Elzbthn Mannerism & Elzbthn/Jcbn Drama

Question 1

Improvements in education during the Elizabethan age gave a grounding in classical rhetoric. What three latin terms categorize the methods of argument creation?

Answer 1

Inventio: how to find matter
Dispositio: how to divide and organize it
Elocutio: How to put words together stylistically for clarity or persuasion.

Question 2

Fowler says Elizabethan rhetoric was not Renaissance, but already ________ (explain)

Answer 2

Mannerist; mannerist rhetoric is always stylish and self-conscious, showing relish for ornate or cleverly arranged words.

Question 3

The surface of the Elizabethan mode of mannerism depended on ______ rather than ______, though the latter are by no means lacking.

Answer 3

Schemes (patterns of arrangement); tropes (metaphorical figures of speech)

Question 4

What is a scheme? and how does it operate in Elizabethan mannerism?

Answer 4

A pattern of arrangement; it is more important to the mannerist style of the moment than tropes (which still appear often). Parallel arrangements, etc.

Question 5

In Elizabethan mannerism, what is a trope?

Answer 5

A metaphorical figure of speech–not as important to the poetry of the time as the scheme, but still important.

Question 6

What is amplification? and what is the role of amplification in Elizabethan rhetoric? An example?

Answer 6

Exaggerated emphasis for persuasive effect; abundant in the writing of the time–the best example among prose works being Sidney’s Arcadia. A heroine didn’t take off her clothes to go to bed, she “impoverished [her] clothes to enrich [her] bed…”

Question 7

In Elizabethan romances generally, the story was relatively unimportant, existing mainly to evoke the world of romance or to provide ______________…

Answer 7

passionately charged occasions for rhetorical expression.

Question 8

Sidney’s Arcadia, though unfinished and imperfect, has remained a generally admired masterpiece for centuries. What unlikely group, given to censoring other works, accepted Arcadia?

Answer 8

The Pilgrim “Fathers” in America

Question 9

Individual sonnets appeared in English as early as ____

Answer 9

Wyatt

Question 10

Individual sonnets appeared in English as early as Wyatt, but the first sonnet sequence was _____________ (1580), by Thomas Watson. How had Watson begun this sequence?

Answer 10

The Hecatompathia or passionate Centurie of Love; by translating Petrarch into Latin

Question 11

The first sonnet sequence in English was The Hecatompathia or passionate Centurie of Love. Who wrote this, and in what year?

Answer 11

Thomas Watson; 1580

Question 12

Watson’s sonnet sequence is outdone fairly soon after it is written–by whom, and by which work? Around when is this work produced?

Answer 12

Sidney; Astrophil and Stella (1591; wr.?1582)

Question 13

What is the relationship between Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella and Petrarch?

Answer 13

Complicated. Sidney ostensibly overturns Petrarchist conventions (like the helpless, submissive lover), but there are still Petrarchan conventions.

Question 14

In Shakespeare’s Sonnets (1609) the impression of _________ __________ is so strong that many post-Romantic readers have understandably been unable to see anything but immediate expressions of love experiences.

Answer 14

individual consciousness

Question 15

Describe pastoral eclogue

Answer 15

In Elizabethan poetry, a medium length form consisting of a dialogue between shepherds (supposed to be simpler than the poet), often with an inset narrative or song.

Question 16

What does pastoral eclogue exclude, and why?

Answer 16

excludes exact knowledge, representation of the passage of time, of work, of difference of rank and external details–all in the interest of concentration on essentials: to realize an unhistorical, changeless world.

Question 17

In a tradition of pastoral eclogue going back through Baptista Spagnuoli Mantuanus to Petrarch, this form may conceal ecclesiastical and political allegories, based ultimately on ________________…

Answer 17

The serious pun in “pastor”

Question 18

In Walter Ralegh’s rebuttal of Marlowe’s “Passionate Shepherd,” he insists on ______: “Time drives the flocks from field to fold . . . The flowers do fade . . .” etc.
Why is this significant?

Answer 18

Change; pastoral eclogue purportedly tried to realize an unhistorical, changeless world

Question 19

Elizabethan hunting poems; praise of country life; instruction and work; seasonal and geographical variety and historical change. All of these appear in _______

Answer 19

Georgics

Question 20

Spenser’s The Shepheardes Calendar (1579) mixes what two (usually opposite) modes?

Answer 20

Pastoral and georgic

Question 21

In Elizabethan times, the word “artificial” had ________

Answer 21

Positive connotations, not negative

Question 22

What Greek writer, popular in Elizabethan imitation, had a tonality of erotic warmth intermittently cooled by “artificial” (then a good word) digressions and allusions?

