Theatre and drama

There were fine works of poetry and prose in the Elizabethan age, but the greatest heights of literature at that period were reached in drama.

The Middle Ages knew religious drama; the Mysteries, Miracles, and Moralities as they were called. The Mystery plays dramatized episodes from the Bible; the Miracle plays, episodes from the lives of saints. Morality plays were allegorical, and dedicated to the struggle of the various virtues and vices for the human soul; more often than not, the vices and even the devil himself were shown in such plays in a comic aspect. Between the episodes of these plays, comic scenes were usually acted that bore almost no relation to the story; these were called interludes.

There was another type of performance in English cities, the pageants ['pedznts]; these were pantomimes re-enacting episodes from the history of that particular city. The pageants were the source of the histories (historical plays) for which the English Renaissance drama is famous.

Sixteenth century England also knew a third type of performance: plays staged by university students; they were plays by Roman dramatists, Seneca ['senike] (tragedies) and Plautus ['plo:tes] and Terence ['terens] (comedies), acted in Latin. Later on, original English plays written in imitation of these authors began to appear.

Such were the foundations of the glorious English drama of the Renaissance.

By the middle of the 16^th century there were companies of the strolling actors who performed in town squares, inn-yards, and in the manors of the nobility. In 1572 Queen Elizabeth passed a decree against vagabonds; by this decree travelling actors were also to be considered as vagabonds and treated as such, that is, with the utmost barbarity. The only exception made was for those that were in the service of some nobleman. Many of these companies enlisted as servants of some peer, of course only nominally, and began to settle down. In 1576 the company of the Earl of Leicester's Men built the first regular playhouse, designed specially for performance, and called it, appropriately enough, "The Theatre" (a Greek word never used in England before); it was open to the sky, except for a sheltered gallery on three sides, and the stage was a large raised platform that came out into the audience like a sort of peninsula. No women were allowed to act, and all the female parts in plays were taken by boys. (The first actress in England appeared after the Restoration of 1660.)

Thus theatres began to be stabilized, and their popularity kept growing. They gave public performances, and were also invited to the court. The most prominent theatre manager at the turn of the century was Philip Henslowe ['henzlou], whose son-in-law, Edward Alley['alin], was the foremost tragedian of his generation.

As the public became more demanding and the art of the theatre developed, old plays were considered too primitive. They did not deal sufficiently with the problems of the time. It became necessary to find new plays. The demand was answered by some university graduates, whose parents were of the middle-class or the impoverished gentry. 1 They were, all things considered, the first professional authors in England to live (and very meagrely) by their pen alone.

This group of writers is known as the Academic Dramatists of the "University Wits". Among them were Thomas Kyd (1557?-1595?), George Peele (1560-1592), Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), and Thomas Nashes (1567-1601).

One of the most famous dramatist of the time was Thomas Kyd, whose "Spanish Tragedy" set the standard for the "revenge", or "blood-and-thunder", tragedies; he was the author of pre-Shakespearian play (now lost) on the subject of Hamlet. John Lyly and Thomas Nashe were famous not for their dramatic works only. Lyly wrote the prose romance "Euphues ['ju:fjui:z], or the Anatomy of Wit" that was very popular at the time; the book gave birth to the term "eumphuism" which means a very artificial, over-ornamented and mannered style of expression. This style was carried to the heights of absurdity by some of Lyly's imitators, but we must remember that he was one of the first authors to reflect the complex feelings of his contemporaries, and he found it necessary to use a complex, embellished style for that purpose.

Thomas Nashes was the author of "The Unfortunate Traveller" (1594), the first picaresque novel 2 in English literature. It tells of the fortunes of Jack Wilton, a page; among its characters are More, Erasmus, Surrey, Luther, Henry 8, and many other people well-known at the time. The novel gives a vivid picture of the colourful and cruel life of the 16^th century.

But the true genius among the University Wits was Christopher Marlowe.

Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) was born two months before Shakespeare. He was the son of a Canterbury shoe-master; in 1580 he went to Cambridge on a scholarship. (A scholarship gave the right to free education after competitive examinations.) Many details of his life are known to us, but it is almost certain that in his student days he went to the Continent on a secret official mission to established contacts with the French Protestants, the allies of England against Catholic reaction.

