painting was the most common type of painting in the nation. Elizabethan portraits are notable for their close attention to the elaborate costumes of their subjects as well as the richly detailed background.

The Reformation and the Arts

In 1521 the teachings of Martin Luther (1483–1546) started the Protestant Reformation (also known as the Reformation; a sixteenth-century religious movement that aimed to reform the Roman Catholic Church and resulted in the establishment of Protestant churches). In the decades that followed many northern European countries, such as the German states, the Netherlands, England, and Scotland, adopted Protestantism, while southern European states, such as Italy, France, and Spain, remained Catholic. The arts developed differently in Catholic and Protestant regions.

Catholics believed that human beings needed the assistance of intermediaries, or go-betweens, to help them communicate with God. The church itself served as an intermediary, but Catholics could also pray to saints, or deceased people who, due to exceptionally good behavior during life, receive the official blessing of the church and are believed to be capable of interceding with God to protect people on earth. Catholic art focused on religious figures in the belief that they brought the viewer closer to God. Catholic churches and homes were usually supplied with many objects of worship. These objects included images and statues of saints and the Virgin Mary, crucifixes, candles, and rosary beads. Most of the Protestant churches, on the other hand, were simple in design and used few decorations. Protestants believed that the Bible was the authority a Christian needed. They considered objects of worship idolatrous—that is, they believed they were wrong because they encouraged worship of something other than God. Protestant leaders such as the French theologian John Calvin (1509–1564) denounced Catholic as idolatrous and called for the destruction Catholic images and other artworks.

Destruction of Catholic arts in England began the reign of Elizabeth's father, Henry VIII (1491–1547), when he closed down the Catholic Monasteries, or houses for monks who live under religious vows. During the reign of Elizabeth's Protestant younger brother, Edward VI (1537–1553), movement called iconoclasm began. (Iconoclasm the deliberate destruction of religious icons: images, statues, objects, and monuments.) Protestant mobs attacked the Catholic churches England, destroying paintings, statues, tapestries, altars, and stained-glass windows. A second iconoclast movement took place soon after Elizabeth the throne, much to the new queen's disapproval. Elizabeth loved some of the arts of the Catholic religion. Though she was unable to completely the iconoclast movement in England, she played strong role in preserving some of the art and of the Catholic Church.

Upper-class Elizabethans loved portrait-miniatures. These were tiny, but highly detailed, painted portraits, some as small as two inches high. The portrait-miniature was a uniquely English contribution to the Renaissance, and Nicholas Hilliard (1547–1619) was the master of the art. Hilliard painted his first miniature of the queen in 1572. She is wearing an elaborate black dress with white embroidered sleeves, a white rose pinned to her shoulder, and a small frill ruff. Ruffs were the highly starched circular collars worn by Elizabethan men and women, either attached to the clothing or as a separate garment. Brightly colored gold lettering surrounds the queen's head. The miniature is painted in watercolor on the back of a playing card, the queen of hearts.

Hilliard's talent for lifelike representation of the physical world is obvious in his detailed depictions of Elizabethan clothing. He invented many new methods of painting the details of his subjects' costumes, including the fabrics, metals, and jewels. For example, he portrayed the starched crispness of lace ruffs by painting the complicated lace patterns with a brush loaded with white lead. When the lead-loaded paint dried the lace patterns stood up in relief. He used real gold and silver in his paint, polished with a small animal tooth to create tiny, perfect surfaces of gleaming metal. To represent diamonds he drew and shaded the cut of the stone with transparent black and gray over polished silver. Hilliard was also highly skilled at capturing his subjects' character and appearance. It is largely thanks to him that we know what leading figures of Elizabethan days—such as poet and statesman Walter Raleigh (1522–1618); explorer Francis Drake (c. 1540–1596), and statesman Robert Dudley (Earl of Leicester; 1532–1588)—actually looked like.

Hilliard, like other painters of the queen, was not allowed to create a lifelike portrait of her. Elizabeth was very careful about her public image. Her ministers hired a few select painters to paint her portrait. These artists created patterns, or examples of the look that was acceptable to the royal court, and the patterns were then distributed to other appointed painters to copy. The queen's portraits provided the regal image of a powerful monarch, the steady, never-aging force behind England. They probably do not reflect what she actually looked like. Those painted when Elizabeth was in her sixties, for example, do not show the wrinkles and chalky face make-up, the loss of her hair, or the blackening of her teeth that written descriptions of her noted.

