Criticism II

Chapter (1)
Brief Background of Literary Criticism
Literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and
interpretation of literature. The word 'criticism' is derived from the
Greek word 'kritikos' and Latin-word 'criticus', its place was taken
in the 2nd century A.D. aimed at the interpretation of texts and
words and the improvement of the works of writers in Greek or
Latin. In English, It was Dryden who first used the word 'criticism'
in print at least, in the now familiar sense of 'any formal discussion
of literature." It is derived from the Greek word meaning
“judgment”; therefore, criticism is the exercise of judgment, and
literary criticism is the exercise of judgment on works of literature.
In the preface of The State of Innocence (1677) he writes,
"Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant a
standard of judging well." Today, the term literary criticism aims
at the study of works of literature with emphasis on their
evaluation. From this, it would be clear that the nature and
function of literary criticism is simple and easy to understand to
some extent. Criticism is the play of the mind on a work of
literature, and its function is to examine its perfection and defects,
and at the end to evaluate its artistic value. That is why; the nature
and function of criticism will be discussed in details, and a lot of
conflicting views, definitions and theories.

3
 Criticism cannot exist without creation. Creation comes
first, criticism next. The function of criticism is to interpret, and
to judge literary works in an unbiased and dispassionate manner
so that the creative writers produce excellent works and the
readers enjoy literature in an enlightened manner. Abercrombie
writes: "Criticism enables the man who has the energy to create
literature, to make the most intelligent, and therefore, the most
efficient use of his energy; and just so criticism enables the man
who has the capacity to enjoy literature, to make his enjoyment
the most intelligent, and therefore the most discriminating and
most illuminating, kind of experience." Criticism is, thus, distinct
from creation and enjoyment and consists in asking and
answering rational questions about literature.

In its strict sense, criticism firstly means judgment. The

literary critic, therefore, is primarily an expert who uses his
special faculty and training to examine the merits and defects of a
piece of literary art or the work of a given author and, pronounce
a verdict upon it. The primary function of a literary critic is to
arrive at and pronounce a meaningful judgment of value. I.A.
Richards says:” To set up as a critic is to set up as a judge of
values.” Literary criticism, says Rene wellek ” is judgment of
books, reviewing and finally the definition of taste, of the
tradition, of what is a classic.”

4
 Secondly, its function is to evaluate. When a critic attempts
to judge the value of a work of art or literature, he can be said to
have evaluated the work. “Evaluative, judicial, or normative
criticism attempts to judge the merits of the literature in relation
to literary, social, moral, or other, value system.” (Lee T. Lemon:
A Glossary for the study of English, p.99). T.G.williams says:
“The function of a literary critic is the evaluation of what has been
written, in terms of aesthetic principles appropriate to literature”
(English Literature, Critical Survey).

Thirdly, its function is to interpret. If judgment be the real

end of criticism, interpretation may be employed as a means to
that end. “ To feel the virtue of the or the painter, to disengage it,
to set it forth- these are the three stages of the critic’s duty”
(Walter Pater). Poetry is a “ criticism (interpretation) of life.”
Criticism is an interpretation of that interpretation. The chief
function of criticism is to enlighten and stimulate by the proper
interpretation of the works of literature. If a great poet makes us
partakers of his larger sense of the meaning of life, a great critic
may make us partakers of his larger sense of the meaning of
literature. Walter Peter suitably says: “criticism is the art of
interpreting criticism.” Carlyle’s for criticism: “criticism stands
like an interpreter between inspired and the uninspired; between
the prophet and those who hear the melody of his words, and

5
catch the glimpse of their material meaning, but understand not
their deeper import.” Matthew Arnold defines criticism as an
endeavor to learn and propagate the best that is known and
thought in the world.

Briefly, a critic is an ideal judge and reader who brings to

bear a trained judgment on whatever he reads. He rationally and
intellectually examines a work of art or literature and, then, passes
his own judgment about its worth and merit. Webster's New
International Dictionar y defines criticism as "the art of judging or
evaluation with knowledge and propriety the beauties and faults
of works of art or literature". To Matthew Arnold, "Criticism is a
disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is
known and thought in the world." Criticism, says T. S. Eliot, is
the "commentation and exposition of works of art by means of
written words." He adds that the end of criticism is "the
elucidation of works of art and the correction of taste." These
definitions of criticism throw light on its nature and function.

The Changing role of Criticism:

Views regarding the functions of criticism and the role of

critics have kept on changing through the ages. Every age has
tended to assign a different Function or functions to criticism. The
earliest systematic critic, Plato, for example, was concerned with
the problem of defining the utility of poetry in the educational

6
system of his ideal state, found poetry wanting, and so banished
poets from his ideal commonwealth. His approach was
fundamentally utilitarian, and he condemned poetry as immoral
and untruthful Following Plato’s condemnation, criticism for long
centuries to come was pre-occupied with justifying imaginative
literature, more specially poetry. Aristotle took up to the
challenge of Plato and asserted the superiority of Poetry over
Philosophy, and Sir Philip Sydney wrote his famous treatise in
defence of poetry. All through the Renaissance the chief purpose
of critical writing was to set up a defence of poetry, and to
emphasize its moral value. All through the neo-classical age,
criticism was concerned with demonstrating that poetry both
instructs and delights.

Critics from the earliest times have also thought that the
chief business of criticism was to leach the writer how to write
effectively. The general statement of Aristotle and Horace were
narrowed down to dogmatic 'rules' and writers were advised to
follow them strictly. The Augustans were of the view that the
chief end of criticism was to devise rules and regulations for the
guidance of writers, and then to judge a work on the basis of these
rules. Pope admirably sums up the classical view of criticism
when he advises writers to make the study of the ancients their
chief delight, learn from the rules of good writing. Writers must

7
adhere to these rules when they create, and critics must judge
strictly on the basis of these 'rules'.

A critic has given considerable thought to poetic theory,

and through his criticism has done much to stimulate re-thinking.
Criticism of such poet-Critics is of much value and significance.
It however, such a view of the function of criticism soon became
outmoded. With the rise of romantic individualism, the
conception of the function underwent a radical change. It was
now realized that the chief function of criticism is aesthetic, i.e. to
promote appreciation and enjoyment of literature. The critic is a
man of taste; he himself enjoys what he tries to convey his own
aesthetic pleasure to his readers. Highest critics is the expression
of the personal impression of an exceptionally gifted and sensitive
individual; it is a record of his own aesthetic pleasure and
response to a work of art and it stimulates and encourages the
readers, and helps them to understand literature.

It was also during the romantic era that a number of critics

wrote to promote a better understanding of the process of
creation. The best of such critics have been the poets themselves,
and they have written in order to convey their literary theories—
their views of poetic creation—to their readers. Thus the purpose
of Wordsworth's criticism is to explain to his readers his own
poetic theory, and in this wav to create the taste by which his

8
poems could be enjoyed. Coleridge, another poet critic made
minute and subtle Studies of the process of poetic creation and
tried to formulate principles of poetic composition. In our own
day, T.S. Eliothas been a great irritant to thought.

Impressionistic criticism often tends to be wayward and

unbalanced. Therefore, the need was soon felt to discipline the
personal like rand dislikes, prejudices and predilections, of the
critic, and bring literary criticism in touch with the main currents
of literary social thought. Thus during the Victorian era, Matthew
Arnold wrote that criticism is, "the endeavor to learn and
propagate the best that is known and thought in the world." In this
way, the scope of critical inquiry was much widened, and
criticism became a handmaid to culture and education by
propagating the best that is known and thought. Such criticism
establishes a current of noble ideas, and thus creates the proper
atmosphere in which great literature becomes possible. In this
way, criticism promotes creation; critical activity of a high order
is considered necessary for successful creation. Indeed, critics like
T.S. Eliot are of the view that much critical labor must precede
and accompany the labor of creation.

In the modern age, there has been a considerable widening

of the scope of criticism. There is a bewildering multiplicity of
views and theories regarding the scope and function of literary

9
criticism. Broadly speaking, modern criticism is of two kinds:
(a)extrinsic criticism, and (a) Ontological criticism. Extrinsic
criticism is criticism which takes into consideration the current
psychological, socio-logical and cultural concept and relates a
work closely to the life and age of its writer. It studies the Impact
of social conditions on literature, as also how far literature tends
to mould the age in which it is written. It enables us to judge a
particular work in its social and biographical context. Ontological
criticism, on the other hand, focuses its attention entirely and
exclusively on the work under study. For an ontological critic
or 'New Critic', the poem is the thing in itself and the text is
minutely examined and studied, word by word, and line by line,
without any reference to any other extrinsic considerations.
Obscure allusions, references, quotations, etc., are thus explained
away and a better and clearer understanding of the meaning of the
text is promoted. Such Textual or Formalistic criticism is
criticism in the service of the reader; it serves to bring the reader
closer to the mind of the author. It is explanatory and
interpretative and so conducive to a healthier and more intelligent
appreciation.

Principles of Criticism:

Next, the question arises as to how criticism is to discharge

its functions, what standards of judgment should be followed, and

10
what should be the qualifications and equipment of a critic. Every
piece of literature has three distinct and characteristic elements
ofexcellence in varying degrees—matter, manner and capacity to
please or impart aesthetic pleasure by appealing to our
imagination, and the critic must judge and evaluate all these three
elements of excellence. During earliest times criticism was
concerned with the devising of rules by which to judge the
technical excellence—plot-construction, diction, style, metre,
language, etc,—of a piece of literature. Such were the 'rules'
supposedly derived from Aristotle, by which literary excellence
was measured all through the Pseudo-classical era. But the
essential literary quality is not technical excellence, but appeal to
the imagination, and this appeal to the imagination may be
examined with reference to certain basic principles. While 'rules'
may change from age to age, these principles are universal and
permanent, because they are related to the basic elements of
human nature. It is on these Essential principles that criticism has
tended more and more to base its judgments, and thus to evaluate
and bring out the permanent appeal of literature.

These essential principles are three in number. First, it is

the principle of truth. Truth is the final test of merit in literature,
for a work, which does not correspond with the facts of life or
with the universal and fundamental beliefs of humankind, cannot

11
be regarded as great whatever its technical excellence may be. But
the truth of literature is different from the truth of science or logic.
Poetic truth is the truth of idea the generalized experience which
forms the content of a work of art must conform to the
generalized experience of the human race. As Aristotle said,
"Poetry has a wider truth, and a higher aim than history, for
poetry deals with the universal, history with the particular", or in
the words of Wordsworth, "Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of
all knowledge." And since the general tense of mankind on
matters of the highest importance is embodied in the code of
social laws, the observance of which is called morality, "it follows
that the connection between the highest and best creative work
and morality is by no means an artificial connection. The morality
of one country or of one society differs in certain respects from
that of another; the morality of the West is markedly different
from the morality of the East; but, notwithstanding these
differences, there are certain principles which—as principles—are
universally accepted by all civilized societies"—(Worsfold). A
novel or a poem which represents that an immoral man (in this
sense) is happier than a moral man does not possess the truth of
idea which is the proper truth of creative literature; for the
experience which the author has embodied in his creation does not
correspond with the generalized experience of the race as
expressed in the laws of morality. Such works, therefore, are

12
condemned by an application of this principle of truth. As
morality is the aggregate experience and wisdom of a given
society, or of society in general, "‘the matter of books which are
in conflict with morality is ex hypothesi condemned by this
supreme test of truth."

The second essential principle by which the permanent

worth of an author is to be assessed is the principle of symmetry.
This principle implies right selection and arrangement of material.
"It implies that the writer should select certain aspects of reality,
and not all reality, and then his material should be so arranged as
to throw the selected aspects of reality into sharp relief." Aristotle
laid great stress on the principle of symmetry, for it is essential for
that artistic beauty on which the imaginative universal appeal of
literature depends. The critic must examine if the various parts of
a composition are organically related to each other or not, whether
they are proportionate to each other, and to the composition, as a
whole, or not. "The test of symmetry is indirectly a means by
which the presence of the dominant artistic quality can be
discovered and measures"—(Worsfold)

The third principle is the principle of idealization. This

principle implies not only that certain aspects or reality should be
selected for artistic treatment but also that, "the selection so made
should exclude such matter as affects unpleasantly the aesthetic

13
consciousness of the reader." Such aspects of reality must be
rigidly kept out as lesson or remove that 'beauty' by virtue which

Types of Criticism

The word criticism is loosely applied to different kinds of

literary inquiry, which are detailed below: Legislative Criticism:
It also includes the rhetoric. It is the earliest kind of criticism. It is
that form of critical endeavour which lays down rules for the art
of writing, largely based on standard works of literature,
especially those of Greek and Latin. It claims to teach the poet
how to write or how to write better. It assumes that the critic is the
law giver and the writer's duty is to put those rules into practice
without any interrogation. The Augustans thought that the key
function of criticism was to frame set rules for the guidance of
writers, and then to judge a work on the basis of these rules.
Writers must strictly follow these rules when they create, and
critics must judge strictly on the basis of these rules. Aristotle,
Horace, Dionysius, Quintillian and Longinus among the ancients;
and Vida, Racine, Boileau, Roscommon etc. among the moderns
were the masters of criticism, whom the writers must follow with
utmost fidelity. Legislative criticis.

Legislative criticism was practised during the Elizabethan

period. Sidney was the only exception. Nearly all Elizabethan
critics directed their remarks to poets rather than to readers of

14
poetry. Aesthetic or Theoretical Criticism :Legislative criticism
restrains the poet or writer from the fullest possible development
of his genius. The fetters of rules, prescribed by the ancients
restrict his imagination and, thus, cast an uncongenial influence
on the full blossoming of his talent. Aesthetic criticism, on the
other hand, treats literature as an art— an independent activity of
the mind, having an end of its own. It has no relation with any
other activity in the field of science, religion, morality, politics,
economy etc. It probes the nature of the literary art as such and
formulates its theories accordingly. Sidney'sApologie for Poetrie
(1595), which appeared nine years after his heroic death, is the
first great example of aesthetic criticism in English. During the
seventeenth century Dryden showed a continuing but occasional
interest in the aesthetics. A gradual shift in interest from Platonic
issues as the exploration of poetic truth towards psychological
questions as the nature of the creative act widened the scope of
theoretical criticism from Hobbes onwards. Addison's .essays on
Imagination in the Spectator, Lord Kames' Treatises, Burke's The
Sublime and the Beautiful (1757), Sir Joshua Reynold's
Discourses (1778), Coleridge's Biographia Literaria , the critical
writings of Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde, I.A. Richards and
Collingwood are some of the finest specimens of aesthetic
criticism.

15
 Descriptive Criticism: It is the latest and most popular of
all the three critical modes. It consists of a study of individual
works, of their aims, methods and effects. Legislative criticism
addresses itself to the writer, descriptive criticism is directed to
the readers. The poets and writers, who have analysed their own
works with a view to explaining their own aims and methods,
have been the most powerful exponents of descriptive criticism. It
begins, with self-justification of poets who discuss their own
works with a view to defending them against hostile criticism.

Descriptive criticism is about some particular text, whether

of the critic's own or of another. The critic, instead of
propounding general rules or theorising in general terms, analyses
the work in hand, traces the influences that have given rise to it,
and then discusses it critically item by item."

The earliest example of descriptive criticism in English is

Ben Jonsons Conversations with Drummond. Dryden's Essay on
Dramatic Poetry is the first great landmark in descriptive
criticism.

Pope, Addison, Fielding, Dr. Johnson, Wordsworth,

Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt, Matthew Arnold, Henry James, T. S.
Eliot, I. A. Richards, F.R. Leavis, William Empson etc. have been
the practitioners of descriptive criticism.

16
 Impressionistic Criticism: It records the personal
experiences of the writer. An impressionistic critic is not
concerned either with the judgement or evaluation of a work of
art, either with aesthetic approach or with biographical
exploration of a piece of literature. He only aims at presenting in
finished language his own "impression" of a work of art. Walter
Pater, one of the most distinguished impressionistic critics,
remarks that "in aesthetic criticism the first step towards seeing
one's object as it really is, is to discriminate it, to realise it
distinctly." Oscar Wilde, George Moore, Arthur Symons and
Virginia Woolf are famous critics who have attempted
impressionistic criticism. It is individualistic and tends to be
wayward and erratic. It is to restrain this tendency of
waywardness that T.S. Eliot and other modern critics stress the
need of tradition and authority in criticism.

Psychological Criticism: Psychological criticism has been

very popular in modern age. A. A. Brill's translations of Freud's
Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex (1910) and The
Interpretations of Dreams (1912) greatly influenced both literature
and literary criticism. Freud interpreted man and human nature in
the light of his libidinous compulsions and the repressions society
forced upon him. To him man is sick rather than villainous. The
unconscious expressed itself in varied manifestations. It

17
fascinated the Romanticists. Under the influence of Freudian
psychology both the romantic and realistic writers began to delve
deeper in exploring the unconscious and varied manifestations of
regressions of man. The impact of psychology upon creative
literature was strengthened by the influence of Adler's concept of
the inferiority complex and of Jung's theory of the collective
unconscious. F. J. Hoffman in Freudianism and the Literary Mind
(1945) studied the influence of Freudianism on the works of
Lawrence, Mann, Sherwood Anderson and others. May Sinclair,
Joyce, Katherine Mansfield, Graham Greene, Dylan Thomas and
Virginia Woolf too were influenced by modern psychology.

In the field of criticism Dr. Ernest Jones attempted to

interpret Shakespeare's Hamlet in the light of Freudian
psychology. Conrad Aiken's Scepticisms : Notes on
Contemporary Poetry (1919), Herbert Read's Reason and
Romanticism (1926), LA. Richards' Principles of Literary
Criticism (1924), F.L. Lucas'Literature and Psychology (1951)
and many other critical works were influenced by psychological
researches.

Psychology has provided the critic with a more precise

language for the discussion of creative process. It enables the
critic to study 'the interior life' of the writer, and then to study his
works with reference to it. The unconscious repressions and

18
drives of the artist are discovered, and this results in a better
understanding and more exact interpretation of his art.
Biographical study is essential for psychological criticism.

Psychological criticism has its own limitations. All

literature is not an expression of repressions, libidinous
compulsions, inferiority complex and the unconscious. Art is
certainly different from dream. The artist is largely, or to some
extent, in control of his product, as the dreamer is not. "The dream
may be compulsive confession; art is composed expression." Its
main limitation, as J. T. Shipley points out, is that "it becomes
dangerous only when sincere individual convictions are taken as
universal laws."

Sociological Criticism: Sociological criticism enjoys

much popularity in the twentieth century. It regards a literary
work as a product of social factors and forces prevailing in a
particular society at a particular time. Taine, the French thinker,
pronounced that literature is deeply influenced by the moment, the
race and the milieu. It examines a literary work in the context of
the social conditions of its author.

A work of art is examined in its social context and it also

studies its social effects. Henry Levin rightly points out: "The
relations between literature and society are reciprocal. Literature

19
is not only the effect of social causes, it is also the cause of social
effects."

Literature reflects social values. The two can never be

divorced. Edmund Wilson traces sociological criticism to Vico's
eighteenth century study of Homer's epics, which revealed the
social conditions in which the Greek poet lived. Hicks' Proletarian
Literature (1935), Cecil Dony Lewis' The Mind in Chains (1937),
Bernard Smith's Forces in American Criticism (1939), V. F.
Calvertan's The Liberation of American Literature (1931), Ralph
Fox's Novel and the People (1937), F. O. Matthiessen's American
Renaissance (1941) and L. C. Knight's Drama and Society in the
Age of Jonson (1937) are some of the noticeable studies on
sociological criticism.

Marxist criticism of literature is a specialised form of

criticism. It is based on the teachings of Karl Marx and Engels.
As a systematic doctrine it influenced Russian, American and
English writings.

It is frankly didactic and propagandist. It lost its central

strength and ceased to be a major force in literary criticism with
the outbreak of World War II in l939.

