ENGLISH LITERATURE

PARTE SCRITTA

Chapter I
The Beginnings
For centuries England was a land of conquest. It was invaded in 43 AD by Romans
who called the island Britannia. Then it was invaded by many Germanic tribes,
the Jutes, the Angles and the Saxons.
They spoke English and in the language that now we call OLD ENGLISH they wrote
their poems. The most ancient were religious and others were of a warrior type.
The most important warrior poem was BEOWULF, composed during the 8th
century. It consists of 3182 lines long and the author was an anonymous Anglo-
Saxon poet. The poem is set in Scandinavia and sings of the protagonist is a young
warrior who rids (libera) his people, called the Geats of a horrible monster called
Grendel and later his vengeful (vendicativa) mother. Fifty years after, Beowulf
now Lord of the Geats, confronts a terrible dragon which had attacked his
people. He kills the dragon but in the battle he is mortally wounded so the poem
ends with Beowulf's solemn funeral. The tone of the poem is legendary, typical of
the epic. The positive values are those of the Germanic warrior world, an archaic
society in which family honour, obligations to lord and to guest are of supreme
importance. Beowulf describes a pagan world which does not know the Bible.
Christianity is a recent acquisition. The world of ancestors, when it is the world
of the heroes, belongs to what Hegel calls the absolute past.
CAEDMON POEMS: poetical paraphrases of Genesis, Exodus and other episodes of
the Bible.
The most important example of religious poetry is THE DREAM OF THE ROOD,
probably dating from 750, a poem in which the Holy Cross tells the narrator the
history of Crucifixion.
The most important surviving prose work is due to King Alfred, who came in
throne in 871. He translated St Augustine's SOLILOQUIES, St Gregory's RULES FOR
PASTORS and Bede's ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORIES from Latin into English. He was
probably also responsible of the ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE which constitutes one
of the most important historical, cultural and literary works of the Early Middle
Ages.

After the Conquest

In 1066 England was invaded for the last time. William the Conqueror, Duke of
Normandy, landed at Hastings and on Christmas day he was crowned King in
Westminster Abbey and the Norman conquest of England was proclaimed. Norman
French became the language of the English court. William imposed his own
bishops (vescovi) so within few years all were and spoke Norman French. The
clergy (clero) wrote in Latin. With the Normans, thousands of French words
invaded England and English, giving rise to a semi inflected language.
The written and spoken English in use between 1100 and 1400 is called Middle
English but in reality no standard literary language existed at all. Each of the
major poets of the 14th century wrote his own version of Middle English: for
example the anonymous author of Sir Gawain. Sir Gawain is the most
distinguished example of the other decisive cultural change brought about the
Conquest.
For a decade William had dealt with a series of baronial rebellions, which he had
finally quelled with the help of Henry, King of France. All the Normans nobles
liked to imagine themselves in the guise of the virtuous paladins of the court of
Charlemagne, from this there sprang (vengono fuori) the expression “chanson de
geste”. Songs because this was the form in which the stories being told were
presented, celebrating the acts of a character (most of all were against Islam).
Particularly important was the CHANSON DE ROLAND which told of Roland's
heroic fight against the Saracens at Roncisvalles and his death and Charlemagne's
revenge against the enemy and the traitor Ganelon. Themes: exaltation of
heroism, love of one's country, loyalty to king and faith.
A similar quality pervades the ROMAN THE BRUT, written by the Norman Robert
Wace and dedicate in 1155 to Queen Eleanor de Aquitaine, it tells the adventures
of Brutus and of his successors, in particular of King Arthur and knights of the
Round Table. Other version or the Roman the Brut is Layamon's BRUT. The name
“romance” derives from the Old French romanz which means vernacular and the
poems were written in vernacular rather than in Latin.
Arthur's court is a centre of courtoise, love stories, adventure and knights fight.
The knight is a paragon of bravery, honour and courtesy.
LE MORTE DARTHUR is the prose version of the Arthurian legend written by Sir
Thomas Malory (1469 or 1470) drawing on both French and English versions in
order to produce a definitive version of Arthurian romance. This version was
printed in 1485 and was the canonical version.

Sir Gawain, Pearl and Piers Plowman

We must turn back to the unknown author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a
verse romance of 2500 lines preserved in a manuscript. The story begins with a
challenge issued by a mysterious Green Knight who presents himself at King
Arthur's court on Christmas Day. Sir Gawain accepts the challenge, which is finally
achieved a year later at the end of adventures, including the seduction of Gawain
by the lady of the castle where he had been offered hospitality.
The poem is written is alliterative verses of OE.
There are marvellous events, mystery, magic, there's an aristocratic appetite for
adventure. Numerous aspects of the poem have been the object of contrasting
critical interpretations. The difference between reality and the chivalric
principles was without doubt considerable.
In the years when Gawain was written, Richard II had to face up tu opposition.
When he thought he could get rid of them, Henry Bolingnroke, Duke of Lancaster,
forced the King to abdicate. Henry began the new king and Richard was prisoned
and then assassinated. When the knight Thomas Malory was writing the eight tales
of Le Morte Darthur, in England began the War of the two Roses (1455-85)
between the house of Lancaster (the Red Rose) and that of York (the White Rose)
for the throne of England. Lancaster won. Henry was proclaimed King as Henry VII
and married the eldest daughter of the Yorkist King so united the houses of
Lancaster and York.
To a different world belong other two important documents, PEARL and PIERS
PLOWMAN. Pearl is a poem which is preserved in the same manuscript as Sir
Gawain. It is a dream poem with a complex metrical structure which opens in a
flowered garden where the narrator, dreamer falls asleep. There appear to him in
a dream a beautiful woman, the pearl that he has mislaid, and also the daughter
she lost, who died when she was 2 years old. Then she is transformed into a sort
of queen and reveals to him the Heveanly City, the New Jerusalem. Before him
appears the Lamb of God at the head of a procession of thousands of virgins
dressed like Pearl leading towards his throne. The dreamer attemps to join them.
Pearl is a precious stone, a human creature, a symbolic creature who incarnates
purity and grace and who unites the human and the super-human.
Piers Plowman is also a dream poem and is written in Worcestershire English, a
dialect, the author William Langland lived for a long while in London. The first
part of the poem features the journey of Will, the dreamer in his quest for the
means of salvation in a corrupt world. Government, society and the Church are
CORRUPT. The hope is to create a just society. The second part of the poem,
which replaces the allegorical narrative of the first part with a series of
interviews. The conclusion is the dream of the realisation of the Kingdom of
Christ on earth thanks to the refoundation of the once corrupt Church.
Despite its allegorical complexity, this poem functioned for a long time as a
cultural point of reference of importance. It denunciates the corruption of
Church, society and government.

Chaucer
In the England of the second half on the 14th century flourished Geoffrey Chaucer
(1340-1400), was as second only to Shakespeare as England's greatest poet. Son of
a prosperous wine merchant, he served with the English army in France entrand
then was entrusted with various diplomatic missions for Edward III and continued
to carry out important public functions. His career started with the imitation and
re-elaboration of French models. His most important contribution to English
literature derived from his encounter with Italian culture. It was Dante who
provided the model for the form of the poem as vision used in HOUSE OF FAME
and Petrarch was an important ideological and technical model for him. The first
translation of a sonnet by Petrarch into English is incorporated into Chaucher's
TROILUS AND CRISEYDE. It is an anomalous romance, constructed in rhyme royal
(7- lines stanzas, ryhmed ababbcc) it tells the story of the two lovers of the title
following the scheme which went under the label of tragedy (rise and fall of the
hero) but it has an ending, not tragic in which the spirit of Troilus observes from
heaven the vanity of the world and laughs at its passions. Chaucher's model was
Boccaccio's Filostrato.
Chaucher's masterpiece is THE CANTERBURY TALES. He framed a set of stories. In
the Tales we encounter people of various social classes who gather at the Tabard
Inn in Southwark (London) before setting out on a pilgrimage to Canterbury. The
Host of the Inn suggests that each pilgrim tell two tales on the way to Canterbury
and two more on the way back in order to make the time pass more pleasantly.
There are 30 pilgrims so 120 stories. Before his death Chaucer has completed only
22 of them, grouped into “Fragments”. The most numerous group is made up of
so-called Fabliaux, comic tales, in a popular setting, centered around the triangle
wife, old or jealous husband and lover. Other tales are close to the romance
genre, other are of a religious character.
The best of all is THE NUN'S PRIEST'S TALE, which belongs to the genre of beast
fable, the moral of which is entrusted to two animal characters, the cock
Chauntecleer and the hen Pertelote. The tale is of great formal elegance and
achieves a comic effect through its application of human psychology to animal
behaviour. It gives a splendid picture of the ways of thinking and living of the
medieval world.
Even more fascinating than the tales are the Prologues, first the General Prologue
with its descriptions of all the pilgrims and then the individual prologues in which
each pilgrim presents himself. The pilgrims are representative of all strate of the
society. The Knight is socially the most eminent, the most humble is the
Polughman. The Pilgrims are English people very different from the middle classes
of today, they are Catholic, extroverted.
The narrator describes them including their defects with an appealing good
humour which masks a formidable irony. There are two important characters:
The Wife if Bath, makes her first appearance in the General Prologue and
emerges as a formidable character, she is revealed to have survived five husbands
and to have had various lovers. She incarnates life's pleasures and the pleasure of
living, her idea of sexuality is in contrast with the teachings of the Church.
The other character important is the Pardoner, his aim id making money. The
Pardoner's Tale is an exemplary story of a great moral value which illustrates the
principle of how the love of money is the root of all evil. The poem concludes
with The Parson's Tale which is not a tale but a long sermon on penitence. The
final “Retraction” in which Chaucer repudiates all his works which do not have a
moral intention and enumerates them one by one, including the tales of
Canterbury.

Interregnum
After the death of Chaucer English literature experienced a long period of
mediocrity. Chaucer was the model to imitate but if there was originality it was
to be found in Scottish writers, also in their way “Chaucerian”, in the work of
Robert Henryson (1424-1506), author of a TESTAMENT OF CRESSEID which
imagines a sequel to Chaucer's narrative. Here Cresseid, having deserted Troilus
for Diomede, is in turn deserted by him. She curses Cupid and the Gods punish
her by giving her leprosy. Henryson's moral attitude is the traditional one.
An opposite literary conception was that espoused by Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542)
whose poetic works were only published a number of years after his death. He
was a courtier and a diplomat. When Anne Boleyn was accused of adultery, he was
arrested because he was suspected of being her lover. In fact his most famous
poem, which imitates Petrarc's “una candida cerva”, might contain a covert
reference to the ill-fated queen, as the deer on whose diamond collar is written
“noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am”.
Wyatt developed the lesson of Petrarch in an original way. On the formal level he
took on the discipline of the Italian verse form but modified the scheme of the
sonnet, he divided it into three quatrains and a final couplet. More importantly,
he altered it thematically. Whereas in Petrarch the beloved girl is absent, here
the loved one is fully present physically.
Also Henry Howard, translated Petrarch's sonnets, perfecting the English form of
the Italian sonnet and creating the schema used by Shakespeare: three quatrains
and a final couplet, rhymed abab cdcd efef gg. His greatest contribution to
English poetry derives from his version of BOOK II and BOOK IV of Virgil's Aeneid,
which he translated into a verse of his own invention, the blank verse, with a
rhythm not far from the natural rhythm of English speech. Sometimes the line has
11 syllables.
They did not print verse, their poems circulated in manuscript but in 1557 the
printer Richard Tottel published a MISCELLANY of songs and sonnets by Wyatt,
Surrey and other in order to render honour to the English language.

Medieval Drama
From the 13th century, liturgical drama, which was essentially music drama,
spread across Europe while the earliest evidence of religious theatre in English
goes back to the 14th century. In England the idea was to put together episodes
covering different moments of the annual cycle of services, particularly the
Gospel accounts of the Passion of Christ. The representation of episodes was
often performed on carts and mobile platforms which moved through the town
streets with shopping points. At each stop the performance was repeated so that
spectators could wait at one point and in due course view the entire cycle.
Four complete cycles survive: from York, Wakefield, Chester and an unknown
town. Of these the Wakefield cycle is the most interesting, especially for the five
or six texts due to a single, though unknown author, which display a great mystery
of language. The masterpiece among the texts is the SECOND SHEPHERD'S PLAY,
with its formidable figure of Mak the sheep-stealer, who tries to hide a sheep he
has stolen in his cottage putting it in a cradle and creating a comic pseudo-
Nativity. The episodes concludes with a real Nativity.
Religious and moral teaching through theatre also takes place by means of the
morality plays, which staged an allegorical conflict between figures of Good and
Evil. The title of the most famous of all these plays, EVERYMAN, (1500), indicates
that the protagonist is evert man, all of humanity. The play describes the journey
of Everyman towards death, the figure of which appears to him sent by God.
Nobody wishes to accompany him on his journey. Only Good Deeds and Knowledge
comfort him and accompany him to the tomb. Is a Moral Play.
Henry Medwall's Fullgens and Lucrece first performed in 1497.
Fulgens was an interlude, that is to say a play offered between courses in
banquets. Interludes could be moral plays, like John Skelton's MAGNIFICENCE
(1576). Other interludes, however were comical in genre.

