British: English Renaissance Flashcards
English Renaissance
Thomas Kyd
Thomas Kyd (1558-1594) The Spanish Tragedy is the first extant Elizabethan revenge tragedy. Know the names of the characters and have a general idea of the plot (it's pretty complicated, and ETS going to expect you to know every little detail). Also, The Spanish Tragedy has a character named Horatio; don't let this confuse you. Know the difference between this Horatio and the Horatio of Hamlet.
The Spanish Tragedy
The Spanish Tragedy begins with the ghost of Don Andrea, a Spanish nobleman killed in a recent battle with Portugal. Accompanied by the spirit of Revenge, he tells the story of his death; he was killed in hand-to-hand combat with the Portuguese prince Balthazar , after falling in love with the beautiful Bel-Imperia and having a secret affair with her. When he faces the judges who are supposed to assign him to his place in the underworld, they are unable to reach a decision and instead send him to the palace of Pluto and Proserpine, King and Queen of the Underworld. Proserpine decides that Revenge should accompany him back to the world of the living, and, after passing through the gates of horn, this is where he finds himself. The spirit of Revenge promises that by the play’s end, Don Andrea will see his revenge.
Andrea returns to the scene of the battle where he died, to find that the Spanish have won. Balthazar was taken prisoner shortly after Andrea’s death, by the Andrea’s good friend Horatio, son of Hieronimo, the Knight Marshal of Spain. But a dispute ensues between Horatio and Lorenzo, the son of the Duke of Castile and brother of Bel-Imperia, as to who actually captured the prince. The King of Spain decides to compromise between the two, letting Horatio have the ransom money to be paid for Balthazar and Lorenzo keep the captured prince at his home. Back in Portugal, the Viceroy (ruler) is mad with grief, for he believes his son to be dead, and is tricked by Villuppo into arresting an innocent noble, Alexandro , for Balthazar’s murder. Diplomatic negotiations then begin between the Portuguese ambassador and the Spanish King, to ensure Balthazar’s return and a lasting peace between Spain and Portugal.
Upon being taken back to Spain, Balthazar soon falls in love with Bel-Imperia himself. But, as her servant Pedringano reveals to him, Bel-Imperia is in love with Horatio, who returns her affections. The slight against him, which is somewhat intentional on Bel-Imperia’s part, enrages Balthazar. Horatio also incurs the hatred of Lorenzo, because of the fight over Balthazar’s capture and the fact that the lower-born Horatio (the son of a civil servant) now consorts with Lorenzo’s sister. So the two nobles decide to kill Horatio, which they successfully do with the aid of Pedringano and Balthazar’s servant Serberine , during an evening rende-vous between the two lovers. Bel-Imperia is then taken away before Hieronimo stumbles on to the scene to discover his dead son. He is soon joined in uncontrollable grief by his wife, Isabella .
In Portugal, Alexandro escapes death when the Portuguese ambassador returns from Spain with news that Balthazar still lives; Villuppo is then sentenced to death. In Spain, Hieronimo is almost driven insane by his inability to find justice for his son. Hieronimo receives a bloody letter in Bel-Imperia’s hand, identifying the murderers as Lorenzo and Balthazar, but he is uncertain whether or not to believe it. While Hieronimo is racked with grief, Lorenzo grows worried by Hieronimo’s erratic behavior and acts in a Machiavellian manner to eliminate all evidence surrounding his crime. He tells Pedringano to kill Serberine for gold but arranges it so that Pedringano is immediately arrested after the crime. He then leads Pedringano to believe that a pardon for his crime is hidden in a box brought to the execution by a messenger boy , a belief that prevents Pedringano from exposing Lorenzo before he is hanged. Negotiations continue between Spain and Portugal, now centering on a diplomatic marriage between Balthazar and Bel-Imperia to unite the royal lines of the two countries. Ironically, a letter is found on Pedringano’s body that confirms Hieronimo’s suspicion over Lorenzo and Balthazar, but Lorenzo is able to deny Hieronimo access to the king, thus making royal justice unavailable to the distressed father. Hieronimo then vows to revenge himself privately on the two killers, using deception and a false show of friendship to keep Lorenzo off his guard.