While yet a student, Marlowe wrote his first tragedies: "Dido, Queen of Carthage" (possibly in collaboration with Nashes), the story of which was adopted from Virgil, and the first part of "Tambullaine 1 the Great". After that, much of his life remains unknown to us. There is a supposition that for a brief period he was an actor, but, after breaking his leg and becoming lame, he devoted all his energy to literature.

After "Tamburlaine" he became a successful dramatist. During the six years left to him he wrote five plays: the second part of "Tamburlaine", "The Massacre at Paris", two major tragedies: "The Jew of Malta ['mo:lte]" and "The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus ['fo:stes]", and a chronicle history play "Edward 2". Among his non-dramatic works his translations of the Roman poets Ovid ['ovid] and Lucan ['lu:ken] must be mentioned; he had also begun a long poem "Hero and Leanders", which was finished after his death by the poet and dramatist George Chapman (1559?-1634?), famous for his translation of Homer's poems.

Marlowe was also the author of a small poem, "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love", which is probably the most beautiful lyrical piece written during the English Renaissance.

The more Marlowe's fame grew, the less desirable to the queen and her advirsors he became. He was a member of Sir Walter Raleigh's "academy", a centre of free-thinking. Later, Thomas Kyd gave information to the Privy Council 1 accusing Marlowe of atheism (a very serious crime at the period) and treason. On May 30, 1593, Marlowe was killed by a dagger thrust in a tavern brawl; obviously, his murder was ordered by the Privy Council.

Marlowe's literary activity lasted for but a few years, yet he created an immortal place for himself in English drama and poetry. If his contemporary, William Shakespeare, had died at same age, he would scarcely be known today.

Among the great merits of Marlowe was his reform of dramatic verse. In 1561 the first English play written in blank verse was produced; that was "Gorboduc ['go:bedak], or Ferrex and Porrex", a tragedy by two scholarly nobles, Sir Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset. The verse of this play was dull, harsh and crude. It was Marlowe who gave wings to the meter: under his pen black verse became grand, sonorous and capable of expressing emotion. The poetic imagery employed by Marlowe is monumental, highly coloured, and in perfect accord with the ideas of his tragedies. And what were the ideas?

As we already know, an outstanding features of Renaissance ideology was the belief in man, himself the master and creator of his destiny. Marlowe's tragedies portray heroes who passionately seek power-the power of absolute rule (Tamburlaine), the power of money (Barabbas, the Jew of Malta), the power of knowledge (Faustus). Marlowe delights in the might and the strong will of his heroes. But there is another side to all these characters.

In the opinion of some men of the Renaissance, man was free not only from the binding dogmas of the Church, but from all moral and ethical obligations whatever; this was an outlook typical of the period, and Marlowe had insight enough to show not only the titanic energy and initiative of his heroes, but the inevitable inner crisis that they faced as well. His Tambulaine, an obscure Scythian shepherd (which the historical Tamerlane was not), rises to the utmost height of power; Barabbas collects a colossal fortune; Faustus, in order to achieve absolute knowledge and gain power over space and time, allies himself with the devil - eventually, all are defeated. In the plays of Marlowe we can see both his respect and admiration for the might of human individuality and his condemnation of individualism.1

The plays of Marlowe had an enormous success, which Edward Alleyn, who played the parts of all his heroes, shared. But at the same time another actor, Richard Burbage ['be:bidz], became Alleyn's serious rival.

After some time the theatre where Burbage played stopped buying plays from the University Wits. The reason was that among Burbage's company there was a share-holder and a third-rate actor who turned out to be able to write plays himself. The verse of these plays was more pliant, and they contained better material for acting than the plays of the University Wits: their author was a professional actor, and knew much better what the theatre required. His name was William Shakespeare…

Shakespeare's Junior Contemporaries. Toward the end of the 16^th century life of England underwent a great change. The primary accumulation of capital was practically accomplished, and it was time to put the capital into circulation. The Renaissance titans who "had anything but bourgeois limitations" (Engels) were needed no more, and many of them met a tragic end. Absolute monarchy, progressive up to a certain stage, from the later years of Elizabeth 1 and during the reign of James 1, became an obstacle to social development. New trends of thought, hostile to Renaissance humanism, appeared, and humanism faced a crisis. As a result of this, the ideology of the drama began to undergo considerable changes. There appeared pessimistic and even morbid tragedies by John Webster (1580-1625) and John Ford (1586-1639?). Aristocratic views were reflected in the works of Francis Beaumont ['fra:nsis 'boument] (1584-1616) and John Fletcher (1579-1625), who often collaborated in writing their plays. They gave birth to a new dramatic genre, the tragi-comedy, as it called. It is not, as is usually supposed, a mixture of the tragic and the comic elements (there are comic scenes in many Elizabethan tragedies), but a play with a tragic conflict and a happy ending. The plays of Beaumont and Fletcher are always amusing, masterfully constructed, written in easy-flowing verse, and have very interesting and complicated plots, but they are superficial, even shallow.

