The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare

In the works of Nash and his imitators, the different parts are badly dovetailed; the novelist is incoherent and incomplete; the fault lies in some degree with the picaresque fo...

All Lyly's imitators, Greene, Lodge, Melbancke, Riche, Munday, Warner, Dickenson, and others, did not faithfully copy his style in all its peculiarities, at any rate in all thei...

When nowadays we see our shepherds, wrapped in their long brown cloaks, silently following the high roads in the midst of a suffocating dust which seems to come out of their she...

"There is nothing beside the goodnesse of God, that preserves health so much as honest mirth, especially mirth used at dinner and supper, and mirth toward bed.... Therefore, con...

The romance which, at this period, received a new life, and was to come nearer to our novels than anything that had gone before, has many traits in common with the fanciful styl...

One of the most remarkable effects of the Renaissance was the awakening of a slumbering curiosity. The _régime_ of the Middle Ages was just ended; its springs were exhausted, it...

Minute research has been made, in every country, into the origin of the drama. The origin of the novel has rarely tempted the literary archæologist. For a long time the novel wa...

II. Heroes and heroism _à panache_ migrate to England--Their welcome in spite of the Puritans--Translations of French romances--Use of French engravings--Imitation and appreciat...

[22] "Le Morte Darthur by Syr Thomas Malory," ed. O. Sommer and Andrew Lang, London, 1889, 2 vol. 8vo. Caxton's Preface, p. 3. The book was originally published at Westminster,...

III. Sidney's reputation in England--Continuators, imitators, and admirers among dramatists, poets and novelists--Shakespeare, Jonson, Day, Shirley, Quarles--Lady Mary Wroth and...

Dekker--His dramatic and poetical faculty--His prose works--His literary connection with Nash--His pictures of real life--His humour and gaiety--Grobianism--A gallant at the pla...

II. Effects of the conquest on the minds of the English inhabitants--Slow awakening of the native writers--Awakening of the clerks, of the translators and imitators--The English...

III. Learning--Erasmus' judgment and prophecies--The part played by women--They want books written for themselves--Queen Elizabeth, her talk, her tastes, her dress, her portrait...