Lecture 6: The Sixteenth Century
The Sixteenth Century
During the sixteenth century, also known as the English Renaissance, England experienced the greatest progress in the shortest period in its history. At the beginning of the century, England was a minor island nation. By the end, it was a cultural and political world power.
One reason for such rapid change was the printing press. William Caxton brought the first movable type printing press to England, and printed the first book in English in 1477. Books became cheaper, more available, and more plentiful. There was also an increase in literacy: in the early 15th century, the literacy rate in England stood at only 30%; by 1530, it had risen to 60%.
Another reason for such rapid progress was England's relative political stability, and the ambition of her monarchs. For thirty years, the House of York and the House of Lancaster had warred for control of England. In 1485, Henry Tudor, the Earl of Richmond, defeated Richard the III at Bosworth Field and became King Henry VII. Henry began making commercial treaties with other European countries. Sheep's wool became the basis for the textile export business, and as the demand for wool grew, more and more farms consolidated and were enclosed for large-scale grazing.
Like all great social changes, this commercialization of agriculture brought wealth and opportunity to some and poverty to others. Many landowners and freeholders (tenant farmers who had permanent rights of tenure) benefitted; some landowners became immensely rich, and some freeholders, who would never before have dreamed of owning property, were able to make enough to purchase their own farms. Other tenant farmers, those who had fewer rights, were likely to be evicted and find themselves homeless and unemployed. Some found work as piece workers or day laborers; others--thousands of them--migrated to the cities, where they struggled to survive. As the supply of labor increased, wages fell so far that they were barely enough to sustain life. Working conditions, never good to begin with, declined even more. People in need of cheap housing crowded into filthy tenements, and of course suffered the inevitable spread of disease. Begging, thieving, and prostitution were increasingly common, and the punishments for such crimes were draconian: long prison sentences, transportation, even death. Many writers, Sir Thomas More among them, decried the abuses, and there were occasional uprisings and revolts, but very little of substance changed to alleviate the suffering.
At the same time, England's wealth was growing, as was the financial well-being of many of its subjects. A Venetian traveller in England was impressed by the wealth he saw, remarking on the innkeeper serving his customers from silver dishes and cups, the lavish window displays of the silversmiths, the grandeur of the monasteries, "more like baronial palaces than religious houses," and the fact that the wealth seemed to be spread into the hands of people from the highest to the lowest classes, so that even an apprentice could rise to good fortune.
At the same time that competition and ambition were becoming character traits necessary for financial success, the feudal order was declining. Firearms were replacing bowmen and knights in armor. Tournaments and jousts became entertainment for the Court, and knights of the kind seen in Arthurian romances were becoming obsolete. The courtly love tradition lived on in literature; Caxton's press printed primarily French translations of Romance literature, moral tracts, and Morte Darthur and other medieval romances.
From a literary standpoint, one of the most important changes in the 16th century was the growth of Christian Humanism. It had its roots in the 15th century, but came to real fruition under King Henry VIII. The English Renaissance was a time of ideas, of intellectual excitement, curiosity, desire for knowledge, and willingness to question, not just in England but all over Western Europe. The Greek and Roman classics had been "rediscovered"; that is, they were being read again and their ideas and knowledge were being incorporated into the literature and thought of the time. In 1491, about the time that Sir Thomas More entered Oxford, Copernicus was studying astronomy and mathematics at the University of Cracow. New studies in astronomy led to advances in navigation, which led to improvements in maritime equipment for the purposes of increased exploration and trade. The travels of Columbus and Vespucci fired people's imaginations. In fact, William Rastell, More's brother-in-law, helped plan an expedition to explore and colonize the New World at the same time that More was writing Utopia.
Humanism stressed social and economic reform, peace, and education in the Bible, the classics, and the practical and pragmatic (how to live a moral life and how to serve). Humanist education, as it appeared first at Cambridge, was structured in two parts: the Trivium (Latin grammar, logic, and rhetoric) and the Quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music). The intent of humanist education was to train the young for public service and a moral life. (Elizabeth I was educated as a humanist.)
