Elizabethan Era

8 Key excerpts on "Elizabethan Era"

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  English Lit 101

  From Jane Austen to George Orwell and the Enlightenment to Realism, an essential guide to Britain's greatest writers and works

  • Brian Boone(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Adams Media

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 2

  The Elizabethan Era

  Also known as the English Renaissance, the Elizabethan Era was the golden age of English literature. This time period, which ran approximately from 1558 to 1603, was an unparalleled era of growth and quality of the written word, characterized by the development of the novel, new and lasting innovations in poetry, and new styles of theater that would incubate the most important and popular plays in the English language.

  While Queen Elizabeth I, the monarch of the time, didn’t directly affect the art of the day, the tone of her reign was one of English pride, prosperity, and political dominance. The English were thriving, not merely surviving, and life was comfortable enough that writing was a viable trade, not just a pursuit afforded to those from wealthy families. (Theater was still viewed as a low art for commoners, but William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson would dispel that notion.)

  The Elizabethan Era was a great leap forward after the experimentation and baby steps of the previous 500 years, in which literature was primarily a tool for politics and religion. Writers now explored a variety of topics, especially any and all aspects of the human condition. But despite that commitment to realism, works were not presented in an entirely realistic way. Poems and theater of this era were especially noted for their flowery, emotional speech and were driven by meter and a rhyme scheme that was well suited to performance.

  Celebrating the language was a form of national pride—important as England circumnavigated and conquered the globe, spreading “Englishness” throughout. With this exploration and contact with other cultures came new words from foreign languages that writers were eager to add to their toolboxes. By doing so, these writers helped make English a vaster and more expressive language.

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  A Short History of Early Modern England

  British Literature in Context

  • Peter C. Herman(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  5 The Elizabethan Era (1558–1603)

  I. 1558–88

  When Elizabeth Tudor became queen of England in 1558, she inherited a depressed, dispirited nation. In a document entitled “The Distresses of the Commonwealth,” the clerk to the Privy Council, Armigail Waad, despaired at sufficiently describing England’s troubles “as they are so infinite there is such a throne of them, as no one man is able to rehearse or comprehend them.”1 Even so, one must try, and the clerk gave this summary of England’s state in 1558:

  The Queen poor. The realm exhausted. The nobility poor and decayed. Want of good captains and soldiers. The people out of order. Justice not executed. All things dear. Excess in meat, drink, and apparel. Division among ourselves. Wars with France and Scotland. The French King bestriding the realm., having one foot in Calais and the other in Scotland. Steadfast enmity but no steadfast friendship abroad.2

  Figure 5.1

  Queen Elizabeth I (‘The Ditchley portrait’) by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, c. 1592. © National Portrait Gallery, London.

  While Waad clearly likes engaging in the early modern penchant for exaggeration (after beginning to enumerate the “many and most grievous diseases” of the commonweal, he laments the term’s inappropriateness: “alas! What say I ‘weal,’ when in manner we have none at all”3 ), his assessment accurately describes England’s condition in 1558. England remained embroiled in a disastrous war with France – the late Queen Mary had lost England’s remaining outpost, Calais, and the heir to the French throne, the dauphin François, married Mary Stuart, creating the possibility of a French invasion from England’s northern border. The economy lay in ruins thanks to war coupled with the dilution of the currency, the crown was deeply in debt, and the populace both exhausted and traumatized by the violent gyrations over religion since Henry VIII separated from Rome.

  Certainly, the new queen had her virtues. She was young (25 years old), very attractive (no small advantage on the marriage market), exceedingly smart, and exceedingly well educated. Fluent in Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish, Elizabeth Tudor (like her father) played the virginal (an early keyboard instrument) and composed verse. She also wrote prayers in a variety of languages, and translated Boethius. Most importantly, however, Elizabeth possessed extremely good political skills. She knew whom to trust, and she brought into her council such eminently capable men as William Cecil, later Baron Burghley

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  A Short Sketch of English Literature

  From Chaucer to the Present Time

  • El. Mann(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter

    (Publisher)

  The Elizabethan Period. 9 T h e E l i z a b e t h a n P e r i o d . 1558—1642 (including the reign of James I., and that of Charles I., to the out-break of the Civil War.) This period which includes the reign of James I. and partly that of Charles I., extends over a much greater space than the reign of Queen Elizabeth proper. As it was the most brilliant in English literature, its influence continued to be felt for a long time. The drama constituted its chief literary feature; and its close is contemporary with the outbreak of the Civil War.' It contains the noblest names of English literature, those of Spenser, Shakspeare, Hooker, Bacon, besides a host of others who have almost been overlooked in the crowd. The reign of Elizabeth was also one of important political activity and the time of great discoveries, and counted as many heroes as poets, and not seldom, both these characters were united in the same per-son, as in the case of Sir Philip Sidney (1554—1586). A far greater poet, Edmund Spenser (1553—1599), the author of the Fcerie Queene (Fairy Queen), was a native of London. He was descended from a good family, though not rich, and received his education at the university of Cambridge. When he left the university, he resided for some time in the north of England, and there published his first poem, The Shepherd's Calendar, a series of pastorals, divided into twelve parts or months. A friend, (Mr. Gabriel Harvey), persuaded him to return to London and introduced him to Sir Philip Sidney, himself a poet and one of the greatest ornaments of the brilliant court of Elizabeth. Sidney, in his turn, recommended the poet to Dudley, Earl of Leicester (his uncle) the favourite of Eliza-beth, and after a long delay, he received a grant of for-feited land in the county of Cork, Ireland.

