The Sixteenth Century

Unit five closed the Middle Ages on works without names, sorted by their kinds. This unit opens the Renaissance, and now the names arrive with the forms. Its governing idea is that the sixteenth century built the tools later writers used: the English sonnet, blank verse, a defence of poetry, allegory, and a public stage. We move in three steps: humanism and More's Utopia; then the sonnet, from Wyatt and Surrey to Sidney's sequence and his Defence, with Elizabeth the First as a writer; and then Spenser's allegory, Marlowe, Mary Sidney Herbert and the stage, closing on two reading procedures.

We begin with humanism, the new classical learning put to Christian purpose and spread by print.

First, where this period sits on the exam.

ENL 0501 The Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Century on This Exam

The sixteenth and early seventeenth century carry fifteen percent of the questions, the age of the Tudors and the first Stuarts. It begins after Henry Tudor's victory at Bosworth in fourteen eighty-five. This course gives it four units: the sixteenth century, Shakespeare, the early seventeenth century, and Milton. Fifteen percent, four units. Shakespeare alone is a unit.

The Renaissance began with a kind of learning.

ENL 0502 Humanism and the English Renaissance

The Renaissance revived classical learning and fostered writing in the vernacular. English humanism, the anchor says, stressed educating the individual courtier or gentleman and tied that education to Christianity. Caxton's printing press, Henry the Eighth's break with Rome, and Elizabeth's long reign shaped the age. Classical learning, Christian purpose, print. Religion runs through every Tudor work.

More imagined an ideal island.

ENL 0503 Thomas More's Utopia

Thomas More, humanist and later Lord Chancellor, wrote Utopia in Latin, published in fifteen sixteen. A traveller, Raphael, describes an island where the towns hold property in common and no one wants. The name means "no place." More was executed for refusing to accept Henry as head of the Church. An ideal island, described by a traveller. Utopia means no place.

Now the sonnet, imported from Italy and made English within two generations.

First, the poet who brought the sonnet over.

ENL 0504 Wyatt and the English Petrarchan Sonnet

Thomas Wyatt, courtier and diplomat, translated Petrarch and brought the sonnet into English, along with terza rima and ottava rima. His poems circulated at court and were printed after his death, in Tottel's Miscellany of fifteen fifty-seven. The anchor also credits him with the English sonnet; the witness credits Surrey. The sonnet, imported from Italy. Sources differ on the English form.

One Wyatt poem turns bitter.

ENL 0505 "They Flee From Me"

Wyatt's speaker recalls lovers who once sought him "with naked foot," now wild and gone, and one woman in particular, who held him and asked, "dear heart, how like you this?" He ends bitterly on being "so kindly" served. The poem is one of the exam's sample answer choices. Lovers like birds that once fed from his hand. "Kindly" is bitter irony.

Surrey shaped two forms.

ENL 0506 Surrey, Blank Verse and the English Sonnet

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, a nobleman beheaded in fifteen forty-seven, was the first to use blank verse in English, in translating books two and four of Virgil's Aeneid. The witness credits him with the English sonnet's rhyme and division into quatrains. Blank verse begins with Surrey. Surrey's verse was printed posthumously.

The exam prints a Surrey poem.

ENL 0507 "The Means to Attain Happy Life"

The exam's sample questions print this Surrey poem whole. It lists what makes a happy life: "the quiet mind," "the equal friend," "the mean diet, no dainty fare." "Mean" here means basic, and the theme, the board's key says, is that happiness comes from simple living. A list of plain goods. "Mean" means modest, not cruel.

The queen herself wrote poems.

ENL 0508 Elizabeth I as Writer

Elizabeth the First, daughter of Henry and Anne Boleyn, was tutored in French, Spanish, Greek and Latin. She reigned from fifteen fifty-eight, restored the Church of England, and stayed unmarried. The anchor prints her poems "The Doubt of Future Foes" and "On Monsieur's Departure." A learned queen with her own poems. The age is named for her.

Sidney made the sequence English.

ENL 0509 Sidney's Astrophil and Stella

Sir Philip Sidney, courtier and soldier, wrote Astrophil and Stella, a Petrarchan sonnet sequence of aloof Stella and suffering Astrophil, published in fifteen ninety-one. He also wrote the prose romance Arcadia. He died of a wound received at Zutphen in fifteen eighty-six. Star-lover and star, in sonnets. Astrophil means star-lover; Stella means star.

Sidney also defended poetry itself.

ENL 0510 Sidney's Defence of Poesy

Sidney's Defence of Poesy answers attacks on poetry as immoral, especially Plato's banishing of poets. Built on the classical oration, it argues that poetry teaches and delights, giving light through beauty, and that right thought leads to right action. It is the period's major critical work. Poetry teaches and delights. It answers Plato's charge against poets.

Last, Spenser's allegory and the stage of Marlowe and Kyd, where the great age of the theatre began.

Spenser planned a poem of virtues.

ENL 0511 Spenser's Faerie Queene: Plan and Allegory

Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene, published from fifteen ninety, is an allegorical national epic in Spenserian stanzas, dedicated to Elizabeth. He completed six books of a planned larger work, each for a virtue, beginning with Holiness. Prince Arthur, seeking Gloriana, links the books. One virtue, one knight, per book. The poem is unfinished.

Book one follows a knight of holiness.

ENL 0512 The Faerie Queene, Book One: Redcrosse

Book One follows the Redcrosse Knight, knight of Holiness, with Una, whose parents a dragon holds captive. Redcrosse is deceived into deserting her for Duessa, her false double. The anchor reads Una as truth and the true Protestant church, and Duessa as the Roman Church. The true lady, and her two-faced copy. The religious reading is the anchor's.

Spenser's own sonnets end in marriage.

