LITERATURE 



299 



suggested by Boccacio's " Decameron." The | 

 "Prologue" to the "Canterbury Tales" is one' 

 of the finest pieces of description in our language. 

 Before Chaucer's time English was a language 

 of dialects. He wrote in the Midland dialect 

 and made that the language of the nation.] 

 Chaucer died in fourteen hundred, just three, 

 hundred and thirty-four years after the Norman j 

 Conquest. To sum up the most important liter- 

 ary events of these years we note the develop- | 

 ment of the English language, the translation 

 of the Bible, and the creation in English of one 

 of the world's great masterpieces, the "Canter- 

 bury Tales." 



There is to be noted a comparative lack of 

 literary progress in the century following Chau- 

 cer. There were changing social conditions and 

 intellectual and political unrest. The struggle 

 between the houses of York and Lancaster ab- 

 sorbed men's minds. These are the reasons as- 

 signed for the dearth of literature. To them must 

 be added the lack of a literary genius. There 

 was no one great enough to succeea Chaucer. 



The greatest prose work of the Fifteenth Cen- 

 tury was Malory's "Morte d' Arthur." This 

 is a great prose epic of the deeds of King Arthur 

 and his Knights of the Round Table. Fortu- 

 nately for the Fifteenth Century it also estab- 

 lished the printing press. In 1477, Caxton printed 

 the first book in England. A second complete 

 t t anslation of the Scriptures was made by William 

 Tyndale, early in the Sixteenth Century, and 

 tlie work of the reformation was furthered. In 

 1535, Miles Covenlale published the first printed 

 copy of the whole Bible. Certain Italian in- 

 fluences were at work that were changing the 

 i of our poetry. Wyatt and Surrey intro- 

 duced the Italian sonnet and made use of the 

 Italian blank verse. 



The Elizabethan age is marked by features 

 so distinct and so superior that it has been called 

 the "Golden Age in English literature." Two 

 great forces combined to make this the greatest 

 intellectual age, the Renaissance and the Refor- 

 mation. Men's minds were stimulated and a 

 ianr completely formed was ready at their 

 hand. There was freedom for thought to ex- 

 press itself and there was variety in Iffe and 

 freshness of experience for the mind to feed upon. 

 The printing press and travel and social inter- 

 course all stimulated intellectual activity. Life 

 was worth enjoying and there was leisure !<>r 

 letters. It was an age of imagination and en 

 thusiuMii. and in t!:e midst of it all ^eniiiM-> 

 were born. What age ever produced two such 

 poets as Shakespere and Spenser, unless it 

 ,t be ih. (iolden Age" of Greek splen- 



The n'>n-dramatic ports of the Elizabethan 

 age are Thomas Sackville. Sir Philip Sidney. 

 and Sir Walter Raleigh, who n\> wrote a : 

 ambitious work in pro*-, the "History of the 

 Id." 



-er, the only great non-dramatic poet of 

 abeth's reign, fuis been called the successor 

 work i- the "Shi-p 



Calendar." divided into t \\el\e eclogues, 



one for each month. His greatest work, the 



v Queen," was also divided into twelve 



books, but only six books and the fragment of 



the seventh were ever written. Spenser has been 

 justly called "the poet's poet. He may be 

 wearisome to the general reader who undertakes 

 to study him to-day, but the purity of his imagi- 

 nation, the beauty of his verse, and the music 

 of his rhythm, have furnished models for our 

 later poets. 



The dawn of the drama in England is found 

 in "Miracle Plays and Mysteries" which were 

 introduced soon after the Norman Conquest. 

 Following these were the later dramatic recitals, 

 the "Moralities," "Interludes," "Masks," and 

 "Pageants." 



As early as the Eleventh Century miracle 

 plays were performed in the monasteries by 

 monks and choristers. Later, companies of pro- 

 fessional players traveled about the country 

 and enacted their plays in the yards of inns. 

 In 1575, the Puritans expelled the players from 

 the city and theaters were built outside the 

 limits. Shakespere was born in 1564, and 

 twenty-two or three years later made his way 

 to London where he was attracted by one of 

 these forbidden theaters. Already the English 

 drama had taken form in the great plays of 

 Christopher Marlowe, "Tamburlaine the Great," 

 "Faustus," "The Jew of Malta." The greater 

 of these plays is "Faustus." Marlowe estab- 

 lished the use of blank verse in the English 

 drama, a form of verse which Shakespere 

 adopted. 



That Shakespere quickly rose to prominence 

 in his art we may judge from the fact that in 

 1592, when he had been in London not more 

 than five or six years, he was already writing 

 plays and was the object of a jealous attack by 

 one of his rival playwriters. At the a^e of 

 forty-nine he was able to leave London with a 

 competence and return to his home at Stratford- 

 on -Avon. This also argues for his success as a 

 dramatist. In 1598, Francis Mere writes of tin- 

 growing fame of Shakespere and prints the titles 

 of a number of his plays. Ben Jonspn, the sec- 

 ond dramatist of the age, was his intimate 

 friend. These are facts worth knowing about 

 the personality of the man who is the pi 

 figure in English literature, perhaps in all litera- 

 ture. 



Taking the number from the globe edition of 

 Shakespere's dramas, he wrote thirty-four dif- 

 ferent plays counting as one play those* which 

 are written in two parts. His dramas may lie 

 divided into three classes: comedies. hiitoriML 

 tragedies. The following are a few of the ln-*t 

 in each class. Everyone well-read should be 

 familiar with them: 



Comedies: ".Midsummer Night's Dream," 



\ You Like I: .' Merchant of Venice/' 

 -Winter's Tale," "Twelfth Nmht." - The Tem- 



>riea: "Richard III .." "Hoary IN 



\ III ." Km-" John." 

 "Julius Cawar." 



Tragedies: -Hamlet." .Macbeth." "Lear," 

 "Othello," "Romeo and Juliet." 



In addition to his dramas, Shakespere also 

 wrote two long i 1 one hun 



dred and fifty tour Bonnets. It is said that the 

 measure of Shakespere's greatness is his um\er 

 . "not of an age, but for all time." Othc -r 



