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Like the Renaissance in other parts of Europe, the English Renaissance also witnessed a sudden new growth of activities or interests in humanity itself, as has deeply conceived in the new conception of literature and arts: The medieval synthesis collapsed before the new science, new religion, and new humanism; the strengthening of new secular ideas lead to drastic advancements in education and the growth of a strong body of secular literature; and the wide dissemination of new learning produces a literary revival that occurred in a society rife with tensions, uncertainties, and competing versions of order and authority, calling into question the newly won certainties and the older truths that they were dislodging. In short,this doubling of new possibilities and new doubts, simultaneously apprehended, gives an immediate deconstruction of the holiness of power that the dominants have attempted to contain, having provided a ready therapy to the long-existing cultural pathology.
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, is a British poet and soldier. For a poet, he continued in Sir Thomas Wyatt's (1503—1542) footsteps on the English sonnet form while the two were both often entitled with“father of the English sonnet”. They established the form that was later used by Shakespeare and others, and they also introduced blank verse to English—a form that Henry Howard used in his translations of Virgil. For a soldier, he was a mighty fighter, like his father and grandfather: In October 1536, he served with his father in quelling“The Pilgrimage of Grace rebellion”, which protested against the King's dissolution of the monasteries. He also served the king in Flanders with the English army on the side of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who was seeking to acquire the Netherlands. His major publication of poems is included in his posthumous Tottel's Miscellany (1557), of which of the 271 poems in the collection, 40 were by Surrey, 96 by Wyatt, and the rest by various courtier poets. The excerpted poem is usually named“An Epitaph on Clere, Surrey's Faithful Friend and Follower”, which says that Henry Howard and Thomas Clere, his squire and companion, fought together in expeditions to Kelsal in Scotland, Landrecy in the Netherlands, and Boulogne in France. At the siege of Montreuil, on 19 September 1544, Clere received wounds while protecting Surrey, from which he died the following spring. He was buried at Lambeth, in the chapel assigned to the Howards.
Clere of the County of Cleremont though hight;
Norfolk sprang thee, Lambeth holds thee dead,
Within the womb of Ormond's race thou bred,
And saw'st thy cousin crownèd in thy sight.
Shelton for love, Surrey for Lord thou chase:
Ay me, while life did last that league was tender;
Tracing whose steps thou saw'st Kelsal blaze,
Laundersey burnt, and battered Bullen render.
At Muttrell gates, hopeless of all recure,
Thine Earl half dead gave in thy hand his Will;
Which cause did thee this pining death procure,
Ere summers four times seven thou could'st fulfil.
Ah! Clere! if love had booted, care, or cost,
Heaven had not won, nor Earth so timely lost.
Edmund Spenser is one of the preeminent poets of the English language, who strongly extends the genealogy of English poetic culture initiated by Geoffrey Chaucer. Among his many contributions to English poetic tradition, he is the originator and namesake of the Spenserian stanza and the Spenserian sonnet, represented respectively in his classical pastoral
The Shepheardes Calendar
(1579), which marks the beginning of the English Renaissance in literature, and his great epic poem
The Faerie Queene
(1590—1596), written in honour of Queen Elizabeth I and celebration of the Tudor dynasty. With the virtuous exploits of 12 knights in the service of the mythical King Arthur, the latter is not only an epic celebration of Queen Elizabeth, the Protestant faith and the English nation, but also a chivalric romance,full of jousting knights and damsels in distress, dragons, witches, enchanted trees, wicked magicians, giants, dark caves, and shining castles. The following two excerpts are respectively from his
The Faerie Queene
and his short poem
Astrophel: A Pastorall Elegie Upon the Death
of the Most Noble and Valorous Knight, Sir Philip Sidney
(1595) .
