Letteratura inglese III, prof. Lovascio

Renaissance

The periodization is different. In England, we consider the Renaissance period as the years from 1500 to 1640. Only in 1840 did that period (1500-1640) start to be considered and called the Renaissance. No one at the time would have used this word. The first recorded usage in the Oxford English Dictionary is in 1840 in inverted commas as a French term: “That heaviest and least graceful of all possible styles, the renaissance as the French choose to term it”. It becomes a standard description in the 20th century. It means the 'rebirth' of the classical learning that was lost during the Dark Ages, thanks to humanist learning that studied texts with special attention to the human element and human experiences. The classical had been partly lost during the Middle Ages. It’s for this reason that we talk about 'rebirth'.

A problematic word

Renaissance is a problematic word. Some critics prefer to refer to this period as the Early Modern Period. This is because:

• Nobody in 1500-1640 thought to be in the Renaissance period.
• Renaissance is used to refer to an experience of a very small amount of people.
• Calling it the Early Modern Period makes the connection between those years and our years stronger. The end of the Early Modern Period marks the beginning of our period, the Contemporary Age.
• Renaissance only describes the experience of the educated elite engaged.

History and religion

1500-1600

Religion was very important in that period and was connected to politics. The most important event was the Reform, an attempt to reform the Roman Catholic Church but ultimately gave rise to a very different form of Protestantism. The Catholic Church was excessively corrupt.

English Reformation

The English Reformation had two principal causes:

1. Henry VIII was married to Catherine of Aragon, which was important to create political diplomacy with Spain. He had a daughter but wanted a son for dynastic reasons. His wife apparently wasn’t able to give him a male heir. Henry VIII fell in love with Anne Boleyn, the daughter of an obscure Kentish knight.
2. Martin Luther with his 95 theses in 1517, which led to Henry VII disputing the Pope’s authority.

Henry VIII wanted a son because his father, Henry VII, who was the first Tudor, took the crown not by succession but thanks to a war. He fought the War of the Roses and killed King Richard III in 1485 at Bosworth.

This was also called the Yorkist-Lancaster conflict because it was a dynastic conflict: the opposition of the house of York to the one of Lancaster. Henry VIII felt that his position was precarious and needed a male heir to secure his dynasty. He was worried that making his daughter a queen was uncertain because people could start a war for the throne as his father, Henry VII, did. He thought that a son, a king, was much more stable. He wanted a strong descent (discendenza).

Marriage and divorce

He married Catherine of Aragon, a dynastically magnificent match because she was the daughter of Ferdinand Aragon and Isabella of Castile, who gave him a daughter, Mary. She could theoretically become a queen regnant, but Henry still wanted a son. Henry VIII didn’t have a son. He fell in love with Anne Boleyn and wanted a son with her. He decided to divorce, but it wasn’t easy. Henry had to find a good reason to end the marriage. He found it – he claimed that his first wife, Catherine, was his sister-in-law. People considered this marriage incestuous. He asked the Pope to annul the marriage so he could stay with Anne. The Pope didn’t accept because he didn’t want to take a position contrary to the previous Pope. In the same years, Martin Luther challenged the Pope.

On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther nailed 95 theses questioning the doctrines and authority of the Catholic Church in Wittemberg. Initially, he wanted to reform and purify the Catholic Church, but he actually started the Reformation and gave rise to Protestantism. Protestantism was immediately very successful and made many converts, including Anne Boleyn, who was one of the earliest to convert, an unusually educated and intellectual woman for her time. Protestantism also provided Henry VIII with a framework of ideas with which to challenge the authority of the Pope. At that point, Henry VIII decided that if the Pope didn’t annul his first marriage, he would found his own church. This is the birth of the Church of England.