Chapter 2
From Henry to Elizabeth
Henry Tudor, Henry VIII came to the throne in 1509, he was proclaimed Defender
of the Faith by the Pope, but he entered in a dispute with the Church of Rome
which had refused to annul his marriage with Catherine of Aragon. He enlisted to
support of the Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer and in 1533 declared
his own marriage annulled and married Anne Boleyn. In 1534 the Act of
Supremacy had proclaimed him head of the Church of England. In 1536 Anne
Boleyn was executed for adultery and Henry married Jane Seymour, who died in
childbirth giving birth to Henry's son Edward, who succeeded him in 1547. Edward
died in 1553, and the succession passed to Mary Tudor, Henry's daughter by
Catherine of Aragon. Mary was Catholic and carried out a policy of persecution
against the Protestants, which led to her nickname Bloody Mary. Mary married
Philip II of Spain. The following year, Mary died and Anne Boleyn's daughter
Elizabeth succeeded to the throne. The young queen proved able to act both
prudently and decisively. She stabilised the schism, definitively consolidating the
Anglican Church of which she became Supreme Governor. She managed to focus
around her figure the image of a nation finally united under her crown, in the full
flood of economic expansion. Victory over the INVINCIBLE Spanish Armada in
1588, gave England dominion over the sea. She was the Virgin Queen and poets
celebrated her by comparing her to the chaste divinities of the classical world,
she was a woman of great culture. In order to understand the cultural dimension
underlying the world of the Elizabethan aristocracy, it is worth drawing attention
to the role played by the most famous contemporary treatises on the manners of
the true gentleman, the CORTEGIANO by Baldassarre Castiglione and the CIVILE
CONVERSAZIONE by Stefano Guazzo. Equally important was George Puttnam's
work THE ART OF ENGLISH POESY 1586, it establishes an interesting
correspondence between poetry and manners, between poetic values and those
of civilisation.

Sidney
Philipp Sidney (1544-86) is the poet in whom this correspondence appeared to
find its highest expression, through only after his tragically early death. His
relations with the Queen were hampered (ostacolate) by his too ardent
Protestantism. He died at the age of 32 (as the result of an injury while fighting
against the Spaniards). After his death, Protestant propaganda, exalting him as a
perfect courtier and a brave soldier who had died for a just case, bequeathed a
legacy of his memory as the perfect representative of an idealised Elizabethan
age. As befitted an aristocratic poet, Sidney never published his literary works
and had declared them to be works of only modest importance:
1-A DEFENCE OF POETRY written in 1579 and published in 1595, is a vindication
of literature, of its superiority to philosophy or history, of its power to illuminate
and beautify those who promote it, of its greatness in all cultures at all times and
of its great potential for development in the English language.
2-ASTROPHIL AND STELLA is a sequence, in the Petrarchan manner, of 108
sonnets and eleven songs which describes the love of Astrophil (star-lover in
Greek) for Stella (star in Latin). He uses forms of poetic construction, linguistic
devices and imagery proper to the Petrarchan tradition. The name of the
protagonist contains a clear allusion to the poet's forename (-phil as in Philip),
Sidney himself is less the lover of a star than a lover of the art of poetry.
3-ARCADIA is a prose romance, based on the prototype of Sannazaro's Arcadia.
This romance was written between 1578 and 1580 but two years later he began a
complex work of revision adding new characters and new twists to the plot. The
central story is that of two princes in love with two princesses, mixed in with
which are various comic moments, dramatic episodes and a number of passages of
tragic intensity. Sidney used both the idyllic setting of the pastoral fantasy and
the repertory of adventure proper to romance. But then he placed in a central
position debates and discussions on academic themes dear to the culture of the
time, and it is possibly this element, so distant from us today, that accounts for
much of his early success in Europe.
Spenser
Edmund Spenser (1522-99) was born in London. He distinguished himself for his
poetic talent, but his literary gifts did not gain for him the career in public
service that he aspired to. In 1579 he obtained a place in the Earl of Leicester's
household (where he became familiar with Sidney). He lived in Ireland until 1598
when his house was plundered and burnt during Tyrone's insurrection. It was from
Chaucer that he drew numerous obsolete words and expressions and archaisms.
There is no doubt that Spenser appeared as the writer who had brought English
poetry to a level equal to that of the greatest poetry of any age or country. He
loves the classics. As well as metre he wanted to introduce into English poetry the
sort of elegance and precision, together with richness of diction, which he could
find in classical poetry.
His earliest important work, THE STEPHERD'S CALENDAR dedicated to Sidney,
consists on twelve eclogues, one for each month of the year. It was strongly
allegorical, the dialogues mask real personages, it develops themes of a general
character such as love, morality, religion or poetry. Spenser's greatest work is THE
FAERIE QUEENE that is an epic poem in which enemy is Catholicism. The Church
of England has restored primitive purity to the Church. Queen Elizabeth who is its
Supreme Governor, is the Virgin Queen and Spenser celebrates her. It is a poem
designed to educate the English ruling class of the time, offering moral lessons.
Spenser harks back to the fantastic world of King Arthur and his Knights, but
viewed fro ma moral position. Six knights are the heroes of the six adventures
narrated in each book, each exemplifying a virtue: truth, temperance, chastity,
friendship, justice and courtesy. He uses as models Ariosto and Tassio, in
particular the former's Orlando Furioso: his metre is based on the ottava rima of
his Italian models, but he adds to it a ninth line. Allegory was his way to tell the
truth. The same grace is to be found in some technically exquisite passages of
PROTHALAMION (1596), a poem which celebrates the double betrothal of the
Earl of Worcester's two daughter; and in AMORETTI (1595) a sonnet sequence
dedicated to his second wife Elizabeth.

Elizabethan Drama
Actors and Theatres
The form in which Elizabethan culture expressed itself in all its originality and
greatness was the theatre. In few years the theatre spread from being an
occasional entertainment for a small minority to becoming the most socially
widespread of the arts. The Queen loved the theatre, the Protestants hated it,
seeing in it the most diabolical form of imitation of reality. Illuminating in this
respect are the arguments of the reformed playwright Stephen Gosson, who
attributed directly to Satan the responsibility for the development of English
theatre.
In 1576 the carpenter and impresario James Burbage built a theatre, simply
named THE THEATRE, in Shoreditch, just outside the city limits to the east. The
following year, not far away, there arose a second theatrical building, THE
CURTAIN. Around the middle of the 16th century, the authorities were very
concerned with the numbers of people who were leaving their native district in
search of employment. The problem was solved in 1572 with the Vagrancy Act
which established severe penalties, including hanging. The new law covered
actors and affected even the paid troupes of certain nobleman which turned
themselves into companies. Under the 1572 Act it was only actors in this last
category, who had the right to continue to exercise their profession. One of the
1st companies to acquire this new status was that formed by a group of actors
who, in 1572, requested the Earl of Leicester to renew his “protection” and to
retain them as his “household servants”. The Lord Admiral's Men came into being
in 1576 followed by the company of the Queen's Men. A little later, in the 1594,
the company of the Chamberlain's Men was founded with William Shakespeare as
one of its members; when James I succeeded to the throne it came under his
protection with the title of the King's Men. The theatrical companies were quite
small but they were able to stage plays with a large number of characters by
means of the practice of doubling, assigning to each actor several roles in the
same play. In turn meant that the author had to organise exits and entrances in
such a way that the actor could shift from one part to the next. Girls' roles were
performed by young actors since the idea of women performing on stage was
regarded as totally shocking. We talk about cross dressing that means that a
young man is dressed as a girl who was pretending to be a young man.
The first to find a home were Leicester's Men, who settled in the Theatre in
Shoreditch in 1576. The impresario, Burbage, had designed a building open to the
skies. The first theatres, The Rose and The Swan had a circular shape. The
theatre could hold up to 2000 spectators (the Swan nearly 3000). Surrounding an
arena into which the stage jutted, rose three levels of gallery. Over the stage,
supported by two columns, there was a canopy, while the stage itself contained a
trapdoor, “the hell” from which a devil or a witch might appear. The back wall
had two doors through which actors entered and exited and sometimes a central
opening covered by a curtain. Spectators paid one penny for entrance. The play
was performed in daylight, with no scene changes. There was a direct
relationship between the public and the actor. The same characteristics were
present in the other kind of the theatre to be found in London at the end on the
16th century, the so-called private theatre, modelled on the great halls in the
houses on the nobility where plays were performed. In the private theatres the
basic structure remained the same: a platform with two or three doors and in
some cases a spacious balcony. The audience of the private theatres tended to
come from a more restricted social class, which could afford the higher price of
admission. The Elizabethan public remained a unitary one. But during the reign of
James I this unitary public began to split up, with the more sections of the public
choosing the private theatres and in the reign of Charles I it disappeared as the
theatre addressed itself more and more to an elite public.

Plays and Playwrights

There was a demand for novelty and diversity, at least thirty new plays a year, if
we use Henslowe's DIARIES as a guide. Romances and Italian novellas were models
for new plots. Important collection in English translation, William Painter's
PALACE OF PLEASURE that was published in 1566-67. An equally source of
inspiration were the mythical and legendary heritage of the classical world and
Roman history and English history itself. This was to be the case most notably,
later, with Ben Jonson. One reason why texts were not always published was that
theatre companies were afraid that they could be used by rival companies.
The theatrical genres were comedy, tragedy, history play and tragicomedy, a
genre which came to the fore later, under the influence of Guarini's PASTOR
FIDO. Neither this new hybrid genre nor the history play were forms recognised
by Aristotle. The first known example of a history play was John Bale's KING JOHN
followed by Sackville's GORBODUC based on the legendary English chronicles. But
from the 1580s in particular with THE FAMOUS VICTORIES OF HENRY VI, that the
history of England and its rulers, from the remote Middle Ages to the recent reign
of Henry VIII, emerges as a distinct theatrical genre. Shakespeare and other
authors oh history plays followed the conception of the time in presenting past
events in the guise of a mirror of magistrates.
The comedy of Elizabethan period was generally a romantic comedy, with a plot
often motivated by love. Shakespeare often found them (character) in the Italian
novella. It was then Ben Jonson who first rejected the romantic comedy and drew
his characters from the contemporary world around him (and from London in
particular) and shifted the emphasis from love to money. Tragedy was a less
widely practised genre than comedy. Its model was Seneca. It was from Seneca
that the most characteristic form of the period was derived the “revenge
tragedy”, whose Elizabethan prototype was Thomas Kyd's SPANISH TRAGEDY and
whose most distinguished exemplar is HAMLET. Kyd's text is also distinguished by
its abandonment of the rhyming verse and its replacement with a new type of
verse, the BLANK VERSE invented by Surrey. The growing interest in classical
culture was of decisive importance for the development of the theatre. Students
were invited to recite Latin texts and the tragedies of Seneca and the comedies
of Plautus and Terence were translated into English and constituted a model to be
followed. The 1st English tragedy, GORBODUC is of clear Senecan inspiration. With
the interludes, it had a strong didactic purpose, but political rather than moral.
The 1st English comedy, RALPH ROISTER DOISTER by Nicholas Udall, owes much to
the comedies of Plautus and Terence. It was followed by GAMMER GURTON'S
NEEDLE which has a strong didactic and moral purpose. The play also contains
echoes if Italian Cinquecento comedy (Ariosto).

