Jacobean Drama an Overview

Jacobean Drama an Overview

Elizabethan literature generally reflects the exuberant self-confidence of a nation expanding its powers, increasing its wealth, and thus keeping at bay its serious social and religious problems. Disillusion and pessimism followed, however, during the unstable reign of James I (1603–25). The 17th century was to be a time of great upheaval—revolution and regicide, restoration of the monarchy, and, finally, the victory of Parliament, landed Protestantism, and the moneyed interests.

After the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603 King James VI of Scotland was crowned as James I to rule over England. James I was entitled to mount the English throne after Elizabeth's death, thus uniting the two crowns under the name of James I of England. A Presbyterian, the new king had no problem with Anglicanism, which provoked the Catholics into scheming and plotting, the culmination of which was reached in the act of desperation to blow up the Parliament. This plot, widely known as the Gunpowder plot, was discovered in time and those involved in it were mercilessly dealt with.

Under the reign of James I the religious quarrels with the Puritans surfaced in various forms with both the sides adapting unyielding attitudes. With the Parliament also the King had no smooth relations, because the reigning crown and later his son Charles considered themselves divine representatives and far above the Parliament. The latter was ignored on all matters of national policy, especially those concerning the finances, when the King tried to raise money without the Parliamentary sanction. Such stubbornness resulted in the Petition of Rights in Charles's rule which made it illegal to raise money without the Parliament's sanction. Relations between the two turned so sour that Charles's rule between 1629 and 1640 was marked by his deliberate attempt to ignore Parliament thoroughly; this was the worst period of tyrannical rule and despotism. Star Chamber and the Ecclesiastical Court of High Commission became utterly notorious and such measures an imposing war time naval taxes when no war-like conditions existed created great popular discontent.

Charles's quarrels with the Puritans also turned bitter to the extent that his measures of clamping down on Puritan practices forced many of them to flee to America. However, his imposition of the Anglican practices in Scottish Churches inflamed the Scots to such an extent that they threatened to attack England. The famous 'Short Parliament', called to raise money lasted only three weeks. The Scots, having marched into Yorkshire, a new session of Parliament was summoned which went down in history as the 'Long Parliament’. It granted money to the King which was used to bribe the Scots out of England. It was at this crucial juncture that Cromwell, Rym and Hampden marched on the scene taking control of the situation; Parliament annulled all the illegal acts of the King. These men, especially Cromwell, proved ruthless and high-handed in dealing with the monarch. But ironically the latter himself showed little signs of recognizing his weakening position and resorted to use of force in seeking arrest of the three; but they escaped. It was clear that the King could not be trusted and war appeared to be the only solution. Civil War which ensued with the King making escape to the North saw the emergence of the Cavaliers, staunch royalists, loyal to the King, and the Roundheads who had their hair cropped close. Cromwell rapidly gained in power finally effecting surrender of Charles who was tried and executed by chopping off his head. Cromwell was now in total command of the situation and he saw to it that the Parliament which had moderates alive in considerable number was purged of them, thus reducing it to a 'Rump' which is what it came to be known. An unfortunate country reduced to a pathetic condition of helplessness vas now taken control of by a ruthless dictatorial Cromwell who ruled it with i single-minded determination till he died in 1658. Upon his death his son Richard Cromwell took over, but soon proved to be an incompetent ruler. It was an army leader General Monk who, after a sea of utter misrule came forward and called the Parliament, now known as the Convention Parliament. It voted for monarchy and in 1660 the executed Grog's son was invited to England as Charles II.

While Cromwell concentrated his energies in organizing society and England’s political and military capabilities with a firm hand, achieving a few notable successes, such as wresting Jamaica from Spain and defeating the Dutch, the Puritans introduced a closed, narrow-minded programme of social leaning in which drama, theatre, and actors were gagged. Freedom in music, and literature was strictly controlled so that all joy and pleasure in common man's life fled as if by magic.

