NATIONAL LIFE FROM 1603 TO 1660. We have already observed that, as
Shakspere's career suggests, there was no abrupt change in either life or
literature at the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603; and in fact the
Elizabethan period of literature is often made to include the reign of
James I, 1603-1625 (the Jacobean period [Footnote: 'Jaco'bus' is the Latin
form of 'James.']), or even, especially in the case of the drama, that of
Charles I, 1625-1649 (the Carolean period). Certainly the drama of all
three reigns forms a continuously developing whole, and should be discussed
as such. None the less the spirit of the first half of the seventeenth
century came gradually to be widely different from that of the preceding
fifty years, and before going on to Shakspere's successors we must stop to
indicate briefly wherein the difference consists and for this purpose to
speak of the determining events of the period. Before the end of
Elizabeth's reign, indeed, there had been a perceptible change; as the
queen grew old and morose the national life seemed also to lose its youth
and freshness. Her successor and distant cousin, James of Scotland (James I
of England), was a bigoted pedant, and under his rule the perennial Court
corruption, striking in, became foul and noisome. The national Church,
instead of protesting, steadily identified itself more closely with the
Court party, and its ruling officials, on the whole, grew more and more
worldly and intolerant. Little by little the nation found itself divided
into two great factions; on the one hand the Cavaliers, the party of the
Court, the nobles, and the Church, who continued to be largely dominated by
the Renaissance zest for beauty and, especially, pleasure; and on the other
hand the Puritans, comprising the bulk of the middle classes, controlled by
the religious principles of the Reformation, often, in their opposition to
Cavalier frivolity, stern and narrow, and more and more inclined to
separate themselves from the English Church in denominations of their own.
The breach steadily widened until in 1642, under the arbitrary rule of