Write a brief essay on the prose of
the Elizabethan period.
Introduction:
The Elizabethan age has well been called a
“young” age. It was full of boundless vigour, re-awakened intellectual
earnestness, and unfettered, soaring imagination. The best fruits of the age
are enshrined in poetry in which all these elements can be befittingly
contained. In poetry there are restrictions of versification which exerted some
check on the youthful imagination and vigour of the Elizabethans. Consequently,
Elizabethan poetry is very great. But prose does not admit of any restrictions,
and the result is that Elizabethan prose is as one run amuck. Too much of
liberty has taken away much of its merit.
During the fifteenth century, Latin was the
medium of expression, and almost all the important prose works were written in
that language. It was in the sixteenth century, particularly in its later half,
that the English language came to its own. With the arrival of cheap mass
printing English prose became the popular medium for works aiming both at
amusement and instruction. The books which date from this period cover many
departments of learning. We have the Chronicles of such writers as Stowe and
Holinshed recapturing the history of England, though mixed with legends and
myths. Writers like Harrison and Stubbs took upon themselves the task of
describing the England not of the past but of their own age. Many writers, most
of them anonymous, wrote accounts of their voyages which had carried them to
many hitherto unknown lands in and across the Western Seas. Then, there are so
many “novelists” who translated Italian stories and wrote stories of their own
after the Italian models. There are also quite a few writers who wrote on
religion. And last of all there is a host of pamphleteers who dealt with issues
of temporary interest.
Though the prose used by these numerous
writers is not exactly similar, yet we come across a basic characteristic common
to the works of all: that is, the nearness of their prose to poetry. “The age,”
says G. H. Mair, “was intoxicated with language. It went mad
of a mere delight in words. Its writers were using a new tongue, for English
was enriched beyond all recognition with borrowings from the ancient authors,
and like all artists who become possessed of a new medium, they used it to
excess. The early Elizabethans’ use of the new prose was very like the use some
educated Indians make of English. It was rich, gaudy and overflowing, though,
in the main, correct.” A. C. Ward observes in Illustrated History of English
Literature, Vol. I: “Our modern view of prose is strictly and perhaps-too
narrowly practical and utilitarian or functional. Prose, we hold, has ajob to do
and should do it without fuss, nonsense, or aesthetic capers. It should say
what it has to say in the shortest and most time-saving manner, and there
finish.” But we find Elizabethan prose far from this commonly accepted
principle. It is colourful, blazing, rhythmic, indirect, prolix, and
convoluted. Rarely does an Elizabethan prose writer call a spade a spade......................................................................................................
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