Under the influence of humanism, "modern" English replaced Latin as the language of learning. Classical languages were taught, but intellectuals revolted against the idea that there was more inherent value in Latin than in any other language. Their attitude was that if a language was crude, the best thinkers writing in that language would make it more refined and precise. English language vocabulary began to expand, since a larger and more precise vocabulary is required for written than for spoken works. And a number of Greek terms were added to English, as well, in the spirit of recognizing Greek as being as valuable a resource of language and art as Latin:
- drama
- catastrophe
- comedy
- dialogue
- episode
- scene
- theatre
- tragedy
- comma
- hyphen
- idiom
- paragraph
- acrobat
- parenthesis
- athlete
- and trophy,
to name just a few examples.
There was one notable exception to this general rule: Sir Thomas More wrote Utopia in Latin, and it was translated into French, German, and Italian before being translated into English.
Henry VIII and Elizabeth I
Henry VIII's marital history is famous, but the religious and political significance of his reign should not be overlooked. The wives are as follows:
- Catherine of Aragon; he married her in 1509, after receiving a papal dispensation to do so. She had been married briefly to his older brother, Arthur, who had died just days into the marriage, and Church law forbade the marriage of a widow to her husband's brother. But she swore that, due to Arthur's illness, the marriage had never been consummated, and the Pope decided to allow her to marry Henry. She had a daughter, Mary, but failed to bear him a male heir, and his determination to divorce her led to England's split from the Catholic Church. When she died in 1536 (the same year he married his third wife), he celebrated by giving an elaborate ball.
- Anne Boleyn; he married her secretly in 1533, before the Pope granted his divorce from Catherine. Haste was required because she was pregnant, and Henry wanted to legitimize her child as heir to the throne. He was sure it was a son, and was bitterly disappointed when she had a daughter, Elizabeth. On the same day, the Pope excommunicated Henry VIII. Anne Boleyn was later accused of high treason, adultery, and incest with her brother and was beheaded on May 19, 1536.
- Jane Seymour; he married her in 1536, eleven days after Anne Boleyn's death. She died two weeks after giving birth to a son, Edward VI, on Oct. 12, 1537.
- Anne of Cleves; he married her in January 1540, in a political move to form a German alliance. He divorced her a few months later.
- Catherine Howard; he married her in July 1540. She was the cousin of Anne Boleyn, and a teenage girl; Henry was 49. She was later accused of adultery (charges which were almost certainly justified) and executed in 1542. She was the catalyst for a law passed a few years later, making it illegal for a maiden who was not a virgin to marry the monarch.
- Catharine Parr; he married her on July 12, 1543; she was 31 at the time. Henry was in declining health, and she was probably more a nurse to him than anything else. She was widowed when Henry VIII died on January 28, 1547.
Henry VIII was excommunicated by the Pope because of his divorce from Catherine of Aragon and his subsequent marriage to Anne Boleyn. But Henry had been taking steps to distance himself from the Catholic Church for some time before that, in an attempt to gain more power and wealth in England. Under pressure from the King, Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy in 1534, declaring the king the Supreme Head of the English Church, and required that the king's subjects swear loyalty to him under the Act of Succession. Thomas More, the Lord Chancellor and a devout Catholic, was executed after refusing to recognize Henry's authority as head of the Anglican Church. Thomas Cromwell succeeded More as Chancellor; he dissolved the monasteries, executed and imprisoned the clergy, burned clerical buildings and goods, and was himself executed in 1540.
Upon Henry VIII's death in 1547, his son, Edward VI, who was only 10 years old, took the throne. He died of tuberculosis in 1553. He was succeeded by Mary (also known as Bloody Mary), who tried to restore England to Catholicism, burning and otherwise executing some 275 Protestant "heretics." She died on November 16, 1558, and the throne passed to her half-sister, Elizabeth I.
