English Literature - Elizabethan playwrights slide show

Elizabethan Playwrights The chief literary glory of the Elizabethan Age was its Drama.

Drama masks The two masks associated with drama

represent the traditional generic division between comedy and tragedy.

They are symbols of the ancient Greek Muses, Thalia and Melpomene. Thalia was the Muse of comedy (the laughing face), while Melpomene was the Muse of tragedy (the weeping face).

Nicholas Udall  (1504 – 23 December 1556) was

an English playwright, cleric, and schoolmaster, the author of Ralph Roister Doister, generally regarded as the first comedy written in the English language.

Gorboduc The first regular English tragedy was

Gorboduc, in blank verse performed in 1564. The first three acts were written by Thomas Northon, the other two by Thomas Sackville.

It is very dull, and is about King Gorboduc and his family.

Thomas Sackville – the earl of Dorset.

The Spanish Tragedy The Spanish Tragedy (1592) by Thomas

Kyd is an example of the tragedy of blood, popular at the time. Blood and death play a large part at such plays.

There are many aspects in this play that are similar to those of Shakespeare’s Hamlet such as a ghost who appears to someone and even a character named Horatio.

Christopher Marlowe – the first great dramatist.

Tamburlaine the Great  It is a play in two parts by Christopher

Marlowe. It is loosely based on the life of the Central Asian emperor, Timur "the lame". Written in 1587 or 1588, the play is a milestone in Elizabethan public drama.

It marks a turning away from the clumsy language and loose plotting of the earlier Tudor dramatists, and a new interest in fresh and vivid language, memorable action, and intellectual complexity.

Tamburlaine - plot It deals with the rise to power of

Tamburlaine, a shepherd and a robber. His terrible ambition drives him onwards to more power and more cruelty. His armies conquer Bajazet, ruler of Turkey whom Tamburlaine takes from place to place in a cage, like an animal.

Tamburlaine the Great

Cruelty on stageTamburlaine is pulled to Babylon in

a carriage, it is drawn by two kings whom he curses and whips when they do not get fast enough. When they get tired, they are taken away to be hanged and then two spare kings have to pull the carriage.

Popular playsAlong with Thomas Kyd's The

Spanish Tragedy, it may be considered the first popular success of London's public stage. The play was well received, but the violence of the language and of the action are serious faults.

The Jew of Malta The Jew of Malta is a play by Christopher

Marlowe, probably written in 1589 or 1590. Its plot is an original story of religious conflict, intrigue, and revenge, set against a backdrop of the struggle for supremacy between Spain and the Ottoman Empire in the Mediterranean that takes place on the island of Malta. The Jew of Malta is considered to have been a major influence on William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.

The Jew of Malta - plot The governor of Malta taxes the Jews

there, but Barabas, a rich Jew, refuses to pay. His money and house are therefore taken from him and in revenge he begins a life of violence. He poisons his own daughter, Abigail, and causes her lover to die too. He helps the Turks and they attack Malta, and so they make him governor, but he decides to kill all the Turkish officers.

The Jew of Malta

Barabas’ final momentsHe arranges that the floor of a big

room can be made to fall suddenly, and then invites them to meal in it.

However, an enemy makes his secret known and he himself is thrown down below the floor into a vessel of boiling water.

Dr. Faustus The Tragical History of the Life and

Death of Doctor Faustus, commonly referred to simply as Doctor Faustus, is a play by Christopher Marlowe, based on the Faust story, in which a man sells his soul to the devil for power, riches, and knowledge. 

Doctor Faustus was first published in 1604, eleven years after Marlowe's death and at least twelve years after the first performance of the play.

Faustus – plot Faustus agrees to give his soul to the

devil, Mephistopheles, in return for 24 years of splendid life. The end of the play, when death is near and Faustus is filled with fear, is a highlight of terrible description.

One of the things Faustus asks the devil to for him is to bring back from the dead the beautiful Helen of Troy.

Faustus and Mephistopholes

Helen of Troy

Edward II  Edward II is a Renaissance or Early

Modern period play written by Christopher Marlowe.

It is one of the earliest English history plays. The full title of the first publication is The Troublesome Reign and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second, King of England, with the Tragical Fall of Proud Mortimer.

Edward II  Marlowe found most of his material for

this play in the third volume of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles (1587). Frederick Boas believes that "out of all the rich material provided by Holinshed" Marlowe was drawn to "the comparatively unattractive reign of Edward II" due to the relationship between the King and Gaveston.

Marlowe’s plots Boas elaborates, "Homosexual

affection ... has (as has been seen) a special attraction for Marlowe. Jove and Ganymede in Dido, Henry III and his 'minions' in The Massacre, Neptune and Leander in Hero and Leander, and all akin, although drawn to a slighter scale, to Edward and Gaveston." 

The King and Gaveston.

Marlowe was killed in a quarrel at Thames-side inn before he was thirty years of age.