Riassunto "ENGLISH LITERATURE. A SHORT HISTORY (P. BERTINETTI)" - PRIMA PARTE, Schemi e mappe concettuali di Letteratura Inglese

Scarica Riassunto "ENGLISH LITERATURE. A SHORT HISTORY (P. BERTINETTI)" - PRIMA PARTE e più Schemi e mappe concettuali in PDF di Letteratura Inglese solo su Docsity! ENGLISH LITERATURE. A SHORT HISTORY (P. BERTINETTI) FROM THE ORIGIN TO THE RENAISSANCE 1. THE BEGINNINGS • The Romans start leaving Britain in the second half of 300 AD. • The withdrawal is completed in 410 AD under Emperor Honorius • 467 AD: official fall of the Roman Empire • 450 AD (ca): The Angles, Saxons and Jutes begin conquest and settlement of Britain • 597 AD: A mission from Rome, led by Augustine and sent by Pope Gregory I, begins to spread Christianity in England - (Britannia: name given by the Romans to their colony. It is the combination of the Greek word 'prettanoi', meaning tattooed people, and the Celtic word, 'brit', meaning light coloured or speckled. Great Britain = Great Land of the Tattooed) England was invaded in 43 AD by the Romans, who called the island Britannia and occupied it for centuries. Then, many Germanic tribes invaded England: the Saxons, the Jutes and the Angles, who gave it the name Angel-cynn, which later became Engla land, the land of the English. English was the Germanic language they spoke and they wrote their poems; this language was OLD ENGLISH (700-1100), and this is incomprehensible to the English people of today. Poetic Devices in Anglo-Saxon Poetry • Kenning: A formulaic phrase that is used in place of a name or noun • No rhyme • Alliteration: the repetition of consonant sounds especially at the beginning of several words or syllables that are close together. • Assonance: the repetition of vowel sounds in several words or parts of words • Stress • Each line was divided into two halves by a break or caesura and had 4 stresses • Litotes: an under-statement in which an affirmative is stated by negating its opposite. • For example: the food is not bad; they aren’t the happiest couple around The most important poems was Beowulf, an epic poem. Composed during the 8th century (3182 lines long), Beowulf talks about the heroic world of the north from which the English had come to Britain. The protagonist is Beowulf, a young nobleman of the Geats (Geatland = southern Sweden, ruled by King Hygelac), who leaves his country to help a kindred population (the Danes) of a horrible monster, called Grender, and his mother. Fifth years afterward, Beowulf, now Lord of the Geats, confronts and kills the monster and his mother, but in the battle he is mortally wounded (= ferito). The tone of the poem is legendary, typical of the epic poems. The positive values are those of the Germanic warrior world, an archaic society in which family honour, obligations to lord and to guest and bond (= legame) between the lord and his people are of supreme importance. Beowulf describes a pagan world, which does not know the Bible. The poet does know it, but he also knows that Christianity is a recent acquisition (597AD). The story of Beowulf retains (= conserva), however, the ethos (= caratteri comuni di un popolo) of the pagan Germanic world. The Christian values are at the root (= base) of the so-called Caedmon Poems (religious poems), poetical paraphrases of Genesis, Exodus and various other episodes of the Bible, and at the root of the Cynewulf’s poems (4 poems) – Cynewulf was a poet of the late 8th century. The most important example of religious poetry is The Dream of the Rood (probably dating from 750), a short poem in which the Holy Cross tells the narrator the history of the Crucifixion. The most important prose work are King Alfred’s translations from Latin into English (St Augustine’s Soliloquies, St Gregory’s Rules for Pastors, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History). King Alfred (871-899) came to the throne in 871, when the Danes has seized (=presero, si impossesarono) control of all English kingdoms except his own. He was probably also responsible for the inception (= principio, inizio) of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, which are one of the most important historical, cultural and literary works of the Early Middle Ages. The Chronicle record the successes of Alfred’s descendants. 2. AFTER THE CONQUEST • Old English: 700-1110 • Middle English: 1100-1450 • Modern English: 1450 – present day In 1066, England was invaded for the last time. William the Conqueror was crowned King, on Christmas day, in Westminster Abbey and, thereby (= con ciò), the Norman conquest of England was solemnly proclaimed, in the presence of God and man. The Normans spoke their own version of French and Norman French become the language of the upper classes until the middle of the 14th century. The clergy wrote in Latin, in fact Latin was the language of the Church and of cultural studies (treatises, essays). English was relegated to the lower classes. The emergence of French as the courtly language did not provide (= fornito) a “standard form” of English so English developed many dialectical variations. English poetry, that is literary production in Old English, died out. English, which remained the language of the vast majority of people, eventually won over French, but it was a different language: Middle English. It had lost the Anglo-Saxon inflections and had been enriched with thousands of French words. By the end of the Middle English period, the dialect of London, now the dominant city of England, reigned supreme. The matter of France (Charlemagne and his paladins, the crusades) For a decade, William had dealt with (= ebbe a che fare con) a series of baronial rebellions which he had finally quelled with the help of Henry, King of France. The Norman nobles liked to imagine themselves in the guise (= vesti) of the virtuous paladins of the court of Charlemagne whose deeds (= gesta) were celebrated by Taillefer, William’s minstrel (= giullare). From this there sprang the expression “chansons de gestes” or song of deeds. “Song” because this was the form in which the stories being told were presented, celebrating the deeds of a character. Particularly popular was the Chanson de Roland, a poem in 4.000 decasyllables, which told the adventures of a paladin (Roland) against the Saracens and his death against the enemy and the traitor Ganelon. It promotes some values likes loyalty to one’s king and one’s faith, love for one’s country, exaltation of disinterested heroism. The matter of Britain (King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, Lancelot and Guinevere, Merlin, Camelot) Roman de Brut by Norman poet Robert Wace, draws on Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Latin chronicle Historia Regum Britanniae. It tells in 15,000 lines the adventures of Brutus, reputed descendant of Aeneas ad conqueror of the Island of Albion (named Britain after his name) and of his successors, in particular King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. While the story of origins, and of Brutus, situate in the absolute past, has overtones (= caratteristiche) of the epic, the tale of the Arthurian legends opens the door to the new cultural and literary sensibility, expressed in the genre that came to be known as romance. This romance aspect is accentuated in the Middle English version of Wace’s poem, Layamon’s Brut (ca. 1200)-. The many poems subsequently dedicated to Arthur and his knights represented the heart of the new genre. The name “Romance” comes from the Old French word «romanz», which means vernacular and became attached to these works (romances) because they were written in the vernacular rather than in Latin. The subject matter of romance was the telling of the adventurous and honorable deeds (chivalry values). The romance flourished in France from 9th to 12th century, and spread to England with the Normans. Another important work is La Morte Darthur, the prose version of the Arthurian legend written by Thomas Malory in 1470, drawing on the French and English versions. Malory’s version was printed in 1485 and for this reason, it established itself as the canonical version of King Arthur’s stories. One of the most important author of this period was Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542). Wyatt was a courtier, a poet and a diplomat serving Henry VIII in several missions to France and Italy. Many of his poems are translations of Petrarch’s Rime sparse. Petrarch’s work constitutes a point of reference. He took the discipline of the Italian verse but modified the scheme of the sonnet. Instead of an octave and a sestet, he divided the sonnet into 3 quatrains and a final couplet. He also altered it thematically: his woman is a real one. She is present physically, courted and invited to declare herself, so that the poet knows if she reciprocates him or not. Whereas (=mentre) in Petrarch the beloved woman is absent, in Wyatt the loved one is fully present. While serving the king in the 1520s, Wyatt became interested in an attractive and young lady who frequented the court, Anne Boleyn. A few years later, the king himself began courting (=iniziò a corteggiare) Anne Boleyn, while seeking (=cercare) the annulment from his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Henry later married Boleyn after declaring his union with Catherine invalid. Consequently, Wyatt, who was in an unhappy marriage, had to give up any thoughts of winning Boleyn for himself. His sonnet is believed to be an expression of his frustration at this turn of events. One of Wyatt’s famous work is Whoso list to hunt (Whoever wishes to hunt), imitates Petrarch’s Una candida cerva and might contain a covert reference to the ill-fated queen, as the deer (=cerva) on whose diamond collar is written “Noli me tangere, for Caesar’s I am”. The poem tells of a deer hunt (= caccia al cervo) in which several riders are chasing (= inseguono) a hind (=female deer). The deer hunt and the hind are both metaphors, the hunt representing young men pursuing an alluring (=allettante) woman at the king's court and the hind representing the woman herself, presumably Boleyn. Wyatt’s most famous poem is They flee from me. This is not a love poem but an attack on the hypocrisy and falseness of the court and is composed in the “rhyme royal” beloved (=caro a) Chaucer. Another important poet of this period was Henry Howard (1516/17-1547), earl (=conte) of Surrey, beheaded (=decapitato) on a false charge (=accusa) in 1547. Howard translated Petrarch’s sonnets. He perfected the English form of the sonnet creating the rhyme scheme that will be used by Shakespeare. He also translated Virgil’s Aeneid (Books II and IV) in a verse form of his own invention: the blank verse (lines of ten syllables = unrhymed iambic pentameter). The blank verse will be the most used verse in English literature (Shakespeare, Milton up to Wordsworth and Tennyson). It is not far from the natural rhythm of English speech. 