Dramatists During The Age Of Revival.

1. HENRY MEDWALL (1462-1502)

Henry Medwall is popular as the first known English vernacular dramatist. He was educated at Eton College and the University of Cambridge and participated in dramatic performances there. He served as a chaplain in the household of Cardinal John Norton, the Archbishop of Canterbury under Henry VII.

Literary Career and Works : He wrote a morality play, Nature, but is mostly known for Fulgens and Lucrece (1497) the first secular play surviving in English. This play appears to have been written for performance at Christmas time between the courses of a banquet at which Morton entertained ambassadors from abroad. Medwall died in 1502.

Medwall's Fulgens and Lucrece

• The play is based upon a Ciceronian declamation on true nobility De Vera Nobilitate (1428).
• It is the first vernacular play to be printed in England.
• It is the first play to show the influence of classical antiquity.
• It is the first, in which a woman is the central character. The heroine has to choose between two rival suitors.
• The play is a debate on the origins of true nobility, enlivened by the interruptions of household servants.

2. JOHN RASTELL (1475-1536)

English printer and author JOHN RASTELL was the son of a leading Coventry citizen and Warwickshire justice of the peace. He is said to have been born in London. Rastell's first press was at 'the Abbot of Winchcombe's place' by the Fleet bridge.

Literary Career and Works : After 1526, Rastell started printing works of his own authorship, which give him an important place in the history of Tudor drama. Two plays, Of gentylnes and nobylyte and The Nature of the Four Elements may with fair certainty be attributed to him, while a third, Calisto and Melibea, shows signs of his workmanship.

The Nature of the Four Elements portrays the benefits of a humanistic education in a not very dramatic allegory, where the hero Humanity is led away from his books and into a tavern by the vice-figure ignorance and the cheerful sensual appetite. The purpose of this play is to awaken interest in natural science and discovery. In Of gentylnes and nobylyte, largely a dialogue between a ploughman and a knight, the evils of inheritance are attacked and it is argued that nobility is not a matter of birth. Both plays present the notion of the 'commonweal', and the third, Calisto and Melibea, concludes with a moralising address on the theme, that natural knowledge and reason are aids to religion.

Rastell's best-known work is The Pastyme of People, the Chronydes of dyvers Realmys and most specially of the Realme of England (1529), a chronicle dealing with English history from the earliest times to the reign of Richard III.

3. JOHN BALE (1495-1563)

JOHN BALE was an English theologian, historian, playwright, literary historian and Bishop of Ossory. He was born at the little village of Cove, near Dunwich in Suffolk, on 21st November, 1495.

Literary Career and Works : Bale is said to have attracted Cromwell's attention by his dramas, which were morality plays or scriptural plays setting forth the reformed opinions. Bale's propagandist play King Johan was first acted on 2nd January, 1539. King Johan tells the history of King John's defeat and death at the hands of the Roman powers in a morality-play framework of allegorical figures. Apart from this play, Bale is known for The Image of Both Churches, which is a thorough commentary on the Book of Revelation.

The 8 years of Bale's exile were his most productive period as a writer. When pro-Protestant Edward VI came to the English throne in 1548, it prompted an outpouring of twelve works from Bale, including A Comedy Concerning Three Laws and The Image of Both Churches. Bale subsequently returned to England and resumed his ecclesiastical duties. In 1552, despite Bale's reluctance, Edward appointed him to the Bishopric of Ossory. Bale chronicled his experiences in this turbulent and staunchly Catholic diocese in his Vocacyon of Johan Bale to the Bishoprick of Ossorie in Irelande (1553). He died in November 1563 in Canterbury.

4. NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI (1469-1527)

Italian author and statesman Niccolo di Bernardo dei Machiavelli, was born at Florence on 3rd May, 1469. At an early age, he became a pupil of a renowned Latin teacher, Paolo da Ronciglione. He is believed to have attended the University of Florence and received an excellent humanist education. Not much is known about his biographical history.

Literary Career and Works : In 1500, he was sent on his first assignment to France to obtain terms from Louis XII for continuing the war against Pisa: it is this king, who in his conduct of affairs in Italy, committed the five capital errors in statecraft summarised in The Prince and was consequently driven out.

His visits to courts of various Kings and experience in foreign policy would later form the basis of many of the principles he expresses in The Prince and the great personages that he met form the examples from which he draws his lessons.

Machiavelli's historical writings comprise:

• Florentine Histories,
• Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius, (commonly known as The Discourses), a Life of Castruccio Castracani (unfinished) and History of the Affairs of Lucca.

His literary works comprise an imitation of The Golden Ass by Apuleius, an essay on the Italian language, the play Mandragola and several minor compositions. He also wrote Seven books on The Art of War. His greatest known work is the political treatise, The Prince (1532). The book gives a set of rules for establishment and preservation of authority and advocates adoption of any means, fair or unfair. Machiavelli died in San Casciano in 1527, just a few miles outside his beloved Florence.

Machiavelli's Mandragola

Machiavelli portrays fortuna and virtu in Mandragola to demonstrate that immorality is acceptable. He makes the protagonist boast virtue and his leading lady encompass fortuna the protagonist. Callimaco is the virtuous prince that Machiavelli alludes to in the prince, with fervent aspirations, willing to endanger his life, thus worthy of his love Lucrezia and worthy of authority. The antagonist Nicia, holds power, like an inherited prince but loses Fortuna because of his passiveness. Each character is a representative political figurehead, reiterating ideas from the Prince, with the help of marks and stock figures.

Theatre is a cautious means of exposing truths as the audience connects with the action, but is removed enough from the stage that there is no looming fear.