Hilliard and his student, Isaac Oliver (c. 1560–1617), made miniatures very popular in Elizabethan times. Other artists, such as Robert Peake the Elder (died 1619), Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger (1561–1635), and George Gower (1540–1596), made large, full-length paintings that portray the noble class in richly adorned costumes complete with armor, embroidery, ruffs, hunting gear, weapons, and lace.

Architecture

In medieval times much of England's finest architecture had been devoted to its churches and cathedrals, but church-building came to a halt during Henry VIII's reign, after his break with the Catholic Church. In Elizabeth's reign architecture took on a new importance as the growing class of wealthy courtiers began to build huge homes called "great houses" or "prodigy houses" in rural areas of England. Most summers Elizabeth took trips called progresses around the English countryside, usually traveling with a retinue, or group of attendants, of about five hundred people. She and her full retinue lodged at the great houses of her courtiers, and the hosts were expected to feed, house, and entertain this huge group of guests. Though the queen's visits were extremely expensive, they were considered a great honor to the host. Competition grew among courtiers to build bigger and more elaborate country estates.

The homes of the wealthy had previously been built around courtyards so they could be defended against enemy attacks. Elizabethan country houses, however, were open to their surroundings. They were symmetrical, or balanced, with the same-sized parts on each side. Most were built in the shape of a letter H or a letter E. In a letter E house, the long line of the E was a great hall on the bottom floor, used mainly for showing off expensive art and impressing visitors. The lines at either end of the E were respectively the kitchen and living quarters. The shorter line in the middle was an entrance porch. On the upper floor, above the great hall, was a long gallery that ran the full length of the house and was used for entertaining and for daily family life. Most of the great houses were made of stone.

In Elizabethan times there were no professional architects to design buildings. Usually the owner of the house created his own design or found a design to copy and then hired someone to carry out the construction. Nevertheless, the design of some of the largest and most elaborate sixteenth-century great houses can be attributed to a stonemason named Robert Smythson (1535–1614). One of his most famous works is the enormous house called Longleat in Wiltshire, which was finished in 1580 and is considered one of the finest examples of Elizabethan architecture.

In the cities of Elizabethan England, another common style of house evolved for merchants and the growing middle class. The exterior of the house was black and white with dark wood beams and white clay walls. The bottom floor of the city home was usually a shop or place of business, while the upper floors, which overhung the lower floors and had more room, were the living quarters for the family.

Music

Elizabeth was an accomplished musician, playing the lute (a plucked string instrument similar to a guitar but shaped like a pear, with six to thirteen strings and a deep round back) and the virginal (a small, legless, rectangular keyboard instrument related to the harpsichord) as well as composing her own music. As queen, Elizabeth supported music of all kinds, from popular songs to church music. She kept about seventy musicians in the royal court, and she expected her courtiers to sing, play musical instruments, and dance with grace and ability.

In the first decades of Elizabeth's rule English music was undergoing important changes. Various new musical instruments—the early violin, the harpsichord and virginal, the oboe (a reed instrument), and others—were being used in combination to produce complex sounds. This type of musical arrangement was called polyphony, which means many voices, or the mixing together of several melodic lines at the same time. Another notable change was the expression of passion and mood in Elizabethan music, which usually highlighted the emotions of the words being sung with the music.

Religious music

The Protestant movement had called for an end to sacred music that evoked Catholic traditions, particularly songs with lyrics (words) in the Latin language. But Elizabeth was particularly fond of the traditional church music and quietly struggled against these prohibitions. Thus it came about that the great master of Elizabethan music was a Catholic composer named William Byrd (c. 1543–1623), who was hired by Elizabeth to a position in the royal chapel in the early 1570s. There he worked with Thomas Tallis (c. 1505–1585), a long-time royal musician and composer. Byrd was looked upon with suspicion by many because of his religion. Elizabeth, though, loved his traditional music and was not concerned about his beliefs. In 1575 she granted Byrd and Tallis a monopoly (the exclusive right to trade with a particular market or group of markets) over printing music in England. The first serious music to be published in England was their Cantiones Sacrae, a collection of Latin motets, choral compositions usually sung in Latin and traditionally a part of the Catholic Mass. Though the English public found the collection too Catholic in its sound, these works are today considered some of the greatest Elizabethan compositions, full of intense emotion and musical complexity.

