Unit II: English Literature during the Sixteenth Century (1485–1603)

Overview of Sixteenth‑Century English Literature

The sixteenth century witnessed a dramatic transformation of English literary culture. Under the Tudor monarchs—Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I—England shifted from a medieval, Catholic worldview to a Protestant, humanist, and increasingly secular society. This period saw the introduction of the sonnet from Italy, the flourishing of lyric poetry, the emergence of a professional commercial theatre, and the production of seminal epic and prose works that would influence later generations.

Key developments include:

The adoption and adaptation of the Petrarchan sonnet by Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey.
The rise of courtly lyric and pastoral modes, exemplified by Marlowe’s The Passionate Shepherd to His Love.
The publication of Edmund Spenser’s allegorical epic The Faerie Queene, which sought to create a national mythology.
The use of poetry and prose for political persuasion, as demonstrated in Elizabeth I’s The Golden Speech.
The maturation of English drama, culminating in Shakespeare’s early comedies and lyric works.

Together, these authors and texts illustrate how literature responded to, and helped shape, the tumultuous religious, political, and cultural currents of the Tudor era.

Historical and Cultural Context

The Tudor period (1485–1603) was marked by several interlocking forces:

Political centralization: The Tudor monarchy strengthened royal authority, reducing feudal nobility’s power and establishing a more bureaucratic state.
Religious Reformation: Henry VIII’s break with Rome initiated a series of religious swings—from Catholicism under Mary I to the Elizabethan Settlement that created a moderate Protestant Church of England.
Humanist education: Inspired by Erasmus and Continental scholars, grammar schools and universities emphasized Latin, rhetoric, and classical literature, fostering a new literary sensibility.
Expansion and exploration: Voyages of figures like Sir Walter Raleigh expanded horizons and inspired themes of empire, nature, and the transient nature of life.
Growth of London and the theatre: The rise of a literate urban middle class created demand for entertainment, leading to the establishment of permanent playhouses (e.g., The Theatre, 1576; The Globe, 1599).

These conditions produced a literary environment where innovation coexisted with imitation of classical models, and where writers could simultaneously serve the crown, critique society, and explore personal emotion.

Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder (1503–1542)

Biography and Influence

Sir Thomas Wyatt, a diplomat and courtier, is credited with introducing the sonnet form to English literature. His experiences abroad—particularly in Italy—exposed him to Petrarch’s Canzoniere, which he adapted to English sensibilities, blending courtly love themes with a more candid, sometimes skeptical voice.

Analysis of “Farewell, Love”

Wyatt’s Farewell, Love (often titled My galley charged with forgetfulness) exemplifies his Petrarchan inheritance while revealing a distinct melancholy. The poem opens with a nautical metaphor:

My galley charged with forgetfulness
Through sharp seas in winter nights doth pass…

The “galley” symbolizes the speaker’s burdened heart, navigating tempestuous seas of desire and oblivion. Wyatt employs the Petrarchan structure (an octave presenting a problem, a sestet offering a resolution) but subverts the conventional resolution: rather than finding solace in love, the speaker ultimately renounces it.

Key formal features:

Meter: Predominantly iambic pentameter, with occasional trochees for emphasis (e.g., / × × / × / × / × /).
Rhyme scheme: ABBAABBACDCD EE, a hybrid that tightens the octave while allowing a more flexible sestet.
Tone: A blend of courtly elegance and personal anguish, anticipating the introspective lyricism of later poets.

Wyatt’s innovation lies in his willingness to expose the fragility of the lover’s stance, laying groundwork for the skeptical voice that would surface in Shakespeare’s sonnets.

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517–1547)

Biography and Literary Contributions

Surrey, a cousin of Anne Boleyn and a prominent court figure, refined Wyatt’s experiments. He is credited with inventing the English (Shakespearean) sonnet form—three quatrains followed by a concluding couplet—and with translating Virgil’s Aeneid into blank verse, thus pioneering the use of unrhymed iambic pentameter in English.

