Good morning and welcome to today's lecture
on the course History of English Language
and Literature. Today we continue to look
at the importance of University Wits in the
emergence of Shakespearean drama at a later
stage. So in the previous section we also
took a look at some of the University Wits
and we took at their lives in detail and today
in continuation with that we will continue
to situate the importance of the two more
remaining university wits mainly Kyd and Marlowe.
So these two figures are quite important
in the history of English Literature and they
have a rare distinction of having attracted
more attention from critics and historians
compared to the other University Wits. In
fact in Pat Rogers critical analysis he makes
a very interesting comparison between Kyd
and Marlowe which also is partly the reason
for clubbing these two together in one particular
session and also in terms of the influence
that they had on Shakespeare's writings at
a later stage it's more pronounced and more
profound than all
of the other university wits put together.
Pat Rogers observes this thing about Kyd's
and Marlowe's characters. “Kyd's characters
are trapped because everything has been mapped
out for them. Marlowe's characters are trapped
because they cannot discover a map”. So
in that sense there is a continuity in the
writing tradition. There is also a way in
which they can be closely connected with the
analysis of Shakespearean plays at a later
stage. And it is important to note that especially
when one is discussing Shakespeare's tragedies
they are often mentioned together and they
also give a proper context to the understanding
of Shakespeare's tragedies both in terms of
craft and technique.
And we begin to look at the life of Thomas
Kyd. He was born as the son of a London scrivener
- we noted in the previous lecture itself
that he was the only one among the university
wits to have had no university education.
At least there are no records which prove
that he went to either of the Universities
- to Oxford or to Cambridge and most of his
works significantly has been lost as well.
So in that sense it becomes another factor
for intellectual and historical curiosity
that he was one of the prime influencing factors
in shaping
the dramatic career of William Shakespeare.
His Spanish Tragedy was
and is still considered as the most of important
of Kyd's works and also one of the most influential
works that laid the foundation to Elizabethan
tragedy from the mid sixteenth century onwards.
In fact even during his lifetime the work
was so popular that by 1634 at least 10 editions
of Spanish Tragedy had come out. In the earlier
period it was also spelt a little differently
it was the Tragedie with d i and e. It was
only in the later editions that the English
in Kyd's plays began to be revised and more
became more suited for
our contemporary kind of consumption. In fact
he is said to have inaugurated this revenge
tradition in Elizabethan plays and this in
that sense is said to have greatly influenced
Shakespeare and his influence in fact continued
into the Jacobean period as well. There were
many writers who were trying to produce plays
alongside, along the tradition of Spanish
Tragedy and this plot of Spanish Tragedy was
also very interesting. It was quite thrilling
for the audience to watch during that time
and this was in fact the only play, one of
the first plays to offer this kind of a thrilling
experience for the audience. This had numerous
turns and twists of plot in terms of the plot
he had included many racy details into it.
It had about 8 deaths in
a single play which was quite stunning for
the Elizabethan audience then. There were
emotional speeches the verse was quite a racy
and there were these different kinds of spectacles
which might appear a bit gory when we look
at it in the contemporary perspective there
were scenes of public hanging there was a
scene with lunatic in place and there is a
very violent and gory scene which a man bites
out his own tongue - those kinds of spectacles
were rare during the time in the Elizabethan
audience were quite
thrilled to see them on stage and there was
a lot of innovation in terms of the play structure
as well - it was structured in a way that
there was a play within a play.
