Lope de Vega is the great Spanish dramatist of this time. His astonishing facility produced over two thousand original dramas, of which three hundred have been preserved. Jodelle, the father of the French theatre, presented his "Cléopatre" in 1552. In 1598 the foundations were laid of the Comédie Française.
In England, Sackville led the way with his tragedy of "Gorboduc," played at Whitehall before Elizabeth in 1562. In 1576, the first public theatre was erected in Blackfriars. Several young men of talent appeared, Marlowe, Peele, Greene, Kyd, and Nash, as the precursors of Shakespeare; and in 1587, being then twenty-three years old, the greatest of dramatists settled in London, and several of his plays had been acted before the close of the century.
Among English prose writings of this time may be mentioned Ascham's "Schoolmaster," 1570, Puttenham's "Art of English Poesie," 1586, and, as a curiosity of affectation, Lilly's "Euphues." But the first good prose-writer is Sir Philip Sidney, whose "Arcadia" appeared in 1590; and the finest master of prose in the Elizabethan period is Hooker. The first book of the "Ecclesiastical Polity" is one of the masterpieces of English eloquence.
V.—The Seventeenth Century (1600–1650)
The two great figures in philosophy of this period are Bacon and Descartes. At its beginning the higher philosophy had been little benefited by the labours of any modern enquirer. It was become, indeed, no strange thing to question the authority of Aristotle, but his disciples could point with scorn at the endeavours made to supplant it.
In the great field of natural jurisprudence, the most eminent name in this period is that of Hugo Grotius, whose famous work "De Jure Belli et Pacis" was published in Paris in 1625. This treatise made an epoch in the philosophical, and, we might almost say, in the political history of Europe.
In the history of poetry, between 1600 and 1650, we have the Italians Marini, Tassoni, and Chiabrera, the last being the founder of a school of lyric poetry known as "Pindaric." Among Spanish poets are Villegas and Gongora; in France, Malherbe, Regnier, Racan, Maynard, Voiture, and Sarrazin; Opitz, in Germany, was the founder of German poetic literature; and this, the golden age of Dutch literature, included the poets Spiegel, Hooft, Cats, and Vondel. The English poets of these fifty years are very numerous, but for the most part not well known. Spenser was imitated by Phineas and Giles Fletcher. Sir John Denham, Donne, Crashaw, Cowley, Daniel, Michael Drayton, William Browne, and Sir William Davenant wrote at this time, to which also belong the sonnets of Shakespeare. Drummond of Hawthornden, Carew, Ben Jonson, Wither, Habington, Suckling, and Herrick, were all in the first half of the seventeenth century. John Milton was born in 1609, and in 1634 wrote "Comus," which was published in 1637; "Lycidas," the "Allegro" and "Penseroso," the "Ode on the Nativity," and Milton's sonnets followed.
The Italian drama was weak at this period, but in Spain Lope de Vega and Calderon were at the height of their glory. In France, Corneille's "Mélite," his first play, was produced in 1629, and was followed by "Clitandre," "La Veuve," "Medea," "Cid," and others. The English drama was exceedingly popular, and the reigns of James and Charles were the glory of our theatre. Shakespeare—the greatest name in all literature—Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, Shirley, Heywood, Webster, and many other dramatists contributed to its fame.
In prose writings, Italian and Spanish works of this time show a great decline in taste; but in France, the letters of the moralist Balzac and of Voiture, from 1625, have ingenuity and sprightliness. English prose writings of the period include the works of Knolles, Raleigh, Daniel, Bacon, Milton, Clarendon; Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," Earle's "Microcosmographia" and Overbury's "Characters."