6. The Tudors and

History

Literature Click here for a Tudor timeline. The royal website includes a history of the Tudor Monarchs [and those prior and post this period]. Art This site will guide you to short articles on the Kings and Queens of the Tudor Dynasty. Another general guide to Tudor times can be found here.

Architecture Click here for a fuller account of Elizabeth.

One of the principle events of the reign of Elizabeth was the defeat of the (here's the BBC Armada site). Elizabeth's famous (and short) speech before the battle can be found here. England's power grew mightily in this period, which is reflected in the lives and achievements of contemporary 'heroes' such as Sir Francis Drake, fearless fighter against the Spanish who circumnavigated the globe, and Sir (nowadays pronounced Rawley), one of those who established the first British colonies across the Atlantic (and who spelt his name in over 40 different ways...). Raleigh is generally 'credited' with the commercial introduction of tobacco into England .about 1778, and possibly of the potato.

On a lighter note, information on Elizabethan costume is available here (including such items as farthingales and bumrolls).

Literature

Drama and

The Elizabethan age is the of , for which the establishment of permanent theatres is not least responsible. As performances left the inn-yards and noble for permanent sites in , the demand for drama increased enormously. While some of the smaller theatres were indoors, it is the purpose-built round/square/polygonal such as The Theatre (the first, built in 1576), the Curtain (late 1570s?), the (1587), the Swan (1595), the Fortune (1600) and of course the Globe (1599) that are most characteristic of the period. Although not the first, Shakespeare's Globe, built with materials from the demolished Theatre which moved to avoid a rent increase, was the most famous, and has now been reconstructed near its old site in Southwark. The first play performed at the Globe in 1599 was . [For a scholarly article on the Elizabethan stage and acting conditions, plus much else, click here.]

Of the many, many dramatists of the period, this survey course concentrates on the following:

Christopher Marlowe: this link will take you to an attractive Luminarium site with many details. A shorter account of his life and relevance is given here – he perfected blank verse (see below - poetry) with his ‘mighty line’, as Jonson called it. Marlowe was also a fine poet, and here you can read his delightful short poem "The Passionate Shepherd to his Love". : As you read in some detail, you should have more general knowledge of such points as his main types of play with some examples and the development of his language and his view of the world from romantic comedies and through the great tragedies and 'dark' comedies to the philosophical plays and tales. The topic of our greatest dramatist is inexhaustible - clicking on his name will take you to a whole Shakespeare library with many further links. Mr William Shakespeare and the Internet has an attractive page with a wide range of links. There is also a website for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Ben Jonson (please note the spelling!): another Luminarium site with links to the works, life etc. of this younger contemporary and friend of Shakespeare. In contradistinction to the latter, however, he sought to follow the classical precepts of the Unities, and his characters tend to illustrate the medieval theory of the four humours. His tragedies are rarely played nowadays, but his comedies The Alchemist, Bartholomew Fair and especially Volpone are still current on the stage.

John Webster: writing during the Jacobean period. Little is known about the author, but The Duchess of Malfi [text etc.] is still frequently acted, The White Devil less so. Both are revenge tragedies, an extremely popular at the time (with the subtlest and most outstanding). Webster's dramas are full of mental and physical cruelty but the dramatic poetry is fine.

Poetry

[Concentrate on Spenser, Shakespeare and Donne]

Sir Thomas Wyatt, who lived at the time of Henry VIII, is credited among other things with introducing the into in its Petrarchan form, while a contemporary, the Earl of , developed the Elizabethan or Shakespearean sonnet form. Even more important, Surrey developed blank verse to translate Virgil's Aeneid. This verse form (decasyllabic and with its basis in iambic pentameters) was to dominate English drama in the Jacobethan period (=Elizabethan/Jacobean) as well as being used by such as Milton (below).

The poet most admired in Shakespeare's day was , well dealt with as usual at this Luminarium site. Have a look, for instance, at the first verse of "Prothalamion" with its complaint at his neglect by those who might have been his patrons (he was poor) and his reference to "silver-streaming Thames" (though he was probably upriver of the main sewers such as the Fleet river!), or with a theme found also in Shakespeare's (below), or a verse or two of the First Canto of . This is generally reckoned the second greatest epic poem in English after Milton's Paradise Lost (below), if such statements are meaningful. The 9 lines are decasyllabic (=10 syllables) with the exception of the last, which is an alexandrine (12 syllables, the length of French classical verse). This is usually called the Spenserian stanza, and was later used by Keats, for instance.

Shakespeare himself was of course a poet not only in his poetic dramas and the songs often found there, but in a few longer poems and notably in his sonnets, whose mysteries have engaged scholars for years.

Largely rediscovered in this century, not least due to the influence of T.S.Eliot, is . The Victorian Golden Treasury, an anthology by F.T. Palgrave, contained not a poem by Donne, for instance. His poetry often begins in a startling, even violent, way and is argumentative, using strange ideas or 'conceits' but persuading us of their appropriateness. See for instance "The Sun Rising" and "The Flea". This type of poetry was later referred to as 'metaphysical' by the classical poet Dryden (not intended as praise) and the term was popularised by Dr Johnson in the eighteenth century. Donne and his followers have been especially favoured in our century by the Modernist movement in poetry and by the New Critics because of their use of irony, ambiguity and other structural devices.

Links to some other poets not taken up here, such as Sydney, can be found at this site, though there were many more of interest.