The marriage between Bel-Imperia and Balthazar is set, and the Viceroy travels to Spain to attend the ceremony. Hieronimo is given responsibility over the entertainment for the marriage ceremony, and he uses it to exact his revenge. He devises a play, a tragedy, to be performed at the ceremonies, and convinces Lorenzo and Balthazar to act in it. Bel-Imperia, by now a confederate in Hieronimo’s plot for revenge, also acts in the play. Just before the play is acted, Isabella, insane with grief, kills herself.
The plot of the tragedy mirrors the plot of the play as a whole (a sultan is driven to murder a noble friend through jealousy over a woman). Hieronimo casts himself in the role of the hired murderer. During the action of the play, Hieronimo’s character stabs Lorenzo’s character and Bel-Imperia’s character stabs Balthazar’s character, before killing herself. But after the play is over, Hieronimo reveals to the horrified wedding guests (while standing over the corpse of his own son) that all the stabbings in the play were done with real knives, and that Lorenzo, Balthazar, and Bel-Imperia are now all dead. He then tries to kill himself, but the King and Viceroy and Duke of Castile stop him. In order to keep himself from talking, he bites out his own tongue. Tricking the Duke into giving him a knife, he then stabs the Duke and himself and then dies.
Revenge and Andrea then have the final words of the play. Andrea assigns each of the play’s “good” characters (Hieronimo, Bel-Imperia, Horatio, and Isabella) to happy eternities. The rest of the characters are assigned to the various tortures and punishments of Hell.
English Renaissance
Wyatt and Surrey
Wyatt and Surrey
The only reason you need know these two characters is that they are dually credited with being the first practitioners of the sonnet in English. I’ve included a few poems that might show up on the exam, but generally speaking, they are minor characters.
Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542)
Wyatt, along with Surrey, was the first to introduce the sonnet into English, with its characteristic final rhyming couplet. He wrote extraordinarily accomplished imitations of Petrarch’s sonnets, including ‘ I find no peace ‘ (‘ Pace non trovo ‘) and ‘ Whoso List to Hunt .’
“Whoso List To Hunt”
Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,
But as for me, hélas, I may no more.
The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,
I am of them that farthest cometh behind.
Yet may I by no means my wearied mind
Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore
Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore,
Sithens in a net I seek to hold the wind.
Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,
As well as I may spend his time in vain.
And graven with diamonds in letters plain
There is written, her fair neck round about:
Noli me tangere, for Caesar’s I am,
And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.
*Whoso list: whoever wishes
hind: female deer hélas: alas
vain travail: futile labor
deer: playing on the word “dear”
Sithens: since Noli me tangere: “touch me not”
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517-1547)
Surrey continued in Wyatt ‘s footsteps on the English sonnet form. Wyatt and Surrey, both often titled “father of the English sonnet”, established the form that was later used by Shakespeare and others: three quatrains and a couplet, with a rhyme scheme of abab cdcd efef gg. (KNOW THE RHYME SCHEME!)
DESCRIPTION OF SPRING,
WHEREIN EVERY THING RENEWS, SAVE ONLY THE LOVER.
THE soote season, that bud and bloom forth brings,
With green hath clad the hill, and eke the vale.
The nightingale with feathers new she sings;
The turtle to her make hath told her tale.
Summer is come, for every spray now springs,
The hart hath hung his old head on the pale;
The buck in brake his winter coat he slings;
The fishes flete with new repaired scale;
The adder all her slough away she slings;
The swift swallow pursueth the flies smale;
The busy bee her honey now she mings;
Winter is worn that was the flowers’ bale.
And thus I see among these pleasant things
Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs!
English Renaissance
Thomas Campion
Thomas Campion
Campion will not likely be on your exam, and if he is, you won’t need to know anything about him. However, “When Corina to her lute sings” is fairly famous, and has some chance of appearing on the exam.
“When to her lute Corrina sings" When to her lute Corrina sings, Her voice reuiues the leaden stringes, And doth in highest noates appeare, As any challeng'd eccho cleere ; But when she doth of mourning speake, Eu'n with her sighes the strings do breake.