6. MEDIEVAL DRAMA Medieval Drama has its origin in the mass or liturgy. The ritual of the Christian Church, with its two great festivals of Christmas and Easter and the celebration of Christ’s life through its most significant moments, is dramatic (ritual of the Mass=interaction priest-believers, script with lines to recite). Liturgical drama spread in Europe in the 13th century. MD purpose (=scopo) was to communicate the teachings of religion in a simple and attractive way to all the faithful, because most of them were illiterate. In England the idea was to put together episodes covering different moments of the annual cycle (a series of mystery/miracle plays written in a certain town) of services. Each episode was entrusted to one of the guilds (=associazioni) present in the town and representation of the episodes was often performed on carts and mobile platforms (pageant wagons). Pageants: Wagons or stages on wheels (=ruote) which went around the town from one station to another. Each pageant presented a scene of the play that was repeated at every station. Pageants were organized and financed by the guilds (corporazioni medievali di arti e mestieri) Four complete cycles survive: the Cycle of York, Chester, Wakefield and an unknown town (N. Town) The Wakefield cycle is the most interesting. It includes some texts whose author shows great mastery of language (from educated language to local vernacular). The Second Shepherds’ Play (Secunda Pastorum) is its masterpiece, with the character of Mak, the sheep- stealer, creates a comic pseudo-nativity by trying to hide (=nascondere) a sheep he has stolen (=rubare) in a cradle (=cullare). The episode concludes with the real Nativity. Little by little, there was a secularization of characters. They are humanised, especially minor characters like the shepherds. In the cycles we often have moment of realism and lively comedy together with doctrine and mirth (allegria), but the secularisation of the characters and of the stories aroused (causò) hostility in religious circles and in the second half of the 16th century reforming zeal (=entusiasmo, fervore) led to (=ha portato) their suppression. Religious and moral teaching, through theatre, also takes place by means of the morality plays, which staged an allegorical conflict between figures of good and evil (psychomachia), as they struggle to capture the soul of the character symbolizing humanity as a whole. The characters are personified abstractions of virtues and vices (vizi), who struggle (lotta) for man’s soul. The title of the most famous morality play Everyman (ca. 1500) already indicates that the protagonist is every man, that is, all of humanity. Everyman describes the journey of man toward death, the figure of which appears to him at the beginning, sent by God “in great haste” (fretta). Nobody wants to accompany him, neither (nessuno dei due) Fellowship, nor Goods (i.e. riches). Only Good Deeds and Knowledge comfort him and accompany him to the tomb. Interludes were a type of morality play that introduces more realistic and comic elements (end of 15th cent.); a playlet (commedia) offered between the courses of a banquet. It marks the transition between religious and secular drama. It includes scenes far removed from the original theme and atmosphere of the morality play and is entertaining (divertente). An interlude could be a moral play, like John Skelton’s Magnyficence (ca. 1576). The protagonist (a prince) is tempted by the Vices and learns from Adversity and Despair to follow the advice (consigli) of Perseverance. The education of a prince is typically a Renaissance interest. Its lesson (moderation or measure) is a Humanist rather than (anzichè) a Christian value. The text also contains an implicit critique of Cardinal Wolsey. Another interlude is The Play Called the Four PP (ca 1544) by John Heywood. A comic interlude. Four PP  a Palmer (pilgrim), a Pardoner (venditore d’indulgenze), a Pothecary (pharmacist) and a Pedlar (ambulante) compete (=”gareggiano”) to tell the biggest lie. The Palmer is the judge of the competition. - Pothecary: a tale of a marvellous cure. - Pardoner: a tale of a visit to Hell where he finds a neighbour, a terrible shrew (toporagno). Lucifer does not want women in Hell any longer. - The Pedlar wins by declaring that he has never seen a woman with a bad temper (brutto carattere) or losing her patience. ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 1. FROM HENRY TO ELISABETH Between the York and Lancaster families, in 1455-1485, there was the War of the Roses. Henry Tudor defeated the last Yorkist, Richard III, and became King in 1485 as Henry VII (he was the heir – erede - of the Lancaster, son of a Lancaster woman who had married a Tudor). Therefore (dunque), he become the first Tudor, from 1485 to 1509. Henry VIII came to the throne in 1509 (he was a Renaissance scholar, six wives (mogli), breach with Rome, “political” reformation, supremacy of the State over the Church, suppression of monasteries, confiscation of the Church’s riches but also destruction of many art treasures). In 1521, the Pope proclaimed him Defender of the fait, but then he entered into dispute with the Church of Rome, which had refused to annul his marriage with Catherine of Aragon. In response to the Pope’s refusal, he enlisted (arruolato) the support of the Archbishop (arcivercovo) of Canterbury (Thomas Cranmer), and in 1533 the declared his own marriage annulled and married Anne Boleyn. In 1534, the Act of Supremacy had proclaimed him head of the Church of England. In 1536, Anne Boleyn was executed for alleged (presunto) adultery and Henry married Jane Seymour, who died in childbirth giving birth to Henry’s son Edward, who succeeded him at his death in 1547. After Henry VIII, his successors (and children): • Edward VI (1547-1553) - son of Jane Seymour - Protestant reformation, The English Book of Prayer replaced the Latin missal. The form of worship (culto) and furnishing (arredamento) of the church became much simpler. He died in 1533, and the succession passed to Mary Tudor. • Mary Tudor (1553-1558) – Henry’s daughter by Catherine of Aragon – “Bloody Mary” persecuted Protestants. Married to Philip II of Spain who drove (spinse) her into an absurd war against France (1557), which concluded with the loss of Calais, England’s last toehold (ultimo appiglio) on the Continent. In 1558, Mary died and Anne Boleyn’s daughter Elizabeth succeeded to the throne. • Elizabeth I (1558-1603) - daughter of Ann Boleyn. Elizabeth stablished the schism, definitively consolidating the Anglican Church, of which she became Supreme Governor. She adopted shrewd (astute) policies aimed at calming old conflicts. She managed to focus around her figure the image of a nation finally united under her crown. She consolidated the Anglican Church. In 1572, Vagrant Act solved the problem of the number of unemployed people leaving their districts in search of employment (vagrants). There was penalties for those who had no land, no master, and no legitimate trade or source of income (fonte di reddito). Actors, too, were affected by this law. No more free to wander around the country as before (itinerant companies). They had to acquire a new status as household servants under a personage of high degree (grado) patron/master/aristocrat. In 1584, Queen Elizabeth gives Sir Walter Raleigh permission to set up the American colony of Virginia: beginning of the Empire and economic expansion. In 1588, Victory over the Spanish Armada gives England dominion over the sea, thanks also to explorations and overseas trade expansion. 2. PHILIP SIDNEY (1554-86) Sidney’s relations with the queen were hampered (ostacolata) by his possibly too ardent Protestantism. He died, at the young age of 32, as the result of an injury (ferita) sustained (subita) in a skirmish (scaramuccia) while fighting against the Spaniards who then occupied the Low Countries. After his death, Protestant propaganda, exalting him as a perfect courtier and a brave soldier who had died for a just cause. Sidney never published his literary works: an essay (componimento) on poetry, a romance and a sonnet sequence. A defence of poetry, written in 1579 and published in 1595, is a vindication of literature, of its superiority to philosophy or history, of its power to illuminate and beautify those who promote it. Astrophil and Stella is a sequence, in the Petrarchan manner (modo, tipo), of 108 sonnets and 11 songs which describes the love of Astrophil (star-lover in Greek) for Stella (star in Latin). Sidney had recourse to the model pf Petrarch, using forms of poetic construction, linguistic devices (sistemi) and imagery proper to the Petrarchan tradition, but departing (si allontata) from it in the way his presence, his personal voice, appear in the foreground (in vista) of the poetic text. Although the name of the protagonist contains a clear allusion to the poet’s forename (-phil as in Philip), Sidney himself is less the lover of a star than a lover of the art of poetry. Sidney’s European reputation was based at the time largely on his Arcadia, which later centuries was regarded as a work of no great merit. It is a prose romance, though also containing some verse based on the prototype of Sannazaro’s Arcadia. Sidney’s Arcadia was written between 1578 and 1580; the central story is that of two princes in love with two princesses, mixed in with which are various comic moments, dramatic episodes and, especially in the second version, known as the New Arcadia, a number of passages of tragic intensity. Sidney used both the idyllic setting of the pastoral fantasy and the repertory of adventure proper to romance. The theatrical genres were comedy, tragedy, history play and tragicomedy. First history play is John Bale’s King John (1538), followed by Gorboduc (both tragedy and history play by Norton and Sackville). The history of England and its rulers was widely used and appreciated. History plays present events from the past in the guise of “a mirror for magistrates”, a mirror which contained a lesson for the present (Exemplary narration of the fall of the powerful). It was a conception of history which read past events as a sanction of the full legitimacy of the present. They allowed dramatists to strengthen Elizabeth’s role as guarantor of the unity and prosperity of the nation. Contrary to what is generally believed, tragedy was on the whole (tutto) a less widely practised genre than comedy. The model for tragedy was Seneca (his idea of fate), but re-interpreted in a bloodthirsty (assetato di sangue) way. The “revenge-tragedy” comes from Seneca. Its prototype is Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy (1592) and its most distinguished example is Hamlet. The growing interest in classical culture was of decisive importance for the development of the theatre; Latin plays were recited or learnt by heart by students. The first English comedy was Ralph Roister Doister (1552), written by Nicholas Udall, inspired by Plautus and Terence, whose plays Udall, headmaster at Eton, translated into English. The comedy owes (deve la) much to John Lily, who turned to Greek legends for his plays. (Midas, Endimion, Sapho and Phao). 