This brief account of the socio-political upheavals, the fast-moving events triggered by coming to the throne of James I helps us understand the atmosphere in which new literature was produced. Change from the great Elizabethan spirit of exultation and confidence to the mood of doubt, uncertainty and gloom was a drastic one. Dramatists turned their attention to social issues seeking to understand the forces and tendencies that caused such heal changes; there was a perceptible decline in the moral values which curbed the writers. Greed and avarice of moneyed people crossed all limits decency rendering other people miserable and unhappy and causing crudities of human nature and vulgar behaviour to appear in bold colours. eat notes of Shakespearean beauty in drama and poetry disappeared to be )laced by the plays that highlighted social discord and moral decay, especially the comedies based on 'humours'.

Jacobus is the Latin form of the name James; the Jacobean Age, therefore, refers to the reign of James I of England (James VI of Scotland), from 1603 to 1625.

Jacobean Drama is a term for plays written during reign of James I, (1603-25). Elizabethan Drama is a general term for plays written during reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603), and by extension including also those written up to closing of theatres in 1642. Those written from 1603 to 1642 are more correctly called Jacobean (from James I, 1603-25) and Caroline (from Charles I, 1625-49). Historically, the term 'Elizabethan' refers to the reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603) and 'Jacobean' to the reign of her successor, James I (163-25). However, the terms are sometimes used more loosely when applied to the drama of the period.

'The plays of the Jacobean period become even more complex, even more passionate and violent than the plays of the Elizabethan age, as they go more deeply into problems of corruption and human weakness. The masterpieces of Jacobean tragedy include the plays of John Webster, especially The White Devil (published in 1612), and The Duchess of Malfi, written about the same time. These plays contain two of the most memorable tragic heroines in English drama, Vittoria Corombona and the Duchess of Malfi herself; women who are the victims of male violence, and whose sufferings show many of the problems that Jacobean society was experiencing.' [From The Penguin Guide to English Literature, London, 1996]

Jacobean drama is marked by a sudden change in the perception of life. While the Elizabethans showed a more inclusive view of man, placing a deep faith in his abilities and potentialities as also relating his conditions to the larger cosmic scheme, that breadth of vision suffered damage in the ensuing period. Historical events reflecting the King's wanton individualism and unabashed vagaries of behaviour shook people's faith in the social systems. Scepticism became the dominant mode of approaching realities; doubts and queries aimed at the foundations and a new intellectual mode based on realism emerged as is seen in the plays of Ben Jonson, John Marston, Beaumont, Fletcher, Middleton and others. Though, they continued to write in the old style, the very fact that revenge form became more popular points to the fact that it provided a much better form to consider numerous social issues involving political plotting. Apart from catering to the base tastes of the common people hankering after sensational entertainment, revenge plays could show much effectively the politicking that went on in courts as well as decline in social life.

In the general race for royal and courtly favours dramatists were rapidly losing contact with the common people; court began to dominate the form and content of the plays as the dramatists gave preference to pandering their tastes. While at the time of Shakespeare theatre had become part of the people's life, turning itself into a kind of national institution, in the Jacobean period it shrunk pitiably and its appeal to the public began to wane rapidly. Plays of Jonson and Fletcher aimed more at the intellectual's preferences and not the middle and lower classes. We have seen how Shakespeare's plays were enjoyed equally by the low and the high, this was not so in the period under discussion. It is a strange phenomenon that though realistic portrayal of social issues and manners of behaviour occupied more and more the central place, the man on the street lost interest in the theatre. There was little in Beaumont and Fletcher to interest him.

The playwrights focused on the gentleman's view of life: the intriguing and scheming that marked their days and nights, their lust for money and position and their complete reliance on the coterie of faithless sycophants. This is what we see in The Alchemist, Volpone, The Dutch Courtesan, Shoemaker's Holiday and A Chaste Maid in Cheapside. English drama was moving along an uneasy course concerning itself with the lowly and the morally weak, projecting men and women that had little life in them but were full of wit and irony. The way to its final culmination in the Restoration comedy was being paved.