So with all of these innovative details he
stood apart as a very distinctive character
distinctive dramatist during the Elizabethan
times and his influence also for the same
reason continued to be very profound. Pramod
Nair, one of the recent
compilers of Literary History, he feels that
there is
an ‘excellent stage craft getting displayed’
in Spanish Tragedy. And it was this craft
that had kept the audience glued to the to
their seats when they were watching Kyd's
Spanish Tragedy and there is an interesting
observation made about the presentation of
the Spanish Tragedy – ‘if you blinked
you missed a murder’. So that was the kind
of pace with which the events were getting
unfolded in the play and apart from Spanish
Tragedy which of course continues to be
his supreme most contribution in fact we can
even extend it and say that Spanish Tragedy
may be considered as one of the most supreme
contribution
of the entire Elizabethan wits put together
prior to Shakespeare. And there was this play
partly attributed to Thomas Kyd but not entirely
based on historical evidence
A play named Ur Hamlet which was a Danish
tragedy to begin with and many feel that this
is the work which could be considered as an
immediate ancestor to Shakespeare's Hamlet
but there is very little historical authentic
evidence to prove the same and the authorship
of this play to Thomas Kyd is also heavily
disputed. In fact his life also undergoes
a lot of turn of events towards the end because
he is said to have involved in a lot of subversive
political activities like many other university
wits were. And his association with Marlowe
was not very
fruitful in this aspect. In fact his association
with Marlowe had even brought a lot of ill-repute
and disrepute to the personality of Thomas
Kyd and Marlowe was incidentally a friend
and a sometime roommate of Thomas Kyd and
he was in fact tortured and punished because
he was said to have collaborated with Marlowe
in one of his spy adventures against the state
and, Marlowe's early death is said to have
saved Thomas Kyd from some form of any impending
punishment. But these are all mostly historical
conjectures with very little proper evidence
or proof. Thomas Kyd also dies very early
at the age of 36 so there was not much time
for him to prove his literary output. Also
after Spanish Tragedy we do not find any significant
kind of literary output being generated from
him. In fact it is interesting to note that
a dramatic genius which produced a work such
as
The Spanish Tragedy was not capable of giving
the same kind of rendition later age. So maybe
he was rightfully involved in lot of controversies
which prevented his dramatic genius from flowering
into a, into a proper form.
Christopher Marlowe is in fact the most interesting
and the most controversial of all these figures
so much so that many historians feel that
if he had lived a little longer he would have
entirely outwitted William Shakespeare, his
contemporary.
He was born at Canterbury. He was educated
at Oxford. He has this distinction of being
born in the same year as Shakespeare and he
was also the son of a respectable tradesman.
So in many ways there was a lot of reputation
that he was already born with and he also
came to London to pursue a career in theatre.
He was attached to Lord Admiral's players,
prominent theatre company of those
times but his lifestyle was very interesting.
He lived in a very Bohemian way which also,
many feel that had marred some of his literary
genius. His life was not just about drama
and literature. He is also had said to have
worked as a spy. He had travelled much, so
his life is very interesting and these kind
of varied interests and varied influences
we find in his
writings as well. Everyone was in agreement
of this fact in mid sixteenth century London
that he was very erudite and his scholarship
was quite evident in everything that he had
done during his lifetime. He had a very thorough
grounding in classical learning but this did
not come in the way of dramatic genius in
any way. He knew how to bring and blend the
elements from the classical drama and infuse
a new kind of life in the Elizabethan drama
which was emerging then. He also had varied
kinds of scholarly interests. He was interested
in
geography, astronomy and philosophy - and
as we noted earlier in his plays and his production
we find a direct reflection of all of this
scholarship. And keeping in tune with his
Bohemian lifestyle, he had a very, his dressing
was considered very flamboyant and he used
lot of
elaborate jewellery which was matter of curiosity
and interest for Elizabethan people during
those times
and even later historians look at it with
much interest and curiosity. And significantly
he had no bent for comedy like most of the
other erudite dramatists of the time. He believed
that comedy is of inferior stature than that
of tragedy. And
his plays, it was in many ways keeping in
tune with his own value system and his belief
system so we find that his combination, his
thought process was a combination of an enquiring
mind and dissolute life, yeah. So in his plays
we find certain kind of profound influence
of atheism and immorality coming in. So we
do find that he was a man of varied
interests and this kind of variety had brought
in a new kind of refinement to the drama that
he was producing.
And he also had a very unfortunate end. He
was killed in a brawl in a tavern at the,
at the young age of 29. This happened in 1593
and some even feel that since he was involved
in a lot of spy work and a lot of controversial
political affairs, if he had not died in the
tavern, in that pub
he would have got arrested and would have
been imprisoned for the rest of his lifetime.
