Queen Elizabeth Loved Poetry

· One of the queen's favorite art forms was poetry, and the written word flourished under her reign. Some poets even composed in dedication to Queen Elizabeth herself as a form of flattery, including the famous “The Faerie Queene” by Edmund Spencer.

LITERARY CHARACTERISTICS.

Next to the patriotic spirit of Elizabethan literature, its most notable qualities are its youthful freshness and vigor, its romantic spirit, its absorption in the theme of love, its extravagance of speech, its lively sense of the wonder of heaven and earth.

This romantic enthusiasm of Elizabethan poetry and prose may be explained
by the fact that, besides the national impulse, three other inspiring
influences were at work.

The first in point of time was the rediscovery of
the classics of Greece and Rome,--beautiful old poems, which were as new to
the Elizabethans as to Keats when he wrote his immortal sonnet, beginning:

The second awakening factor was the widespread interest in nature and the
physical sciences, which spurred many another Elizabethan besides Bacon to
"take all knowledge for his province." This new interest was generally
romantic rather than scientific, was more concerned with marvels (чудеса) like the philosopher's stone that would transmute all things to gold, than with the
simple facts of nature.

The third factor which stimulated the Elizabethan imagination was the
discovery of the world beyond the Atlantic, a world of wealth, of beauty,
of unmeasured opportunity for brave spirits, in regions long supposed to be
possessed of demons, monsters, Othello's impossible cannibals that each other eat, The anthropophagi, and men whose heads Do grow beneath their shoulders.

When Francis Drake returned from his voyage around the world he brought to England two things: a tale of vast regions just over the world's rim that awaited
English explorers, and a ship loaded to the hatches with gold and jewels.

LYRICS OF LOVE. Love was the subject of a very large part of the minor
poems of the period/

Since love was still subject to literary rules, as in the metrical
romances, it is not strange that most Elizabethan lyrics seem to the modern
reader artificial. They deal largely with goddesses and airy shepherd folk;
they contain many references to classic characters and scenes, to Venus,
Olympus and the rest; they are nearly all characterized by extravagance of
language.

MUSIC AND POETRY. Another reason for the outburst of lyric poetry in
Elizabethan times was that choral music began to be studied, and there was
great demand for new songs. Then appeared a theory of the close relation
between poetry and music.

So many lyric poets appeared during this period that we cannot here
classify them; and it would be idle to list their names. The best place to
make acquaintance with theo is not in a dry history of literature, but in
such a pleasant little book as Palgrave's _Golden Treasury_, where
their best work is accessible to every reader.

EDMUND SPENSER (1552-1599)

Spenser was the second of the great English poets, and it is but natural to
compare him with Chaucer, who was the first. In respect of time nearly two
centuries separate these elder poets; in all other respects, in aims,
ideals, methods, they are as far apart as two men of the same race can well
be.

He was born in London, and spent his youth amid the political and
religious changes of the time Elizabeth. For all
this turmoil Spenser had no interest; he was a man of peace, of
books, of romantic dreams. He was of noble family, but poor; his
only talent was to write poetry, and poetry would not buy much
bread in those days/

To the liberality of a patron he owed his education at Cambridge.
It was then the heyday of Renaissance studies, and Spenser steeped
himself in Greek, Latin and Italian literatures. Everything that was antique was then in favor at the universities; there was a revival of interest in Old-English poetry, which accounts largely for Spenser's use of obsolete words and his imitation of Chaucer's spelling.

After graduation he spent some time in the north of England,
probably as a tutor, and had an unhappy love affair, which he
celebrated in his poems to Rosalind. Then he returned to London,
lived by favor in the houses of Sidney and Leicester, and through
these powerful patrons was appointed secretary to Lord Grey de
Wilton, the queen's deputy in Ireland.

For his services Spenser was awarded the castle of Kilcolman and
3000 acres of land, which had been taken from the Earl of Desmond.
In the same way Raleigh became an Irish landlord, with 40,000 acres
to his credit; and so these two famous Elizabethans were thrown
together in exile, as they termed it. Both longed to return to
England, to enjoy London society and the revenues of Irish land at
the same time, but unfortunately one condition of their immense
grants was that they should occupy the land and keep the rightful
owners from possessing it.

