Divine Poetry and Drama in Sixteenth-Century England

The Reformation and the impact of the Renaissance were almost simultaneous in England. So the English versions of the Bible appeared at much the same time as the new, worldly forms of verse and drama. It was not long before serious-minded poets and playwrights used the Bible thus made available for new forms of religious verse. There was an important but neglected succession of writers who did this, culminating in Milton. The forms involved include the sonnet, the miniature epic and the popular drama. Miss Campbell treats both dramatic and non-dramatic literature. She shows that both kinds were new and not prolongations of medieval forms: the 'divine' lyric is a counterpart of the new secular lyric, and professedly hostile to it; and the 'divine' drama is an adaptation of current popular forms and not a development of the mystery play.