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Tudor Drama before Shakespeare Throughout the early history of England, literature and ideas were not considered the main issues of society. Instead, people focused their attention on family ties, political issues and ways of becoming rich. During the Tudor period, the flourishing of new ideas led to the emergence of a cultural and social movement known as the Renaissance. This movement was characterized by the discovery and study of arts, literature and ideas of ancient Greece, which arose in Italy in the 14 th century and reached England in the early 16th century. The aim of this paper is to describe the unfolding events that paved the way for the revival of ancient cultures in England, between the years 1500 and 1603, particularly, under the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. The paper is divided in three sections. The first section deals with the social and political background of the mentioned dynasty. Section two presents the Tudor period, its authors and their works. The last section describes the most important of the three periods, the Elizabethan period. Tudor England promoted an effective revolution in the social system, and preserved the form and even the spirit of much that was old. What survived ostensibly in the old forms were universities, nobles, lawyers, bishops, secular clergy and town corporations. Orders, corporations, and institutions remained intact when compared to

those of medieval times but with the condition of submitting to sovereign authority of the state. As the Tudor governments lacked military forces with which to maintain order and obedience, the complete independence for the nation and omni-competence for the state were embodied in the person of the prince. This was the Divine Right of King which stated that the king derived his power from God, it was accountable only to God and it was God who decided on the hereditary succession. Apart from this doctrine, the Tudor dynasty managed to achieve the consolidation of nation state and royal power. As they did not have a standing army or professional bureaucracy to back up a despotic form of government, they relied on popular support. When Henry VII came to the throne, the lesser gentry, the merchants and craftsmen had little interest in who became king as long as this person would restore order, which was essential for developing their activities. The greatest rivals of the crown were the nobles, whose economic and political power began to decline after the War of the Roses. As regards society, the main characteristics of this period were: poverty among the labouring classes and luxury among the rich. Due to the substantial increase of the enclosure movement, which consisted on fencing off former common lands, peasants became unemployed when they were excluded from their share of the woods. These economic changes led to the transformation of English social classes. The great baronial families were replaced by the rising country gentlemen or squires, who were known as the new landed aristocracy. This group, based on wealth rather than on birth, gave the Tudors the necessary local influence because they acted as administrator in the counties. Taking advantage of the old nobility and peasants situation, other social classes such as the gentry, yeomen and merchants (the new men) grew and attained more power.

Apart from the social changes, England went through a revolution in education and ideas, that has its roots in/on the barbarian invasions. At that time, many manuscripts and records of the Italian civilization had disappeared; monuments and buildings had collapsed and fallen in decay. The only thing that had survived, but with some changes, was language: it was preserved in the church and in law courts. However, during the later Middle Ages, manuscripts had been discovered and with this, an interest in the literature of the antiquity was reborn. Scholars began to learn and study the old culture: history, art and literature. They believed that the culture of the ancient Greece was superior in beauty, to the point of not taking into consideration the fact that they were Pagans. Consequently, there was a period in which scholars focused their attention on the imitation of the Greek civilization but it did not prevail. As a result, the scholars attempt paved the way for a revival of the old epoch, not to imitate it but to be inspired by it. This movement, the Humanism, originated in Italy, under the leadership of Petrarch, Dante and Boccacio who not only created excellent pieces of writings in their own language but they also realised that it was necessary to find a connection between modern and ancient literature. It was like rediscovering centuries of an unknown culture in all its aspects: history, art, literature and language. In England, there were few young men interested in learning more about Humanism. However, Humanism in England did not have, for a long time, a profound effect on poetry and prose due to the fact that the English language was not completely settled. The scholars who were in charge of introducing the new ideas in the country, William Grocyn (1446?-1519) and Thomas Lineacre (1460?-1524), belonged to a group of distinguished men.

The Oxford reformers, known with this name because the University was the centre of the literary and educational revival, aimed to improve every field of activity through the knowledge acquired from Greek and Roman cultures without either disobeying the authority or offending the Church. They were also inspired by the educational and religious policy of the reformed schools and the reformed Church of England that emerged under the later Tudors. Among other members of this revolutionary group were John Colet, Thomas More and Desiderius Erasmus. Colet was a humanist scholar deeply interested in Church and educational reform. By founding St. Pauls school he also provided the first model of non-clerical secondary school in which the teaching was based on Latin and Greek. Together with John Colet, Desiderius Erasmus, the most celebrated Christian humanist of the early Renaissance, began a series of bitter attacks that ridiculed many Church practises, opening the door for theological criticism of church doctrines. Thomas More provided with his Utopia a humanistic parody of the times. He idealised human nature by a description of a society free from feudal and religious intolerance. Even though many revolutionary ideas flourished during the Middle Ages, this was not a great period for literature. The reason of this lies on the fact that most of the population was illiterate and they were more interested in theatrical exhibitions. As an example of these exhibitions we can consider the Morality plays, in which human qualities such as lust or reason were personified. These plays usually symbolised the conflict of vices and virtues. This type of representations emerged almost simultaneously with classical drama, so they served as a transition from medieval to modern drama. One of the most prominent authors of Morality plays, was John Skelton (14601529). It is difficult to place him in a specific period because his poems sometimes