4.3 Christopher Marlowe University Wits were the first English dramatists who had all read and studied the classics. One of this was C. Marlowe, who also spy in the service of the Queen. He was born in 1564 and he attended Cambridge University thanks to a scholarship. Marlowe was mortally wounded by the secret services in a tavern, because he probably was not reliable any more. His characters are monolithic and grandiose in their wickedness (malvagità): • The ferocious Tamburlaine: ambition, power. • The villainous Barabas the Jew: vengeance. • The blasphemer Faustus: knowledge One of his most famous word was Tamburlaine the Great (1587, which present the rise to power, decline and death of a Scythian shepherd (pastore sciita) driven by unbound (senza limiti) ambition, who becomes emperor. He seems to carry a religious force: his vigor is the god within him. Tamburlaine is the famous conqueror Timur, who ruled in Samarkand in the 14th cent, subduing Persians, Tartars, Syrians and Turks. He destroys whoever stands in the way of his march to power. He is the only figure with a great stature in the play, but his grandeur lies only in his wickedness. Barabas, the central character in the Jew of Malta. The governor of Malta decides that the taxes due to the Turks would “all be levied amongst the Jews”, obliging each of them has to pay one-half of his estate. However, he confiscates all of Barabas’s estate. Audiences and readers today probably know Marlowe above all for his Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (1590), whose protagonist is the character later immortalized by Goethe. Faustus makes a bargain (patto) with the devil to obtain power, riches, pleasures (Helen of Troy) and boundless (immense) knowledge in exchange for his soul. Marlowe’s best-constructed theatre work is Edward II (1592), which transformed the history play in historical tragedy. There are four characters: Edward, his lover Gaveston, his wife Queen Isabella, and her lover Mortimer. The clash (scontro) between private feelings and their quest for power and sexual desire leads the nation to the verge of catastrophe. The revolt of the barons leads to the murder of Gaveston, and the successful rebellion of Isabella and Mortimer to Edward’s confinement in Berkeley Castle and, later, his murder. Marlowe was able to pose the problem of the legitimacy of royal power: Shakespeare would probably have had Marlowe’s example in mind in conceiving his Richard II. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 1. LIFE AND WORKS Shakespeare was born in 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, where he attended the local grammar school. When he was 18 he married Anne Hathaway and six month later were born their daughter, Susannah. In 1588 were born two twins, a girl called Judith and a boy called Hamnet, who died at the age of 11. In 1592 he is known to have been in London and to have been there for some time. After a long and successful career, in 1611 Shakespeare left London and its theatres and returned to Stratford, where he died in 1616, at the age of 52. Shakespeare’s sonnet were published .for the first time in 1609, not authorized, in an in-quarto volume. Texts of 16 plays were printed individually during Shakespeare’s time. Some were taken from the author’s “foul papers” = unrevised drafts (“good” quartos), some were “bad” quartos (corrupt, pirated editions). They were all casual publications, in which the author had no hand. John Heminges and Henry Condell set to work to collection in one massive volume Shakespeare’s theatrical works. This was to be the famous First Folio (1623). • In-quarto: a volume in small format where each page corresponds to a quarter of the large sheet of paper used for the press. • In-folio: a large format volume where two pages corresponds to a single sheet. Sometimes we have different versions of the same play: for 4 of them we have only the Folio text and that of a corrupt quarto; for others we have good and bad quartos and Folio texts, with variations. In 1594, when the plague had subsided, the theatre reopened. In this year the company of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men was formed, which Shakespeare joined. He was the prolific author of texts for the Lord Chamberlain’s Men to perform. In the next few years he wrote two comedies, Much Ado about Nothing and The merchant of Venice, and a second cycle of history plays, Richard II (the two parts Henry IV and Henry V). The staging of Henry V coincided with the completion in May 1599 of the company’s theatre, the Globe. Hamlet, which was the tragedy most expressive of the modernity of Shakespeare’s genius, inaugurates the phase of the great tragedies: Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus. In 1608 a fresh outbreak of plague led yet again to the closing of the public theatres and the King’s Men moved to the private Blackfriars theatre. The public was no longer the mixed one they were used to at the Globe; it was more refined, with a particular taste for the new genre of tragicomedy. Shakespeare developed this genre in a new way, with the romances that he wrote between 1608 and 1611: Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest. Shakespeare collaborated also with Fletcher on two plays, The Two Noble Kinsmen and Henry VIII. Shakespeare was a man who frequented the streets and taverns of the world’s busiest port to take note of the words with which men described their adventure. Shakespeare is an extraordinary storyteller. The language is the everyday speech transformed poetically in the creative process (unexpected locutions, rhetorical figures, strange emphases give unusual tone to the content). Ability to rise common language to the level of poetry. The fixed, stylised stage set and the total delegation to the spoken word. Shakespeare’s plays continue to be performed not only because the dramatic power of his work is unaffected (non influenzato) by changes in theatrical convention but because the fabric of experience around which he built his character and their adventures in rich enough to speak to our sensibility even today. Like classic writers, Shakespeare has given us myths and archetypes. The protagonists there were not gods or heroes in the Christian or modern world. Homer and Greek tragedians are at the root of all western culture in terms of imagery and archetypal figures. Shakespeare’s has given us characters which constitute the archetype of an attitude and a form of experience, they have become synonymous of a particular mode of being. • Othello  jealousy • Hamlet  the anguish of doubt • Macbeth  thirst for power • Falstaff  reckless vitality • Romeo and Juliet  limitless love Like Greek Oedipus, Medea, Antigone, Helen, Achilles, Cervantes’s Don Quixote, and Mozart’s Don Juan. 2. HISTORIES At the beginning of his career, Shakespeare wrote three linked (connesse) historical dramas about the reign of Henry VI and a sequel about Richard III. Staging (rappresentando) the event surrounding the reign of Henry VI, whose lack political skills, let alone statesmanship (arte di governo), was one of the causes of Wars of the Roses, Shakespeare touches on the theme of responsibilities of the King, the disasters caused by opposing forces within the nation, the necessity of national unity, and the legitimacy of kingship. Since the beginning, Shakespeare’s history plays had an important educational value for the large majority of the less cultured spectators and contained a clear political message for all and sundry (tutti quanti). For the spectators of the time, the interest derives most of all from the dramatic vigour and theatrical fascination exercised by the character who is the play’s protagonist. For this reason, Richard III remains one of the most popular Shakespeare’s plays. Its protagonist is a figure of evil on a grand scale. Richard’s aim is the conquest of power and it is his wickedness (malvagità) that enables him to acquire it. He is a sublime actor who elevates imposture to an art of politics. After dramatizing the reign of Henry VI and Richard III, Shakespeare turned back to the reign of Richard II to tackle (per affrontare) the theme of kingship (potere sovrano) and legitimacy. In 1595, the year in which Richard II was probably first performed, Queen Elizabeth was old; she was childless and there was a fear that she might be deposed. The story of a king who was obliged to give up his throne was therefore at the same time a topical political subject. The assassination of Richard was ordered by Bolingbroke, who had already seized (sequestrare) power and taken the name of Henry IV. Richard’s soliloquy is one of the most exalted moments of Shakespeare’s dramatic poetry, and a perfect final touch to the portrait the play has painted of the unfortunate king. Henry IV, part one and part two, recount the travails of the new King, the usurper Bolingbroke, faced with the rebellion of his earls and archbishops, and of his son the dissolute Prince Henry. However, the greatest creation is the character of Falstaff, the leader of the dissolute «crew» frequented by the young prince. Falstaff is a comic character, larger than life (flamboyant appearance), eloquent spokesman of the pleasures of eating, drinking and fornication, a great liar. He instructs us in freedom not in, but from society. When henry IV dies, reconciled to his son, Falstaff hurries (affretta) to London to greet his former noon companion, now Henry V. This is the end of Falstaff’s merry (allegre) adventures, and the beginning of the military and patriotic adventure entrusted (affidate) by Shakespeare and by history to henry V. 3. COMEDIES The most popular of Shakespeare’s early comedies are The Taming of the Shrew and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. A play within a play is one of the central elements of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This is Shakespeare’s most popular comedy throughout the English-speaking world, partly no doubt because it is one of the most frequently performed in schools and is particularly enjoyable for children because it is full of fairies, song, witchcraft and magic spells. King Lear has often been interpreted as a tragedy about power. This theme is certainly in the foreground (primo piano) both in behaviour of Lear and in that of Edmund, the bastard son of Gloucester, and of Lear’s other two daughters, Regan and Goneril, who stripped him of his power and Lear’s noble anger (rabbia) for the ingratitude of his daughter rapidly turns to madness. Alongside (accanto) the story of Lear is that of Gloucester, who is tricked by his bastard son Edmund into believing that his legitimate son Edgar is plotting to kill him. Edgar flees (fugge) and disguises himself as Poor Tom. Filthy (sporco) and clad (vestito) only in rags (stracci), and without revealing his identity. It is when his mind has given way (ha lasciato il posto) Lear finally recognises Cordelia’s unreserved love; in the same way, Gloucester only recognized the extent of Edgar’s love for him after he has been horrifically blinded (accecato). King Lear is the tragedy of power; but it is also the tragedy of fathers unable to understand their own children. Lear and Gloucester are blind in the face of the adulation of their children who are deceiving (ingannando) them and those who really love them. King Lear finally is a tragedy in which cruelty reigns unopposed, in which the actions of man are like those of wild beasts, and in which destinies of pain (dolore) and death overwhelm (seppellire) the characters almost without exception. The world in which the characters act is a barbarous and a pagan one; it’s a pre-Christian world. Macbeth, the “Scottish play”, is based on an episode recounted in Holinshed’s Chronicles. It shown at the outset of the play as a noble and brave warrior but on hearing the prophecy of the 3 witches who tell him he will become king and conceives the idea of killing the existing king: Duncan. He is tormented by doubt and hesitates in the face of the horror that the idea of regicide (regicidio) provokes in him. However, at the end his thirst (sete) for power gets the better of his doubts. He kills the existing king, putting the blame (colpa) for the murder on his two officers, then he kills also his friend Banquo, who suspects the truth. Lady Macbeth is a woman driven by an inflexible and evil determination. When she had heard the prophecy, she announced in a terrifying speech her wish to kill Duncan. In Act III. After the murder of Banquo, she shows no pity (senza pietà) and then she disappears from the scene. She