Secular music

Byrd also played a large role in developing the English madrigal, a polyphonic love song for four to six voices without musical accompaniment. The madrigal had once been highly popular in Italy but it had gone out of style there. In England it gained great popularity during Elizabeth's reign, as composers set poetry written in the English language to madrigal musical compositions.

Thomas Campion (1567–1620) was both a poet and a musician, as well as a scientist and physician. He contributed greatly to Elizabethan music with his 119 songs for voice and lute. The songs, called ayres, were about love, death, and beauty. Campion wrote both the lyrics and the music of his songs, masterfully connecting them so that his simple melodies reflected the emotions of his words. Composer John Dowland (1563–1626) also wrote highly popular secular lute songs that balanced beautiful lyrics and instrumental music.

Elizabethan literature

During Elizabeth's reign England experienced its highest level of literacy, the ability to read and write. This was in part due to the great rise in education. (For more information on Elizabethan education, see Chapter 11.) It was also due to the Protestant belief in individual reading and interpretation of the Bible, which made it desirable for everyone to have the ability to read. The development of the printing press also changed the nature of reading and writing in England, making literature widely available to English readers. The universities, too, took on a new focus, educating a large new class of non-religious statesmen and merchants who were able to express their views in increasingly sophisticated English prose. (Prose is ordinary speech or writing; not poetry.) Widespread reading and writing was a major force behind the English Renaissance.

Most early Renaissance writers in England strove to imitate the style of the classics. Many continued to write in Latin, the language used for most literary works in England. Others, though, sought to follow in the footsteps of the medieval English author Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1342–1400), whose poetic work, The Canterbury Tales, had been written in English. Like Chaucer, many Elizabethan writers wished to raise the English language, long considered a rough means of expression, to the level of art.

Puritans and the Arts in Elizabethan England

Many wealthy Protestants had gone into exile in Europe during the reign of the Catholic Mary I (1516–1558). Some had met the followers of John Calvin, who had set up a strict Protestant government in Geneva, Switzerland. These English exiles adopted some of Calvin's more extreme doctrines, and many came to believe that the Bible was to be read literally. According to the Calvinists, a pious person should reject anything that is not specifically discussed in the Bible and follow precisely anything that was mentioned within its pages.

Upon returning to England the Calvinists were dismayed to find that Elizabeth's religious settlement permitted many elements of Roman Catholicism, such as the wearing of vestments (ceremonial robes) by the clergy, the use of the sign of the cross, playing an organ to present church music (rather than the voices of the congregation), and decorating churches with religious ornaments. The radical Protestants desired to "purify" the Church of England of its Roman Catholic customs. The Anglicans, or members of the Church of England, began to call these reformers Puritans, making fun of their rigid piety and self-righteousness.

In Elizabethan times there was no such thing as religious tolerance. It was widely accepted that in order to have a peaceful nation, everyone must believe the same thing. In their intense dedication to their faith, Puritans were unwilling to accept the ways of others. They believed their way had been sanctioned by God. They opposed many things that others valued, such as certain forms of art, instrumental music in church, certain manners of dress, and many popular festivals and pastimes, especially the English theater. Elizabeth, though Protestant, distrusted the Puritans and fought against their attempts to limit music, ban holidays, and close theaters.

Foxe's Book of Martyrs

In the 1530s Mary I took the throne and began persecuting Protestants for their beliefs. By this time Protestant educator and writer John Foxe (1516–1587) was already writing a book about Protestant martyrs, or people who choose to be punished or put to death rather than to abandon their religious beliefs. He was forced to flee England to avoid persecution. During his exile in Europe, he added to his book the stories he was hearing from England about the torture and execution of Protestants under Mary. His accounts were exciting and featured exaggerated and shocking details. His book was first published under the long title Acts and Monuments of these latter and perilous days, touching matters of the church, wherein are comprehended and described the great persecution and horrible troubles that have been wrought and practices by the Romish prelates from the year of Our Lord a thousand to the time now present, but it is often called simply Book of Martyrs. It was an enormous, well-illustrated book of more than two thousand pages.

