Seventeenth Century Literature and Culture

Jim Daems

• Publisher: Continuum
• Year: 2006
• Print ISBN: 9780826486592
• eBook ISBN: 9781441122155
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

The guide to Seventeenth Century Literature and
Culture provides students with the ideal introduction to literature and its context from 1603-1688, including: - the historical, cultural and intellectual background including religion, politics and culture during the Civil War, Commonwealth and Restoration - major writers and genres including John Donne, George Herbert, Andrew Marvell and John Milton - concise explanations of key terms needed to understand the literature and criticism - key critical approaches from the eighteenth century to the present - a chronology mapping historical events and literary works and further reading including websites and electronic resources.

1

Historical, Cultural and Intellectual Contexts

Arts and Culture

Popular Culture

Court Culture: King and Protector

Visual Arts and Architecture

Theatre

Censorship and Print

Politics and Religion

Politics

Religion

Science and Philosophy

The Challenge to Scholasticism

Witches

Sir Francis Bacon and the New Science

Philosophy and Political Theory

Science, Philosophy and Language

ARTS AND CULTURE

Popular culture

Popular and court culture dynamically coexisted through the socio-political turmoil of the period. Though popular and court cultural forms, both reinforced by the liturgical calendar of the Church of England, could, ideally, work together to strengthen the hierarchical bonds of society, they could also come into conflict. Often, this resulted from a clash between Puritans and the political and ecclesiastical authorities who firmly upheld a paternalistic notion of reciprocal community: the benevolent obligations of the ruling class and the wilful submission of the monarch’s subjects. Puritans opposed the rites, ceremonies and forms of worship of the Church of England, many of which they saw as remnants of England’s Catholic past. They felt that the reformation begun in Henry VIII’s reign had not been completed. In addition, Puritans felt that many popular folk beliefs, such as May Day celebrations, were ‘pagan’ and, therefore, ungodly. Puritan opposition manifested itself not only in the strictly political sphere of petitioning for reforms and, increasingly, parliamentary debate, but also on a localized level - the parish, town or city. The Church of England and the monarch, however, attempted to manage popular festivals and traditional entertainments at a local level in order to inspire loyalty.

For the Church and the monarchy, the benefits of allowing the lower orders to celebrate holy-days and political occasions, as well as rural events centring upon the natural cycle of planting and harvesting, accrued to the hierarchical social order. While the links between popular culture and the intentions of the ruling class ‘must always reflect the ambiguity inherent in activities whose objectives are rarely expressed explicitly and whose impact is beyond quantification’ (Kelsey 1997, p. 78), regal authority was naturalized - made to seem a manifest part of the divine order of the cosmos - through the liturgical and seasonal cycles. The importance of traditional culture and pastimes to the ruling class is evident in James 1’s Declaration of Sports (1618), reissued by Charles I in 1633. The Declaration denounced ‘Puritans and precise people’ for ‘prohibiting and unlawful punishing of our good people for using their lawful recreations and honest exercises’ (Gardiner 1951, p. 100). Puritans viewed such pastimes as both pagan and ‘popish’, but their attempts to curtail them met with limited success for two reasons. First, such festivities and celebrations were, in many localities, deeply ingrained. Second, any attempt by Puritans to prohibit traditional culture was dependant upon the support of the local elite to whom they appealed on the basis of ‘godly’ reformation. It was simply not in the best interests of many of these men to give heed to the Puritan critique, as their authority went hand in hand with the Church and the king. But even a Puritan ascendancy in local or civic government did not necessarily bring about the total extirpation of traditional culture; rather, it would often be reformed in order to assert a more ‘godly’ sense of authority.

Traditional popular culture also continued to thrive in the middle of the century. During the civil wars and Interregnum, ‘traditional culture was commonly perceived as being (and often was, in fact) associated with counter-revolutionary notions about the proper ordering of Church and State - with the beliefs and rituals of episcopacy and monarchy’ (Underdown 1987, p. 239). As David Underdown has demonstrated, the association of popular pastimes with the Stuarts was assumed by both Cavalier and Parliamentarian alike. This link would continue, and become more openly practised, throughout the seventeenth century; for example, upon Charles II’s restoration, May Day celebrations effectively reasserted the monarchical social order with popular festivity. Samuel Pepys (1960, p. 23) noted in his diary that 1 May 1660 ‘will be remembered for the happiest May-day that hath been many a year to England’. Many popular celebrations marking the Restoration also included the roasting of ‘rumps’ of meat in derision of the Rump Parliament created by Pride’s Purge. In fact, as political events were tending towards the Restoration, the Duke of Newcastle (Rudrum et al. 2001b, p. 235) reminded Charles II that such ‘divertissements will amuse the people’s thoughts, and keep them in harmless action which will free your Majesty from faction and rebellion’.

