Halleck's New English Literature Part 16

When the full influences of the Renaissance reached England, Shakespeare answered their call, and his own creations surpa.s.s the children of Utopia.

The Invention of Printing.--In 1344, about the time of Chaucer's birth, a _Bible_ in ma.n.u.script cost as much as three oxen. A century later an amount equal to the wages of a workman for 266 days was paid for a ma.n.u.script _Bible_. At this time a book on astronomy cost as much as 800 pounds of b.u.t.ter. One page of a ma.n.u.script book cost the equivalent of from a dollar to a dollar and a half to-day. When a member of the Medici family in Florence desired a library, he sent for a book contractor, who secured forty-five copyists. By rigorous work for nearly two years they produced two hundred volumes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BOOK ILl.u.s.tRATION, EARLY FIFTEENTH CENTURY. _British Museum_.]

One of the most powerful agencies of the Renaissance was the invention of printing, which multiplied books indefinitely and made them comparatively cheap. People were alive with newly awakened curiosity, and they read books to learn more of the expanding world.

About 1477 William Caxton, who had set up his press at the Almonry, near Westminster Abbey, printed the first book in England, _The Dictes and Notable Wish Sayings of the Philosophers_. Among fully a hundred different volumes that he printed were Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_, Malory's _Morte d'Arthur_, and an English translation of Vergil's _AEneid_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FACSIMILE OF CAXTON'S ADVERTIs.e.m.e.nT OF HIS BOOKS._ Bodleian Library, Oxford._]

Malory's Morte d'Arthur.--The greatest prose work of the fifteenth century was completed in 1470 by a man who styles himself Sir Thomas Malory, Knight. We know nothing of the author's life; but he has left as a monument a great prose epic of the deeds of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. From the various French legends concerning King Arthur, Malory selected his materials and fas.h.i.+oned than into the completest Arthuriad that we possess. While his work cannot be called original, he displayed rare artistic power in arranging, abridging, and selecting the various parts from different French works.

Malory's prose is remarkably simple and direct. Even in the impressive scene where Sir Bedivere throws the dying King Arthur's sword into the sea, the language tells the story simply and shows no straining after effect:--

"And then he threw the sword as far into the water as he might, and there came an arm and an hand above the water, and met it, and caught it, and so shook it thrice and brandished, and then vanished away the hand with the sword in the water... 'Now put me into the barge,' said the king; and so he did softly. And there received him three queens with great mourning, and so they set him down, and in one of their laps King Arthur laid his head, and then that queen said, 'Ah, dear brother, why have ye tarried so long from me?'"

After the dusky barge has borne Arthur away from mortal sight, Malory writes: "Here in this world he changed his life." A century before, Chaucer had with equal simplicity voiced the Saxon faith:--

"His spirit chaunged hous."[1]

Sometimes this prose narrative, in its condensation and expression of feeling, shows something of the poetic spirit. When the damsel on the white palfrey sees that her knightly lover has been killed, she cries:--

"O Balin! two bodies hast thou slain and one heart, and two hearts in one body, and two souls thou hast lost.' And therewith she took the sword from her love that lay dead, and as she took it, she fell to the ground in a swoon."

[Ill.u.s.tration: MALORY'S MORTE D'ARTHUR. _From De Worde's Ed., 1529_.]

Malory's work, rather than Layamon's _Brut_, has been the storehouse to which later poets have turned. Many nineteenth-century poets are indebted to Malory. Tennyson's _Idylls of the King_, Matthew Arnold's _Death of Tristram_, Swinburne's _Tristram of Lyonesse_, and William Morris's _Defense of Guinevere_ were inspired by the _Morte d'Arthur_.

Few English prose works have had more influence on the poetry of the Victorian age.

Scottish Poetry.--The best poetry of the fifteenth century was written in the Northern dialect, which was spoken north of the river Humber. This language was just as much English as the Midland tongue in which Chaucer wrote. Not until the sixteenth century was this dialect called Scotch.

