Theme 4: Renaissance. Renaissance in English literature Plan

The Height of the Renaissance

Under the reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603), order was restored, and England entered upon her most glorious age. Elizabeth was only twenty-five when she assumed the throne, never married, and ruled wisely and well for forty-five years.

Interested in education, Queen Elizabeth established one hundred free grammar schools in all parts of the country. These schools were open to both sexes of all ranks. In 1579, Gresham College was founded in London to cater to the needs of the middle class. Unlike the classical curriculum offered by Oxford and Cambridge, its curriculum included law, medicine and other practical courses. As the children of 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 an age of poetry. Except perhaps for the essayist Francis Bacon and the critic Christopher Marlowe, people were not yet writing prose of literary quality. Some Elizabethan writers dealt exclusively in lyric poetry, but many were also playwrights writing their plays in verse.

The Elizabethan period was golden age of English drama. In 1576, James Burbage built England’s first playhouse, called The Theatre, in a suburb of London. Until this time, drama had been performed in the streets, in 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 of leading Elizabethan playwrights was known as the “University Wits” because they had attended the famous English universities at Oxford or Cambridge. These playwrights included Robert Greene, Christopher Marlowe, and George Peele. Marlowe was the most important dramatist among the 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 childless. After her death, in 1603, King James of Scotland, the son of Mary Queen of Scots, became the king of England.

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