And as her lute doth liue or die, Led by her passion, so must I, For when of pleasure she doth sing, My thoughts enioy a sodaine spring, But if she doth of sorrow speake, Eu'n from my hart the strings doe breake.
English Renaissance
Sir Walter Ralegh
Sir Walter Ralegh
Ralegh is not a major figure for the GRE, but “The nymph’s reply to the shepherd,” which is an answer to Marlowe’s”The Passionate Shepherd to His Love,” is a GRE favorite, so definitely be able to identify, explain, and reference the poem. Since Donne, Herrick, and C. Day Lewis have all parodied Marlowe’s original, Ralegh contribution is highly noteworthy.
*“The nymph’s reply to the shepherd”
This poem was written in response to Marlowe’s poem,
If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd’s tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee and be thy love.
Time drives the flocks from field to fold
When rivers rage and rocks grow cold,
And Philomel becometh dumb;
The rest complains of cares to come.
The flowers do fade, and wanton fields
To wayward winter reckoning yields;
A honey tongue, a heart of gall,
Is fancy’s spring, but sorrow’s fall.
The gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses,
Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies
Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten,—
In folly ripe, in reason rotten.
Thy belt of straw and ivy buds,
Thy coral clasps and amber studs,
All these in me no means can move
To come to thee and be thy love.
But could youth last and love still breed,
Had joys no date nor age no need,
Then these delights my mind might move
To live with thee and be thy love.
“To his son”
Three things there be that prosper up apace
And flourish, whilst they grow asunder far;
But on a day, they meet all in one place,
And when they meet they one another mar:
And they be these: the wood, the weed, the wag.
The wood is that which makes the gallow tree;
The weed is that which strings the hangman’s bag;
The wag, my pretty knave, betokeneth thee.
Mark well, dear boy, whilst these assemble not,
Green springs the tree, hemp grows, the wag is wild,
But when they meet, it makes the timber rot;
It frets the halter, and it chokes the child.
Then bless thee, and beware, and let us pray
We part not with thee at this meeting day.
The Author's Epitaph, Made By Himself Even such is time, which takes in trust Our youth, our joys, and all we have, And pays us but With age and dust, Who in the dark and Silent grave When we have wandered all Our ways Shuts up the story of our days, And from which earth, and grave, and dust The Lord shall raise me up, I trust.
English Renaissance
Sir Phillip Sidney
Sir Phillip Sidney
When I was studying for the GRE, I focussed pretty intensely on Sidney, though now I can’t say for certain how likely he is to appear on the exam. As one of the earlier figures of the English Renaissance, he’s pretty important, but I don’t know that his works are likely to appear on the exam.
Astrophel and Stella
The first of the famous English sonnet sequences, “Astrophel and Stella” was probably composed in the early 1580s. They were well-circulated in manuscript before the first (apparently pirated) edition was printed in 1591; only in 1598 did an authorized edition reach the press. The sequence was a watershed in English Renaissance poetry. In it, Sidney partially nativized the key features of his Italian model, Petrarch: variation of emotion from poem to poem, with the attendant sense of an ongoing, but partly obscure, narrative; the philosophical trappings; the musings on the act of poetic creation itself. His experiments with rhyme scheme were no less notable; they served to free the English sonnet from the strict rhyming requirements of the Italian form.
This is often called a “sonnet cycle” because it tracks in linked sonnets the progressive rise and fall of a love relationship. However, typically for Sidney who was an avid experimenter in poetic forms, the 108 sonnets are interrupted by 11 songs of varying forms, usually using shorter lines than the sonnet’s pentameters (mostly tetrameters [four feet per line]). The Norton editors include the fourth and eleventh songs as examples, and also because they record crucial turning points in the affair celebrated in the sonnets. They also are where you can hear “Stella”’s voice, ventriloquized by the speaker, as he describes her response to his pleas.