Marlowe
The 1st English dramatists had all read and studied the classics and almost all of
them had studied at university. Christopher Marlowe, the son of a shoemaker ì,
was born in 1564 and had gone to Cambridge thanks to a scholarship. He wrote
for the theatre and he worked as a spy. At a certain point the secret services
decided he was no longer reliable and probably they killed him.
The adventurous and irregular aspects of his life find their counterpart in the
characters and events in his plays. His characters are monolithic and grandiose,
the villainous Barabas the Jew, the ferocious Tamburlaine, the blasphemer
Faustus and the events of which they are the protagonists are a repertory of
shocking and extreme actions.
Four important theatrical plays:
1- TAMBURLAINE THE GREAT presents the heroic and cruel story of a Schythian
shepherd who rises to become emperor by destroying whoever stands in the way
of his march to power. Is the play which has the most passages in which Marlowe's
poetic power manifests its strength most eloquently.
2- THE JEW OF MALTA where Barabas is the central character, ha neither the
poetry nor the grandeur of Tamburlaine. He is equal to him in his wickedness and
in the brutality of the crimes he commits to achieve vengeance.
3- TRAGICAL HISTORY OF DOCTOR FAUSTUS whose protagonist is the character
later immortalised by Goethe. Like Tamburlaine, Faustus challenges God: he
makes a bargain with the Devil to obtain power. Faustus will be damned for
having excessively desired what all of us desire: power, riches, pleasure.
4-EDWARD II which transformed the history play into a historical tragedy. The
tragedy revolves around four characters: Edward, his lover Gaveston, his wife
Queen Isabella and her lover Mortimer. The clash between their private feelings
and their quest for power brings the nation to the verge of catastrophe. By
casting his tragedy around such a questionable historical figure Marlowe was able
to pose the problem of the legitimacy of royal power.

Chapter 3
William Shakespeare
Life and Works
William Shakespeare was born in 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, where he attended
the local grammar school. At the age of 18 he married Anne Hathaway and they
had a daughter, Susannah and two twins, a girl called Judith and a boy called
Hamnet who died at the age of 11. William's early life is shrouded in mystery. At
some point he left Stratford, his wife and his children but we don't know what he
did next. In 1592 he is known to have been in London and to have been there for
some time, having acquired a reputation in the world of literature, sufficient to
have provoked the insults of Robert Greene (la critica dice che copiava le sue
opere). After a long and successful career in 1611 he left London and its theatres
and returned to Stratford, where he died in 1616 at the age of 52. In his will he
allotted a small sum of money for the purchase of three memorial rings to be
given to Richard Burbage, Henry Condell and John Heminges, three actors in his
company. Burbage died three years later and the two survivors, Heminges and
Condell set to work to collect in one massive volume Shakespeare's theatrical
works. This was to be the famous FIRST FOLIO.
It was rare that scripts became books, or if they did, they did so illegally, or with
some delay. The dating of Shakespeare's plays has become a massive part of the
industry of Shakespeare scholarship, reliant on the one hand on a few items of
external data and on the other hand on internal textual elements (historical
events, contemporary scandals). Shakespeare did not see any of his plays through
the press himself. There exist the legal editions of his works and for some of his
works there are pirate editions, the so-called BAD QUARTOS. And then there is
the FIRST FOLIO printed in 1623 and edited by Heminges and Condell . In 1594
the company of the Lord Chamberlain's Men was formed and Shakespeare joined
it. Shakespeare was the author of texts for the Lord Chamberlain's Men to
perform. In the next few years he wrote two comedies, MUCH ADO ABOUT
NOTHING and THE MERCHANT OF VENICE and a 2nd cycle of history plays-
RICHARD II the two parts of HENRY IV and HENRY V.
The staging of Henry V coincided with the completion in May 1599 of the
company's theatre, the Globe. Here the Chamberlain's Men staged the “Roman
tragedy” JULIUS CAESAR and four comedies, AS YOU LIKE IT, TWELFTH NIGHT,
ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL and MEASURE FOR MEASURE; also TROILUS AND
CRESSIDA a play first described as a comedy and then as a tragedy and finally
HAMLET the tragedy most expressive of the modernity of Shakespeare's genius.
Hamlet inaugurates the phase of the great tragedies, OTHELLO, KING LEAR,
MACBETH, ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA, CORIOLANUS now the company has a new
name, the King's Men.
In 1608 they had to close public theatres and the King's Men moved to the private
Blackfriars theatre. The public was no longer the mixed one they were used to at
the Globe. It was more refined, with a particular taste for the new genre of tragi-
comedy. Shakespeare developed this genre in a new way, with the romances
PERICLES, PRINCE OF TYRE, CYMBELINE, THE WINTER'S TALE and THE TEMPEST.
Thereafter he collaborated with Fletcher on two pays, THE TWO NOBLE KINSMEN
and HENRY VIII.
Shakespeare was a man of considerable culture. He had a brillant memory, he had
an ability to connect the situations, circumstances and sensations of the
characters he created for the stage. The London of 16th century was a great
metropolis where everything that took place anywhere in the world had an
immediate echo. He could master the sense of these extraordinary experiences
and make them his own, to find them a place in the actions and words of his
characters. He was a man who frequented the streets and taverns. In his works
even those situated in a dimension highly marked by fantasy, we always have the
feeling of being confronted by the solidity of life. The fascination of
Shakespeare's works lies first and foremost in the way his stories are told. He's an
extraordinary storyteller, his language is so exuberant. His characters speak with
the words of everyday speech but they will come out with unexpected locutions,
strange emphases or hidden rhetorical figures. To the Elizabethan spectator this
all appeared quite natural, whether because the theatrical conventions required
that whatever was said on the stage should be assumed to be true, or because in
the case of Shakespeare whatever was said could also count on the most powerful
gift possessed by language. Naturally, he was a man of this time, and some of his
convictions and beliefs belong to his time and not to ours, and need to be
understand as such. Shakespeare has given us Hamlet, Othello, Romeo and Juliet,
Macbeth, Falstaff. He has given us characters who constitute the archetype of an
attitude and a form of experience which could be common to each of us:
jealously, the anguish of doubt, limitless love, thirst for power, reckless vitality.
The names of those characters have become synonymous with a particular mode
of being.

Histories
At the beginnings of his career, Shakespeare wrote three interlinked historical
dramas about the reign of Henry VI and a sequel about Richard III. It was clear
that he wanted to deal with a set of crucial political problems.
Henry VI was one of the causes of the Wars of the Roses, Shakespeare touches on
the themes that will be at the centre of all his history plays: the responsibilities
of the King, the disasters caused by opposing forces within the nation, the
necessity of national unity and the legitimacy of kingship. When they were first
staged, Shakespeare's history plays had an important educational value for the
large majority of the less cultured spectators and contained a clear political
message. Richard III remains one of the most popular of Shakespeare's plays. Its
protagonist is a figure of evil, his aim is to conquest the power and his wickedness
enables him to acquire it. After dramatising the reign if Henry VI and Richard III,
Shakespeare turned back to the reign of Richard II to tackle the theme of kingship
and legitimacy. In 1595, the year in which Richard II was probably first
performed, Queen Elizabeth was old, she was childless and there was a fear that
she might be deposed. The story of a king who was obliged to give up his throne
was therefore at the same time a topical political subject and a reflection on the
nature and prerogatives of sovereignty and the very basis of legitimacy. The
assassination of Richard was ordered by Bolingbroke, who had already seized
power and taken the name of Henry IV. Richard's soliloquy just before his murder
is one of the most exalted moments of Shakespeare's dramatic poetry. A weak
king, influened by his favourites, but full of vitality and rich in eloquence and
who in the course of the play had succeeded in gaining the sympathy of the
audience due to his appeal as poet. HENRY IV, PART TWO recount the travails of
the new king, faced with the rebellion of his earl and archbishops and that of his
son, Prince Henry. But the great creation of there two history plays is the figure
of Falstaff, leader of the dissolute crew frequented by the young prince. Falstaff
is a comic figure, a great liar and marvellous pretender, and eloquent spokesman
of the pleasures of eating, drinking and fornication. When Henry IV dies,
reconciled to his son, Falstaff hurries to London to greet his former boon
companion, now Henry V. This is the end of Falstaff's adventures, and the
beginning of the military and patriotic adventure entrusted by Shakespeare and
by history to HENRY V.

Comedies
The most popular of Shakespeare's early comedies are THE TAMING OF THE
SHREW and A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. A play within a play, but this time
clearly presented as such, is one of the central elements of A Midsummer Night's
Dream. This is Shakespeare's most popular comedy, it is full of fairies, songs and
magic spells. Act I and Act V take place in Athens, where the Duke is about to
celebrate his marriage to Hippolyta. Acts II, III and IV take place in the wood
where too young Athenians and the girl who are in love with them engage in
pursuit of each other. And it is here, in the wood that the magic is performed
which will resolve the conflict between Oberon and Titania, king and queen of
the fairies, and which, will sort out the amorous issues of the young people. Also
in the wood are a group of craftsmen who are rehearsing the play they will
perform at the Duke's wedding. One of them, Bottom, is transformed by a spell so
that he has the head of an ass, while Titania, victim of another spell, falls in love
with the first person she sees. When the spells wear off everything back to
normal and Bottom returns to town just in time to act in the plat performed at
the Duke's palace to grace his nuptials. The four young people decide that the
things that happened to them under the effects of magic were just a dream.
Very often, the real protagonist of Shakespeare's comedies are the women.
Beautiful, intelligent, decisive. But the female parts were performed by young
male actors and so Shakespeare devised plots in which the girl had to dress as a
man for a large part of the play.
The action of the 1st of these, AS YOU LIKE IT, takes place mainly in the Forest of
Arden, where Orlando and Rosalind have taken refuge to escape dangers at court.
The forest is a place which pastoral literature presented at the site of a serene
and simple life, where love and innocence triumph. As far as love is concerned,
the unmasking is performed by Rosalind who has put on the dress of a
countryman. Orlando does not recognise her: the 2 young people had met each
other at court for a brief moment and had fallen in love with each other. Rosalind
can reveal to a friend the depth of her feelings and let us understand that she is
perfectly aware of the power and value of love. Marriage will seal their love in a
symbolic finale.
Viola is the protagonist of TWELFTH NIGHT and disguises herself as a young man,
Cesario after a shipwreck which has separated her from her twin brother
Sebastian. This is often the case in Shakespeare's happy comedies which take
place in fantasy locations.
Then we have the Fool that is a character with a long history in English literature.
But Shakespeare makes him the character to whom to entrust the hidden sense of
the play. Who has the ability yo make us aware of profound truths hidden, a play
or a laugh. Only the Fool in KING LEAR shows himself able to be even more subtle
and sharply to the point.
Even Portia, the heroine of the Merchant of Venice, who chooses a husband by
subjecting her suitors to a test specified in her father's will, disguises herself as a
man an advocate to defend Antonio. Portia finds a cunning ruse to trap his
creditor, the Jewish Shylock who is obliged to convert to Christianity. When
Shakespeare wrote this play, anti-Semitism was rife in England but he declares
Shylock to be a man like the rest of us.