Though Foxe's book was extremely expensive, it became an Elizabethan bestseller, selling more than ten thousand copies by the end of the century. Its strong anti-Catholic sentiments appealed to Protestants, but it was probably its nationalism, or patriotism and loyalty to England, that caught the public attention. The Book of Martyrs was one of the first books that presented England, with its own strong Protestant identity, as the center of true Christianity. In 1570 the Church of England ordered all major churches in the nation to purchase a copy.

Debate between Anglicans and Puritans

By the 1580s some of England's finest prose was devoted to the debate between the Anglicans and the Puritans. An anonymous Puritan author using the name Martin Marprelate issued several extremely well argued pamphlets ridiculing the Anglican church and its bishops. The church in turn hired some noted writers to respond to the Marprelate tracts, fueling a war of words between moderate Protestants and Puritan reformers. The debate was temporarily silenced when the printer of the Marprelate pamphlets was arrested and hanged for his part in their publication.

The most acclaimed Elizabethan writer of nonfiction prose was Richard Hooker (1554–1600), a clergyman in the Church of England and an educator in a law school. He began his masterpiece, the eight-volume Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1593–1597) in response to an argument he was having with a Puritan educator in his school. The Puritan argued that the Bible was the only authority to guide Christians, and that therefore a church led by the queen and her appointed bishops was not right. Hooker argued that along with the Bible, God had created human beings with the ability to reason, and that this God-given reason could be considered a source of authority. He went on to discuss the place of human beings in the universe and in relation to God, defending the Church of England as the product of human understanding of the divine and natural worlds. Hooker's prose was simple, clear, and elegant as he handled complex philosophical points.

John Stubbs's Right Hand

In 1579 the forty-five-year-old Elizabeth began a courtship with a French prince, the Duke of Alençon (1555–1584). Many English people, particularly the Puritans, were horrified at the prospect of a match with the French royalty, particularly because the Catholic French government had recently been responsible for a large-scale massacre of the French Protestants called the Huguenots. Among the many protests that arose was a popular pamphlet written by a well-respected Puritan named John Stubbs (c. 1543–1591). The pamphlet compared Alençon's presence in England to the devil's presence in the garden of Eden as described in the Old Testament. In Stubbs's argument, the French prince meant to seduce Elizabeth as Satan had seduced Eve with the forbidden apple, destroying the purity of England forever. The pamphlet found an eager audience throughout England.

Stubbs's pamphlet infuriated Elizabeth. Stubbs was arrested, and Elizabeth appealed to the courts to have him and his publisher hanged. The judges, however, did not think the offense was serious enough to be punished by death. Instead, Stubbs and the publisher were to have their right hands cut off before being sent to jail. This punishment was executed at a public platform at Whitehall Palace in London. The executioner chopped off Stubbs's right hand and cauterized (burned) it with a hot iron to stop the bleeding. When this was done, Stubbs put on his hat with his left hand, cried out "God Save the Queen!" and then fainted from pain.

Elizabeth came to regret her harsh actions. Stubbs was released from prison and soon became a member of Parliament, England's legislative body. The message for all writers, however, was clear. It was extremely dangerous to anger the queen.

Prose fiction

One of the most influential and popular prose writers of the era was John Lyly (1554–1606). His romances Euphues, or the Anatomy of Wit (1578) and its sequel Euphues and His England (1580) were published to instant success. (Romances are literary works about improbable events involving characters that are quite different from ordinary people.) Lyly's prose style in these two early romances was called euphuism, named after Lyly's character Euphues. Like the prose of the ancient Greeks and Romans, euphuism featured extremely elaborate sentences, full of similes (comparisons between unlike things usually using the words "like" or "as") and alliteration, or repetition of the same consonant at the beginning of words or syllables. It also included many references to the classics and mythology. Lyly's Anatomy of Wit is about two friends who both love the same woman, and come to realize that the bond of friendship is more important than romantic love. An example of the euphuistic language in that book, quoted from the Internet Shakespeare Editions, demonstrates the style:

Time draweth wrinkles in a fair face, but addeth fresh colors to a fast friend, which neither heat, nor cold, nor misery, nor place, nor destiny can alter or diminish. O friendship, of all things the most rare, and therefore most rare because most excellent, whose comfort in misery is always sweet, and whose counsels in prosperity are ever fortunate!