Archetypal Criticism : Archetypal criticism, which is also

known as the totemic, mythological or ritualistic, has drawn
considerable attention recently. It is based on minute textual

20
analysis because the critic has to demonstrate some basic cultural
pattern of great meaning and appeal to humanity in a work of
literature. This approach reflects strong interest in myth and the
influence of Frazer and Jung. Frazer's The Golden Bough, which
appeared in twelve volumes from 1890 to 1915 is a monumental
study of magic and religion, tracing numerous myths to their
prehistoric origins. Carl Gustav Jung formed the theory of
collective consciousness which means that, "civilized man
preserves, though unconsciously, those prehistoric areas of
knowledge which he articulated obliquely in primitive myths."
James Frazer and Jessie Weston have painstakingly studied
primitive myths and have demonstrated that human behaviour and
culture follow the same patterns in all ages and places. Defining
archetypal criticism M. H. Abrams writes: "The term has been
much employed in literary criticism ever since the appearance of
Maud Bodkin's Archetypal Patterns in Poetry (1934). In criticism
'archetype' is applied to narrative designs, character types, or
images which are said to be identifiable in a wide variety of works
of literature as well as in myths, dreams and even ritualised modes
of social behaviour. Similarities within these diverse phenomena
are held to reflect a set of universal, primitive and elemental
patterns whose effective embodiment in a literary work evokes a
profound response from the reader." The voyage in Coleridge's
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is an archetype of spiritual

21
journey which all men experience. The Ancient Mariner himself
is the archetype of the man who offends God. James Joyce, Yeats,
Robert Graves, and T. S. Eliot have abundantly used various
myths and archetypal patterns in their writings.

Inductive Criticism: Inductive criticism discards set rules

and principles in judging works of literature. Inductive critic
approaches literature in the spirit of pure investigation. In the
words of Prof. Richard Moulten : "The inductive critics review
the phenomena of literature as they actually stand, inquiring into
and endeavouring to systematize the laws and principles by which
they are moulded and produce their effects and recognise no court
of appeal to the literary works themselves." The laws of art are
found in the practice of artists and not in set rules.

Comparative Criticism: It seeks to evaluate a work by

comparing it with other works of similar nature, either in one's
language or in other languages. Matthew Arnold was the first
staunch advocate of comparative criticism. He asserted that it is
the duty of the critic to know the best that has been thought and
said, both in ancient and modern literatures. The critic must know
passages, extracts, quotations from different works of literature
and must compare them with similar passages of the work under
consideration in order to know its real and intrinsic worth.
Comparison must be made between works of the same type and

22
genre. Arnold calls it the 'touchstone method which is both
illuminating and interesting.

Textual or Ontological Criticism: In it, the critic minutely

analyses the structure of a literary piece and the various elements
— words, images, diction, style, tone, theme etc.—that help in the
formation of the structure. The critic ignores all extrinsic factors
as Biography, History, Sociology, Psychology etc. The
ontological critic arrives at the true meaning of the writer through
such rigorous analysis. The 'new critics' regard poetry as a great
source of knowledge that cannot be communicated in terms other
than its own. They popularised the ontological criticism in
modern age. Robert Pen Warren remarks : "Poetry does not inhere
any particular element but depends upon the set of relationships,
the structure, which we call the poem."

Qualifications of a Critic

A critic's task is very difficult. He has to play many roles.

He corrects our tastes, justifies them and sometimes creates new
tastes. In order to master his craft he needs a special training. His
success depends greatly upon a natural aptitude for it. In short,
only an exceptionally qualified and gifted man can perform his
task well. In the first place, a critic must be a man of wide and
varied learning, because only then he can have sufficient materials
on which to base his judgments. In order to have proper standards

23
of evaluation he must be thoroughly acquainted with the great
authors in several languages. According to Matthew Arnold the
first great requisite for a critic is the acquisition of "knowledge,
and ever fresh knowledge." He says that "every critic should try
and possess one great literature, at least, besides his own; and the
more unlike his own, the better." T. S. Eliot regards the whole of
European literary tradition, from the beginning down to his own
day, as one tradition, and enjoins on the critic to acquire as much
of it as he can. It is only such knowledge that can enable the critic
to judge particular works in a proper perspective.

Secondly, a critic must-have proper training and technical

skill in the different branches of literature. It means that a critic
must serve a long apprenticeship in learning the fundamentals of
his trade. For example, a critic of Shakespeare cannot write with
confidence and authority without a comprehensive knowledge of
various types of drama, the England of Shakespeare's age, the
University Wits, the Elizabethan theatre, stage etc. All this
technical information is essential for him and its right use
constitutes technical skill.

Thirdly, a critic should maintain a strictly detached point of

view. He should not allow his own preferences to influence his
judgement. He should be unbiased and unprejudiced in his
approach and he should be able to rise above political, religious

24
and other considerations. He should not show any obvious bias to
any writer, as Dr. Johnson did to Milton, or he should not show
excessive fondness to any writer, as Dryden did to Chaucer. He
should have sympathy for a work of art, and try his best to give a
fair criticism even of something which he may personally dislike.

Fourthly, a critic must have imaginative sympathy with the

writer. He must imaginatively identify himself with the author,
and thus, try to see things from his point of view, and share his
vision of life. It is only through such imaginative sympathy that a
critic can properly understand the real meaning and purpose of an
author, and can impartially bring out the real significance of his
work. Unless the critic has some imagination, some share of
heavenly spark, he will utterly fail in his task. Imaginative writers
like Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, De Quincy, Coleridge and Arnold are
good critics. A good critic must always be close to the artist's
point of view, and that he cannot do unless he himself has in him
thepoetic touch. Ben Jonson rightly observed: "To judge of poets
is only the faculty of poets."

Fifthly, a critic must possess a sound knowledge of human

life, nature and psychology. Literature mirrors life, so a thorough
knowledge of life is essential for a correct judgement and
evaluation of literature. A good and gifted critic must also have
the philosophical mind, that is, he must be able to distinguish

25
between reality and appearance. It is this capacity which makes
Hazlitt, De Quincey and Lessing great critics. They had also the
gift of communicating that distinction in the most appropriate
language. So a critic must have the teaching or communicating
capacity. He must have the capacity of expressing his ideas in a
readable and appealing language. Some of the prominent critics
like Dryden, Johnson, Hazlitt, Arnold, Pater, Ruskin, T. S. Eliot
were illustrious writers of prose.

Summarising the qualities of a great critic Oscar Wilde

writes : "Who is the true critic but he who bears within himself
the dreams, and ideas, and feelings of myriads of generations and
to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional impulse
obscure ? And who the true man of culture, if not he who by fine
scholarship and fastidious rejection has made instinct self-
conscious and intelligent, and can separate the work that has
distinction from the work that has it not, and so by contact and
comparison makes himself master of the secrets of style and
school, and understands their meanings and listens to their voice,
and develops that spirit of disinterested curiosity which is the real
root, as it is the real flower, of the intellectual life, and thus,
attains to intellectual clarity, and, having learned, "the best that is
known and thought in the world", lives with those who are
immortals."

26
Some Critical and Literary Terms

The purpose of the present chapter is to provide the reader

with a little rudimentary knowledge of such critical terms as are
likely to be used in a book on criticism like the present one, and in
this way to avoid confusion and misunderstanding.

Aestheticism:

The word means enjoyment and appreciation of beauty.

The word is used loosely for a late 19th century movement which
aimed it the enjoyment of art for art’s sake, without any reference
to its moral effects. Among literary critic Walter Paler is the best
known exponent of their movement.

Allegory:

Allegory is basically a technique of vision seeking to

convey abstract and philosophical truths through concrete
examples. Allegories are often stories with a hidden moral
significance. They convey metaphorically some spiritual or
ethical ideas. Such allegories are purposely didactic. "In other
allegories, however, there may lie behind the 'front' story some
political, literary, or even personal attack; such allegories are
satirical." Allegories may be sustained or short; they may be
independent wholes or may be imbedded in non-allegorical
composition. They may appear in the form of prose, poetry, or

27
drama. Fables and Parables are special forms of allegory, which
seek to convey moral truth through animal stories.
Bunyan’s Pilgrim's Progress and Spenser's Fairy Queene are the
two best known allegories in the English Language, and
Aesop's Fables are the best known fables.

'Barlesque' and 'Parody':

Burlesque is a term applied generally to any farcical

composition in which a serious subject is treated ludicrously.
More specially, the manner of one or more literary works may be
held up to ridicule. It creates loud laughter through exaggeration.
An elevated subject may be handled in a trivial manner. Although
the words burlesque and parody are often used interchangeably,
the word parody is more commonly applied to a ludicrous
imitation of a single work and lacks the farcical connotation
of burlesque.

'Classic' and 'Classicism', Pseudo-Classicism:

In a general sense, die term classic denotes any artistic

achievement of permanent excellence, to works which stand in a
class by themselves. More specifically, it refers to the art and
literature of ancient Greece and Rome. The word classicism is
used loosely to summarize the general characteristics of the
classic art and literature of ancient Rome and Greece—simplicity,
restraint, and order—and the adjective 'classic' and 'classical' are

28
thus applied to any work which reflects those qualities. Thus, the
restraint and order of classicism are often opposed to the
enthusiasm and freedom of romanticism. The Age of Pope,
marked by order and dignity—if only in a limited sense of the
words—and by a slavish imitation of the ancients, is sometimes
called the Classic Age, sometimes the Pseudo-classic, and at other
times the Neo-Classic (or new classic) Age. 'Neo-classic' implies
not only new but also false because the body and the rules, but not
the essential spirit of antiquity, were reproduced in the imitation.
Hence, it is also called pseudo-classicism.

Diction:

It is the choice and arrangement of words in a line of

poetry. Every poet has his own diction, but the poets of the 18th
century paid special attention to their diction.

Euphuism:

Euphuism was a prose style which flourished during the

reign of Elizabeth. John Lyly was its author. It derives its name
from his work Euphues. Its chief characteristics are the constant
use of balance and antithesis, complex schemes of alliteration,
and a profusion ' of far-fetched metaphorical comparisons,
similes, and other .figures of speech.

29
Expressionism:

"Expressionism is a term used in literature and literary

criticism, to indicate that in revealing his ideas, .and particularly
his moods, the artist or writer is concerned not with the exact
reproduction of obvious details but, through these, with the
sensations that lie behind. Since conscientious reproduction of the
superficial aspects of the object is of no immediate concern to the
author, such details are usually scarified to allow the impressions
to pass through them" — (Watt and Watt). Thus in painting, the
conception of country peace would not be expressed by a
conventional representation of herd of cows chewing the cud
calmly by a silent brook, but unarticulated details of cows,
brooks, trees, which collectively would express this idea."

Expressionism in literature:

It springs from the same motive. "The expressionistic

writer is quite ready to sacrifice all conventional forms and
practices m composition, so that there may emerge through, work
the intellectual or emotional abstractions which he wishes to
express" —(Watt and Watt). Paragraphs, sentences, words—even
letters, sometimes—are not permitted to intrude between the
writer and his purpose. As a result, to the average reader, the
composition may seem like a mass of "clotted nonsense", with no
familiar word order, and with many strange words, punctuations,

30
exclamations in the medley, "Since simple clarity of idea cannot
be the objective of the expressionist, his work, like that of the
expressionistic painter, frequently demands an interpreter.
Expressionism is essentially modern and T.S. Eliot and James
Joyce are its most famous exponents"—(Watt and Watt).

Fable:

A Fable may be defined as a short, allegorical tale in prose

or verse designed to convey a moral lesson. The characters in the
fable are usually, but not always, speaking animals or inanimate
objects which symbolize human beings. The most famous
collection of fables is that attributed to Aesop, a Greek writer of
the sixth century B.C. Many of Aesop’s fables have become so
widely known in English that often a single phrase from one—
such as “sour grapes"—suggests the entire story. "The term fable
was also used in literary criticism in the neo-classical period for
the plot or action of a narrative and particularly of an epic
poem”—(Watt and Watt). We often come across this word in the
critical discussions of Aristotle’s Poetics.

Farce:

Farce is a term which was applied at the end of the

seventeenth century to any short humorous play, but now it is
commonly applied to a humorous play in which plot and incident
is exaggerated. Farces are usually marked by the boisterous stage

31
business and loud laughter which is variously designated as
slapstick and horseplay. In general, face bears the same relation to
high comedy that melodrama bears to high tragedy.

Humanism:

The word Humanisin was used for the Graeco-Roman

culture which in the fifteenth century gradually took the place of
medieval Scholasticism in Christian Europe. "With the movement
known as the Renaissance there evolved at the close of the Middle
Ages a philosophy that was less abstract and speculative than that
of the Schoolmen and more concerned with the relationship of
human beings and the world in which they lived"—(Watt and
Watt). This philosophy is called Humanism. "The Humanists
were anti-Aristotelian, their methods of reasoning were inductive,
and they were concerned with the revival of the classical learning
of Greece and Rome, and with knowledge based on experiment
and not on the untested pronouncement of authorities." To the
Humanists, as T.H. Huxley said, skepticism was not a sin but a
virtue. The attitude of the Humanists was, in brief, that of the
modern world, and from the fifteenth century onwards the
influence of Humanism has been overwhelming. Humanists are
concerned with all things human, with human Iife in the s world
and hot in the other world.

32
Impressionism:

Impressionism is a theory of art and literature, "based upon

the conception that objects should be represented not in any great
detail but as, at the moment of observation, they have impressed
the painter or writer. Impressionists seek to present their subjects
in terms of the immediate sense impression; in other words, they
work subjectively"—(Watt and Watt). In literature, in all elements
of his composition—episodes, characters, setting, moods—the
impressionistic writer attempts to present through a few highly
selected details the impression that his materials have made upon
him. These various elements, in short, become the media through
which he conveys hit impressions to his reader. Impressionistic
literature tends, therefore to be breathless and sketchy. "The
impressionist is concerned with reproducing through essential
details, his own immediate impressions; the expressionist is
concerned with presenting some abstract emotion or idea which
lies behind the details and is inherent in the object itself"—(Watt
and Watt).

Imagery:

Images are essentially figures of speech such as similar

metaphor, etc. They are called images because in them one thing
is imaged or expressed in another. Imagery is used by poets to

33
decorate their language and to convey their meaning vividly and
clearly.

Melodrama:

The melodrama was originally a popular romantic play in

which sentimental, tense, and exaggerated situations were further
emotionalized by the employment of interpretative song and
instrumental music. "The type developed, mainly in France, in the
late eighteenth and nineteenth, centuries and was widely used in
England and America." The term come to be applied also to
popular plays in which were introduced such devices as hair-
breadth escapes, unjust sufferings, murders, stage fights, ghosts,
etc. It exploits fully the uncommon in incident and character; it is
sensational. The melodrama tends, in brief, to be sensational
rather than quiet; sentimental, emotional, and exaggerated rather
than, intellectual, and restrained. Generally speaking, it bears the
same relationship to tragedy that farce bears to comedy. The,
adjective melodramatic is applied, finally, not only to
characteristic scenes in plays that are predominantly of this type,
but also to short-stories, novels, and, in fact, to all forms of
narrative, literary art that are marked with the melodramatic
devices and moods.

Naturalism is a term applied generally to literature which

attempts accurately to imitate nature. More commonly, it is often

34
used as synonymous with realism. More commonly, it is used to
express a specific kind of realism, the slavish attempt to
reproduce details from life without selection, and so is sometimes
referred to as photographic Realism. In French literature, the term
naturalism is used for a school of nineteenth-century novelists—
including Flaubert, Zola and the brothers Goncourt—who
attempted to approach life in a scientific manner, recording
external appearances only, but recording them with the all-seeing
patience of the scientist. Hence they revealed the seamy aspects of
life which Victorian England had been studiously ignoring, and
their influence on the English novel—notably on the works
of Gissing, Moore, and Hardy—gave rise to violent outcries about
the obscenities of the French naturalists. The word still carries
with it, at least to some minds, a bad connotation, for much
vulgarity and obscenity has often been justified in the name of
Naturalism.

Realism:

Realism is used loosely in criticism of art and literature to

signify works which depict life as it is. Hence, realism is
commonly opposed to romanticism, idealism, and escapism—all
of which suggest a flight from the world of reality into the world
of the imagination. "'There are, of course, many degrees of
realism. Sometimes the word is used to denote an objective

35
literary technique which depicts, in a scientific, unselective
manner, only tangible, observable pacts. This approach is also
called photographic realism and naturalism. To some readers,
particularly those to whom literature and escaped are
synonymous, realism means the revelation of sordid, unpleasant
details which should not defile respectable books. These readers
fail to see that the "realistic" approach be used in the service of
high ideals just as the "romantic" approach often serves the
immortal purposes of distorting the truth and concealing evil. To
few authors or books can the term realistic be applied without
reservation"—(Watt and Watt).

Romanticism:

Romanticism is opposed to Realism. In a loose sense, it is

the tendency in art or literature to represent life as it is—either,
with the help of the imagination, to distort the real word or to
escape from it entirely into the shadowy realm of romance. Hence
romanticism is commonly taken to be the opposite of realism. The
term is also applied to a work in which an author expresses his
individuality in defiance of established artistic rules. It signifies a
violation of the classical rules of literary composition. Hence
romanticism is often regarded as the opposite of classicism also.
Imagination, emotion, subjectively, love of the past, love of

36
Nature, and faith in the supernatural, in varying degrees,
characterize all romantic literature.

Scholasticism:

Scholasticism is the term used to denote the formal

intellectual culture which prevailed in Christian Europe during the
Middle Ages (from the twelfth century to the Renaissance in the
fifteenth). Its founders were the, "Schoolmen", who were trained
in the studies of the medieval universities. Of the various
branches of learning, logic was the most practiced. It was
employed in the innumerable, "disputations" which were
designed, in general, to reconcile reason with the teachings of the
Christian faith, but which became highly speculative, narrow, and
trivial, long before the end of the fifteenth century. It is now often
used as a term of contempt for meaningless, hair-splitting
discussions.

Surrealism:

It is a movement which aims at expressing the working of

the unconscious in art and literature. "Surrealism is a term used
for the technique of a small twentieth century group of painters
and writers who violate convention by attempting to create reality
through eccentric distortions of the object presented. In painting,
the leader of the surrealists is the Spaniard, Juan Miro. In
literature, surrealism has frequently taken the direction of seeking

37
effective expression by throwing words but of normal and logical
sequence”—(Watt and Watt), by violating the demands of logic
and rational control.

Symbols and Symbolism:

Symbols are essentially words which are not merely

connotative, but also evocative and emotive. In addition to their
meaning, they also call up or evoke before the mind’s eye a host
of associations connected with them, and are also rich in
emotional significance. For example, the word 'lily' merely
connotes a 'flower' but it also evokes images of beauty and
innocence. It also carries with it the emotional overtone of pity,
resulting from suffering or oppressions. In this way, through
symbols a writer can express much more than by the use of
ordinary words; symbols make the language rich and expressive.
Concepts which by their very nature are inexpressible can be
conveyed in this way. Thus a symbol can be used to convey "pure
sensations", or the poet's apprehension of transcendental mystery.
That is why C.M. Bowra regards symbolic poetry as a kind of
mystic poetry, a poetry in which the poet tries to convey his sense
of the mystery of life. Edmond Wilson defines symbolisms, as an
attempt by carefully studied means—a complicated association of
ideas represented by a medley of metaphors—to communicate
unique personal feeling." In symbolic poetry the poet

38
communicates (1) unique personal feeling, and (2) he makes use
of image-words for the purpose. Symbolism is essentially an
oblique or indirect mode of expression which suggests much more
than is actually described or asserted. It deals with the Infinite add
the Absolute and in the words of W.B. Yeats, gives, "dumb things
voices and bodiless things bodies."

Tautology:

It means needless repetition, saying the something more

than once in different ways. It is the use of more words than are
required by the thought.

39
 Chapter 2
The Early Modern Period
General Characteristics of the Renaissance:

"Renaissance" literally means "rebirth." It refers especially

to the rebirth of learning that began in Italy in the fourteenth
century, spread to the north, including England, by the sixteenth
century, and ended in the north in the mid-seventeenth century
(earlier in Italy). During this period, there was an enormous
renewal of interest in and study of classical antiquity.

Yet the Renaissance was more than a "rebirth." It was also

an age of new discoveries, both geographical (exploration of the
New World) and intellectual. Both kinds of discovery resulted in
changes of tremendous import for Western civilization. In
science, for example, Copernicus (1473-1543) attempted to prove
that the sun rather than the earth was at the center of the planetary
system, thus radically altering the cosmic world view that had
dominated antiquity and the Middle Ages. In religion, Martin
Luther (1483-1546) challenged and ultimately caused the division
of one of the major institutions that had united Europe throughout
the Middle Ages--the Church. In fact, Renaissance thinkers often
thought of themselves as ushering in the modern age, as distinct
from the ancient and medieval eras.