The Great Tragedies and The Tempest

ROMEO AND JULIET is one of Shakespeare's major tragedies and one of the most
popular. The source of the play is a poem published by Arthur Brooke in 1562,
which takes up the tale narrated in Masuccio's NOVELLINO and re-elaborated by
Bandello in his NOVELLE. It tells the story of the two star-cross'd lovers, Romeo
and Juliet, victims of the hatred between the two house-holds that they belong
to. The audience follows the adventures of Romeo and Juliet, their first meeting,
their moonlight dialogue, and their separation and death will bring an end to
their love and their short lives. At the tragic value resides a beautiful and
delicate love, pure that will be rewarded only with death. The feud between the
two households is the core of the play and what leads to the death of the lovers.
From the prologue, Shakespeare insists on the fact that the private story is
inseparable from the public context.
Other major tragedies started with HAMLET that is a revenge tragedy. His father's
ghost tells Hamlet that he has been killed by his brother Claudius, who is now
king and has married his widow Gertrude, Hamlet's mother. The Ghost demands to
be avenged but Hamlet is not sure whether the apparition really is his father's
ghost, a spirit who is telling the truth, or if it is a devil tempting him to kill an
innocent man. The power of the tragedy does not derive from the plot but from
the figure of Hamlet himself. He is on stage almost all the time, speaks nearly
half the lines in the whole play, and addresses the audience directly in a number
of soliloquies, the most famous being “to be or not to be”, in which he reflects on
the meaning of human life, its disappointments, troubles and torments and that
evokes the possibility of suicide. The play makes us reflect on our shared human
condition, on our limits, our uncertainties and the value and meaning of our lives.
Hamlet is a man who can see himself as we can see ourselves, conscious of our
fragmented nature.
Then we have OTHELLO: Iago, who persuades Othello that Desdemona, his wife,
has betrayed him. Once Iago gives some vague and unconvincing reasons and
Othello wants to know why that demi-devil has so deceived him. “Demand me
nothing” is Iago's response. Othello is the incarnation of jealousy, and its
destructive power. Othello shows us reason can be totally overpowered by
emotion. His jealously has robbed him of any ability to distinguish, to evaluate or
to understand. And it is jealously that makes him believe that what he intends to
do is not a murder but a sacrifice. When, after having killed the innocent
Desdemona, he discovers the truth, Othello delivers a noble speech in which he
absolves himself but in substance condemns himself. Then he kills himself.
KING LEAR: Lear has decided to abdicate and bequeath his kingdom to his three
daughters. The first words of the play establish that this is to be an equal division
but he then says that he might “extend his bounty” to whichever of the daughters
can demonstrate by her verbal homage to him that she loves him most. His
youngest daughter, Cordelia, fails to pronounce a rhetorical declaration of love
for her father. King Lear has often been interpreted as a tragedy about power and
Cordelia died in a scene so painful. It is also the tragedy of fathers unable to
understand their own children. The action of men are like those of wild beasts, it
is a pre-Christian world.
MACBETH, the Scottish play tells the story of the medieval Scottish king Macbeth
and once again presents a character who is a grandiose embodiment of evil.
Unlike Richard III (debole e influenzabile), Macbeth is shown as a noble and brave
warrior but one who, on hearing the prophecy of the three witches who tell him
he will become king, yields to temptation and convinces the idea of killing the
existing monarch. He is tormented by doubt and hesitates in the face of horror
that the idea of regicide provokes in him. He kills the holy king. Lady Macbeth is a
woman driven by an inflexible and evil determination, she shows no pity. Macbeth
turns himself into an ever more bloodthirsty guilty of atrocities towards the end
of the play, he seems to be saying more than just that his own life in meaningless:
he, the bloodstained assassin, forces us, his meek audience, to reflect on the
sense of our lives and perhaps to doubt it.
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA is the last of the great tragedies. Its source is Plutarch.
The theme is the conflict between reason and the passions. On the one hand
there is a conflict of two worlds: the world of Cleopatra, sensual queen,
capricious and irrational and the Roman world, orderly, calculating as represented
in the figure of Octavian. On the other hand there is the love between Antony and
Cleopatra. Antonio caught between the two worlds, chooses to take the side of
Cleopatra, his passion is the cause of his downfall.

The new theatrical form that Shakespeare developed was enriched in THE
TEMPEST where music and sound effects are decisive element in the plot and
where we find an actual Masque, the genre of spectacle compounded of music,
dance and fantastic costumes. The Tempest tells the story of Prospero, Duke of
Milan, who had handed over the government of the state to his brother Antonio to
devote himself to the study of magical art. But Antonio betrayed him and
Prospero was forced to take refuge with his little daughter Miranda. The play
starts with Prospeto raising a storm. His power is as a magician which enables him
to control the forces present on the island and represented by Ariel at his service
and the monstrous Caliban, son of the former ruler of the island. Caliban: symbol
of the victims of colonial exploitation. Prospero, as magician moves invisible
among the characters and guides the development of the plot. Ariel will have his
freedom, Miranda and Ferdinand will be married in Naples and Prospero will
retire to his dukedom, leaving the island where he had spent his exile and where
he had exercised his magic powers.

Poems
Shakespeare was a great poet, he was the author of two long poems written in
the years 1592-95, when the theatres were closed because of the plague, he was
also author of a volume of SONNETS.
VENUS AND ADONIS published id 1593 belongs to the tradition of erotico-
mythological poetry and recounts in a sensual style the attempts by Venus to
seduce the youth Adonis. The second poem, THE RAPE OF LUCRECE (1594)
narrates one of the most important episodes in Roman history, the rape of
Lucretia by Tarquinus and her suicide.
Shakespeare's Sonnets contains 154 sonnets, divided into two sections: sonnets I
to 126 are concerned with a youth, whereas sonnets 127 to 154 are mainly
concerned with a Dark Lady. There has been much speculation about the possible
identities of the young man and the Dark Lady. The sonnets are not to be
considered autobiographical: they explore personal relations in friendship and
love, offering up to the reader a series of reflections on them. The theme of the
first sonnets is the immortality of poetry, in Sonnet 18 the poet declares that is
will be poetry that offers immortality both to the young man and to the poet. In
other sonnets the poet repeats his challenge to Time the destroyer.

Chapter 4
The Early Seventeenth Century
James I and Charles I
At the death of Elizabethan in 1603, James Stuart (Giacomo di Scozia), son of the
Catholic Mary Queen, became the first Stuart King of England, “King of Great
Britain”. He was an advocate of royal absolutism and never really understood the
rights of the English Parliament. He promoted a policy of international peace-
making. This action made him decidedly unpopular. James in his youth had
written poetry and who liked to be seen as a patron of the arts. He is most
famous for a work, the new translation of the Bible, known as the Authorised
Version and also as the King James Bible. This version was the only book present
in many English household and it formed one of the main linguistic and cultural
reference points of the English-speaking world.
On James's death in 1625, his second surviving son Charles became king and soon
married Henrietta Maria, sister of Louis XIII of France. Like his father, Charles was
a patron of the arts and believed in the absolute power of the monarch. In 1642
the Civil War broke out, ending some years late with the defeat of the King.
Jacobean and Caroline Drama
In the first years of the 17th century the theatre began to lose its unitary
character. New theatrical forms developed. In particular an elitist genre, the
masque. It was concerned on Italian models, the masque had already begun to
establish itself during Elizabeth's reign. With Jonson the words were not the main
attraction of the spectacle. The extravagant costumes, the music, the dancing,
the sumptuous sets, the special effects provided by machines were what
constituted the decisive attraction of the genre.

Jonson
Ben Jonson (1527-1637) studied the classics. Classical culture was his guiding light
throughout his literary career. He edited and published his own works in a volume
entitled THE WORKS OF BEN JONSON (1616), which also contained his plays.
Jonson wrote comedies and tragedies which respected the unities of time and
place as he has encountered them in his study of the classics. He set his comedies
in the real world of his time, often in London, as in BARTHOLOMEW FAIR and THE
ALCHEMIST and EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR.
“Comedy of humours” is the expression generally used to define his form of
comedy. According to the theory of humours, the four cardinal humours were
blood, phlegm, choler and melancholy. A man was supposed to be governed by a
proportioned mixture of these four; if any single one of them formed the
prevalent humour, the ideal equilibrium was lost and the man became sanguine,
phlegmatic, choleric or melancholic as the case might be. In his comedies the
character were the embodiment of a dominant ruling passion, and the comic
effect was produced as much by the excess of a single character as by the
interaction of the conflicting passions (and humours) or different characters.
The Alchemist is set in a house in London, which has been abandoned by its
owner, Lovewit, during an epidemic of the plague. In his absence Subtle, a fake
alchemist and astrologer, engages in a series of deceptions by promising various
characters the fulfilment of their desires. Lovewit's unexpected return brings an
end to this trade in deception. The deceived characters are shown as so petty and
their deceivers as so ingenious that moral judgement gives way to laughter. No
punishment is inflicted on the tricksters.
VOLPONE, Jonson's other masterpiece, takes place in Venice but is a
representation on contemporary London. The rich man Volpone pretends to be
seriously ill in order to get gifts from his would-be heirs. Mosca, his parasite,
assures each of them that he or she is to be the heir. Finally Volpone nominates
Mosca as his heir and pretends to be dead; but reveals their tricks to the
authorities. His parasite is condemned “to live prisoner”. This time punishment
falls on the guilty and morality and law triumph. The ending is more tragic than
comic. It is a satirical denunciation of hypocrisy, in a conservative point of view.
Jonson's social and cultural credo is contained in his poem TO PENSHURST,
dedicated to the country house of the Sidney family. The house was conceived to
be comfortable in an atmosphere of great charm and aristocratic discretion. Only
the English nobility of this kind, Jonson thought, was truly capable of establishing
civilised converse between men, a correct relationship between art and power.
The genre of Jonson was the masque. He wrote 28 masques. His most original
contribution to the genre was the antimasque, where appeared on the strange
grotesque figures representing chaos and disorder, performed by professional
actors. At a certain point, generally marked by a change in the music, the main
masque began, performed by members of the nobility present at the spectacle,
which re-established order and harmony.
Jonson's texts present complex allegories which are elaborations of contrast
between vice and virtue. The king was the ideal point of reference, he was the
incarnation of the moral virtues.
PLEASURE RECONCILED TO VIRTUE is the most representative of Jonson's texts
for the masque, full of symbolic meanings and references to classical and
Renaissance culture. It is a celebration of James I. Jonson was appointed Poet
Laureate in 1616.

Fletcher, Heywood, Middleton, Webster

John Fletcher (1579-1625) is remembered mainly for the two plays on which he
collaborated with Shakespeare (Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen). He was a
very successful playwright. The genre of which he was a master was the
tragicomedy. One of his first works was THE FAITHFUL SHEPHERDESS (1603)
whose title implies the debt it owes to the PASTOR FIDO by the creator and
theoretician of the genre, Battista Guarini. It was not a success.
Fletcher turned to the writing of a number of tragicomedies in collaboration with
Francis Beaumont. Their plays enjoyed success at the court, where they were
much appreciated for the complexity of their plots, the presence of a double or
an opposite for many of the characters, the “moral” difficulties encountered in
the face of choices such as that between his beloved and a passion for another
woman or between love and loyalty and for the music and dance sequences with
which the spectacle was interspersed. None of these works can appreciated by
today's public. One of these is THE KNIGHT OF THE BURNING PESTLE, written by
Beaumont without Fletcher, a partial flop at the time and the other is THE WILD
GOOSE CHASE by Fletcher without Beaumont, a play which can be described as a
social satire centred on the relationship between marriage and interest, love and
the thirst for money. One form of comedy which Shakespeare never practised was
the city comedy. The setting is London and the story concerns daily life at the
time. The characters belong to the middle class with plenty of money available
and a propensity to use it to bring their lifestyle closer to that of the aristocracy.
The leading author of city comedies was Thomas Middleton, son of a master
bricklayer. He wrote a number of works in collaboration with other dramatists and
on his own some ferocious comedies. A TRICK TO CATCH THE OLD ONE is a
comedy in which a spendthrift nephew plays tricks on his avaricious uncle.
Dissipation and avarice are shown as “normal” human characteristic. In A MAD
WORLD MY MASTER the young Follywit tries to rob his grandfather. But this time
youth loses out and Follywit marries the prostitute Gullman, who had been the
lover of his grandfather, believing her to be a virgin.
A Middleton's masterpiece is A CHASTE MAID IN CHEAPSIDE (1613), in which he
weaves together four plots involving four London families.
He also wrote tragedies: WOMEN BEWARE WOMEN, a play set in Italy and in
which everything is driven by lust, money and the quest of power. The other is
THE CHANGELING.
This work is set in Spain and tells the story of Beatrice who has been promised in
marriage to Alonzo but is in love with Alsemero and asks her father's servant De
Flores to kill Alonzo. The reward that demands is not money but Beatrice herself.
The guilty pair are found out and Beatrice is killed by De Flores, who then
commits suicide. De Flores is a villain, a not frequent figure in Elizabethan and
Jacobean drama. The figure of Beatrice is equally powerful dramatically but more
original. Another tale of seduction is told in the subplot. In the finale there is not
only morality but reason itself. There were also revenge tragedies: Middleton's
WOMEN BEWARE WOMEN and Webester's THE DUCHESS OF MALFI and THE
WHITE DEVIL. The Revenge's Tragedy is set somewhere in Italy, in a court where
rape, adultery and incest are the norm. The revenger is Vindice. Unlike Hamlet,
who only had to revenge himself, Vindice has to confront a legitimate Duke and
his entire family. The plot is extremely complex.
Another successful genre was the so-called domestic tragedy, tragedy which deals
with everyday characters and events. A WOMAN KILLED WITH KINDNESS by
Thomas Heywood is the most successful example of the genre. The plot concerns
the marriage between a country gentleman Frankford and Anne, his wife who
nevertheless yields to the charms of their guest Wendoll. When he finds out,
Frankford devises a subtle and cruel punishment: he locks her up in a remote
house, barred from the sight of her children and himself. Consumed by remorse,
Anne dies and her husband pardons her on her deathbed.
Tragedies of John Webster: THE WHITE DEVIL is based on an event which took
place in Italy some years earlier, even though names and events are changed and
confused to create a stereotypical “Italian” atmosphere: dark, violent,
blasphemous and corrupt. The white devil is Vittoria Corombona, wife of the old
Camillo who falls in love, reciprocated, with Brachiano, who is tired of his wife
Isabella, sister of the Duke of Florence. She is sentenced to confinement but
Gasparo and Lodovico, the Duke's men, poison and strangle Brachiano and then
stab Vittoria and her brother Flamineo who is the accomplice of the two lovers
and killer of his virtuous brother Marcello.
With the intrigues and crimes of its corrupt characters, shifts its focus to the
dimension of death which has accompanied the events. Webster's masterpiece,
THE DUCHESS OF MALFI which in addition to its vertiginous succession of deceits
and crimes, can also rely on the psychological richness of its two protagonists and
the sense of pity aroused by the sufferings of the innocent. The Duchess marries
her steward Antonio. Her brothers, who had ordered their sister not to remarry,
place in her employment as a spy Bosola. When the truth is about to be
uncovered, she flees with two of her children, but Bosola captures them and has
them strangled. All are killed, the Duchess is not guilty of any adultery but rather
of a violation of the established order (she marries a steward and disregards her
brothers' orders) and is portrayed by Webster as a completely positive character:
honest, brave and full of dignity in her suffering. She is a luminous ans sensual
figure. Bosola, the instrument of power and order, is also the instrument of a sort
of poetic justice. Webster's tragedies are rich in corpus de scéne.
TIS PITY SHE'S A WHORE by John Ford is a tragedy whose central theme is the
incest taboo. Giovanni loves his sister Annabella, who asks him to swear eternal
love. When Annabella discovers she is pregnant she marries one of the suitors in
order to shield her brother. But the truth is soon found out. Giovanni kills
Annabella, Soranzo and is then killed by Soranzo's servant.
Giovanne lets himself be killed after having proclaimed his love. Ford had allowed
him to present their love as a spiritual union, rather than a physical one. Ford is
the poet of feelings which are absolute, dominate the actions and destiny of the
characters who are possessed by them.