reappears in Act V, she sleep-waling (sonnambula) and she pronouncing a handful (manciata) of phrases which mix traces of determination with an obsession with blood. This scene making Lady Macbeth one of the most disturbing figures in Shakespearean theatre. Macbeth, meanwhile (nel frattempo), turns himself into an ever more bloodthirsty tyrant (sanguinario tiranno). Antony and Cleopatra is the last of the great tragedies, from Plutarch’s Parallel Lives. The underlying theme is the conflict between reason and passions. One the one hand there is a conflict of two worlds: the world of Cleopatra, sensual queen of a warm country, capricious and irrational vs the Roman world, cold, orderly, calculating, future emperor Octavian. Antony, caught (intrappolato, catturato) between two worlds, chooses to take the side of Cleopatra, denying his Roman-ness. Antony’s downfall caused by passion but it also makes him grand and noble in his defeat. We might consider the last plays of Shakespeare a his original response to the vogue for tragicomedy, and it is no accident that in them he makes more use of music. The new theatrical form that Shakespeare developed was enriched (arricchita) in The Tempest, where music and sound effects are a decisive element in the unfolding (svolgimento) of the plot and where we found an actual Masque, the genre of spectacle compounded (mescolato) of music, dance and fantastic costumes and stage-set (scenografie) which was put on in the palaces of the aristocracy and at court. The Tempest tells the story of Prospero, Duke of Milan, who had handed (consegnato) over the government of the state to his brother Antonio to devote himself to the study of magical art. But Antonio betrayed (tradire) him and Prospero had to take refuge on a far-off isle together with his daughter Miranda. The play starts with Prospero raising a storm (sollevando una tempesta) which causes the boat carrying young Ferdinand, son of the king of Naples. Prospero tells his daughter about his political fate and lets her understand more about his power as a magician which enables him to control the mysterious forces present on the island, represented by Ariel. Prospero, as a magician, guides the development of the plot, which gives ample scope for comic effect, towards a happy ending. Ariel will have his freedom, Miranda and Ferdinand, who fell in love at first sight (vista), will be married in Naples, and Prospero will retire to his dukedom. The Tempest is one of the finest of all Shakespeare’s creations and one of the plays which gives most scope for the theatre to exercise its magic. 5. POEMS Shakespeare was the author of two long poems in the classical tradition, both dedicated to the Earl of Southampton and written in the years 1592-95, when the theatre were closes because of the plague (peste). He was also an author of a volume of Sonnets, which constitute one of the greatest achievements of English poetry of all times. Venus and Adonis, published in 1593, belongs to the tradition of erotico-mythological poetry. The second poem, The Rape of Lucrece (1594), narrates with a language full of verbal artifice one of the grimmest (feroce) episodes in Roman history. Shakespeare’s Sonnets were first printed in 1609, not authorized, in an in-quarto volume contains 154 sonnets, divided into two section: from number 1 to 126 they are concerned with a “fair youth”, from 127 to 154 with a “Dark lady”. Sonnets explore personal relation in friendship and love, offering up to the reader a series of reflections of them which start from an individual case and ride to take on a universal meaning and value. Their theme is the immortality of poetry and the immortality that poetry confers. Sonnets 1-7 urge (sollecitare) the youth to marry and procreate so his beauty will continue in his offspring (prole). General topics: Time the destroyer, injustice that seems to triumph over the world. Specific facts: discrepancy between the poet’s age and his friend’s youth, the estrangement and reconciliation between the poet and the youth, the absence of his friend). The sonnet of second part seem to recount the relationship between the poet and the Dark Lady, or rather the suffering of his love for her. THE EARLY SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 1. JAMES I AND CHARLES I At the death of Elizabeth in 1603, James Stuart, son of the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots executed in 1587, become the first Stuart king of England. He was a stubborn (testardo) advocate of royal absolutism and never really understood the rights of the English Parliament. He promoted a policy of international peace making, started with a peace, which he planned to sign with Spain immediately on his accession. James was a cultivated person, who in his youth had written poetry and who liked to be seen as a patron of the arts. On James’s death in 1625, his second surviving son Charles become king and married Henrietta Maria, sister of Louis XIII of France. Charles was a patron of the arts and he believed in the absolute power of the monarch, like his father. 2. JACOBEAN AND CAROLINE DRAMA In the first years of the 17th century, the theatre began to lose its unitary character. New theatrical forms developed, in particular James and his court favoured an elitist genre: the masque. The masque was staging (è stata messa in scena) followed Italian models and had already begun to establish itself during Elizabeth’s reign. The extravagant costumes, the music, the dancing, the sumptuous sets, the special effects provided by purpose-built machines were what constituted the decisive attraction of the genre. The masque could only be performed at court or in the palaces of the aristocracy, because of the huge cost involved. 2.1 Jonson Ben Jonson (1572-1637) was a classicist (the classic model was the source of his formula). He edited and published his own works in a volume entitled The Works of Ben Jonson (1616), which also contained his plays unlike the normal practice of his contemporary playwrights. “Comedy of Humors” is the expression used to define Jonson’s form of comedy. The four cardinal humors were blood, phlegm (flemma), choler (collera) and melancholy. In Jonson’s comedy the character were the embodiment (personificazione) of a dominant ruling passion, and the comic effect was produced as much by the excess of a single character as by the interaction of the conflicting passion of different character. The Alchemist (1610) is set in a house in London, which has been abandoned by its owner, Lowevit, for the epidemic of plague. His servant Face and Subtle (a false alchemist) engages in a series of deceptions (inganni) to fulfil (realizzare) people’s desires. Volpone (or the Fox), Jonson’s other masterpiece, takes place in Venice but it is easy to see in it a representation of contemporary in London. Rich man, Volpone, pretends (finge) to be seriously ill (malato) to get presents from would-be heirs (eredi). Mosca, his parasite, helps him tricking (ingannare) them. Each of them is made to believe that he will be the chosen heir. Voltore (vulture) offers expensive gifts, Corvino (crow) offers his wife, Corbaccio (raven) disinherits his son. Finally, Volpone nominates Mosca as his heir and pretends to be dead; but then, when the matter goes to court, to prevent Mosca laying (posa) his hands on his precious goods, reveals their tricks to the authorities. The ending is more tragic than comic. The two masterpieces therefore have opposing endings, but each in its way express Jonson’s basic position: by giving the spectator an image of the times from a conservative point of view, he displays (mostra) a profound contempt (disprezzo) for the rising merchant classes. Jonson’s attitude towards the upper classes is different; his attitude to the part of the ruling (dirigente) classes which he saw as embodying Renaissance values. Jonson’s social, aesthetic and cultural credo is contained in his poem To Penshurt, dedicated to the country house of the Sidney family. The house was conceived to be comfortable and in harmony with nature, a dwelling (dimora) where the owners could enjoy the simple beauty of the house and entertain their friends and artist. Jonson was capable of establishing civilized converse (conversare) between men, a correct relationship between art and power, and a conscious appreciation of the value of the artist. Jonson was undisputed (indiscusso) master of the masque. This was somewhat ironic, given that the min quality of the masque was its ornateness (ornatezza) rather than its discretion. He collaborates with the great architect Inigo Jones, who introduced Italian perspective scenery to England, and wrote 28 masques. The most important one is Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue (1618): a celebration of James I. His texts present complex allegories, full of symbolic meanings and references to classical and Renaissance culture. He invented the ‘Antimasque’: first stage of the masque, grotesque figures appear (professional actors) performing chaos and disorder. Jonson died in 1637, before he cold witness (assistere) the collapse of the absolute power of the king and the victory of the merchant classes and Puritans who had been the target (bersaglio) of his contempt (disprezzo). 2.2 Fletcher, Heywood, Middleton, Webster John Fletcher (1579-1625) is remembered mainly for the two plays on which he collaborated with Shakespeare: Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen. The genre of which he was a master was the tragicomedy. One of his first work was The Faithful Shepherdess (1603). It was not a success, possibly because the unreal world of shepherds (pastori) and shepherdesses (pastorelle) was not found convincing by the public. Their plays enjoyed great success at the court of James I and his successor Charles I, where they were much appreciated for the complexity of their plots, the presence of a double or an opposite for many of the characters. He had wrote a couple of comedies. One form of comedy which Shakespeare never practiced was the city comedy, which grew up in the last years of the 16th century and flourished particularly in the Jacobean period. The setting is London and the story concerns daily life at the time. The characters belong to the middle classes of the capital, merchants and craftsmen (artigiano) whose attitudes are partially or wholly (pienamente) those of Puritans opposed to the theatre. However, none of these poems uses the sonnet form: they are lyrics of varying length and varying metrical properties. Their principal characteristic is that the beloved is not the centre of the poem, rather it is the relationship that the lover wishes to establish whit her and the way his amorous sentiment manifests itself and to which she is called upon (su) the respond. Language can have a highly erotic charge or invite to a spiritual union, which goes beyond the physical and sentimental. The woman is not a distant object but a real partner: she is being asked to accept the amorous experience proposed by the poet. Donne from time to time constructs an argument through which he explores the experience of love. The poet addresses he beloved by means of a discourse which is always based on a psychologically concrete datum, but which he frequently hides under a rhetorical artifice. It is this aspect that has earned (guadagnare) for Donne the epithet “Metaphysical” and which is what effectively distinguishes him from the Elizabethan poets. 