40
 Study of the Renaissance might well center on five
interrelated issues. First, although Renaissance thinkers often tried
to associate themselves with classical antiquity and to dissociate
themselves from the Middle Ages, important continuities with
their recent past, such as belief in the Great Chain of Being, were
still much in evidence. Second, during this period, certain
significant political changes were taking place. Third, some of the
noblest ideals of the period were best expressed by the movement
known as Humanism. Fourth, and connected to Humanist ideals,
was the literary doctrine of "imitation," important for its ideas
about how literary works should be created. Finally, what later
probably became an even more far-reaching influence, both on
literary creation and on modern life in general, was the religious
movement known as the Reformation.

Renaissance thinkers strongly associated themselves with

the values of classical antiquity, particularly as expressed in the
newly rediscovered classics of literature, history, and moral
philosophy. Conversely, they tended to dissociate themselves
from works written in the Middle Ages, a historical period they
looked upon rather negatively. According to them, the Middle
Ages were set in the "middle" of two much more valuable
historical periods, antiquity and their own. Nevertheless, as

41
modern scholars have noted, extremely important
continuitieswith the previous age still existed.

The Great Chain of Being

Among the most important of the continuities

with the Classical period was the concept of the Great
Chain of Being. Its major premise was that every
existing thing in the universe had its "place" in a
divinely planned hierarchical order, which was
pictured as a chain vertically extended.
("Hierarchical" refers to an order based on a series of
higher and lower, strictly ranked gradations.) An
object's "place" depended on the relative proportion of
"spirit" and "matter" it contained--the less "spirit" and
the more "matter," the lower down it stood. At the
bottom, for example, stood various types of inanimate
objects, such as metals, stones, and the four elements
(earth, water, air, fire). Higher up were various
members of the vegetative class, like trees and flowers.
Then came animals; then humans; and then angels. At
the very top was God. Then within each of these large
groups, there were other hierarchies. For example,
among metals, gold was the noblest and stood highest;

42
lead had less "spirit" and more matter and so stood
lower. (Alchemy was based on the belief that lead
could be changed to gold through an infusion of
"spirit.") The various species of plants, animals,
humans, and angels were similarly ranked from low
to high within their respective

43
segments. Finally, it was believed that between the segments
themselves, there was continuity (shellfish were lowest among
animals and shaded into the vegetative class, for example,
because without locomotion, they most resembled plants).

Besides universal orderliness, there was universal

interdependence. This was implicit in the doctrine of
"correspondences," which held that different segments of the
chain reflected other segments. For example, Renaissance
thinkers viewed a human being as a microcosm (literally, a "little
world") that reflected the structure of the world as a whole, the
macrocosm; just as the world was composed of four "elements"
(earth, water, air, fire), so too was the human body composed of
four substances called "humours," with characteristics
corresponding to the four elements. (Illness occurred when there
was an imbalance or "disorder" among the humours, that is, when
they did not exist in proper proportion to each other.)
"Correspondences" existed everywhere, on many levels. Thus the
hierarchical organization of the mental faculties was also thought
of as reflecting the hierarchical order within the family, the state,
and the forces of nature. When things were properly ordered,
reason ruled the emotions, just as a king ruled his subjects, the
parent ruled the child, and the sun governed the planets. But when
disorder was present in one realm, it was correspondingly

44
reflected in other realms. For example, in Shakespeare's King
Lear, the simultaneous disorder in family relationships and in the
state (child ruling parent, subject ruling king) is reflected in the
disorder of Lear's mind (the loss of reason) as well as in the
disorder of nature (the raging storm). Lear even equates his loss of
reason to "a tempest in my mind."

Though Renaissance writers seemed to be quite on the side

of "order," the theme of "disorder" is much in evidence,
suggesting that the age may have been experiencing some
growing discomfort with traditional hierarchies. According to the
chain of being concept, all existing things have their precise place
and function in the universe, and to depart from one's proper place
was to betray one's nature. Human beings, for example, were
pictured as placed between the beasts and the angels. To act
against human nature by not allowing reason to rule the emotions-
-was to descend to the level of the beasts. In the other direction, to
attempt to go above one's proper place, as Eve did when she was
tempted by Satan, was to court disaster. Yet Renaissance writers
at times showed ambivalence towards such a rigidly organized
universe. For example, the Italian philosopher Pico della
Mirandola, in a work entitled On the Dignity of Man, exalted
human beings as capable of rising to the level of the angels
through philosophical contemplation. Also, some Renaissance

45
writers were fascinated by the thought of going beyond
boundaries set by the chain of being. A major example was the
title character of Christopher Marlowe's play Doctor Faustus.
Simultaneously displaying the grand spirit of human aspiration
and the more questionable hunger for superhuman powers,
Faustus seems in the play to be both exalted and punished.
Marlowe's drama, in fact, has often been seen as the embodiment
of Renaissance ambiguity in this regard, suggesting both its fear
of and its fascination with pushing beyond human limitations.

Political Implications of the Chain of Being:

The fear of "disorder" was not merely philosophical--it had

significant political ramifications. The proscription against trying
to rise beyond one's place was of course useful to political rulers,
for it helped to reinforce their authority. The implication was that
civil rebellion caused the chain to be broken, and according to the
doctrine of correspondences, this would have dire consequences
in other realms. It was a sin against God, at least wherever rulers
claimed to rule by "Divine Right." (And in England, the King was
also the head of the Anglican Church.) In Shakespeare, it was
suggested that the sin was of cosmic proportions: civil disorders
were often accompanied by meteoric disturbances in the heavens.
(Before Halley's theory about periodic orbits, comets, as well as
meteors, were thought to be disorderly heavenly bodies.)

46
 The need for strong political rule was in fact very
significant, for the Renaissance had brought an end for the most
part to feudalism, the medieval form of political organization. The
major political accomplishment of the Renaissance, perhaps, was
the establishment of effective central government, not only in the
north but in the south as well. Northern Europe saw the rise of
national monarchies headed by kings, especially in England and
France. Italy saw the rise of the territorial city-state often headed
by wealthy oligarchic families. Not only did the chain of being
concept provide a rationale for the authority of such rulers; it also
suggested that there was ideal behavior that was appropriate to
their place in the order of things. It is no wonder then that much
Renaissance literature is concerned with the ideals of kingship,
with the character and behavior of rulers, as in Machiavelli's
Prince or Shakespeare's Henry V.

Other ideals and values that were represented in the

literature were even more significant. It was the intellectual
movement known as Humanism that may have expressed most
fully the values of the Renaissance and made a lasting
contribution to our own culture.

47
Humanism:

A common oversimplification of Humanism suggests that

it gave renewed emphasis to life in this world instead of to the
otherworldly, spiritual life associated with the Middle Ages.
Oversimplified as it is, there is nevertheless truth to the idea that
Renaissance Humanists placed great emphasis upon the dignity of
man and upon the expanded possibilities of human life in this
world. For the most part, it regarded human beings as social
creatures who could create meaningful lives only in association
with other social beings.

In the terms used in the Renaissance itself, Humanism

represented a shift from the "contemplative life" to the "active
life." In the Middle Ages, great value had often been attached to
the life of contemplation and religious devotion, away from the
world (though this ideal applied to only a small number of
people). In the Renaissance, the highest cultural values were
usually associated with active involvement in public life, in
moral, political, and military action, and in service to the state. Of
course, the traditional religious values coexisted with the new
secular values; in fact, some of the most important Humanists,
like Erasmus, were Churchmen. Also, individual achievement,
breadth of knowledge, and personal aspiration (as personified by
Doctor Faustus) were valued. The concept of the "Renaissance

48
Man" refers to an individual who, in addition to participating
actively in the affairs of public life, possesses knowledge of and
skill in many subject areas. (Such figures included Leonardo Da
Vinci and John Milton, as well as Francis Bacon, who had
declared, "I have taken all knowledge to be my province.")
Nevertheless, individual aspiration was not the major concern of
Renaissance Humanists, who focused rather on teaching people
how to participate in and rule a society (though only the nobility
and some members of the middle class were included in this
ideal). Overall, in consciously attempting to revive the thought
and culture of classical antiquity, perhaps the most important
value the Humanists extracted from their studies of classical
literature, history, and moral philosophy was the social nature of
humanity.

"Imitation":

Another concept derived from the classical past (though it

was present in the Middle Ages too), was the literary doctrine of
"imitation." Of the two senses in which the term had traditionally
been used, the theoretical emphasis of Renaissance literary critics
was less on the "imitation" that meant "mirroring life" and more
on the "imitation" that meant "following predecessors." In
contrast to our own emphasis on "originality," the goal was not to
create something entirely new. To a great extent, contemporary

49
critics believed that the great literary works expressing definitive
moral values had already been written in classical antiquity.

Theoretically, then, it was the task of the writer to translate

for present readers the moral vision of the past, and they were to
do this by "imitating" great works, adapting them to a Christian
perspective and milieu. (Writers of the Middle Ages also
practiced "imitation" in this sense, but did not have as many
classical models to work from.) Of course Renaissance literary
critics made it clear that such "imitation" was to be neither
mechanical nor complete: writers were to capture the spirit of the
originals, mastering the best models, learning from them, then
using them for their own purposes. Nevertheless, despite the fact
that there were a great many comments by critics about
"imitation" in this sense, it was not the predominant practice of
many of the greatest writers. For them, the faithful depiction of
human behavior--what Shakespeare called holding the mirror up
to nature--was paramount, and therefore "imitation" in the
mimetic sense was more often the common practice.

The doctrine of "imitation" of ancient authors did have one

very important effect: since it recommended not only the
imitation of specific classical writers, but also the imitation of
classical genres, there was a revival of significant literary forms.
Among the most popular that were derived from antiquity were

50
epic and satire. Even more important were the dramatic genres of
comedy and tragedy. In fact, Europe at this time experienced a
golden age of theater, led by great dramatists such as
Shakespeare.

The Protestant Reformation:

Finally, as it developed during the Renaissance, the

Protestant Reformation was a movement that had profound
implications, not only for the modern world in general, but
specifically for literary history. Just as Renaissance Humanists
rejected medieval learning, the Reformation seemed to reject the
medieval form of Christianity. (It should be noted, however, that
both Catholics and Protestants were Humanists, though often with
different emphases.) In the early sixteenth century, the German
monk Martin Luther reacted against Church corruption, the sort
depicted, for example, by Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales.

Many Catholics like Erasmus wanted to reform the Church

from within. However, Luther's disagreements with Church policy
ultimately led him to challenge some of the most fundamental
doctrines of the Church, which in turn led him and his followers
to break away from the Catholic Church in protest; hence they
were known as Protestants. The Reformation had significant
political ramifications, for it split Europe into Protestant and
Catholic countries which often went to war with each other during

51
this period. Protestantism broke up the institution that had for so
long unified all Europe under the Pope (though there were also
national struggles with the Papacy that had little to do with
Protestantism).

Among the most important tenets of Protestantism was the

rejection of the Pope as spiritual leader. A closely related
Protestant doctrine was the rejection of the authority of the
Church and its priests to mediate between human beings and God.
Protestants believed that the Church as an institution could not
grant salvation; only through a direct personal relationship with
God--achieved by reading the Bible--could the believer be granted
such. Many scholars argue that this emphasis on a personal,
individual connection with God spawned the modern emphasis on
individualism in those cultures affected by Protestantism. On the
other hand, some Protestants also believed that after the Fall of
Adam in Eden, human nature was totally corrupted as far as
human spiritual capabilities were concerned. (Early
Protestantism's emphasis on human depravity distinguishes it
sharply from Renaissance Humanism.) Humans therefore are
incapable of contributing to their salvation, for instance through
good deeds; it could only be achieved through faith in God's
grace. Overall, there is a good deal of ambivalence regarding
many of the Protestant positions, and in fact the disagreement

52
among the many Christian sects may be precisely what
distinguishes Renaissance from Medieval religion.

Early modern theatre:

1- Drama Before Theatres:

When Elizabeth I came to the throne in 1558 there were no

specially designed theatre buildings in England. Companies of
actors toured the country and performed in a wide variety of
temporary acting spaces, sometimes building stages and scenery
for a particular series of performances, and sometimes simply
using an unaltered hall or open space. There are records of actors
performing in churches, in the great halls of Royal Palaces and
other great houses, in Inn Yards, in Town Halls, in Town Squares
and anywhere else that a large crowd could be gathered to view a
performance. Acting companies were usually small and mobile.
Records suggest that an average touring company consisted of
five to eight players, often consisting of four adult men and a
single boy to play all the female parts. Although we are mostly
concerned with the larger companies that inhabited the large
theatre buildings that were built later in Elizabeth’s reign, touring
companies of this kind (using temporary acting spaces throughout
the country) continued to perform throughout Elizabeth’s reign,
and even the major companies could be forced to tour to the

53
Provinces when Plague shut the London theatres or money was
low.

Soon after Elizabeth came to the throne laws began to be

passed to control wandering beggars and vagrants. These made
criminals of any actors who toured and performed without the
support of a member of the highest ranks of the nobility. Many
actors were driven out of the profession or criminalised, while
those who continued were forced to become officially servants to
Lords and Ladies of the realm. Touring was increasingly
discouraged and many of the remaining companies were
encouraged to settle down with permanent bases in London. The
first permanent theatres in England were old inns which had been
used as temporary acting areas when the companies had been
touring - the Cross Keys, the Bull, the Bel Savage and the Bell
were all originally built as inns. Some of the Inns that became
theatres had substantial alterations made to their structure to
allow them to be used as playhouses. The Red Lion in Stepney, in
particular, had a rough auditorium with scaffolding galleries built
around the stage area - a design that may have influenced the
building of later purpose built theatres such as the Theatre and
the Globe.

54
2- The First Theatre:

The first purpose built Theatre building in England -

originally and solely intended for performance - was called “The
Theatre”, eventually giving its name to all such buildings. It was
built in 1576 by the Earl of Leicester’s Players who were led by
James Burbage - a carpenter turned actor. The design of the
Theatre was based on that of bull baiting and bear baiting yards
(where crowds of spectators watched animals torn to pieces for
sport) which had sometimes been used by actors as convenient
performance venues in the past. Not much is known about the
design of the Theatre, but it appears to have been wooden and
polygonal (with many straight sides making up a rough circle of
walls) and may have had three galleries full of seating stacked one
above another. The main area of the theatre was open to the sky,
with a large yard for spectators to stand and watch the action if
they could not afford a seat. In 1599 Burbage’s sons became
involved in a dispute over the land on which the Theatre stood
and solved their problems by secretly and suddenly tearing down
the Theatre building and carrying away the timbers to build a new
playhouse on the Bankside, which they named The Globe. By this
time the Burbages had become members of the Lord
Chamberlain’s Company, along with William Shakespeare, and

55
the Globe is famously remembered as the theatre in which many
of Shakespeare’s plays were first performed.

Although the Globe is the most famous Elizabethan

Theatre, and the building which we will concentrate upon, there
were many other theatres built during this period - each one
different from the others in the way in which it was designed and
built. The theatres fell into two main types, however, the “public”
amphitheatre buildings (such as the Theatre, the Globe, the
Curtain and the Swan) which were open to the air, and the smaller
and more expensive “private” theatres (such as Blackfriars and
the Cockpit) which were built to a hall design in enclosed and
usually rectangular buildings more like the theatres we know
today. The private theatres had a more exclusive audience since
they charged considerably more - the cheapest seat in a private
theatre cost sixpence, while public theatres like the Globe charged
twopence for a seat in the galleries or a single penny to stand in
the yard. The adult companies did not start to use the private hall
theatres until after Elizabeth’s death - which technically puts them
beyond our consideration of Elizabethan Theatre - but they were
used by the boy companies (made up entirely of child and teenage
actors) in Elizabeth’s reign and were used by Shakespeare’s
Company - by this time the King’s Men - and other adult

56
companies in the Jacobean period, so we will consider them in
passing.

3- The Globe:

The original Globe Theatre was built in 1599 with a

thatched roof above the galleries (covering the seats: the yard -
where poorer spectators stood - was still open to the air). This
roof caught fire in 1613 when cannon fired off during a
performance of Shakespeare’s Henry VIII sent sparks into the
thatch and the whole theatre burned to the ground. A second
Globe was built with a tiled roof, and this was finally demolished
in 1644 when all plays had been banned by the Roundhead
Parliament during the Civil War. In modern times several replica
Globe Theatres have been built around the world, including the
new Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London, which was
completed in 1997. Although the modern Globe Theatre is an
inexact imitation of the real Globe - with many of its
characteristics based on guesswork, and others altered to pass
modern fire regulations and accommodate a modern audience
(taller, fatter and expecting more luxurious surroundings than
their Elizabethan ancestors) - the design, building and use of the
new Globe has given much useful information about how an
Elizabethan Theatre works and how it affects the performances of
actors who use such a stage.

57
 The size and exact shape of the original Globe can only
really be guessed at, but surviving records about the Globe and
other Elizabethan theatres (including some very rough drawings
of the outside of the Globe in drawings of the city) together with
archaeological examination of parts of the Globe’s remains (most
of which are unfortunately buried under modern London
buildings and cannot be examined) have allowed the people who
built the modern Globe Theatre reconstruction to make what they
hope is a faithful reproduction of the original theatre. The modern
Globe is a hundred feet (30 metres) in diameter. Instead of being
circular, as some early scholars believed it to be, the building is a
polygon with 20 straight walls. There are three layers of seating in
galleries on all sides of the stage except directly behind it.
Directly in front of the stage is a large yard nearly 80 feet (24
metres) in diameter for the groundlings (standing spectators who
pay a cheaper entry price than those who have seats). The stage
itself is unusually wide by modern standards - 44 feet (13.2
metres) wide, 25 feet (7.5 metres) deep, and 5 feet (1.5 metres)
high. There is roofing over the gallery seating and over the stage
itself, the stage roof being held up by two huge pillars that stand
on the stage - obstructing the view of audience members from
various angles - but the yard is open to the air. Behind the stage
there is a curtained “discovery space” - a small room behind a
curtain - which allows characters to be suddenly revealed by

58
 opening the curtain (as Ferdinand and Miranda are suddenly
revealed in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, playing chess). There are
two other entrances in the upstage wall, on the left and right.
Behind the entrances is the tiring house, for actors to dress,
prepare and wait offstage. There is a balcony above the stage
which was sometimes used in the performance (it was probably
Juliet’s balcony in Romeo and Juliet), sometimes housed the
theatre musicians and was sometimes used for more audience
seating. There is a trapdoor in the centre of the stage and the
Elizabethans had simple machinery to allow ghosts, devils and
similar characters to be raised up through the trapdoor and gods
and spirits to be lowered from the “heavens” in the stage roof.
Visiting the reconstructed Globe is a magical experience, but
it is important to remember that it does not exactly resemble the
conditions of the original theatre. The modern Globe can hold
1500 spectators: the original Globe (which had smaller and less
comfortable visitors) packed twice as many people into the same
space. Modern fire regulations force the modern Globe to have
four six foot wide entrances. The original Globe had only two
narrow doorways. Similarly the modern Directors did not like the
original positioning of the two obstructive stage pillars and
insisted that they should be further back on the stage and closer
together than the architects, builders and historians thought they
really should have been. The modern reconstructed stage is

59
designed to allow two columns of soldiers to march abreast in
front of the stage pillars. The pillars in the original theatre were
probably further apart and much closer to the front of the stage,
restricting the number of actors passing in front of the pillars and
causing more frequent obstructions to audience sightlines.

4- The Players:

The number and type of actor involved in Elizabethan

Theatre varied from one performance to the next, but there were
invariably many more parts than actors. The London companies
with their fixed theatres tended to use many more actors than the
touring companies we considered earlier. In a performance of
Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, for example, a spectator
remembered that he had seen “about fifteen” actors perform the
play. There are 40 named roles in Julius Caesar along with an
unspecified number of extra “Plebeians” and “Senators, Guards,
Attendants etc.” all played by members of the fifteen strong cast.
Elizabethan Theatre, therefore, demanded that an actor be able to
play numerous roles and make it obvious to the audience by
changes in his acting style and costume that he was a new person
each time. When the same character came on disguised (as, for
example, many of Shakespeare’s female characters disguise
themselves as boys) speeches had to be included making it very

60
clear that this was the same character in a new costume, and not a
completely new character.

