mid-I5th century, and the establishment of a modern, efficient, centralized state. Technically, the date is close to that of the introduction of printing into England by William Caxton (1422-1491). Culturally, the first important period in England was the reign of the second Tudor monarch, Henry VI. This was the period of the English humanists such as Sir Thomas More (1478-1535) and the poet Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542).
The English Renaissance had 5 characteristics: (1) English culture was revitalized not so much directly by the classics as by contemporary Europeans under the influence of the classics; (2) England as an insular country followed a course of social and political history which was to a great extent independent of the course of history elsewhere in Europe; (3) owing to the great genius of the 14th-century poet Chaucer, the native literature was sufficiently vigorous and experienced in assimilating foreign influences without being subjected by them; (4) English Renaissance literature is primarily artistic, rather than philosophical and scholarly; and (5) the Renaissance coincided with the Reformation in England.
The English Renaissance was largely literary, and achieved its finest expression in the so-called Elizabethan drama which began to excel only in the last decade of the 16th century and reached its height in the first 15 years of the 17th century. Its finest exponents were Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, and William Shakespeare.
Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), a famous poet and dramatist, established blank verse in plays. He wrote Tamburlaine, Dr Faustus,
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The Jew of Malta and Edward H. In Dr. Faustus (1589) he developed a new concept of tragedy, the struggle of a great personality doomed to inevitable failure by its own limitations. Marlowe greatly influenced the early works of Shakespeare.
Ben Jonson (1572-1637), a dramatist and poet, was the leading writer of his time, after Shakespeare's death. His plays include Volpone, The Alchemist and Bartholomew Fair. He also produced masques, in association with the designer-architect Inigo Jones. Many of his poems were set to music by composers of the time.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616), a dramatist and poet, is generally regarded as the greatest writer in the English language. Son of a prosperous glover, he was born at Stratford-on-Avon in Warwickshire. In 1582 he married Ann Hathaway, and they had three children. He moved to London before 1589 probably as an actor, and by 1592 had made a name as a playwright. He wrote 37 plays, including the following: (1) Historical Plays—Richard, Henry V , and Richard ( 2 ) Comedies—Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, Mid-Summer Night's Dream, Much Ado about Nothing, and The Tempest ; (3) Tragedies—Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, and Cymbeline , besides his Sonnets.
Poetry was also extremely rich, and reached its peak at the beginning of the 17th century in the work of Edmund Spenser, Philip Sidney, Shakespeare and John Donne.
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Edmund Spenser ( 1552-1599 ), a celebrated poet, wrote Shepherd's Calendar and The Faerie Queene, a long allegorical poem, written in a stanza of nine lines, called \language is rich and often deliberately antique; he creates a dream world of mystery and magic which has influenced many later poets, especially the Romantics.
Philip Sidney (1554-1586) is known for his sonnets and his critical work An Apology for Poetry.
John Donne (1571-1613) is the best known of the \poets. His work is dramatic, full of argument and strong feelings, expressed through language that is often violent and surprising.
Native English prose also developed with great vigour in native English writers such as Roger Ascham and Richard Hooker, in the English works of Francis Bacon, and in the translators of the Authorized Version of the Bible.
Roger Ascham (1515-1568) is the author of School- master and Toxophilus, or The School of Archery.
Richard Hooker (1554-1600) was an eminent theological writer. His work The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1593-97) is a defence of the reformed Church of England against Puritan attacks. It was important to the development of Anglican ideas, and is also considered a masterpiece of English prose.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626), a statesman, and philosopher, is known for his Essays (1597-1625). His chief philosophical work is Novum
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Organum (1620).
V. James 1 (1603-1625) and the Parliament
James VI of Scotland succeeded Elizabeth I and became James I of England (1603-1625). His succession brought a temporary union of the two countries but his reign, too, was troubled by religious controversy. The Puritans became very powerful in the Parliament, believing that the Reformation had not gone far enough and calling for a purer form of worship. They were happy to have James as icing at first because the Scottish Church was a pure Protestant Church with democratically elected officials, in contrast to the practice of the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England whereby kings chose bishops and bishops chose a]l the other officials.
The Puritans were shocked when James refused all their proposals for change in 1604 with the words \bishop, no king\They increasingly suspected him of being a secret Catholic because of his pro-Spanish foreign policy and his son's Spanish marriage alliance. The Catholics engineered a number of plots. Sir Walter Raleigh got involved in one of them (the Cobhams Plot). He was sent to the Tower of London, where he remained 13 years. In 1615 James I, being in want of money, released Raleigh, and gave him a fleet of 13 ships to go in search of a gold mine in Guiana. The expedition failed and Raleigh was accused of treason and executed at Winchester. The most famous of the Catholic conspiracies was the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.
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On November 5, 1605, a few fanatical Catholics attempted to blow King James and his ministers up in the Houses of Parliament where Guy Fawkes had planted barrels of gunpowder in the cellars. The immediate result was the execution of Fawkes and his fellow-conspirators and the imposition of severe anti-Catholic laws. The long-term result has been an annual celebration on November 5, when a bonfire is lit to burn a guy and a firework display is arranged.
The Puritan protests were more peaceful, but James had little sympathy with their demands. A new translation of the Bible into English (known thereafter as the King James or Authorized Version, and was published in 1611) was one of the few concessions James declared that he would \them conform or harry them from the land\Many Puritans had left England for Holland. In 1620 a small group of these Puritans, numbering 201, called the Pilgrim Fathers, sailed from Plymouth in the Mayflower, and founded New Plymouth in America, Britain's first settlement in the New World.
James I, a firm believer in the Divine Right of Kings, a belief held by most European rulers of the time, would have preferred no Parliament at all and actually did without one for seven years. But, once recalled in 1621, the House of Commons renewed its insistence on political power in return for the taxes it was constantly asked to raise. James' reaction to hostile Parliaments was simply to dissolve them (send them home). The result was that he could get no pounds from Parliament. He had to use all sorts of discreditable
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