On English literature in the Elizabethan age read part 3 of the article English Literature (Vol. 9, p. 616), by Prof. Oliver Elton, University of Liverpool; also Sir Thomas More (Vol. 18, p. 822), by Mark Pattison, the essayist and student of the Renaissance; William Tyndale (Vol. 27, p. 498); Roger Ascham (Vol. 2, p. 720), by A. F. Leach, author of English Schools at the Reformation, etc.; William Dunbar (Vol. 8, p. 668), by Prof. G. Gregory Smith; Sir Thomas Hoby (Vol. 13, p. 553); Raphael Holinshed (Vol. 13, p. 584); John Foxe (Vol. 10, p. 770); Sir Thomas North (Vol. 19, p. 759); Sir Thomas Wyat (Vol. 28, p. 861); Earl of Surrey (Vol. 26, p. 138); George Gascoigne (Vol. 11, p. 493); Nicholas Udal (Vol. 27, p. 554), by A. F. Leach; Edmund Spenser (Vol. 25, p. 639,) by the late Professor William Minto of Aberdeen, and F. J. Snell, author of The Age of Chaucer, etc.; Sir Philip Sidney (Vol. 25, p. 43); John Lyly (Vol. 17, p. 159), by Mrs. Humphry Ward; Euphuism (Vol. 9, p. 898); Michael Drayton (Vol. 8, p. 557), and Samuel Daniel (Vol. 7, p. 808), all by Edmund Gosse; William Warner (Vol. 28, p. 327); Edward Fairfax (Vol. 10, p. 130); Sir John Harington (Vol. 12, p. 952); Giles and Phineas Fletcher (Vol. 10, p. 498); Thomas Watson (Vol. 28, p. 413), by E. Gosse; Thomas Lodge (Vol. 16, p. 860), by Prof. A. W. Ward, Cambridge; Thomas Campion (Vol. 5, p. 137), by P. Vivian, editor of Campion; Nicholas Breton (Vol. 4, p. 501); Robert Southwell (Vol. 25, p. 517); the metaphysical poets, John Donne (Vol. 8, p. 417), George Herbert (Vol. 13, p. 339), Richard Crashaw (Vol. 7, p. 379), Abraham Cowley (Vol. 7, p. 347), Thomas Traherne (Vol. 27, p. 155), and Henry Vaughan (Vol. 27, p. 955); William Browne (Vol. 4, p. 667); George Wither (Vol. 28, p. 758); William Drummond of Hawthornden (Vol. 8, p. 600); Robert Herrick (Vol. 13, p. 389), by E. Gosse; Richard Lovelace (Vol. 17, p. 71); Sir John Suckling (Vol. 26, p. 7); Andrew Marvell (Vol. 17, p. 805); Edmund Waller (Vol. 28, p. 282), by E. Gosse; and John Milton (Vol. 18, p. 480), in great part by David Masson, late professor at Edinburgh University.

The Drama

Shakespeare

Elizabethan drama—particularly Shakespeare—deserves a separate paragraph, especially as its treatment in the Britannica is so full. Read in the article English Literature, pp. 622–626; in the article Drama, by Prof. A. W. Ward, Cambridge, pp. 520–524 of Volume 8; and the articles: John Lyly (Vol. 17, p. 159), by Mrs. Humphry Ward; Thomas Kyd (Vol. 15, p. 958), by E. Gosse; George Peele (Vol. 21, p. 44); Robert Greene (Vol. 12, p. 539), by A. W. Ward; Christopher Marlowe (Vol. 17, p. 741), by A. C. Swinburne and Thomas Seccombe, author of The Age of Johnson, etc.; and above all Shakespeare (Vol. 24, p. 772; equivalent to 80 pages of this Guide), containing a biography and sketches of the different works by E. K. Chambers, editor of the “Red Letter Shakespeare” and author of The Medieval Stage, with a discussion of the portraits of Shakespeare (20 of which are reproduced), by M. H. Spielmann, formerly editor of the Magazine of Art, and of the Shakespeare-Bacon controversy by Hugh Chisholm, editor-in chief of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and an elaborate, classified bibliography by H. R. Tedder, librarian of the Athenaeum Club, London. In his discussion of the Baconian theory of the authorship of the plays Mr. Chisholm says:

“No such idea seems to have occurred to anybody till the middle of the 19th century.... The most competent special students of Shakespeare, however they may differ as to details, and also the most authoritative special students of Bacon, are unanimous in upholding the traditional view.” And he adds that as regards the effort to account for the positive contemporary evidence in favour of the identification of the man Shakespeare with the author of Shakespeare’s works, “it is highly significant that it was not attempted or thought of for centuries.” See also: Hamlet (Vol. 12, p. 894) for earlier treatment of the legend, and Macbeth (Vol. 17, p. 197) for the historical basis of the play.

For the other dramatists of the time see the articles Ben Jonson (Vol. 15, p. 502), by A. W. Ward; George Chapman (Vol. 5, p. 852), John Webster (Vol. 28, p. 462), Cyril Tourneur (Vol. 27, p. 106), and Beaumont and Fletcher (Vol. 3, p. 592), all by A. C. Swinburne; Thomas Dekker (Vol. 7, p. 939), by William Minto and R. B. McKerrow; Thomas Heywood (Vol. 13, p. 439); Thomas Middleton (Vol. 18, p. 416); John Marston (Vol. 17, p. 776); Philip Massinger (Vol. 17, p. 868); John Ford (Vol. 10, p. 641), by A. W. Ward; James Shirley (Vol. 24, p. 990).

16th and 17th Century Prose

For Elizabethan prose writers not already mentioned, see: the translators, John Bourchier, Lord Baron Berners (Vol. 3, p. 800), Philemon Holland (Vol. 13, p. 587) and Giovanni Florio (Vol. 10, p. 546); and the philosophers and essayists, Richard Hooker (Vol. 13, p. 672), by T. F. Henderson, Francis Bacon, (Vol. 3, p. 135; equivalent to 55 pages of this Guide), by Robert Adamson and J. M. Mitchell, Thomas Hobbes (Vol. 13, p. 545), by G. Croom Robertson, biographer of Hobbes, Sir Thomas Browne (Vol. 4, p. 666), Izaak Walton (Vol. 28, p. 300), Robert Burton (Vol. 4, p. 865), Jeremy Taylor (Vol. 26, p. 469), Thomas Fuller (Vol. 11, p. 296), William Chillingworth (Vol. 6, p. 162), John Hales (Vol. 12, p. 834), Ralph Cudworth (Vol. 7, p. 612), by Henry Sturt, author of Personal Idealism, etc.; the historian Clarendon (Vol. 6, p. 428), by P. C. Yorke; and the letter-writer James Howell (Vol. 13, p. 838).

Dryden

Pepys