All of the actors in an Elizabethan Theatre company were

male. There were laws in England against women acting onstage
and English travellers abroad were amused and amazed by the
strange customs of Continental European countries that allowed
women to play female roles - at least one Englishman recorded
his surprise at finding that the female actors were as good at
playing female parts as the male actors back home. One woman -
Mary Frith, better known as Moll Cutpurse - was arrested in the
Jacobean period for singing and playing instruments onstage
during a performance of a play about her life (Middleton and
Dekker’s The Roaring Girl) and some suggest that she may
actually have been illegally playing herself in the performance,
and women sometimes took part in Court Masques (a very
stylised and spectacular sort of performance for the Court, usually
dominated by singing and dancing), but otherwise English women
had no part in the performance of Elizabethan plays. The male
actors who played female parts have traditionally been described
as “Boy Actors”, but there is now an academic controversy about
exactly how old these actors would have been. Some academics
are convinced that very young actors could not possibly have
played such important, complex and emotionally difficult parts as

61
Shakespeare and his fellow playwrights wrote for women, and
argue that references to “men” playing women’s parts prove that
these actors were in fact fully grown adults. My friend Dave
Kathman, however, has researched this issue and points out that
whenever we know or can guess the age of an actor who was
known to be playing a female part in a particular performance,
that actor was a teenager - most between the ages of roughly
fourteen to nineteen. Because of differences in diet and
upbringing, boys’ voices broke much later in the Elizabethan
period than they do now, which made it possible for boys to play
women’s parts convincingly for much longer than some modern
scholars assume possible.

The rehearsal and performance schedule that Elizabethan

Players followed was intense and demanding. Unlike modern
theatres, where a successful play can run for years at a time,
Elizabethan theatres normally performed six different plays in
their six day week, and a particularly successful play might only
be repeated once a month or so. There were exceptions to this
rule, such as Middleton’s immensely successful Jacobean play A
Game At Chess which played for nine days in a row before being
banned for political reasons, but runs of this kind were reserved
for plays which were an immense success and were viewed as
extremely unusual. In a typical season Henslowe’s Company

62
performed thirty-eight different plays, twenty-one of which were
entirely new and seventeen of which had been performed in
previous years. The Elizabethan actor did not have much time,
therefore, to prepare for each new play, and must have had to
learn lines and prepare his blocking largely on his own and in his
spare time - probably helped by the tendency of writers to have
particular actors in mind for each part, and to write roles which
were suited to the particular strengths and habits of individual
actors. There were few formal rehearsals for each play and no
equivalent of the modern Director (although presumably the
writer, theatre managers, and the most important actors - who
owned shares in the theatre company - would have given some
direction to other actors). Instead of being given full scripts, each
actor had a written “part”, a long scroll with nothing more than
his own lines and minimal cue lines (the lines spoken by another
actor just before his own) to tell him when to speak - this saved
on the labourious task of copying out the full play repeatedly by
hand. There was a bookholder or prompter who held a complete
script and who helped actors who had forgotten their lines. The
bookholder usually also had a “plot” or a brief summary of the
play, scene by scene, listing the various entrances and exits and
telling which characters and properties were required upon the
stage at any one time. Surviving plots have a square hole to allow
them to be hung upon a peg in the playhouse.

63
 We know little more about most Elizabethan actors than
their name, when this has happened to survive on theatrical
records, in cast lists, or elsewhere - but there were a few star
actors who have left a more detailed reputation behind them. The
two most famous Elizabethan actors normally played tragic and
romantic heroes. They were Edward Alleyn, lead actor of the
Admiral’s Men, and Richard Burbage who was the lead actor in
Shakespeare’s Company (belonging at various times to Leicester,
Lord Strange, the Lord Chamberlain and finally becoming - in the
Jacobean period - the King’s Men). Alleyn was probably the most
famous Elizabethan actor, who was best known for his
performances in Christopher Marlowe’s plays - playing
Tamburlaine a shepherd who became a mighty military leader and
conquered vast swathes of territory, Doctor Faustus who made a
pact with the devil, and Barabas the villainous Jew in Marlowe’s
Jew of Malta. Alleyn made so much money from his acting and
his share in the theatre company to which he belonged that he was
able to buy the Manor of Dulwich on his retirement (costing
£10,000 - an unbelievably huge sum of money at the time) and
established Dulwich College, where the papers of his father-in-
law, the famous theatre manager Philip Henslowe, were stored -
the most important cache of theatrical documents to have survived
the Elizabethan period. Richard Burbage is now probably better
known than Edward Alleyn because of his connection with

64
Shakespeare and he originated most of Shakespeare’s famous lead
roles including Romeo, Hamlet, Othello, Richard III, Henry V,
King Lear and others. It is suggested that the contradictions in
Shakespeare’s Hamlet, where the lead character is apparently a
young student at the beginning of the play but is referred to as
“fat” and aged thirty towards the end of the play, were particularly
added to suit the middle-aged and portly figure of Burbage
himself. Burbage also became wealthy on the profits of his
profession, although not nearly so well off as Alleyn. Both were
admired and remembered by numerous Elizabethan writers. The
other actors to become household names were the Clowns or
Fools, and we will consider them later.

The income of actors varied enormously according to their

position in the Company, and the type of Company to which they
belonged. The least well paid actors were the boys, who were
apprenticed to adult actors and whose small wage (the Admiral’s
Men paid one boy player three shillings a week) was paid to their
masters. In return they were given board and lodging and a very
meagre allowance to spend on themselves. Next lowest in the
acting hierarchy were the hired men, adult actors who were paid a
fixed wage for each working day. Actors in Henslowe’s London
Company received ten shillings a week, but those performing in
smaller companies or touring outside London could receive half

65
that. The most important actors in a theatre company, however,
were taken on as sharers - owning a particular portion of the
theatre company or its theatre building and subsequently earning a
proportion of the Company’s profits from every performance.
Shakespeare earned enough from his share in the Globe Theatre to
buy the second most expensive house in his home village of
Stratford and to invest in lands and property, and he was also able
to buy himself a coat of arms and the right to refer to himself as a
Gentleman (an important step up the social ladder in class
conscious Elizabethan times).

5- The Playwrights:

During the Middle Ages nobody is known who could be

referred to as a professional English playwright. Pageants and
Church plays were often written by members of the Clergy and
the writers of plays for touring companies were largely
anonymous and few of their works have survived. In the Tudor
period, and a little before it, men who earned their living as
writers and poets began to be recognisably connected with plays.
The earliest professional playwright of whom we know may have
been Henry Medwall who wrote a Morality Play and an Interlude,
that survive, for performance in the house of his master, John
Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury. John Heywood, during the
reign of Henry VIII, wrote a large number of Interludes for

66
performance at the Court, but when Elizabeth’s reign began most
plays were still written by people we would regard as amateurs or
occasional playwrights. The increasing professionalism of the
acting companies, however, meant that they increasingly needed
to employ professional dramatists to provide them with the large
and continually changing repertory that they required. The first
wave of professional playwrights were mostly University
educated men who earned a living from their pens. These men
were incredulous and envious when subsequently confronted by
less well educated playwrights - such as Shakespeare, the son of a
glover, who seems to have learned his skills as a member of the
acting profession and became a writer without being educated in
the great Universities, who became rich through his connection
with the theatre while many of the better qualified University
playwrights lived and died in poverty, given only a few pounds
for each of their plays. Shakespeare earned money as a Sharer in
the Theatre Company (given a proportion of the Theatre’s profits
for every production rather than just a wage), a position that he
probably gained largely because of his acting background.

The form which Elizabethan plays took was still developing

at the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign. Elizabethan Universities
studied Greek and Roman plays in the original language, and the
students sometimes performed them within the University. During

67
Elizabeth’s reign translations of these Greek and Roman plays
became widely available and began to have a heavy influence
upon English playwrights. Greek and Roman Plays were largely
divided into two genres, Comedy and Tragedy. The first full
length English Comedy, written in about 1553, was Ralph Roister
Doister - written by Nicholas Udall, former headmaster of Eton -
in which Ralph, a character based on the Roman Dramatist
Plautus’ stereotypical Braggart, pursues a widow who is betrothed
to an absent sea captain, until the widow finally drives him off
with the help of her maids armed with mops and pails. The first
full length English Tragedy was Gorboduc - written in 1561 by
Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville - which tells the story of a
mythical English King in a style in imitation of the Roman
Dramatist Seneca, complete with choruses and long rhetorical
speeches. Gorboduc also influenced the later creation of a
peculiarly English dramatic genre, not based on Classical
examples, the Chronicle or History play which was neither
Comedy nor Tragedy, but told the story of a genuine Historical
period - usually the reign of a particular English Monarch. It is
not known which was the first English History play, but early
examples included Shakespeare’s Henry VI (eventually a trilogy
of plays) and Marlowe’s Edward II. Originally English Tragedies
and Comedies tended to be written in close imitation of Greek and
Roman models and much was made of the Classical rules of

68
writing plays - rules which Renaissance writers took from
Aristotle’s Poetics and expanded upon. These rules included the
assumption that Tragedy and Comedy should never mix and that a
play should take place according to the Unities of Time and Place
- meaning that the stage should represent a single place and all of
the play’s action should take place within a single fictional day at
most. Fortunately English playwrights increasingly rejected the
restrictions of slavishly following Classical models and began to
write Tragedies and Comedies in a much looser and more relaxed
style. Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, for example, a
bloodthirsty tale of murder and revenge, generally ignored the
Classical rules and strongly influenced many subsequent
Elizabethan plays including Shakespeare’s early Titus Andronicus
and his later Hamlet (it is even suspected that Thomas Kyd may
have been the author of an early Hamlet play that existed before
Shakespeare’s). It also became traditional for comic characters to
appear in even the most serious of Tragedies, like the comic
gravedigger in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

At the same time that the genres of English plays were

becoming fixed and accepted, a particular form of dramatic poetry
was discovered to be ideal for dramatic composition. This was
blank verse - first used in Gorboduc. Blank verse was usually
unrhymed (except for occasional couplets in significant places)

69
and used ten syllables a line divided into five iambic feet of
alternately unstressed and stressed syllables. The main advantage
of blank verse was that despite being regular and poetical it could
be made to sound very much like natural English speech. Early
blank verse was very regular, with all sentences end-stopped
(finishing exactly at the end of the blank verse line) and with very
little variation in the stresses and pauses in the lines. As time
passed Marlowe, Shakespeare and other dramatists began to use
blank verse in a much more flexible and inventive manner -
allowing sentences to run from one line into the next and finish
wherever in the line was necessary, breaking the blank verse rules
when it suited them to allow extra syllables in the line or irregular
stresses and pauses. Generally speaking the later a blank verse
play was written the more natural its language sounds.
Shakespeare and other Elizabethan dramatists often used a
mixture of blank verse and prose, usually giving the unstructured
prose (following no poetical rules and without line endings) to
their comical or rustic characters or those who for some other
reason were considered more casual in their speech than the
significant or serious characters who routinely spoke verse. The
majority of Elizabethan and Jacobean plays were written in blank
verse after Gorboduc, but some were written in other forms, such
as prose or rhyming couplets.

70
6- Politics and Religion:

Elizabeth began her reign in a fast changing and dangerous

period for the English nation. Elizabeth’s father, Henry VIII, had
broken off from the Catholic Church and established the
Protestant Church of England. After the death of Henry and his
sickly son Edward the throne had passed on to Elizabeth’s older
sister Mary, a Catholic - who had brought England back into the
Church of Rome, and had married the firmly Catholic King of
Spain. When Mary died without children the Protestant Elizabeth
inherited the throne and England became a Protestant Nation once
more. Each stage in this process involved bloody trials and
executions of those following the wrong religion - and Elizabeth
had to consider the fact that a large proportion of her population
had been or still was Catholic. While some Catholics continued
their religion secretly and otherwise supported Elizabeth, others
were openly rebellious. Elizabeth was excommunicated by the
Pope who encouraged all Catholic Kings and subjects to work to
assassinate Elizabeth and overthrow her regime. Elizabeth
managed to resist the Northern Rebellion - where Catholic Lords
and subjects in the North rose up against her - and escaped a
number of planned assassination attempts. She also fought off the
Spanish Armada, an invasion force blessed by the Pope.

71
 In times such as these, plays, which gathered huge crowds
and exposed them to a particular view of the world - which could
be an excellent form of propaganda - were viewed with a great
deal of concern. This is hardly surprising since a single
performance at a playhouse could attract 3000 spectators when
the population of London was only 200,000. This meant that one
and a half percent of the London population were gathered in one
place and exposed to the same influence at every performance -
enough people to begin a riot or even a rebellion. To protect
against these threats, the Elizabethan authorities imposed a range
of laws and systems to ensure that they could control just about
every word that was spoken onstage. The official in charge of this
control was the Lord Chamberlain, but most of the real work was
carried out by his subordinate, the Master of the Revels. Before
the performance of any play, the script had to be submitted to the
Revels Office for checking and the Master of the Revels made
any alterations in the script that he felt necessary - making sure
that the play remained morally and politically safe and did not
trespass into religious matters or use inappropriate blasphemies.
The punishments for writers whose works were felt to be
seditious or offensive could be extreme, including imprisonment,
torture and mutilation - but in fact the Elizabethan Censors were
more lenient than is sometimes suggested and did not come down
heavily on many actors or dramatists during this period.

72
 One of the major incidents of suppression during the
Elizabethan period was prompted by the production of Thomas
Nashe and Ben Jonson’s The Isle of Dogs. The exact content of
this play is not known, as it was ruthlessly suppressed and never
printed, but it has been suggested that it may have been a satirical
attack on Elizabeth’s courtiers. After the play had been performed
in 1597, the players - Pembroke’s Men - and the playwright Ben
Jonson were arrested and imprisoned while Thomas Nashe fled to
Yarmouth. Nashe’s house was searched for papers and Jonson
was questioned and then secretly imprisoned with two informers
who encouraged him to betray himself to them. The Privy Council
was so outraged by the performance that it went as far as to ban
all plays in London and its surroundings for much of the rest of
the year. After having failed to incriminate himself, however,
Jonson was released and his imprisonment did not damage his
future reputation or prospects in any significant way.

Another major scandal involved Shakespeare’s Richard II,

a performance of which was specially commissioned by followers
of the Earl of Essex, who - unknown to the Players - were
planning to stir up support in London for a rebellion against
Elizabeth the following day. The Earl, who had lost the Queen’s
favour and been discredited, led a small band of armed followers
through London with the intention of capturing the Queen, but

73
they were not supported by the London populace and the rebellion
failed. The reason for choosing the play was that it showed the
decline and fall of Richard II, a weak King closely connected to
corrupt favourites, who was overthrown by a rebellion led by the
Earl of Bolingbroke who had the King murdered and took his
crown. Elizabeth was vastly upset by the rebellion and
particularly commented upon the attempts to compare her to the
corrupt and successfully overthrown Richard II of the play. “I am
Richard II, know you not that?” she told Francis Bacon and
complained “This tragedy has been played forty times in open
streets and houses”. Augustine Phillips, one of the leading actors
of Shakespeare’s Company, was called in and interrogated about
the actors’ role in the affair, but he maintained that they had
known nothing about any seditious intent and that they had
simply been encouraged to reprise an old play - so old that they
didn’t expect much of an audience - and had been paid ten
shillings over the ordinary to perform it. The authorities treated
the actors leniently and no punishment seems to have been
forthcoming. On the day before Essex was executed
Shakespeare’s Company, perhaps as a sign of forgiveness, was
invited to perform before the Queen.

More typical of the censorship of Elizabethan plays was the

suppression of Sir Thomas More - a play which was written and

74
then amended by a large group of different playwrights, possibly
including Shakespeare - who may have written scenes in his own
handwriting in the manuscript. It was an odd choice of a subject
for a play, since Thomas More was a Catholic Martyr who had
been executed by Elizabeth’s father for opposing his divorce and
establishment of the Church of England. The Master of the Revels
disliked many of the scenes within the play and sent it back
repeatedly for alterations - particularly to a scene in which More
talked with poor rioters, which was seen as particularly dangerous
in its presentation of More himself and its dangerous sympathy
with rebellious poor people who opposed the Tudor regime.
Despite many such alterations the play was never considered
acceptable and so was never granted a licence to be performed or
published. We know the play only because the original
manuscript survives.

7- Costume, Scenery and Effects:

Some modern companies consider the Elizabethan

performance style to have been very close to what we now call
Minimalism. Companies like the Shenandoah Shakespeare
Express claim to be closer to the original Elizabethan
performance style because they perform in modern dress, with no
scenery and few props, and without using modern lighting, sound
or stage effects. Although Minimalist performances of this kind

75
may be closer to the Elizabethan originals than, for example, the
spectacular Victorian performances of Shakespeare’s plays (with
detailed painted backdrops and archaeologically correct costumes
and stage designs, and sometimes even real horses, real boats and
real canals) they are still very far from Elizabethan performances.
In reality the Elizabethans used far more sophisticated props,
costumes and stage effects than is sometimes assumed.

Elizabethan costuming seems to have been a strange

combination of what was (for the Elizabethans) modern dress, and
costumes which - while not being genuinely historically or
culturally accurate - had a historical or foreign flavour. A famous
picture of a performance of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus (one
of the few pictures of Elizabethan actors at work) shows Titus in a
breastplate and a supposedly historical garment, very loosely
based on the Roman toga, while one of his guards (in a play set in
Roman times) wears the familiar armour of an Elizabethan soldier
and another wears a foreign looking, possibly Turkish influenced,
suit of armour. Many of the authentic Elizabethan garments
owned by a Theatre Company had been passed onto them,
secondhand, by members of the nobility. Strict laws were in force
about what materials and types of clothes could be worn by
members of each social class - laws which the actors were
allowed to break onstage - so it would be immediately obvious to

76
the Elizabethan audience that actors wearing particular types of
clothes were playing people of particular backgrounds and types.
Extensive make-up was almost certainly used, particularly for the
boys playing female parts and with dark make-up on the face and
hands for actors playing “blackamoors” or “Turks”. There were
also conventions for playing a number of roles - some of which
we know from printed play scripts. Mad women, like Ophelia,
wore their hair loose and mad people of both sexes had disordered
clothing. Night scenes were often signalled by characters wearing
nightdresses (even the Ghost of Hamlet’s father appears in his
nightgown, when Hamlet is talking with his Mother in her
chamber).

The Elizabethans did not use fixed scenery or painted

backdrops of the sort that became popular in the Victorian period,
but those who claim that the Elizabethans performed on a
completely bare stage are wrong. A wide variety of furniture and
props were brought onstage to set the scene as necessary - ranging
from simple beds, tables, chairs and thrones to whole trees, grassy
banks, prop dragons, an unpleasant looking cave to represent the
mouth of hell, and so forth. Such props often played a major part
in the play, as in The Spanish Tragedy where a man is
spectacularly hanged by the neck from an arbour, apparently a

77
complex wooden frame with a bench and leaves - a scene
illustrated in a published copy of the play.

Death brought out a particular ingenuity in Elizabethan

actors and they apparently used copious quantities of animal
blood, fake heads and tables with holes in to stage decapitations
(an illustration of an Elizabethan conjuring trick shows a table
with two holes in it, one boy sitting hidden under the table with
only his - apparently decapitated - head above it another lying on
the top of the table with his - apparently missing - head hidden
below it: tricks of this kind were almost certainly used on the
Elizabethan stage). Heads, hands, eyes, tongues and limbs were
dramatically cut off onstage, and probably involved some sort of
blood-drenched stage trick.

A number of other simple special effects were used. Real

cannons and pistols (loaded with powder but no bullet) were fired
off when ceremonial salutes or battles were required. Thunder
was imitated by rolling large metal cannon balls backstage or by
drumming, while lightning was imitated by fireworks set off in
the “heavens” above the stage. Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale
calls for a man to be pursued across the stage by a bear and there
is much academic argument about whether a real (tame) bear
would have been used or whether it would have been a man in a
bear costume (probably a real bear skin). Some plays bring dogs

78
onstage, although it has been suggested that Shakespeare only
once used a dog in his plays because the animal proved to be
more trouble than it was worth.

One thing that Elizabethan theatres almost completely

lacked was lighting effects. In the outdoor theatres, like the
Globe, plays were performed from two o’clock until about four or
four thirty in the afternoon (these were the times fixed by law, but
plays may sometimes have run for longer) in order to take
advantage of the best daylight (earlier or later performances
would have cast distracting shadows onto the stage). Evening
performances, without daylight, were impossible. In the hall
theatres, on the other hand, the stages were lit by candlelight -
which forced them to hold occasional, probably musical, breaks
while the candles were trimmed and tended or replaced as they
burned down. Elizabethan actors carried flaming torches to
indicate that a scene was taking place at night, but this would
have made little difference to the actual lighting of the stage, and
spectators simply had to use their imagination. The nearest that
the Elizabethans came to lighting effects were fireworks, used to
imitate lightening or magical effects - the devils in Marlowe’s
Doctor Faustus apparently cavorted around the stage with squibs,
small exploding fireworks, held in their mouths.

