valiant. As a mere story it is a poem of
great power, but under the guise of chivalrous
adventures the poet wrought out a
supreme allegory of life.
It was in this age that the drama rose to a height never reached before or since. Dramatic representations began in England as early as the 12th century in the form of miracle plays, the subjects being Bible stories and legends from the lives of the saints. Later, allegorical plays called moralities were in vogue. But in the latter half of the 16th century was born the modern English drama, the drama of real life. How sudden was this outburst of dramatic genius is seen in the fact that in less than 50 years after the first rude tragedy, Hamlet and Lear were created. Greene, Peele, Lyly, Marlowe and their companions, brilliant and eager young men, attached themselves to the stage and made it and themselves suddenly famous. Marlowe is a type of the class, raising himself to fame by a tragedy produced just after leaving the university and writing several plays of great power. His Doctor Faustus, founded on the same story as Goethe's Faust, is a tragedy of terrible power, and has passages worthy of Shakespeare.
But in the last 20 years of Elizabeth's reign, when Marlowe and his friends were in their glory, the greatest of poets arose and eclipsed them all. The plays of Shakespeare fill the period from 1585 to 1616, when the poet died. It is impossible here to give any worthy account of these great works. The plays, early classified as comedies, tragedies and histories, embody all the feelings and passions of the human soul; they possess such wealth of imagination, largeness and many-sidedness of thought and power to touch every chord of feeling and teach every kind of wisdom as set them apart from all other works of human genius.
Next after Shakespeare, in order of time and merit, comes his friend Ben Jonson, who wrote in the reigns of James I and Charles I. Most of his plays were comedies and masques. The masques were entertainments, not for the theater, but for the court, with little dialogue but with much costly scenery and costumes and with mythical characters, as nymphs and river-gods. As a song-writer Jonson had few equals. Beaumont and Fletcher lived at the same time as Jonson, and wrote joint plays which by some critics are ranked next to those of Shakespeare.
Roger Ascham, at the beginning of this period, wrote clear and vigorous prose in his Toxophilus and his Schoolmaster. John Lyly in his Euphues indulged in a fantastic style which was named euphuism from the title of his book. Sir Philip Sidney's famous Arcadia is a romance with all the impossibilities and enchantment of a story of mediaeval times. His Defense of Poetry is one of the earliest attempts at literary criticism in English. Richard Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, the first book of which has been compared to the peal of a cathedral organ, is a work of genius. It is a defense of the Church of England as established under Elizabeth. In 1597 Francis Bacon published 10 short essays: in the latest edition there were 58. Nothing equal to them in any way has ever been written since. His Advancement of Learning is a view of knowledge as it then was. His great work in Latin, Novum Organum, is a treatise on the inductive philosophy. This, the true method of studying nature, was not created by Bacon, but he held it up before the world in such a light as to make its claims seen and felt and to earn for himself the title of Father of Modern Science.
John Milton, born in 1608, ranking next to Shakespeare among English poets, wrote in three distinct periods. That of his early poems began in his boyhood, the noble Hymn on the Nativity being written before he left the university. His two companion pieces, L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, show, the one, cheerful sympathy with the bright side of nature and life, and the other, sober thought on the earnestness and mystery which belong to them. The elegy Lycidas and the masque Comus are others of his early poems. Milton's second period as a writer was spent in defending Parliament against Charles I. For 20 years he poured forth tracts and treatises, the most eloquent of which is his Areopagitica, a plea for the freedom of the press. His last period as a writer gave to the world the tragedy of Samson Agonistes and the epics of Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. Paradise Lost is his masterpiece and the greatest English epic.
Among the theological writers of Milton's time was Jeremy Taylor, whose sermons are famous in literature. Holy Living and Holy Dying and Liberty of Prophesying are his best-known books. George Herbert's religious poetry is good, as are also the love-poems of Lovelace, Herrick, Cowley and Waller. To the era of the Restoration belongs the immortal prose allegory of the Bedford tinker and nonconformist preacher, The Pilgrim's Progress of John Bunyan.
The greatest writer of the Restoration was John Dryden, whose many plays were highly popular. His Absalom and Achitophel has been called the most powerful satire in English verse. Another satire was Mac Flecknoe, while Religio Laici and Hind and Panther are religious discussions in verse.
In this period, from Charles II to Anne, modern science arose on the foundation laid by Bacon; Newton's Principia was an epoch-making book. At this time, also, John Locke and Thomas Hobbes wrote on politics and metaphysics. Their chief books are Hobbes' Leviathan and Locke's famous Essay on the Human Understanding.
The literature of the reign of Queen Anne
