Ford's The Broken Heart is a strong, but unpleasant, tragedy. He is so fascinated with the horrible that he introduces it even when it is not the logical outcome of a situation. His best but least characteristic play is Perkin Warbeck, which is worthy of ranking second only to Shakespeare's historical plays.
End of the Elizabethan Drama.—James Shirley (1596-1666), "the last of the Elizabethans," endeavored to the best of his ability to continue the work of the earlier dramatists. The Traitor and The Cardinal are two of the best of his many productions. He was hard at work writing new plays in 1642, when the Puritans closed the theaters. He was thus forced to abandon the profession that he enjoyed and compelled to teach in order to earn a livelihood.
The drama has never since regained its Elizabethan ascendancy. The coarse plays of the Restoration (1660) flourished for a while, but the treatment of the later drama forms but a minor part of the history of the best English literature. Few plays produced during the next two hundred years are much read or acted to-day. She Stoops to Conquer (1773), by Oliver Goldsmith, and The Rivals (1775) and The School for Scandal (1777), by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, are the chief exceptions before 1890.
SUMMARY
The Elizabethan age was a period of expansion in knowledge, commerce, religious freedom, and human opportunities. The defeat of the Armada freed England from fear of Spanish domination and made her mistress of the sea.
England was vivified by the combined influence of the Renaissance and the Reformation. Knowledge was expanding in every direction and promising to crown human effort with universal mastery. The greater feeling of individuality was partly due to the Reformation, which emphasized the direct responsibility of each individual for all acts affecting the welfare of his soul.
Elizabethans were noted for their resourcefulness, their initiative, their craving for new experiences, and their desire to realize the utmost out of life. As they cared little for ideas that could not be translated into action, they were particularly interested in the drama.
Although the prose covers a wide field, it is far inferior to the poetry. Lyly's Euphues suffers from overwrought conceits and forced antitheses, but it influenced writers to pay more attention to the manner in which thought was expressed. The flowery prose of Sidney's Arcadia presents a pastoral world of romance. His Apologie for Poetrie is a meritorious piece of early criticism. While Hooker indicates advance in solidity of matter and dignity of style, yet a comparison of his heavy religious prose with the prayer of the king in Hamlet or with Portia's words about mercy in The Merchant of Venice will show the vast superiority of the poetry in dealing with spiritual ideas. Bacon's Essays, celebrated for pithy condensation of striking thoughts, is the only prose work that has stood the test of time well enough to claim many readers to-day.
Poetry, both lyric and dramatic, is the crowning glory of the Elizabethan age. The lyric verse is remarkable for its wide range and for beauty of form and sentiment. The lyrics include love sonnets, pastorals, and miscellaneous verse. Shakespeare's Sonnets and the songs in his dramas are the best in this field, but many poets wrote exquisite artistic lyrics.
Edmund Spenser is the only great poet who was not also a dramatist. His Faerie Queene fashions an ideal world dominated by a love of beauty and high endeavor.