79
8- Performance Techniques:

We know very little, unfortunately, about how Elizabethan

actors actually played their roles. Performances probably ran
continuously without any sort of interval or Act Breaks.
Occasionally music may have been played between Acts or
certain scenes, but scholars think this was quite unusual except in
the hall playhouses, where candles had to be trimmed and
replaced between Acts. We do not even know how long
Elizabethan plays usually ran. The law (mentioned above)
expected plays to last between two and two and a half hours, and
Shakespeare talks about “the two hours traffic of our stage” in
Romeo and Juliet, but some plays - such as Hamlet, which in
modern times runs for more than four hours - seem much too long
to have been performed in such a short time. It is possible that the
scripts which have been passed down to us are the playwright’s
first draft and that they would have been cut considerably for
performance. It is also possible that Elizabethan actors performed
at a much faster speed than modern actors without so many
pauses and without speaking slowly for emphasis. What props
and scenery there were in the Elizabethan Theatre were probably
carried on and off while the scenes continued, which means that
there would have been no need to wait for scene changes -

80
something which could double the length of a spectacular
Victorian performance.

Some idea of the sort of hand gestures that an Elizabethan

actor may have used may have been preserved in a peculiar book
called Chirologia or the Naturall Language of the Hand. This was
supposed to explain hand gestures used to show emotions or give
emphasis in normal conversation rather than in stage
performance, but if gestures of this kind were used offstage then
they were almost certainly used on it as well. Some of the
gestures seem very odd and extravagant to modern eyes, but may
well have seemed perfectly natural to an Elizabethan.

Another aspect of Elizabethan performance that we know a

little about was the use of clowns or fools. Shakespeare complains
in Hamlet about the fact that the fool often spoke a great deal that
was not included in his script, and in the early Elizabethan period
especially it seems to have been normal for the fool to include a
great deal of improvised repartee and jokes in his performance,
especially responding to hecklers in the audience. At the end of
the play the Elizabethan actors often danced, and sometimes the
fool and other comic actors would perform a jig - which could be
anything from a simple ballad to a quite complicated musical
play, normally a farce involving adultery and other bawdy topics.
Some time was apparently put aside for the fool to respond to

81
challenges from the audience - with spectators inventing rhymes
and challenging the fool to complete them, asking riddles and
questions and demanding witty answers, or simply arguing and
criticising the fool so that he could respond. One of the famous
clown Tarlton’s jokes, for example, was given in response to a
woman in the audience threatening to cuff him. She should only
reverse the spelling of the word, he told her, and she could have
her will immediately. It has been suggested that the first fool in
Shakespeare’s company - William Kempe - was famous for
improvisational humour of this kind and for rejecting
Shakespeare’s scripts in order to make his own jests, and that his
replacement Robert Armin may have been more of an actor and
less of an improvisational comedian, respecting the words that
Shakespeare had set down for him.

Performances by modern actors at the reconstructed Globe

have given us some insight into aspects of performance on a stage
of this kind which may help us to reconstruct the behaviour of
Elizabethan actors, but may sometimes be misleading - since the
modern Globe actors are a 21st Century company performing for
21st Century audiences. Modern Globe actors have found the
Globe to be an excellent performing space which actors find very
appealing, but it is also very different from the modern stages that

82
they are used to and requires a very different style of performance
to make use of the theatres strengths and alleviate its weaknesses.

Companies performing on the Globe stage have to take

into account the strange positioning of the audience. The Globe
seating almost completely surrounds the stage, with audience
members at the extreme ends of the circle almost behind the
upstage corners of the stage and looking at the action from the
back forwards - and with the views of all parts of the audience
occasionally blocked by the obtrusive stage pillars. The modern
Globe Directors have found that, as a result, they need to keep
their actors in constant motion. They also need to have actors
facing in as many different directions as possible during a scene.
When I went to see King Lear this Summer I was surprised to find
that despite sitting in the worst position, at the most extreme
upstage left corner of the stage, behind the actors, I was always
able to see at least one actor’s face throughout the performance
and was therefore included in the play’s action and not frustrated
by seeing only backs. The actors also found that even when
conversing privately the Globe stage encouraged them to stand at
a distance from one another, in a long diagonal, rather than
standing close together as they would on a more intimate modern
stage. Similarly while modern stages encourage actors giving
soliloquies to step to downstage centre and address the audience,

83
the more powerful positions on the Globe stage turned out to be in
the front corners of the stage rather than downstage centre, or best
of all upstage centre - which turned out to be the most powerful
position on the stage. Before performing on the stage it had been
assumed that the actors would need to use big voices and broad
gestures, but they found that clarity of speech and movement was
more important than volume or size, and much more subtle acting
was possible. The acoustics of the stage (once all of the genuine
oak had been installed) turned out to be excellent, although actors
tended to misjudge the effect of their own voices at first and were
tricked into shouting when they didn’t need to.

Oddly, when casting male actors to play the female role of

Princess Katherine in Henry V, the Globe casting directors felt
that teenage actors’ voices didn’t carry well in the Globe space
and selected an actor in his early twenties. The historical records
seem to show that the same view was not held in Shakespeare’s
day since Dave Kathman’s research suggests that teenage boy
actors were the norm. The modern Globe staff were very satisfied
by audience reactions to the cross-dressing boy actor, however.
Some failed to realise that the actor was male and apart from
knowing laughs at lines about being a woman, the audience
seemed able to suspend its disbelief and view the character as a
normal and convincing female even when the actor was not.

84
 Naturally, the set up of the Globe encourages intimacy
with the audience and it has been found that Globe audiences are
enthusiastic to take part in the production in ways that the actors
sometimes find distracting. This may in part be explained by the
atmosphere of the Globe itself - the Globe’s Artistic Director
actively encouraged audiences to shout back at the actors before
the first performance was given - but it is also probably explained
by the great visibility of the Globe audience. With no modern
stage lighting to enhance the actors and put the audience into
darkness, Globe audience members can see each other exactly as
well as they can see the performers and the Groundlings in
particular are near enough to the stage to be able to touch the
actors if they wanted to and the front row of the Groundlings
routinely lean their arms and heads onto the front of the stage
itself. The Groundlings are also forced to stand for two or three
hours without much movement, which encourages short attention
spans and a desire to take action rather than remain completely
immobile. This means that the Groundlings frequently shout up at
the actors or hiss the villains and cheer the goodies. During King
Lear the audience were quick to offer their advice when Edmund
(Gloucester’s bastard son) asked himself which of Lear’s
competing daughters he should accept as his lover. Elizabethan
audiences seem to have been very responsive in this way - as their
interactions with the Fool suggests - and were particularly well

85
known for hurling nut shells and fruit when they disliked an actor
or a performance. The Elizabethan audience was still more
distracted, however, since beer and food were being sold and
consumed throughout the performance, prostitutes were actively
soliciting for trade, and pickpockets were busy stealing goods as
the play progressed.

It is important to remember, however, that the opinions of

modern actors may bear little relationship to the way in which
Elizabethan actors viewed their stage and gave their
performances. One hint that Elizabethan audiences may have
viewed plays very differently gave us the origin of the word
“audience” itself. The Elizabethans did not speak of going to see a
play, they went to hear one - and it is possible that in the densely
crowded theatre - obstructed by the pillars and the extravagant
headgear that richer members of the audience were wearing - the
Elizabethan audience was more concerned to hear the words
spoken than to be able to see the action. This idea is given extra
weight by the fact that in the public outdoor theatres, like the
Globe, the most expensive seats were not the ones with the best
views (in fact the best view is to be had by the Groundlings,
standing directly in front of the stage), but those which were most
easily seen by other audience members. The most expensive
seating was in the Lord’s box or balcony behind the stage -

86
looking at the action from behind - and otherwise the higher the
seats the more an audience member had to pay (a seat in the
Lord’s Room cost one shilling or twelve pence, a seat in a
Gentleman’s Room cost sixpence, a seat in the galleries cost
twopence and it cost only a penny to stand in the pit) . Some
Elizabethan documents suggest that the reason for this range of
prices was the richer patron’s desire to be as far from the stink of
the Groundlings as possible.

87
Summary:

A product of the revival of classical Greek and Roman culture

known as humanism, Renaissance literary criticism takes root in
14th- and 15th-century Italian defenses of poetry and dialogues on
language and literary imitation. It reaches maturity, however, and
first achieves independence as a discourse, in 16th-century Italy,
where the recovery of Aristotle’s Poetics occasioned a series of
commentaries that extended to the elaboration of comprehensive
theories of poetry, such as that of Lodovico Castelvetro (b. 1505-
d. 1571), and to the application of these theories to vernacular
works by Dante, Ariosto, Tasso, and others. The influence of
Italian criticism meanwhile spread swiftly across Europe, where
such figures as Joachim Du Bellay (b. 1522–d. 1560) and Philip
Sidney (b. 1554–d. 1586) enlisted it, along with the other
resources of humanism, in the establishment of vernacular
traditions of literature and criticism. Fundamentally classical,
Renaissance criticism showcases its debts to Horace, Aristotle,
and Plato, roughly in that order. But it was the questions left
unanswered by these authorities that crucially led Renaissance
critics to synthesize, adapt, and extend classical poetics to meet
the demands of contemporary Christian writers and readers.
Going back to Dante, their first priority was the defense of poetry
against the incursions of its ancient and modern opponents and

88
the defense of the vernacular as a poetic medium. Defending
poetry entailed defining it and establishing its formal criteria, both
of which hinged on imitation. Following Aristotle, critics tended
to define poetry itself as an imitation, the status, source, and
purpose of which they debated with recourse to other classical
philosophers, critics, and rhetoricians. Invoking Horace and
plying the formalism of Aristotle and such rhetorical treatises as
the Institutio oratoria of Quintilian, ambitious critics such as
Julius Caesar Scaliger (b. 1484–d. 1558) composed
encyclopedic artes poeticae that sought in unprecedented ways to
systematize the art of poetry with standards of prosody, figure,
and genre derived from classical models. The question of which
models to imitate, and how, gave rise to heated disputes over the
imitation of Cicero, the employment of quantitative meter and
rhyme, and the relative merits of romance and epic. Renaissance
literary criticism thus reflects the intellectual culture of the age by
confronting at every turn the complex dynamics of imitation, both
practically and theoretical

89
 Chapter (3)
Renaissance Criticism: Ben Johnson
Ben Jonson (1572- 1637) was an English Stuart dramatist,
lyric poet, and literary critic. He is generally regarded as the
second most important English dramatist, after William
Shakespeare. Ben Jonson was born by name of Benjamin Jonson
in London on June 11th , 1572, two months after his father died.
His stepfather was a bricklayer, but by good fortune the boy was
able to attend Westminster School. His formal education,
however, ended early, and he at first followed his stepfather’s
trade, then fought with some success with the English forces in
the Netherlands.

On returning to England, he became an actor and

playwright, experiencing the life of a strolling player. He
apparently played the leading role of Hieronimo in Thomas
Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy. By 1597 he was writing plays for
Philip Henslowe, the leading impresario for the public theatre.
With one exception (The Case Is Altered), these early plays are
known, if at all, only by their titles. Jonson apparently wrote
tragedies as well as comedies in these years, but his extant
writings include only two tragedies, Sejanus (1603) and Catiline
(1611).

90
 The year 1598 marked an abrupt change in Jonson’s
status, when Every Man in his Humour was successfully
presented by the Lord Chamberlain’s theatrical company (a
legend has it that Shakespeare himself recommended it to them),
and his reputation was established.130207 Bibliotheca
Alexandrina Updated by Ahmed Ghazi In 1606, Jonson and his
wife (wh om he had married in 1594) were brought before the
consistory court in London to explain their lack of participation
in the Anglican church. He denied that his wife was guilty but
admitted that his own religious opinions held him aloof from
attendance. The matter was patched up through his agreement to
confer with learned men, who might persuade him if they could.
Apparently it took six years for him to decide to conform.

For some time before this he and his wife had lived apart,
Jonson taking refuge in turn with his patrons Sir Robert
Townshend and Esmé Stuart, Lord Aubigny. During this period,
nevertheless, he made a mark second only to Shakespeare’s in the
public theatre. His comedies Volpone or the Foxe (1606) and The
Alchemist (1610) were among the most popular and esteemed
plays of the time.

In 1623, his personal library was destroyed by fire. By this

time his services were seldom called on for the entertainment of

91
Charles I’s court, and his last plays failed to please. Ben Jonson
died in London on August 6 th, 1637.

Jonson exerted a great influence on the playwrights who

immediately followed him. In the late Jacobean and Caroline
years, it was he, Shakespeare, and Francis Beaumont and John
Fletcher who provided all the models. But it was he, and he
alone, who gave the essential impulse to dramatic
characterization in comedy of the Restoration and also in the 18th
and 19th centuries.

Ben Johnson and criticism:

Ben Jonson was the first classical critic of England. He

held the ancient classical theories and principles of literature as
laid down by Plato, Aristotle and Horace in high esteem. He
equally loved, admired and adored the ancient Greek and Latin
poets. They were the models fit to be followed and imitated by
the moderns.

The classical models were: Homer and Virgil for epics,

Virgil also for pastorals, Seneca for tragedy, Plautus and Terence
for comedy, and Juvenal for Satire. Euripides, Sophocles and
Aeschylus were model dramatists before Shakespeare. However,
with all his respect and admiration for these ancient poets and
critics, he did not undermine the genius of the English poets and
dramatists. He did not want the moderns “to rest in their sole

92
authority, or take all upon trust from them. For to all the
observations of the ancients we have our own experience; which
if we will use and apply, we have abetter means to pronounce. It
is true they opened the gates and made the way that went before
us, but as guides, not commanders. For rules are ever of less
force and value than experiments. Nothing is more ridiculous
than to make an author a dictator as the schools have done
Aristotle.

Jonson’s admiration and adoration of the classics did not

shut the windows of his own mind. He admired the ancients for
what they were worth. At the same time he did not love and
admire to any degree less the great english authors like
Shakespear, Spenser, Bacon, Marlowe, Sidney, Donne and
others. Thus we see that Jonson’s neo-classical creed did not
blind him to the purely English genius and originality of the
Elizabethan authors. He was not to any degree blind to the glories
of English literature.

In a word, Ben Jonson is not only a playwright, but also a

critic who commented on his own plays and took care to collect
them in a definitive edition, an uncommon practice at the time
(1616). He was also the first Englishman object of a critical
monography, Jonsonus Virbius (1638). Jonson's thought is
influenced by Sidney, but he presents us with a more severe brand

93
of classicism than the one we had found in Sidney. Sidney
stressed idealization and passion; Jonson will insist on imitation
and regularity instead. His moral purpose is also more explicit.
Jonson's plays are much more respectful of the unities than
Shakespeare's, even though there is scarcely a single one in which
they may be said to remain intact (vide Dryden on The Silent
Woman). Jonson's classicism is native; it is not an extraneous
foreign element, but rather blends easily with the English
tradition, of which it is a logical evolution. Much of this easy
implantation comes from the nature of Jonson's talent: he is
caustic and vulgar, obscene yet at the same time moralising. He
does not deal with unknown places or attitudes, but rather with
London and now. This topical character of his plays is also found
in his criticism, and it is a great obstacle to its comprehension,
because he is always referring to some current topic which is
obscure to us now. Jonson also has the self-righteous and
confident tone of many neo-Classics after him.

Jonson was a kind of literary dictator in his circle of the

Mermaid Tavern, which included Shakespeare. Being energetic
and overbearing, he became involved in literary disputes such as
the Playwright's Quarrel (1599-1602), but he never wrote a
theoretical work stating his principles. Much of his criticism, as is
usual in the early seventeenth century, is dispersed in his poetical
works: prologues, memorial verses, satires, essays in verse. . . The

94
thing most resembling a book on literature written by Jonson was
published posthumously (1640) under the long-wound
title Timber: or, Discoveries; Made upon Men and Matter; as they
have flow'd out of his daily Reading, or had their refluxe to his
peculiar Notion of the Times. It is a miscellany of late writings
(mostly 1620-35) which includes political and moral writings,
satire, drafts for future works, and lecture notes -it seems that
Jonson was a professor of rhetoric at university for one year. Two
thirds of the whole, however, consists in literary criticism, dealing
with rhetoric, poetry, and drama. Only the ideas are not Jonson's,
at least not exclusively. The greater part is a series of verbatim
quotations from classical sources, which we may however take to
express Jonson's literary creed. He also borrows from some
contemporary critics, such as Daniel Heinsius, Pontanus, and
Hoskins. The exposition is aphoristical throughout: rules of
thumb, practical advice for composition, and sententious
comments on previous authors. Jonson's neoclassical doctrine
consists more of practical principles and concrete advice than of
systematic theories.

The qualities of style in oratory and letter-writing favoured

by Jonson are the ones appreciated by most Renaissance critics:
brevity, perspicuity, vigor and discretion. He rejects artifice,
recalling the ancient phrase oratio imago animi

95
 Chapter (4)
Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586)
1- Life, Work and Sources
2- Poetry: its nature and aims
3- The Poet
4- The Poem: Genres
5- The Poem: Prosody and Diction
6-English Poetry

Life, Work and Sources:

Sidney was the son of an illustrious family. He received a

solid education, based on the medieval trivium (Grammar,
Rhetoric, Logic), and the classical languages and literature. He
travelled widely through Europe, and met in person many of the
leading humanists of all countries. Early in his life he developed
Protestant sympathies, and he was active in the politics of his
country, aiming at establishing an international Protestant league
against Spain. He died in the Netherlands, in a skirmish with
Spanish forces while on mission for the Queen.

Sidney is remembered for his sonnet sequence Astrophil

and Stella and for his pastoral novel interspersed with
poetry, Arcadia. He did not write for publication; the Defence was
probably written in the early 1580s, and it circulated in
manuscript copies before it was published posthumously in 1595

96
in two separate editions under two different titles: An Apology for
Poetry and The Defence of Poesy.

Sidney's aim in writing the Apology was to justify that a

sensible and comprehensive control over human affairs can be
learnt from poetry. Poetry is not a contemplative but a practical
activity: it is designed to teach. Sidney links the Reformation with
the advancement of learning, and this with poetry. Poetry, then,
has a direct usefulness to the building of the nation; writing good
poetry is a patriotic enterprise.

Three traditions of critical thought mingle in Sidney:

The Horatian-Aristotelian combination current in Italian

poetics. Aristotle is seen as a support to Horace, but on the whole
he is not a major influence on his own yet. The first English
version of Horace's Artwas published in 1567; later, Ben Jonson
was to make his well-known verse rendering. Horace reaches
Sidney directly; we do not know whether it is the same with
Aristotle. He certainly knew some of his Italian commentators.

The classical rhetorical tradition, whose main figure is

Cicero. This tradition had lived on during the Middle Ages in
the trivium. Following a medieval tradition and encouraged by
Cicero, the Humanists subsume poetry under rhetoric. Poetry is
seen by many as a variant of ornamented prose. In England,
Ascham and Wilson present this account. Sidney opposes it: he

97
sees rhetoric as merely a "serving science," an instrument of other
disciplines. Poetry is more than rhetoric: it is a special kind of
knowledge and creation for Sidney, even though he is careful to
make poetry the vehicle of morality and religion.

The Platonic, or rather the neo-Platonic tradition as

transmitted by Boethius and Ficinus. These neo-Platonists admit
that the beauty of objects is a way of ascending towards the divine
beauty.

We may recognize in Sidney a Horatian background

reinforced by Aristotelian and Ciceronian technicalities as well as
by the Platonic Ideal. The plan of the Apology is as follows: first
an encomium of poetry in humanist terms, underlining the
authority of the ancients. There follows a comparison between
poetry and other disciplines of knowledge, with a refutation of the
current objections against poetry, a discussion of poetic forms,
and lastly, an examination of the state of English poetry.

Poetry: Its nature and aims:

Sidney's Apology follows a line of Humanist vindication

of poetry, which is already old by the time he writes (though not
so much in England). Dante and Petrarch had rejected the low
estimate of poetry current during the Middle Ages, and Boccaccio
had identified poetry with high-toned, serious-minded and learned
poetry. Some chapters of the Genealogy of the Gentile Gods set

98
the tone for the numerous essays written for the next three
centuries demanding a prominent place of poetry among the other
disciplines of learning. Still, we see that in Sidney's time poetry
was condemned by some Puritans; philosophical attacks against
poetry (Cornelius Agrippa, De vanitate et incertitudine
scientiarum, 1527) were not lacking either. It is obvious that the
defense of poetry was the critical task proper of the age.