This kind of atmosphere offered ideal conditions for the growth of licentious tendencies and an unflinching disregard for the moral values, where chastity was sneered at and licentiousness flouted around.

Methinks her fault and beauty Blended together, show the leprosy The whiter, the fouler.

Themes highlighting sexual infidelity and incestuous relations came to occupy the playwright's attention, and titillate the audiences. Comedies like Westward Ho ! and Northward Ho ! A Cure for a Cuckold, A New way to Pay Old Debts, The Lover's Melancholy, The Broken Heart, 'Tis Pity 'She's a whore, The changeling concocted horrors and mechanical villainies, heavy as these plays are with "doom, madness, lewd intrigue, the anguish and suffering of the innocent, the seeming triumph of the guilty".

As L.G. Salinger observes, "The romantic tragedies and tragic-comedies of Beaumont and Fletcher, and after them, of Massinger, of Ford, of Shirley, Davenant and the courtly amateurs of Charles I; developed consistently into the Heroic Drama of the age of Dryden. They mark at once a decisive change in the social outlook of the theatre and a striking artistic decadence. In tragic even more than in comic writing what the late Jacobean and Caroline stage offered was no longer a representative national art but a diversion fora single class, the court aristocracy. Middleton's work apart, it was theatrical in the most limiting sense, emotionally shallow, arbitrary, and confined".

Such plays as could be expected, did not fail to inspire the younger authors, nor did it provide the common theatre-goers with any significant vision of life and truth. Their morbid tastes only caused further decline of the dramatic tradition. It was Shakespeare's genius and Marlowe's exceptional dramatic insights that created a firm healthy dramatic tradition, just as Chaucer's genius produced many notable followers. That healthy and positive tradition disintegrated by degrees under the influence of fast-changing socio-political conditions. It was the present and topical issues that drew the attention of the dramatists, the conventional framework provided ready formulae; working within these formulae, mediocrity had the field day.

In a sense, Jacobean characters can be said to be the precursors of the Restoration personae, so full of they are of personal cynicism and eccentricities. It would be no exaggeration to observe that it is the stuff of these characters that foreground their lopsided features. Sir Giles Overreach, the heartless usurer, Attorney Marrall (an alter-ego of Mosca), Megra (in Philaster) a lady of loose virtues, Ralph (in The Knight of the Burning Pestle), and scores of others are images of lowly and base instincts preoccupied with lechery, and avarice, busy cheating and corrupting the simple innocent ones in a mad race for self-acquisition. The shallowness of character-portrayals is suggested by this brief extract:

Tell me, gentle boy,

Is she not paralleless?

Is not her breath

Sweet as Arabian winds when fruits are ripe?

Are not her breasts two liquid ivory balls?

Is she not a lasting mine of joy?

Among other factors responsible for the decline of Jacobean drama the Puritan opposition was a major one. The spontaneous growth and popularity of drama was not welcomed by the likes of Stephan Gosson who in his famous book The School of Abuse (1579) directed severe invective against all secular literature hardly seeing any difference between "poets, players, jesters and such like caterpillars of a commonwealth". The continued attack is indicated by another notable book The Anatomy of Abuses by the Puritan Philip Stubbs who gathered Biblical evidence against drama. As one literary historian observes, "It is a depository of all the accumulated diatribes of the Fathers of the Church and "the moralists against plays and actors; and it was also a direct attack on the court, when at this time dramatic art found its sole support".

Silliam Prynne (1632) also launched a fierce assault on the stage in Histriomastix. A few years afterwards the Parliament having secured its triumph over the King, ordered closure of all theatres, players were whipped and play houses were demolished. Between the opening of the first playhouse and the closure of all theatres was a space of sixty-three years.

The final act of banishing drama from England's social life marks the swift decline of plays that embodied an all-round degeneration of moral values, plot construction, characterization and dramatic art.