Poetry
Donne
John Donne had been born into a Catholic family and had been brought up as a
Roman Catholic. Most of his love poems are difficult to date and some may have
been written after his marriage. His wife died, after giving birth to their twelfth
child. It was a terrible grief, which let an indelible mark on his soul. From that
moment the religious dimension became central to his life and his writings. The
central theme is always love, and the love of God. In the HOLY SONNETS the poet
addresses himself to God. English love poetry found its original identity with
Spenser and Sidney. The form used was basically that of the sonnet, but Donnes's
choice was different. The title of the volume where his love poems are collected,
published after his death is SONGS AND SONNETS. But none of the poems uses
the sonnet form: they are lyrics of varying length and varying metrical properties,
whose form is dictated by the “message” that he has to communicate. The lover
is not the centre. The woman is note a distant image, the object of desire: she is
the partner who is being asked to share the amorous experience proposed by the
poet. She is not an icon, she is a totally real woman. The poet addresses the
beloved by means of a discourse which he frequently hides under a rhetorical web
of surprising and fascinating artifice.
(Quello che fa Donne è accostato ai poeti metafisici, piuttosto che a quelli del
periodo Elisabettiano). Characteristic can be found in Italian baroque poetry.

The Metaphysical Poets

The Metaphysical poets were “rediscovered” at the beginning of the 20th century,
the rediscovery was due to the essay published by T. S. Eliot (1921), THE
METAPHYSICAL POETS in which he indicated a number of traits common to those
poets. Some are more metaphysical than others. George Herbett, a friend of
Donne's is less metaphysical. All his English poems were in a volume, THE
TEMPLE. The title gives an idea of a religious unity. His poems do not have the
same quality as Donne's.
Richard Crashaw is more metaphysical. He's a son of Puritan, he converted to
Catholicism. His principal work, STEPS TO THE TEMPLE. His poetry is
characterised by a profusion of metaphors and extravagant conceits which place
him in a baroque context.

The Cavalier Poets

Cavalier Poets is a term applied to a group of lyric poets whose poems about lvoe
and loyalty to the King Charles I were distinguished by a lightness of tone, a
graceful wit and a controlled form. Most of them were courtiers, but one in
particular was not Robert Herrick. He began to cultivate an interest in folk
customs and ancient festivals of pagan origin, an interest which is reflected in
several of the lyrics in his major collection, HESPERIDES. It contains 1400 poems
and is full of echoes of classical poetry. Herrick sings of an idealised rural world,
that of the classical pastoral tradition, but also of a more realistic rural world,
that of the English tradition, and seeks to find in it, a response to the major
social conflicts of the time. The Cavalier Poets were Thomas Carew, John
Suckling, Richard Lovelace. The reality was the opposite.

Bacon
The most successful prose writings in the Elizabethan periods were little books of
tales about rogues and thieves. The authors purported to be warning honest folk,
especially visitors from the provinces, of the dangers or life in the metropolis, but
who were aware that they were writing works of entertainment.
The finest prose writing of the period, was produced by someone who was not in
the first instance a man of letters but a politician and author of texts of a
philosophical and scientific character, Francis Bacon. His ESSAYS have remained
celebrated for their direct and essential style but perhaps his most original works
is the THE NEW ATLANTIS. It tells the story of the discovery of remote island
called Bensalem, which is the home of a kind of ideal state. Bacon turns his
attention away from politics to science. In Bensalem, great importance is
attached to a college of sciences whose end is the knowledge of causes of things.
Bacon's hope was that James I would establish a similar institution in England. In
effect, his proposal was taken up in the 1650s under the Commonwealth and was
instrumental in the foundation in 1660 of the Royal Society.
THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING is the first step, in which he criticised the
various methods of education based on Aristotelian structures of knowledge. He
wrote his works in Latin and English and he developed his radical principles which
proposed; that study should be based not on theory but on observation and
experiment, and that the King should promote scientific research. Bacon's works
are written in a language which combine clarity of expression and flowing
argument with a use of rhetorical devices from aphorism to similes. His style is
polished and simple.

Chapter 5
Revolution and Restoration
A Century of Revolution
In 1640 Charles I summoned Parliament, after having governed England without it
since 1628, to finance his war against Scotland and its Presbyterian Church. But
after two years during which the conflict between King and Parliament, Charles
left London. Both sides prepared for war, but Parliament's economic resources
were greater than the King's. The 1st phase of the Civil War lasted from 1642 to
1646 with the final defeat of the Royalist troops. The contrasts among the victors
and between the House of Commons and the army, induced Charles to prompt the
second phase of the Civil War.
The king and his allies were crushed by Oliver Cromwell, the general and leader
of the Parliamentary forces. Charles I was sentenced to death and executed on 30
January 1649. Britain became a rich republic. Oliver Cromwell became Lord
Protector. Oliver Cromwell died in 1658 and his son Richard was declared Lord
Protector in his place. The Parliament dismissed Richard and in 1660 Charles, the
son of Charles II was proclaimed King, King Charles II. On his death he was
succeeded by his brother James II, Catholic and hostile to Parliament. He was
deposed by Parliament in 1688. His throne was given to his daughter Mary and her
husband, the Protestant William of Orange. It began the “Glorious Revolution” in
1689 which gave rise to the world's first constitutional monarchy. The king could
no longer be an absolute ruler and Parliament became the centre of national
politic life. People who represented in the Parliament were those of burgeoisie.
The English burgeoisie had risen with the Glorious Revolution to an equally
dominant role in political affairs, a decisive role in social and cultural life.

Marwell
Andrew Marwell was a student of the classics, and author of a Horatian Ode
dedicated to Cromwell. After the Restoration he wrote a number of satires. His
lyric poetry (MISCELLANOUS POEMS) entered the canon of English poetry only
after the rediscovery of the Metaphysical by Eliot. Sometimes his theme is in the
first instance the simple beauty of nature, of flowers and gardens, but the
contemplation of nature produces reflections on the emotions, the passions and
the anxieties intrinsic to the human condition. His most famous poems, TO HIS
COY MISTRESS, whose theme is that of the carpe diem. Marvell plays ironically
with the concept of time.
The poetic talent of the satirist Marvell finds its moment of triumph in his lyrical
writing.

Milton
John Milton is one of the central protagonists of English culture and literature,
second only to Shakespeare. Milton devoted his life to becoming not only a great
poet, but also the interpreter of his times and the voice that spoke to the British
nation to illustrate to it the divine message. The parallel study of the classics and
of the sacred texts was for him the necessary basis for the formation of the
intellectual. He also studied the works of Shakespeare and Spenser. He wrote a
pastoral elegy, LYCIDAS, published in a volume of poems mourning the death. The
conventional world of Arcadia offers a pretext for a reflection on the apparent
serenity of nature and on his response as a Christian poet to the premature death
of a young man. He wrote also COMUS which was a masque, the aristocratic
genre par exellence. Comus does not put forward the image of a perfect world
threatened by evil forces. Here there is no pre-existing perfect world. Perfection
is an ideal to reach only after a victory over a long series of temptations and
encountered in the wood of error. Comus is the son of Bacchus and Circe, a
seducer and a master of rhetoric who proposes to the Lady, the traditional carpe
diem argument of Cavalier poetry. The Lady manages to resist him.
Milton's religious convictions were central both to his personal life and to his
poetry. He spent one year in Italy which for him was the land of the artistic
creation. After his return to London his attention turned towards the political
conflict which opposed Parliament to the king and the bishops. In the years that
followed he wrote a series of works on various religious and political subjects,
turning himself into a passionate defender of the principles of liberty. He
published several pamphlets against the institution of bishops. ON EDUCATION is
a treatise in which there's a reformation of the traditional educational system, in
order to prepare schoolboys to become responsible citizens.
A formidable speech, AEROPAGITICA, pleading for the freedom of the press. He
also wrote four pamphlets on divorce, arguing that not only adultery but also
incompatibility should be considered a legitimate ground for divorce. His most
radical political works is THE TENURE OF KINGS AND MIGISTRATES, an essay
which justifies the execution of Charles I.
Some years earlier, he published a volume of POEMS which contained almost all
his poetic production in English, Latin and Italian. Pride of place in the volume
must go to L'ALLEGRO and IL PENSEROSO (only the titles are in Italian, the
poems themselves are in English). In his two characters, Milton contrasts gaiety
and melancholy, action and contemplation. The contrast can be seen as one
between a pagan choice by the first and a Christian choice by the second. He also
wrote sonnets, but most of them are on public themes. Only a few are personal.
After the collapse of the Protectorate, on the eye of the Restoration, he
published a courageous defence of the republican cause, THE READY AND EASY
WAY TO ESTABLISH A FREE COMMONWEALTH. After the restoration, copies of his
works were publicly burnt. He was released and he composed PARADISE LOST, a
poem (there are two editions). Paradise Lost has as its protagonists Adam and
Eve, ancestors of the whole human race. He represents the magnificence of the
Paradise that humanity has lost. The poem also preserves the fundamental
principle of the epic poem: the story told constitutes, for the whole humanity, an
occasion to imagine its own collective identity. While an epic celebrates a victory,
Paradise Lost is the story of a defeat, just as in the majority of Elizabethan
tragedies, The fall of Adam, is more than an example: it is an archetype of the
fall experienced by men and women over the course of the time. As in the epic,
the beginning is in medias res and the story is then presented through a series of
jumps backward and forward in time, leading to a conclusion which does not
culminate in victory but in resigned and necessary acceptance. Here there is not
positive hero, no characters who contains within himself the supreme virtues,
courage in battle, spiritual nobility. For Milton, the values on which human
civilisation should be based, and the virtues proposed to the reader as a guide to
their life. They are humility and meekness. They are also temperance, friendship,
conjugal love, labour. The woman is praised and admired for her submission to
the man. The other value is the one of labour, fully of conformity with the
Protestant ethic opposed to the ideals of the aristocratic class. It is only at the
end of Book X that they recognise that both together have been the cause of their
damnation. In Book XII he continues his exposition of the future up to the coming
of Christ and the corruption of the medieval Church. Paradise is lost forever: but
by following the advice of the Archangel Michael, they will face successfully a
world of suffering and hard work guided by the light of virtue and love. Paradise
lost is a central work for British culture, and one which had an enormous
influence on English poetry and literature. It has been particularly formative from
a linguistic and formal point of view. We find there numerous forms of proper
Latin, Italian or Greek. Milton's choice, was that in favour of blank verse, the
metre of Elizabethan tragedy. With this choice Milton on the one hand rejects the
metrical form used by “aristocratic culture”. On the other hand, he aligns himself
with the classical tradition.