Moreover, Catherine was the daughter of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, and her nephew was the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who probably put pressure on the Pope because he did not want his aunt to be disgraced by a divorce. In 1533, the king nominated Thomas Cranmer as the Archbishop of Canterbury, the most important spiritual authority in the Anglican Church. Cranmer declared Henry’s marriage to Catherine invalid and married Henry to the pregnant Anne Boleyn in 1533. She ironically gave birth to a daughter, the future Elizabeth I. The Pope excommunicated both Henry VIII and Cranmer, but they didn’t care. He would also excommunicate Elizabeth in 1570.

Act of Supremacy

In 1534, the English parliament passed the Act of Supremacy. Henry VIII was considered, with this act, the supreme governor of the Church of England. Even if he separated the church, he was still a Catholic (the first Protestant king was his son). Possibly Henry, who wasn’t a stupid man, feared that Charles V might make war on him, so he ordered the closure of all England’s abbeys and monasteries, thereby causing a massive redistribution of wealth.

• He gave some of the confiscated land to knights and nobles in order to cement their loyalty.
• He invested a lot of money in ships and created the British navy, because he feared a potential invasion from either France or Spain.

Henry VIII died in 1547. He had 6 wives: 2 divorced, 2 beheaded, 1 died, 1 survived.

Edward VI, 1547-1553

At the death of Henry VIII, his and Jane Seymour’s son, Edward VI, became king. He was the first Protestant king. He was just a little baby and died soon; he was 16 years old.

Mary I, 1553-1558

At the death of Edward VI, Mary I became queen. She was Catholic, so she decided to kill Protestants. Due to this, she was called ‘Bloody Mary’. After 5 years, she died in 1558. She wasn’t loved by the English.

Elizabeth I, 1558-1603

At the death of Mary I, Elizabeth I became queen. She was the daughter of Anne Boleyn and was Protestant, so England became Protestant again. The transition from Catholic to Protestant wasn’t easy. Many people were worried because she was a woman and because they didn’t appreciate the previous queen, Mary I.

• She had to suppress a rebellion intended to put her cousin, Lady Jane Grey, on the throne.
• She had reverted to Catholicism and was married to King Philip II of Spain.
• She had not borne children.

The parliament wanted her to marry from the first day. A man could properly guide her, and she could produce heirs. She always denied it. She never got married. Even if she was called the ‘Virgin Queen’, the truth is that she had a lot of lovers, but no one became her husband. She let the suitors believe that perhaps she would marry, but her intention was very different. She played hard to get.

In that period, there were three states for a woman: married, widow, about-to-be-married. She ruled alone with the help of her Privy Council, headed by William Cecil. Maybe he was also one of Mary’s lovers. She benefited from the Reformation; she filled the psychological and cultural gap produced by the disappearance of the intercessory role of the Virgin Mary and the saints. She was very unconventional, an unmarried queen, and she used this as her strength. They developed a sort of cult around Elizabeth, creating a mythological persona.

She had been queen for almost 50 years and always kept her image in portraits as semper eadam, always the same regardless of her age. There are no portraits of her aged, with wrinkles.

She was connected to Mary Queen of Scots. Elizabeth wasn’t the only queen in Britain; at that moment, England and Scotland were still separated. In England, there was Elizabeth, and in Scotland, Mary Stuart. She was King James V’s only daughter and ascended the throne in 1542 when she was a week old. Her throne was commanded by other people. She was sent to France so she could marry the son of the French king. It was very important from a diplomatic point of view. Later her husband became king, and Mary became queen of France but also of Scotland.

When her husband died, she decided to come back to Scotland, but there were a lot of problems:

• Scotland was Protestant while Mary Stuart was Catholic.
• Mary Stuart knew French, but even if she was queen of Scots, she didn’t know Scottish or English.
• Nobody liked her.

She married her cousin, Henry Lord Darnley, and she gave birth to James VI of Scotland. Shortly afterwards, her husband died in mysterious circumstances. Mary immediately married the chief suspect, James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell. Scots rebelled, and Mary was sent to prison but escaped and went to England to ask for help from Elizabeth.

