BIBLIOGRAPHY. The following works have been sifted from a much larger number dealing with the age of Chaucer and the Revival of Learning. More extended works, covering the entire field of English history and literature, are listed in the General Bibliography.
HISTORY. Snell, the Age of Chaucer; Jusserand, Wayfaring
Life in the Fourteenth Century; Jenks, In the Days of Chaucer;
Trevelyan, In the Age of Wyclif; Coulton, Chaucer and His England;
Denton, England in the Fifteenth Century; Green, Town Life in the
Fifteenth Century; Einstein, The Italian Renaissance in England;
Froissart, Chronicles; Lanier, The Boy's Froissart.
LITERATURE. Ward, Life of Chaucer (English Men of Letters
Series); Kittredge, Chaucer and His Poetry (Harvard University
Press); Pollard, Chaucer Primer; Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer;
Lowell's essay in My Study Windows; essay by Hazlitt, in Lectures
on the English Poets; Jusserand, Piers Plowman; Roper, Life of Sir
Thomas More.
FICTION AND POETRY. Lytton, Last of the Barons; Yonge,
Lances of Lynwood; Scott, Marmion; Shakespeare, Richard II, Henry
IV, Richard III; Bates and Coman, English History Told by English
Poets.
CHAPTER IV
THE ELIZABETHAN AGE (1550-1620)
This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea, …
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England!
Shakespeare, King Richard II
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND. In such triumphant lines, falling from the lips of that old imperialist John of Gaunt, did Shakespeare reflect, not the rebellious spirit of the age of Richard II, but the boundless enthusiasm of his own times, when the defeat of Spain's mighty Armada had left England "in splendid isolation," unchallenged mistress of her own realm and of the encircling sea. For it was in the latter part of Elizabeth's reign that England found herself as a nation, and became conscious of her destiny as a world empire.
There is another and darker side to the political shield, but the student of literature is not concerned with it. We are to remember the patriotic enthusiasm of the age, overlooking the frequent despotism of "good Queen Bess" and entering into the spirit of national pride and power that thrilled all classes of Englishmen during her reign, if we are to understand the outburst of Elizabethan literature. Nearly two centuries of trouble and danger had passed since Chaucer died, and no national poet had appeared in England. The Renaissance came, and the Reformation, but they brought no great writers with them. During the first thirty years of Elizabeth's reign not a single important literary work was produced; then suddenly appeared the poetry of Spenser and Chapman, the prose of Hooker, Sidney and Bacon, the dramas of Marlowe, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and a score of others,—all voicing the national feeling after the defeat of the Armada, and growing silent as soon as the enthusiasm began to wane.