Answer 22

Ovid

Question 23

What are epyllia?

Answer 23

Longish mythological narratives

Question 24

The neogothic vogue for Ovid resulted in Elizabethans writing epyllia, or longish mythological narratives. Name three stand-out examples.

Answer 24

Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis (1593); Marlowe’s unfinished Hero and Leander (1598; wr. before 1593); the continuation of the latter by George Chapman (1598)

Question 25

Modern critics (says Fowler) insist on the Faerie Queene’s undramatic quality. Fowler ultimately disagrees, but admits that this is obviously right insofar as…

Answer 25

It seldom offers a direct naturalistic representation of objective reality as it would appear to an observer.

Question 26

If Spenser’s poetry is subjective and therefore undramatic in the usual sense, what is Fowler’s argument for drama in Spenser?

Answer 26

The reader is put through the experience not as a spectator but as a participant. When Phedon tells his appalling case history and Guyon briskly advises him “all your hurts may soone through temperance be easd,” a good reader will sense that the response is facile, and be ready for irony. The indolent reader will see the speech as authorial rather than dramatic, and be dismayed when Guyon later suffers an unforeseen stumble.

Question 27

In Fowler’s analysis of dramatic writing in the Faerie Queene, the reader becomes a participant, and apparently authorial statements or actions can be seen instead as dramatic, introducing irony. What is the relationship of such subtly ironic narrative to Elizabethan fiction? What is its heritage?

Answer 27

It’s very new at the time. Later, writers like Fielding and other early novelists will take it as their point of departure from Spenser.

Question 28

The earliest and greatest advances in the rise of realism take place not in the novel, which matures later, but in

Answer 28

Drama

Question 29

Short, gradual steps: here an unusual realization of psychology, there a few specific details of a Vice’s villainy. What is happening?

Answer 29

The rise of realism in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama.

Question 30

The Morality play continues throughout the

Answer 30

16th century

Question 31

In the 16th century, if not before, the Morality play was accompanied by another popular dramatic form, __________

Answer 31

The interlude

Question 32

The _________ has given scholars trouble since it was applied to works of such diversity: in Scotland to farces, in England to moral allegory but also political allegory and coarse comedy.

Answer 32

interlude

Question 33

Probably _______–contrasted with outdoor _______–meant simply indoor plays.

Answer 33

interludes; stageplays

Question 34

Interludes were typically written for a small professional company (often four men and a boy) of resident or loaned or itinerant players. Such a troupe could not have performed open-air _________ with their large casts. Indeed, the interlude troupe required a special, more technical approach on the dramatist’s part, to provide for _________ __ _____.

Answer 34

Moralities; doubling of parts

Question 35

Since indoor interludes used small casts, parts were often doubled. This resulted in characters oddly vanishing halfway through the play. However, by Shakespeare’s time, at least, this dwindling of parts seems not to have been felt as a defect. What does this explain about an important Shakespeare work?

Answer 35

The lack of sustained presence and development of Cordelia and the fool in King Lear

Question 36

Though different from the Moralities, interludes still seem remote to us; they sermonize, and they ignore causal sequences when the argument requires it. But the simplicity can be deceptive: they were often subtle. Give an example of how this might be seen.

Answer 36

The audience has to think abstractly about personifications before the meanings of the interlude could be disclosed. In Respublica (1554) there is a system of double personifications, whereby the vices disguise themselves as personified virtues: Avarice as Policy, Insolence as Authority, Oppression as Reformation, etc.

Question 37

Describe the difficulties modern critics long had in dealing with character analysis in Marlowe’s plays, such as Tamberlaine Part I.

Answer 37

Tudor interludes and Moralities have almost no individual characterization, and no psychology at all in the naturalistic sense; characters are predictable in terms of moral philosophy rather than natural motivations. So the question becomes how far Marlowe uses Morality structures actively, and how far passively.

Question 38

In Faustus, naturalistic characterization is largely absent, but occurs most in which scenes?

Answer 38

Opening and closing (why? Idk)

Question 39

Why is Faustus hardly a representative “man of the Renaissance”?

Answer 39

Marlowe shows him despising the modern Ramus and the ancient Aristotle indifferently. Faustus’s summary of the arts is really non-naturalistic–a medieval way of representing experience lasting over a long period of time.

Question 40

Dr. Faustus is a modified form of

Answer 40

a Morality

Question 41

The Morality play survives for a long time, even through Marlowe’s career. It must have received powerful reinforcement from habits of self-examination cultivated by ______________…

Answer 41

the religious of the time, through works of casuistry and the procedures of the confessional.