3.2 The Metaphysical Poets Metaphysical = concerned with the fundamental problems of the nature of the universe and man’s place in it. Literal meaning is misleading The metaphysical poets were “rediscovered” at the beginning of the 20th century. Francis Palgrave in his anthology The Golden Treasury (1861) included not a single poem of Donne’s and only a couple of items y Metaphysical poets. The “rediscovery” was due in particular to the publication in 1921 of the volume Metaphysical Lyrics and Poems of the 17th century edit by Herbert Grierson and even more to the essay published in that same year by T.S. Eliot, The Metaphysical Poets, in which he indicated a number of traits common to those poets. The characteristics that make metaphysical poetry innovative were: • Wit: quickness of intellect, liveliness of fancy  ingenuity. • Conceit (concetto o metafora ardita): unusual metaphors, analogies between two apparently distant images, ideas or objects. Use of images from natural • Science: geography, alchemy, medicine, astronomy, mathematics. • Colloquial tone, used by the poet with his beloved in the poem. • Sensual images expressed with religious language and religious images expressed with sensual language George Herbert (1593-1633), a friends of Donne’s, is less metaphysical. He was ordained deacon (diacono) probably in 1624 and become a priest (sacerdote) in 1630. During those years, he worked on the poem which he sent to a friend, asking him to assess whether they were worthy of publication (valutare se erano degni di pubblicazione). Almost all English poems were then collected together and he published them in a volume called The Temple (1633). Richard Crashaw (1612-49) was son of a puritan preacher (predicatore). He converted to Catholicism in 164 and ended his das in a minor office at the Santa Casa of Loreto. His principal work Steps on the temple (1646) pays homage to Herbert only in the title. His poetry is characterized by a profusion of metaphors and extravagant conceits which place him in a baroque context. The intensity of religious feeling, the rhetorical skill and the originality of imagery, which characterize the poetry of Crashaw, justify their “discovery” by Grierson and Eliot. 3.3 The Cavalier Poets In Palgrave’s Golden Treasury a considerably space is given to the Cavalier Poets, a group of lyric poets whose poems about love and loyalty to the king Charles I were distinguished by lightness of tone, a graceful (grazioso) wit, and tightly (strettamente) controlled form. It was a poetry characterized by formal perfection, refined style, pastoral and bucolic settings, influenced by Latin writers (Virgil, Horace, and Juvenal). The best cavalier poet was Robert Herrick. He took his degree at Cambridge and then lived for some years in London, mixing in literary circles. He wrote more than 2500 composition. He was ordained priest in 1624 but, five years later, Charles I appointed him (lo nominò) to the living of Dean Prior, a village deep in the Devonshire countryside. He never felt in tune (sintonia) with rural live, but gradually began to cultivate an interest in folk customs and ancient festivals of pagan origin. This interest is reflected in several of the lyrics in his major collection: Hesperides (1648), which contains approximately 1400 poems, refined stylistically, full of echoes (echi) of classical poetry. The Cavalier Poets (Thomas Carew, John Suckling, and Richard Lovelace) often imagined pastoral worlds into which to escape and they often sang of love as free and happy sensual satisfaction. The reality was the opposite: love had to be subjected to social constrains (vincoli) and their place was not in Arcadia, but in a court, which would soon be overthrown and swept (spazzato) away by the Civil War. 4. BACON The most successful prose writing in the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods were little books of tales about rogues and thieves (ladri). The finest prose writing of the period was produced by Francis Bacon (1561-1626). His Essays, published in various edition from 1597 to 1625, have remained celebrated for their direct and essential style; but perhaps his most original works is The new Atlantis, published in 1627, a year after his death. It tells the story of the discovery of a remote island called Bensalem, which is the home of a kind of ideal state. Bacon turns his attention away from politic to science. In Bensalem, great importance is attached to a college of sciences, public financed. The studies experiments of the members of the college concern physics, chemistry, astronomy, medicine, agriculture and mechanics. Bacon’s hope was that James I would establish a similar institution in England. In effect, his proposal was taken up in the 1650s under the Commonwealth and was instrumental in the foundation in 1660 of the Royal Society. Bacon’s works are written in a language which combines clarity of expression and flowing argument with a lively use of rhetorical devices, from aphorism to similes. His style, polished and simple, has been praised for its beauty over the centuries. REVOLUTION AND RESTORATION 1. A CENTURY OF REVOLUTION Important Dates to Remember:  1620 The Pilgrim Fathers land in America.  1642 The Civil War Broke out and theatres were closed (until the Restoration, 1660)  1649 Execution of the King. The Commonwealth of England (Repubblica).  1653 Oliver Cromwell appointed Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland.  1658 Cromwell died. In 1640 Charles I summoned (convoca) Parliament, after having governed England without it since 1628, to finance his war against Scotland and its Presbyterian Church. After two years during which the conflict between King and Parliament, Charles fled (fuggì) to the North, leaving London to be the centre of his protestant enemies’ power. The first phase of the Civil War lasted from 1642 to 1646, with the final defeat of the Royalist troops (tuppe). The contrast among the victors and between the House of Commons and the army induced Charles, who negotiated a secret engagement with the Scots, to prompt (suggerire) the second phase of the civil War. The king and his allies were crushed (schiacciati) by Oliver Cromwell, the great general and leader of the Parliamentary forces. Charles I, charged (accusato) with high treason (tradimento), was sentenced to death and executed on 30 january 1649 and Britain become a republic. Oliver Cromwell became first Chairman (presidente) of the council of State of the new republic. In 1653, he became Lord Protector. On Oliver Cromwell’s death in 1658, his son Richard was immediately declared Lord Protector in his place, but not for long. Parliament dismissed Richard in 1659 and in May 1660 Charles, the eldest surviving son of Charles I, was proclaimed King Charles II. His alliance with France was viewed with suspicion; his relations with Parliament were often conflictual and in 1681 he dissolved it. On his death he was succeeded by his brother, James II, openly catholic, autocratic and hostile to Parliament. James was deposed by Parliament in 1688 and his throne was given to his daughter Mary and her husband, the protestant William of Orange. It was certainly a Glorious Revolution which, with the Bill of Rights (carta dei diritti) in 1689, give rise to the world’s first constitutional monarchy. The king could no longer be an absolute ruler and the parliament became the centre of national political life. Government was the result of a social contract between the king and his people represented in Parliament (John Locke). The people represented in the parliament of the time were mainly those sections of society which had been the protagonist of English social and economic life since the beginning of the century (bourgeoise). 2. MARVELL Andrew Marvell (1621-1678) was a student of the classics, particularly Horace and Juvenal. After the restoration, he wrote a number of satires both in prose and in verse, and was for a long time after his death mainly remembered as a satirist. His lyric poetry, related (collegato) to that of the metaphysical poets, entered the canon of English poetry only after the rediscovery of the metaphysical by Grierson and Eliot. Sometimes Marvell’s theme is in the first instance (esempio) the simple beauty of nature, of flowers and gardens, but the contemplation of the nature produces a complex web of reflections on the emotions, the passion and the anxieties intrinsic to the human condition. His most famous poem is To His Coy Mistress, whose theme is that carpe diem seize (sequestrare) the day. Marvell plays ironically with the concept of time, with the endless wait (attesa infinita) which the loved one, with her coyness (timidezza) imposes on his desire; but time passes inexorably, leading towards death when “her beauty shall no more be found” and she will be in her grave (tomba). 3. MILTON John Milton (1608-1674) is one of the central protagonist of English culture and literature, second only to Shakespeare. He was a Cambridge student and he took his BA in 1629. He learnt Latin, Greek and Italian and he studied Shakespeare and Spenser. He was a committed Protestant and a humanist, who felt his poetic inspiration was a gift from god. His interpretation of the genres of “high literature” was to subvert them, or rearrange them, in order to separate them from the aristocratic culture with which they were associated. This project is present in the pastoral elegy Lycidas (1638) which was published in a volume of poems mourning the death (in lutto per la morte) by drowning (annegamento) of a graduate Christ’s College. Another Milton’s works was Comus, which was a masque, the aristocratic genre par excellence. Even in Milton’s masque we find the celebration of a noble household (famiglia) but, contrary to traditional models of the genre, Comus does not put forward (mettere avanti) the image of a perfect world threatened (minacciato) by evil forces which are then defeated so as to exalt the previous state of perfection. Perfection is an ideal to pursue, a target to reach only after a victory over a long series of temptations and dangers encountered in the wood of error. Milton’s religious convictions were central both to his personal life and to his poetry. He spent the years 1638 and 1639 in Italy, which for him was the land of artistic creation (He visited Galileo in Fiesole). Shortly, when he came back, his sympathies were for Cromwell. In the years were followed he wrote a series of works on various religious and political subjects, turning himself into a passionate defender of the principles of liberty. He published several pamphlets (opuscoli) against the institution of bishops; a brilliant treatise (trattato), On Education (1644) which advocated a reformation of the traditional educational system, putting at its order to prepare schoolboys to become responsible citizens. He also wrote 4 pamphlet on divorce Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643), resulted from personal experience (his unhappy marriage), arguing (sostenendo) that not only adultery but also incompatibility should be considered a legitimate ground for divorce. His most radical political work is The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649), an essay which justifies the execution of Charles I, arguing that sovereign (sovrano) power always resides with the people, which is “free by nature”. 