To Sidney, a man with an acute political and religious

sense, the highest sciences are those which teach virtuous action
in the political or the ethical sphere. These are history and moral
philosophy. Theology he refuses to consider alongside human
learning; it has for him a sphere of its own outside which it cannot
stand comparison. His comparison of poetry with history and with
philosophy is based on Scholastic psychology, which
distinguishes three main faculties in the human mind:
imagination, reason, and memory. The different kinds of learning
are directed to one or another of these faculties: enriching of
memory (i.e. history), enabling (or strengthening) of judgment
(i.e. philosophy), and enlarging of conceit (i.e. poetry).

Enlarging of conceit: that is, expanding the human mind

and improving ideas. In order to present this concept in a lively
way, Sidney depicts character-sketches of the historian and the
philosopher which are close to caricatures.

99
 During the Renaissance there was not much theorising on
metaphysics, but there was an acute interest in applied
philosophy. "Much of Renaissance achievement lay in diffusing
over all human activities the intense, highly specialised
acquisitions of philosophy in medieval times" (Shepherd 31).
Sidney presents a typical Renaissance attitude in seeing the man
of letters as the model for learning, and not the abstract
philosopher, who is caricatured as a mixture of Scholastic pedant
and minor Greek philosopher. Practical, useful and effective
knowledge, leading to action, is valued more highly than abstract
theory.

The Humanists tend to establish comparisons between

history and poetry. We saw that Castelvetro defined poetry as an
imitation of history; Lorenzo Valla sees in history the source of
both poetry and philosophy. Sometimes these opinions are
reversed, but all the disciplines are seen as closely related. History
is valued for its rhetorical power, apart from its factualness. It is
seen as a school of examples and morals. And of course there is
an increasing political, nationalistic interest in the writing of
history.

Sidney distrusts too high a rating of the moral and

educative value of history. He stresses that it deals with
particulars, and not universals, an opinion already advanced by

100
Aristotle. History is not then guided by a rational principle, but by
mere facts which may contradict what is morally desirable.
Poetry, on the other hand, supplies that rational organization and
so it is a reliable moral guide; its examples are more ideal than
those of history because they are not tied to fact and can be
modelled on pure moral intention.

One main argument for Sidney's defense of poetry is that

all sciences depend on nature, but that poetry is a higher activity
than science. All sciences are dependent on nature, but poetry
builds a nature of its own: “Only the poet, disdaining to be tied to
any such subjection, lifted up with the vigour of his own
invention, doth grow in effect into another nature, in making
things either better than Nature bringeth forth, or, quite anew,
forms such as never were in Nature, as the heroes, demigods,
cyclops, chimeras, furies, and such like; so as he goeth hand in
hand with nature, not enclosed within the narrow warrant of her
gifts but freely ranging within the zodiac of his own wit. Nature
never set forth the earth in so rich a tapestry as divers poets have
done, neither with so pleasant rivers, fruitful trees, sweet-smelling
flowers, nor whatsoever else may make the too much loved earth
more lovely. Her world is brazen, the poets only deliver a
golden”.

101
 We see that poetry presents a "golden world", that is, an
ideal world which brings out the potentialities of the real one.
According to this conception, poetry gives examples, but not
merely in the way of allegory, veiled theology or moral
philosophy. "To Sidney . . . poetry was an exercise of the free
creative faculty, in which the poet transcended the limitations of
actual life, yet succeeded by means of his fictions in giving a
delightful and inspiring revelation of ideal and universal truth." It
is, fundamentally, a neo-Platonic position. Sidney does not see
that this idea is contrary to Plato's views. At first sight, the theory
is not too far from Aristotle's, though it seems to lean more to the
side of idealization --Aristotle also accepts realistic poetry. Sidney
quotes Aristotle to support his idea that poetry works with
universal concepts, and not with particulars, that it aims at
universal value. But while Aristotle's universals are generally
cognitive, Sidney's universals are moral. Sidney's theory of poetry
as the production of another nature derives from Scaliger, but
Sidney adds religious and transcendental overtones coming from
neo-Platonism theories of the ideal world.

Many of the scholastic accounts of poetry gave it a humble

place among the sciences, and often equated fiction with lies. For
instance, Conrad of Hirsau praises Virgil in the following
terms:” There has never been a [greater] author in terms of style

102
and metre, and no one, when he ought to have told the truth,
nevertheless lied in a more polished and civil fashion.”

One of Sidney's main arguments in defense of poetry is his

riposte to the accusation that poetry is a kind of lie:” The poet, he
nothing affirms, and therefore never lieth. For, as I take it, to lie is
to affirm that to be true which is false But the poet (as I said
before) never affirmeth. The poet never maketh any circles about
your imagination, to conjure you to believe for true what he writes
. . . . And therefore, though he recount things not true, yet because
he telleth them not for true, he lieth not.”

Sidney's argument, based on the difference in intention,

might derive from Augustine's definition of lying. At first sight,
this may sound like a good riposte. It is indeed a primary and
essential justification of fiction against the obtuse accusation that
it does not present us with factual truth, a justification that
apparently has to be repeated at regular intervals. But taken as a
whole it is a highly problematical assertion, and it does not solve
the problem of the relationship between fiction and truth. The
poet does affirm after all, because there is a logical relationship
between fiction and reality. Otherwise, he could not teach, and
Sidney assumes that he can. Saying that poetry does not affirm
may be problematic if taken literally -it might imply that poetry
need not have any relationship of congruence with the rest of

103
reality: it would be a theory of art for art's sake. Some of the
assertions in the Apology take a dangerous approach to that view.
Poetry would be not an interpretation of reality, but an alternative,
improved reality. There is a risk of contradiction with Sidney's
main aim in writing the treatise: to show that this congruence
exists, and that poetry is a mode of knowledge which provides us
with a better understanding of the real world.

In fact, according to the main argument of Sidney's theory,

the discovery of inherent reason within nature produces an
imitation which betters nature, but the notion of creation ex
nihilo is absent. The poet's activity is not seen as one of creation;
it is rather a discovery or recognition of a pattern which was
already there in an imperfect way. It is arguable, though, that
Sidney does not develop a fully consistent view of the relation
between poetry and reality. And of course poetry may be badly
used, and not help us in discovering the truth: it may deal
with phantastiké, with unworthy objects, instead of guiding us
along the patterns of God's creation. As any instrument, poetry is
dependent on the moral nature of he who uses it.

Sidney condemns aestheticism as something which jumps

out of the natural order of things. Things must be content with
their place, and subservient to the whole of God's scheme: even a
purse, beautifully embroidered though it may be, must answer to

104
its original function, keeping money inside (Arcadia ). Everything
in nature is directed to an end, and nothing is an end in itself. Art
must therefore be used to hide art, and shoew that both poetry and
nature are subject to decorum. Sidney believes that poetry can
provide a grasp of the design governing the whole.

Sixteenth-century interpretations of Aristotle and Horace

lean towards didacticism; it is always Horace's third possible aim
for poetry (to please and teach) which is quoted, repeated and
emphasized (although there are some exceptions to this view, like
Castelvetro).

Sidney defends usefulness in poetry. Delight is

instrumental to the main purpose, but it is a good in itself as well.
This assertion of pleasure is also a typical phenomenon of the
Renaissance: we may think of Lorenzo Valla's De
voluptate (1440), a vindication of pleasure and of active life
which goes against all the medieval ideals. Delight is good for
Sidney, because it derives from the recognition of harmony,
perfection or goodness. It appeals then not merely to the senses,
but to the understanding as well. Poetry can catch some of the
delight of the senses by means of the words, which substitute
sense experience. It also provides, of course, an intellectual
delight.

105
 But the main characteristic of poetry is its power to move.
Moving has two senses: stirring the emotions of the reader and
inducing him to action. To move does not mean to perturbate the
hearer in any way, but rather to persuade him to do something.
Sidney would agree with Puttenham's claim that poets from the
beginning were the best persuaders and their eloquence the first
rhetoric in the world.

Moving is a higher aim than teaching, because its effects

are seen in actual action. We may think here of this threefold aim
of poetry (teach, delight and move) similar those set by Cicero to
the accomplished orator. The Christian reformulation of this
doctrine by St. Augustine had set as the sole aim of the discipline
to move men to holiness. Renaissance theory of literature still
shows a strong rhetorical influence in seeing moving and
conviction as the main end of poetry. Since poetry is more
moving than both philosophy and history, poetry for Sidney "in
the most excellent work is the most excellent workman." The idea
that poetic style is more affective and moving, that it is more fit to
lead the emotions of people who cannot reach the abstractions of
philosophy, is a commonplace of medieval scholasticism.
According to Henry of Ghent, “in the speculative sciences, where
the main aim is the illumination of the intellect, one must proceed
by way of proof and in a subtle manner, but in moral matters,

106
where the goal is an upright will and that we should become good,
one must proceed by persuasion and use of figures.”

Sidney has probably inherited this conception. It originates

in the Ethics of Aristotle, and it is consonant with Sidney's
conception of poetry as an instrument of ethics. However,
Sidney's views on poetry should be distinguished from Aristotle's,
since they are much more heavily rhetorical. Aristotle "never
suggests that poetry is an effective way of communicating a kind
of knowledge that could also be communicated (but less
effectively) by other kinds of discourse." At the basis of this
conception is the idea that poetic techniques are only a means of
presentation, a "form" which is added to a pre-established
"content." Renaissance theory does not conceive of poetry as a
means of discovery, and divorces form from content.

The Poet:

Sidney dismisses (as Scaliger before him) Plato's

condemnation of the poets in the Republic, and commends instead
what he believes to be the praise bestowed on the poet
in Ion, even though he points out that the claim of divine
inspiration is excessive. It is characteristic of Renaissance
theorists that they tend to present Plato as a defender of poetic
inspiration; for them, Plato condemned only the abuse of poetry.
Sidney does not favour much any theory of inspiration. The

107
Roman name given to the poets, vates or prophets, he adduces as
a proof of reverence bestowed on them, but acknowledges that in
itself it is superstitious.

There is a tendency in neo-Platonism to draw a parallel

between human and divine creation: "What God creates in the
world by His thought man conceives in himself by intellectual act
and expresses it in language, puts it into his books and makes a
copy of it using earthly materials" (Shepherd 62). How is this to
be effected? Ronsard, Tasso, Puttenham, Chapman, and many
other poets and critics in the Renaissance advocate the old
inspirationalist theory in Ion, which at the time is taken to be an
exaltation of poetry, and speak of the "divine fury" of the poet.
"Possessed by this fury, a poet's spirit was thought to rise to a
direct awareness of the divine harmony and acquire a supernatural
wisdom." Willis notes that poetic fury is not to be understood as
pathological madness, but rather as a state of exaltation induced
by intense concentration. Others speak of direct divine inspiration.
For Spenser, poetry was “no art, but a divine gift and heavenly
instinct, not to be gotten by labour and learning, but adorned with
both, and poured into the wit by a certain enthousiasmos and
celestial inspiration.”

Giordano Bruno wrote in England and dedicated to Sidney

his work De gli Eroici Furori (1585). But the dedication, though

108
not as unwelcome as Stephen Gosson's, was equally misapplied,
because Sidney himself did not adhere to these doctrines of
inspiration and had satirized them in Astrophil and Stella:

I never drank of Aganippe well,

Nor ever did in shade of Tempe sit;

And muses scorn with vulgar brains to dwell;

Poor layman I, for sacred rites unfit

Some do I hear of poet's fury tell,

But (God wot) wot not what they mean by it. . . .

(from Sonnet 74)

Sidney believes that the poet has an insight into the proper
nature of things, but this insight comes from right reason, not
from any kind of fury or madness. It is a controllable force.
Sidney's doctrine may have some neo-Platonic traits, but it is a
very reasonable brand of neo-Platonism, similar to that applied to
painting by the Italian painter and theorist Zuccaro. The ideas in
human mind are all right the images of the divine ideas, but they
have a low origin: they are derived from sense, and they are not
"substantial", like the divine ones, but "accidental."

Poetry, then, is a vocation, a rational activity, not a divine

gift in any other sense than the reason common to men is divine.

109
But "orator fit, poeta nascitur": poetry must lead, and not be led. It
is an "unelected vocation," and one which ought to be a
demanding one, Sidney implies as he exhorts his fellow-poets to
more self-discipline. More work and less heroic fury: this is
Sidney's classicist advice.

But there are more romantic elements than this in Sidney's

theory of poetry than this counsel would warrant. Towards the
end of the Apology, Sidney complains that in the lyrical poets of
his time Sidney finds a general lack of energy which betrays a
lack of passion: “many of such writings as come under the banner
of unresistible love, if I were a mistress, would never persuade me
they were in love.”

Persuasion may be the end of love lyrics, but to persuade

one must move, and one does not move by mere imitation and
study, without energy. Persuasion is therefore linked
to expression and to a renewal of the rhetorical tradition. Sidney
opposes using conventional rhetorical ornaments becayse they
work against the main aim of poetry: worn-out resources are no
longer convincing. The poet must find a new and more vivid
expression, something which only the poet's personal experience
and subjective enthusiasm can provide. This conception is not
much stressed in the Apology, but it is a suggestive theme
inAstrophil and Stella :

110
Loving in truth, and faine in verse my love to show,

That the deare She might take some pleasure of my paine:

Pleasure might cause her reade, reading might make her know,

Knowledge might pitie winne, and pitie grace obtaine,

I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe,

Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertaine:

Oft turning others' leaves, to see if thence would flow

Some fresh and fruitfull showers upon my sunne-burn'd braine.

But words came halting forth, wanting Invention's stay,

Invention, Nature's child, fled step-dame Studie's blowes,

And others' feete still seem'd but strangers in my way.

Thus great with child to speake, and helplesse in my throwes,

Biting my trewand pen, beating myself for spite,

"Foole," said my Muse to me, "looke in thy heart and write.

This poem is written at the start of a tradition which

favours original invention over imitation of previous authors, a

111
tradition which will not come to the foreground of literary theory
until the Romantic age. It is significant that we find this statement
in a poem, and not in Sidney's purposed theoretical formulation of
his poetic principles; sometimes a writer's theory and his practice
are not completely coordinated. In the Apology the classical
tradition is given a much more prominent role. And it is
only feeling that Sidney is favouring; of imagination he is more
distrustul, because he links it to pestilent desires.

In the Apology, the poet is dealt with only as an

embodiment of his art. Sidney does not pay much attention to the
personality of the poet, and is not much concerned with his
mental states. The poet has the dignity of his craftÊhis ideal must
be one of great seriousness. He has the public role of a teacher,
which he is to perform in the activities of his life as a courtier,
after the ideal formulated by Castiglione and Elyot. Being a
courtier is not a restricted ideal at that time: the ideal courtier is a
man of learning, a man of fashion, good manners and witty
conversation, a lover, a politician and a warrior.

The poet is not committed to publication. The aristocrat

Sidney favours the kind of restricted and privileged audience he
enjoyed during his lifetime; the Apology itself was designed for
restricted circulation in courtly circles. At the end of the treatise,
Sidney indulges in a half-serious, half-playful call to the reader,

112
asking him to become a defender of poetry, too: “ Thus doing,
your name shall flourish in the printer's shops; thus doing, you
shall be of kin to many a poetical preface; thus doing, you shall be
most fair, most rich, most wise, most all, you shall dwell upon
superlatives.”

The Poem: Genres:

Sidney stresses the importance of decorum: the differences

between the poetic genres must be preserved. This difference in
form is linked to a difference in end: each kind of poetry and each
genre follows different aims and is designed to please a different
kind of public. There are three main kinds of poetry: religious,
philosophical, and imaginative poetry. This last kind is the most
properly poetic one, and the one Sidney is most concerned with. It
is subdivided into several genres. Sidney's list of genres is typical
of the Renaissance, partly based on metre and partly on subject
matter. It follows an order of preeminence, and includes Heroic
Poetry, Lyric Poetry, Tragic Poetry, Comic Poetry, Satiric Poetry,
Iambic Poetry, Elegiac Poetry, Pastoral Poetry.

Each genre has its own end and its own merit: pastoral, for
instance, is interpreted by Sidney as an essentially allegorical
genre which sings of virtue and politics under cover of talesÊthis
is certainly the case in Spenser's Colin Clout and in
Sidney's Arcadia. Elegy sings the evils of the

113
world, iambic poetry (the epigram) decries villainy,
and satire makes us reflect on our own folly.

Comedy imitates the common errors of life. Through it we

get an experience of vice and learn the effects which are to be
expected from it. It shows evil characters and doings, but that
does not mean that it teaches evil; Sidney compares it to a mirror
which must show truth: this means that it is a realistic genre,
instead of an idealized one like tragedy and epic.

Tragedy is interpreted by Sidney in the standard fashion of

his age: it shows the uncertainty of human fortune, and gives
advice to kings and tyrants. To this medieval idea, he adds the
Aristotelian idea that the function of tragedy is to cause pity and
fear, or, as he puts it, "admiration and conmiseration." But the
emphasis is on moral teaching rather than on emotional catharsis,
and so the theory not quite Aristotelian. Sidney expounds the
doctrine of the unities of space and time, which had been
developed in the continent by Robortello, Scaliger, and
Castelvetro; but he presents these rules as sensible
recommendations rather than as inviolable precepts.

Lyric is rated in the Apology rather more highly than in

other Renaissance treatises, maybe because Sidney himself was
an outstanding practitioner of the genre. Anyway, there is a
general move in the Renaissance to recognize the seriousness of

114
lyric poetry. The aim of lyric is for Sidney to praise virtue, give
moral precepts and sing the praise of God; it teaches honourable
enterprises and is the enemy of idleness. It is striking that most of
Sidney's lyrical production (and most of what we consider lyric
poetry) falls outside this definition. As we can see, Sidney is so
eager to demonstrate the didactic purpose of all genres that he
distorts actual practice. But in Sidney's own poetry we can find
the traditional objectives of instruction and delight combined with
a more urgent affective goal, which touches the poet himself. The
close link between lyric and subjective feeling is clearer in
Sidney's poems than in his treatise, althought here he insists on
the need for sincerity and he condemns the tendency to rhetorical
and insincere forms. He calls for a less elaborated, more direct
lyrical style.

Like most Renaissance theorists, Sidney places epic poetry

foremost in his list of genres. The model to follow is the Aeneid.
Heroic poetry moves men with example and makes virtue
triumph. It is the most idealized of all the genres, and therefore
the closest to the essence of poetry within Sidney's conception. It
was surely his early death what prevented Sidney from attempting
the writing of a protestant epic, a work which would have fulfilled
all the ideals of poetic relevance and high seriousness that the
neo-Classical theory ideally demands from literature.

115
The Poem: Prosody and Diction:

It results from Sidney's definition of poetry that verse form

is ancillary, not essential to poetry, as Minturno had held against
Scaliger. Verse is the most adequate form for poetry, since it is
more harmonious and dignified, but “It is not rhyming and
versing that maketh a poet, no more than a long gown maketh an
advocate.”

Imaginative writings in prose can also be called poetry.

Metre is appropriate because it reflects the harmony of the
Universe. It is also a good mnemonic resource and helps poetry in
teaching; besides, it favours the alliance of poetry with "divine
music." But in the last analysis it is only an ornament, not a
necessity. It is "feigning" together with teaching that makes a
poet, and not verse. A shortcoming of this way of putting it is that
verse seems something which is added to a pre-existing meaning,
instead of helping to constitute that meaning.

The rhythm of modern verse, he says, is based on "number,

with some regard of the accent," and on rhyme. Sidney was one of
several poets who tried to adapt the Classical measures to English.
One reason is that he was aware of the danger that the mechanical
necessity of rhyme may distort the coherence of the poem. Like
Gascoigne, Sidney argues that rhyme must be founded on reason.

116
In submitting sound to sense, a writer declares the rationality of
poetry.

In spite of his defense of classical poetry, Sidney's views

are not extreme. He accepts and uses rhyme, and he believes that
the English language is fit for both types of versification, the
classical and the modern one, because of the free position of the
accent in its vocabulary (as compared to French, for instance). He
seems to think that classical verse can be adapted to English
substituting accent for quantity. Other attempts at using classical
prosody in English were a failure, because the English ear
perceives accentual and even syllabic rhythm as more significant
than any metrical pattern resting on an alterance of long and short
vowels.

There were two general attitudes to style current in

Sidney's time: “That good style consists in an elaborate, difficult
and ornamented language, different from the simplicity of
everyday speech.” That the best style is simple and direct, that
ornaments only serves to hinder the clarity of truth.

