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The Importance of the Third Stage-High Conception of Poetry This brief survey of the evolution of criticism during the Elizabethan age makes it clear that the most important stage in this evolution is the third one, when there was much thinking over the nature and function of poetry, and an English theory of poetry was formulated.Poets were regarded as spiritual legislators and reformers; the function of poetry was considered to be to delight as well as to instruct.It can attain perfection only by a divine instinct, or by a great excel- lence of nature or by vast observation and experience of the world.The conception of poetry, and the function of a poet, was high.

The Importance of the Third Stage-High Conception of Poetry
This brief survey of the evolution of criticism during the Elizabethan age makes it clear
that the most important stage in this evolution is the third one, when there was much
thinking over the nature and function of poetry, and an English theory of poetry was
formulated. Poetry, and all imaginative literature, continued to be justified allegorically, as
in the middle ages. The conception of poetry, and the function of a poet, was high. Poets
were regarded as spiritual legislators and reformers; the function of poetry was considered
to be to delight as well as to instruct.
To be truly and correctly understood, it was supposed, poetry must be moralised and
interpretated allegorically. Poetry, in its highest form, is the art of making, and the poet is a
maker, a creator. It can attain perfection only by a divine instinct, or by a great excel- lence
of nature or by vast observation and experience of the world. It is a heavenly gift, the voice
of the divine speaking through the poet, but it is much abused and debased. It is to be
noted that even the Puritans and moralists who attacked poetry acknowledged its
greatness. It was the abuse of poetry which was attacked, and not poetry as such. Says
Spingarn, “Throughout the Elizabethan age, there was this similarity in the point of view of
those who attacked and those who defended poetry. Both sides admitted that not poetry,But its abuse, is to be disparaged, and they differed chiefly in that,The one side insisted
almost entirely on the ideal perfection of the Poetic art, while the other laid stress on the
debased state into which It had fallen.”