Characters: The lover, characterized as the “star lover” [astro-phil with a pun on Sidney’s first name] and the beloved, “Stella” or star, often are the speaker and spoken-to in these sonnets. However, Sidney’s persona often talks to entities he allegorically personifies as “Reason,” “Love,” “Love,” “Queen Virtue,” “Sleep,” “the Moon,” “Patience,” “Desire,” dawn, and other cognitive phenomena in sonnets that not infrequently describe allegorical struggles among them which we might compare with the dialogues in Everyman. The court surrounding them is populated by friends (loyal), enemies (jealous), and various other characters including her fool of a husband.
The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia
note that this is prose punctuated by poems, including “Ye Goatherd Gods,” a poem remarkable because it is a double sestina–a form so dedicated to rhyming structure that it is very rarely seen.
The Arcadia, by far Sidney’s most ambitious work, was as significant in its own way as his sonnets. The work is a romance that combines pastoral elements with a mood derived from the Hellenistic model of Heliodorus. In the work, that is, a highly idealized version of the shepherd’s life adjoins (not always naturally) with stories of jousts, political treachery, kidnappings, battles, and rapes. As published in the sixteenth century, the narrative follows the Greek model: stories are nested within each other, and different story-lines are intertwined. The work enjoyed great popularity for more than a century after its publication. William Shakespeare borrowed from it for the Gloucester subplot of King Lear; Samuel Richardson named the heroine of his first novel after Sidney’s Pamela.
A Defence of Poesy
A Defence of Poesy (Also known as the Apology for Poetry): Sidney wrote the Apology before 1583. It is generally believed that he was at least partly motivated by Stephen Gosson, a former playwright who dedicated his attack on the English stage, The School of Abuse, to Sidney in 1579. In his essay, Sidney integrates a number of classical and Italian precepts on fiction. The essence of his defense is that poetry, by combining the liveliness of history with the ethical focus of philosophy, is more effective than either history or philosophy in rousing its readers to virtue. The work also offers important comments on Edmund Spenser and the Elizabethan stage.
English Renaissance
John Webster
John Webster (c. 1578 - c. 1634) John Webster (c. 1578 - c. 1634) was an English Jacobean dramatist, a late contemporary of William Shakespeare. His tragedies The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi are often regarded as masterpieces of the early 17th-century English stage.
For the sake of the GRE, know the plot and names of characters of The Duchess of Malfi.
The Duchess of Malfi
The play is set in the court of Malfi (now Amalfi), Italy over the period 1504 to 1510. The Duchess, recently widowed, falls in love with Antonio, but her brothers, not wishing her to share their inheritance, forbid her from remarrying. However, she secretly marries Antonio and bears him several children.
The Duchess’s lunatic and incestuously-obsessed brother Ferdinand threatens and disowns her. In an attempt to escape, the Duchess and Antonio concoct a story that Antonio has swindled her out of her fortune and has to flee into exile. She takes Bosola into her confidence, not knowing that he is the Cardinal’s spy, and arranges that he will deliver her jewellery to Antonio at his hiding-place in Ancona. She will join them later, whilst pretending to make a pilgrimage to a town nearby. The Cardinal hears of the plan, instructs Bosola to banish the two lovers, and sends soldiers to capture them. Antonio escapes with their eldest son, but the Duchess, her maid and her two younger children are returned to Malfi and executed by Bosola. This experience, combined with a long-standing sense of injustice, turns Bosola against the Cardinal and his brother. Antonio, meanwhile, obtains a pardon from the Pope.
The Cardinal confesses to his mistress Julia his part in the killing of the Duchess, and then murders her to silence her. Next, Bosola overhears the Cardinal plotting to kill him, and so visits the darkened chapel to kill the Cardinal at his prayers. Instead, he mistakenly kills Antonio, who has just returned to Malfi to attempt a reconciliation with the Cardinal. Ferdinand, who by this time has gone mad, stabs the Cardinal, who dies. In the brawl that follows, Ferdinand and Bosola stab each other to death.
Antonio’s elder son by the Duchess appears in the final scene, and takes his place as the heir to the Malfi fortune.