Bunyan
John Bunyan was enrolled in 1644 into the Parliamentary army to serve in the
Civil War. His masterpiece is a religious allegory THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS, he
finished that during a second term of imprisonment, in 1677. It was an enormous
success. He published a SECOND PART OF THE PILGRIM, 1684, in which the same
pilgrimage is undertaken, but this time by the wife and children of the original
protagonist, Christian, who has happily entered in the Celestial City. The whole
story is presented as a dream. The protagonist's journey, his “progress”, takes him
through a series of symbolic place where he encounters various allegorical
personages. The tone of narration, and the characteristics of the people he
encounters, are on the other hand realistic. Christian has to overcome difficulties
and obstacles of every kind and every risk. He is really terrorised by the obscure
presences that surround him. At the end with the aid of his pilgrim Hopeful, he
reaches the Celestial City. Another of his fellow pilgrims, Faithful, is put to death
in Vanity Fair, the place where everything is for sale, not only gold, pearls and
precious stones, but also promotions, honours, titles... wives, husbands, children,
masters, lives, servants. Bunyan offers his readers a story in which “ordinary”
people like themselves face absolutely extraordinary adventures.

Restoration Drama
The Puritans had closed the theatres in 1642. With the accession of Charles II in
1660, the theatre immediately returned to life. Only two theatre companies were
given royal licence to perform in the capital. After a few years the new
companies also acquired new theatres to perform it. These were built on the
Italian of French model. There was a U-shaped stalls area with a dozen or so rows
of benches, surrounded by boxes, and with two tiers of galleries rising above. On
the stage two revolutionary novelties were introduced. The first consisted of the
two scenery: moveable painted scene flats could be slid on stage from each side.
Here they could form a backscene or could be removed and changed or opened.
The dramatist could count on the art of painting which could be called upon to
create spectacular landscapes. The second revolutionary innovation, was that
female roles were now entrusted to actresses rather man to young male actors.
The King himself was a great promoter of this second change, he was keen on
Spanish comedies of intrigue. The public was different from that of the
Elizabethan period, consisting on aristocrats, gentlemen, merchants, and an elite
public. The rediscovery of classical brought a pursuit of moderation, clarity and
order, even in tragedy, while the metre corresponding to these principles was the
heroic couplet, a pair of rhyming verses of ten syllables, a metre used by
Chaucer. The heroic couplet, wrote Dryden, should be the metre par exellance of
the tragedy.

Dryden
John Dryden was a poet but also a playwright and essayist, he wrote his 1 st major
work, HEROIQUE STANZAS, on the death of Cromwell, following it in 1660, with
the poem ASTRAEA REDUX to celebrate the return of the King. The subject
matter of Dryden's poetry was often political events and questions of politics and
religion and it was easy to present him as an opportunist. In his poem ANNUS
MIRABILIS, Dryden recalled the wonders of 1666, the victory against the Dutch.
Two years after his conversion to Catholicism, he published THE HIND AND THE
PANTHER, a poem in which through a series of allegories he criticised the
Anglican Church. In his last 12 years Dryden went back to writing for the theatre.
He also produced excellent translations of Latin poets and compiled a volume of
translations of Ovid, Boccaccio and Chaucer under the title FABLES ANCIENT AND
MODERN. Dryden's first plays were verse and prose comedies, for example THE
RIVAL LADIES, the tragedy of THE INDIAN EMPEROR where his chosen metre was
the heroic couplet. The subject matter. Dryden declared should be similar to that
treated by Ariosto in his ORLANDO FURIOSO: love, honour, duty, loyalty. This type
of Tragedy is called Heroic Tragedy. The only one of Dryden's tragedies to have
survived in the stage repertory is ALL FOR LOVE, it is written in blank verse,
Shakespeare's metre, to represent the political and amorous vicissitudes of
Antony and Cleopatra. His tragedy is articulated around the constrast between
two cultural poles. Egypt and Rome and is focused on the two protagonists.
Among Dryden's many comedies we have MARRIAGE à LA MODE and
AMPHITYRON.
Restoration Comedy
The 1st Restoration comedies were varied in type. There were plays on political
themes, there were some of Spanish inspiration, there were imitations of Moliere.
The so-called London comedy, whose subject matter was the world of the
metropolitan high society and its heroes young gentlemen and ladies of that
social group. Ordinary citizens if the City were by contrast treated with scorn.
The type of London comedy to which the most interesting Restoration plays
belong, is the comedy of manners, characterised by satire. He talks about rakes,
wit, economic aspect of the wedding, love stories. Wit, the rhetorical instrument
so dear to the Metaphysical poets, becomes here a linguistic ability, the ones we
find in the comedy of manners.
The point of reference of all these plays was London, and that people from the
countryside, even gentleman were shown as ridiculous.

Etherege
The career of George Etherege opened with THE COMICAL REVENGE, a comedy
whose story develops through four interlinked plots, taking place in four different
social strata, to each of which there corresponds a different language. His next
plays is SHE WOULD IF SHE COULD, and is a London comedy.
His third and last play, THE MAN OF MODE, is a comedy of manners, has a sub-
title “Sir Floping Flutter”: the character is a top full of affectation and
presumption who unmasks its vain and superficial essence. The protagonist, is not
him but Dorimant. In the comedy of manners this figure is transformed into a
character whose behaviour is motivated almost exclusively by eroticism.
Dorimant, elegant, cynical immediately meets Harriet, ideal heroine of the
comedy of manners. But this time the rake falls in love and at the end asks her to
marry him. It is in really a duel, the heroine knows that she has to hide her
feelings. (rake=libertino) In this duel, the young lady's decisive weapon in her wit
(senso dell'umorismo).
Harriet is a formidable adversary, she is more than a match for Dorimant, thanks
to her self-control. And always thanks to her wit she is able to make evident the
truth of his being in love. One could say that is she who conquers Dorimant and
not vice versa. Dorimant is converted and becomes the typical reformed rake of
the comedy of manners. Dorimant proves to Harriet that his love for her is
absolutely sincere, accepting, indeed.

Wycherley
Horner, the protagonist of Wycherley's masterpiece THE COUNTRY WIFE, is an
exception: the rake-hero does not become a reformed rake but remains a
libertine until the curtain falls. Willian Wycherley in his 5 French years had learnt
the theatre of Moliere. He also used various episodes from Moliere's comedies in
his own plays, one of which, THE PLAIN DEALER derived from Le Misanthrope.
Wycherley had debuted with a comedy of intrigue, LOVE IN A WOOD. His greatest
play is THE COUNTRY WIFE, the Restoration comedy. The motor of the plot is the
rake Horner who pretends to be a eunuch in order more easily to seduce the
ladies of respectable society. He also seduces Margery, the ingenuous country wife
of the odious Pinchwife. Meanwhile his friend Harcourt is in love with Alithea,
Pinchwife's sister and engaged to the fop Sparkish. He too succeeds in conquering
and marrying the young lady after an open courtship made possible by the
stupidity of her betrothed.
In THE COUNTRY WIFE Whycerley mounts a frontal attack on the forms which
regulate social relations and elevate appearance to the level of truth. It is a
comedy of manners, but it could be described as a sex comedy. Another author of
sex comedies was Aphra Behn, singled out by Virgina Woolf as the first
professional woman writer.

Congreve
The leading author of Restoration theatre is William Congreve. He was the creator
of elegant dialogue, full of linguistic invention. His first play is THE OLD
BACHELOR, is a comedy of manners. His next is THE DOUBLE DEALER. It has its
moments of comic invention, it also has its moments of happiness for the two
young lovers. A significant part of it is devoted to the negative characters and the
satire applied to them. In the end there's a revelation of hypocrisy and falsity
that surround the institution of marriage.
LOVE FOR LOVE is a comedy of manners. The protagonist is Valentine, a former
libertine who has reformed out of love for Angelica. Economic problems and the
means by which they can be resolved are intricately involved with the love story.
The satire in the play is centred around Valentine himself who, pretending to be
mad, can allow himself to throw back in the back in the face of the various
characters the hypocrisy of the social conventions to which they subscribe. The
satire also derived from the sense of ridiculousness that Congreve ingeniously
generates from their behaviour without them being aware of it.
The Glorious Revolution of 1688 had brought considerable changes. There was no
more support from the Court.
Congreve's last play is THE WAY OF THE WORLD, one of the finest texts in all of
Restoration theatre. The protagonists of the play are the wit Mirabell and the
fascinating Millamant. There are no real obstacles to their marriage. The
economic aspect of marriage, a subject always present in the comedy of
manners, here plays a determining roles.

Farquhar
George Farquhar was an Irish who left Dublin for London. He enjoyed success with
a pair of comedies which combined situations familiar to the Restoration public
which flashes Irish originality. His main contribution to English drama was to come
later. After a period he returned to the stage with a comedy: THE RECRUITING
OFFICER based on his experience in the army. The plot centres on the love story
between Captain Plume and Silvia. The action is placed outside London. His next
comedy is THE BEAUX'S STRATAGEM, his masterpiece, the action of which also
takes place in a provincial town. The stratagem of the title consists in the fact
that two young men, have decided to explore the provinces in search of an
heiress to marry. (riassunto plot).

Conclusion
There are many types of Restoration comedy, very different. Those that have best
stood the test of time and form the legacy of that marvellous period of theatrical
production are almost all of them comedies of manners. They use the typical
figures and topoi (rake, love stories and money) universal in comedy but root
them in their own time, enriching them with precise characteristics belonging to
the historical reality of the Restoration period. This applies to the unfaithful
wives, victims of a forced marriage. But it applies eve more strongly to the two
lovers, who transcend the economic aspect of marriage while remaining aware at
all times that money is decisive for their destiny. Restoration comedy declares
that the marriage is a contract. The comedies of manners place at the centre of
their stories relations between the sexes, both amorous and institutional.
These comedies offer the spectators a dream of how they themselves would like
to be. Both men, who would like to be those brilliant heroes; and women, who
would like to be like those witty and fascinating heroines and to be courted by
such handsome, gallant and intelligent heroes. Marriage as institution is the
object of a radical satire. On the other hand they denounce marriages of interest
presented as a cause of falsity and unhappiness; on the other hand they offer
images of marriages of love. Marital choice must not be imposed by the parents
but made freely by the children. Restoration dramatists often force reality,
inventing a corner of the world in which love overcomes every obstacle- but even
there they underline the need to temper amorous enthusiasm with an awareness
of the difficulties of married life. They wished to give a voice to the hope for a
better world where present reality could be contrasted with the dream of a
universe in which hypocrisy and the power of money were conquered and
annihilated.

Chapter 6
The Eighteenth Century
A Century of Contradiction
Upon William's death in 1702, Anne, second daughter of James II became queen.
She had no children and by the Act of Settlement (assicurava il regno solo di
principi protestanti Stuart o Hannover) of 1701, when she died she was suceeded
by Georg Ludwig, Elector of the German State of Hanover, and a great-grandosn
of James I. On his accession, he took the name and title of George I and he and
his successors, George II, III , IV, William IV and Queen Victoria are called the
Hanoverian dynasty. The first two Georges didn't count for much, the kingdom
was in the hands of the prime minister (Robert Walpole) and of the two
parliamentary parties, the Whigs and the Tories. Treaty of Paris in 1763. Britain
acquired Canada, Florida and a part of the West Indies, having managed to
establish its dominion in the most important regions of India. She had become the
most powerful colonial power in the world. The American Revolution and the loss
of the American colonies (1783) was a blow, not only economically. When the war
against revolutionary France began, Britain had recovered all its economic and
military power.
In literature, the 1st part of the 18th century is often referred to as the Augustan
Age. Many of the writers during the reign of Queen Anne were in fact inspired by
the example of the great Latin writers. This explains the use of a second
appellation, which covers a more extensive period, the Neo-classical Age. Neo-
classicsm, with its credo that Art should imitate Nature, prevailed until
midcentury. 1700: Neo-classical Age, entertainment and sensibility.
The 18th century is the one of Enlightenment, of a vision of the world which had
faith in the universal authority of Reason. The reasons “of the heart”, of belief in
God, or irony, infiltrate their way into the land of Reason.
This is why the word for the second half of the 18th century is Sensibility: that is
to say, a capacity for moral feeling, of a cult of the feelings. The two aspects,
Enlightenment and Sensibility are co-present.