Gentle Knight was pricking on the plaine,
Y cladd in mightie armes and siluer shielde,
Wherein old dints of deepe wounds did remaine,
The cruell markes of many'a bloudy fielde;
Yet armes till that time did he neuer wield:
His angry steede did chide his foming bitt,
As much disdayning to the curbe to yield:
Full iolly knight he seemd, and faire did sitt,
As one for knightly giusts and fierce encounters fitt.
But on his brest a bloudie Crosse he bore,
The deare remembrance of his dying Lord,
For whose sweete sake that glorious badge he wore,
And dead as liuing euer him ador'd:
Vpon his shield the like was also scor'd,
For soueraine hope, which in his helpe he had:
Right faithfull true he was in deede and word,
But of his cheere did seeme too solemne sad;
Yet nothing did he dread, but euer was ydrad.
Vpon a great aduenture he was bond,
That greatest Gloriana to him gaue,
That greatest Glorious Queene of Faerie lond,
To winne him worship, and her grace to haue,
Which of all earthly things he most did craue;
And euer as he rode, his hart did earne
To proue his puissance in battell braue
Vpon his foe, and his new force to learne;
Vpon his foe, a Dragon horrible and stearne.
A louely Ladie rode him faire beside,
Vpon a lowly Asse more white then snow,
Yet she much whiter, but the same did hide
Vnder a vele, that wimpled was full low,
And ouer all a blacke stole she did throw,
As one that inly mournd: so was she sad,
And heauie sat vpon her palfrey slow:
Seemed in heart some hidden care she had,
And by her in a line a milke white lambe she lad.
So pure and innocent, as that same lambe,
She was in life and euery vertuous lore,
And by descent from Royall lynage came
Of ancient Kings and Queenes, that had of yore
Their scepters stretcht from East to Westerne shore,
And all the world in their subiection held;
Till that infernall feend with foule vprore
Forwasted all their land, and them expeld:
Whom to auenge, she had this Knight from far compelled.
They stopt his wound (too late to stop it was)
And in their armes then softly did him reare:
Tho (as he wild) vnto his loued lasse,
His dearest loue him dolefully did beare.
The dolefulst beare that euer man did see,
Was Astrophel , but dearest vnto mee.
She when she saw her loue in such a plight,
With crudled blood and filthie gore deformed:
That wont to be with flowers and gyrlonds dight,
And her deare fauours dearly well adorned,
Her face, the fairest face, that eye mote see,
She likewise did deforme like him to bee.
Her yellow locks that shone so bright and long,
As Sunny beames in fairest somers day:
She fiersly tore, and with outragious wrong
From her red cheeks the roses rent away.
And her faire brest the threasury of ioy,
She spoyld thereof, and filled with annoy.
His palled face impictured with death,
She bathed oft with teares and dried oft:
And with sweet kisses suckt the wasting breath,
Out of his lips like lillies pale and soft.
And oft she cald to him, who answerd nought,
But onely by his lookes did tell his thought.
The rest of her impatient regret,
And piteous mone the which she for him made:
No toong can tell, nor any forth can set,
But he whose heart like sorrow did inuade.
At last when paine his vitall powres had spent,
His wasted life her weary lodge forwent.
Which when she saw, she staied not a whit,
But after him did make vntimely haste:
Forth with her ghost out of her corps did flit,
And followed her make like Turtle chaste.
To proue that death their hearts cannot diuide,
Which liuing were in loue so firmly tide.
The Gods which all things see, this same beheld,
And pittying this paire of louers trew:
Transformed them there lying on the field,
Into one flowre that is both red and blew.
It first growes red, and then to blew doth fade,
Like Astrophel , which thereinto was made.
And in the midst thereof a star appeares,
As fairly formd as any star in skyes:
Resembling Stella in her freshest yeares,
Forth darting beames of beautie from her eyes,
And all the day it standeth full of deow,
Which is the teares, that from her eyes did flow.
That hearbe of some, Starlight is cald by name,
Of others Penthia , though not so well:
But thou where euer thou doest finde the same,
From this day forth do call it Astrophel .