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  English Literature from the Old English Period Through the Renaissance

  • Britannica Educational Publishing, J.E. Luebering(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Britannica Educational Publishing

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 3

  THE RENAISSANCE PERIOD (1550–1660)

  B y the end of the Middle English period, the groundwork was laid for the remarkable writing of the Renaissance. In a tradition of literature notable for its exacting and brilliant achievements, the Elizabethan and early Stuart periods have been said to represent the most brilliant century of all. (The reign of Elizabeth I began in 1558 and ended with her death in 1603. She was succeeded by the Stuart king James VI of Scotland, who took the title James I of England as well. English literature of his reign as James I, from 1603 to 1625, is properly called Jacobean.) These years produced a gallery of authors of genius, some of whom have never been surpassed, and conferred on scores of lesser talents the enviable ability to write with fluency, imagination, and verve. From one point of view, this sudden renaissance looks radiant, confident, heroic—and belated, but all the more dazzling for its belatedness. Yet, from another point of view, this was a time of unusually traumatic strain, in which English society underwent massive disruptions that transformed it on every front and decisively affected the life of every individual. In the brief, intense moment in which England assimilated the European Renaissance, the circumstances that made the assimilation possible were already disintegrating and calling into question the newly won certainties, as well as the older truths that they were dislodging. This doubleness, of new possibilities and new doubts simultaneously apprehended, gives the literature its unrivaled intensity.

  SOCIAL CONDITIONS

  In this period England’s population doubled, prices rocketed, rents followed, old social loyalties dissolved, and new industrial, agricultural, and commercial veins were first tapped. Real wages hit an all-time low in the 1620s, and social relations were plunged into a state of fluidity from which the merchant and the ambitious lesser gentleman profited at the expense of the aristocrat and the labourer, as satires and comedies current from the 1590s complain. Behind the Elizabethan vogue for pastoral poetry lies the fact of the prosperity of the enclosing sheep farmer, who sought to increase pasture at the expense of the peasantry. Tudor platitudes about order and degree could neither combat nor survive the challenge posed to rank by these arrivistes. The position of the crown, politically dominant yet financially insecure, had always been potentially unstable, and, when Charles I lost the confidence of his greater subjects in the 1640s, his authority crumbled. Meanwhile, the huge body of poor fell ever further behind the rich. The pamphlets of Thomas Harman (1566) and Robert Greene (1591–92), as well as William Shakespeare’s King Lear

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  Events that Changed Great Britain from 1066 to 1714

  • Frank W. Thackeray, John E. Findling, Frank W. Thackeray, John E. Findling(Authors)
  • 2004(Publication Date)
  • Greenwood

    (Publisher)

  7 Elizabethan England, 1558-1603 INTRODUCTION The phrase "Elizabethan England" derives from the long reign of Eliza- beth I, who occupied the throne from 1558 until 1603. The daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth was born on September 7, 1533. She received a good education under the direction of Catherine Parr, her father's last wife, and became proficient in Latin, Greek, Italian, and French. During the reign of the Catholic Queen Mary (1533-1558), Eliza- beth, who always embraced Protestantism, was briefly under suspicion for treason, but nothing was proven against her and she was released. Her succession in 1558 upon Mary's death was peaceful. At the beginning of her reign, Elizabeth received great help from Wil- liam Cecil (Lord Burghley), whom she appointed as her secretary and chief minister. A wily politician and devoted Protestant, Cecil was an able and trusted counselor to Elizabeth for forty years. He advised her to take the throne as a Protestant despite the domestic risk of antagonizing bish- ops and Scots, and the international risk of alienating Catholic foreign rulers. Papal supremacy, restored by Mary, was again abolished, and the spiritual powers Henry had held were given to her, although she was called supreme governor rather than supreme head. The Catholic mass was again outlawed, and the doctrine of transubstantiation (the idea that the wine and bread of communion actually become the blood and flesh of Christ during the sacrament) was officially denied. Protestant sufferings under Mary between 1555 and 1558 were chroni- cled by John Foxe in a long book known commonly as the Book of Martyrs, which, in part, drew a connection between the Christian martyrs in Queen Elizabeth I signed the death warrant for her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots, in 1587. For many years the English have looked back with great favor upon the reign of Elizabeth ("Good Queen Bess").