Pope
Alexander Pope (1688-1744), had an absolute faith in the value of poetry. Like the
humanists he love the clarity and elegance of classic poetry. All this emerges
clearly from his ESSAY ON CRITICISM which takes up the concept of imitation of
Nature. The heroic couplet was the type of verse. The book which drew him to
public attention was PASTORALS, a work inspired by Virgil which put forward the
pastoral genre as the representation of an ideal state of life.
His masterpiece is THE RAPE OF THE LOCK, a mock-heroic poem which tells of
the quarrel between two families cause by the snipping of a love-lock from the
head of the beautiful Belinda. Everything is presented to the reader in the tones
of an epic. The comic effect arises from the immense gap between the reality
and the rhetorical means by which it is described. A further comic effect is given
by the allusions and references to some of the greatest works of the literary
tradition, from the Aeneid to Paradise Lost. High culture becomes an object of
parody, in the same way as the society oh the time is the object of satire. After
his translation of the Iliad and the elegy Eloisa to Abelard which treats themes of
love and passion with great emotional intensity. He had not been able to enter
university because he was a Catholic and had been the butt of insults from men of
letters, because of his physical deformity. But once ha had acquired a secure
position on the English cultural scene, he was free to launch into a corrosive
satire of the literary world. This satire is contained in the three volumes of THE
DUNCIAD, presents the entire present state of things as the kingdom of the
inversion of civilised values. His satire is not inspired by indifference but by a
sincere indignation sublimated through the grace and rigour of the heroic
couplet.

(GUARDA PAG 115)

Swift
The satire of Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) is marked by disgust. In his early years
he had been close to the positions of the Whig party, but he later switched to the
Tories. He promoted the rights of the people of Ireland in a number of writings,
the most famous is A MODEST PROPOSAL, here Ireland had been reduced as a
result of the politics of the English. In his quiet and elegantly understated
ferocity, this is the high point of the satirical output which had made him
appreciated in literary circles in London. By far, the most famous of Swift's works
is GULLIVER'S TRAVEL (1726), a formidable satire. The source of the book is THE
TRUE HISTORY, a tale of fantastic journey undertaken by a group of lost
mariners. This story is divided into four books, is told by Gulliver, a ship's surgeon
and an honest fellow, sincere, but not particularly perspicacious. In Book I
Gulliver is on the island of Lilliput, where he's a giant among being only 6 inches
tall. In Book II his travels take him to Brobdingnag, whose inhabitants are 12
times taller than he is. In Book III Gulliver first ends up in the flying Island of
Laputa, a country whose inhabitants are all devoted to abstract speculation and
are incapable of performing the simplest practical activities. Finally he meets a
race of immortals who are all growing steadily more decrepit and miserable
because they cannot die.
Book III's journey through human stupidity provides the logical premiss for the
journey described in Book IV, where Gulliver travels to the country of the
Houyhnhnms, wise and rational horses who rule over the Yahoos, filthy man whose
smell he finds embarrassingly like his own. When he returns home he prefers the
company of his horses to that of his relatives, because the Yahoo-like smell they
gave off reminds him of the disgusting nature of the human race. Gulliver's
adventures are the occasion for a ferocious satire of English society and politics,
on George I, on his prime minister Walpole, on religious squabbles between
Catholics and Protestants, on the administration of justice. Swift is often
described as a misanthrope. He was a moral philosopher who hated false ideals,
who hated injustice, whether against individuals or against collectivities. He was
a misogynist.

Gay and Fielding

Richard Steele and Joseph Addison are famous for the magazines they founded.
These magazines were addressed to a public of both men and women of the
bourgeois class for whom they played a very important role in supplying
information of literary, scientific and general intellectual interest, entertainment
and instruction. They encouraged their readers to take pride in belonging to the
bourgeois class. When writing for the Stage, Steele was famous for comedies, his
most appreciated genre. His positive characters were an incarnation of the values
appreciated by the bourgeoisie: they were honest, serious and good, and the
story ended with the triumph of goodness.
The public of today still appreciates the masterpiece of John Gay (1685-1732),
THE BEGGAR'S OPERA described as a ballad opera because it contains 69 songs,
or ballads, and was divided into three acts like an opera. Satire and parody,
realised through the technique of inversion, are what animate it. The most
fundamental inversion, relates to social values: the heroes are bandits and
prostitutes in place of the nobility, and traffickers and rogues in place of the
bourgeoisie. There is even an inversion of a political order, since the malefactors
appear to represent prime minister Walpole and his Whig. Gay's satire presents a
world ruled by money rather than by moral values.
Parody is also the central feature of the work of Henry Fielding. Fielding's
theatrical success was due to his skill with parodic effects, but it also derived
from the irreverence of his satire. His last play is THE HISTORICAL REGIS which
had a huge public success and greeted with applause even by the Prince of Wales,
was a fierce and overt satire against Walpole and the corruption of politicians. A
few weeks later, the Licensing Act, came into force and for Fielding this meant
the end of his theatrical career and for the English theatre the end not only of
satire but of ways of intervening in the political scene. Fortunately, Fielding
found a new outlet for this satirical and parodic vein, the literary genre of the
modern age.

The Novel
The English novel is the literary genre of the rising bourgeoisie. Romances speak
of kings, queens, heroes, miraculous events. Novels, by contrast, are close to us
as readers. They may present curious and unusual events, but we recognise that
they belong to our world. The world of the romance was in conflict with the real
world. The novel does not speak of nobles and heroes, but deals with common
life, it does not use elevated language, but makes use of the riches of ordinary
speech. It tells true stories: extraordinary stories, capable of exciting interest
and pleasure, but things that really happened. The novelist wants to captivate
the reader by speaking to him of the world he himself knows, recounting events
and experiences that are not directly his but but that might have been lived
through by real people, belonging to the present day and the society he belongs
to. The first English novelists narrate the life and adventures of a character from
the real world, and narrate a true story. The story being told do not only aim to
entertain, by their truth they also set out to promote the values expressed by the
characters or by the plot. They are exemplary stories.
The high price of a novel indicates that only a limited proportion of the literate
population was in a position to buy copies. Men, seem to have had little time for
reading. But women did have time. The women in question were of course ladies
of the upper-middle class.

Defoe
Daniel Defoe was born in London, he travelled extensively in Europe and around
Britain. He found time to write hundreds of pamphlets, political and ideological
essays, historical essays and articles for the periodicals, and novels to which he
owes his reputation.
He was a Dissenter who dissented in matters of religious belief and worship from
the Church of England. Defoe published a pamphlet, THE SHORTEST WAY WITH
THE DISSENTERS in which he ironically proposed a radical suppression of dissents,
and for which he was imprisoned and put in the pillory. In his pamphlets and
articles Defoe defended theses and principles of great modernity. He stood for
the sovereignty of the people and its right to rebel against the unjust ruler. He
defended the importance of education. He was a proponent of capitalism. He
began writing ROBINSON CRUSOE (1719). He wants the reader to know from the
outset that everything recounted is absolutely true. In fact something very similar
had happened a few years earlier to the Scotsman Alexander Selkirk. The
invention is all Defoe's, who in creating Robinson's autobiography had in mind the
vast Protestant literature. One reason for the success lies in the novelty of the
language, very far from that of the romances. It was the language of journalists.
In Defoe's language we can detect the idiom of the people, the liveliness of
spoken English and the choice of words that all potential readers would
understand. Robinson is alone on his desert island, and that he survives by
creating a condition that the reader recognises as “civilisation”. Robinson faces
the trials he must undergo with courage, discipline and determination: the
adversity and the illness which risk killing him are occasions for him to put his
trust in divine benevolence. He is saved, and is able to return home a rich and
honoured man. But what can a poor girl do in the throbbing metropolis, in the
new bourgeois world in which money, as the protagonist of MOLL FLANDERS puts
it, is the thing on the quantity of which depends men's salvation or damnation?
Moll's mother has left her child about six months old. But the child proves lucky to
the care of a woman who makes a living bringing up and educating young girls
destined to go into domestic service. But Moll does not want to become a
servant. It tells the story of a woman who, constrained by Necessity (the parent
of crime), becomes a thief and prostitute, has 5 husbands and 8 children. Moll
uses all that she has, her beauty and her body, in order to survive. She uses her
body as labourer uses in his arms and it is all she has to enable her not to become
the permanent property of a man. The same goes for the protagonist of ROXANA,
OR THE FORTUNATE MISTRESS who does not start from the same miserable
condition as Moll. Roxana marries a rich London brewer who wastes his fortune
and deserts her. This is where her adventures begin. She becomes a whore from
necessity but then continues to practise her profession. She even refuses to marry
a rich nobleman so as not to lose her financial independence: she does not want
to become a man's property.
Defoe has often been undervalued by certain critics, who considered him a
journalist, more than a novelist.

Richardson
PAMELA, OR VIRTUE REWARDED is the first novel of a Puritan printer, Samuel
Richardson. Pamela is made up of letters and journals, most of them written by
Pamela a 15-year-old maidservant who is laid siege to by her young master, Mr B.
The young girl resists and even after having been imprisoned in Mr B.'s remote
house she refuses his offer to make her his mistress. At the end Mr B. marries her
and the final part of the novel shows Pamela become a model of virtue.
Richardson moralises throughout the novel. As a good Protestant, he wants to
recount an experience which has didactic value. Richardson tells the story of a
member of the lower middle class who makes the extraordinary leap to joining
the elevated ranks of the upper gentry. The novel was hugely successful in
England and was also the first novel to be published in the American colonies. The
bourgeois class happily recognised itself in the moral and social principles put
forward in the true story of Pamela. In Italy the book was adapted by Goldoni,
who used it for comedy. He decided to change the ending. For Richardson,
Pamela's story is a clear example of virtue rewarded. We must recognise her
modernity: her resistance, a modern response to the arrogance. The language is
the language of the ordinary people. The language of the people has entered of
literature. His epistolary novel CLARISSA is a denunciation of the old order,
consists of an exchange of letters between Clarissa and her admirer/persecutor.
In this novel too, the protagonist is a young woman who defiantly resists the
advances of a man who aims to possess her. After many failed attempts at
seducing her, Lovelace drugs and rapes her. Clarissa goes mad, she wants to die
and died. The story assumes the tones almost tragedy. Lovelace, after her death,
is killed by her cousin. The letters written by Pamela are a means of convicting
the reader of the truth of the events being recounted.

Fielding
Henry Fielding, son of a lieutenant, pursued study of classical literature. Many of
his plays reveal a taste for parody. In that year Pamela was published and Fielding
immediately found in the moralism of that book a new object for his contempt
and parodic skills. SHAMELA is Fielding's mocking response to Richardson. The
parodic intent is already in the title, a combination of Pamela with sham (fake)
and shame (also with shambles). Shamela is a satire on what Fielding felt to be
the moralistic hypocrisy of Pamela. His next novel, JOSEPH ANDREWS, was
published the following year. Joseph is Pamela's brother and is the footman of
Lady Bobby, the aunt of Mr B. Lady Bobby makes advances to Joseph. The young
man, who is pure and is in love with the beautiful Fanny, rejects them. The
narrative proceeds as a bizarred English version of the adventures of Don Quixote
and Sancho Panza. The novel is stylish and entertaining. It is full of highly comic
episodes and maintains a lively tone thanks to the irony and humour. The story is
told in the third person and Fielding declares his presence as narrator explicity
from the outset, beginning with the ironic titles at the head of each chapter.
Events and characters are true in the sense of being based on those found in real
life, but at the same time are avowedly fictional. His characters are like people
we find in real life. The happy ending, Fielding knows full well, is of course not
realistic. TOM JONES, Fielding's masterpiece. Tom is a foundling who towards the
end of the novel finds out that he is the nephew of Mr Allworthy, a man of
property who had adopted him. This means he will be able to marry Sophia, the
woman he loves and who loves him. The adventures and misadventures of Sophia
and Tom carry on for a few hundred pages, but they are never boring. At the end
of the novel, Tom Jones, is exuberant, imprudent but a man of generous heart,
forgives all who have wronged him.
In his last novel, AMELIA, he creates the figure of an ideal wife and mother, a
victim of her husband, but helped by honest and generous people, who goes
through every sort if misadventure.

