"The English sang their songs then, or played them" (page 589).
"Music moved beneath the words. No grammar bound them tightly together. They could be read aloud; danced to or sung to; but they could not follow the pace of the speaking voice. They could not enter into the private world" (page 589).
Spenser "was separate from the minstrel; from the chronicler; and from his audience. They no longer joined in the song and added their own verses to the poem. But the book that had given him a separate existence had brought into being a little group of readers" (page 589).
Spenser "is aware of his art as Chaucer was not, nor Langland, nor Malory" (page 591).
"Had the poet remained in the great room, proferring his book to the little group of readers, English poetry might have remained book poetry, read aloud; a recollection; a reflection; something heard by the leisured listening in the great room. But there was the other voice; the voice at the back door. Spenser had heard it. He recalled the voice of 'minstrels making goodly merriment, With wanton bards and rhymers impudent'" (page 591).
Concerning Spenser, see John Webster's article "Oral Form and Written Craft in Spenser's FAERIE QUEENE" in the journal STUDIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE, volume 16 (1976): pages 75-93.
Also see Ong's "From Epithet to Logic: Miltonic Epic and the closure of Existence" in INTERFACES OF THE WORD: STUDIES IN THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND CULTURE (1977, pages 189-212).
"The play is still in part the work of the undifferentiated audience, demanding great names, great deeds, simple outlines, and not the single subtlety of one soul" (pages 594).
"But, while we have a measuring rod handy, our past[, and] and a press that at once applies a standard, the Elizabethans had no literature behind them with which to compare the play, and no press to give it speech. To the Elizabethans the expressive power of words after their long inadequacy must have been overwhelming. Surprise must have kept them silent. There at the Globe or at the Rose men and women whose only reading had been the Bible or some old chronicle came out into the light of the present moment. They saw themselves splendidly dressed. They heard themselves saying out loud what they had never said yet. They heard their aspirations, their profanities, their ribaldries spoken for them in poetry. And there was something illicit in their pleasure. The preacher and the magistrate were always denouncing their emotions. That too must have given it intensity" (pages 595-596; bracketed material added by Clarke).
"Bacon's contempt was for hyperbole; not for the art of speech. He was teaching the ranting players to speak slowly, closely, subtly. He was proving that there is another kind of poetry, the poetry of prose. He was bringing the prose of the mind into being. And thus by increasing the range of the poet, by making it possible for him to express more, he was making an end of anonymity" (page 597).
"Anonymity was a great possession. It gave the early writing an impersonality, a generality. It gave us the ballads; it gave us the songs. It allowed us to know nothing of the writer; and so to concentrate upon his song. Anon had great privileges. He was not responsible. He was not self conscious. He is not self conscious. He can borrow. He can repeat. He can say what every one feels. No one tries to stamp his own name, to discover his own experience, in his work. He keeps at a distance from the present moment. Anon the lyric poet repeats over and over again that flowers fade; that death is the end. He is never tired of celebrating red roses and white breasts. The anonymous playwright has like the singer this nameless vitality, something drawn from the crowd in the penny seats and not yet dead in ourselves. We can still become anonymous and forget something that we have learnt when we read the plays to which no one has troubled to set a name" (pages 597-598).
"But at some point there comes a break when anonymity withdraws" (page 598).
"There comes a point when the audience is no longer master of the playwright. Yet he is not separate from them. A common life still unites them; but there are moments of separation" (page 598; bracketed material added by me).
"But gradually the audience is mastered by the playwright" (page 598).
"The curtain rises upon play after play. Each time it rises upon a more detached, a more matured drama. The individual on the stage becomes more and more differentiated" (page 598).
"The playwright is replaced by the man who writes a book. The audience is replaced by the reader. Anon is dead" (page 599).
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