Rowse's England
G. R. Elton
The Elizabethan Renaissance: The Life of the Society A. L. Rowse (Macmillan £3.50) Sixteen years ago Dr Rowse published the second volume of his trilogy on the age of Elizabeth. Now after several books have intervened, he presents the first part of volume three which in course of time has outgrown its intended size. "The life of the society" during the Elizabethan Renaissance (that there was a Renaissance and that it was Burckhardt's is firmly asserted) will be followed by a study of "the cultural achievement." The whole will erect a solid monument to a lifetime's love affair with that age.
The chapter headings suggest a book in two parts: on the one hand, a study of the social strata from the court downwards — social history of the new kind — and on the other, descriptions of food. sexual behaviour, sports and customs — social history of the old kind. These expectations are not exactly fulfilled. Dr Rowse rather despises quantification and analysis his preferred method is descriptive and cumulative, drawing on the resources of a remarkable memory stocked by enormous reading. The only statistical study which he is willing to adopt is Jordan's work on philanthropy, and he will not apparently agree that both the figures and the inferences of that book have, under scrutiny, lost most of their first charm. Despite the many interesting things said about the ruling classes, their hectic lives and hectic building, their search for and exploitation of patronage, we do not really receive a precise understanding of this society from within itself. Sharp asides denouncing those who do not believe that the gentry rose or think that the aristocracy was in crisis do not exorcise a feeling that a heaping of detail, necessarily selective, cannot prove the case for the explosive expansiveness insisted on. Yet probably Dr Rowse is right in the main. His admiration for those upper classes inclines him to see all their. doings and fortunes in the best light. as he tells us, several times, he has after all seen the splendours they have left behind. But did everything go so well? Even lower down the scale? Dr Rowse recognises that this was a 'subsistence economy.' and such societies are rarely as cheerful as this one is made to appear.
On the other hand, Dr Rowse is much too learned a man not to make more of his description of social habits than mere antiquarian quaintness. There is much to be learned here, not least from his savage account of prevalent beliefs in astrology and witchcraft. Puritans, of course, were worst in this (as indeed they were): but only that extremely credulous practitioner, John Dee, is treated with compassion — " we must remind ourselves that he was a gentleman." Dr Rowse has made excellent use of the records kept by Simon Forman, an astrologer and physician who collected dossiers on his clients and on himself: this material should be published. In this second half of the book we ente'r much more fully into the reality of the time. Dr Rowse's own devotion to pride of ancestry and the ethos of an elite resting on breeding, education and wealth help him to an easy grasp of the scene: this is where his rejection of tables, figures and interpretative theories really pays off. He knows those people personally and intimately. Rushing about fifty years and fifty counties, he is at home everywhere; the reader need do no more than bow as he is introduced and keep his ears open. Maybe it is a flood, but it is a controlled flood moving with a purpose: not everybody's preferred method, but very good history nevertheless.
Dr Rowse on the Elizabethans will never tire himself or his audience; Dr Rowse on the twentieth century is another matter. One could wish he might be persuaded to remove his asides on mass populations and urban sprawl, on the pervasive idiocy of men and especially of the common people, his outdated quarrel with the Victorians and his ill-tempered strictures on fellow historians, usually unnamed. If he did not force us to peer through the haze created by his hatred for the age he lives in, we should be so much better able to see the glories of the past he is so attractively anxious to display before us.
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