followed medieval poems and sometimes they imitated the classics. But it could be said that chronologically he was considered one of the earliest Tudor writers. He wrote satires, laments and elegies. However, the only surviving dramatic piece of writing is Magnyfycence which is a long morality of the medieval fashion. Magnyfycence (1516) symbolizes a generous prince who is ruined by mistaken liberality and bad counsellors but he is restored by Goodhope, Perseverance and other similar figures. It is the first secular morality in English. Magnyfycence represents the king, the Vices and Virtues are the two factions among his counsellors. Another author of the period was John Bale (1495-1563), who was a famous dramatist and clergyman. He was the author of several plays and polemical works which were in favour of the cause of the Reformation. Bale was an important figure in this period thanks to his work King John (1547), which marks the transition between morality plays and English historical drama by allegorical treatment of the fate of England rather than of the fate of man's soul. What follows is an extract of Bales work:
"This noble Kynge Johan, as a faythfull Moses Withstode proude Pharao for his poore Israel."

As it was mentioned before, the Middle Ages was a period in which literature had not fully developed . At about the time of Elizabeths accession, the nation was in a period of transition: there was a national Church, Renaissance ideas were coming into England, commerce had increased rapidly and there was a revolution in education and literature. Due to the increase of trade and the breakdown of feudal society, the demand for literacy and education grew even in rural areas. The wealthiest families hired a tutor to teach the boys at home or sent the children to live with families of greater wealth and

status. Parents who were not wealthy enough to hire a private tutor but could afford to pay for education, sent cathedral. During the later Middle Ages, schools had been attached to monasteries and to charity foundations but, under Henry VIII, the Reformation and the dissolution of monasteries led to the closure of many elementary schools. Other type of schools, such as the grammar schools, were restored at the end of Elizabeths reign thanks to the patronage of clergy and nobility. Universities were also affected by the rise of new ideas carried out by Puritans. To set a good example, Cambridge became more influential and larger. Even though Oxford continued to be one of the most important universities, it was more affected than Cambridge due to the fact that it suffered many monastic and faculty losses. Most people in the first half of the 16th century did not believe in education for women. They held the medieval belief that teaching girls to read and write would cause them to waste their time and skills on love letters. Education for girls was a Renaissance concept. Only the privileged and the rich had access to it. The main purpose of educating women was to produce wives schooled in godly and moral precepts. Not to promote independent thinking and problem solving. Most girls were taught the wifely arts: manage a household, needlework, wild herbs and plants that could be used in healing, meal preparation, and their duty to their future husband. But foremost it promoted strong religious training. On the other hand, the way they handled the education for boys, which had a long standing tradition, was completely different. They were taught Latin, Greek and religion, and they were trained for a specific job or skill. the boys to a grammar school or a school attached to a

In connection with literature, the real flowering occurred under Elizabeths reign when intellectual and poetic freedom had already reached the fullest expansion. The Elizabethan age can be divided in two periods: the first is characterised by religious toleration towards Roman Catholics even though the majority of the English regarded themselves as fervent Protestants. This is the reason why literature was not conditioned by any laws or restrictions compared to that of the second period which begins in 1570 with Elizabeths excommunication. After this event, the propaganda of the Protestant religion went forward quickly: it identified Englishmen with patriotism, with the defiance of Spain and, with the protection of the life of the Queen from assassins. Despite the religious controversy, Englishmen regarded the Bible as the book of the books. It stimulated and enlarged the culture of the British. Men heard the Bible with close attention as the word of God and it was taken as the example to be followed by the better educated. Catholics and Protestants had declared themselves to be incompatible one with the other. As a consequence, Tudor Interludes, which preserved a strongly didactic moral content, were transformed into vehicles of Protestant propaganda. Consequently, Tudor government was forced to try to control the stage through legislation, police action and censorship. With the passing of time, this measures grew harsher, forcing playmakers and actors to change their source of inspiration to the subject matter of Roman and Greek plays since the risks of fines, imprisonment and even penalties could thus be greatly reduced. As we have previously mentioned, England was going through social, economic and political changes. The intellectual and cultural revolution was so prosperous that even though it comprises more than one dynasty, it is widely known with the name of