In Ireland Spenser began to write his masterpiece _The Faery
Queen_. Raleigh, to whom the first three books were read, was so
impressed by the beauty of the work that he hurried the poet off to
London, and gained for him the royal favor. In the poem "Colin
Clout's Come Home Again" we may read Spenser's account of how the
court impressed him after his sojourn in Ireland.

WORKS OF SPENSER. The poems of Spenser may be conveniently grouped in three classes. In the first are the pastorals of _The Shepherd's Calendar_,
in which he reflects some of the poetical fashions of his age. In the
second are the allegories of _The Faery Queen_, in which he pictures
the state of England as a struggle between good and evil. In the third
class are his occasional poems of friendship and love, such as the
_Amoretti_. All his works are alike musical, and all remote from
ordinary life, like the eerie music of a wind harp.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564-1616)

LIFE. It is probably because so very little is known about
Shakespeare that so many bulky biographies have been written of
him.

In the beautiful Warwickshire village of Stratford our poet was
born, probably in the month of April, in 1564. His mother, Mary
Arden, was a farmer's daughter; his father was a butcher and small
tradesman, who at one time held the office of high bailiff of the
village. There was a small grammar school in Stratford, and
Shakespeare may have attended it for a few years. When he was about
fourteen years old his father, who was often in lawsuits, was
imprisoned for debt, and the boy probably left school and went to
work. At eighteen he married Anne Hathaway, a peasant's daughter
eight years older than himself; at twenty-three, with his father
still in debt and his own family of three children to provide for,
Shakespeare took the footpath that led to the world beyond his
native village.

William Shakespeare had three children. Susanna was born in May 1583, six months after the wedding of her parents Anne Hathaway and William Shakespeare. The baptism of Susanna Shakespeare took place in Stratford Parish Church on May 26th 1583. Two years later in 1585 Anne and William's twins, Hamnet and Judith Shakespeare, were born. The baptism of Hamnet and Judith Shakespeare took place in Stratford Parish Church on February 2nd 1585.The twins were named after two very close friends of William and Anne, the baker Hamnet Sadler and his wife, Judith. These were the three legitimate children of the Bard.

From Stratford he went to London. That he was looking for work;
that he followed a company of actors.

Beginning, undoubtedly, as an actor of small parts, he soon learned
the tricks of the stage and the humors of his audience. His first
dramatic work was to revise old plays, giving them some new twist
or setting to please the fickle public.

This experimental period of Shakespeare's life in London was
apparently a time of health, of joyousness, of enthusiasm which
comes with the successful use of one's powers. It was followed by a
period of gloom and sorrow, to which something of bitterness was
added. What occasioned the change is again a matter of speculation.
The first conjecture is that Shakespeare was a man to whom the low
ideals of the Elizabethan stage were intolerable, and this opinion
is strengthened after reading certain of Shakespeare's sonnets. Whatever the cause of his grief, Shakespeare shows in his works that he no longer looks on the world with the clear eyes of youth. The great tragedies of this period, _Lear_, _Macbeth_, _Hamlet_, _Othello_ and _Casar_,

FIRST PERIOD, EARLY EXPERIMENT (1590-1595). _Titus Andronicus_,
_Henry VI_, _Love's Labor's Lost_, _Comedy of Errors_,
_Two Gentlemen of Verona_, _Richard III_, _Richard II_,
_King John._

SECOND PERIOD, DEVELOPMENT (1595-1600). _Romeo and Juliet_,
_Midsummer Night's Dream_, _Merchant of Venice_, _Henry IV_,
_Henry V_, _Merry Wives of Windsor_, _Much Ado About
Nothing_, _As You Like It._

THIRD PERIOD, MATURITY AND TROUBLE (1600-1610). _Twelfth Night_,
_Taming of the Shrew_, _Julius Caesar_, _Hamlet_, _Troilus
and Cressida_, _All's Well that Ends Well_, _Measure for
Measure_, _Othello_, _King Lear_, _Macbeth_, _Antony and Cleopatra_, _Timon of Athens._

FOURTH PERIOD, LATER EXPERIMENT (1610-1616). _Coriolanus_,
_Pericles_, _Cymbeline_, _The Winter's Tale_, _The
Tempest_, _Henry VIII_ (left unfinished, completed probably by
Fletcher).

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