In rhetoric as well as in poetry, Sidney leans moderately to

the second position. He opposes the extremely ornamental diction
of Euphuism, even though he advocates a polished aesthetic use
of language. Words, he thinks, should remain transparent and be
comprehensible to the hearer. The ideal is (as in similar proposals

117
in Italy, France, or Spain) that of the conversational speech of
courtiers, in which art is used to hide art, instead of showing it,
and the result is both simple and polished. The rhetorical tradition
of Cicero and Demosthenes, Sidney believes, will no longer carry
out the aim of poetry, which is to persuade, because its resources
are now evident: there is a surfeit of rhetoric. Conviction will only
come through sincerity, and this cannot exist together with
rhetoric. However, Sidney himself did not always write according
to the principles he preached. His novel Arcadia (1580), inspired
in Sannazaro and Montemayor, is written in a florid style which
often out-Lylies Lyly.

English Poetry:

In the Apology we find one of the earliest surveys of

English literature. Apart from the usual complaints that poetry has
fallen from an earlier state of preeminence and that contemporary
poets are cold and rhetorical, Sidney presents us with the "great
tradition" of English poetry up to his time: among medieval poets
he values Chaucer (though he mentions Troilus and
Criseyde rather than The Canterbury Tales), and he shows an
appreciation for medieval romances and ballads uncommon in a
Humanist. Among his contemporaries he praises the Earl of
Surrey, and Spenser, though he does not approve of the archaic
diction of the latter.

118
 As concerns drama, he complains that English tragedies
and comedies, even the great Gorboduc, are faulty as to the
classical rules of space and time: the English stage is fond of
dramatising many episodes which should instead be narrated in a
messenger speech, or suppressed altogether by plunging in medias
res. He calls for a strict verisimilitude of the action represented on
the stage, and for less reliance on the fancy of the spectator.
Besides, he says, Englishmen are too fond of farce, and spoil their
tragedies by turning them into tragicomedies. The aim of the stage
(even in the case of comedy) for Sidney is to produce delight,
rather than laughter: “delight we scarcely do but in things that
have a conveniency to ourselves or to the general nature; laughter
almost ever cometh of things most disproportioned to ourselves
and nature.”

Comedy is more polished and intellectual than farce. It

makes us laugh by exposing human foibles, not through mere
clowning; laughter should come from its satiric aspect. As to
tragicomedy, it is not rejected outright; only the sudden breaches
of tone which spoil the tragic effect. The test is the emotional
effect, the quality of the dramatic illusion produced, not a blind
submission to the rules.

Sidney concludes with a profession of faith in the future of

English language, and analysing its advantages (mixed

119
vocabulary, simple grammar, sweet sound) which will make it
capable of producing great literature in the future.
The Apology itself, because of its intrinsic merits and its
historical significance, lives up to this expectation. One of its
merits is to have made literary criticism readable and entertaining
for the English audience of the Renaissance; many of its ideas
were influential on writers like Shakespeare and Ben Jonson.

120
 Chapter (5)
Neo-Classical Theory & Criticism
Definition:

Neoclassicism refers to a broad tendency in literature and

art enduring from the early seventeenth century until around 1750.
While the nature of this tendency inevitably varied across
different cultures, it was usually marked by a number of common
concerns and characteristics. Most fundamentally, neoclassicism
comprised a return to the classical models, literary styles, and
values of ancient Greek and Roman authors. In this, the
neoclassicists were to some extent heirs of the Renaissance
humanists. But many of them reacted sharply against what they
perceived to be the stylistic excess, superfluous ornamentation,
and linguistic oversophistication of some Renaissance writers;
they also rejected the lavishness of the Gothic and Baroque styles.

Origin and Development of Neo-Classicism:

Many major medieval and Renaissance writers, including

Dante, Ariosto, More, Spenser, and Milton, had peopled their
writings with fantastic and mythical beings. Authors such as
Giraldi had attempted to justify the genre of the romance and the
use of the “marvelous” and unreal elements. Sidney and others
had even proposed, in an idealizing NeoPlatonist strain, that the
poet’s task was to create an ideal world, superior to the world of

121
nature. The neoclassicists, reacting against this idealistic tendency
in Renaissance poetics, might be thought of as heirs to the other
major tendency in Renaissance poetics, which was Aristotelian.
This latter impetus had been expressed in the work of Minturno,
Scaliger, and Castelvetro, who all wrote commentaries on
Aristotle’s Poetics and stressed the Aristotelian notion of
probability, as well as the “unities” of action, time, and place.

However, whereas many Renaissance poets had labored

toward an individualism of outlook, even as they appropriated
elements of the classical canon, the neoclassicists in general were
less ambiguous in their emphasis upon the classical values of
objectivity, impersonality, rationality, decorum, balance,
harmony, proportion, and moderation. Whereas many
Renaissance poets were beginning to understand profoundly the
importance of invention and creativity, the neoclassical writers
reaffirmed literary composition as a rational and rulebound
process, requiring a great deal of craft, labor, and study. Where

Renaissance theorists and poets were advocating new and

mixed genres, the neoclassicists tended to insist on the separation
of poetry and prose, the purity of each genre, and the hierarchy of
genres (though, unlike Aristotle, they generally placed the epic
above tragedy). The typical verse forms of the neoclassical
poetswerethe alexandrine in France and the heroic couplet in

122
England. Much neoclassical thoughtwas marked by a recognition
of human finitude, in contrast with the humanists’ (and,later, the
Romantics’) assertion of almost limitless human potential.

The English Neoclassical movement, predicated upon and

derived from both classical and contemporary French models,
(see Boileau'sL'ArtPoetique (1674) and Pope's "Essay on
Criticism" (1711) as critical statements of Neoclassical principles)
embodied a group of attitudes toward art and human existence —
ideals of order, logic, restraint, accuracy, "correctness,"
"restraint," decorum, and so on, which would enable the
practitioners of various arts to imitate or reproduce the structures
and themes of Greek or Roman originals. Though its origins were
much earlier (the Elizabethan Ben Jonson, for example, was as
indebted to the Roman poet Horace as Alexander Pope would
later be), Neoclassicism dominated English literature from the
Restoration in 1660 until the end of the eighteenth century, when
the publication of Lyrical Ballads (1798) by Wordsworth and
Coleridge marked the full emergence of Romanticism.

For the sake of convenience the Neoclassic period can be

divided into three relatively coherent parts: the Restoration Age
(16601700), in which Milton, Bunyan, and Dryden were the
dominant influences; the Augustan Age (17001750), in which
Pope was the central poetic figure, while Defoe, Richardson,

123
Fielding, and Smollett were presiding over the sophistication of
the novel; and the Age of Johnson(17501798), which, while it
was dominated and characterized by the mind and personality of
the inimitable Dr. Samuel Johnson, whose sympathies were with
the fading Augustan past, saw the beginnings of a new
understanding and appreciation of the work of Shakespeare, the
development, by Sterne and others, of the novel of sensibility, and
the emergence of the Gothic school — attitudes which, in the
context of the development of a cult of Nature, the influence of
German romantic thought, religious tendencies like the rise of
Methodism, and political events like the American and French
revolutions — established the intellectual and emotional
foundations of English Romanticism.

To a certain extent Neoclassicism represented a reaction

against the optimistic, exuberant, and enthusiastic Renaissance
view of man as a being fundamentally good and possessed of an
infinite potential for spiritual and intellectual growth. Neoclassical
theorists, by contrast, saw man as an imperfect being, inherently
sinful, whose potential was limited. They replaced the
Renaissance emphasis on the imagination, on invention and
experimentation, and on mysticism with an emphasis on order and
reason, on restraint, on common sense, and on religious, political,
economic and philosophical conservatism. They maintained that

124
man himself was the most appropriate subject of art, and saw art
itself as essentially pragmatic — as valuable because it was
somehow useful — and as something which was properly
intellectual rather than emotional.

Hence their emphasis on proper subject matter; and hence

their attempts to subordinate details to an overall design, to
employ in their work concepts like symmetry, proportion, unity,
harmony, and grace, which would facilitate the process of
delighting, instructing, educating, and correcting the social animal
which they believed man to be. Their favorite prose literary forms
were the essay, the letter, the satire, the parody, the burlesque, and
the moral fable; in poetry, the favorite verse form was the rhymed
couplet, which reached its greatest sophistication in heroic couplet
of Pope; while the theatre saw the development of the heroic
drama, the melodrama, the sentimental comedy, and the comedy
of manners. The fading away of Neoclassicism may have
appeared to represent the last flicker of the Enlightenment, but
artistic movements never really die: many of the primary aesthetic
tenets of Neoclassicism, in fact have reappeared in the twentieth
century — in, for example, the poetry and criticism of T. S. Eliot
— as manifestations of a reaction against Romanticism itself:
Eliot saw Neoclassicism as emphasising poetic form and
conscious craftsmanship, and Romanticism as a poetics of

125
personal emotion and "inspiration," and pointedly preferred the
former.

The neoclassicists were by no means devoted to slavish

imitation of the classics. La Bruyère indeed thought that the
ancients had already expressed everything that was worth saying;
and Pope, in one of his more insistent moments, equated
following the rules of nature with the imitation of Homer. But
Ben Jonson,Corneille, Dryden, and many others were more
flexible in their assimilation of classical values. Nearly all of them
acknowledged the genius of Shakespeare, some the genius of
Milton; Boileau recognized the contribution of an inexplicable
element, the je ne sais quoi, in great art, and Pope acknowledged
that geniuses could attain “a grace beyond the reach of art.”
Moreover, the neoclassicists attempted to develop and refine
Aristotle’s account of the emotions evoked by tragedy in an
audience, and an important part of their endeavor to imitate nature
consisted in portraying the human passions. There raged at the
beginning of the eighteenth century various debates over the
relative merits of “ancients” and “moderns.” The ancients were
held to be the repository of good sense, natural laws, and the
classical values of order, balance, and moderation. Such
arguments were found in Jonathan Swift’s The Battle of the
Books (1704) in the writings of Boileau and Pope. Proponents of

126
the “modern” laid stress on originality of form and content,
flexibility of genre, and the license to engage in new modes of
thought.

The famous critics of different eras French Neoclassicism:

Corneille, Boileau-Despréauxh Neoclassical literary criticism first
took root in France from where its influence spread to other parts
of Europe, notably England. It was Jean Chapelain who
introduced into France the ideas of the Italian Aristotelian
commentators Castelvetro and Scaliger. The French court during
the reign of Louis XIV was a center of patronage for numerous
poets and dramatists. The political conditions of relative peace,
prosperity, and national unity after the religious wars of the
sixteenth century, together with the growth of educated elites in
the clergy and court aristocracy, proved ripe for the founding of
the French Academy in 1635. The mission of the Academy,
headed by Cardinal Richelieu, was partly to standardize language
through the creation of a dictionary and grammar, as well as work
on rhetoric and poetics. The major figures of French
neoclassicism were Corneille, Racine, Molière, and La Fontaine.
Corneille’s theories grew out of the need to defend his dramatic
practice against strict classicists such as Scudéry and Jean
Chapelain. The most prominent theorists were Dominique
Bouhours, René Rapin, and Nicolas Boileau. Characteristically of

127
the neoclassical tendency as a whole, Bouhours argued against
excessive ornamentation and insisted on the principle of decorum.
Boileau, perhaps the most influential French neoclassical critic,
argued for retaining the strict divisions between classical verse
forms.

Pierre Corneille (1606–1684):

Pierre Corneille, born in the French town of Rouen in

Normandy, was primarily a playwright. Born into a middleclass
family, and having failed in his initial endeavor as a lawyer, he
launched into a stormy and controversial career in the theater. The
most important text of his literary criticism, TroisDiscourssur le
poèmedramatique (Three Discourses on Dramatic Poetry, 1660),
was produced in response to the controversies he had ignited, to
explain and justify his own dramatic practice. Those controversies
had their origin in the varied reception of Corneille’s most
renowned play, Le Cid, which appeared in 1637. While the play
enjoyed great popularity with audiences, it was attacked not only
by critics but also by the French literary and political
establishment. This attack was based on the play’s alleged failure
to observe the rules of classical theater as laid down by Aristotle
and Horace. Critics claimed that the play violated the classical
unities – of action, time, and place – as well as the Aristotelian
precepts of probability and necessity; and in doing so, they

128
argued, it undermined the morally didactic function of drama.
Corneille responded to these charges both by writing further plays
displaying his mastery of classical conventions and by producing
his Three Discourses. While he is conventionally regarded as a
champion of neoclassical virtues in the tradition of François de
Malherbe and Racine, the actual texts of his Discourses suggest
that he is concerned to adapt classical precepts to modern
requirements of the tage and to provide a broader and more liberal
interpretation of those precepts.

In his third Discourse, entitled “Of the Three Unities of

Action, Time, and Place,” Corneille attempts to explain the
rationale behind his plays. Regarding the unity of action,
Corneille resists any interpretation of this to mean that “tragedy
should only show one action on the stage.” He takes Aristotle’s
statement that a complete action should have a beginning, middle,
and end to mean that these three parts are “separate actions which
find their conclusion in the principal one.” And, just as these three
parts are subordinated to the main action, so, Corneille urges,
each of these three parts can contain subordinate which is to take
place in the following one. So what Corneille is disputing is not
that the action in a play should be complete, but the definition of a
complete action; interestingly, his own definition attempts to
develop the implication of Aristotle’s for the connections between

129
the acts of a play; it also makes the audience’s response an
integral component. In addition he develops Aristotle’s view, that
one event must not simply follow another but be caused by it
according to necessity or probability, into a rule which is “new
and contrary to the usage of the ancients.” This rule is that, not
only should all parts of the action be closely and causally
connected, but also they should “all have their source in the
protasis” (the protasis being the introduction of events in the first
act) (102– 103). actions. In other words, while he agrees that
“there must be only one complete action,” he insists that “action
can become complete only through several others . . . which, by
serving as preparation, keep the spectator in a pleasant suspense.”
He suggests that the end of each act leave us in the expectation of
something which is to take place in the following one. So what
Corneille is disputing is not that the action in a play should be
complete, but the definition of a complete action; interestingly,
his own definition attempts to develop the implication of
Aristotle’s for the connections between the acts of a play; it also
makes the audience’s response an integral component. In addition
he develops Aristotle’s view, that one event must not simply
follow another but be caused by it according to necessity or
probability, into a rule which is “new and contrary to the usage of
the ancients.” This rule is that, not only should all parts of the
action be closely and causally connected, but also they should “all

130
have their source in the protasis” (the protasis being the
introduction of events in the first act)

Aristotle had divided a play into two parts: the

“complication” leading up to the “change of fortune” of the
protagonist; and the “resolution,” the remaining part of the play.
While Corneille accepts this division, he states that the
“complication depends entirely upon the choice and industrious
imagination of the poet and no rule can be given for it” beyond
the requirements of probability and necessity .Corneille adds that
the poet should not engage in lengthy narrations providing
background to the play’s actual action; this will annoy and burden
the spectator. Narrations should be used only to explain or
comment on actions that have occurred within the play. Corneille
reaffirms Aristotle’s view that the deus ex machina should be
avoided, since this provides a “faulty resolution” of a plot. On the
other hand, he finds Aristotle’s criticism of the flying chariot in
Euripides’ Medea harsh since, Corneille argues, the audience has
been adequately prepared for this otherwise improbable scene.

b) Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (1636–1711):

The French poet, satirist, and critic Boileau had a pervasive

influence not only on French letters (of the oldfashioned kind) but
also on English and German poets and critics. His L’ArtPoétique
(The Art of Poetry), first published in 1674, was translated into

131
English by John Dryden. Boileau’s text represents a formal
statement of the principles of French classicism, and perhaps the
most direct expression of neoclassical ideals anywhere. It drew
heavily on Aristotle and Horace, and in its turn was a powerful
influence on English neoclassical writers such as Pope; in fact,
some of it is echoed very directly in Pope’s Essay on Criticism.
Boileau’s text and authority enjoyed such prestige that he was
known as the législateur du Parnasse, credited with the formation
of French literary taste, fixing this taste through consistent criteria
and extricating it from “unclassical” Spanish and Italian
influences. Boileau helped the French public to appreciate the
works of his friends Racine and Molière. Above all, Boileau
became the embodiment of classical rationality, “good sense,” and
proportion.

Like Pope’s Essay on Criticism, Boileau’s Art of Poetry

embodies some of the vast intellectual and political changes that
were already beginning to sweep over Europe. In some ways, it
embodies a rejection of the entire feudal system; characteristically
of neoclassical thinking, it virtually ignores the Middle Ages and
seeks to restore the classical principles of reason and nature,
together with the classical view of the human being as essentially
social. Just as Molière’s plays effect a balance between religious
belief and rationalism, arguing for an enlightened rather than

132
authoritarian religion, so Boileau’s text is marked by a central
affirmation of the importance of reason, as well as observation.
To this extent, Boileau’s neoclassicism, like Molière’s and
Pope’s, exhibits surface similarities with emerging bourgeois
philosophy and relatively modern ways of thinking. It reacts
against Christian puritanism, submitting the claims of the latter to
the judgment of reason. But, as in the case of these other authors,
the “reason” espoused by Boileau is a classical view of reason as
a common human faculty which perceives what is universally
true. It is not the individualistic reason of bourgeois philosophy
that rejects all authority and relies ultimately on thefindings of
individual senseperception. Moreover, Boileau appeals directly in
his text, as does Molière in Tartuffe, to the authority of the king
(Louis XIV) as an enlightened and nearomniscient monarch who
has extinguished “rebellion” and has brought order to all of
Europe.

Like Pope’s Essay, Boileau’s text is written as a poem, in

the tradition of Horace’s Arspoetica, and offers advice to the poet
in various genres such as tragedy, comedy, epic, and ode, as well
as summaries of various aspects of literary history. The principle
of reason is at the heart of Boileau’s text, receiving an emphasis
well beyond that in Horace’s text and greater even than that in
Pope’s text. Boileau’s most general imperative that the poet

133
employ reason is contained in the lines: “Love reason then; and
let whate’er you write / Borrow from her its beauty, force, and
light” (I, ll. 37–38). Boileau is skillful in drawing out the widely
varied ramifications of the reliance on reason.

134
 Chapter (6)
Neoclassicism in England: Dryden, Pope
John Dryden (1631–1700):

John Dryden occupies a seminal place in English critical

history. Samuel Johnson called him “the father of English
criticism,” and affirmed of his Essay of Dramatic Poesy (1668)
that “modern English prose begins here.” Dryden’s critical work
was extensive, treating of various genres such as epic, tragedy,
comedy and dramatic theory, satire the relative virtues of ancient
and modern writers, as well as the nature of poetry and
translation. In addition to the Essay, he wrote numerous prefaces,
reviews, and prologues, which together set the stage for later
poetic and critical developments embodied in writers such as
Pope, Johnson, Matthew Arnold, and T. S. Eliot.