Elizabeth, the advocator of these literary developments. The Queen openly showed her knowledge of Greek, paving the way for the establishment of academies devoted to the study of Roman drama and theatre. The result was a strange mixture in English theatrical developments: the gothic method of playwriting and production, an interest in classical drama, Latin and Greek and the fact that the audience was purely English. Before mentioning the main works and authors of the Elizabethan period, it is appropriate to describe the significance of the most important terms that involved drama, as well as the effect they had on society. The theatre, opened to the whole town, might be a school room or college hall, where students performed under the direction of their masters; other representations might be held in some great houses or palaces of London. In case the actors travelled, they might have taken place where an audience could be gathered, from a town hall to a barn. The structure of the theatres was round or hexagonal, it had two pillars in the middle of the platform that upheld the ceiling. The actors entered the scene by two doors placed at the back. There were two kinds of playhouses. Private playhouses were built within the City and offered the clientele seats for all, elaborate music, and artificial lightning. The public playhouses had the original innyard structure: a roofless auditorium offering standing room only for the rubble and seats in the roofed gallery for patrons who paid more. Actors were almost outcasts from society: they were not recognized as wage earners and they had no professional safeguards. Although Puritans had tried to suppress actors, they had two recourses to go on with their performances. To avoid the laws against vagabonds they described themselves as the private servants of some great lord or of the queen, claiming that they contributed to the queens amusement and that they needed practice to be granted the honour to play before her. The other recourse was

to avoid the City government by building their own public playhouses outside the corporate limits. A well known author of Elizabeths time was William Stevenson, a Master of Christ College in Cambridge. One of his most famous plays was Gammer Gurton`s Needle whose date is difficult to set due to the fact that some authors consider it as a play from Marys reign while others include it under Elizabeths reign. However, it is certain that it was printed in 1575. The characters and setting of this play were wholly English while the structure was wholly Latin. It was divided into five acts and it had unity of time and place. It gave a contrasting picture of urban and of country society. The dialogue was fluent and the rhymed verse produced comic effects, and the realism was not adulterated by borrowings from antiquity. John Lyly (1554-1606), came from Magdalen College, Oxford and he was known as a member of the University Wits. He had a great popularity and a refined talent in contrast with the boorishness that characterised society of his time. His plays were all comedies and were all classically divided, but he was essentially romantic in his plots and violated the unities of time and place whenever he liked. His novel Euphues (1578) not only paved the way for him to start writing other comedies such as Campaspe (1581) and Mother Bombie (1590) but also introduced the Euphuistic Style which in enlarged the countrymens vocabulary. What was special of this style was that it ridiculed natural history, classical mythology, fable and anecdote, alliteration and antithesis. In the Elizabethan period, tragedy as a form was revived and with it the national theatre came more significantly. Seneca, a Roman philosopher and tragic poet, provided the model for a formal active play in a rhetorical style. Englishmen were influenced by

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Seneca, his use of themes from Greek mythology and, usually, the presence of a phantom who explained the situation that was taking place. The best known tragedy writers were Thomas Norton (1532-1584) and Thomas Sackville (1536-1608). Their most famous play is Gorboduc, the first tragedy, written in the Senecan manner. It was presented by the authors for their own and others entertainment. They had a didactic aim. They wanted to depict the suffering and misfortunes of a kingdom that did not have a determined line of succession, which was a clear image of what the English society was experiencing. Gorboduc itself, had his subject taken from the legendary chronicles of Britain. It consisted of five acts. The first three were written by Thomas Norton and the last two by Thomas Sackville. George Peele (1558-1598), a dramatic predecessor of Shakespeare, was considered an extraordinary poet. Even though he went to Oxford, he was known as an incorrigible Bohemian. By the time he went back to London, he was almost a beggar and practically ended in jail. He died at the age of forty with no honours but was by no means forgotten. His peculiar personality was reflected in most of his poems: his taste for ornament and preference for fine language and his sense of nationalism. One of his most famous works was The Arrangement of Paris which represents pre-Homeric Greece. Although this poem is classically divided and lacks construction, it gives pleasure to the reader. Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), educated at Cambridge, was one of the greatest scholars of his time. His works had an impressive dramatic effect which sometimes surpassed the poetry of their lines. They reflected his personality and a sense of dramatic values. The main topics of his plays were: royal ambitions, greediness for gold, the need of friendship and the suffering of love.

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The first play, Tamburlaine, describes more or less the true story of a Scythian shepherd, Timur the Lame, who managed by his own means to take control of half Asia. The author of this place was still at university when he wrote it and he followed the sources he had available. The style of the prologue primarily sticked to the blank verse instead of rhyme. The next lines are part of Marlowes play:
Awake, ye men of Memphis! hear the clang Of Scythian trumpets; hear the basilisks That , roaring, shake Damascus turrets down!

Thomas Kyd (1558-1594) was educated at Merchant Taylors School in London and in his writings he seemed to have been associated with Marlowe. His Spanish Tragedy, which was published anonymously in 1592, was an exceptionally popular play of Elizabethan drama and was considered the first tragedy, which brought fatality onto the English stage. Its political background was the victory of Spain over Portugal in 1580. It was the first play written in blank verse under the influence of antiquity. There were many flaws in the tragedy but it had a high artistic level. Taking into consideration the knowledge acquired by/through this paper, it could be concluded that due to the influence of the classical ideas and of the crucial changes that took place during the previous Tudor reigns, the Elizabethan Age is nowadays considered the most splendorous artistic period. Although every aspect of culture was improved, it can not be denied that drama was the most distinguished one. Some plays and authors of the period not only served as the main example for future generations of writers but also left humanity a legacy that, at this moment in time, has no parallel.