Elizabeth returned England to Protestantism, thus restoring a great deal of political stability. She was a strong strategist and diplomat. During her reign, she outmaneuvered all her opponents both English and foreign, and made England a great world power. She died in 1603.
Christopher Marlowe
Christopher Marlowe was born on February 26, 1564 in Canterbury, a busy cathedral city. His father, John Marlowe, was a leatherworker, and was frequently in trouble for debt; Christopher's sisters were said to be noisy and quarrelsome; his sister Dorothy was probably promiscuous. Even the apprentices John Marlowe took on caused trouble: three of them were involved in bastardy cases, one with Mrs. Marlowe's maid.
Christopher entered the King's School in January 1579, at the age of 15. The headmaster had a large private library with volumes and volumes of plays and medieval romances; these were probably the sources for Marlowe's plays. In 1581, Marlowe moved to Corpus Christi College at Cambridge, as a "Canterbury student": he had been given one of three scholarships for students interested in pursuing a career in the Church. He is said to have been a good scholar who wrote excellent verses. He was granted a bachelor's degree in 1584.
When Marlowe applied for his master's degree in 1587, the university decided to withhold it. Marlowe had been absent from the college for long periods of time; in addition, the university officials suspected him of being a Catholic (a capital crime at the time). He only received his degree when the Queen's Privy Council stepped in and requested that it be granted.
It is now assumed by most scholars that Marlowe's absences from Cambridge were in the service of the government, either as a secret agent or a confidential messenger. Her Majesty's Privy Council said, in its request to Cambridge, that Marlowe had gone to France for the Queen; Marlowe was probably in the employ of the Queen's Secretary of State, Sir Francis Walsingham, who maintained an elaborate espionage system.
After leaving Cambridge, Marlowe lived in London. He had been writing plays at Cambridge, and he brought them with him. Tamburlaine Part One was produced by November 1587 and Tamburlaine Part Two shortly after. The two plays made his reputation. But his life was not a quiet, reputable affair. In September 1589, Marlowe became involved in a fight with William Bradley. Thomas Watson, the poet, came to Marlowe's aid, and in the brawl, Watson fatally stabbed Bradley. Both Marlowe and Watson were imprisoned in Newgate, Marlowe for two weeks (he was exonerated legally in December) and Watson until the following February, when he was discharged on grounds that he had killed Bradley in self-defense.
By 1591, Marlowe was part of a circle of intellectuals which included Thomas Hariot, a distinguished mathematician; Matthew Roydon, a poet; and Edward Blount, the bookseller who formed one of the first syndicates to publish Shakespeare's plays. Sir Walter Raleigh and Thomas Walsingham, Sir Francis Walsingham's cousin, visited occasionally, as well.
In the summer of 1591, Thomas Kyd and Marlowe shared a room which they used as a study for writing. Kyd had had enormous success several years earlier, at about the same time as Tamburlaine was produced, with a play called The Spanish Tragedy, and both Kyd and Marlowe were under the patronage of Thomas Walsingham.
Two years after sharing the study, Thomas Kyd was arrested and questioned about his religious views; he had in his possession a pamphlet, apparently, which was considered heretical and atheistic. Under torture on the rack, he said that the paper belonged not to him but to Christopher Marlowe. He said his and Marlowe's papers had become confused in the shared room. Under further duress, Kyd wrote a statement in which he reported that Marlowe had "monstrous opinions," and used to "jest at the divine scriptures, gibe at prayers..." He also claimed that Marlowe, among other things, accused Christ of having "an extraordinary love" for St. John.
On May 18, 1593, a warrant was issued for Marlowe's arrest; he was apprehended in the home of Thomas Walsingham. He appeared before the judges on May 20. Instead of prison and torture (the sentence Kyd received), he was "commanded to give his daily attendance on their Lordships until he shall be licensed to the contrary." Marlowe's powerful friends apparently interceded in his behalf once again.