English Renaissance
John Skelton
John Skelton
Skelton is a really forgetable character. He is only noteworthy in the GRE’s eyes because he is associated with “Skeltonic verse.”
Skeltonic verse is composed of short lines of irregular meter and features tumbling rhyming couplets. It’s pretty easy to identify. Be able to identify Skeltonics when you see it.
An example of skeltonics can clearly be seen in the following short excerpt from Phyllyp Sparrowe:
Somtyme he wolde gaspe Whan he sawe a waspe; A fly or a gnat, He wolde flye at that And prytely he wold pant Whan he saw an ant; Lorde, how wolde hop After the greesop! And whan I sayd, Phyp, Phyp, Than he wold lepe and skyp, And take me by the lyp.
English Renaissance
Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser
There are a efw things about Spenser that you definitely need to know.
- The Spensarian stanza. You need to be able to identify it. The rhyme scheme ABABBCBCC. The first eight lines are iambic pentameter, and the last line is iambic hexameter (called an alexandrine). The GRE, out of some love of anachronism, badly wants you to know what an alexandrine is, so learn it.
- If you know that the language of his poetry is purposely antique, you will have no problem picking it out, especially since it doesn’t really look like Chaucer, anyway; think of it as an imitation of Chaucher, and you approach a description of Spenser’s poetry.
The Shepheardes Calendar
The first poem to earn him notability was a collection of eclogues called The Shepheardes Calendar, written from the point of view of various shepherds throughout the months of the year. It has been suggested that the poem is an allegory, or at least is meant to symbolize the state of humanity at large in a universal sense, as implied by its cyclical structure. The diversity of forms and meters, ranging from accentual-syllabic to purely accentual, and including such departures as the sestina in “August,” gave Spenser’s contemporaries a clue to the range of his powers and won him a good deal of praise in his day.
It is a pastoral allegory that employs various forms.
The central characters are Colin Clout, Hobbinol, and Rosalind. (you probably won’t need to know this)
The Faerie Queene
The Faerie Queene is his major contribution to English poetry. The poem is a long allegory, in the epic form, of Christian virtues, tied into England’s mythology of King Arthur. Spenser intended to complete twelve books of the poem, but managed only six before his death.
In The Faerie Queene, Spenser creates an allegory: The characters of his far-off, fanciful “Faerie Land” are meant to have a symbolic meaning in the real world. Major characters include Britomart, Duesa, Redcrosse, and Una.
It begins:
Lo I the man, whose Muse whilome did maske,
As time her taught in lowly Shepheards weeds,
Am now enforst a far unfitter taske,
For trumpets sterne to chaunge mine Oaten reeds,
And sing of Knights and Ladies gentle deeds;
Whose prayses having slept in silence long,
Me, all too meane, the sacred Muse areeds
To blazon broad emongst her learned throng:
Fierce warres and faithful loves shall moralize my song.
The Amoretti and The “Epithalamion”
The Amoretti is a sonnet cycle or sequence composed of 89 sonnets. The “Epithalamion” is a wedding song derived from Latin originals. The epithalamion is composed in 24 immensely complex 18-line stanzas whose rhyme schemes vary but use Spenser’s typical concatenation strategy to link each stage of the stanza together.
Spenserian sonnet
Edmund Spenser employed an a-b-a-b, b-c-b-c, c-d-c-d, e-e rhyme scheme - as evidenced in his Amoretti sequence. This form has not been particularly popular.
“ Whilst it is Prime”
Fresh Spring, the herald of loves mighty king,
In whose cote-armour richly are displayd
All sorts of flowers, the which on earth do spring,
In goodly colours gloriously arrayd—
Goe to my love, where she is carelesse layd,
Yet in her winters bowre not well awake;
Tell her the joyous time wil not be staid,
Unlesse she doe him by the forelock take;
Bid her therefore her seife soone ready make,
To wayt on Love amongst his lovely crew;
Where every one, that misseth then her make,
Shall be by him amearst with penance dew.
Make hast, therefore, sweet love, whilst it is prime;
For none can call againe the passed time.
