OVERVIEW: Studying the Literature of the Sixteenth Century

The sixteenth century was among the most fertile periods in the history of English literature. Those who lived in that extraordinary century were aware that theirs was an age of innovation and new beginnings. Later historians have invented terms to describe what was beginning in the sixteenth century. One of these terms, "the Renaissance" (which means "rebirth") draws our attention to the period's decisive break with medieval culture and its intense fascination with the classical past. Another commonly used term, "the early modern period," emphasizes the ways in which the seeds of the modern world were sown in the sixteenth century, above all through the development of agrarian capitalism and the centralized state. Both of these perspectives are important to keep in mind for those seeking to appreciate the cultural and literary achievements of this era.

A sense of the extraordinary revolution in literature that took place in the course of the sixteenth century can be gained by comparing passages from the morality play Everyman and from Shakespeare's King Lear, texts from the very beginning and the very end of this period. In each passage, the title character complains of being betrayed by the companions who once flattered him. This is Everyman:

Oh, to whom shall I make my moan
For to go with me in that heavy journay?
First Fellowship said he would with me gone:
His words wee very pleasant and gay,
But afterward he left me alone.
Then spake I to my kinsmen, all in despair,
And also they gave me words fair—
They lacked no fair speaking,
But all forsake me in the ending.

This is King Lear:

They flattered me like a dog; and told me I had white hairs in my beard ere the black ones were there. To say "aye" and "no" to everything that I said!—"Aye" and "no" was no good divinity. When the rain came to wet me once, and the wind to make me chatter; when the thunder would not peace at my bidding; there I found 'em, there I smelt 'em out. Got to, they are not men o' their words! They told me I was everything. 'Tis a lie, I am not ague-proof.

The aesthetic revolution that occurred between Everyman and King Lear did not take place in a historical vacuum. Literary works in sixteenth-century England were rarely if ever created in isolation from other currents in the social and cultural world. The boundaries that divided the texts we now regard as literature from other texts that participated in the spectacles of power or the conflicts of rival religious factions or the rhetorical strategies of erotic and political courtship were porous and constantly shifting. The sessions that follow emphasize the interrelationship of different kinds of writing, juxtaposing texts dealing with religion, colonialism, and monarchy with the great works of Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, and William Shakespeare.