Dryden was also a consummate poet, dramatist, and

translator. His poetic output reflects his shifting religious and
political allegiances. Born into a middleclass family just prior to
the outbreak of the English Civil War between King Charles I and
Parliament, he initially supported the latter, whose leaders, headed
by Oliver Cromwell, were Puritans. Indeed, his poem Heroic
Stanzas (1659) celebrated the achievements of Cromwell who,
after the execution of Charles I by the victorious parliamentarians,
ruled England as Lord Protector (1653–1658). However, with the

135
restoration of the dead king’s son, Charles II, to the throne in
1660, Dryden switched sides, celebrating the new monarchy in his
poem AstreaRedux (Justice Restored). Dryden was appointed
poetlaureate in 1668 and thereafter produced several major
poems, including the mockheroic “Mac Flecknoe” (1682), and a
political satire Absalom and Achitophel (1681). In addition, he
produced two poems that mirror his move from Anglicanism to
Catholicism: “ReligioLaici” (1682) defends the Anglican Church
while The Hind and the Panther, just five years later, opposes
Anglicanism. Dryden’s renowned dramas include the comedy
Marriage a la Mode (1671) and the tragedies AurengZebe (1675)
and All for Love, or the World Well Lost (1677). His translations
include Fables, Ancient and Modern (1700), which includes
renderings of Ovid, Boccaccio, and Chaucer.

a) Dryden as a critic:

Dryden was both a writer and a critic and he had rather a

dogmatic bent. Most of his critical interpretations are found in the
prefaces to his own works. In Dryden we find an interest in the
general issues of criticism rather than in a close reading of
particular texts. We call Dryden a neoclassical critic, just as
Boileau. Dryden puts emphasis on the neoclassical rules. His
bestknown critical work, An Essay on Dramatic Poesy, partly
reflects this tension in Dryden's commitments. Its dialogue form

136
has often been criticized as inconclusive, but actually, as in most
dialogues, there is a spokesman weightier than the others. Dryden
carried out his critical thoughts effectively, stating his own ideas
but leaving some room for difference of opinion. Neander's
overall statement on the literary standards is that, the norms can
be added to make the work ideal, but the norms will not improve
a work which does not contain some degree of perfection. And as
Dryden believes, we may find writers like Shakespeare who did
not follow the rules but are nevertheless obviously superior to any
"regular" writer. Shakespeare disconcerts Dryden; he recognises
his superiority but within himself he would feel closer affiliations
with Ben Jonson. In Dryden, then, we find a "liberal"
neoclassicist, although he is most coherent (a trait of classicism)
when he is dealing with that which can be understood and reduced
to rule. Dryden’s Essay of Dramatic Poesy is written as a debate
on drama conducted by four speakers, Eugenius, Crites, Lisideius,
and Neander. These personae have conventionally been identified
with four of Dryden’s contemporaries. Eugenius (meaning
“wellborn”) may be Charles Sackville, who was Lord Buckhurst,
a patron of Dryden and a poet himself. Crites (Greek for “judge”
or “critic”) perhaps represents Sir Robert Howard, Dryden’s
brotherinlaw. Lisideius refers to Sir Charles Sedley, and Neander
(“new man”) is Dryden himself. The Essay, as Dryden himself
was to point out in a later defense of it, was occasioned by a

137
public dispute with Sir Robert Howard (Crites) over the use of
rhyme in drama. In a note to the reader prefacing the Essay, he
suggests that the chief purpose of his text is “to vindicate the
honour of our English writers, from the censure of those who
unjustly prefer the French”. Yet the scope of the Essay extends far
beyond these two topics, effectively ranging over a number of
crucial debates concerning the nature and composition of drama.

b) Dryden on the nature of Poetry:

Dryden agrees in general terms with Aristotle’s definition

of poetry as a process of imitation though he has to add some
qualifiers to it. The generally accepted view of poetry in Dryden’s
day was that it had to be a close imitation of facts past or present.
While Dryden has no problem with the prevalent neoclassical bias
in favour of verisimilitude (likeness/fidelity to reality) he would
also allow in more liberties and flexibilities for poetry. In the The
Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy he makes out a case for
doublelegged imitation. While the poet is free to imitate “things
as they are said or thought to be”, he also gives spirited defence of
a right to imitate what could be, might be or ought to be. He cites
in this context the case of Shakespeare who so deftly exploited
elements of the supernatural and elements of popular beliefs and
superstitions. Dryden would also regard such exercises as
‘imitation’ since it is drawing on “other men’s fancies”

138
c) Dryden on the function of Poetry”:

As we know, Plato wanted poetry to instruct the reader,

Aristotle to delight, Horace to do both, and Longinus to transport.
Dryden was a bit moderate and considerate in his views and
familiar with all of them. He was of the opinion that the final end
of poetry is delight and transport rather than instruction. It does
not imitate life but presents its own version of it. According to
Dryden, the poet is neither a teacher nor a bare imitator – like a
photographer – but a creator, one who, with life or Nature as his
raw material, creates new things altogether resembling the
original. According to him, poetry is a work of art rather than
mere imitation. Dryden felt the necessity of fancy, or what
Coleridge later would call “the shaping spirit of imagination”.

d) An Essay on Dramatic Poesy: An Introduction:

John Dryden’s An Essay on Dramatic Poesy presents a

brief discussion on Neoclassical theory of Literature. He defends
the classical drama saying that it is an imitation of life and reflects
human nature clearly.

An Essay on Dramatic Poesy is written in the form of a

dialogue among four gentlemen: Eugenius, Crites, Lisideius and
Neander. Neander speaks for Dryden himself. Eugeniusfavours
modern English dramatists by attacking the classical playwrights,
who did not themselves always observe the unity of place. But

139
Crites defends the ancients and points out that they invited the
principles of dramatic art paved by Aristotle and Horace. Crites
opposes rhyme in plays and argues that though the moderns excel
in sciences, the ancient age was the true age of poetry. Lisideius
defends the French playwrights and attacks the English tendency
to mix genres.

Neander speaks in favour of the Moderns and respects the

Ancients; he is however critical of the rigid rules of dramas and
favours rhyme. Neander who is a spokesperson of Dryden, argues
that ‘tragiccomedy’ (Dryden’s phrase for what we now call
‘tragicomedy’) is the best form for a play; because it is closer to
life in which emotions are heightened by mirth and sadness. He
also finds subplots as an integral part to enrich a play. He finds
single action in French dramas to be rather inadequate since it so
often has a narrowing and cramping effect.

Neander gives his palm to the violation of the three unities

because it leads to the variety in the English plays. Dryden thus
argues against the neoclassical critics. Since nobody speaks in
rhyme in real life, he supports the use of blank verse in Drama
drama and says that the use of rhyme in serious plays is justifiable
in place of the blank verse.

e) Definition of Drama:

Dryden defines Drama as:

140
“Just and lively image of human nature,

representing its passions and humours, and the

changes of fortune to which it is subject, for the

delight and instruction of mankind.”

According to the definition, drama is an ‘image’ of ‘human

nature’, and the image is ‘just’ and ‘lively’. By using the word
‘just’ Dryden seems to imply that literature imitates (and not
merely reproduces) human actions. For Dryden, ‘poetic imitation’
is different from an exact, servile copy of reality, for, the imitation
is not only ‘just’, it is also ‘lively’.

When the group talks about the definition of Drama

Lisidieus expresses his views about Drama as “a just and lively
Image of Humane Nature.” And then each character expresses his
views about Drama and they compare French Drama and English
Drama and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of French
and English Drama. The debate goes on about the comparison
between ancient writers and modern writers. They also discuss the
importance of “Unity in French Drama”. So far as the Unities of
Time, Place and Action are concerned French Drama was closer
to the classical notions of Drama. With the influence of Platonic
Dialogues Dryden had designed the group that further discusses
the Playwrights such as Ben Jonson, Molière, and Shakespeare

141
with a deeper insight. Crites offers an objection specifically to the
use of rhyme as he privileges the verisimilitude of the scene while
citing Aristotle. On the other hand, Neanderfavours the natural
rhyme since that, according to him, adds artistry to the plays. It
was Twilight when the four friends had their final speech at the
SomersetStairs and then the four friends parted along their
separate ways.

f) f) Violation of the Three:

In an age of pseudoclassic criticism, with its precise rules

and definitions, Dryden had the boldness to defend the claims of
genius to write according to its own convictions, without regard
for the prescription and rules which had been laid down for good
writing.

He cleared the ground for himself by brushing away all the

arbitrary bans upon freedom of judgment and refused to be cowed
down by the French playwrights and critics.

g) Dryden’s Defence:

Dryden’s liberalism, his free critical disposition, is best

seen in his justification of the violation of three unities on the part
of the English dramatists and in his defense of English
tragicomedies. As regards the unities, his views are as under:

142
 a) The English violation of the three unities lends greater
copiousness (existing in large amounts, profuse in speech) and
variety to the English plays. The unities have narrowing and
cramping effects on the French plays, and they are often betrayed
into absurdities from which English plays are free.

b) The English disregard of the unities enables them to

present a more ‘just’ and ‘lively’ picture of human nature. The
French plays may be more regular but they are not as lively, not
so pleasant and delightful as that of English. e.g., Shakespeare’s
plays which are more lively and just images of life and human
nature.

c) The English when they do observe the rules as Ben

Jonson has done in The Silent Woman, show greater skill and art
than the French. It all depends upon the ‘genius’ or ‘skill’ of the
writer.

d) There is no harm in introducing ‘subplots’, for they

impart variety, richness, and liveliness to the play. In this way the
writer can present a more ‘just’ and ‘lively’ picture than the
French with their narrow and cramped plays.

e) To the view that observance of the unities is justified on

the ground that (i) their violation results in improbability , (ii) that
it places too great a strain on the imagination of the spectators ,
and (iii) that credibility is stretched too far, Dryden replies that it

143
is all a question of ‘dramatic illusion’. Lisideius argues that “we
cannot so speedily recollect ourselves after a scene of great
passion and concernment to pass to another of mirth and humour,
and to enjoy it with any relish”. Neander questions this
assumption and replies to it by saying why should he imagine the
soul of man more heavy than his senses? “Does not the eye pass
from an unpleasant object to a pleasant in a much shorter time?”
What Neader implies by this is that gratification of sense is
primary while that of the soul is secondary and that sensory
perception helps in dramatic illusion.

In Dryden’s text, this com compromise subsumes a number

of debates: one of these concerns the classical “unities” of time,
place, and action; another focuses on the rigid classical distinction
between various genres, such as tragedy and comedy; there was
also the issue of classical decorum and propriety, as well as the
use of rhyme in drama. All of these elements underlie the nature
of drama. In addition, Dryden undertakes an influential
assessment of the English dramatic tradition, comparing writers
within this tradition itself as well as with their counterparts in
French drama.

Dryden’s other essays and prefaces would seem to confirm

the foregoing comments, and reveal important insights into his
vision of the poet’s craft. In his 1666 preface to Annus Mirabilis,

144
he states that the “composition of all poems is, or ought to be, of
wit; and wit . . . is no other than the faculty of imagination in the
writer”. He subsequently offers a more comprehensive definition:
“the first happiness of the poet’s imagination is properly
invention, or finding of the thought; the second is fancy, or the
variation, deriving, or moulding, of that thought, as the judgment
represents it proper to the subject; the third is elocution, or the art
of clothing or adorning that thought, so found and varied, in apt,
significant, and sounding words: the quickness of the imagination
is seen in the invention, the fertility in the fancy, and the accuracy
in the expression” Again, the emphasis here is on wit,
imagination, and invention rather than exclusively on the classical
precept of imitation.

In fact, Dryden was later to write “Defence of An Essay on

Dramatic Poesy,” defending his earlier text against Sir Robert
Howard’s attack on Dryden’s advocacy of rhyme in drama. Here,
Dryden’s defense of rhyme undergoes a shift of emphasis,
revealing further his modification of classical prescriptions. He
now argues that what most commends rhyme is the delight it
produces: “for delight is the chief, if not the only, end of poesy:
instruction can be admitted but in the second place, for poesy only
instructs as it delights”. And Dryden states: “I confess my chief
endeavours are to delight the age in which I live” . We have come

145
a long way from Aristotle, and even from Sidney, who both
regarded poetry as having primarily a moral or ethical purpose.
To suggest that poetry’s chief or only aim is to delight is to take a
large step toward the later modern notion of literary autonomy.
Dryden goes on to suggest that while a poet’s task is to “imitate
well,” he must also “affect the soul, and excite the passions” as
well as cause “admiration” or wonder. To this end, “bare imitation
will not serve.” Imitation must be “heightened with all the arts
and ornaments of poesy” .

Alexander Pope (1688–1744):

An Essay on Criticism, published anonymously by

Alexander Pope in 1711, is perhaps the clearest statement of
neoclassical principles in any language. In its broad outlines, it
expresses a worldview which synthesizes elements of a Roman
Catholic outlook with classical aesthetic principles and with
deism. That Pope was born a Roman Catholic affected not only
his verse and critical principles but also his life. In the year of his
birth occurred the socalled “Glorious Revolution”: England’s
Catholic monarch James II was displaced by the Protestant King
William III of Orange, and the prevailing anti-Catholic laws
constrained many areas of Pope’s life; he could not obtain a
university education, hold public or political office, or even reside
in London. Pope’s family, in fact, moved to a small farm in

146
Windsor Forest, a neighbourhood occupied by other Catholic
families of the gentry, and he later moved with his mother to
Twickenham. However, Pope was privately taught and moved in
an elite circle of London writers which included the dramatists
Wycherley and Congreve, the poet Granville, the critic William
Walsh, as well as the writers Addison and Steele, and the deistic
politician Bolingbroke. Pope’s personal life was also afflicted by
disease: he was a hunchback, only four and a half feet tall, and
suffered from tuberculosis. He was in constant need of his maid to
dress and care for him. Notwithstanding such social and personal
obstacles, Pope produced some of the finest verse ever written.
His most renowned publications include several mockheroic
poems such as The Rape of the Lock (1712; 1714), and The
Dunciad (1728). His philosophical poem An Essay on Man
(1733–1734) was a scathing attack on human arrogance or pride
in failing to observe the due limits of human reason, in
questioning divine authority and seeking to be selfreliant on the
basis of rationality and science. Even An Essay on Criticism is
written in verse, following the tradition of Horace’s Arspoetica,
and interestingly, much of the philosophical substance of An
Essay on Man is already formulated in this earlier poem, in its
application to literature and criticism. While An Essay on Man
identifies the chief fault of humankind as the original sin of
“pride” and espouses an ethic based on an ordered and

147
hierarchical universe, it nonetheless depicts this order in terms of
Newtonian mechanism and expresses a broadly deistic vision.

Indeed, Pope’s poem has been variously called a study and

defense of “nature” and of “wit.” The word “nature” is used
twentyone times in the poem; the word “wit” fortysix times.
Given the numerous meanings accumulated in the word “nature”
as it has passed through various traditions, Pope’s call for a
“return to nature” is complex, and he exploits the multiple
significance of the term to generate within his poem a
comprehensive redefinition of it. Among other things, nature can
refer, on a cosmic level, to the providential order of the world and
the universe, an order which is hierarchical, in which each entity
has its proper assigned place. In An Essay on Man Pope expounds
the “Great Chain of Being,” ranging from God and the angels
through humans and the lower animals to plants and inanimate
objects. Nature can also refer to what is normal, central, and
universal in human experience, encompassing the spheres of
morality and knowledge, the rules of proper moral conduct as
well as the archetypal patterns of human reason.

The word “wit” in Pope’s time also had a variety of

meanings: it could refer in general to intelligence and intellectual
acuity; it also meant “wit” in the modern sense of cleverness, as
expressed for example in the ability to produce a concise and

148
poignant figure of speech or pun; more specifically, it might
designate a capacity to discern similarities between different
entities and to perceive the hidden relationships underlying the
appearances of things. In fact, during the late seventeenth and
early eighteenth centuries, “wit” was the subject of a broad and
heated debate. Various parties contested the right to define it and
to invest it with moral significance. A number of writers such as
Nicolas Malebranche and Joseph Addison, and philosophers such
as John Locke, argued that wit was a negative quality, associated
with a corrupting imagination, distortion of truth, profanity, and
skepticism, a quality opposed to “judgment,” which was a faculty
of clear and truthful insight. Literature generally had come to be
associated with wit and had been under attack from the Puritans
also, who saw it as morally defective and corrupting. On the other
side, writers such as John Dryden and William Wycherley, as well
as moralists such as the third earl of Shaftesbury, defended the use
and freedom of wit. Pope’s notions of wit were worked out in the
context of this debate, and his redefinition of “true” wit in Essay
on Criticism was a means not only of upholding the proper uses
of wit butalso of defending literature itself, wit being a mode of
knowing or apprehension unique to literature.

It would be facile to dismiss Pope’s Essay on Criticism as

an unoriginal work, as a hotchpotch of adages drawn from the

149
likes of Aristotle, Horace, Quintilian, Longinus, and Boileau.
While the isolated insights offered by Pope may not be original,
the poem as a whole undertakes a number of endeavors that, in
their poetic unification, might well be viewed as novel. To begin
with, Pope is not merely delineating the scope and nature of good
literary criticism; in doing this, he redefines classical virtues in
terms of an exploration of nature and wit, as necessary to both
poetry and criticism; and this restatement of classicism is itself
situated within a broader reformulation of literary history,
tradition, and religion. Above all, these three endeavors are
pursued in the form of a poem: the form of the work exemplifies
and enacts much of its overt “meaning.” And its power far
exceeds its paraphrasable meaning: this power rests on the poetic
effects generated by its own enactment of classical literary
dispositions and its own organic unity.

While much of Pope’s essay bemoans the abyss into which

current literary criticism has fallen, he does not by any means
denounce the practice of criticism itself. While he cautions that
the best poets make the best critics (“Let such teach others who
themselves excell,” l. 15), and while he recognizes that some
critics are failed poets (l. 105), he points out that both the best
poetry and the best criticism are divinely inspired:

150
 Both must alike from Heav’n derive their Light, These
born to Judge, as well as those to Write.

(ll. 13–14)

Pope specifies two further guidelines for the critic. The

first is to recognize the overall unity of a work, and thereby to
avoid falling into partial assessments based on the author’s use of
poetic conceits, ornamented language, and meters, as well as
those which are biased toward either archaic or modern styles or
based on the reputations of given writers. Finally, a critic needs to
possess a moral sensibility, as well as a sense of balance and
proportion, as indicated in these lines: “Nor in the Critick let the
Man be lost! / GoodNature and GoodSense must ever join” (ll.
523–525). In the interests of good nature and good sense, Pope
urges the critic to adopt not only habits of selfcriticism and
integrity (“with pleasure own your Errors past, / And make each
Day a Critick on the last,” ll. 570–571), but also modesty and
caution. To be truthful is not enough, he warns; truth must be
accompanied by “Good Breeding” or else it will lose its effect (ll.
572–576). And mere bookish knowledge will often express itself
in showiness, disdain, and an overactive tongue: “Fools rush in
where Angels fear to tread. Distrustful Sense with modest
Caution speaks” (ll. 625–626). Pope ends his advice with this
summary of the ideal critic:

151
But where’s the Man, who Counsel can bestow,

Still pleas’d to teach, and yet not proud to know?

Unbiass’d, or by Favour or by Spite;

Not dully prepossest, nor blindly right;

Tholearn’d, wellbred;

and tho’ wellbred,

sincere;

. . . Blest with a Taste exact, yet unconfin’d;

A Knowledge both of Books and Humankind;

Gen’rous Converse; a Soul exempt from Pride;

And Love to Praise, with Reason on his Side?

(ll. 631–642)

As we read through this synthesis of the qualities of a good

critic, it becomes clear that they are primarily attributes of
humanity or moral sensibility rather than aesthetic qualities.
Indeed, the only specifically aesthetic quality mentioned here is
“taste.” The remaining virtues might be said to have a theological
ground, resting on the ability to overcome pride. Pope effectively
transposes the language of theology (“soul,” “pride”) to
aesthetics. It is the disposition of humility – an aesthetic humility,

152
if you will – which enables the critic to avoid the arrogant
parading of his learning, to avoid falling into bias, and to open
himself up to a knowledge of humanity.

Pope’s specific advice to the critic is grounded on virtues

whose application extends far beyond literary criticism, into the
realms of morality, theology, and art itself. It is something of an
irony that the main part of his Essay on Criticism is devoted not
specifically to criticism but to art itself, of which poetry and
criticism are regarded as branches. In other words, Pope sees
criticism itself as an art. Hence most of the guidance he offers,
couched in the language of nature and wit, applies equally to
poetry and criticism. Not only this, but there are several passages
which suggest that criticism must be a part of the creative process,
that poets themselves must possess critical faculties in order to
execute their craft in a selfconscious and controlled manner.
Hence there is a large overlap between these domains, between
the artistic elements within criticism and the critical elements
necessary to art. While Pope’s central piece of advice to both poet
and critic is to “follow Nature,” his elaboration of this concept
enlists the semantic service of both wit and judgment, establishing
a close connection – sometimes indeed an identity – between all
three terms; wit might be correlated with literature or poetry; and
judgment with criticism. Because of the overlapping natures of

153
poetry and criticism, however, both wit and judgment will be
required in each of these pursuits.

Pope’s final strategy in the Essay is to equate the classical

literary and critical traditions with nature, and to sketch a
redefined outline of literary history from classical times to his
own era. Pope insists that the rules of nature were merely
discovered, not invented, by the ancients: “Those Rules of old
discover’d, not devis’d, / Are Nature still, but Nature Methodiz’d”
(ll. 88–89). He looks back to a time in ancient Greece when
criticism admirably performed its function as “the Muse’s
Handmaid,” and facilitated a rational admiration of poetry. But
criticism later declined from this high status, and those who
“cou’d not win the Mistress, woo’d the Maid” (ll. 100–105).
Instead of aiding the appreciation of poetry, critics, perhaps in
consequence of their own failure to master the poetic art, allowed
the art of criticism to degenerate into irrational attacks on poets.
Pope’s advice, for both critic and poet, is clear: “Learn hence for
Ancient Rules a just Esteem; / To copy Nature is to copy Them”.

154