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Literature Study Guide Literary Movement

THE PRE-SHAKESPEAREAN: DRAMA

The Elizabethan age (1558 – 1603) Or THE AGE OF SHAKESPEARE
(1558-1625)

The Period of Renaissance in literature English Literature

PRE-SHAKESPEAREAN DRAMA

Variety and Abundance of Dramatic Output

The Elizabethan age is the golden age of the drama. While the influence of the
classics and of foreign countries is everywhere to be felt, the drama is truly
national, a true expression of the national genius, despite the various foreign
influences to which it was subjected. The drama was everywhere; performances
were given every night, and hence there was an amazing prodigality of
dramatic output. The variety and abundance of the dramatic output even
during the pre-Shakespearean period would be clearly brought out, if we briefly
consider the various types of drama that flourished during the age:
(1) there was the chronicle play based on events from national history and
witnessing the patriotism of the people.
(2) The domestic drama presents rather crude scenes from domestic life as in
Grammar Gurton's Needle. It developed into such plays as Shakespeare's
Taming of the Shrew.
(3) The courtly comedy intended for cultured and learned audiences and
dealing with the life of the court and the courtiers. Its chief features were witty
dialogues, jests and puns, rather than action. The appeal was to the intelligence
and imagination of scholarly audiences.
(4) The classical plays are based on the drama of ancient Greece and Rome.
(5) The melodrama which depended not upon plot or characterisation but on
sensation and thrills. There was a heaping up of sensational events.
(6) The revenge tragedy is full of bloody events.
(7) Farces full of clownage and appealing to the lower sections of the audience.

Causes of Its Popularity

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Various factors account for the immense popularity of the drama:
(1) The people wanted entertainment, and the drama was the only possible
source of entertainment for them. The novels were few and could be enjoyed
only by the lettered.
(2) The drama was truly national, national themes were dramatized and
national sentiments were expressed. It harmonized with the growing
nationalism of the age.
(3) It was an age of action as well as of thought and emotion. The whole man —
his thoughts, feelings and actions—can be expressed only through the drama. It
provides food for the mind as well as for the eyes. The people could get enough
energetic action on the stage.
(4) It was the best way for authors in need of money to fill their pockets. The
drama satisfied the needs of both the audience and the playwrights.
(5) The Elizabethan drama was the fusion of various elements, popular, courtly
and academic. It had enough action, thrill and sensa­tion, enough of clownage,
supernaturalism, coarse and indecent jokes, music and spectacle, but it had also
enough of refinement and courtly grace, resulting from a fusion of the popular
tradition and the refined academic drama of the court. The fusion could take
place as the same plays were staged in the public theaters as well as at the
court. The actors and playwright were often the same. So it appealed to the
people of most varied natures. It was the character of the audience that
decided the character of the Renaissance drama, and made it entirely national.
It is entirely different from the drama of France, Italy or other countries of
Europe.

Dramatic Activity
The development of drama during the Age of Shakespeare was greatly
influenced by the establishment of the private and the public theaters. Towards
the end of the sixteenth century, dramatic activity was in full swing. The number
of audiences day by day. Hence, the idea of establishing permanent theaters
took shape. The first playhouse in London was erected in the year 1576 in
Shoreditch, well out of the reach of civic authorities. During the next thirty years
at least seven regular theaters and a dozen or more innyards, permanently
fitted for perform­ances, were established in the city of London and its
immediate suburbs. The Theatre, the Rose, the Globe, the Swan, the Fortune
were built in the Shoreditch area or on the Bankside. The Blackfriars was the
only theater within the city.

Theaters were of two kinds. First, the private theaters, which were roofed in and
lit by artificial light, were attended by a better class audience. Blackfriars,
Salisbury Court and Drury Lane were famous private theaters. Secondly, the
public theaters were open to the sky and performances took place in broad
daylight. All classes of contemporary society intermingled in yards or galleries.
The whole idea of these early theaters was like that of the Roman amphitheater.
These theaters were round or octagonal, with a stage set in the middle of a

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benchless open yard and tiers of galleries running round the entirety of the
house. Over the stage was a small roof supported by pillars and on top of all
appeared a tiny turret.

The main stage was open, with a curtain at the back and two or more doors
through which the actors entered. The groundlings surrounded the platform, but
gallants able to pay for the privilege sat on the stage itself. Two important
consequences resulted from this. First, no scenery could be introduced on the
main stage. Primitive scenic effects were created with the help of movable
properties; for example, a tree in the tub might symbolize a forest. The absence
of scenery necessitated the introduction of a large amount of explanatory
reference. The audiences had to be told it was dark, a hall or a garden, and to
this we owe a great deal of sheer poetry and the late sixteenth century and
early seventeenth century drama. As the audiences surrounded the stage and
the actors, there was close intimacy between the two. It resulted in the
introduction of the device of soliloquy and aside. The audiences believed in
superstitions and were fond of thrilling actions. So, Elizabethan plays abound in
superstitions, ghosts, witches and fairies, blood curdling scenes of murder and
bloodshed, and revenge. In these plays female parts were taken up by boy
actors, who evidently were more distressing than the crude scenery.
The university wits —Kyd, Nash, Lyly, Peele, Greene and Marlowe—completely
revolutionized English drama and made it a suitable medium for the expression
of the genius and temperament of their age. They brought the English drama to
a point where Shakespeare began to experiment upon it. Let us now consider
the contribution of the university wits to the remarkable development of British
drama.