And there is also this assumption that he
was not really killed accidently but perhaps
he was assassinated because of his political,
controversial political connections. And this
in fact - this event which marked the death
of Christopher Marlowe - it had a very negative
impact on the
lives and the dramatic output of all the University
Wits. In fact we also know that from 1592-93
onwards we find only Thomas Nashe continuing
to write till 1599, all the others
either they shift to other professions or
they just disappeared into oblivion or they
just withdraw themselves into a life of obscurity.
This was the kind of influence that Marlowe's
life had on the general dramatic scene of
Elizabethan England.
And if we talk about Marlowe's writing career,
it was very prolific. He wrote for only a
brief period of time, a little more than 5
years but if we compare the output with the
period of time when he was active it's very
prolific and very impressive and he is for
that same reason he is even compared with
William Shakespeare. In fact if we take a
look at the later analyses and the later criticism
Marlowe's works are only ones which are compared
along the same stature
alongside William Shakespeare. Nashe and Greene
were Marlowe's major writing companions and
we do not have much evidence of any collaborative
work that they had produced but they are said
to have enjoyed a good kind of relationship
throughout their lifetime. And he at some
point he had shared lodgings with Thomas Kyd
which we noted earlier that which had also
led to lot of disrepute for Thomas Kyd and
also led to his imprisonment and torture because
they assumed that they were together in some
of the
political conspiracies - the details and evidence
of which is very little known and mostly are
of conjecture in nature. He was also said
to have been friends with Walter Raleigh and
some feel that his assassination or his accidental
death in the pub after a fight with someone
who was drinking with him, some even feel
that it had something to do with Walter Raleigh
and he had staged the entire thing - but there
is very little evidence to conclude any of
these facts. And in terms of his writing output,
some of his major works continue to be taught
and discussed even in the contemporary. That
is the kind
of influence they have had in the, not just
in the dramatic interest of London scene,
but also in the academic fraternity in the
later periods to come. And his works Tamburlaine,
The Jew of Malta, Edward the Second and Doctor
Faustus, these plays are considered to be
the first ever ones to analyze the effects
of
power on ordinary human beings and in that
sense he had a very rare kind of genius to
probe into the minds of humans and to understand
what power and its repercussions could do
to their as a life-changing event. And Tamburlaine
the Great is credited to be as a new
kind of tragedy. In fact it talks about a
rise of a shepherd to generalship and how
the same person goes on to command the entire
Mongol empire. And Tamburlaine's character
is said to be one of the greatest characters
in English drama in terms of characterization
and in terms of the general finish that Marlowe
had brought about. And Edward the Second is
perhaps the first ever play to explore the
dramatic tension between duty and desire.
It also showed how one could experiment with
a with the life of weak-willed king - and
Shakespeare at a later stage is said to have
drawn a lot from the portrayal of Edward the
Second. And another rare distinction about
Edward the Second which also talks a lot about
the bold personality that Marlowe was then,
Edward the Second deals with the theme of
homosexuality which was taboo then
and continues to be a taboo to a certain extent
even in the contemporary. So to talk about
such a theme in the mid-sixteenth century
it really took a lot of guts from the dramatist's
part. So that had led to lot of controversy
nevertheless it also forced the Elizabethan
public to talk about things which were considered
taboo. And Doctor Faustus, perhaps
the most renowned of Marlowe's plays, it talks
about a certain man named Faustus who ends
up selling his soul to the devil Mephistopheles.
And this is in fact a one play which explores
in detail a man's quest for knowledge and
demonic power and in this play in fact Marlowe,
a different side of Marlowe comes into play.