Analysis of “The Soote Season”

The Soote Season celebrates the arrival of spring through a series of natural observations, each stanza juxtaposing the renewal of the external world with the speaker’s internal emotional state. An excerpt illustrates the pastoral lyricism:

The soote season, that bud and bloom forth brings,
With green hath clad the hill and eke the vale…

Surrey’s use of iambic pentameter is remarkably regular, creating a smooth, melodic flow that mirrors the season’s gentle progression. The poem’s structure—six stanzas of alternating rhyme (ABAB)—demonstrates his experimentation with stanzaic forms beyond the sonnet.

Notable aspects:

Blank verse precursor: Though the poem is rhymed, Surrey’s contemporaneous work in blank verse (e.g., his translation of Aeneid Book II) shows his metrical versatility.
Imagery: Rich visual and auditory details (budding trees, singing birds) serve both decorative and symbolic functions, suggesting the possibility of emotional renewal.
Voice: Unlike Wyatt’s often tormented speaker, Surrey’s narrator adopts a more detached, observational stance, reflecting a growing confidence in poetic authority.

Surrey’s formal innovations—the Shakespearean sonnet and blank verse—directly enabled the later achievements of Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Spenser.

Elizabeth I (1533–1603): “The Golden Speech”

Context and Significance

Delivered to Parliament in 1601, Elizabeth I’s The Golden Speech is a masterpiece of Renaissance rhetoric, blending political counsel, personal reflection, and a fervent appeal for loyalty. Though not a poem, its highly wrought prose exhibits poetic devices—meter, parallelism, and vivid metaphor—that underscore the queen’s literary education.

Rhetorical and Literary Features

The speech opens with a humble acknowledgment of her subjects’ burdens:

Mr. Speaker, and you, the rest that are here assembled… I have ever set my judgement and my conscience before any respect of persons…

Elizabeth employs several classical rhetorical strategies:

Ethos: She establishes her credibility by referencing her long service and divine right.
Pathos: Evocative imagery of the realm as a “garden” and her subjects as “flowers” appeals to affection and duty.
Logos: Logical arguments concerning taxation and the necessity of parliamentary consent are presented with clarity.
Parallelism and antithesis: Phrases such as “I have been your prince, and yet your servant” create memorable contrasts.

Notably, the speech’s rhythm often approaches iambic pentameter, especially in passages where Elizabeth reflects on her legacy:

Though I have been a prince, yet am I a woman; and of frail condition…

The underlying metrical pattern (× / × / × / × / × /) adds a lyrical quality that reinforces the sincerity of her appeal. “The Golden Speech” thus exemplifies how Renaissance monarchs employed literary techniques to bolster political authority and connect with their subjects.

Edmund Spenser (c. 1552–1599): Canto I, Book I of The Faerie Queene

Overview of the Epic Project

Spenser’s The Faerie Queene is an allegorical epic intended to glorify Queen Elizabeth I and to fashion a national myth akin to Virgil’s Aeneid. Planned as twelve books, each representing a moral virtue, the work blends Arthurian romance, Protestant ideology, and Petrarchan lyricism.

Canto I: The Redcrosse Knight and the Theme of Holiness

Canto I introduces the Redcrosse Knight, emblem of Holiness, who ventures forth with Una (Truth) to defeat the dragon of error. The opening stanza sets the tone:

A gentle Knight was pricking on the plain,
Yclad in mighty arms and silver shield…

Spenser adopts the Spenserian stanza—a nine‑line form with the rhyme scheme ABABBCBCC and a final Alexandrine line in iambic hexameter. This structure allows for extended narrative development while maintaining musicality.

Key elements in Canto I:

Allegory: Each character and episode represents abstract virtues or vices (Redcrosse = Holiness, Una = Truth, Error = a monstrous beast).
Language: Archaic diction and deliberate evocation of Chaucerian and Chaucer‑like diction lend a timeless, mythic quality.
Meter: Predominantly iambic pentameter, with the concluding Alexandrine providing a solemn, weighty finish to each stanza.
Theological underpinning: Reflects Protestant concerns about faith, works, and the battle against spiritual deception.