Ben Jonson (1573-1637). We know that Shakespeare was the greatest of English author and that he had an enormous influence on the whole of world literature. But Ben Jonson had greater direct influence on English literature than Shakespeare himself ever had.

Ben Jonson was born in Westminster. His father, a clergyman, died shortly before the birth of his son. Adopted in early childhood by a bricklayer, Ben was educated at Westminster School, where his teacher was William Camden (1551-1623), the great historian and antiquarian. This was the beginning of Jonson's education: he learned a great deal from Camden, and picked up much more of his splendid erudition by his own effort; for though later he had the reputation of being the most learned man of his time and received honorary degrees from both Oxford and Cambridge, he never attended any university. After leaving Westminster School, he worked as a bricklayer for some time, and then entered the army and fought the Spaniards in Flanders, proving himself to be a man of extraordinary courage. Returning to England about 1595, he began to work as an actor and playwright, and very soon became a dramatist of the first rank. A man of fiery temper, he was jailed for killing a fellow-actor in a duel, and again jailed for being collaborator in a play that insulted the Scots at the time King James succeeded Elizabeth on the throne of England. Jonson was always in the thick of literary battle with his fellow-dramatists and as he grew older, he became literary dictator of London and gained the friendship of men like Shakespeare and the great philosopher Francis Bacon (1561-1626). He was the literary teacher of many young poets, whom he called "his sons"; among them was John Milton.

If Shakespeare is unsurpassed in the genres of historical chronicle and tragedy, Jonson is the author of the best English satirical comedies. Among his best works are "Volpone, or the Fox" (1606), with the action set in Venice ['venis], a devastating satire on the lust for riches; "The Silent Woman" (1609), one of the funniest comedies ever written with probably the most unexpected ending in all drama; "the Alchemist" (1610), in which he ridicules many superstitions of his time, and "Bartholomew Fair" (1614), a wide satirical survey of all contemporary classes of society.

From 1605 Ben Jonson started writing what were called masques, that is, plays to be presented at court and acted mainly by the nobility and sometimes even by royalty; these were elaborate and very expensive spectacles, involving music, song, and dance, built around a moral allegory and culminating in a compliment to the king and queen. In 1616 Ben Jonson was made poet laureate and granted a pension, but, nevertheless, he died in poverty, stricken by paralysis. His last play, left unfinished, is unlike any other written by him: it is a pastoral drama, "The Sad Shepherd", with Robin Hood and his merry men among the characters; it is written in most exquisite verse.

The ideology of Jonson was complex: loathing the decaying feudal aristocracy, he was in his social views very close to Puritans Republicanism,1 but at the same time he hated the Puritans because they considered the theatre to be sinful. Jonson was convinced that the theatre was a mighty weapon in the moral improvement of mankind, and attached great importance to it. His hostility to tyrants and political adventures was expressed in his tragedies of "Sejanus [si'dzeines] His 2 Fall" (1603) and "Catiline His 2 Conspiracy" (1611), based on Roman history.

Ben Jonson was also a fine lyric poet. His minor poems and the songs in many of his plays are true masterpieces. Many English poets have written poems dedicated to Shakespeare, but the poem by Ben Jonson, composed to the memory of his colleague and friend, remains unsurpassed.

But it was in the genre of satirical comedies that Ben Jonson became leader and excelled all other dramatists. The comedies were written after the "theory of humours". It was believed that a certain inclination or passion in the character of every individual was due to certain "humour" of the constitution, or 'liquids" flowing in the body of man. Jonson slightly exaggerated these "humours". It made his characters grotesque and sometimes one-sided, but it also made him the forerunner of the classicist movement in literature.

Jonson's grotesquely comic manner of depicting characters typical of contemporary life influenced the whole of English literature. Among the followers we may list the novelists of the Enlightenment, and such writers of later periods as Charles Dickens, G. Bernard Shaw, and J. B. Priestley.