The Jacobean Era, Cromwell, and the Restoration

The Jacobean Era, Cromwell, and the Restoration

Elizabethan literature generally reflects the exuberant self-confidence of a nation expanding its powers, increasing its wealth, and thus keeping at bay its serious social and religious problems. Disillusion and pessimism followed, however, during the unstable reign of James I (1603–25). The 17th cent. was to be a time of great upheaval—revolution and regicide, restoration of the monarchy, and, finally, the victory of Parliament, landed Protestantism, and the moneyed interests.Jacobean literature begins with the drama, including some of Shakespeare's greatest, and darkest, plays. The dominant literary figure of James's reign was Ben Johnson, whose varied and dramatic works followed classical models and were enriched by his worldly, peculiarly English wit. His satiric dramas, notably the great Volpone (1606), all take a cynical view of human nature. Also cynical were the horrific revenge tragedies of John Ford, Thomas Middleton, Cyril Tourneur, and John Webster (the best poet of this grim genre). Novelty was in great demand, and the possibilities of plot and genre were exploited almost to exhaustion. Still, many excellent plays were written by men such as George Chapman, the masters of comedy Thomas Dekker and Philip Massinger, and the team of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher. Drama continued to flourish until the closing of the theaters at the onset of the English Revolution in 1642.

The foremost poets of the Jacobean era, Ben Jonson and John Donne, are regarded as the originators of two diverse poetic traditions—the Cavalier and the metaphysical (see Cavalier poets and metaphysical poets). Jonson and Donne shared not only a common fund of literary resources, but also a dryness of wit and precision of expression. Donne's poetry is distinctive for its passionate intellection, Jonson's for its classicism and urbane guidance of passion.Although George Herbert and Donne were the principal metaphysical poets, the meditative religious poets Henry Vaughan and Thomas Traherne were also influenced by Donne, as were Abraham Cowley and Richard Crashaw. The greatest of the Cavalier poets was the sensuously lyrical Robert Herrick. Such other Cavaliers as Thomas Carew, Sir John Suckling, and Richard Lovelace were lyricists in the elegant Jonsonian tradition, though their lyricism turned political during the English Revolution. Although ranked with the metaphysical poets, the highly individual Andrew Marvell partook of the traditions of both Donne and Jonson.

Among the leading prose writers of the Jacobean period were the translators who produced the classic King James Version of the Bible (1611) and the divines Lancelot Andrewes, Jeremy Taylor, and John Donne. The work of Francis Bacon helped shape philosophical and scientific method. Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) offers a varied, virtually encyclopedic view of the moral and intellectual preoccupations of the 17th cent. Like Burton, Sir Thomas Browne sought to reconcile the mysteries of religion with the newer mysteries of science. Izaak Walton, author of The Compleat Angler (1653), produced a number of graceful biographies of prominent writers. Thomas Hobbes wrote the most influential political treatise of the age, Leviathan (1651).

The Jacobean era's most fiery and eloquent author of political tracts (many in defense of Cromwell's government, of which he was a member) was also one of the greatest of all English poets, John Milton. His Paradise Lost (1667) is a Christian epic of encompassing scope. In Milton the literary and philosophical heritage of the Renaissance merged with Protestant political and moral conviction.

With the restoration of the English monarchy in the person of Charles II, literary tastes widened. The lifting of Puritan restrictions and the reassembling of the court led to a relaxation of restraints, both moral and stylistic, embodied in such figures as the Earl of Rochester. Restoration comedy reveals both the influence of French farce (the English court spent its exile in France) and of Jacobean comedy. It generously fed the public's appetite for broad satire, high style, and a licentiousness that justified the worst Puritan imaginings. Such dramatists as Sir George Etherege, William Wycherley, and William Congreve created superbly polished high comedy. Sparkling but not quite so brilliant were the plays of George Farquhar, Thomas Shadwell, and Sir John Vanbrugh.

John Dryden began as a playwright but became the foremost poet and critic of his time. His greatest works are satirical narrative poems, notably Absalom and Achitophel (1681), in which prominent contemporary figures are unmistakably and devastatingly portrayed. Another satiric poet of the period was Samuel Butler, whose Hudibras (1663) satirizes Puritanism together with all the intellectual pretensions of the time. During the Restoration Puritanism or, more generally, the Dissenting tradition, remained vital. The most important Dissenting literary work was John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress (1675), an allegorical prose narrative that is considered a forerunner of the novel. Lively and illuminating glimpses of Restoration manners and mores are provided by the diaries of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn.