Spenser’s synthesis of classical epic, medieval romance, and Reformation theology creates a complex, multilayered text that would influence later poets from Milton to the Romantics.

Sir Walter Raleigh (1552–1618): “What Is Our Life?”

Biographical Note

Raleigh, soldier, explorer, and poet, embodies the Elizabethan spirit of adventure and existential inquiry. His fortunes rose and fell with royal favor, culminating in his imprisonment and eventual execution.

Analysis of the Poem

What Is Our Life? is a concise meditation on the transience of human existence, employing the metaphor of life as a brief play:

What is our life? A play of passion,
Our mirth the music of division…

The poem’s structure consists of six couplets in iambic tetrameter, creating a brisk, epigrammatic rhythm that mirrors the fleeting nature of its subject.

Formally, the poem demonstrates:

Meter: Iambic tetrameter (× / × / × / × /) throughout, lending a song‑like quality.
Rhyme: A simple AA BB CC DD EE FF pattern that reinforces the aphoristic tone.
Imagery: Theatrical imagery (play, music, actors) underscores the Elizabethan fascination with the world as a stage—a concept later famously expressed in Shakespeare’s As You Like It (“All the world’s a stage”).
Philosophical tone: A stoic acceptance of mortality, reflective of Renaissance memento mori traditions.

Raleigh’s poem anticipates the metaphysical poets’ concern with brevity and the carpe diem motif, while also serving as a personal reflection on his own volatile career.

Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593): “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”

Context and Influence

Marlowe, a pioneering dramatist and poet, helped define the Elizabethan lyric with his inventive use of pastoral convention. This poem, likely composed circa 1588, sparked numerous responses, most notably Sir Walter Raleigh’s The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd.

Stanza‑by‑Stanza Examination

The poem comprises six quatrains in iambic tetrameter, employing a regular AABA rhyme scheme that lends a musical, lilting quality.

Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove…

The shepherd’s invitation is characterized by:

Idealized nature: Lists of bucolic delights—“beds of roses,” “caps of flowers,” “gowns of finest wool”—create a utopian vision.
Persuasive rhetoric: The repeated imperative “Come live with me” functions as a seductive appeal, blending erotic desire with promises of material comfort.
Meter and sound: Iambic tetrameter (× / × / × / × /) combined with internal rhymes and alliteration (“swains shall dance and sing”) enhances the song‑like quality.
Pastoral convention: While adhering to the tradition of the shepherd‑lover, Marlowe infuses the poem with a heightened sensuality that distinguishes it from earlier, more chaste pastorals.

The poem’s enduring appeal lies in its balance of idealization and tangible sensuality, offering a model for later lyric poets who would both emulate and subvert the pastoral mode.

William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

“So Shall I Live Supposing Thou Art True” (Sonnet)

This sonnet (often identified as Sonnet 108) reflects Shakespeare’s mature treatment of the themes of constancy, time, and poetic immortality. The poem follows the Shakespearean sonnet form: three quatrains (ABAB CDCD EFEF) and a concluding couplet (GG).

Opening quatrain:

So shall I live, supposing thou art true,
Like a depraved prince who, in his pride…

Key observations:

Argumentative structure: The first quatrain presents a conditional hypothesis; the second develops the consequence of betrayal; the third offers a resolution through poetic fame.
Metrical regularity: Predominantly iambic pentameter, with occasional spondaic substitutions for emphasis (e.g., / / × / × / × / × / in line 3).
Use of antithesis: Contrasts between “true” and “false,” “live” and “die,” underscore the speaker’s reliance on the beloved’s fidelity as a source of existential stability.
Closing couplet: The final two lines assert that the beloved’s truth will immortalize the speaker through verse—a typical Shakespearean move that links love to poetic eternity.