Elizabeth and Mary Stuart

Elizabeth had to face a difficult situation. She didn’t know what to do. She was Protestant, so she didn’t like Mary because she was Catholic. At the same time, she had to help her but didn’t want to start a war because she had offended the Scots. As a queen, she wanted to show the importance of respecting other queens’ rights. In the end, she decided to imprison Mary Stuart in England for 19 years. This created problems with France because Mary was still queen of France, but also with Spain, which was strongly Catholic – Philip II was enraged at England’s imprisonment of a Catholic queen, especially after what had happened to his great-aunt Catherine of Aragon.

An atmosphere of paranoia about domestic security developed in England. The problem was also with the regency of the Netherlands. They were Catholic, so Philip of Spain wanted this place. The English wanted to convert the Netherlands to Protestantism. The problems between Spain and England were also due to the fact that the English were stealing money, gold, and resources from the New World to Spain. The first English intelligence service was developed (Edmund Spenser and Christopher Marlowe apparently worked for it).

Spanish Armada

When Elizabeth I, in 1587, decided to execute Mary I Stuart, Philip of Spain decided that this was a good reason to start a fight between the two countries. Philip II seized the opportunity to send the ‘Invincible’ Armada of ships against England in summer 1588, because he wanted to overthrow Elizabeth to prevent the English from interfering in the Spanish Netherlands and from intercepting Spanish ships coming back from the New World. However, Philip’s plans miscarried:

• Because of his own mismanagement of the campaign.
• Because of the defensive efforts of the English and Dutch prevailed. The Dutch, together with the English, proved to be much stronger than everyone thought they could be.
• Because the Spanish Armada was dispersed by the storm (which the English interpreted as ‘God’s wind’).

Philip II of Spain also ruled the Low Countries through regents, which became increasingly difficult after Protestantism began to spread there, and Philip had to repress rebellions. The Dutch appealed to Elizabeth, as a fellow Protestant, and she decided to support the rebels (Sir Philip Sidney died fighting there).

Problems with Ireland

Another problem for England was Ireland. This place was Catholic, and the English were frightened that the Irish could side with France and Spain. Elizabeth invested a lot of money and created many campaigns to defeat Ireland. Elizabeth was helped by Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Sussex, to fight against the rebellious Irish. He failed and was very ashamed. He decided to return to England and meet Elizabeth to apologize to her; the two had a strong relationship, probably they were lovers. Apparently, he presented himself in her bedchamber one morning, before she was properly wigged or gowned.

After all this, he was put under house arrest and fell from the queen’s favour. Utterly desperate, in 1601 he decided to lead the only armed rebellion of Elizabeth’s reign. It was a miserable failure, and Essex was executed for treason. Then he decided to organize an anti-monarchic rebellion and was executed. Elizabeth died in 1603 without heirs (eredi).

James I, 1566-1625

Elizabeth I was succeeded by James VI of Scotland, the son of Mary I Stuart. James VI of Scotland decided to unify England, Ireland, Scotland – the British Empire. When he unified Scotland and England, he became James I of England. People were excited about this new king. He was married to a Danish woman and had several children: one daughter and two sons, so the succession shouldn’t be a problem.

Major projects

His two major projects were:

• Unify England, Scotland, Ireland > British Empire.
• Be a rex pacificus, so he wanted to finish all the hostility with the foreign countries.

He signed a treaty with Spain, the enemy of Britain, in 1604, which made him very unpopular. Initially, it seemed that James might be a tolerant king towards Catholics. However, two things happened:

1. There were two combined Catholic plots, one to kidnap James and hold him in the Tower of London until he agreed to be more tolerant towards Catholics; the other to remove James and his family and supplant them with his cousin Arbella Stuart.
2. He discovered that his wife, Queen Anne, had been secretly sent a rosary from the pope.

