Faculty Examiners

Bernadette Andrea, Andrew Griffin, James Kearney

Notes and Resources

Students taking the first qualifying examination in the Renaissance (sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literature) should be familiar not only with the following primary texts but also interpretive issues (e.g., genre, style, relevant literary traditions and contexts) concerning these texts and key moments in the period at large. Selections with an asterisk (*) are in the tenth edition of the Norton Anthology of English Literature (Volume B), which is also a valuable resource for literary and historical contexts. Students may direct their questions about this list to any of the faculty examiners for Renaissance Literature.

Reading List

John Skelton (ca. 1460-1529)* 

• “Mannerly Margery Milk and Ale” 
• “With lullay, lullay, like a child /”
• “The Tunning of Elinour Rumming”

Sir Thomas More (1478-1535)* 

• Utopia, including the letter to Peter Giles

Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder (1503-1542)*

• “The long love that in my thought doth harbor”, “Whoso list to hunt”, “Farewell, Love”, “I find no peace”, “My galley”, “Divers doth use”, “What vaileth truth?”, “Madam, withouten many words”, “They flee from me”, “The Lover Showeth How He is Forsaken of Such as He Sometime Enjoyed”, “My lute, awake!”, “Forget not yet”, “Blame not my lute”, “Stand whoso list”, “Who list his wealth and ease retain”, “Mine own John Poins”

Nicholas Udall (1504-1556)

• Ralph Roister Doister

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517-1547)*

• “The soote season”, “Love, that doth reign and live within my thought”, “Alas! So all things now do hold their peace”, “Th’Assyrians’ king, in peace with foul desire”. “So cruel prison how could betide”, “Wyatt resteth here, that quick could never rest”, “O happy dames, that may embrace”, “Martial, the things for to attain”, “The Fourth Book of Virgil [Dido in Love]”

Thomas Norton (1532-1584)  and Thomas Sackville (1536-1608)

• Gorboduc

Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603)*

• Poems: “Verses Written with a Diamond”, “The doubt of future foes”, “On Monsieur’s Departure”, “Verse Exchange between Elizabeth and Sir Walter Ralegh”
• Prose Selections [check]: From “The Passage of Our Most Dread Sovereign Lady Queen Elizabeth through the City of London to Westminster on the Day before Her Coronation”, “Speech to the House of Commons, January 28, 1563”, from “A Speech to a Joint Delegations of Lords and Commons, November 5”, from “A Letter to Mary, Queen of Scots, February 24, 1567”, “A Letter to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, February 10, 1586”, “A Letter to Sir Amyas Paulet, August 1586”, “A Letter to King James VI of Scotland, February 14, 1587”
• “Speech at Tilbury” (1588)
• the “Golden Speech” (1601)

George Gascoigne (c. 1535-1577)

The Adventures of Master F.J. 

• Poems* (in Norton) “And if I did, what then?”, “The Lullaby of a Lover”, “Woodmanship”

Arthur Golding (c. 1536-1606)

• Preface to Ovid’s Metamophoses

William Baldwin (fl. 1547), et. al. 

• A Mirror for Magistrates 
  • 1559 Prefaces
  • Tragedies of Tresilian, Mortimer, Gloucester, Mowbray, and Richard II (may not all be in the 1559 edition)

Sir Walter Ralegh  (1552-1618)* 

• Poetry, “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd”, “What is our life?”, “[Sir Walter Ralegh to His Son]”, “The Lie”, “Farewell, false love”, “Methought I saw the grave where Laura lay”, “Nature, that washed her hands in milk”, “[The Author’s Epitaph, Made by Himself]”
• Prose, From “The discovery of the large, rich, and beautiful Empire of Guiana”, “The History of the World [Conclusion: On Death]”

Edmund Spenser (1552/3-1599)

• The Shepheardes Calender, all prefatory material and January, April, and October eclogues
• The Faerie Queene, Books I, II, and III, Book VI, cantos 9-12, the “Mutabilitie Cantos,” and the letter to Raleigh [A.C. Hamilton]
• Selections from Amoretti (selections)
  • 1, 34, 37, 54, 64, 65, 67, 68, 74, 75, 79

Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586)