James I. of Scotland (1406-1437) spent nineteen years of his youth as a prisoner in England. During his captivity in Windsor Castle, he fell in love with a maiden, seen at her orisons in the garden, and wrote a poem, called the _King's Quair_, to tell the story of his love. Although the _King's Quair_ is suggestive of _The Knightes Tale_, and indeed owes much to Chaucer, it is a poetic record of genuine and successful love. These four lines from the spring song show real feeling for nature:--

"Wors.h.i.+ppe, ye that lovers be, this May, For of your bliss the kalends are begun, And sing with us, 'Away, Winter, away, Come, Summer, come, the sweet season and sun!'"

Much of this Scotch poetry is remarkable for showing in that early age a genuine love of nature. Changes are not rung on some typical landscape, copied from an Italian versifier. The Northern poet had his eye fixed on the scenery and the sky of Scotland. About the middle of the century, Robert Henryson, a teacher in Dunfermline, wrote.--

"The northin wind had purifyit the air And sched the misty cloudis fra the sky."[2]

This may lack the magic of Sh.e.l.ley's rhythm, but the feeling for nature is as genuine as in the later poet's lines:--

"For after the rain when, with never a stain The pavilion of heaven is bare."[3]

William Dunbar, the greatest poet of this group, who lived in the last half of the fifteenth century, was a loving student of the nature that greeted him in his northland. No Italian poet, as he wandered beside a brook, would have thought of a simile like this:--

"The stones clear as stars in frosty night."[4]

Dunbar takes us with him on a fresh spring morning, where--

"Enamelled was the field with all colours, The pearly droppes shook in silver showers,"[5]

where we can hear the matin song of the birds hopping among the buds, while--

"Up rose the lark, the heaven's minstrel fine."[6]

Both Dunbar and Gawain Douglas (1474?-1522), the son of a Scotch n.o.bleman, had keen eyes for all coloring in sky, leaf, and flower. In one line Dunbar calls our attention to these varied patches of color in a Scotch garden: "purple, azure, gold, and gules [red]." In the verses of Douglas we see the purple streaks of the morning, the bluish-gray, blood-red, fawn-yellow, golden, and freckled red and white flowers, and--

"Some watery-hued, as the blue wavy sea."[7]

Outside the pages of Shakespeare, we shall for the next two hundred years look in vain for so genuine a love of scenery and natural phenomena as we find in fifteenth-century Scottish poetry. These poets obtained many of their images of nature at first hand, an achievement rare in any age.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EARLY t.i.tLE PAGE OF ROBIN HOOD.]

"Songs for Man or Woman, of All Sizes."--When Shakespeare shows us Autolycus offering such songs at a rustic festival,[8] the great poet emphasizes the fondness for the ballad which had for a long time been developing a taste for poetry. While it is difficult to a.s.sign exact dates to the composition of many ballads, we know that they flourished in the fifteenth century. They were then as much prized as the novel is now, and like it they had a story to tell. The verse was often halting, but it succeeded in conveying to the hearer tales of love, of adventure, and of mystery. These ballads were sometimes tinged with pathos; but there was an energy in the rude lines that made the heart beat faster and often stirred listeners to find in a dance an outlet for their emotions. Even now, with all the poetry of centuries from which to choose, it is refres.h.i.+ng to turn to a Robin Hood ballad and look upon the greensward, hear the rustle of the leaves in Nottingham forest, and follow the adventures of the hero. We read the opening lines:--

"There are twelve months in all the year, As I hear many say, But the merriest month in all the year Is the merry month of May."

"Now Robin Hood is to Nottingham gone, With a link a down, and a day, And there he met a silly old woman Was weeping on the way."

Of our own accord we finish the ballad to see whether Robin Hood rescued her sons, who were condemned to death for shooting the fallow deer. The ballad of the _Nut-Brown Maid_ has some touches that are almost Shakespearean.