James ordered all Catholic priests to leave the country and revived the collection of fines for recusancy (i.e., refusal to attend services of the Church of England). If I was Catholic, I could live in England, but I had to go to the Protestant church even if in my own house I could be Catholic, but I couldn’t be in front of others. I had to maintain my religion secret. The heightened tensions between Protestants and Catholics laid the ground for the Gunpowder Plot (1605).

The Gunpowder Plot

In 1604, a number of disgruntled Catholics, such as Robert Catesby the conspirator, decided to rent a small house near the Parliament. Then they rented a cellar, right by the Houses of Parliament, installing Guy Fawkes as caretaker, under the alias of John Johnson. The cellar lay directly underneath the House of Lords, and over time 36 barrels of gunpowder were moved in, enough to blow everything and everyone in the vicinity sky-high if ignited. According to recent studies, the explosion could have caused total destruction up to a radius of 40 m, thereby destroying the old palace of Westminster and Westminster Hall, the Abbey, and surrounding streets.

In October 1605, the plan was that Guy Fawkes had to start the fire and then escape to continental Europe to ask for help from other foreign countries. At the same time, the others had to kidnap Elizabeth, James’ daughter. The plan failed because one member of the parliament received a letter warning him to avoid the opening of Parliament on November 5th. He decided to spread the word. He took the letter to the Secretary of State, who decided the best results would be achieved by striking at the last minute. On the night of November 4th, the Secretary of State ordered Westminster to be searched. The first search spotted a suspiciously large amount of firewood in a certain cellar. The second, at around midnight, found Fawkes. Fawkes was immediately arrested; the others were caught in the next few weeks. Guy Fawkes was tortured for two full days in the Tower before confessing.

The plotters were charged with high treason, which carried a terrible punishment: they were to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. This means that they would be drawn through the streets, hanged until half-dead, upon which their genitals would be cut off and burned in front of them. Still alive, their bowels and heart would be removed. Finally, they would be decapitated and dismembered; their body parts would be publicly displayed, eaten by the birds as they decomposed. The Gunpowder Plot influenced a number of early modern English plays, e.g., William Shakespeare’s Macbeth (1606), Ben Jonson’s Volpone (1606) and Catiline His Conspiracy (1611), Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher’s The Woman Hater (1606) and Cupid’s Revenge (1607-08). The Gunpowder Plot ultimately resulted in a worsened situation for Catholics, as James obviously enforced new laws against them.

In general, James was not a very popular king. He was probably homosexual, but this was not a problem per se. The issue was that he was especially susceptible to male favourites, which gave rise to several scandals at court. Unlike Elizabeth, he did not like public displays and progresses: on one occasion, when told by a courtier that the public wanted to see him, he replied, ‘God’s wounds! I will pull down my breeches and they shall see my arse!’ He spent too much time hunting. He spent a lot of money on lavish entertainments at court. He was not very close to his son Henry, who was instead very popular. He died in 1625. He had two sons. People wanted Henry, who was a soldier, Protestant, and wanted to make Europe all Protestant, as king, but he died before becoming king. So, James I was succeeded by his other son: Charles I.

Charles I

He was a weak man. All the decisions were taken by his wife, Henrietta Maria, who was a Catholic. Nobody liked them. They thought that the parliament had no value. He asked the parliament for money, but they denied it, so Charles I decided to shut down the Parliament for 11 years. This period is called the ‘Eleven Years’ Tyranny’ and it happened in 1642. In 1642, Civil war broke out (closure of the theatres); in 1649, Charles I was decapitated.

Religion

Religion was very important in the Early Modern Period in England. It was almost impossible to be an atheist. ‘Atheist’ was an insult too extreme and too ludicrous to be taken seriously. Apart from some exceptions, basically everyone was a Christian. Christianity had been the dominant religion in England since St. Augustine, the apostle of England, arrived in Kent in 597 CE (Christian Era). When Christianity split, people had to...