Lyly's prose style was imitated by many Elizabethans, and Euphues was praised as an attempt to elevate the English language to a new level of artistic expression. Euphuism, though, quickly became dated and its elegant style was often ridiculed in later literature.

Philip Sidney

In the greatest work of literary criticism of the Elizabethan Era, The Defence of Poetry (1595), Philip Sidney (1554–1586) commented that, aside from the writings of Chaucer and a couple of contemporary writers, English literature had never been very good. Although France and Italy and even Scotland had their notable poets, according to Sidney the art of England had "fallen to be the laughing-stock of children." Sidney and a few of his associates were about to change all that, however.

Sidney was a perfect example of an aspiring courtier in Elizabeth's court. His father was a well-connected statesman serving the queen and his uncle was Robert Dudley (Earl of Leicester; 1532–1588), the queen's long-time favorite. In 1575, after traveling extensively in Europe, the bright and handsome young man established himself in Elizabeth's court. He probably would have taken his place there as a favorite had he not gotten himself into trouble by writing to Elizabeth in 1580 to advise her not to marry the Duke of Alençon. The letter infuriated Elizabeth and she immediately banished him from court. Sidney retreated to the home of his sister, Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke (1561–1621). Mary was an accomplished writer herself, and gathered the top poets of the country at her estate. In her home Sidney wrote his most famous works, such as the prose romance Arcadia, and The Defence of Poetry. He also wrote his highly acclaimed sonnet sequence (a collection of related sonnets) Astrophil and Stella, which sparked a revolution in English poetry and literature.

Critics regard Astrophil and Stella as Sidney's masterpiece. It is a variation on the Italian sonnet, a form perfected by Italian poet Francesco Petrarch (1304–1374), and was the first sonnet sequence in English literature. The work consists of 110 sonnets written from the perspective of Astrophil, a poet and courtly lover. Astrophil describes his unrequited

Sonnets

There are two major types of sonnets: Italian and English. Sonnets originated in Italy around 1200. The form was later perfected by Italian poet Francesco Petrarch with his famous poems about his unrequited (not returned) love for a married woman named Laura. Most Italian sonnets expressed themes of love and followed a set form. They were fourteen lines long, with the first eight lines setting out a problem and the last six lines resolving it. There was usually a major change in the tone, or the mood of the poem, at the eighth or ninth line. Sonnets contained careful rhyme schemes, or the patterns of rhymes in a poem. The first eight lines of an Italian sonnet rhymed in an abbaabba pattern, meaning that the last word of the lines designated as "a" all rhyme with each other, as in deep, sleep, keep, and weep, and the last word of lines designated "b" all rhyme with each other, as in day, away, stay, and gray. The last six lines rhymed in a variation of a cdecde, cdccdc, or cdedce pattern.

The Italian sonnet was introduced to England in the early part of the sixteenth century by English statesman and poet Thomas Wyatt (1503–1542). As it developed the English sonnet came to differ significantly from the Italian form. It was divided into four units: three quatrains (four-line parts), each with its own rhyme scheme, followed by a rhymed couplet, or two lines of rhymed verse. Thus the typical rhyme scheme for the English sonnet is: ababcdcde-fefgg, but there are many variations. Philip Sidney was one of the developers of the English sonnet and popularized the sonnet sequence in England. In the sonnet below, he uses the English form, with three quatrains and a couplet, to express the conventional theme of unrequited love. Note the letters in parentheses at the end of each line, indicating this simple ababa-babcdcdee rhyme scheme.