Some of the carols of the fifteenth century give a foretaste of the Elizabethan song. One carol on the birth of the Christ-child contains stanzas like these, which show artistic workmans.h.i.+p, imaginative power, and, above all, rare lyrical beauty:--

"He cam also stylle to his moderes bowr, As dew in Aprille that Fallyt on the flour."

"He cam also stylle ther his moder lay, As dew in Aprille that fallyt on the spray"[9]

We saw that the English tongue during its period of exclusion from the Norman court gained strength from coming in such close contact with life. Although the higher types of poetry were for the most part wanting during the fifteenth century, yet the ballads multiplied and sang their songs to the ear of life. Critics may say that the rude stanzas seldom soar far from the ground, but we are again reminded of the invincible strength of Antaeus so long as he kept close to his mother earth. English poetry is so great because it has not withdrawn from life, because it was nurtured in such a cradle. When Shakespeare wrote his plays, he found an audience to understand and to appreciate them. Not only those who occupied the boxes, but also those who stood in the pit, listened intelligently to his dramatic stories. The ballad had played its part in teaching the humblest home to love poetry.

These rude fireside songs were no mean factors in preparing the nation to welcome Shakespeare.

William Tyndale, 1490?-1536.--The Reformation was another mighty influence, working side by side with all the other forces to effect a lasting change in English history and literature. In the early part of the sixteenth century, Martin Luther was electrifying Germany with his demands for church reformation. In order to decide which religious party was in the right, there arose a desire for more knowledge of the _Scriptures_. The language had changed much since Wycliffe's translation of the _Bible_, and, besides, this was accessible only in ma.n.u.script. William Tyndale, a clergyman and an excellent linguist, who had been educated at both Oxford and Cambridge, conceived the idea of giving the English people the Bible in their own tongue. As he found that he could not translate and print the Bible with safety in England, he went to the continent, where with the help of friends he made the translation and had it printed. He was forced to move frequently from place to place, and was finally betrayed in his hiding place near Brussels. After eighteen months' imprisonment without pen or books, he was strangled and his body was burned at the stake.

Of his translation, Brooke says: "It was this _Bible_ which, revised by Coverdale, and edited and reedited as _Cromwell's Bible_, 1539, and again as _Cranmer's Bible_, 1540, was set up in every parish church in England. It got north into Scotland and made the Lowland English more like the London English. It pa.s.sed over into the Protestant settlements in Ireland. After its revival in 1611 it went with the Puritan Fathers to New England and fixed the standard of English in America. Many millions of people now speak the English of Tyndale's _Bible_, and there is no other book which has had, through the _Authorized Version_, so great an influence on the style of English literature and on the standard of English prose."

[Ill.u.s.tration: WILLIAM TYNDALE. _From an old print_.]

The following verses from Tyndale's version show its simplicity directness, and similarity to the present version:--

"Jesus sayde unto her, Thy brother shall ryse agayne.

"Martha sayde unto hym, I knowe wele, he shall ryse agayne in the resurreccion att the last day.

"Jesus sayde unto her, I am the resurreccion and lyfe; whosoever beleveth on me, ye, though he were deed, yet shall he lyve."

Italian Influence: Wyatt and Surrey.--During the reign of Henry VIII. (1509-1547), the influence of Italian poetry made itself distinctly felt. The roots of Elizabethan poetry were watered by many fountains, one of the chief of which flowed from Italian soil. To Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) and to the Earl of Surrey (1517-1547) belongs the credit of introducing from Italian sources new influences, which helped to remodel English poetry and give it a distinctly modern cast.

These poets were the first to introduce the sonnet, which Shakespeare, Milton, and Wordsworth employed with such power in after times. Blank verse was first used in England by the Earl of Surrey, who translated a portion of Vergil's _AEneid_ into that measure. When Shakespeare took up his pen, he found that vehicle of poetic expression ready for his use.