Buchara state university m. Bakoeva, E. Muratova, M. Ochilova english literature

practical courses. As the children o f the middle class grew better
educated, the middle class itself grew in power.
During Elizabeth’s reign, England began to gain supremacy on
the seas. The Elizabethan Age is the age o f poetry. Except perhaps
for the essayist Francis Bacon and the critic Christopher Marlowe,
people were not yet writing prose o f literary quality. Some
Elizabethan writers dealt exclusively in lyric poetry, but many were
also playwrights writing their plays in verse.
The Elizabethan period was the golden age o f English drama.
In 1576, James Burbage built England’s first playhouse, called

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The Theatre, in a suburb o f London. Until this time, drama had
been performed in the streets, at homes and palaces, and at English
universities. After Burbage built The Theatre, other playhouses
were constructed, which rapidly increased the popularity of drama.
A group o f leading Elizabethan playwrights was known as the
“University Wits” because they had attended the famous English
universities at Oxford and Cambridge. These playwrights included
Robert Greene, Christopher Marlowe, and George Peele. Marlowe
was the most important dramatist among :he Wits.
William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and other more than a dozen
first-rate playwrights also created their skillful dramas at that
period. Blank verse, introduced into the language by Surrey,
became the main form for writing tragedies and comedies.
In 1600, when the new century began, Elizabeth was an aging
queen not in the best of health. She was chi Idless. After her death,
in 1603, King James o f Scotland, the son o f Mary, Queen of Scots,