Sonnet I from Astrophil and Stella  
 
    Loving in truth, and fain [intent] in verse my love to show, (a)
    That she (dear She) might take some pleasure of my pain: (b)
    Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know, (a)
    Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain; (b)
    I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe, (a)
    Studying inventions fine [other poets' creative works], her wits to entertain: (b)
    Oft turning others' leaves [pages], to see if thence would flow (a)
    Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sun-burn'd brain. (b)
    But words came halting forth, wanting Invention's stay, (c)
    Invention, Nature's child, fled step-dame Study's blows, (d)
    And others' feet still seem'd but strangers in my way. (c)
    Thus, great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes [spasms; comparing poetry-writing to childbirth], (d)
    Biting my truant [duty-shirking] pen, beating myself for spite (e)
    "Fool," said my Muse [source of inspiration] to me, "look in thy heart and write." (e)

SOURCE OF POEM: POET'S CORNER. HTTP://WWW.THEOTHERPACES.ORC/POEMS/INDEX.HTML.

passion for a married woman named Stella, expressing both the joy and anguish of being in love and the great divide between the sexual desires of the body and the moral reasoning of the mind. The sonnets are full of Petrarchan features, such as exaggerated comparisons and ornate imagery, but Sidney had developed a truly English form. The characters of his sequence speak in English accents and discuss national issues. Beyond this, Sidney's meter (the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables), his rhyme scheme, and imagery are uniquely English. Astrophil and Stella, was not published until after his death in 1591. Upon its publication many English writers began to create sonnets. Sidney's poems and the works that followed, written by poets such as Edmund Spenser (c. 1552–1599), Fulke Greville (1554–1628), Michael Drayton (1563–1631), and William Shakespeare (1564–1616), represent the best of Elizabethan poetry.

Edmund Spenser and The Faerie Queene

Edmund Spenser was the son of a humble cloth maker who worked hard to get an education. When he was twenty-seven Spenser wrote The Shepheardes Calender (1579), a series of twelve short, descriptive poems that focused on the lives of shepherds, idealizing their pastoral, or country, life. The pastoral style of the work, which was popular in the Elizabethan Era, was drawn from the works of Roman poet Virgil (70–19 bce). The poems are noted for their rustic language and their graceful rhythm. With this publication, Spenser became one of England's best-known poets.

A friend introduced Spenser to Robert Dudley, who used his influence at court to win Spenser a position as secretary to the Lord Deputy of Ireland. Settled in Ireland Spenser began writing his masterpiece, The Faerie Queene. He planned to write twelve books, each focusing on a moral virtue such as holiness, justice, or temperance. Each virtue was represented by a knight. Amidst the moral virtues, however, Spenser also wrote about political issues and religious themes. The Faerie Queene presents a complex religious, national, and philosophical allegory that describes the struggle between good and evil, presents the history of the ongoing battle between English Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, and expresses the views of the Anglican church. All the books of The Faerie Queene are connected by the presence of two characters, Prince Arthur, representing the legendary figure of King Arthur, and the Faerie Queene, who represents Queen Elizabeth. The entire work is presented as a celebration of Elizabeth's reign and greatly flatters the queen.

The Faerie Queene follows the literary form of a romance. The book also took its form from the popular handbook of manners, a book that instructed Elizabethan gentlemen on the proper code of behavior. But Spenser aimed higher than either of these forms. The Faerie Queene was his attempt to create an English epic, a long narrative poem that relates the deeds of a hero and is of particular importance to a culture or nation.

By 1589 Spenser had finished the first three books of his projected twelve-book project. (He would finish only six volumes during his lifetime.) He brought them to London, where they were published early in the following year with an elaborate dedication to Elizabeth. While some English poets criticized The Faerie Queene because Spenser had used the rough, old-fashioned language of Chaucer, most scholars and general readers enjoyed the poem and marveled at Spenser's mastery of poetic skills. It was written with clarity and grace in an innovative rhyme scheme that gave it a slow and stately movement. The nine-line stanza Spenser invented for his epic has come to be known as the Spenserian stanza, and many poets after him have tried to imitate his rhythm. (A stanza is a group of lines that form a section of a poem.)

The queen, too, was highly impressed with the poem. Spenser hoped she would grant him a large pension to enable him to concentrate on his verse. But this was not to be. In an unwise move, Spenser sharply criticized her chief advisor, William Cecil (Lord Burghley; 1520–1598), in a 1591 publication. His criticism was not appreciated, and he would forever remain an outsider in the royal court. Early in 1591 he returned to Ireland and resumed work on his epic, publishing three more books in 1595. The poet died in 1599. His extensive poetic vocabulary, his natural ear for rhythm and rhyme, and his subtle introduction of political and social issues of the day into his works would change the way English poets wrote. Many scholars rank Spenser among the greatest poets of the English language.