Smollett
We have now the “picaresque novel”, the subgenre that first appeared in Spain in
the 16th century and which tells the venturesome story of a young man of lowly
social extraction. The French novel GIL BLAS DE SANTILLANA was the most
successful example of this genre, not only in France but in England, was
translated by Tobias Smollett (1721-71). He was the son of a Scottish nobleman.
He also wrote a novel of his own, THE ADVENTURES OF RIDERICK RANDOM, a
first- person tale in which the hero recounts a long series of adventures similar to
the picaresque novels.
Smollett published THE ADVENTURES OF PEREGRINE PICKLE, a novel told by an
omniscient narrator in which the protagonist offers Smollett a series of critiques
of continental habits and manners. More successful all round was HUMPHRY
CLINKER, an epistolary novel. The letters written by the five correspondents on a
journey offer a multiplicity of points of view on the same objects creating a quite
delightful comic effect. All of Smollet's work is dictated by his anti-conformism.

Sterne
Laurence Sterne wrote THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF TRISTAM SHANDY. In the title
we have to observe that his purports is not about adventures, but “opinions”. It
openly declare its fictional character. The author addresses himself constantly
and directly to his readers. He's confident of obtaining their consent and their
complicity. The novel starts not with the birth of Tristram, the narrator, but with
the birth of him, the narrator with his conception. Tristram wrties, but as he
writes he follows the thread of his thought and the associations of ideas that
occur to him and he exploits the relativity of time as we humans experience it,
interrupting chronological sequence with a thousand digressions and recounting
the lives of other people around him. What the reader has in front of him is a
work of fiction, not Tristram's autobiography, but the literary invention of a
novelist. Of the life and even the opinions of Tristram, the truth is we learn
practically nothing. Tristram Shandy invents a new form of humour, “Shandean
humour” as it came to be called. A much warmer welcome was given to A
SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY, published after Sterne's
death, and based on journeys he had undertaken some years earlier for reasons of
health. This attachment to sentiment, and all the stress given to individual
sensibility, in perfect harmony with the philosophy and taste which were to come
in the second half of the 18th century.

The Age of Sensibility

Sensibility is the key term used to describe a decisive aspect of culture in the
second half of the 18th century. Old and new aspects can co-exist for a long time
and sometimes, particularly in the case of the 18th century, the new aspects can
be in contrast with each other.

Poetry
Sensibility: the capacity to feel. In poetry, sensibility expressed itself in a view of
the place of man in the world. Man is no longer the measure of all things. The
masterpiece of 18th century melancholic sensibility is Thomas Gray's ELEGY
WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD that soon become a model for the
successive generation of poets. THE ELEGY is a meditation on death, but the
death in question is that of the rural poor. Their death leads to a general
reflection on death and concludes an Epitaph whose reference is to the destiny of
the poet himself. “Grave poetry” forms one of the fundamental components of
pre-Romanticism. Gray is also the author of THE BARD, an ode. The words of a
surviving bard (who at the end of the poem commits suicide) provide Gray with
the opportunity to align his poetry in the direction of the Sublime. This is another
central idea of pre-Romanticism poetry, one which assigns aesthetic value to the
violence of nature and to its savage aspects. Gray's Bard also displays another
fundamental aspect of pre-Romanticism sensibility, connected to the idea of the
Sublime itself understood as the celebration of the primitive, the spontaneous
and the “natural”. A couple of years later, James Macpherson, produced a book
called FRAGMENT OF ANCIENT POETRY which consisted of material he had
collected in the Highlands and had then translated from the original. He also
published FINGAL, AN ANCIENT EPIC POEM declaring it to be a translation of an
epic by Ossian. This was followed by a more ancient epic poem, TEMORA. Not
only in Britain but all over Europe Gaelic poetry came to be acclaimed as the
sublime manifestation of natural poetic genius. The poems translated by Thomas
Chatterton had a powerful effect on the Romantic poets. They also appreciated
Thomas Percy's RELIQUIES OF ANCIENT ENGLISH POETRY, a collection of old
song, poems and ballads. Sensibility is a new model of poetry. In opposition to the
controlled language, rigorous metre, propriety of subject matter, we find a type
of poetry that presented itself as spontaneous, free of sophisticated rhetorical
artifice. Emotion, irrationality, primitive and a genuine expression. (Anticipa il
romanticismo). Gray=poet of the Sublime

The Gothic Novel

Horace Walpole, son of the Prime Minister appreciated Gray as a poet of the
Sublime, he found this category congenial. In 1764, Walpole published the novel
THE CASTLE OF OTRANTO, a Gothic story, he created a new genre which brings
together the taste for the picturesque and the sublime with a predilection for
mystery and irrationality. The protagonist of the Gothic novel is most often a
young woman who is pursued by villains. In her flight faces every sort of real or
imaginary danger, including ghosts and supernatural phenomena. Almost always
the novel concludes with the canonical happy ending, which tends to appear
improbable. Here we find ourselves on a terrain opposed to that of neoclassicism.
We enter a narrative world where the boundary between life and death is no
longer clear. In Walpole's novel the backdrop is an exotic castle, located in Italy, a
setting for ghosts, mysterious apparitions. His aim had been to fuse novel and
romance. The vogue for the Gothic novel reached its apogee towards the end of
the 18th century. Before that, emerged a work of extraordinary originality,
VATHEK by William Beckford written in French. It tells the story of the cruel
Caliph Vathek who makes, like Faustus, a pact with the devil. He commits
horrible misdeeds but as soon as he can comprehend the vanity of all earthly
riches, his heart burns into flame.
The most famous of all Gothic authors was Ann Radcliffe. Her first novel was set
in Scotland, her later novels were set in Italy, in picturesque landscapes and in
mysterious convents or in sinister castles which give scope for infinite variations
on the theme of terror. The victim is the persecuted girl and her persecutor is a
false-hearted and lecherous villain. The story ends with the inevitable wedding.
THE MONK is the masterpiece of Matthew Gregory Lewis makes a significant
change to the basic rules of the Gothic genre (il finale è diverso). Instead of the
expected happy ending, a man rapes the girls and kills her. Discovered, he is
handed over to the Inquisition and sentenced to be burnt alive.
Dr. Johnson
Samuel Johnson (1709-84) was emerging as the most authoritative figure in the
whole English literary world. So important was he that the period called the Age
of Sensibility could with equal justice be referred to as the Age of Johnson. He is
the son of a bookseller. Suffering acute mental distress following his father's
death. He moved to London and he set out on a career of intense literary activity,
writing poems, essays and biographies. He wrote DICTIONARIES OF THE ENGLISH
LANGUAGE, his aim was to create a dictionary by which the pronunciation of
England could be fixed. Johnson in 1750 started a periodical, THE RAMBLER. His
numerous articles established him as the foremost moralist of the period. Both
the poem THE VANITY OF HUMAN WISHES and RASSELAS express a moral vision
of severity and rigour, in which humility and faith are the only antidote against
illusions.
The many articles in THE RAMBLER share the purpose of improve knowledge of
culture. His ambition extended to constructing a canon of English literature,
something he was to achieve later, in his LIVES OF THE ENGLISH POETS. He
always offers the reader judgements expressed with clarity, coherence and
literary and linguistic sensibility.
Johnson explains that it is wrong to criticise Shakespeare for mixing comedy with
tragedy, because this is what happens in nature and in real life. Due to his
importance, we have his biography, written by the biographer James Boswell,
LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, documented by Johnson's letters and writings and by
records of their conversation.

Goldsmith and Sheridan

Sentimental comedy fitted well with the philosophy and values which the
bourgeois public believed in. Oliver Goldsmith was born in Ireland and settled in
London, where he began writing for various periodicals and became a friend of Dr
Johnson. He wrote THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD, a novel whose underlying
philosophy is the idea of benevolence. Goldsmith's first play is THE GOOD-
NATURED MAN and as the title implies, makes reference to the same optimistic
hope in benevolence professed by the sentimental comedy. But Goldsmith's
language has a sense of humour that was lacking in the theatre of the day. With
his next play, SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER, Goldsmith gave a practical
demonstration of how it was possible to combine sensibility and laughter. The
play rotates around a series of misunderstanding.
Goldsmith's genius lay in combining one of the ideological linchpins of the
contemporary theatre of the time and of the period in general with a plot full of
farcical elements and humorous subtleties but never loses sight of psychological
consistency.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan was born in Dublin and was a Member of Parliament
with very modern ideas and he ended his career as playwright with his adaption
of a German drama, PIZARRO a play which denounced the massacres of the
Spanish colonists. THE RIVALS is a play in which its characters and their
predicaments reveal a richness of nuance that place it alongside the great classic
comedy. The protagonists are Lydia, a girl who despises riches and dreams of a
pure, romantic, disinterested love and Captain Absolute. After many tricks and
white lies the two lovers are finally able to marry. But the lines they exchange
reveal that the real theme is not that of romantic love but of the relationship
between money and their children's freedom of choice. The other wonderful
feature of the play is the character of Mrs Malaprop, whose habit of confusing
learned, difficult or even simply long words and mangling quotations has become
proverbial under the name malapropism, and whose linguistic and cultural gaffes
are a source of laughter.
THE RIVALS is a great comedy, able to provoke both profound reflection on the
human soul and comic delight. THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL where the target of
Sheridan's satire here is Lady Sneerwell. The play's humour derives from the
witticisms of the members of the School. The comic quality of the play is more
dependent on the plot, which is rather complex. In a play in which the incidents
befalling the characters are a way of displaying both the ordinary face of human
nature and the hidden corners of human weakness. The surname of the two
brothers is Surface. The whole comedy is devoted to revealing what lies behind
the surface.

SAMPLE QUESTIONS FOR THE WRITTEN TEXT

-The Rape of the Lock is not: AN ELEGIAC POEM;
-Richardson did not write: ROXANA (Defoe l'ha scritta);
-A picaresque novel is not: AN ALLEGORY OF A JOURNEY;
-Richardson was: A PRINTER;
-Theatres were closed by Puritans: FROM 1642 TO 1660;
-Pearl is: A MEDIEVAL DREAM POEM;
-Gothic fiction is: PRE-ROMANTIC GENRE;
-Who wrote Love for Love?: CONGREVE;
-All for Love: DRYDEN, HEROIC TRAGEDY;
-Who was not an Elizabethan playwright?: JOHN GAY;
-Who was Bede?: THE FIRST ENGLISH HISTORIAN;
-Astrophil and Stella is: A COLLECTION OF SONGS AND SONNETS (Sidney);
-Battle of Hastings: 1066;
-What means Blank Verse?: UNRHYMED PENTAMETRES;
-Quale opera di Shakespeare non menziona una foresta?: ROMEO AND JULIET;
-Who wrote the Duchess of Malfi?: WEBSTER;
-English sonnet: 3 quartains and a couplet:
-Swift's work, THE BATTLE OF: THE BOOK;
-Ophelia is a female character in: HAMLET;
-Kyd's Spanish Tragedy is: A REVENGE TRAGEDY;
-Who wrote Edward II?: MARLOWE;
-In The Rape of the Lock the ceremonial arming of the classical epic heroe is
parodied in the description of: A GIRL AT HER DRESSING TABLE;
-”Fop” is not: EXTREMELY WITTY;
-Contemporaneo di Chaucer: Edward III;
-Che concetto ha sviluppato Burke?: SUBLIME;
-Che autore supportava la Repubblica?: MILTON;
-Chi ha rivisitato l'opera di Gay “The Beggars Opera”?: BRECHT;
-Sottotitolo di Oroonkoo: THE ROYAL SLAVE;
-Chi fu il successore di Henry VII?: IL FIGLIO EDWARD;
-Come finisce Beowulf?: CON IL SUO FUNERALE;
-Chi furono gli autori metafisici?: DONNE, CRASHAW, HERBETT;
-Quale delle opere è un'anti-novel?: TRISTRAM SHANDY;
-Chi ha scritto Amoretti?: SPENSER;
-Chi fu il successore di Elizabeth?: JAMES I/IV;
-Che opere scrive Jonson?: ANTIMASQUE, COMEDY WITH MONEY;
-Cosa non è Defoe?: CRISTIANO;
-Quando è avvenuta la Glorious Revolution?: 1688-1689;
-Caratteristica dell'OE: ALLITERATION;
-Perchè fanno il pellegrinaggio a Canterbury?: PER VEDERE LA TOMBA DI BECKETT
CHE FU SEPOLTO Lì;
-War of the Roses: 1455-85;
-Che opera ha scritto Milton quando era cieco?: PARADISE LOST;
-As you like it riproduce la storia d'amore tra: ANTHONY AND CLEOPATRA;
-Qual è la differenza tra Tragedy e Comedy?: IL FINALE.