The Development of Literary Style

1. Poetry. The period immediately preceding was that of the clumsy poetry of Hawes, Skelton, and their kind; succeeding it is the strength and beauty of Elizabethan poetry. Between these two extremes the different stages of development are fairly well marked.

(a) The earliest period (say from 1550–80) is that of Wyat, Surrey, Sidney, and the University Wits. This is the formative and imitative period, during which the dependence upon classical originals is particularly strong. The style has the precision and the erratic character of the diligent pupil. There are few deliberate innovations, and lapses into barbarism are not unknown. In this period appear the sonnet, blank verse, and many of the beautiful lyrical metrical forms. The lyrical style is least restrained by the influence of classical models.

(b) The Spenserian and Shakespearian stage (from about 1580 to 1615) is the stage of highest development. The native English genius, having absorbed the lessons of foreign writers, adds to them the youth and ardor of its own spirit. The result is a fullness, freshness, and grandeur of style unequaled in any other period of our literature. There are the lyrics and allegories of Spenser; the poems, dramas, and lyrics of Shakespeare; and the innumerable miscellanies, poems, and plays of other writers. The style is as varied as the poems; but the universal note is the romantic one of power and ease.

(c) In the second decade of the seventeenth century the decline is apparent. The inspired phraseology, the wealth and flexibility of vocabulary, and the general bloom of the style pass into the lightness of fancy and the tinkling unsubstantial verse of the nature of Campion’s. Or the high seriousness degenerates into the gloomy manner of the Websterian tragedy. The handling of blank verse is typical of the movement. The sinewy Shakesperian blank verse becomes nerveless; in drama prose is commoner in quantity and coarser in fiber. In the lyric much of the old technical dexterity survives, but the deeper qualities of passion and sincerity are less common and robust.

2. Prose. Unlike that of poetry, the style of prose enjoys a steady development, continued from the previous age, and maintained through the Elizabethan age. Euphuism, which appeared early in this epoch, was a kind of literary measles incidental to early growth, and it quickly passed away, leaving the general body of English prose healthier than before. There is an increase in the raw material of prose in the shape of many foreign words that are imported; there is a growing expertness in sentence-and paragraph-construction and in the more delicate graces of style, such as rhythm and melody. The prose of Hooker and Bacon (in his later stages) represents the furthest development of the time. Prose style has yet a great deal to learn, but it is learning fast.

TABLE TO ILLUSTRATE THE DEVELOPMENT OF LITERARY FORMS

Date> Poetry Drama Prose

Lyric Narrative-Descriptive Didactic Comedy Tragedy Essay Narrative Didactic

Ascham

1550

Sackville

1560 Wyat Surrey

1570

Gascoigne

1580 Spenser North Lyly

Lyly Peele

Kyd

Greene

1590 Marlowe

Daniel Donne Nash Hooker

Shakespeare Nash

Marlowe Shakespeare Spenser

1600 Drayton Chapman Bacon

Campion Jonson Dekker Shakespeare

Donne Marston

Jonson

1610 G. Fletcher Heywood

Drayton Webster

Beaumont Overbury

Fletcher

1620

Middleton Bacon

Ussher

Burton

1630 Bacon Hall

P. Fletcher

1640