ENL 0513 Spenser's Amoretti and Epithalamion

Amoretti, a sonnet sequence in Spenser's interlocked rhyme scheme, celebrates his courtship of Elizabeth Boyle, whom he married in fifteen ninety-four; it ends in successful love. Epithalamion, a wedding song after the classical form, celebrates the marriage itself. Courtship in sonnets, then a wedding song. Unlike most sequences, this love succeeds.

The stage's first great poet lived dangerously.

ENL 0514 Marlowe and the Mighty Line

Christopher Marlowe, a shoemaker's son educated at Cambridge, was among the first playwrights to use blank verse; Tamburlaine the Great was a great success, his characters larger than life. He was killed in fifteen ninety-three in a quarrel over a bill; the anchor notes spying theories but no proof. Blank verse, outsized heroes, a violent death. The spy story is speculation.

Marlowe's scholar sells his soul.

ENL 0515 Doctor Faustus

In Doctor Faustus, a scholar sells his soul for twenty-four years of power and pleasure served by Mephistophilis. He conjures Helen of Troy: "Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships." At the end, devils take him. The anchor reads him as a divided figure Shakespeare echoed. A bargain, a conjured Helen, a damnation. Faustus's ambition is the tragic flaw.

A pastoral offer gets an answer.

ENL 0516 "The Passionate Shepherd" and Raleigh's Reply

Marlowe's pastoral lyric opens, "Come live with me and be my love," promising a shepherd's pleasures. Sir Walter Raleigh, courtier and explorer, answered with "The Nymph's Reply": "If all the world and love were young," she might believe him, but time destroys every gift. A pastoral offer, and a realist's refusal. The reply answers point by point.

One writer finished her brother's work.

ENL 0517 Mary Sidney Herbert and the Psalms

Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, Sidney's sister, completed his unfinished works and championed his legacy. She translated Petrarch and Garnier, and her verse translations of Psalms forty-four to one hundred fifty introduced, the anchor says, an astonishing array of metrical forms. Patron, editor, translator, poet. She finished what her brother began.

The plays had a new home.

ENL 0518 The Elizabethan Stage and Its Playwrights

Public playhouses flourished in London from the later sixteenth century, staging plays for audiences across the classes. Marlowe, Kyd and Shakespeare wrote for them in blank verse. The anchor credits Marlowe's Tamburlaine with heralding the great age of Elizabethan theatre. Public playhouses, blank verse, new audiences. Plays were popular entertainment, not literature first.

One play set a pattern for revenge.

ENL 0519 Kyd and the Revenge Tragedy

Thomas Kyd's Spanish Tragedy, about fifteen eighty-five, imitated Marlowe's blank verse and set the pattern of the revenge play: a crime, a ghost or call to vengeance, the avenger's delay or madness, a play within the play, and a bloody end. Hamlet uses the pattern. Crime, ghost, delay, play, bloodbath. Kyd once shared lodgings with Marlowe.

Here is the method for any Elizabethan sonnet.

ENL 0520 Reading an Elizabethan Sonnet

Read an Elizabethan sonnet in a fixed sequence. Name the form by its scheme: octave and sestet is Petrarchan, the form Wyatt brought over; three quatrains and a couplet is English; interlocked quatrains are Spenser's. Identify the convention used or overturned: the cruel lady, the suffering lover, love as sickness or war. Find the turn, at line nine or the couplet, and say what changes. Read the ending as the answer to the opening's problem. Check for irony. Wyatt's "so kindly" served reverses the courtly ideal, and the conventions are stock figures, not autobiography.

Here is the method for reading Spenser.

ENL 0521 Allegory in Spenser: A Worked Reading

A Faerie Queene passage is answered on two levels. Follow the literal story: who travels, whom they meet. Name each figure's abstraction: Redcrosse is Holiness, Una truth and oneness, Duessa her deceptive double, Errour a monster of error. Read the action as an argument: when the knight leaves the true lady for the false, holiness is deceived by appearances. Check the historical layer the anchor reports, the Protestant and Roman churches, giving it as one layer, not the only one. Choose the answer that fits both levels, preferring the moral meaning. The nine-line stanza confirms the source.

The capstone gathers what the century built.

ENL 0522 What the Sixteenth Century Built

The sixteenth century gave English literature its forms, its theory and its stage. The Tudors came to power in fourteen eighty-five, and humanism, the press and the Reformation shaped what followed. More's Utopia described an island of common property whose name means no place. Wyatt brought the sonnet from Petrarch, and Surrey shaped the English sonnet and first used blank verse. Elizabeth the First wrote poems of her own. Sidney made the Petrarchan sequence English and answered Plato by arguing that poetry teaches and delights. Spenser's Faerie Queene gives each book a virtue and a knight, and his Amoretti turn a sequence toward marriage. Mary Sidney Herbert completed her brother's work. Marlowe's mighty line opened the great theatre, Raleigh answered the shepherd, and Kyd set the revenge pattern Hamlet would follow. Sources disagree on who shaped the English sonnet, so expect questions on its features. Read the poems by scheme, convention and turn, read allegory on two levels, and you meet Shakespeare knowing the forms he inherited.

This unit showed a century building forms. We saw humanism join classical learning to Christian purpose, and More imagine the island that is no place. We traced the sonnet from Wyatt and Surrey to Sidney's sequence, and read one by scheme, convention, turn, answer and irony. We stated Sidney's defence: poetry teaches and delights. We read Spenser on two levels, story and abstraction, with the historical layer as one reading among others. And we met Marlowe's mighty line, the shepherd and the reply, Mary Sidney Herbert, the public stage and Kyd's revenge pattern. Unit seven, William Shakespeare, takes all of it to the stage.