Court culture: King and protector

In contrast to popular culture, the court employed much more opulent cultural forms in order to represent its authority. The centre of this culture was the king’s primary residence, Whitehall Palace - the term palace, however, needs to be clarified as regards Whitehall. It had been acquired by Henry VIII from Cardinal Wolsey in 1529 and, by 1603, it had become a sprawl of buildings in Westminster, rather than having been built to a coherently designed architectural plan. In the mid-century, ‘one survey counted well over a thousand rooms, fifty-five closets, seventy-five garrets, twenty-six cellars and thirsteen kitchens’ (Kelsey 1997, p. 41). The Stuarts never had the money to rebuild it, though Inigo Jones had drawn up preliminary plans. Its sprawl was in large part due to the army of people necessary to maintain Whitehall’s four principal functions. First, it was a royal residence serving the needs of the king and his family. Second, it represented the magnificence of the realm to the world - foreign ambassadors and visiting dignitaries - as well as to the king’s subjects. This was accomplished through a yearly cycle of ceremonies and ritual. Third, Whitehall was the centre of both cultural and political patronage. Finally, it was the political centre of the realm not only because of the presence of the king, but also of his chief officers, who operated from its precincts.

It is important to keep in mind, however, that while the king was the main influence on the court, in many ways he was also defined by it. The central figure of court life, be he king or protector:

stamped his personality and preferences on the court: through those he promoted, and in the ordinances he chose to enforce or allowed to lapse. Conversely, however, the court also imposed its own disciplines on the prince. Court life revolved around ritual.

(Adamson 2000, pp. 99-100)

The liturgical calendar of the Church of England regulated life at court as much as it did life in the city and countryside. There were also rituals specific to the court. These include basic forms of etiquette amongst courtiers, how one was to behave in the presence of the king or a member of the royal family and at ceremonies. Two of the most elaborate ceremonials were the Order of the Garter installations and processions, which Charles I re-established in its full dignity, and ‘touching for the king’s evil’, a form of tuberculosis with a naturally high recovery rate. The elaborate ritual involved the king, surrounded by clergy and court officials, in his mystical, divine role as the earthly mediator of God; all the Stuart monarchs until 1688 performed this rite.

To further understand the court’s character, we might briefly consider the moral climate of the Stuart courts through a contrast of James I and Charles I. James I was noted for his public fawning over his male favourites, such as George Villiers, who quickly rose to Duke of Buckingham. Even if we turn to a hostile observer, Charles I’s court was an orderly one. Lucy Hutchinson (1995, p. 67), in the memoir of her husband, a signatory of Charles I’s death warrant, described the moral climate in the Caroline court in this way:

Charles was temperate and chaste and serious, so that the fools and bawds, mimics and catamites of the former court grew out of fashion, and the nobility and courtiers, who did not quite abandon their debaucheries, had yet the reverence to the King to retire into corners to practice them.

Charles I ‘set a personal example of comeliness and sobriety at court, so in turn, the court, reflecting his virtues, would become the model for the country’ (Sharpe 1989, p. 171). Indeed,

Charles excluded the openly scandalous from his court, and his personal morality reflected the respectful and monogamous regard for his wife, Henrietta Maria, which found expression in the encouragement of a cult of idealized Platonic love and in the celebration of their reign as an equal partnership.

(Corns 1992, p. 203)

In this way, the royal union was to symbolize the ideal, loving relationship of the king to his realm.

Following the execution of Charles I, ritual, pageantry and theatricality were not tossed into the dustbin of history. As Sean Kelsey (1997, p. 26) has demonstrated, the Commonwealth ‘showed a consistently enthusiastic and increasingly confident commitment to restoring the charismatic focus of civilian government, bringing back some of the gloss of traditional patterns of authority tarnished by revolution’. In contrast to Charles I, whose fastidious sense of privacy meant that he rarely went on public display, the Commonwealth and Protectorate regimes were more visible, appropriating aristocratic forms of representation in order to add a familiarity to their own authority. During the Commonwealth, Whitehall Palace continued to be the centre of government, while with the Protectorate, it once again served as the principal residence of a quasi-monarchical figure. Incidentally, as the Protector, Oliver Cromwell took up residence in Whitehall; he also received Hampton Court Palace.