5.1 Dryden John Dryden (1631-1700) was a poet, an essayist, a playwright very famous at his time. As a poet, he used the heroic couplets and dealt with political events, and religious and political questions (Celebrative poetry) He wrote his first major work Heroique Stanzas in 1659 on the death of Cromwell. In 1660, he wrote the poem Astrae Redux to celebrate the return of the King. In 1666, he wrote Annus Mirabilis on the Fire of London and the victory against the Dutch; the following year he was given the title of “Poet Laureate”. In 1687, two years after his conversation to Catholicism, he published The Hind (cerva) and the Panther (1687), allegorical poem in which he criticizes the Anglican Church and expresses his theological conviction that truth is achievable (relizzabile) only through absolute faith. The following year the glorious revolution deprived him of the title of Poet Laureate but he remained Catholic all his life. In his last 12 years, he went back to the theatre for which he had already written in the 1660s. He also was an excellent translator of classics (Juvenal, Virgil) and Italians; and compiled a volume of translation called Fables Ancient and Modern (Ovid, Boccaccio, and Chaucer), which he published in 1700 and in whose preface he says: “Chaucer is the father of English Poetry”. Dryden’s first plays were verse and prose comedies, written in heroic couplets. The same metre was used the following year for the tragedy inspired by Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso. Love, duty, honour should lead the actions of the characters. This type of tragedy, called heroic tragedy, was appreciated by the elite audience and the formal elegance of the heroic couplet is suitable (adatto) to build the self-image and values of upper classes. The only one of Dryden tragedies to have survived in the stage repertory is All for Love (1678), tragedy in blank verse (Shakespeare’s metre), it is a story of Antony and Cleopatra. This tragedy is articulated around the contrast between Rome and Egypt (superiority of Roman values) and it focused on the two protagonist who are convincingly portrayed both dramatically and psychologically. One of the best of the Dryden’s comedies is Marriage à la Mode (1672), similar to other Restoration comedies. It calls in question the institution of marriage in alignment with the attitude of the aristocracy. The second is Amphitryon (1690), a comedy criticized but full of examples of “wit” (arguzia), which restoration comedy considered the most desirable quality in its characters. For Dryden comedy is regarded as an inferior genre. 5.2 Restoration Comedy The first restoration comedies were plays on political themes; there were the imitations of Molière and the influence of Spanish (comedies of intrigue). However, a new type of comedy appeared: the London Comedy, whose subject matter (argomento) was the metropolitan high society to which most of the public belonged. The ordinary citizens of the City (merchants, tradespeople, artisans) were treated with scorn (disprezzo), as cuckolded (cornuti) husbands, because they are the class that supported the Puritans and Cromwell. The type of London comedy to which the most interesting Restoration plays belong is the comedy of manner characterized by satire on the manners and customs of the day and mockery (derision) of the attitudes, behaviour and values of the London beau monde. The fop (bellimbusto) is particular object of ridicule; his fault is lack of proportion, his excess also shows the inconsistency of the values of all the others and his fanatical attention to dress, studied indifference, exalted opinion of himself. He thinks he is a wit, but he is not. He is a would-be wit. For Metaphysical poets, wit meant ingenuity, the ability to make conceits (unusual clever analogies); in Restoration Comedy it is above all a linguistic ability, “a quickness and variety for pleasantry and entertainment”. The point of reference of all of these plays was London, with its elegant and witty characters come from the city and that people from the countryside, even gentlemen, were shown as clumsy (goffo), despised and ridiculed. One of the first restoration comedies of manners was Etherege’s masterpiece The Man of Mode. 5.2.1 Etherege The career of George Etherege (1635-93) opened with The comical Revenge (1664), a comedy whose story develops through four interlinked plots, taking place in four different social strata, to each of this corresponds a different language. His next play was She would If she could (1668), which is already a London Comedy. His third and last play The Man of Mode (1676) is an exemplary comedy of manners. Its subtitle, “or, Sir Fopling Flutter“, underline the character who is the “Man of Mode”: a fop full of affectation and presumption embodies the code and values of high society, unmasking its superficial essence. The protagonist is not him but Dorimant, inspired by poet and libertine Earl of Rochester. The Elizabethan and Jacobean “rake” (libertino) developed into a character focused on eroticism. The rake, cynical, witty and elegant, generally repents (si pente) at the end, when he finds his match and falls in love. At the beginning of the play, Dorimant’s lover was Mrs Loveit, but afterwards he meets Harriet, who is the ideal heroine of the comedy of manners, she has self-control and wit, and initiates a courtship (corteggiamento) with her. The courtship is in reality a duel (psychological and verbal). Harriet knows she has to hide her feelings to bring out into the open his feelings. She gives him no reason for hope until the last minute. She makes his suitor (corteggiatore) a supplicant. She unmasks his affectation and makes evident the truth of his being in love. Dorimant is converted and becomes the typical reformed rake of the comedy of manners, accepts even to follow her to the countryside (proof of real love). 5.2.2 Wycherley William Wycherley (1640-1716) returned to England in 1660, after having lived in France 5 years, during which he had absorbed the great French literary culture and the influence of Molière. Wycherley had debuted with a comedy of intrigue Love in a wood (1671) and even his next play The gentleman Dancing-master (1672), belongs to the same genre. His masterpiece is The country wife (1675). The protagonist is Horner, unreformed rake, who pretends he is a eunuch (eunuco) in order to seduce the ladies of respectable society. He becomes an instrument for mocking the cult of appearances. He also seduces Margery, the ingenuous country wife of the odious Pinchwife. Meanwhile, his friend Harcourt is in love with Alithea, Pinchwife’s sister and engaged to the fop Sparkish. Harcourt succeeds in showing (riesce a mostrare) Sparkish’s stupidity and marry Alithea. The cult of appearances leads Sparkish to display a total lack of jealousy, which he regards (che egli considera) as a duty (dovere) for a “man of mode”. Then he believes in her betrayal (tradimento) when she is unjustly accused and appears guilty (colpevole). The country wife is a comedy of manners but also a sex comedy, a kind of play prevalent in the 1670s, in which the sexual aspect is at the centre of comic invention. Another author of sex comedies was Aphra Behn (1640-1689), singled out (individuata) by Virginia Woolf as the first professional woman writer. Behn imposes a woman’s point of view on her plays and she found a particularly convincing voice when denouncing the frequent “forced marriages” of the period. Her masterpiece is Sir Patient Fancy (1678) in which the heroine (in contravention of the laws of the time) is able to leave her old husband whom she has married against her will without having to renounce her dowry (dote). 5.2.3 Congreve William Congreve was the Inventor of supremely witty (spiritoso) and elegant dialogue. His first play The Old Bachelor (1693) is a comedy of manners. His next The Double Dealer (1693) is a satirical comedy on the falsity and hypocrisy of the institution of marriage. Cynthia wants to build a marriage based on love (not just as a contract), avoiding the squalor around her. The protagonist Maskwell is a negative character, a champion of dissimulation (double-dealer). He almost wins over the public to his viewpoint thanks to his brilliant talk. In the end he is unmasked. (Fop = Brisk). Love for love (1695) is his masterpiece. The protagonist is Valentine, an ex-libertine, and Angelica, rich and intelligent. They can marry only when Valentine’s former debts are paid and the love contract can be concluded. The satire is centred on Valentine, who pretends (finge) to be mad (pazza) and can allow himself to throw back in the face of the other characters the hypocrisy of social conventions. Congreve’s last play is The Way of the World (Così va il mondo), 1700. The protagonist of the play are the wit Mirabell and the fascinating Millamant. There are no real obstacle to their marriage: the problem is how Millamant can marry without losing all or part of her heritage (patrimonio). The economic aspect of marriage plays a determining role. The most fascinating characters are the heroine Millamant and the villain Fainall, cynical libertine and a true wit. Mirabell represents the Beau Monde, a society dominated by convention and no one is exempt (esente) from it. It exemplifies the precision of the satire of contemporary manners. The play also profits (beneficia) from the presence of comic secondary characters: the fops, the servants and the old and still sex-mad Lady Wishfort. After The way of the world, Congreve wrote no more comedies. 5.2.4 Farquhar George Farquhar was a young Irish actor who had left Dublin for London as a result of in incident in which he accidentally stabbed (pugnalò) a fellow actor. After a period when, in order to pay off is debts, he served as officer in the Grenadiers, he returned to the stage with a lively (vivace) and carefree (spensierato) comedy The recruiting officer (1706), based on his experience in the army. The plot centres on the love story between Captain Plume and Silvia. Much of the action is taken up with the trickery (raggiro) and deceit (inganno) with which the army and magistrates press-gang dozens of poor people. The prevailing tone remains one of laughter at the foolishness of the victims. Farquhar places the action outside London and makes no use of the situation, styles of dialogue and characters of the comedy of manners. His masterpiece is The beaux’ Stratagem (1707), which also take place in a provincial town. The stratagem consists in the fact that two young man, Aimwell and Archer, have decided to “explore” the provinces in search of an heiress to marry. Aimwell immediately falls in love with the wealthy (ricca) Dorinda; their love story is a tale of generosity, sincerity and gestures (gesti) of renunciation. Archer is a true rake-hero; he is an instinctive charmer (ammaliatore), who proves (dimostra) irresistible not only to Cherry, the innkeeper’s (locandiere) young daughter, but also to the “old, civil country gentlewoman” Lady Bountiful and to Mrs Sullen, the young wife of Squire Sullen, “a country blockhead, brutal to his wife”. Mrs Sullen is aware of her intolerable condition and is receptive to Archer’s courtship, but would never betray her husband. Mrs Sullen will be able to marry Archer because she will be granted (concesso) a divorce by consent and even be able to reclaim her dowry. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 1. A CENTURY OF CONTRADDICTION In 1702, when William death, Anne, second daughter of James II, became queen. She was the last English queen to wear the English crown. She had no children and, as decreed in the act of Settlement, signed in 1701, when she died in 1714 she was succeeded by Georg Ludvig, Elector of the German state of Hannover. He took the name and title of George I and he and his successors (George II, George III, George IV, William IV, Queen Victoria) are called the Hanoverian dynasty. Two major parties emerged: Tories and Whigs. A foreign and military policy carried out during the 1740s and 1750s let to the British triumph sealed (sigillato) by the Treaty of Paris in 1763. Britain acquired a great part of India, Quebec in Canada and Dakar in Africa. The American Revolution and the loss of the American colonies (1783) was a serious blow (colpo). By 1793, when the war against revolutionary France began, Britain had already recovered all its economic and military power. In literature, the first part of 18th century is referred to as the Augustan Age. Many poets were inspired by Latin authors (Augustan poets). This was also called Neo-classical Age, Neo-classicism, with its credo that Art should imitate nature. This concept of imitation changed substantially as the century progressed, and was present in the romantic idea of poetry, in a new form. The novelists use the first person narrator in the first novels. A novel was generally in 3 volumes and was expensive (circulating libraries). The women made up the largest sector of the reading public, because men had little time for reading. 3.1 Defoe In his essay The Rise of the Novel (1957), the critic Ian Watt underlines the connection between rise of the novel and rise of the middle class, which reflect the same economic and psychological individualism. Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) was born in London. Between 1703 and 1714, he travelled around Britain to gather (raccogliere) political information for the powerful statesman Robert Harley, who also employed him as a secret agent. He wrote hundreds of pamphlets, political and ideological essay, historical treatises and essay and in 1719 he wrote the novel to which he owes (deve la) his reputation. He was a Dissenters (those who dissented from the Anglican Church = Protestants). In 1702 he published The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, a pamphlet in which he ironically promoted the suppression of anybody who dissented. In his pamphlets and articles, he promotes the values of the Middle Class and the ethos of capitalism. He stood (sostiene) for the absolute sovereignty of the people and its right to rebel against an unjust ruler and overthrow (rovesciare) hierarchy and privilege, to recreate a new order (with merchants’ values at its heart). He declared: “The man is not rich because he is honest, is honest because he is rich” (Puritan way  poverty is a sin). His masterpiece is Robinson Crusoe (1719). Robinson, shipwrecked on an island, is the quintessential Homo Economicus, defined entirely by his properties. Robinson removes everything he can from the ship before it sinks (affondare); he will come up with detailed inventories of his possessions and lists of objects he owns. This is “true” story inspired by Scotsman Alexander Selkirk. His adventures had been told in a number of books, but the invention is that Defoe have created Robinson’s autobiography, refers to a genre in Protestant literature: the biographical account serving as a lesson and a warning (avvertimento). One reason for the success of this and Defoe’s other novels is in the novelty of the language. It was the language of journalism and preachers (predicatori), addressing to a public of merchants and craftsmen. In this language we can detect the idiom of the people, liveliness (vivacità) of spoken language, and concreteness of speech the choice of words that potential readers want to read. This is a long way from the language of romance. Robinson is alone on his desert island and he survives by creating a condition he recognises as civilisation. His solitude has strong religious overtones, which hint (suggerire) at Defoe’s Dissenting convictions. Robinson has rebelled against paternal authority, so he has been punished. God has also offered him the chance of salvation; Robinson faces the trials (prove) he must undergo (sottoporsi) with determination, discipline, courage which lead him to success. He not only survives, but thrives (avere fortuna), in fact, he goes back home as a rich and honourable man. Another important Defoe’s work is Moll Flanders (1722), which was a Picaresque novel (from Spanish «pícaro», briccone, furfante. First novela of this kind: Lazzarillo de Tormes, by an anonymous author, 1554). It is an autobiographical account of the life and adventures of a person of the lower classes, generally an orphan, in a hostile world. Moll was a poor girl. Moll’s mother, condemned to death for the theft (furto) of three pieces of linen (biancheria), being pregnant has obtained the favour of being transported to the plantations and has left her child about six month old. After a series of vicissitudes, the child is entrusted (affidata) to the care of a woman who makes a living bringing up and educating young girls destined to go into domestic service. But Moll does not want to become a servant. Twenty years later, in 1740, Richardson was to publish Pamela, the story of a maidservant (serva) who marries a gentleman. It was possible by the time to imagine such an extreme example of mobility, but Defoe chooses a different path (percorso). Moll uses all she has, her beauty and her body, to survive. She uses her body as a labourer uses his arms. It is all she has, her capital (as for Robinson the remains of the shipwreck). Defoe believed in the principle of male and female equality, in fact Moll’s behavior enables her not to become the permanent property of a man. The same goes for the protagonist of Roxana, or the Fortunate Mistress (1724). She does not start from the same miserable condition as Moll. She married to a rich gentleman who loses his fortune and deserts (abbandona) her. She becomes a prostitute from necessity but then continues to practice her profession even when she is not in need any longer. Her experience has taught her to have no faith in gentlemanly behavior or generosity: she understands she has to provide for herself. She even refuses to marry a rich nobleman not to lose her financial independence and she does not want to become a man’s property. In the last lines of the novel, there arrives divine punishment for her sins (peccati), specifically for having allowed one of her daughters to die. With punishment comes repentance (pentimento), but what she repents of is her sin as a mother, not that of a woman who has won for herself freedom. Another Defoe’s fictional works are Captain Singleton and The Journal of the plague year (1722), the fictional true report of a London artisan during the Great Plague, which had ravaged (distrusse) the city six years earlier. The character (Defoe’s limitation) may weep (piangere) and fall into despair (disperazione), but we never see what the deep feelings (sentimenti profondi) are in his mind and in his heart. 3.2 Richardson Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) was a Puritan printer and led an industrious life. He was apprenticed to a printer in London and married his employer’s daughter. He discovered his ability as a novelist by chance and he wrote a book for young men apprenticed to a trade, The Apprentice’s Vade Mecum (1733), and was commissioned a volume called The Familiar Letters on Important Occasions, a guidebook meant to provide model letters that could be imitated by semi-literate readers. So he told maidservants how to negotiate a proposal for marriage, apprentices how to apply for a job, and even sons how to plead their fathers’ forgiveness. Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740), is his first novel. Pamela is made up of letters and journals, most of them written by Pamela herself. (Epistolary novel, 6 correspondents in all). It tells the story of a 15-year-old maidservant, Pamela, whose virtue has been unsuccessfully attacked by her master, Mr B. (Today we would call it “Sexual harassment”). The young girl resist and, even after having been imprisoned in Mr B.’s remote house, she refuses his offer to make her his mistress (padrona). However, after being rejected by Pamela, at the end Mr B. marries her. As a good protestant, Richardson wants to recount an experience, which reflects the Puritan middle-class scheme of reward for virtue and punishment for sins (didactic aim). These are the same principles of hard work and conjugal love, accompanied by the condemnation of the debauchery of aristocracy previously promoted by Milton. Richardson also promotes a revolutionary principle of the middle class: social mobility. He tells the story of a person of the lower middle class, who succeeds (riuscire) in joining the elevated ranks of the upper gentry. The middle class swept away (spazzato via) the medieval principle whereby everyone should live and die in the same class in which were born. In Richardson’s novel there is psychological analysis, missing from most of previous fiction. The reader is taken into the character’s mind and is invited to share their innermost (più interni) feelings and moods (stati d’animo). In contrast to Defoe’s novels there is a sense of personal development within the story. Characters are not static. There are the first person narrative and individual points of view on the same event, which is fully explored. It has much in common with the dramatic technique, because characters introduce one another using letters instead of speech, the action is made up by a series of scenes. The language in which Pamela express her troubles is the language of ordinary people. However there are occasion where letters cannot be the direct expression of maidservant. Richardson intervenes to correct some of the irregularities of common speech and makes it more formal. It is a revolution: the language of people entered the realm (regno) of literature. Clarissa is Richardson’s gigantic epistolary novel, in 8 volumes published between 1747 and 1749. It is a denunciation of the old order (although Clarissa is part of it). About 1/3 of the novel consist of an exchange of letters between Clarissa and Lovelace. Clarissa resists the attacks of Lovelace, her admirer and persecutor; but he finally drugs her and rapes her. Clarissa goes mad and, when she recovers, she has lost her will to live. The final third of the book deals with the preparation for death. Clarissa dies, but Clarissa’s cousin kills Lovelace. His death sentence is a sentence passed on an entire social system, «the old order» (i.e. the aristocracy as ruling class), with its false values, insolence and arrogance. Some critics sometimes consider Clarissa, symbol of the victims of male violence, as a negative figure: self- obsessed, in love with virtue and victimhood (vittimismo). Some critics have also accused her of being a masochist. She is attracted by Lovelace’s charm, but she wants to resist, because she distrusts his motives. When her refusal of him becomes absolute, he becomes obsessed and his increases his violent instincts. Richardson uses a particular technique: his characters «write to the moment», they write about their experiences as they happen, have no time to reflect on them, put them down hot on the page. They were real people who communicate their experience with immediacy. It is up to us readers to reflect on them and draw from them the necessary lessons. 