He in fact is critical of the classical learning
and he is he perhaps questions the kind of
hierarchy in which learning is placed and
he does not make much of a distinction between
the
reputed classic learning and certain other
certain other disreputable kind of practices
like witchcraft, demonic worships and so on
and so forth. In that sense he questions a
lot of conventions which were in place not
just in Elizabethan England but also in the
larger scheme of classical learning. And Doctor
Faustus is said to be the first ever tragic
hero
to go through intellectual torment within
the phase of drama. So in many ways, though
the output of Marlowe continues to be very
limited in terms of number their influence
was very profound not just in the writings
of Shakespeare but also in the way in which
the drama began to be fashioned and refashioned
not just in England but also worldwide. And
it’s said that the success of Tamburlaine,
one of his earliest plays, it had turned London
stage into a strong and popular industry.
This is very important because when Shakespeare
takes over
the Elizabethan scene he knew how to commercialize
drama; he knew the forces that were driving
the London market in terms of the dramatic
scene. And Tamburlaine is said to have laid
the foundation and made it easier for the
other playwrights to come. So it was with
Tamburlaine that many other patrons, the playhouses,
the actors, all of them began to realize the
commercial potential of London stage. And
Marlowe is also credited
to be the one who made full use of blank verse.
This also brings us to this question of the
significance of blank verse. In terms of a
literary tradition
the Elizabethan drama was emerging gradually
but steadily and strongly. One of the literary
techniques that aided this emergence was the
prominence of blank verse. Blank verse did
not however originate in Elizabethan England.
This was beginning to be practiced from Chaucer's
times but the Elizabethans are said to have
perfected this technique and they had begun
to use in multiple ways
in their plays. And what is blank verse? We
need to take quite a detailed look at it.
It is the form that released drama from its
constricted poetic conventions and it is also
considered verse without rhyme which also
makes us to force this distinction between
blank verse and free verse. Blank verse is
not actually free verse and free verse, there
is no specified syllable count or meter but
blank verse followed a particular kind of
meter known as iambic pentameter which we
will be shortly taking a look at and it is
‘iamb’ means weak syllable followed by
a strong word. This is also in tune with the
way English language is spoken with stressed
and non-stressed syllable. And Gorboduc, the
first ever English tragedy to be produced
is said to have perfected the use of blank
verse
from the Elizabethan times onwards and Shakespeare
is another important figure who continued
to use continued to use blank verse whenever
there was a poetic rendering in any of his
plays. So that brings us to this question
what is iambic pentameter? It is a line of
verse with five metrical feet each consisting
of one short or unstressed syllable followed
by a long or stressed syllable. So that leads
us to this question what is a meter then?
Meter is a regularized rhythm where the accented
syllables occurs at regular intervals. And
penta means five, so iambic pentameter is
a regular occurrence of stressed syllables
within a single verse.
So when is iambic pentameter used? And we
note that in the poetic rendition whenever
the characters plays certain important moments
in his life; when he is feeling passionate,
when the character is feeling introspective
or if the character is feeling momentous,
we will find the character resorting to a
verse in iambic pentameter. This finds its
perfection in many of Shakespeare's plays,
in fact certain famous instances include Hamlet
when he is pondering his existence or Romeo
professing his love for Juliet or when Orsino
is lovesick and he is giving out these melancholic
rants, we find all of them are using
iambic pentameter to express their feelings.
And why iambic pentameter and not any other
kind of verse? In fact from the Elizabethan
times onwards we realize
that blank verse perhaps is the most important
technical term that gets used over and again
whenever verse is getting talked about. Many
Elizabethan dramatists
and later significantly Shakespeare, they
resort to iambic pentameter because it was
very easy for the actors to memorize it because
it had a certain rhythmic structure to it
and it was easy for the audience to understand
as well. Because the metrical structure and
the rhythmic pattern was not complicated at
all like it was in the other classical forms.
And the structure of this was also naturally
suited to the English language. In that sense
it was quite easy for people to talk, quite
easy for people to engage with this because
it was quite similar to that of the language
structure of English itself. And this is common
analogy being made for iambic pentameter with
the heartbeat itself, in the sense that there
is this general assumption that perhaps initially
we resorted to iambic pentameter because it
is the same way that the heart beats with
a certain rhythmic structure like ‘ta dum
ta dum ta dum ta dum’. There is a weak syllable
followed by a strong syllable. And this verse
from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night "If music
be the food of love, play on", this is in
fact the most quoted examples of iambic pentameter.