• The New Arcadia (1590),  Book One
• The Defense of Poesy*
• Astrophil and Stella: 1, 2, 6, 7, 9, 15, 21, 31, 37, 41, 45, 47, 74, 94, 106, 108

Thomas Kyd (1558-1594)

•  The Spanish Tragedy

Francis Bacon (1561-1626)*

• Selected prose works
  • Essays: “Of Truth”, “Of Marriage and Single Life”, “Of Great Place”, “Of Superstition”, “Of Plantations”, “Of Negotiating”, “Of Masques and Triumphs”, “Of Studies [1597]”, “Of Studies [1625]”
  • “The Advancement of Learning [The Abuses of Language]”, from Novum Organum, from The New Atlantis “Solomon’s House”

Samuel Daniel (1562-1619)*

• Sonnets 9, 32, 33

Mary ( Sidney) Herbert (1562-1621)*

• Psalm 52, Psalm 119: O, Psalm 139

Michael Drayton (1563-1631)*

• “To the Reader of These Sonnets”, Sonnets 5, 6, 8, 50, 61

Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593)

• The Jew of Malta

• Doctor Faustus

• Hero and Leander 

• “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

• At least eight plays, including Twelfth Night*, The Merchant of Venice, 1 Henry IV, Hamlet, Othello*, King Lear, and The Tempest
• Sonnets 1, 12, 15, 18, 20, 22, 29, 46, 59, 62, 104, 111, 127, 129, 130, 138, 141, 148, 152, 154.

Isabella Whitney (fl. 1566-1600)

• “Will and Testament”

Thomas Nashe (c. 1567 – c. 1601)

The Unfortunate Traveler

Aemilia Lanyer (1569-1645)*

• Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (including the dedicatory poems) 
• “The Description of Cooke-ham”*

Thomas Dekker (1572-1632)

• The Shoemaker’s Holiday 

John Donne (1572-1631)* [all in Norton]

• Poems
  • Songs and Sonnets: “The Flea”, “The Good-Morrow”, “The Sun Rising”,, “The Canonization”, “A Valediction: Of Weeping”, “Love’s Alchemy”, “A Nocturnal upon Lucy’s Day, Being the Shortest Day”, , “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”, “The Ecstasy”,, “The Relic”, “A Lecture upon the Shadow”
  • , “Elegy 19: To His Mistress Going to Bed”, “Satire 3”, “Sappho to Philaenis”, “An Anatomy of the World: The First Anniversary”, “Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward”,, “Hymn to God My God, in My Sickness”, “A Hymn to God the Father”, from “Death’s Duel”
  • Holy Sonnets: 1, 5 10, 14
  • Devotions upon Emergent Occasions: “Meditation 4,” “Meditation 17,” from “Expostulation 19”

Ben Jonson (1572-1637)

• Volpone*
• Bartholomew Fair
• Selections from Epigrams: “To My Book”, “On Something, That Walks Somewhere”, “To William Camden”, “On My First Daughter”, “To John Donne”, “On Giles and Joan”, “On My First Son”, “On Lucy, Countess of Bedford”, “To Lucy, Countess of Bedford, with Mr. Donne’s Satires”, “To Sir Thomas Roe”, “Inviting a Friend to Supper”, “On Gut”, “Epitaph on S.P., a Child of Queen Elizabeth’s Chapel”
• Selections from The Forest: “To Penshurst”, “Song: to Celia”, “To Heaven”
• Masques: Masque of Blackness*, Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue+, and Oberon*+

Thomas Middleton (1580-1627) and Thomas Dekker (1572-1632)

• The Roaring Girl

John Webster (1580?-1625?)

The Duchess of Malfi*

Philip Massinger (1583-1640)

• The Renegado

Francis Beaumont (1584-1616) and John Fletcher (1579-1625)

• Knight of the Burning Pestle

Mary Wroth (1587-1651?)