 

 Caroline era

The Caroline era was dominated by the growing religious, political, and social conflict between the King and his supporters, termed the Royalist party, and the Puritan opposition that evolved in response to particular aspects of Charles's rule. In contrast, however, to the bloody conflict of the Thirty Years' War then raging in continental Europe, the Caroline period in Britain was one of an uneasy peace, growing darker as the civil conflict between King and Puritans worsened toward the latter part of Charles' reign.
This conflict between King and Parliament dominated society to such a degree that other developments have seemed mere continuations of previous innovations. Some of those continuations, however, were of major significance for the future. English efforts at the colonization of North America continued throughout Charles' reign, with the foundation of new colonies in Maryland (1634), Connecticut (1635), and Rhode Island (1636) standing as important steps in the process. Development of previously-established colonies in Virginia, Massachusetts, and Newfoundland also continued. (In Massachusetts, the Pequot War of 1637 was the first major armed conflict between New England settlers and a Native American people.)

Literature

In literature, and especially in drama, the Caroline period has often been regarded as a diminished continuation of the trends of the previous two reigns. Caroline theatre unquestionably saw a falling-off after the peak achievements of William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, though some of their successors, especially Philip Massinger, James Shirley, and John Ford, carried on to create interesting, even compelling theatre. In recent years the comedies of Richard Brome have gained in critical appreciation.
In poetry, however, the Caroline period saw the flourishing of the Cavalier poets (including Thomas Carew, Richard Lovelace, and Sir John Suckling) and the Metaphysical poets (George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, Katherine Philips and others), movements that produced powerful figures like John Donne, as well as lyrically satisfying artists like Robert Herrick. If the Elizabethan era was the golden age of English drama, the Caroline age was nearly as rich in the realm of non-dramatic poetry, bringing as it did the beginnings of the career of John Milton, in addition to the poets of the movements already mentioned.
(In the specialized domain of literary criticism and theory, Henry Reynolds's Mythomystes was published in 1632, in which the author attempts a systematic application of Neoplatonism to poetry. The result has been characterized as "a tropical forest of strange fancies" and "perversities of taste.")

Arts

In the visual arts, the portraiture of Anthony van Dyck (appointed "painter to the king," 1633–1641) was a dominant influence, and has sometimes been credited with founding an English school of painting. Upon his death in 1641, his position as portraitist to the royal family was filled, practically if not formally, by William Dobson (ca. 1610–1646), making Dobson the most prominent native-born English artist of the era.Inigo Jones carried forward his work in architecture and design, though without breaking new ground. The peculiar artistic form of the court masque was still being written and performed, including the final masques of Ben Jonson (1625–34). The lavish expenditures on these showpieces—the production of a single masque could approach £15,000—was one of a growing number of grievances that critics in general, and the Puritans in particular, held against the King and his court.

Sciences and mathematics

The sciences saw a major step forward with the 1628 publication by William Harvey of his study of the circulatory system, Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus ("Anatomical Essay on the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals").The reception granted to Harvey's work was, unfortunately, highly critical and hostile; but within a generation his work began to receive the valuation it deserved. More broadly, the revolution in thinking that connects Sir Francis Bacon (1561—1626) with the foundation of the Royal Society (1660) was ongoing throughout the Caroline period; Bacon's The New Atlantis was first printed in 1627, and contributed to the evolving new paradigm among receptive individuals. The men who would begin the Royal Society were for the most part still schoolboys and students in this period—though John Wilkins was already publishing early works of Copernican astronomy and science advocacy, The Discovery of a World in the Moon (1638) and A Discourse Concerning a New Planet (1640).
Lacking formal scientific institutions and organizations, Caroline scientists, proto-scientists, and "natural philosophers" had to cluster in informal groups, often under the social and financial patronage of a sympathetic aristocrat. This again was an old phenomenon: a precedent in the prior reigns of Elizabeth and James can be identified in the circle that revolved around the "Wizard Earl" of Northumberland. Caroline scientists often clustered similarly. These ad hoc associations helped individuals to avoid the dark by-ways of alchemy and astrology, Neoplatonism and Kabbalah and sympathetic magic—temptations that trapped more than a few in this era (like Sir Kenelm Digby with the Powder of Sympathy).
In mathematics, two major works were published in a single year, 1631—the Artis analyticae praxis of Thomas Harriot (1560–1621), published ten years posthumously, and the Clavis mathematicae of William Oughtred (1575–1660). Both contributed to the evolution of modern mathematical language, the latter giving us the sign for multiplication.In philosophy, Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) was already writing some of his works and evolving his key concepts, though they would not see print till after the end of the Caroline era.
And on the dark and obscure flipside of science, the occultist Robert Fludd continued his series of enormous and convoluted volumes of esoteric lore, begun during the previous reign. In 1626 appeared his Philosophia Sacra (which constituted Portion IV of Section I of Tractate II of Volume II of Fludd's History of the Macrocosm and Microcosm), which was followed in 1629 and 1631 by the two-part medical text Medicina Catholica. Fludd's last major work (there were various minor ones in between) would be the posthumously-published Philosophia Moysaica (1638). However one chooses to evaluate Fludd's intellectual achievement, the superb and daedally complex illustrations in his books, masterpieces of the engraver's art, are a cultural enrichment.