6. The Tudors and Jacobethan England
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
Music
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 Spanish Armada
(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 Walter Raleigh (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 theatre
The Elizabethan age is the golden age of English drama, for which the establishment of
permanent theatres is not least responsible. As performances left the inn-yards and noble
houses for permanent sites in London, the demand for drama increased enormously. While
some of the smaller theatres were indoors, it is the purpose-built round/square/polygonal
buildings such as The Theatre (the first, built in 1576), the Curtain (late 1570s?), the Rose
(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 Julius Caesar. [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".
William Shakespeare: As you read Macbeth 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 tragedies 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 genre at the time (with Hamlet 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 sonnet into English literature in its Petrarchan form, while a contemporary, the
Earl of Surrey, 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 Edmund Spenser, 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 sonnet 75 with a theme found also in Shakespeare's sonnets
(below), or a verse or two of the First Canto of The Faerie Queene. 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 John
Donne. 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 Hans Holbein the Younger 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 painting 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 portrait miniature (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, Nicholas Hilliard. His "Young Man Among Roses" is thought to have been a
portrait of Elizabeth's favourite 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 Thomas Tallis.
Under Elizabeth the madrigal, songs for several voices or parts ( a form of Italian origin),
reached perfection under practitioners such as Orlando Gibbons, Thomas Morley, who wrote
music to Shakespeare's songs [here you will find a synthesized version of "Now is the Month
of Maying"], the great William Byrd [examples of his music], and many more. Salon and
parlour 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 Tudor architecture with some examples at the Wikipedia site.
Elizabethan Architecture was a further development with more foreign and Renaissance
influence.
The medieval house had been built up round its great hall which was high to allow smoke
from the centrally placed fire to find its way out under the roof. 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 gatehouse of St John's College, Cambridge, dates from the 15th
to early 16th c. and shows the Perpendicular four-centred arch surmounted by an ogee; the
octagonal corner towers are also typical of this time and are found for instance at St James's
Palace and beside the centrally placed gatehouse at Hampton Court Palace (1515-25).This
latter originally belonged to Henry VIII's chief minister Cardinal Wolsey, but its size (280
rooms) 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 window (a window projecting from a wall, supported by corbels or
brackets) over the entrance (apparently a relic of Wolsey's earlier Great Hall) 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
brickwork 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. hammerbeam roof 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 English Renaissance. The best-known master
builder was Robert Smythson, whose Longleat, built for Sir John Thynne [better picture here],
an ancestor of the Marquess of Bath, shows several Elizabethan features: the symmetry, the
horizontal emphasis, the very large leaded windows (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 walls. 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, ('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 colonnades in England, front and back, forming
loggias, 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 long gallery, 166 feet in length, with both wall hangings and portraits. The uppermost
floor with its suite of rooms and the High Great Chamber was intended to be fit for the Queen
who, however, never came. (Another Smythson building is Wollaton Hall.)
'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 Montacute House in Somerset,
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 brick 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
Hatfield House (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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