The University Wits

Commenting on the contribution of the "University Wits" to the British drama,
Nicoll writes: "The classicists had form, but no fire, the popular dramatists had
interest but little sense of form. Drama, that is to say, was struggling between a
well-formed chill and a structureless enthusiasm. The great merit of the
University Wits was that they came with their passion and poetry, and their
academic training, to unite these two forces, and thus to give Shakespeare a
pliable and fitting medium for the expression of his genius."
Some Pre-Shakespearean Dramatists
1. John Lyly (1554-1606) is the writer of a number of artistic and highly refuted
courtly plays, mostly comedies. He wrote solely for the fashionable lords and
ladies of the court, and had no thought of the people or the popular stage. His
plays are, therefore, models of refinement; he has the credit of writing the most
artistic plays before Shakespeare.
The best of his plays are:
(a) Campaspe
(b) Endymion
(c) Midas

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(d) Love's Metamorphosis
(e) The Woman in the Moon , etc.
His chief merits as a dramatist are:
Lyly wrote for private theaters. So his plays differ from those of other
playwrights of this group.

His contribution to English drama is historically very important:

(a) Lyly was essentially a court dramatist. He added to the drama the qualities
of delicacy, grace, charm and subtlety which were lacking in the rougher and
bombastic pieces wrought for performance in public theaters.
(b) Lyly was the first who gave shape to romantic comedy. He found
contemporary comedy lacking in form and atmosphere. He first of all
elaborated the romantic sentiment and created an atmosphere infused with
humor and romantic fancy. This romantic fancy with him is more idealistic than
it was with Green and Peele. There is in his comedies "a mellowed spirit under
which seriousness and laughter meet, a world of poetic fancy wherein the
deities of classical mythology live and move by the side of human figures."
(c) Lyly did not completely reject the classical pattern. Terence taught him the
technique which is displayed in his plays. The Greek myths, with which few
Renaissance artists were acquainted, led him into a strange realm. "The
classical age is seen through the eyes of romance. There are delicate colourings,
a certain mellowed sadness, a linking of the earth with the spirit world Here are
realism, classicism and romanticism welded into one."
(d) In Lyly's comedies for the first time we find a suitable blank verse for
comedy. Marlowe's rich, imaginative and highly poetical blank verse was
incapable of expressing lighter sentiments. Lyly's verse, delicate, if artificial,
could convey excellently the quickness of his thought and the humorous images
constantly fleeting through his brain. High comedy also demands a nice sense of
phrase, and Lyly is the first great phrase maker in English. He knew the use of
skilled phrases for purposes of character delineation and plot construction. He
gave English comedy a witty phraseology.
(e) Lyly definitely established prose as an expression of comedy. He deftly used
prose to express light feelings of fun and laughter. The interweaving of prose
and verse in his comedies corresponds to the two worlds of reality and the ideal.
Shakespeare learnt, it seems, this device of using both prose and verse in his
comedies from Lyly.
(f) Lyly made an important advance at successful comic character portrayal.
Although some of his plays show Terence's influence, he shakes himself free
from the presentation of merely "imitative humors". Each of his characters is
endowed with individuality.
(g) The device of the girl dressed as a boy is traced back to Lyly.
(h) The introduction of songs symbolic of the movement or mood of a particular
comedy owes its popularity to Lyly.
2. George Peele (1558-98), another of the University Wits, is one of the
important predecessors of Shakespeare. Like Lyly he also writes courtly plays.

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Then he unsuccessfully attempts national history in his Ed­ward I. By far the
most original of his plays is The Old Wives' Tale (1952) in which Milton found
some suggestions for his Contras. It is a pleasing extravaganza. It has poetic
qualities of a high order; but George Peele has no dramatic sense and can write
only masques and lyrical pieces.
(a) He widened the range of English drama by writing a romantic tragedy, a
chronicle history, a kind of mystery play and a romantic literary satire. In all of
them we notice a high level of poetic attainment.
(b) As a humorist he showed the way to Shakespeare. He could induce laughter
of a peculiar mellowed sort by the juxtaposition of reality and romance, and he
could create an atmosphere which unites these two worlds in one harmony.
(c) Into the purely romantic fantasy, Peele succeeded in introducing an amount
of literary satire. The Old Wives' Tale is the first dramatic literary satire in
English. In it he does not create laughter by comic presentation or clownery, but
by dramatic irony in the contrast of romantic plot and realistic diction.
3. Robert Greene (1560-92), also one of the University Wits, is known primarily
for his Friar Bacon and Friar Bungey.