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  The Making of the Modern English State, 1460-1660

  • Philip Edwards(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  6 The Reign of Elizabeth I, 1558±1603 `And great Eliza's glorious name may ring': 1 the monarchy of Elizabeth I The woman who became the last Tudor sovereign was only 25 years of age at her accession and unmarried. No one in Novem-ber 1558 had any idea that she would rule for such a long period ± nearly 45 years ± down to 1603, or that she would preside over one of the truly great epochs in English history. Indeed the key-note of 1558±9 was one of tension and uncertainty. England seemed beset by crises: a religious crisis occasioned by continual changes in belief and devotion; a dynastic crisis created by the claim of Mary Queen of Scots to the English throne; an interna-tional crisis engendered by the inherited war against France and the French presence in Scotland; and an economic and demo-graphic crisis owing to a vicious bout of influenza that seems to have reduced the population quite substantially in the years after 1556. Sir Thomas Smith might well bemoan that `I never saw England . . . weaker in strength, money and riches.' Yet despite this inauspicious start Elizabeth stamped her per-sonality on the second half of the century, and there can be little doubt of the great reputation that Elizabeth I has enjoyed over the centuries as the saviour of her country and as the epitome of Englishness. The vast majority of historians have praised her highly, beginning with William Camden in the early seventeenth century. David Hume in the eighteenth century, although dislik-ing the Tudors as unenlightened despots, praised the queen's abilities which `appear not to have been surpassed by any person who ever filled the throne'. Hume concluded that `[f]ew sover-eigns of England succeeded to the throne in more difficult cir-cumstances; and none ever conducted the government with such uniform success and felicity'. In the nineteenth century even the Whig Lord Macaulay regarded Elizabeth's age as a golden one, whose `memory is still dear to the hearts of a free people'.

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  The Renaissance Literature Handbook

  • Susan Bruce, Rebecca Steinberger, Susan Bruce, Rebecca Steinberger(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Continuum

    (Publisher)

  Several did in fact attempt assassinations, and this provoked increased state suppression of Catholic orders such as the Jesuits. Widespread fear of foreign and Catholic intervention continued throughout Elizabeth’s reign, affecting debates about Elizabeth’s potential marriages and increasing difficulties with Catholic Spain, fears justi-fied by the attempt to invade England by sea in 1588. The armada’s famous defeat ended that threat, but hostility to Catholics, especially Catholics on the continent, continued long into the future, and is frequently recognizable in the drama of the period in the figure of the evil Cardinal or the corrupt continental locations of Italy and Spain. These political conflicts are one important face of the Reformation, but just as important were the personal changes: new ways of thinking that, among other things, provided a new context for literature. A Lutheran emphasis on every Christian’s inner experience helped foster patterns of inwardness and individual responsibility that, some would claim, define the period, and remain characteristic of the modern Western world. Gender Conflict: Women in Their Places As print and a new religious culture encouraged more and more questioning of received ideas, conceptions of gender also began to shift and change. The historian Joan Kelly-Gadol famously entitled a 1977 essay ‘Did Women Have a Renaissance?’ and thirty years of scholarship has worked to give nuanced, if conflicting, answers to that question (see Chapters 2, 6 and 7). The period whose very name suggests liberation had a very mixed record for women, as the new gender roles created offered restrictions as often as they offered opportun-ity. One central aspect of the history of women in the Renaissance was the changing nature of the household, which reflected both economic shifts and the The Historical Context of English Renaissance Literature 31

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  Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I

  • Edmund Spenser, George Armstrong Wauchope, (Authors)
  • 2005(Publication Date)
  • Perlego

    (Publisher)

  Add to this intense delight in life, with all its mystery, beauty, and power, the keen zest for learning which filled the air that men breathed, and it is easy to understand that the time was ripe for a new and brilliant epoch in literature. First among the poetic geniuses of the Elizabethan period came Edmund Spenser with his Faerie Queene, the allegory of an ideal chivalry. This poem is one of the fruits of that intellectual awakening which first fertilized Italian thought in the twelfth century, and, slowly spreading over Europe, made its way into England in the fifteenth century. The mighty impulse of this New Learning culminated during the reign of the Virgin Queen in a profound quickening of the national consciousness, and in arousing an intense curiosity to know and to imitate the rich treasures of the classics and romance. Its first phase was the classical revival. The tyrannous authority of ecclesiasticism had long since been broken; a general reaction from Christian asceticism had set in; and by the side of the ceremonies of the church had been introduced a semi-pagan religion of art—the worship of moral and sensuous beauty. Illiteracy was no longer the style at court. Elizabeth herself set the example in the study of Greek. Books and manuscripts were eagerly sought after, Scholars became conversant with Homer, Plato, Aristotle, and the great tragic poets Sophocles, Euripides, and Æschylus; and translations for the many of Vergil, Ovid, Plautus, Terence, and Seneca poured forth from the printing-presses of London. The English mind was strongly tempered by the idealistic philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, and the influence of Latin tragedy and comedy was strongly felt by the early English drama. Along with this classical culture came a higher appreciation of the beauty of mediævalism

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