English Renaissance
Michael Drayton
Michael Drayton
There’s nothing you need to know about Drayton, but this Shakespearean sonnet occasionally appears on the GRE.
Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part (Idea: LXI)
Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part,
Nay, I have done: you get no more of me,
And I am glad, yea glad with all my heart,
That thus so cleanly I myself can free.
Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,
And when we meet at any time again
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.
Now at the last gasp of Love’s latest breath,
When his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies,
When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And Innocence is closing up his eyes,
Now, if thou wouldst, when all have given him over,
From death to life thou might’st him yet recover.
English Renaissance
Christopher Marlowe
Christopher Marlowe
As you probably know, Marlowe was the most famous dramatist in Shakespeare’s day, and died young, a few years before Shakespeare’s rise to fame. You need to know about Marlowe because he’s a GRE favorite.
**“The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”
~ see also Sir Walter Ralegh’s “The Nymph: Reply to the Shephard”
~ This poem has been sited by Donne, Herrick, Ralegh and C. Day Lewis.
“The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”
Come live with me and be my love, And we will all the pleasures prove That valleys, groves, hills, and fields, Woods or steepy mountain yields. And we will sit upon the rocks, Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks, By shallow rivers to whose falls Melodious birds sing madrigals. And I will make thee beds of roses And a thousand fragrant posies, A cap of flowers, and a kirtle Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle; A gown made of the finest wool Which from our pretty lambs we pull; Fair lined slippers for the cold, With buckles of th purest gold; A belt of straw and ivy buds, With coral clasps and amber studs: And if these pleasures may thee move, Come live with me and be my love. The shepherds' swains shall dance and sing For thy delight each May morning: If these delights thy mind may move, Then live with me and be my love.
**Tamburlaine the Great
Be able to pick out the relevant names for Tamburlaine, but don’t worry too much about the plot.
In the earliest of Marlowe’s plays, the two-part Tamburlaine the Great (c. 1587; published 1590), Marlowe’s characteristic “mighty line” (as Ben Jonson called it) established blank verse as the staple medium for later Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatic writing. It appears that originally Marlowe intended to write only the first part, concluding with Tamburlaine’s marriage to Zenocrate and his making “truce with all the world.” But the popularity of the first part encouraged Marlowe to continue the story to Tamburlaine’s death.
“Hero and Leander”
The poem tells the celebrated story of the love between the hero, Leander, and Hero, a priestess of Venus. The two live in different cities, Abydos and Sestos, which are separated from each other by the gulf known as the Hellespont. Leander swims across for a night of passion, but in so doing he attracts the attention of the sea-god Neptune, who makes advances to him which Leander, not really understanding what is going on, rejects. He breaks safely away, reaches Hero, and the two make love—and there the story breaks off. Its original publisher printed at this point the words “ desunt nonnulla “, meaning “something is missing”, and many subsequent readers have been inclined to agree with him that Marlowe had originally intended to carry the narrative to its traditional conclusion—the drowning of Leander—and was prevented, presumably by death. Others, however, have argued that Marlowe, who was after all no respecter of traditions, had simply decided to let the poem end, as does the first part of Tamburlaine , on an unexpected note of triumph and success, challenging contemporary attitudes by refusing to endorse the idea that daring and transgression must always be punished by loss and retribution. He had certainly already deviated from the norm in the introduction of Neptune’s desire for Leander—an innovation which would have been instantly registered as such, since the story was so popular that, said a contemporary, “Hero and Leander is in every man’s mouth”. At the same time, though, that episode also seems to foreshadow an ultimately tragic ending by giving the rejected Neptune a strong motive to drown Leander, and indeed the opening line “On Hellespont, guilty of true love’s blood” similarly presages disaster. It does therefore seem likely that Marlowe would have continued the poem had he lived, and his friend George Chapman, who seems to have regarded himself as Marlowe’s literary executor, certainly thought so, since he himself supplied a conclusion for the poem.
“Doctor Faustus”
*Note that Doctor Faustus has a character named Benvolio, like Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Don’t get confused on the test if this name comes up; it may be a trick.
Needless to say, this is a hugely influential play. For a plot summary, check out wikipedia article here .