We will quickly take a look at how the iambic
pentameter
analysis could be done. So in iambic pentameter
as we noted earlier, we have a stressed syllable
followed by a non-stressed syllable just like
it is in English language, yeah. So ‘If
music be the food of love, play on’. So
if we try to reproduce it in a different way
it would be like there are certain syllables
which are getting stressed. ‘If music be
the food of love, play on’ and we also find
that there is a falling rhythm and a rising
rhythm, a falling rhythm and a rising rhythm,
so it goes like that just like a heartbeat
‘ta dum ta dum,’ yeah. So this blank verse
was quite popular in that sense,
it also made a lot of sense for the audience,
for the actors and also for the dramatists
to express particular kind of emotions and
to convey particular kinds of things.
So this digression aside, let's come back
to the main topic of the day on University
Wits. Having noted
the significance and influence of blank verse,
it is time for us to come back to the main
topic on university wits and wind up our discussion.
So as we sum up, let’s look at some of the
speculations and observations that have been
historically and literally prevalent about
the university wits in general. There is the
general conjecture
that the early deaths of Robert Greene, Marlowe
and Kyd especially in the 1590s, all of them
they die very, an early death in the 1590s
at the peak of their career and we note that
they all had faced a different kinds of trials
and tribulations towards the end of their
dramatic career and they were quite promising
in terms of their literary output. And we
find that the early
deaths were often shrouded in mystery as well
and many theories float around as to what
constituted those deaths, what constituted
their early withdrawal from the dramatic scenes
and so on and so forth. And the reputation
and talent, they also continued to be of huge
interest and curiosity and there is this theory
of whether they were all real writers or whether
they were proxying for another court figure.
We should not go into the details of that
but this is just to draw you attention to
the fact that there are different kinds of
studies, different kinds of researches happening
about the University Wits especially in the
present century. And there is this argument
that some of the historians which could be
true to a certain extent as well and it is
generally assumed that maybe the early deaths
or the early withdrawal of some of them from
the
political scene had left the dramatic scene
of London quite free for Shakespeare. So when
he arrived in London, this was one of the
earliest mentions of Shakespeare in the London
dramatic scene
is what we find in Robert Greene's pamphlet
as we noted earlier. This is in 1592. And
we also note that by fifteen, in the earlier
1590s, all of these writers, they either withdraw
to seclusion or they die. And as we noted
it is only Thomas Nashe who continues to write
until 1599, so when Shakespeare arrives in
London with the dream of pursuing a career
in drama and theatre, we find that there are
no other competitors in place for him other
than the University Wits. So perhaps this
we had it in place for him in such a way that
the playfield was made quite free for Shakespeare
to emerge and to flower and to enjoy and reap
a lot of success. And apart from the University
Wits, now the interesting thing to be noted
is that there is no other noted dramatist
other than Shakespeare
And also Lyly's comedy, Marlowe's and Kyd's
tragedy, it had a profound influence on the
way Shakespeare continued to write, so in
that sense even after Lyly, Marlowe and Kyd
had ceased to exist - they had stopped writing
- in Shakespeare's play we do find a certain
kind of a shadow of all of these university
wits lingering on. This is more evident in
the detailed analysis of the plays which were
done at a later stage
especially in terms of comparative analysis.
Pat Rogers has a very interesting observation
to make which I think would sum up the influence
that they University Wits had on Shakespeare.
He says
Shakespeare was pondering over and arguing
with their work throughout his career. In
that sense, it's impossible to understand
Shakespeare's dramatic genius
and Shakespeare's literary career without
understanding what the University Wits were
doing, who they were, what kind of influence
they exerted and what kind of social life
they lived. So we find that Shakespeare's
work is in fact a continuing dialog with the
predecessor, with the predecessors namely
the university wits and in the next session
we will be taking the look at the man himself,
William Shakespeare. But this is all we have
for today's lecture. Thank you for listening
and see you in the next class.