On May 30, Marlowe and several of his friends went to Deptford, a village down the Thames from London. Present were Ingram Frizer, Lady Walsingham's business agent and a wealthy man; Robert Poley, who had frequently been employed on secret missions for the government; and Nicholas Skeres, a wealthy man. They ate lunch at Eleanor Bull's Tavern, spent a quiet afternoon talking in the garden, and then went inside to supper. A dispute concerning the bill arose, and Marlowe grabbed Frizer's dagger and gave him a couple of cuts on the head. In the struggle that followed, Marlowe was stabbed and died. He was 29 years old.
A coroner's inquest was held on June 1 and a jury of sixteen men quickly acquitted Frizer. But the inquest was hurried, and the report was incomplete; parts of the matter were hushed up. This, along with Marlowe's record of espionage and his associates on that day--especially Poley--has given rise to speculation that perhaps the facts were not as they were stated for the record.
Dr. Faustus
Dr. Faustus is a dramatic play, full of spectacle. A story is told that on one occasion when the play was first being performed, the actor playing Dr. Faustus actually conjured up a devil. Even in our more skeptical times, the play still fires our imaginations; Faust-stories, in which an individual sells his soul to the devil in return for some great prize, are common.
One of the criticisms of the play has been that Dr. Faustus, as a character, is so vague: we know almost nothing of his life or his circumstances before the play begins: does he have a family? Did he have a happy or unhappy childhood? Even the minutiae of daily life are absent from the play. Faustus is not a fully developed individual in the sense that we have come to expect in modern theatre, especially compared to a character such as Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, for example, or Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire. He is not even as individuated as Hamlet. But he is not meant to be. Dr. Faustus is meant to raise philosophical inquiries, not psychological speculation. We are not meant to be concerned with him as an individual, but to identify with his conflicts. The play's structure supports this. It follows a pattern of "statement-variation": a statement is made near the beginning of each act, and then is illustrated in variations for the rest of the act.
Dr. Faustus is the ultimate humanist: he sees the world in rational and legalistic terms. In humanism and in Protestantism, the individual is the object of interest; Faustus evaluates actions only as they affect him. Faustus rationally and logically makes his decision in Act I, and he knows the consequences of his choice. As soon as Marlowe chooses Satan, the Good Angel and the Bad Angel appear. These can be seen as voices of Faustus's conscience, but they can also be taken as a representation that Good and Bad exist independently in nature, outside of any one man.
Next we see that Valdes and Cornelius have enticed Faustus to magic and that they hope to use him for their own purposes. But Faustus is committed to knowledge for its own value. Marlowe is presenting us with two attitudes toward knowledge: that knowledge is only useful if it can be used for some practical purpose or gain, and the opposite opinion that knowledge is valuable for its own sake. This is an issue that Marlowe certainly would have encountered in his time at Cambridge, and that he probably encountered daily in a time of growing commercialism.
The comedy of Wagner and the clowns keeps Faustus's actions in perspective and highlights the ludicrous nature of Faustus's aspirations. It also illustrates the way in which an individual's evil influences and corrupts others.
In Acts III and IV, Faustus seems content with trickery and magic. He has been reduced by his corruption and, ironically, limited to smaller and smaller spheres of influence and knowledge, even as he deceives himself and revels in his fame.
In Act V, as his time runs out, Faustus is in despair, but is still too prideful to repent. He still believes in his human and legal contract rather than the merciful power of God. In Dr. Faustus, fact and faith conflict: Faustus sees the world in human terms, refusing to believe that God has the power to void any contract, to forgive any sin. His pride will not allow him to see that God might have more power than he, himself, has--and so he believes redemption and salvation are impossible for him.
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Some of the information in this lecture derives from:
1. "The Damnation of Faustus," by W. W. Greg, in Marlowe, ed. Clifford Leech
2. "The Equilibrium of Tragedy," by Una Ellis-Fermor, in Marlowe, ed. Clifford Leech.
3. "The Damnation of Faustus," by J. P. Brockbank, in Marlowe, ed. Clifford Leech
4. Christopher Marlowe, by Robert E. Knoll
5. A Literary History of England, edited by Albert C. Baugh.