And when so euer thou it vp doest take,
Do pluck it softly for that shepheards sake.
Hereof when tydings far abroad did passe,
The shepheards all which loued him full deare:
And sure full deare of all he loued was,
Did thether flock to see what they did heare.
And when that pitteous spectacle they vewed,
The same with bitter teares they all bedewed.
And euery one did make exceeding mone,
With inward anguish and great griefe opprest:
And euery one did weep and waile, and mone,
And meanes deviz'd to shew his sorrow best.
That from that houre since first on grassie greene
Shepheards kept sheep, was not like mourning seen.
But first his sister that Clorinda hight,
The gentlest shepheardesse that liues this day:
And most resembling both in shape and spright
Her brother deare, began this dolefull lay.
Which least I marre the sweetnesse of the vearse,
In sort as she it sung, I will rehearse.
As a dramatist, historian and poet, George Peele belonged to the group of university scholars for academic literature. He employed blank-verse lines and lyric interludes of dramatic representation in ways that anticipate Shakespeare, and he also used blank verse effectively in non-dramatic poems, and many of these poems were published in Polyhymnia (1590) and The Honor of the Garter (1593), the former of which has a prologue containing his judgments on his contemporaries. The excerpt“Farewell to Arms to Queen Elizabeth”was written in 1589. It is a blank verse description of the ceremonies attending the retirement of the Queen's champion, Sir Henry Lee.
His golden locks time hath to silver turned;
O time too swift, O swiftness never ceasing!
His youth 'gainst time and age hath ever spurned,
But spurned in vain; youth waneth by increasing:
Beauty, strength, youth, are flowers but fading seen;
Duty, faith, love, are roots, and ever green.
His helmet now shall make a hive for bees;
And, lovers' sonnets turned to holy psalms,
A man-at-arms must now serve on his knees,
And feed on prayers, which are age's alms:
But though from court to cottage he depart,
His saint is sure of his unspotted heart.
And when he saddest sits in homely cell,
He'll teach his swains this carol for a song:
‘Blest be the hearts that wish my sovereign well,
Curst be the souls that think her any wrong.’
Goddess, allow this aged man his right,
To be your beadsman now, that was your knight.
Michael Drayton is a poet, and a learned and accomplished practitioner of most Renaissance poetic genres. He was also the first to write odes in English in the manner of Horace. Among his works are The Harmony of the Church (1591), Idea: The Shepherd's Garland (1593), Idea's Mirror (1594), and historical heroic poems such as Robert, Duke of Normandy (1596) and Mortimeriados (1596). Besides, his Englands Heroicall Epistles (1597) and Poly-Olbion (1612—1622) are considered to be the greatest in the celebration of the topography of Britain recording comprehensively the beauty of the countryside, the romantic fascination of ruined abbeys, and its history, legend and present life. In The Battle of Agincourt , he retells the story of the war in which Henry V renewed the Hundred Years War with France in 1415, laying successful siege to Harfleur. On 25 October 1415, with an army of only 14,000 men, Henry V defeated a French force numbering 50,000 in a famous battle at Agincourt.
Fair stood the wind for France
When we our sails advance,
Nor now to prove our chance
Longer will tarry;
But putting to the main,
At Caux, the mouth of Seine,
With all his martial train,
Landed King Harry.
And taking many a fort,
Furnished in warlike sort,
Marcheth towards Agincourt
In happy hour;
Skirmishing day by day
With those that stopped his way,
Where the French gen'ral lay
With all his power;
Which, in his height of pride,
King Henry to deride,
His ransom to provide
Unto him sending;
Which he neglects the while,
As from a nation vile,
Yet with an angry smile
Their fall portending.
And turning to his men,
Quoth our brave Henry then,
Though they to one be ten,
Be not amazed.
Yet have we well begun,
Battles so bravely won
Have ever to the sun
By fame been raised.
