ABSTRACT
JONSON, last of the English humanists, only-just missed the full effects of the Puritan disaster. He outlived a generation which had fought a losing battle against the assemblies, corporations and conventicles. It was more than a contest of persons and sects. It raised the most important issue with which England was ever confronted, dividing not only parties and professions, but the minds of those who participated. Many of the most ferocious enemies of humanism were renegade poets, actors and dramatists. Donne, who began as a humanist, climbed at last into the pulpit as a prophet of doom. Corbet took orders and became a preacher. Marston forsook the stage for a country rectory. Pamphleteers like Munday and Gosson, who lashed the poets in a frenzy of indignation, addressed the pious world as brands snatched from the burning. Even the Protestant party and ministers of the Crown were not always sure of their attitude. There was a time when it looked as though the Reformation itself might encourage and use the play of free minds in its struggle with the Papists. The first Cromwell made a serious effort to mobilise the forces of merriment against the Catholic Church, while under Elizabeth cardinals, bishops and abbots were mocked in anti-clerical plays. There were masked revelries in the streets of London with the connivance of such pillars of authority as Sir William Cecil. This was a generation 192caught between the possibilities of a positive humanism and the moral forces which culminated in the negative ecstasies of the Fifth Monarchy.