The comedy is a fusion of diverse elements and marks a stage in the

development of the English drama.
(1) Its blank verse has the energy, vigor and flexibility of the blank verse of
Marlowe in Tamburlaine and Faustus.
(2) The tricks which the two magicians play on each other again remind us of Dr.
Faustus. They provide the comic underplot.
(3) Real pictures of the English countryside have been introduced through the
details of the work of dairy— farming. We get idyllic, romantic scenes of love
against a country background.
(4) Its heroine, Margaret, is a real English girl, but a halo of romance has been
cast over her. It is an idyllic portrait of a real English country girl. "The character
of Margaret, really a pure English girl in love, has no precedent in drama"
(Legouis). She is like a first sketch of Shakespeare's heroines.
(a) Greene paid great attention to plot. He was a master of the art of plot
construction. With him the love story becomes central in the art of drama. He
supplied what Lyly lacked— a complicated story and simple human feeling. His
Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay illustrates this point. In this play he contributed
much to the development of romantic comedy. Its plot is based on the theme of
love.
(b) Greene deftly interwoven diverse moods and surroundings in Friar Bacon
and Friar Bungay, and James the IV, which are his best romantic comedies. We
have three distinct worlds mingled together – the world of magic, the world of
aristocratic life, and the world of the country. In this way he guided
Shakespeare in the writing of A Midsummer Night's Dream. There is peculiar
romantic humor and a rare combination of realism and idealism in these two
plays.

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(c) Greene's contribution to the portrayal of women characters, especially of
romantic heroines, is noticeable. He is the first to draw the Rosalinds and Cialis.
Margaret and Dorothea are excellent portraits of women. The real and the ideal
are commingled in the portrayal of these characters.
4. Thomas Lodge (1558-1625). Thomas Lodge's The Wounds of Civil War
contains hardly anything that is new. He does not rise above mediocrity. Lodge,
who has decided power over the lyric and a charm in his fiction, gave practically
nothing to the theater.
5. Thomas Nash (1558-1625). He was a pamphleteer and story writer. He also
tried his hand at drama. He collaborated with Marston in his Dido and in The
Isle of Dogs.
6. Thomas Kyde (1558-94) a university scholar and a law student, is known for
his The Spanish Tragedy. The tragedies of the Greek dramatist Seneca were his
favorite reading and the chief characteristics of the Senecan tragedy re-appear
in his masterpiece.

The Spanish Tragedy (1585) is a landmark in English tragedy due to

following reasons:
(a) It is a well-constructed play. The author has skilfully woven passion, pathos
and fear until they reach a climax. The play is full of strong external action. The
stage effects are well managed and murders are thrillingly committed.
(b) Kyd succeeded in producing dialogue that is forceful and capable.
(c) Kyd brought the revenge theme to the stage. He, thus, influenced
Shakespeare's Hamlet and Webster's The Duchess of Malfi.
(d) The device of play within play, which Shakespeare employed in Hamlet, is
used for the first time in The Spanish Tragedy.
(e) Kyd contributed a new type of tragic hero to the stage. The main characters
in the tragedy up to his time had been afflicted princes or grandiloquent
supermen. In the character of Hieronimo, Kyd presented the hesitating type,
seen most magnificently in Hamlet, and allied that with madness, feigned or
real. It was the subtlety of characterisation that appealed to his generation.
Hieronimo brings English drama to Hamlet.
Arden of Feversham (1586) is a remarkable domestic tragedy from the pen of
some unknown writer. Its greatness lies in its psychological truth, and its
character-drawing. Its theme is the murder of a husband by his adulterous wife
and her lover. The dramatist shows keen insight into the souls of the guilty, the
tortures they undergo, and the scorpions they have within them. Their suffering
souls are laid bare before the audience and the readers. "The dramatic force
and truth of characterisation have led some to attribute the play to
Shakespeare, assigning it to his early period." However, there is so much
vulgarity and crudity in it that it cannot be reconciled with the works of
Shakespeare.
7. Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593)
Christopher Marlowe, the son of a shoemaker of Canterbury, is the only
dramatist before Shakespeare, who is still read with enthusiasm. A patron sent

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him to Cambridge from where he graduated at the age of nineteen. He came to
London, became an actor and led a reckless life. He lived in a low tavern
atmosphere of excess and wretchedness. His was a godless life and he enjoyed
a reputation as 'Atheist and Epicure', contempt and mocker of religion. At the
age of twenty-three he dazzled the London stage with his first play Tamburlaine.
In five years he produced all his great work. His plays have been widely
appreciated through the ages. It is unfortunate that such a great dramatist led
a dissipated life which cost him his life at the age of twenty-nine. He was
stabbed in a drunken brawl and died in a tavern
Marlowe's Works: During the short span of his life, Marlowe reoriented British
drama by imparting to it a new mold, technique, conception and versification.
Important works:
1. Tumberlaine
2. Doctor Faustus
3. The Jew of Malta

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