And for myself (quoth he),
This my full rest shall be;
England ne'er mourn for me,
Nor more esteem me.
Victor I will remain,
Or on this earth lie slain;
Never shall she sustain
Loss to redeem me.
Poitiers and Cressy tell,
When most their pride did swell,
Under our swords they fell;
No less our skill is
Than when our grandsire great,
Claiming the regal seat,
By many a warlike feat
Lopped the French lilies.
The Duke of York so dread
The eager vaward led;
With the main Henry sped
Amongst his henchmen.
Exeter had the rear,
A braver man not there;-
O Lord, how hot they were
On the false Frenchmen!
They now to fight are gone,
Armour on armour shone,
Drum now to drum did groan,
To hear was wonder;
That with the cries they make
The very earth did shake;
Trumpet to trumpet spake,
Thunder to thunder.
Well it thine age became,
O noble Erpingham,
Which didst the signal aim
To our hid forces!
When from a meadow by,
Like a storm suddenly,
The English archery
Stuck the French horses.
With Spanish yew so strong,
Arrows a cloth-yard long,
That like to serpents stung,
Piercing the weather;
None from his fellow starts,
But, playing manly parts,
And like true English hearts,
Stuck close together.
When down their bows they threw,
And forth their bilbos drew,
And on the French they flew,
Not one was tardy;
Arms were from shoulders sent,
Scalps to the teeth were rent,
Down the French peasants went-
Our men were hardy!
This while our noble king,
His broadsword brandishing,
Down the French host did ding,
As to o'erwhelm it;
And many a deep wound lent,
His arms with blood besprent,
And many a cruel dent
Bruised his helmet.
Gloucester, that duke so good,
Next of the royal blood,
For famous England stood
With his brave brother;
Clarence, in steel so bright,
Though but a maiden knight,
Yet in that furious fight
Scarce such another.
Christopher Marlowe is a great poet and dramatist, enjoying a life of only 29 years. His poem Hero and Leander concerns the Greek mythical lovers of those names concerned. He is known for his establishment of dramatic blank verse in such plays as The Jew of Malta , the chronicle history Edward II , and The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus , which ensured his lasting legacy. His enormously popular play Tamburlaine the Great (1587—1588), produced on the London stage with a sequel soon followed, used the story of the 14 th century Tartar Timuri-leng to dramatise the problems of military command and to examine popular assumptions about war as divine punishment or deliverance. The excerpt is Tamburlaine's speech in Scene II, Act I of the first part of Tamburlaine The Great .
With what a majesty he rears his looks!—
In thee, thou valiant man of Persia,
I see the folly of thy emperor.
Art thou but captain of a thousand horse,
That by characters graven in thy brows,
And by thy martial face and stout aspect,
Deserv'st to have the leading of an host?
Forsake thy king, and do but join with me,
And we will triumph over all the world:
I hold the Fates bound fast in iron chains,
And with my hand turn Fortune's wheel about;
And sooner shall the sun fall from his sphere
Than Tamburlaine be slain or overcome.
Draw forth thy sword, thou mighty man-at-arms,
Intending but to raze my charmed skin,
And Jove himself will stretch his hand from heaven
To ward the blow, and shield me safe from harm.
See, how he rains down heaps of gold in showers,
As if he meant to give my soldiers pay!
And, as a sure and grounded argument
That I shall be the monarch of the East,
He sends this Soldan's daughter rich and brave,
To be my queen and portly emperess.
If thou wilt stay with me, renowmed man,
And lead thy thousand horse with my conduct,
Besides thy share of this Egyptian prize,
Those thousand horse shall sweat with martial spoil
Of conquer'd kingdoms and of cities sack'd:
Both we will walk upon the lofty cliffs;
And Christian merchants, that with Russian stems
Plough up huge furrows in the Caspian Sea,
Shall vail to us as lords of all the lake;
Both we will reign as consuls of the earth,
And mighty kings shall be our senators.