The sonnet demonstrates Shakespeare’s ability to fuse personal lyric with formal ingenuity, anticipating the deeper psychological exploration found in his later plays.

As You Like It (c. 1599)

While the sonnet showcases Shakespeare’s lyrical voice, As You Like It exemplifies his mastery of comic drama and pastoral romance. Set in the Forest of Arden, the play explores themes of love, identity, and the contrast between court and country life.

Notable passages and their literary significance:

“All the world’s a stage” (Act II, Scene VII): Jaques’s famous monologue employs the metaphor of life as a theatrical performance, echoing Raleigh’s theatrical imagery in What Is Our Life? and reinforcing the Elizabethan preoccupation with theatrum mundi.
Rosalind’s disguise as Ganymede: Through cross‑dressing, Shakespeare interrogates gender roles and the fluidity of identity—a device that allows for witty dialogue and social commentary.
Pastoral contrast: The forest serves as a locus of freedom and natural simplicity, opposing the artifice and intrigue of the court—a dichotomy reminiscent of the pastoral ideals in Marlowe’s shepherd poem.
Songs and lyric interludes: Embedded songs such as “It was a lover and his lass” showcase Shakespeare’s skill in blending dramatic action with lyric poetry, reinforcing the musicality of his verse.

As You Like It thus functions as a bridge between Shakespeare’s lyrical sonnets and his more complex tragedies, illustrating how he could manipulate genre, tone, and form to explore human experience.

Comparative Timeline of Major Works (1485–1603)

Year	Author	Work	Significance
1520s	Sir Thomas Wyatt	Farewell, Love (c. 1526)	First English Petrarchan sonnets; introduces courtly love lyric.
1530s–1540s	Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey	The Soote Season (c. 1537); translation of Virgil’s Aeneid (blank verse)	Develops the English (Shakespearean) sonnet; pioneers blank verse.
1560s	Edmund Spenser	The Faerie Queene (Book I, 1590)	National epic; Spenserian stanza; allegorical Protestant virtue.
1588	Christopher Marlowe	The Passionate Shepherd to His Love	Definitive pastoral lyric; inspires numerous replies.
1592	Sir Walter Raleigh	What Is Our Life?	Metaphysical meditation on life’s brevity; theatrical metaphor.
1590s	William Shakespeare	Sonnets (including “So Shall I Live Supposing Thou Art True”); As You Like It (c. 1599)	Mastery of sonnet form; comic pastoral drama; synthesis of lyric and stage.
1601	Elizabeth I	The Golden Speech	Exemplary Renaissance rhetoric; blends political counsel with poetic devices.

Conclusion: Legacies of Sixteenth‑Century Literature

The sixteenth century laid the foundational forms and thematic concerns that would dominate English literature for the next two hundred years. Wyatt and Surrey’s experiments with the sonnet created a durable lyric vessel for expressing personal emotion. Surrey’s blank verse and Spenser’s epic ambition expanded the possibilities of narrative poetry, while the pastoral lyrics of Marlowe and Raleigh revealed a fascination with nature, mutability, and the court‑country dichotomy. Elizabeth I’s The Golden Speech demonstrated how monarchs could harness literary techniques for political persuasion, foreshadowing the later use of rhetoric in parliamentary discourse.

In drama, Shakespeare’s early works—exemplified by the lyricism of his sonnets and the comic ingenuity of As You Like It—showcase a seamless transition from page to stage, highlighting the era’s blurring of generic boundaries. The period’s religious upheavals, humanist learning, and expanding worldview fostered a spirit of inquiry that encouraged writers to question traditional authorities, explore inner psychological states, and imagine new national myths.

Ultimately, the sixteenth century’s literary achievements are not merely historical artifacts; they continue to inform contemporary understandings of voice, form, and the relationship between art and society. By studying these authors and texts, students gain insight into the origins of modern English literary tradition and the enduring power of Renaissance creativity.