Question 42

But move on from Morality-based plays to Shakespeare’s King John or Richard III and you are at once struck by the increase in ________ detail. Of course, in the interval, a beginning has been made on the genre of _______, in such works as More’s History of King Richard the Third, etc.

Answer 42

‘unnecessary’; biography

Question 43

Even though Shakespeare’s early work already shows an increase in ‘unnecessary’ detail, it is not until ________ (1597) that fully detailed action is arrived at. Discuss briefly.

Answer 43

1 Henry IV; Morality features still persist: schematic contrasts of Hal and Hotspur belong to an allegory of true and false honor, and Falstaff easily represents the Vice of concupiscence. But the sheer quantity of realistic detail and subtlety of characterization is of an entirely new order.

Question 44

Gascoigne’s Supposes is a ________ __ ________, which is to say that character, in it, is subordinated to complication of plot. (Akin to Italian Commedia dell’ arte)

Answer 44

Comedy of Intrigue

Question 45

The comedy of intrigue (such as Gascoigne’s Supposes) is closely akin to the Italian Commedia dell’ arte. What is this latter tradition?

Answer 45

A largely oral tradition of improvised comedy with predetermined, permanent characters.

Question 46

The comedy of intrigue would form a considerable element in most subsequent drama, by no means all of it comic. Our greatest master of plotting, __________, achieves some sort of ultimate in ___________ (1610), which in some unencompassable fashion keeps several handfuls of con game intrigues going simultaneously.

Answer 46

The Alchemist

Question 47

Another inexhaustibly rich source of creative complication in Elizabethan drama was the _________, which used a previous literary work as subject, or point of departure, or text for comment. The new work now involved two elements instead of one: the original and the response. An example from Shakespare is ________….

Answer 47

Burlesque (travesty); A Midsummer Night’s Dream (?1596), which burlesques a kind of tragedy

Question 48

What is a burlesque or travesty?

Answer 48

In drama, a form which used a previous literary work as subject, or point of departure, or text for comment. The new work now involved two elements instead of one: the original and the response. An example from Shakespare is A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Question 49

Peele’s burlesque, Old Wives’ Tale (1595) delicately brought together all that was typically romantic. Give four romantic elements burlesqued.

Answer 49

Fairy magic, enchantments, talking statuary, famous heroes.

Question 50

What play by Marlowe is a graceful burlesque or travesty of Virgil?

Answer 50

Dido

Question 51

Burlesques were not imitative or secondary in any bad sense; in fact they raised literature to a higher power by

Answer 51

opening new possibilities of concision and complexity.

Question 52

Elizabethan/Jacobean drama often interacts with previous sources to great effect, reinterpreting events in a romance, for instance, with a complicating effect. Since the best minds of the time were sharpened on allegorical interpretation, Shakespeare could

Answer 52

bring intellect effectively to bear on the familiar action. His use of obvious sources achieved a concentration of meaning, allowing him to communicate fine moral shades, or cultivate a many-faceted complexity of alternative views, bringing profundity into secular drama.

Question 53

Realism didn’t begin with Marlowe; local touches of it appear almost from origins of drama. But more the development of drama as an apparently free-standing, self-contained imitation of life does not occur until what watershed period?

Answer 53

1590’s

Question 54

What happens to realism in the 1590’s?

Answer 54

Realism didn’t begin at this time but the development of drama as an apparently free-standing, self-contained imitation of life flowers here–see Marlowe’s Massacre at Paris (?1593) and Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors (1593)

Question 55

What does the flowering of realism mean for Hamlet’s shelf life?

Answer 55

We seem better able to respond to it, to continue to interpret its events. Distortions of time cause misinterpretation, but the misinterpretation would not be possible if the play did not seem within reach much later.

Question 56

Even in the 1590’s, non-naturalistic representation was still very well understood; the otherwise consistent naturalism of a play might suddenly switch off without, perhaps, bothering contemporary audiences. Name an example of this from King Lear.

Answer 56

When Edgar convinces Gloucester that he has thrown himself off a cliff. We seem more accepting of the footprint in Robinson Crusoe, perhaps because of its placement at the direct center of the novel.

Question 57

Popular theatres like the Globe and the Swan had evolved out of inns and bearpits, retaining polygonal form, raised seating, etc. This precluded a lot of naturalistic scenery, but special effects were still used, such as

Answer 57

Flames, traps, cisterns of water, etc. Sometimes costumes and props (lots of money spent on these) were elaborate enough to attract admiration of European visitors.

Question 58

Medieval tragedies seem to have been different from early modern tragedies in what way?

