English Renaissance Prose

There was no prose fiction proper in England till the 16^th c. Prose fiction was considered to be a II-rate literary instrument. However, prose became 1 of the I results of secularization of knowledge & education, which came alongside with humanism. Firstly, these were the translations of classics & modern foreign authors, who popularized ancient plotlines & ideas, especially Italian Renaissance lit-re, especially Italian novella. Between the mid-60-s till the beg. of 80-s Italian novellas miscellanies appear in English translations. The most important ones were: William Painter (1540-1594) - Pallace of Pleasure (1566-1567), Sir Geoffrey Fenton (1539-1608) - Certaine Tragical Discourses (1567), William Pettie (1548-1589) - Petite Patlace of Pettie his Pleasure (1576), later George Whetstone (1544-1587) – Heptameron of Civill Discourses (1582), etc.

AMONG the prose compositions of the Elizabethan era are numerous works which, with many points of difference, have this in common, that they all aim at affording entertainment by means of prose narrative. They are variously styled Phantastical treatises, Pleasant histories, Lives, Tales & Pamphlets, & the methods & material they employ are of corresponding variety; they are, moreover, obviously written in response to demands from different classes, & yet their common motive, as well as a common prose form, unmistakably suggests a single literary species. Then, again, Malory, Caxton & the translators of Boccaccio had shown that narrative might adopt prose form without disadvantage; through the Bible & the liturgy the use of vernacular prose was fast becoming familiar; while further possibilities of prose were being revealed from its place in the drama. Its “treatises” & its pamphlets embodied studies of manners & character-sketches; it comprised tales of adventure as well as romance; it dealt with contemporary life & events of the past, with life at the court, & life in the city; it was, by turns, humorous & didactic, realistic & fanciful, in short, it represented the I rough drafts of the later novel. The history of the novel had really begun, &, although the term was not, as yet, generally applied, the word itself had already entered the language.

One of the leading places in the development of the English prose fiction was occupied by most of the memebers of the so-called “University Wits” with its leading member being John Lyly, a native of Kent, &, in his day, a noted son of Oxford. The work for which he is famous appeared in 2 instalments. Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit became known by the Christmas of 1578; Euphues & his England, the II part, appeared in 1580. The 2 parts were republished 6 times within the next 2 yrs, & 17 times in the next 30 yrs. In addition, Euphues provoked a great number of imitations, critical reviews, pamphlets & parodies, each 1 contributing to the author & the novel’s popularity. Together, they form an extensive moral treatise, & the I English novel. Each incident & situation is merely an opportunity for expounding some point of philosophy. Euphues, a young man of Athens, arrives at Naples, where he forms a friendship with young Philautus. He falls in love with Lucilla, the fiancee of Philautus, & is later abandoned by the sly mistress. This is all the action of The Anatomy of Wit: but the moralising element is something more considerable. Euphues is a discourse on the subject of friendship. The complications brought about by the action of Lucilla lead to much bitter moralising upon inconstancy in general, while Euphues, abandoned, discusses his soul & composes “a Cooling Carde for all Fond Lovers.” Over and above all this, the work contains the hero’s private papers, his essays and letters; opportunities are seized for insulting against dress, for discoursing upon such diverse subjects as marriage & travel, education & atheism.

Thus, the style, known as Euphuistic has since become 1 of the most familiar of literary phenomena. Lyly aimed at precision & emphasis, in the I place, by carefully balancing his words & phrases, by using rhetorical questions & by repeating the same idea in different & striking forms. Alliteration, puns & further word-play were other devices employed to the same end. For ornament, in the II place, he looked mainly to allusions & similes of various kinds. Finally, III peculiarity - abundant quoting of natural history facts: botany, biology, mineralogy – to illustrate human qualities & peculiarities. He draws similes from folklore, medicine & magic, above all from the Natural History of Pliny, & this mixture of peculiar device & naïve science resulted in a style which appealed irresistibly to his contemporaries. But this elaborated style did not originate with Lyly himself. Its immediate origin lay in a certain stylistic tendency then fashionable in England. Apart from its prose style, the Euphues of Lyly exercised considerable influence upon its author’s contemporaries. On Shakespeare, to mention only 1, its effect is marked. Some of the dramatist’s characters, such as his pairs of friends, the sententious old man Polonius & the melancholy philosopher Jacques, recall Euphues in different ways. Verbal resemblances also exist: Shakespeare’s utterances on friendship, & his famous bee-passage, place his indebtedness beyond all doubt, even supposing his numerous similes drawn from actual or supposed natural history to be but drafts made upon the common possessions of the age.

