Renaissance Poetry, Shakespearean Style, and English Bible History

Renaissance Poetry and the Revival of Learning

There was a collapse in learning and much technical capacity as a result of the chaos that followed the fall of the Roman Empire. There was a revival of material culture long before the Renaissance. Surrey was the first to use blank verse in his translation of the Aeneid. Poetry became the entertainment of the upper classes.

Edmund Spenser: The Faerie Queene

Spenser was a Renaissance Neoplatonist who devoted his life to writing The Faerie Queene, which served as a praise to monarchy. Chaucer was Spenser's favorite poet, and Spenser looked to his texts, among others, to write his epic poem. The Faerie Queene is concerned with patriotism and Puritanism. It has a connotative meaning, starting as a pastoral text and then evolving to praise the court of Elizabeth I. Spenser also used another monarch, King Arthur, comparing this king and his knights to the Queen. It is an echo of the Arthurian legends. The story is about The Gentle Knight who has to rescue the Faerie Queen, and in each episode, he will show a new virtue, such as bravery.

Spenser never wrote about the problems of England but rather about its virtues; the only fact that touches reality is his writing about being a Protestant. He tried to be the poet laureate of his generation but failed. His model was John Skelton, who was the tutor of Henry VIII and the poet of Henry VII. Spenser invented his own stanza (the Spenserian stanza). He lived in Dublin, and his engagement with the deepest concerns of his time made him famous, but he was not considered part of the literary elite. He did not write about anguish, transience, or war, which contributed to his failure. His severe and serious tone can be found in the Mutabilitie Cantos from The Faerie Queene. His misfortune caused drama to become the most successful stream of the time.

Sir Philip Sidney: The Perfect Renaissance Man

Sidney was the perfect figure of the Renaissance man: a lover, a warrior, a poet, and, after his death, a hero for some people, sacrificing himself for others. He wrote Astrophel and Stella, based on an autobiographical situation, written in 6 alexandrine sonnets, and featuring an epigrammatic conclusion in the last line, often conveying a melancholic tone. He uses a much more down-to-earth vocabulary than Spenser and addresses harder themes. His Arcadia is another of his best works, interspersed between prose and verse.

Sidney's theory is that poetry should teach and delight. Art imitates nature, but it is an imitation of an ideal nature. We move from a pastoral and epic poetry to a poetry nearer to the people. The poet must be both a vate (prophet) and a maker (creator).

Shakespeare's Stylistic Development

His first style was characterized by stichomythia (two characters speaking whose speech is intertwined). Shakespeare’s first histories show an abundant use of similes. In his first tetralogy, kings are orators.

As one moves along chronologically, one can see stylistic improvement. A key aspect of Shakespeare’s plays is the improvement of openings, for instance, in Hamlet or Macbeth. Later works feature:

• More flexible syntax.
• Less formulaic rhetorical schemes.
• Fewer soliloquies but more complex themes.

Among his most learned plays are Titus Andronicus and Richard III. Richard II is the first play that is realistic and maintains soliloquies and monologues. Characters will be divided by the way they speak and the way they act. The first plays had simpler ideas that later became complex; this also happened with the vocabulary, which gets richer at the end. The syntax follows the opposite path, becoming more flexible.

The English Bible: Translation and Influence

William Tyndale's New Testament

Tyndale wrote his New Testament, having been trained in Greek and Hebrew. His Bible was born in an epoch of changes in the religious status quo. It was a decisive time in European history. He had a passion for getting the Word of God to laypeople. The most archaic structures found in the Bible were borrowed from Tyndale’s translation.

The Geneva Bible (1560)

First, the New Testament was translated, and then the whole Bible. It is the first Bible to be translated completely from the Greek and Hebrew, and the first academic translation, as it was done by a group of scholars. It is based on Tyndale’s work and Tyndale’s New Testament.

The King James Version (KJV)

The KJV is a Bible intended to be read in public, during worship. It moves from Tyndale’s vernacular style to an Early Modern expression of the standard variety. King James aimed at a formal, rather than a vernacular and common, use of language. He wanted a text of the Bible for everyone.

The King James Version uses numerous rhetorical devices, including chiasms, allusions, apostrophes, hyperbole, idioms, imagery, metaphors, and personification. It also features specific grammatical characteristics:

• Older word order.
• The -eth/-th third person singular (e.g., “doth”).
• Several irregular verbs in their archaic form.
• The use of the preposition “of” in phrases like “tempted of Satan.”
• The use of “his” as a possessive form.
• Common proverbial expressions and sayings.