In the Protectoral palaces, court etiquette was reinstituted and, in 1655, the office of Lord Chamberlain was recreated and four gentlemen of the bedchamber were appointed for the Lord Protector. Cultural forms also portrayed the regime in ways very similar to a monarchical court. In portraiture, for example, parliamentarians were painted by many of the same artists who had painted, and continued to paint, aristocrats. The style, too, stayed much the same. In this way, the premier painters of the middle of the century - Robert Walker, Samuel Cooper and Peter Lely - provided a familiar aura of authority in portraits of Cromwell. Cromwell also patronized musicians. Masques were even performed at court, primarily at diplomatic functions, as Whitehall once again began to serve its principal functions. Hence, although the kingly office had been abolished, the Protectorate essentially restored older forms of allegiance and deference. The quasi-regal dignity created at Whitehall around Cromwell meant that the court operated in much the same way as under a king.

Because the Protectorate had relied on many trappings of monarchical culture, the Restoration was an easy transition. Yet the moral climate of Charles II’s reign stood, again, in marked contrast to both the Protectorate and his father’s reign. Throughout his exile, parliamentary propaganda had publicized Charles II’s supposed sexual adventures in Paris: ‘the gloating boast of Cromwellian propaganda credited the English “Tarquin” with the rape of every virtuous matron and the seduction of every helpless virgin within the arrondise-ments’ (Kenyon 1982, p. 104). Even at his coronation, the sermon of George Morley, Bishop of Worcester, revealed ‘that Charles’ laziness and sexual indiscretions were already arousing the disapproval of many people in and close to the Court within the first year of his restoration’ (Madway 2000, p. 146). Charles II’s coronation reproduced, in its essentials, his father’s coronation, but the restored king also made greater use of public festivities than had his father. This implied a greater accessibility to the court than that granted by Charles I, who sought privacy. As Lorraine Madway (2000, p. 148) notes:

Charles II made sure he did not repeat his father’s mistakes. He was also astute enough to understand that these aspects of the coronation, particularly the procession, gave him the opportunity to display himself directly to his subjects without any interference from the Church regarding the form and content of his presentation.

However, the king’s very public sexual liaisons - one need only read Pepys’ diary to see that they were common knowledge -undermined the dignity provided by ceremonial: ‘Too often he [Charles II] gave his subjects occasions to feel that the presentation of kingship was not a show of majesty but a spectacle of mockery’ (Madway 2000, p. 154). Though Charles II was able to keep the notion of hereditary succession intact through the Exclusion Crisis, the aura of regal authority had been seriously tarnished by his sexual behaviour.

Visual arts and architecture

Cultural patronage greatly influenced the arts in the seventeenth century. The two most significant figures in painting and architecture prior to the civil wars are Sir Anthony Van Dyck and Inigo Jones. Both men’s accomplishments are evident in the remainder of the century. Van Dyck had worked in the studio of the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens and followed his master to England. In 1620, Van Dyck was granted a pension by James I, but it was not until Charles Fs reign that, after several years on the continent studying the masters, he would achieve greatness. The king doubled his pension and knighted him in 1633. Van Dyck painted not only Charles I and his family, but also many aristocratic patrons. His influence on painting was strong, as he vibrantly transformed the rather lifeless Tudor style that is still evident in Daniel Myten’s portraits of James I and his court. The prime painters of the latter part of the century, particularly Lely and Cooper, clearly reveal the impact Van Dyck had on painting in England.

The second individual, Inigo Jones, had been designing masques for James Fs Queen Anne from 1605. He became Surveyor to Prince Henry in 1610, and from 1615 to 1642 was Surveyor of the King’s Works. Influenced by continental architecture, particularly the neo-classicism of Palladio, Jones’ earliest extant designs were for the New Exchange in the Strand. From 1619 to 1622, Jones designed and built the Banqueting House at Whitehall and began work on the Queen’s House at Greenwich for Anne, though this was not completed until 1635 for Henrietta Maria. He also designed the Queen’s Chapel at St James’ Palace for Henrietta Maria and planned a new Whitehall. As David Watkin (2001, p. 98) points out, however, Jones’ designs and buildings were not influential in his own lifetime, ‘they were regarded as an alien court taste by the majority of patrons and designers’. Through his masque designs, Jones’ belief that ‘architecture was the physical expression of a carefully constructed system of social and political values’ is most evident (Howarth 1993, p. 68). Indeed, in the 1630s, Jones is observed fashioning the Surveyorship of the King’s Works into an avowedly political office’ (Howarth 1993, p. 68). Jones’ buildings and designs served as the architectural extension of regal authority.