Art

Pictorial art outside the churches and religious houses is in 16th and 17th c. England very largely the history of the portrait. The first artists in England of great significance were mainly imported from the Continent, with the greatest early example. While his portraits of notables and merchants showed their trade or learning with various portrayed objects - see "The Ambassadors", for instance, two French ambassadors to Henry's court (there is a detailed account of the meaning of the and its symbols here) - his royal portraits were very iconic in style without background details. Note his linear style - every last detail is painted, such as the individual hairs in a fur collar or the pattern of a robe.

Among Holbein's specialities was the (the snapshot of the time to be carried around and shown to friends etc). His greatest successor in the time of Elizabeth was an Englishman, . His "Young Man Among " is thought to have been a portrait of Elizabeth's the Earl of Essex, later executed for rebellion. He seems entangled by eglantine roses – the Queen’s rose – and is wearing black and white clothing which were her colours, worn in honour of the Queen. The tree is a symbol of steadfastness. Some other portraits can be found here, including (an enlargeable) Elizabeth.

Music

Music in England was especially flourishing under the Tudor monarchs, and the 16th c. was a golden age of English music. Henry VIII was himself an accomplished musician with an extensive collection of instruments, and a number of his songs have been preserved. His dissolution of the monasteries broke up their rich musical life, but patronage passed to the court and the nobility. An outstanding composer of Henry's time (mainly of church music) was .

Under Elizabeth the , songs for several voices or parts ( a form of Italian origin), reached perfection under practitioners such as Orlando Gibbons, , who wrote music to Shakespeare's songs [here you will find a synthesized version of "Now is the Month of Maying"], the great [examples of his music], and many more. Salon and music became popular, and wealthier households had a set of viols or a virginal. Lutes could be bought at the barbers' shops.

John Dowland (1563-1626) was the lute virtuoso of his time who also worked in Germany and Denmark [a selection of his music including dance music such as "Lachrymae"].

Architecture Here is a brief guide to with some examples at the Wikipedia site. Elizabethan Architecture was a further development with more foreign and influence.

The medieval had been built up round its great which was high to allow smoke from the centrally placed fire to find its way out under the . In appearance such manors were asymmetrical and grew irregularly over generations, like Penshurst Place in Kent with its perfectly preserved 14th c. hall.

Later, the quadrangle pattern grew more common, and was adopted in the 15th c. for Oxford and Cambridge colleges. The of St John's College, Cambridge, dates from the 15th to early 16th c. and shows the Perpendicular four-centred surmounted by an ogee; the octagonal corner towers are also typical of this time and are found for instance at St James's and beside the centrally placed gatehouse at (1515-25).This latter originally belonged to Henry VIII's chief minister Cardinal Wolsey, but its size (280 ) aroused the King's jealousy so Wolsey wisely saw fit to make the King a present of it. In the reign of Henry Renaissance influence meant that many buildings adopted a symmetrical layout, but the great oriel (a window projecting from a , supported by or brackets) over the entrance (apparently a relic of Wolsey's earlier ) shows that Gothic still predominates in England at this time, and classical details appear, if at all, merely as pattern. Note, too, the very high Tudor chimneys in fanciful patterns. The quality of at this time was extremely high.

Henry's Great Hall at Hampton Court is of a type known as hammerbeam, with Italianate pendants and elaborate decoration (which was extremely expensive, but Henry squandered much of the money his father left him on show). We must not forget the great skill of the carpenters as also exemplified in the enormous 15th c. of Westminster Hall, now part of the Parliament buildings.

During the reign of Elizabeth, the growing wealth of the time expressed itself in the so-called 'prodigy' houses, the high point of the early . The best-known master builder was , whose Longleat, built for Sir [better picture here], an ancestor of the Marquess of Bath, shows several Elizabethan features: the symmetry, the horizontal emphasis, the very large leaded (a status symbol at a time when glass was expensive and could only be made in small panes in lead or iron frames), the exuberance of detailing on the roof, the once bright yellow stain on the . In close-up one can see the semi-classical pilasters set around the windows, a detail selected from pattern-books and used as mere decoration.

Smythson's , ('Hardwick Hall, more glass than wall') was built for 'Bess of Hardwick ' whose four marriages left her better off each time. It is in the form of two Greek crosses joined by a rectangle, had the first in England, front and back, forming , and a hall running front to back instead of side to side, the start of the modern function of the hall as entrance with staircase. Like most English houses of the time, it also had a , 166 feet in length, with both wall hangings and portraits. The uppermost with its suite of rooms and the High was intended to be fit for the Queen who, however, never came. (Another Smythson is .)

'Smaller' houses of the time ('courtier houses') were often E-shaped with the entrance symmetrically placed in the centre and the hall off-centre, or H-shaped, looking like two E's back to back. Examples are Barrington Court (1552-64) and House in , completed ca 1599. The former is an early example and not perfectly symmetrical. The latter has a long gallery running the length of the house on the top floor, terminating at each end in an oriel window. Like many other houses of the time, it was stained a bright yellow, now much faded. Both these houses are quintessentially English in character. Many clickable pictures here with buildings of the time.

In the Jacobean period, windows tended to decrease in size and became more common as a building material. One example is the very attractive Blickling Hall in Norfolk (1619-22) (description). Two very large buildings reconstructed during the reign of James I were (other views and sites) and Audley End.

For Inigo Jones and the introduction of consistent classicism, see below, the 17th c. (page 4).

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