Untitled - Sexey's School Moodle

perceived theatrical venues to be the setting for both transgressive—immoral, lewd, and
profane—impulses and subversive behavior, and repetitively campaigned for either their
censure or their closure (Crewe xv, Stallybrass et al. 92). Nevertheless, to the likes of
Stephen Greenblatt, the Renaissance represented a “totalizing society” which promoted
the proliferation of tremendously prominent and inalienable work of arts and contributed
to the establishment of such acclaimed and revered authors as Shakespeare
(Shakespearean 2).
In tracing the evolution of the English literary canon from the Middle Ages to the
late Eighteenth Century Trevor Ross observes that in 1595 a Cambridge don by the name
of Willliam Covell argued that English universities should canonize their authors in order
to raise England’s status at home and abroad as a “symbol of literary eminence” (87) and
concludes that “canon-making [in the sixteenth] was primarily to enhance the value of
literature in the vernacular and to help foster the English literary system” (91). In An
Essay of Dramatic Poesy, Dryden praises the works of Ben Jonson, Francis Beaumont,
and John Fletcher as best embodying the standards of the English canon, while he
unconditionally situates William Shakespeare as superior to all other writers,
“Shakespeare was the Homer, or father of our dramatic poets” (383). Interestingly
enough, while Dryden’s criticism marks the beginning of a tradition which regards
Shakespeare as the greatest writer in English literature he also condemns the playwright
for privileging what Dryden believed to be a genre stigmatized by predominantly
popular, i.e. “low,” levels of consumption and more specifically, for the transgressive
character of some of his plays. As Ben Jonson did before him, Dryden repeatedly
attempted to discern between high/low audiences, particularly pertaining to the crowds of
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