Jove sometime masked in a shepherd's weed;
And by those steps that he hath scal'd the heavens
May we become immortal like the gods.
Join with me now in this my mean estate,
(I call it mean, because, being yet obscure,
The nations far-remov'd admire me not,)
And when my name and honour shall be spread
As far as Boreas claps his brazen wings,
Or fair Bootes sends his cheerful light,
Then shalt thou be competitor with me,
And sit with Tamburlaine in all his majesty.
William Shakespeare is the greatest figure of English literature, known for his poetry and poetic drama. He wrote more than thirty plays: histories, comedies, tragedies, and romances,a large portion of which is composed in blank verse. For his poetry, the representative is his 154 sonnets, written in the form of three quatrains and a couplet that is now recognised as the Shakespearean Sonnet, all of which focus on the inevitable decay of time, and the immortalisation of beauty and love in poetry: While sonnets 1—126 are addressed to a beloved friend and sonnets 127—152 to a malignant but fascinating“Dark Lady”whom he loves.
Shakespeare's ten English history plays are engaged most profoundly with the experience and recording of early modern warfare. The Cambridge Companion to War Writing (2009) makes such a good summary of his great quantities and complex formulations:“The first tetralogy ( 1, 2, 3 Henry VI and Richard III ) traces the later Wars of the Roses up to Henry VII's accession, while the second tetralogy ( Richard II; 1, 2 Henry IV; Henry V ) goes further back in time to deal with events from the deposition of Richard II to Henry V's victory at Agincourt. Richard II (1595) investigates the figure of the warrior-king by splitting it down the middle, giving eloquence to Richard and military command to his usurper Bolingbroke (the future Henry IV). Richard's departure for war in Ireland at the end of Act 2, Scene 1 provides Bolingbroke's opportunity for the beginnings of his military coup, while false rumours of Richard's death cause the Welsh to join the rebellion, precipitating the collapse of Richard's hope in Act 3, Scene 2. The two parts of Henry IV (1596, 1598) and Henry V (1599) together make perhaps the most encompassing vision of war to be found in all of early modern English literature.” [1] The following excerpts are two speeches in blank verse by Henry V from Act 4,Scene 3: The English camp of Henry V .
What's he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin:
If we are mark'd to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires:
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England:
God's peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more, methinks, would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian:’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.’
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.
…
I pray thee, bear my former answer back:
Bid them achieve me and then sell my bones.
Good God! why should they mock poor fellows thus?
The man that once did sell the lion's skin
While the beast lived, was killed with hunting him.
A many of our bodies shall no doubt
Find native graves; upon the which, I trust,
Shall witness live in brass of this day's work:
And those that leave their valiant bones in France,
Dying like men, though buried in your dunghills,
They shall be famed; for there the sun shall greet them,
And draw their honours reeking up to heaven;
Leaving their earthly parts to choke your clime,
The smell whereof shall breed a plague in France.
Mark then abounding valour in our English,
That being dead, like to the bullet's grazing,
Break out into a second course of mischief,
Killing in relapse of mortality.
Let me speak proudly: tell the constable
We are but warriors for the working-day;
Our gayness and our gilt are all besmirch'd
With rainy marching in the painful field;
There's not a piece of feather in our host—
Good argument, I hope, we will not fly—
And time hath worn us into slovenry:
But, by the mass, our hearts are in the trim;
And my poor soldiers tell me, yet ere night
They'll be in fresher robes, or they will pluck
The gay new coats o'er the French soldiers' heads
And turn them out of service. If they do this,—
As, if God please, they shall,—my ransom then
Will soon be levied. Herald, save thou thy labour;
Come thou no more for ransom, gentle herald:
They shall have none, I swear, but these my joints;
Which if they have as I will leave 'em them,
Shall yield them little, tell the constable.
[1] Kate Mcloughlin, ed., The Cambridge Companion to War Writing . Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009, p.104.