• Book 1 of Urania
• Pamphilia to Amphilanthus* 1, 14, 22, 35, 48,  “A Crowne of Sonnets dedicated to Love (known as the Corona)

Elizabeth Cary (1589-1635)

• The Tragedy of Miriam 

Robert Herrick (1591-1674)*

• Selections from Hesperides: “The Argument of His Book”, “Upon the Loss of His Mistresses”, “The Vine”, “Dreams”, “Delight in Disorder”, “His Farewell to Sack”, “Corinna’s Going A-Maying”, “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time”, “The Hock Cart, or Harvest Home”, “How Roses Came Red”, “Upon the Nipples of Julia’s Breast”, “Upon Jack and Jill, Epigram”, “To Marigolds”, “His Prayer to Ben Jonson”, “The Bad Season Makes the Poet Sad”, “The Night-Piece, to Julia”, “Upon His Verses”, “His Return to London”, “Upon Julia’s Clothes”, “Upon Prue, His Maid”, “To His Book’s End”
• Selections from Noble Numbers: “To His Conscience”, “Another Grace for a Child”

Anonymous[?] (pub. 1592)

• Arden of Faversham 

George Herbert* (1593-1633)

• Selections from The Temple: “The Altar”, “Redemption”, “Easter”, “Easter Wings”, “Affliction (1)”, “Prayer (1)”, “Jordan (1)”, “Church Monuments”, “The Windows”, “Denial”, “Virtue”, “Man”, “Jordan (2)”, “Time”, “The Bunch of Grapes”, “The Pilgrimage”, “The Holdfast”, “The Collar”, “The Pulley”, “The Flower”, “The Forerunners”, “Discipline”, “Death”, “Love (3)”

Hester Pulter (c. 1605-1678), from the Pulter Project, https://pulterproject.northwestern.edu/

• Introductory Material, https://pulterproject.northwestern.edu/about-hester-pulter-and-the-manuscript.html
• Poem 1, “The Eclipse”
• Poem 2, “The Invitation into the Country”
• Poem 6, “Universal Dissolution, Made When I Was with Child, of my 15th Child”
• Poem 7, “On Those Two Unparalleled Friends, Sir George Lisle and Sir Charles Lucas, Who Were Shot to Death at Colchester”
• Poem 8, “On that Unparalleled Prince Charles the First, His Horrid Murder”
• Poem 10, “Upon the Death of my Dear and Lovely Daughter”
• Poem 17, “The Circle [1]”
• Poem 28, “O, My Afflicted, Solitary Soul”
• Poem 32, “Aletheia’s Pearl”
• Poem 45, “This Was Written in 1648, When I Lay in, With my Son John”
• Poem 52, “The Wish”
• Emblem 3, “Heliotropians”
• Emblem 16, “The Cockatrice”
• Poem 101, Emblem 36, “Doves and Pearls”

John Milton (1608-1674)

• • Poems*
    • Longer Poems: “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity”, “On Shakespeare”, “L’Allegro”, “Il Penseroso”, “Lycidas”
    • Sonnets: “How Soon Hath Time”, “On the New Forcers of Conscience under the Long Parliament”, “To the Lord General Cromwell, 1652”, “When I Consider How My Light is Spent”, “On the Late Massacre in Piedmont”, “Methought I Saw My Late Espoused Saint”
  • Comus
  • Paradise Lost*

• Samson Agonistes*

• Areopagitica (Norton selection)*

Querelle des femmes (debate about women and gender) (1620)

• Hic Mulier

• Haec Vir

Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)*

• Poems: “The Coronet”, “Bermudas”, “A Dialogue Between the Soul and the Body”, “The Nymph Complaining for the Death of Her Fawn”, “To His Coy Mistress”, “The Definition of Love”, “The Picture of Little T.C. in a Prospect of Flowers”, ‘The Mower Against Flowers”, “Damon the Mower”, “The Mower to the Glowworms”, “The Mower’s Song”, “The Garden”, “An Horatian Ode”, “Upon Appleton House”

Margaret Cavendish (1623-1673)*

• The Blazing World 

• Selections from Poems and Fancies: “The Poetess’s Hasty Resolution”, “The Hunting of the Hare”

Thomas Traherne (c. 1636-1674)

• “Centuries of Meditation [From The Third Century]”, “Wonder”, “On Leaping over the Moon”

Katherine Philips (d. 1664)* 

• Poems: “A Married State”, “Upon the Double Murder of King Charles”, “Friendship’s Mystery To My Dearest Lucasta”, “To Mrs. M.A. at Parting”, “On the Death of My First and Dearest Child Hector Phillips”

Last revised 2023