Shakespeare, the poet

Around 1592 the plague (a deadly and highly contagious disease) forced the London theaters to close. At that time the young playwright William Shakespeare published his first long narrative poem called Venus and Adonis. The 1,194-line erotic (concerning sexual love and desire) and mythological poem was based on a version of the myth of Venus and Adonis found in the Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Ovid (43–17 bce), Shakespeare's favorite poet. Shakespeare's poem is a comical treatment of love, in which a goddess awkwardly tries to seduce an unresponsive young man. Shakespeare wrote the poem in the elaborate language popular at the time, not unlike the language of John Lyly's romances. A year later Shakespeare published The Rape of Lucrece, a more dramatic poem than the first. The story, derived from Ovid and other classical sources, relates the rape of a virtuous, married noblewoman, Lucrece, by the son of the king of Rome. Lucrece kills herself and her death brings about a full-scale revolt against the royal family, which in turn leads to the founding of the Roman Republic. Both of Shakespeare's early long poems carefully follow the form and structure of classical poetry. They were extremely popular and went through many printings, establishing Shakespeare's reputation as a major poet.

Historians believe that Shakespeare probably began his most famous poems, a sequence of 154 sonnets, not long after writing the two earlier poems, though they were not published until 1609. One hundred and twenty six of the sonnets are addressed to a young man of high rank for whom the poet has strong feelings of love. Most of the rest of the sonnets have to do with the poet's mistress, often called the "Dark Lady" by critics. The sonnets seem intimate and heartfelt, like expressions of the poet's own life. Many scholars have attempted to identify the young man and the dark lady from among the real people in Shakespeare's life, but there is no conclusive evidence to support their ideas. It is possible that the narrator is not actually Shakespeare's own voice, but an invented character.

Shakespeare arrived late to the English sonnet-writing trend, and he followed the contemporary conventions of form, adding a few new touches to the rhyme scheme. His major addition to the form was in each sonnet's last two rhyming lines—the couplet—which in many of Shakespeare's sonnets sounds like a philosophical summary in a voice more detached and assured than the rest of the sonnet.

It was the themes of Shakespeare's sonnets, however, that challenged the poetic conventions of the time. It was expected that a sonnet would be about a young man's worship of a beautiful young woman who does not return his love. But Shakespeare's sonnets address the worship of a young nobleman by an older poet. In the poems addressed to a woman the narrator declares that his mistress is not beautiful, virtuous, or even honest. Because Shakespeare veers so far away from the conventional themes, his readers cannot assume he is merely imitating the sentiments of other poets before him. Thus the sonnets take on a feeling of reality that was unparalleled in his time as they reflect on a variety of conventional and unconventional themes: the sorrow of growing older, unrequited love, and the inconstancies of human society. The narrator of the sonnets never looks to a god for help, but sometimes finds comfort in the act of writing poetry.

Shakespeare's sonnet series is considered a literary masterpiece. In his lifetime it established him as one of England's top poets. In later years most Elizabethan poetry, with the exception of Spenser's The Faerie Queene, lost its popular audience, but Shakespeare's sonnets are still widely read today. Scholars often place the sonnets on an equal level with Shakespeare's dramas as some of the greatest literature of all time.

For More Information

BOOKS

Brimacombe, Peter. All the Queen's Men: The World of Elizabeth I. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000.

Greenblatt, Stephen. Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare. New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 2004.

Palliser, D. M. The Age of Elizabeth: England Under the Later Tudors, 1547–1603, 2d ed. London and New York: Longman, 1992.

WEB SITES

Best, Michael. "John Lyly and the Euphuistic Style." Shakespeare's Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions, University of Victoria: Victoria, BC, 2001–2005. http://ise.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/intro/introcite.html (accessed on July 11, 2006).

"Elizabethan Sonneteers." Sonnet Central, http://www.sonnets.org/eliz.htm (accessed on July 11, 2006).

"Shakespeare's Sonnets." http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/ (accessed on July 11, 2006).

Sidney, Philip. "Astrophil and Stella." Poet's Corner, http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/index.html. (accessed on July 11, 2006).

Sidney, Philip. "The Defence of Poesie." Renascence Editions, University of Oregon, http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/∼rbear/defence.html (accessed on July 11, 2006).