There was a conflict between the humanists like Sir Philip Sidney who stood for classical tradition initiated by Sackville & Norton & a strong national taste of the English public. Finally, the national taste triumphed & ‘romantic’ form of drama was established.

AGE OF SHAKESPEARE: ELIZABETHAN DRAMA

1.It followed unity of subject & tone, & kept tragedy & comedy separately: a tragedy has to be a tragedy from first to last & no humorous episode was permitted. Similarly a comedy has to be comedy & no tragic element was permitted;2. There was little or no dramatic action; incidents only reported or narrated;3. Three unities of time, place & action controlled the structure of the plot: entire story confined to one day; a single scene; & no subplots or minor episodes allowed

PRINCIPLES OF CLASSIC DRAMA

1. Makes free use of variety in theme & tone, often blending tragic & comic incidents & characters in the same piece;

2. Employs action & narrative in carrying on a plot; essentially a drama of action, nearly everything represented on the stage;

3. Rejects 3 unities: allowing the story to extend over months & even years; changing the scene as often as necessary, sometimes from one town or country to another; employing subplots & minor episodes

ROMANTIC OR SHAKESPEAREAN DRAMA

Playwrights before Shakespeare are called “University Wits”, for they were of men of formal education from universities & had academic training & banked on their new learning & personal touch. They are:

John Lyly, Thomas Kid, George Peele, Thomas Lodge,

Robert Greene, Christopher Marlowe & Thomas Nash. Of them, only Lyly & Marlowe deserve our attention for their

infl uence on Shakespeare Instead of detailed catalogue of their works, they are

considered a group that contributed to the evolution of drama which Shakespeare was to take it up later.

Lyly helped to give comedy an intellectual tone with his use of puns, conceits & verbal fi reworks that are found in Shakespeare's comedies such as Love’s Labour’s Lost & A Midsummer Night’s Dream .

Marlowe combined in his plays elements of tragedy & history that Shakespeare later used in his historical plays.

UNIVERSITY WITS

In a span of 24 years between 1588 and 1612, Shakespeare is believed to have produced 37 plays that

can be grouped into 4 periods:

1588—93 Period of experimental work: 3 parts of Henry VI, Titus Andronicus, Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Comedy of Errors, & A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Richard III & Romeo and Juliet

1594—1600 Period of great comedies and chronicle plays: Richard II, king John, The Merchant of Venice, Henry IV Parts I & II, Henry V, The Taming of the Shrew, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Much Ado about Nothing, As You Like It, & Twelfth Night.

SHAKESPEARE’S WORKS

1601---08 Period of great tragedies & bitter comedies. In this period, Shakespeare’s intellectual power & his dramatic power are at their highest. This is the time of supreme masterpieces. The sins & weaknesses of men form the staple of his plots with emphasis on evil. So the tone is either grave or fi erce. The plays are: Julius Casear, Hamlet, All’s Well that Ends Well, Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, & Timon of Athens.

1608---12. Period of later comedies or Dramatic Romances. In these last plays, there is still tragic passion, but evil is controlled & conquered by good. They are often careless in construction & unsatisfactory in characterization, while in style and versifi cation they will not bear comparison with the work of the preceding ten years. The plays of this period are: Cymbeline, The tempest, & The Winter’s Tale.

SHAKESPEARE’S WORKS CONTI…

Though a friend of Shakespeare, the power & volume of his genius were fundamentally different from him.

He opened his career with the satiric comedy Every Man in His Humour He produced many translations & poems. His plays fall into three groups:

His court Masques, his historical tragedies “Sejanus” & Catiline, & his numerous comedies: The Alchemist, Volpone or the Fox, Epicoene or The Silent Women.

BEN JONSON

He was a realist in that his world of comedy is not the world of romance, but of contemporary London life with its manners, foibles, & affectations. His aim was to teach & delight. A general ethical purpose is apparent in his works. In short, his realism is a didactic realism. He takes Latin comedy as his model & insists on ‘master passion’ or ‘humour’ as he calls it, & makes a whole character out of it. As a result, his characters are not complex individuals like Shakespeare’s, but rather types like Downright, Morose, Wellbred, Subtle, Pertinax, Sir Epicure Mammon. In Jonson’s comedies, intellect predominates & he is the real founder of Comedy of Manners.

BEN JONSON CONTI…

John Webster, a dramatist of somber cast of genius & great power had a morbid love of the violent & horrible. His White Devil, & Duchess of Malfi contain scenes of tragic passion unrivalled outside Shakespeare.

Francis Beaumont & John Fletcher worked in collaboration & their moral tone is often relaxing though at times sentimental. Their plays Philaster, & The Maid’s Tragedy are superior plays except that of Shakespeare’s.

Philip Massinger is a ready writer in various styles reached a high level in his comedy A New Way to Pay Old Debt.

OTHER DRAMATISTS OF SHAKESPEARE’S AGE

John Lyly”s Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit & its sequel Euphues and his England are important prose romances. Lyly’s style or Euphuism is characterized by a number of specific rhetorical devices. The outstanding feature of Euphuism is the excessive use of balanced antithesis, frequently combined with alliterations. Lyly also indulges freely in similes, word-play & punning. His works were very popular & considered as guides to polite behaviour, & a model of elegance in speech & writing.

AGE OF SHAKESPEARE: PROSE WRITERS

Thomas Lodge’s Rosalynde, Euphues’ Golden Legacy furnished the raw materials of As You Like It; Robert Greene’s Pandosto, The Triumph of Time, those of The Winter’s Tale.

Thomas Nash’s Unfortunate Traveller, or The Life of Jack Wilton, a rambling of adventure on the continent is our earliest example of the picaresque novel or novel of rascality.

AGE OF SHAKESPEARE: PROSE WRITERS II

FRANCIS BACON(1561 – 1626)

Sir Francis Bacon , even as a boy, showed an abundant wit & precocity that helped him later to hold so many high positions. He was impeached for official malpractices. He wrote voluminously on many subjects, & his greatest works– Advancement of Learning & Novum Organum(New Organ or instrument) profess his idea of Baconian method of studying nature. His principle contribution is his little collection of Essays, or Counsels Civil and Moral . They are dispersed meditations concerned with the conduct of life in private and public affairs.

Bacon has been called the creator of empiricism. His works established and popularized inductive methodologies for scientific inquiry, often called the Baconian method, or simply the scientific method. His demand for a planned procedure of investigating all things natural marked a new turn in the rhetorical and theoretical framework for science, much of which still surrounds conceptions of proper methodology today.

BACON CONTI…