Halleck's New English Literature · Chapter 27Chapter IV: The Age of Elizabeth, 1558-1603
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The Reign of Elizabeth.—Queen Elizabeth, who ranks among the greatest of the world's rulers, was the daughter of Henry VIII. and his second wife Anne Boleyn. Elizabeth reigned as queen of England from 1558 until her death in 1603. The remarkable allowances which she made for difference of opinion showed that she felt the spirit of the Renaissance. She loved England, and her most important acts were guided, not by selfish personal motives, but by a strong desire to make England a great nation.
She had a law passed restoring the supremacy of the monarch, "as well in all spiritual or ecclesiastical things as temporal." The prayer book of Edward VI. was again introduced and the mass was forbidden. She was broad enough not to inquire too closely into the private religious opinions of her subjects, so long as they went to the established church. For each absence they were fined a shilling. Next to churchgoing and her country, she loved and encouraged plays.
[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF ELIZABETH'S SIGNATURE TO A LICENSE FOR THE EARL OF LEICESTER'S COMPANY OF PLAYERS, 1574.]
For more than twenty years she was worried by fear that either France or Spain would put her Catholic cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, on the English throne. With masterly diplomacy, Elizabeth for a long time managed to retain the active friendship of at least one of these great powers, in order to restrain the other from interfering. She had kept Mary a prisoner for nineteen years, fearing to liberate her. At last an active conspiracy was discovered to assassinate Elizabeth and put Mary on the throne. Elizabeth accordingly had her cousin beheaded in 1587. Spain thereupon prepared her fleet, the Invincible Armada, to attack England. When this became known, the outburst of patriotic feeling was so intense among all classes in England that the queen did not hesitate to put Lord Howard, a Catholic, in command of the English fleet. The Armada was utterly defeated, and England was free to enter on her glorious period of influencing the thought and action of the world.
In brief, Elizabeth's reign was remarkable for the rise of the middle classes, for the growth of manufactures, for the appearance of English ships in almost all parts of the world, for the extension of commerce, for greater freedom of thought and action, for what the world now calls Elizabethan literature, and for the ascendancy of a great mental and moral movement to which we must next call attention.
Culmination of the Renaissance and the Reformation.—We have seen that the Renaissance began in Italy in the fourteenth century and influenced the work of Chaucer. In the same century, Wycliffe's influence helped the cause of the Reformation. Elizabethan England alone had the good fortune to experience the culmination of these two movements at one and the same time. At no other period and in no other country have two forces, like the Renaissance and the Reformation, combined at the height of their ascendancy to stimulate the human mind. One result of these two mighty influences was the work of William Shakespeare, which speaks to the ear of all time.
The Renaissance, having opened the gates of knowledge, inspired the Elizabethans with the hope of learning every secret of nature and of surmounting all difficulties. The Reformation gave man new freedom, imposed on him the gravest individual responsibilities, made him realize the importance of every act of his own will, and emphasized afresh the idea of the stewardship of this present life, for which he would be held accountable. In Elizabethan days, these two forces coöperated; in the following Puritan age they were at war.
Some Characteristics of Elizabethan Life.—It became an ambition to have as many different experiences as possible, to search for that variety craved by youth and by a youthful age. Sir Walter Raleigh was a courtier, a writer, a warden of the tin mines, a vice admiral, a captain of the guard, a colonizer, a country gentleman, and a pirate. Sir Philip Sidney, who died at the age of thirty-two, was an envoy to a foreign court, a writer of romances, an officer in the army, a poet and a courtier. Shakespeare left the little town where he was born, to plunge into the more complex life of London. The poet, Edmund Spenser, went to turbulent Ireland, where he had enough experiences to suggest the conflicts in the Faerie Queene.
The greater freedom and initiative of the individual and the remarkable extension of trade with all parts of the world naturally led to the rise of the middle class. The nobility were no longer the sole leaders in England's rapid progress. Many of Elizabeth's councilors were said to have sprung from the masses, but no reign could boast of wiser ministers. It was then customary for the various classes to mingle much more freely than they do now. There was absence of that overspecialization which today keeps people in such sharply separated groups. This mingling was further aided by the tendency to try many different pursuits and by the spirit of patriotism in the air. All classes were interested in repelling the Spanish Armada and in maintaining England's freedom. It was fortunate for Shakespeare that the Elizabethan age gave him unusual opportunity to meet and to become the spokesman of all classes of men. The audience that stood in the pit or sat in the boxes to witness the performance of his plays, comprised not only lords and wealthy merchants, but also weavers, sailors, and country folk.
Initiative and Love of Action.—The Elizabethans were distinguished for their initiative. This term implies the possession of two qualities: (1) ingenuity or fertility in ideas, and (2) ability to pass at once from an idea to its suggested action. Never did action habitually follow more quickly on the heels of thought. The age loved to translate everything into action, because the spirit of the Renaissance demanded the exercise of youthful activity to its fullest capacity in order that the power which the new knowledge promised could be acquired and enjoyed before death. As the Elizabethans felt that real life meant activity in exploring a new and interesting world, both physical and mental, they demanded that their literature should present this life of action. Hence, all their greatest poets, with the exception of Spenser, were dramatists. Even Spenser's Faerie Queene, with its abstractions, is a poem of action, for the virtues fight with the vices.