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2006 5:21pm

A History of Seventeenth-Century
English Literature
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BLACKWELL HISTORIES OF LITERATURE

The books in this series renew and redefine a familiar form by recog-
nizing that to write literary history involves more than placing texts in
chronological sequence. Thus the emphasis within each volume falls
both on plotting the significant literary developments of a given
period, and on the wider cultural contexts within which they occurred.
‘Cultural history’ is construed in broad terms and authors address such
issues as politics, society, the arts, ideologies, varieties of literary pro-
duction and consumption, and dominant genres and modes. The
effect of each volume is to give the reader a sense of possessing a
crucial sector of literary terrain, of understanding the forces that give
a period its distinctive cast and of seeing how writing of a given period
impacts on, and is shaped by, its cultural circumstances.

General editor: Peter Brown, University of Kent, Canterbury

Published to date
Old English Literature Robert Fulk
Seventeenth-Century English Literature Thomas N. Corns
Forthcoming
Victorian Literature James Eli Adams
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A History of
Seventeenth-Century
English Literature
Thomas N. Corns
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ß 2007 by Thomas N. Corns

BLACKWELL PUBLISHING
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Designs, and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher.
First published 2007 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
1 2007

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Corns, Thomas N.
A history of seventeenth-century English literature / Thomas N. Corns.
p. cm.—(Blackwell histories of literature)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-631-22169-2 (alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-631-22169-7 (alk. paper)
1. English literature—Early modern, 1500–1700—History and criticism.
2. Great Britain—Intellectual life—17th century. I. Title. II. Series.
PR431.C67 2007
820.9’004—dc22
2006004745

A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
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To Pat, for even more patience

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Contents

List of illustrations ix
Preface x

1 The Last Years of Elizabeth I: Before March 1603 1

Literary Consumption and Production 2
Latin, Neo-Latin and English 14
Manuscript, Performance, Print 16
The Press and its Controls 22
The Final Years of Elizabethan Theatre 26
Patronage and Court Culture 30

2 From the Accession of James I to the Defenestration

of Prague: March 1603 to May 1618 33
Changes and Continuities 33
The Making of the Royal Courts 35
Masques and Other Court Entertainments 38
Early Jacobean Theatre 42
Jacobean Shakespeare 45
Other Drama 70
Non-Dramatic Poetry 87
Non-Fictional Prose 113

3 From the Defenestration of Prague to the Personal Rule:

May 1618 to March 1629 119
Continental Wars 119
Three Funerals and a Wedding 123
Masques and Pageants 129
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Contents vii

Plays and Players 133

Poetry and Prose Romance 151
Non-Fictional Prose 156
News 164

4 The Literature of the Personal Rule:

March 1629 to April 1640 167
The Making of the Caroline Court 167
Masques of the Personal Rule 176
Other Entertainments 182
Music and Literature at the Caroline Court 184
Themes, Occasions and Conversations 186
From Manuscript to Print 190
Plays and Players 192
Literature and Laudianism 203
George Herbert 206
The Emblem Books of Quarles and Wither 215
Early Milton 221

5 From the Short Parliament to the Restoration:

April 1640 to May 1660 229
Events and Consequences 229
Royalist Poetry 239
Crashaw and Vaughan 264
Mid-Century Drama 273
Sir Thomas Browne 277
Poetry for Parliament and Protectorate 283
Pamphlet Wars 295
Newspapers 311

6 The Literature of the Rule of Charles II:

May 1660 to February 1685 317
Dissent, Popery and Arbitrary Government 317
Theatre of the Rule of Charles II 327
Rochesterism 352
The Poetry of Dryden and Butler 360
Marvell After 1660 370
Bunyan, Pepys and Sprat 381
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viii Contents

Milton, St Nicholas and Hutchinson 391

Katherine Philips and Margaret Cavendish 405

7 From the Accession of James II: After February 1685 409

James II and the Williamite Revolution 409
Aphra Behn: The Late Works 413
Dryden and James II 416
After 1690 421

Bibliography 429
Index 453
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List of Illustrations

Plate 1: Ben Jonson, The Workes of Benjamin Jonson

(1616), portrait frontispiece and title page. 98
Plate 2: Michael Drayton, Poly-Olbion (1612), title
page and facing text. 108
Plate 3: Michael Drayton, Poly-Olbion (1612),
map of ‘Carnarvanshire’. 109
Plate 4: William Shakespeare, Mr. William Shakespeares
Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies (1623),
portrait frontispiece and titlepage. 150
Plate 5: Francis Quarles, Emblemes (1635), Emblem X. 219
Plate 6: George Wither, A Collection of Emblemes
(1635), pp. 4–5. 220
Plate 7: John Milton, Poems (1645), portrait frontispiece
and title page. 222
Plate 8: John Dryden, The Works of Virgil (1697),
frontispiece and title page. 425
Plate 9: John Dryden, The Works of Virgil (1697),
a plate from the Aeneid. 426
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Preface

This is a history of English literature in the seventeenth century. It

covers writing in English in England and Wales. Writing in English in
Scotland and Ireland, like new composition in Latin, figures only
marginally, where it relates to or illuminates the principal subject.
Literatures produced in the other languages of Britain and Ireland
are not considered, because they are both beyond my remit and
outside my competence.
Other decisions in the selection or omission of texts are less clear-
cut. Those authors who currently are most read and studied receive
most attention. I have added some non-canonical works to throw light
on the mainstream, together with some which, in my view, have
literary merit that has been overlooked. Writers who were once influ-
ential or were otherwise perceived as important in their own day are
generally included, even though they have substantially fallen from the
canon. Translation, particularly from the classical languages, was a
significant component of the seventeenth-century experience of litera-
ture. Here my treatment is selective and perhaps somewhat arbitrary,
though works which proved influential, like Sylvester’s rendition of Du
Bartas, are included. Dryden’s late, glorious translations seemed too
good and too important a component of his oeuvre to omit. Populist
genres such as ballads or works of popular piety for the most part are
drawn on only as part of the larger cultural context. Writers in other
genres outside those that are typically considered literary appear inter-
mittently. Francis Bacon and Thomas Sprat, who have often figured in
critical histories of non-fictional prose, are engaged with in literary
terms; Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, despite their higher status
as thinkers, are not considered, except as influences on or analogues
to other writers. Though both write with persuasive power, their
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Preface xi

principal genius rests in their contribution to the tradition of western

philosophy, and a proper appreciation of their work would have carried
me beyond the concerns of literary history.
This study owes much to the kindness of others. Neville Davies, Paul
Hammond, Neil Keeble, Robert Wilcher and David Womersley read
and commented on large sections. Alastair Fowler read it in its entirety,
and with extraordinary generosity met with me over two days to talk
through matters of detail and some of the larger issues. More casual
conversations with Gordon Campbell, David Loewenstein and Nigel
Smith, particularly at the early stages, shaped the project more pro-
foundly than they can have realized. The early modernists among my
Bangor colleagues, Tony Claydon, Bruce Wood, Andrew Hiscock and
Ceri Sullivan, have been a recurrent source of advice and assistance.
The English department, by the sweat of its collective brow, made
possible a semester of study leave at a critical point, and I am grateful,
too, to Densil Morgan, who deputized for me as head of the School of
Arts and Humanities over that period. Several people at Blackwell
Publishing also deserve my thanks: Andrew McNeillie for encouraging
me to take the commission on and Emma Bennett for encouraging me
to finish it; and Karen Wilson and Sarah Dancy for seeing it through
the final stages. The dedication acknowledges a more pervasive kind of
debt.

Thomas N. Corns
Bangor, Gwynedd