3.3 Fielding Henry Fielding (1707-1754) was born into an aristocratic family. He was sent to the exclusive public school of Eton when he was twelve; in 1728, he enrolled as student of letters at the University of Leyden in which he pursued study of classical literature. He wrote for the theatre, and many of his plays was parodies of fashionable repertoire. In 1737, with the Licensing Act, his plays were censored and he stopped working for the theatre. He began studying law, became a magistrate, devoting himself to social reform. In 1740, Pamela was published and Fielding immediately found in the moralism of that book a new object for his parodic skills, Shamela (1741) is Fielding’s response to Richardson. The parodic intent was already in the title: shame (vergogna) or sham (finto, falso) + Pamela (her surname was Andrews). Shamela is a satire of the hypocrisy of Pamela and Pamela. He also criticizes the epistolary novel for its pretension to be able to be “to the moment”. His next novel was Joseph Andrews (1742). Joseph (Pamela’s brother) is the footman of Lady Booby, the aunt of Mr B., who is now called squire (signorotto di campagna) Booby. Lady Booby, in her London house, makes explicit advances to Joseph, who is pure and faithful to Fanny and rejects them and he is thrown out (buttato fuori). He decides to return on foot to his Somerset village, where Lady Booby’s country residence is. His homecoming, like Ulysses’ homecoming after the war of Troy, was complicated, difficult, and full of adventures and misadventures. Joseph bumps (si imbatte) into Parson Adams, the vicar (pastore) of his home village, and they travel together. Here the novel changes course; parody is left on one side and the narrative proceeds under its own steam (proprie forze) as a bizarre a British version of Cervantes’ Don Quixote (Don Quixote and Sancho Panza’s journey). When they arrive at the village, they discover that Pamela has married Squire Booby. Finally, Joseph and Fanny marry, overcoming the hostility of Lady Booby (backed up by Pamela). The novel is stylish and entertaining, a combination that you did not find before. It maintains a lively tone thanks to the irony and humour. The story is told in third-person and Fielding declares his presence as narrator (omniscient narrator), an intrusive or obtrusive narrator, who makes his presence explicit from the outset, comments on the action, makes digressions, addresses the reader. In his Preface, Fielding is keen (acuto) to underline the literary value of his work and looks to classical works as a marker (segnale) against which to situate his novel. His work is something new, never attempted before: a comic epic poem in prose. It differs from romance for being light and for introducing persons of inferior rank. He appeals to the classical genres to legitimize the presence of his lower-class characters and the genre of the novel itself. Fielding is present both as narrator (interpreter of the events) and as the creator of the method he is using. He is the creator of a new art form and explains it (first theorist of the novel). His view is ironic because life «furnishes an accurate observer with the ridiculous». For Fielding, virtue, which leads to happiness, is “a very wholesome (sana) and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, that it is not true.” Fielding condemns hypocrisy and rebels against the Puritan code of the age that considered respectability synonymous with virtue. Fielding’s masterpiece is Tom Jones. Tom is a foundling (trovatello) who towards the end of the novel finds out that he is the nephew of Mr Allworthy, the man of property who had adopted him. This means he will be able to marry Sophia, the woman he loves and who loves him. What is important here is the putting forward of a completely new model of poetry that presented itself as a spontaneous, free of sophisticated rhetorical artifice, a bearer (portatore) of emotion and overtones of irrationality. 4.2 The Gothic Novel Gray was a friend of Horace Walpole, son of the dictatorial Prime Minister. Horace W., in 1757, published Gray’s poems and appreciated Gray as the poet of the Sublime, an aesthetic category he found particularly congenial. In 1764, he published the novel The Castle of Otranto: a Gothic Story, presenting it as the translation of an old Italian text. Walpole created a new genre, that of the Gothic novel, which brings together the taste for the picaresque and the sublime with a predilection for mystery and irrationality. The protagonist of the Gothic novel is most often a young woman who is pursued by villains but rescued (salvato) by her young lover, has to face (mostrare) all sorts of dangers, including ghosts and supernatural phenomena. The novel concludes with the canonical happy ending, which tends to appear blatantly (chiaramente) improbable. The reader is subjected to the “sublime” emotion of terror together with the heroine. In Walpole’s novel, the backdrop (sfondo) is an exotic castle, located in Italy, a setting for ghosts, chases (inseguimenti) in gloomy vaults (cupe volte), mysterious apparition, statues that bleed (sanguinano) and dramatic love stories. Walpole claimed (sostiene) that his aim was to fuse novel and romance. He said “I gave rein (brain) to my imagination; visions and passions choked me (mi soffocano)”. Another famous Gothic novelist was William Beckford with his Vathek (1782), written in French in 1782 and translated into English in 1786 by Samuel Henley, with the author’s assistance. It tells the story of the cruel Caliph Vathek, who makes a pact with the devil. He commits horrible misdeeds (misfatti), confronts extraordinary dangers, and finally reaches (raggiunge) the place where are to be found the treasure of the pre-Adamite sultans. Vathek become a prey (preda) to grief (dolore) without end and remorse without mitigation. The concluding pages, which describe the punishment of one who has become the servant of the devil, are an act of duty (dovere). The most famous, admired and imitates of all Gothic authors was Ann Radcliffe, a woman who invented the most extravagant and horrifying stories of the age. Her first novel was set in Scotland; her later novel, for which she was become famous, were set in Italy. Her masterpiece is The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) set in France and Italy. The idea of Sublime is used in the descriptions of landscapes (the Alps, the castle of Udolpho). The victim is the pursued and persecuted girl and her pursuer/persecutor is a false-hearted and lecherous (lascivo) villain. The story ends with the inevitable wedding. Matthew G. Lewis’ masterpiece, The Monk (1796) was set in Spain. The protagonist is Ambrosio, a young monk, famous for his devotion, who is tricked (ingannato) by a diabolical woman. The monk pursues a young girl living with her mother; but that Ambrosio Rapes the girl and kills her. The monk is sentenced to be burnt by the Inquisition but he makes a pact with the devil and is dragged (trascinato) down to hell. (No happy ending). 4.3 Dr Johnson Samuel Jonson (1709-84) was born in Lichfield, the son of a bookseller. He attended the University of Oxford for just over a year before lack of money forced him to abandon his studies. After his father’s death, he suffered acute mental distress. In 1737, he decided to move to London where he entered the service of the founder the gentleman’s magazine, and set out (avviare) a career of intense literary activity, writing poems, essay and biographies. In 1747, he issued (rilasciare) the “Plan” of his Dictionary of the English language, the work for which he is most famous. He wants to create a dictionary by which the pronunciation of English could be fixed. He gave a definition for some 40000 words, illustrating them with quotation drawn from Sidney, Milton, Dryden, Swift and Pope. While working on the Dictionary, he in 1750 started a periodical: The Rambler. His numerous articles established him as the foremost (primo) moralist of the period. Jonson, the learned Doctor Jonson, established his place as an unmatched literary critic also through the “Preface” to his edition of the Works of Shakespeare (1768). He explain that is wrong to criticise Shakespeare for mixing comedy with tragedy, because this is what happens in “nature” and in real life. 4.4 Goldsmith and Sheridan Oliver Goldsmith (1730-74) was born in Ireland. In 1756, he settled in London, where he began writing for various periodicals and became a friend of Dr Jonson. Jonson saved him from being cast into the debtors’ prison by finding a publisher for The Vicar of Wakefield (1766). Goldsmith’s first play, The Good-Natured Man (1768) makes reference to the same optimistic hope in benevolence professed by the sentimental comedy. However, Goldsmith language has a verve (energia, brio), a lightness of touch, a wit and a sense of humour of a kind that was entirely lacking in the theatre of the day. With his next play, She Stoops to conquer (1773), staged a few month later, Goldsmith gave a practical demonstration of how it was possible to combine a series of misunderstandings. The protagonist, Marlow, goes out to the provinces to meet Kate Hardcastle, whom his own father and Kate’s father want him to marry. Marlow has been led to believe that Mr Handcastle’s house is an inn (locanda) and behaves accordingly (di conseguenza) Kate introduce herself to him as a poor relation (parente povera) of Mr Hardcastle, with the result that Marlow pluck up (prese) courage to declare his love for her; so Kate transform the misunderstanding into a revelation of Marlow and a liberation from his neurotic embarrassment. Goldsmith’s genius is in combining one of the ideological linchpins (perno) of the contemporary theatre of the time and of the period in general with a plot full of farcical (ridicoli) elements and humorous subtleties but with never loses sight of psychological consistency, full of laughter and vitality. Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816) born in Dublin, was a member of the parliament with very modern ideas. But he is mainly remembered as the leading figure on the English stage at the end of 18th century. Two of his earlier plays have remained classic of the English theatrical repertory: The rivals and The School for Scandal. The Rivals (1775) is a play with comic tone. The protagonist are Lydia, a girl who despises (disprezza) riches and dreams of a pure, romantic, disinterested love, and Captain Absolute who present himself before her as the modest Ensign Beverley. In reality, Lydia in her romanticism is in revolt against the authoritarianism of her aunt Mrs Malaprop, while Captain Absolute also has to face up to his authoritarian father. After many tricks, the two lovers are finally able to marry. The real theme is not that of romantic love but of the relationship between money and parental authority on the one side and the children’s freedom of choice on the other. In The School for Scandal, the target (bersaglio) of Sheridan’s satire is Lady Sneerwell and her fellow scandalmongers (malalingua). Here the wittiest lines belong to the negative characters (in contrast with the comedy of manners). The plot punished the scandalmongers, so that the “sentimental” audience can guiltlessly (innocentemente) enjoy laughing at their sharp-tongued (lingua tagliente) wit. The play’s humour derives from the witticism of the members of the School; the comic quality of the play is more dependent on the plot. It hinges (dipende) on the return from India of the rich Sir Oliver Surface: his nephew, Charles and Joseph would each like to marry Sir Peter’s ward, Maria. Charles is saved from bankruptcy ad can happily marry Maria who is in love with his and not with the false and untrustworthy Joseph. The definitive unmasking of Joseph take place in the famous “screen scene” in Ac IV.