The most notable exponent of this fashionable type of work is Robert Greene. His character, the date of his appearance & the attendant circumstances, all made it inevitable that he should follow the fashion, & work it for what it was worth. In his Mamillia (1580) he relates how a fickle Pharicles undeservedly wins Mamillia’s hand, a circumstance which leads on to questions of love & youthful folly. Upon these topics Greene discourses & duly recommends what he has to say, by means of zoological similes and classical precedents. These details of ornamentation he repeats in succeeding works, in his Myrrour of Modestie (1584) & in Morando (1587), a series of dissertations upon the subject of love. In 1587, 2 companion works, characterised by the same style, appeared from his pen. The first, Penelope’s Web, consists of a discussion in which the faithful Penelope, strangely enough, embodies the ideas of the Italian Platonists in her conception of love, & then goes on to portray the perfect wife. In Euphues his Censure to Philautus the perfect warrior is sketched, Euphues supplying the picture for the benefit of his friend. But, in spite of this and other sequels to Lyly’s original story, the enthusiasm aroused by Euphues & the love-pamphlets he engendered had already begun to subside. Greene was already working in another field. Robert Greene is the II great romancer of the Elizabethan period after Sidney, in which he appears as a picturesque but pathetic Bohemian, with “wit lent from Heaven but vices sent from Hell.”

Less interesting, because less tragic, is the personality of Thomas Lodge, who also was responsible for certain romances. During his Oxford days, he fell under Lyly’s influence, which accounts for the Euphuistic strain which pervades all his works. His restless, unsettled career was typical of his age. He began with law, took to literature, & ended as a medical man, while, from time to time, he indulged in lengthy cruises abroad. His I romance, Forbonius & Prisceria (1584), is a slight performance, & consists of a story of blighted affection, the subject of which seeks refuge in a pastoral life. Rosalynde, Euphues Golden Legacie (1590) is 1 of the most pleasing of all the romances, &, upon it, Shakespeare, as is well known, based his As You Like It. It is a fresh story, steeped in idyllic sentiment, the charm of which even a Euphuistic manner is unable to dull. Lodge claims to have written it on a cruise to the straits of Magellan. The story itself is based on The Tale of Gamelyn, a 14^th c. ballad of the Robin Hood cycle, which relates how the hero, deceived by his elder brother, takes to the forest & becomes an outlaw. This story of earlier England is removed by Lodge into the region of pastoral romance, & the English outlaws become Arcadians of the Italian type, polished in speech & courtly in manner. A love element is woven into the tale; Rosalynde & Alinda, as well as Phoebe, appear on the scene; & the plot develops, as in the Arcadia, by means of disguisals of sex. Shakespeare appreciated the charm & freshness of the woodland scenes, & he appropriated the elements of a good love-tale; but he also detected the unreality of Lodge’s creations.

The next great realist, Thomas Nashe, was another of those “University Wits” who lived hard, wrote fiercely, & died young. He seems to have travelled in Germany & Italy; by 1589, he had done with Cambridge, & was endeavouring, in the metropolis, to live by his pen. Like his friend Greene, Nashe was responsible, in the I place, for certain pamphlets dealing with the social life of London; but he does not confine himself, as was the case with Greene, to the outcast & the pariah, nor does he find much attraction in the steady-going citizen. His attack is directed against respectable roguery, against foolish affectations & empty superstition, & these things proved excellent whetstones for his satirical wit. His Anatomie of Absurditie (1589) is a characteristic study of contemporary manners. In Pierce Pennilesse, his Supplication to the Divell (1592), where he figures as Pierce, Nashe gives a fair taste of his quality. He pillories, among others, the travelled Englishman; the brainless politician; and those inventors of religious sects who were a confusion to their age. The result is a gallery of contemporary portraits, faithfully reproduced, and tempered with wit. In 1593, he wrote Christ’s Teares over Jerusalem, a pamphlet which throws light upon the morals of Elizabethan London, & depicts the gamester, a shabby scholar & tavern life generally. The object of his ridicule in his next pamphlet, Terrors of the Night (1594), is the superstition of the age, discoursing on dreams, devils & such like, in a way that must have proved entertaining to many of his contemporaries. But his merriest effort was reserved for his last: in Lenten Stuffe (1599), he writes in praise of the red herring after a visit to Yarmouth, suggesting the role of the fish in the history of the world.

All this pamphleteering work, however, was completely overshadowed by his picaresque novel The Unfortunate Traveller or the life of Jack Wilton, which appeared in 1594, & which was the most remarkable work of its kind before the time of Defoe. It relates the lively adventures of the rogue-hero, an English page, who wanders abroad, & comes into contact with many kinds of society. He enters taverns & palaces, makes acquaintance with people worthy & unworthy, & so passes in review the Germany & Italy of his day. The scene opens in the English camp before Tournay, where the page is engaged in his knavish tricks. The form of this work is of great interest, for it resembles the picaresque type native to Spain. But this need not imply that Nashe was a mere imitator; on the contrary, though he may have derived a definite stimulus from Lazarillo de Tormes, the elements of his work represent a spontaneous English growth. The Spanish rogue-novel was the outcome of a widespread beggary brought about by the growth of militarism & the decline of industry, by the increase of gypsies & the mixed charity of an all-powerful church. Similar social conditions prevailed in Elizabethan England, though from different causes, & the conditions which produced Lazarillo produced The Unfortunate Traveller. In general, it may be said, that parallels existing between the Spanish and English literatures of the time were the result of similar national conditions, of influences which were common to both.

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