Critics argue that Jones’ masque settings engage with political issues of the time, for example Ship Money and plans to rebuild London. Jones had some influence on building in the capital through the Commission for New Buildings instituted by James I to counteract urban sprawl (unlicensed builders were fined - creating conflict between the crown and the city in Charles Fs reign as the licenses were seen as a form of ‘extra-parliamentary taxation’). Jones’ role here is, perhaps, evident in his set designs for Thomas Carew’s masque, Coelum Britannicum (‘The British Heavens’, 1634), in which the opening classical ruins are transformed to a glorious city through the benevolent virtues of Charles I and Henrietta Maria, hybridized as ‘Carlomaria’. No other architect would have such an impact until Sir Christopher Wren.

In 1663, Wren began his first public commission. He was appointed Surveyor-General of the King’s Works in 1669 -retaining this position through the reigns of Charles II,James II and William III - and, in the aftermath of the Great Fire of London in 1666, became the prime architect under the Rebuilding Act of 1670.

Theatre

Aristocratic patronage had always been essential to the survival of theatre in early modern England, and a brief exposition of some important issues prior to 1603 will help establish the contexts for our period. In 1572, four years before James Burbage built the first permanent London theatre, simply named The Theatre, ‘An Act for the Punishment of Vagabonds, and for Relief of the Poor and Impotent’ (cited in Harrison 1956, p. 19) was proclaimed. The statute addressed the ‘great outrages, to the high displeasure of Almighty God, and to the great annoy of the commonweal’. Included in the statute (which carried the penalty of whipping and being ‘burnt through the gristle of the right ear with a hot iron of the compass of an inch about’) were ‘common players in interludes and minstrels, not belonging to any baron of this realm or towards any other honourable personage of greater degree’. ‘An Act for the Punishment of Vagabonds’ was periodically restated during Elizabeth I’s reign and also during the reign of James I. It is often cited as an example of the low standing of stage players, but the distinction is there in the statute itself -players belonging to a ‘baron’, or indeed, the royal household, are exempt from its scope.

Patronage also assisted the theatres to survive anti-theatrical attacks from Puritans and concern from the London city authorities. In 1579, only three years after Burbage’s Theatre opened, Stephen Gosson published the first major anti-theatrical work, The School of Abuse. Puritan anti-theatricality asserted not only that plays were presenting irreligious sentiments - including, of course, satirical representations of Puritans - but that they were also representative of the nation’s moral decline. Many anti-theatricalists focused on the convention of the boy actor in female attire, usually drawing on the condemnation of cross-dressing in the Old Testament books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus. Puritan writers believed that inordinate sexual desires were aroused by such gender confusion. Anti-theatricalism would culminate with William Prynne’s compendious exposition of the moral evils of plays and players in Histriomastix: The Players Scourge or Actors Tragedy (1633). Prynne, however, would extend his critique of theatre beyond the public playhouses and the Inns of Court (the legal schools in London where plays were often performed) to include the royal court. For this, he was pilloried and his ears were cut off.

The London city authorities also expressed their displeasure with the theatres on the grounds of immoral behaviour -presenting not only irreligious or seditious entertainment, but also because of the other forms of ‘entertainment’ with which the theatres were associated, including prostitution, gambling and bear- and bull-baiting. This is why playhouses were built in the suburbs, particularly Southwark, on the south bank of the Thames. This put them outside the city’s jurisdiction, though it did not prevent periodic conflict between the city, the royal household and aristocratic patrons of the theatres. In a sense, these conflicts would be resolved shortly after the outbreak of the civil wars when Parliament ordered the theatres closed in September 1642. The buildings either fell into disrepair or were torn down; for example, the Globe was torn down in 1644, and the Fortune was pillaged in 1649 and destroyed in 1655.

But when James I acceded to the throne in 1603, aristocratic and royal patronage of the theatre was reconfigured. Most notable, of course, was the elevation of Shakespeare’s company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, to the King’s Men in Letters Patent granted on 19 May 1603. The Letters Patent clearly address the opposition of Puritan anti-theatricalists and the London authorities:

Willinge and Commundinge you and everie of you, as you tender our pleasure, not onelie to permitt and suffer them herein without anie your lettes hindrances or molestacions during our said pleasure.

(c...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Historical, Cultural and Intellectual Contexts
• 2 Literature in the Seventeenth Century
• 3 Critical Approaches
• Resources for Independent Study
• References
• Index