CHAPTER III THE FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE I. The Fifteenth Century: The Renascence. II. The First Half of the Sixteenth Century: From the Accession of Henry VIII. (1509) to the Accession of Elizabeth (1558). III. Representative Prose and Verse in the Elizabethan Age. IV. The Development of the English Drama. V. William Shakespeare and his Successors. I. THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY: THE RENASCENCE. It THE century immediately following that of Chaucer and his contemporaries is apparently one of the most unproductive in the history of English literature. is to be recognized, however, as a time of preparation, and not without its important achievements. The Re The fifteenth century was the century of the "new birth," or renascence, of learning and art in nascence. the life of the modern world. It was a period of invention and discovery, producing results which were momentous in subsequent history. New ideas poured in upon men's minds and greatly changed the manner of thinking in philosophy, art, literature, politics, and religion. The whole of Europe was under the spell of this new-born spirit of light and progress, but the centre of greatest influence and the chief source of power was Italy, the home of Dante and Petrarch; THE PRINTING-PRESS 83 of da Vinci, Raphael, and Michelangelo; of the Medici family, magnificent patrons of learning and art, and of hundreds of scholars whose names are less familiar, but who created a taste for the literature and thought of the classic age and taught that literature in the schools of Padua, Bologna, Venice, and Florence. This Revival of Letters was stimulated by the fall of Constantinople in 1453, which sent swarms of Greek scholars westward into Europe, bearing precious manuscripts of Greek philosophers and poets to quicken enthusiasm for the study of this new-old literature. In Germany the new spirit of freedom in thought produced the Reformation, and the scholarship of Melanchthon, Reuchlin, and Erasmus. In England these new ideas, heralded in the preceding century by Wyclif and Chaucer, were fostered and taught by Grocyn, Erasmus, Colet, Ascham, and More. New colleges were established at Cambridge and Oxford, and public schools were founded here and there in the kingdom. As feudalism decayed, the rights of the untitled class were recognized and a new independence was given to the commoner. Press. Most important of all the inventions that make this age remarkable, greatest of all inventions in the farreaching effects of its use, is that which made The possible the printing of books by means of Printingmovable types. The process of block-printing from wooden slabs on which were cut the letters of a single page had, to some extent, displaced the painful art of transcribing on parchment and vellum the exquisite copies of the earlier manuscripts; but the use of separate types in the printing of books appears to have been the invention of John Gutenberg, of the German city of Mainz, about 1450. In Germany and the Netherlands the first printers plied their art, and some time in the last quarter of the century, when the ruinous Wars of the Roses were approaching their conclusion, the Englishman, William Caxton, learned the practice of the craft, and introduced printing into England. William Caxton was originally in the employ of a silk merchant in London, and had settled in the Low Countries at Bruges. Here he became inter1422 ?-91. ested in the new craft and here, in 1474, he put through the press the first book printed in English, The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye. In 1476 Caxton returned to England with a press, the first in the kingdom, which he established at Westminster. The title of the first book from this press is the Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers (1477). The name of this first English printer may well be honored. Not only was Caxton a translator of many texts, but his choice of works for publication is admirable and attests his literary instinct. In 1485 he printed a volume which had been completed fifteen years before by an English writer of whom we know almost nothing, - Malory's Morte Darthur, 1470. a splendid collection of the tales of King Arthur and his knights, told in vigorous and melodious English prose. Sir Nearly one hundred volumes, altogether, were printed on Caxton's presses; conspicuous among them two or three editions of The Canterbury Tales, and other works of Chaucer, besides the compositions of Lydgate and Gower, his contemporaries. Scotland as well as England has a part- and no unworthy one in the story of the literature The Poets. common to them both. Early chroniclers among the Scotch had told in verse the ex ploits of Bruce and Wallace, national heroes of their g Ret chere made our oft to Bs euerychon He ferued Bo wyth Sytayll at the best Strong as the byne & bel dzynke Bo lyfte A femely man our ofte lbas ibpth ale Forto be a marchal in a lozdes halle A large may be was myth eyen stepe Color of hys fpeche and Ibel Bas y taught Le be to me right welcome hertly For By my trotbthe of I shal not lye falb not thye yeer fo mery a companye FACSIMILE OF A PAGE FROM CAXTON'S SECOND EDITION OF CHAUCER'S CANTERBURY TALES, PRINTED ABOUT 1484 (The text reproduced includes lines 747-764 of the Prologue, describing the Host and his hospitable welcome to the pilgrims gathered about his table. The artist did not succeed in introducing the entire company of nine and twenty guests who sat down together at the Tabard, but we have no difficulty in recognizing the worthy Knight and his son at the right of the Host, and Madame Eglentine, the lady Prioress, at his left. Next to the young Squire, with face turned more directly to the front, sits Chaucer himself.) rocky soil, just as the English rhymers of a contemporary or an earlier time had rehearsed the deeds of English champions. But James I. was one of the earliest representatives of the land of Burns and Scott to grace our literature with the beauty and sweetness of genuine song. King James I., 13941437. In 1405 James, who was then a boy of only eleven years, became a state prisoner at the English court. From that time till his release in 1424 he remained in England, enjoying every privilege save that of freedom, and cultivating his love of music and of verse. While confined at Windsor Castle he saw from his window, one May morning, the beautiful daughter of the Duke of Somerset walking in the castle garden; and the love of the royal youth for this lady inspired The Kynge's Quhair (quire, book). This poem, consisting of 197 seven-line stanzas, is full of the influence of Chaucer and Gower, whose disciple James frankly avowed himself to be. From the king's use of this particular stanza form, it has since been called "rhyme royal;" it has held a distinguished place in the compositions of some later poets. Again, at the close of the century there were in Scotland two poets of considerable imaginative power and artistic skill whose work reflects the spirit of this era, although the best of it appeared after 1500. These were William Dunbar, author of The Thistle and the Rose (1503) and The Golden Targe (1508); and Gavin Douglas, who wrote The Palace of Honor (1501) and translated Ovid and Vergil (1513). Dunbar and Douglas. Of English versifiers there were in the first half of English the century two whose names are usually rePoetry. corded: John Lydgate and Thomas Occleve, unskillful imitators of Geoffrey Chaucer. In the latter |