Answer 58

They were stories of divine judgments upon the guilty–like those that make up Chaucer’s Monk’s Tale. The subject was the downfall of the fortunate or powerful; their theme, God’s underlying justice. Different from later tragedy, in which a hero’s fault or error leads to disproportionate and unjust-seeming suffering.

Question 59

What is a marked change in early modern tragedy from its medieval forbears?

Answer 59

In the later tragedy, a hero’s fault or error leads to suffering greater than itself by a terrible disproportion, and far from just in the ordinary sense. Medieval tragedy focused on God’s just punishment of the wicked.

Question 60

To most Elizabethans/Jacobeans, classical tragedy meant

Answer 60

Seneca

Question 61

Seneca was translated into English, acted on the academic stage, and imitated in English plays from _______ (1562) and ____________ (1592) onwards.

Answer 61

Gorboduc; the Spanish Tragedy

Question 62

Describe Senecan tragedy

Answer 62

A form of closet drama with little action and crude psychology; presents extreme passions and sensational events, often in narrative or lyric form. Its staple is long declamatory speeches, full of patterned rhetoric: most events are opportunities for rhetoric.

Question 63

What about Seneca-influenced tragedy like Richard III or The Jew of Malta might have appealed to contemporaries so much?

Answer 63

To some extent we may catch Richard’s infectious glee at the brilliance of his twisted wooing of Anne, offering us a kind of moral holiday. But there may also be a wish to face the ugliness of political motivation for what it is, as opposed to more idealistic depictions of God’s infallible justice.

Question 64

Imitations of Seneca developed into a characteristically Jacobean form, _______________

Answer 64

revenge tragedy

Question 65

Revenge tragedy is a theatrical landmark, with many of its earliest manifestations still commonly appearing on syllabi. Name six examples, three of them from Shakespeare.

Answer 65

The Spanish Tragedy, The Duchess of Malfi, The White Devil are revenge tragedies. Titus Andronicus and Hamlet also fit the mold well. Macbeth is an inverted example.

Question 66

Not all revenge tragedies made their political implications as clear as Chapman’s The Revenge of Bussy d’Ambois (1610). What is one way a revenge tragedy might soften or disguise its critique of local corruption?

Answer 66

By setting the play somewhere seemingly exotic, often in Italy, allowing the punishments to seem more just. (Something Byron must be playing with in DJ)

Question 67

At its most basic, what does medieval comedy look like?

Answer 67

A story beginning in perplexity and ending in blessedness, and showing the pattern of divine providence (i.e. the Divine Comedy).

Question 68

What is the relationship between Elzbthn/Jacobean tragedy and medieval comedy? Provide one example from Shakespeare

Answer 68

The divine agency in medieval comedy often seems to flow beneath the later tragedies, with the terrifying suggestion of a malign cosmic fate. Thus Lear (ptd 1608) terrifyingly rewrites the happy closure of the original story, negating verities at the precise moment the older story upheld them.

Question 69

How would Cordelia have fared in a medieval (divine) comedy?

Answer 69

She embodies everything that would have triumphed.

Question 70

What role does Lear’s fool, and the grotesque farcicality of some of bling Gloucester’s actions, add to the tragedy?

Answer 70

A heightened sense of horror and dread, among other things. It sharpens the reminiscences to the (divine) comedic theme is ultimately denies.

Question 71

Name a way that the Moralities continued to influence the relationship between Jacobean plots and subplots.

Answer 71

As in the earlier drama, these relationships didn’t need to be causal–they were thematically related, by way of analogy, contrast, parody, or simply a scheme of shared coverage.

Question 72

How is Elizabethan and Jacobean drama mannerist?

Answer 72

Dramatists of all the companies, both adult and children’s, draw frequent attention to dramatic style. Sometimes explicitly as in Jonson or Shakespeare (cf. Hamlet’s instructions to the players), other times implicitly through parody or direct variation of previous styles. (Concurrent with the rise of realism? Figuring out fiction?)

Question 73

Around what time does the satirical genre of city comedy start to replace the romantic comedy of Shakespeare’s middle period?

Answer 73

1598; Jonson (just say end of the century)

Question 74

The manneristic taste for self reference found special satisfaction in city comedy–why?

Answer 74

From its beginnings in Jonson’s comical satire (1597ish), it is full of dramatic theory and theatrical gossip. (E.g. throwing missiles in the wars of the theatres)

Question 75

Disguise was always a useful comic device, but it became a principal resource in mannerist drama–why?

Answer 75

Partly, it reflected an actual court pastime; partly it turned to advantage the fact that female parts were played by boys, making virtue of necessity. But it also highlighted the theatrical fiction itself–perhaps having to do with an increasing sense that personality hid inaccessibly behind facades.