Elizabethan literature

Literature produced during the reign of Elizabeth I of England (1558–1603). This period saw a remarkable growth of the arts in England, and the literature of the time is characterized by a new energy, originality, and confidence. Renaissance humanism, Protestant zeal, and geographical and scientific discovery all contributed to this upsurge of creative power. Drama was the dominant form of the age, and the plays of William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe were popular with all levels of society. Other writers of the period include Edmund Spenser, and Philip Sidney. See also English literature.

Elizabethan drama broke away from religious domination, which was the major focus of the medieval mystery play and morality play. Elizabethan drama often used poetical metre (rhythm) for its dialogue, especially the five-foot iambic pentameter (pairs of syllables: unstressed followed by stressed). Both Shakespeare and Marlowe often used controversial subjects for their drama, including the question of political power (in Marlowe's Tamberlaine the Great (two parts; 1587–88) and Shakespeare's Macbeth (1606), for example). Other, lesser playwrights wrote in a similar style to Shakespeare and Marlowe; The Spanish Tragedy (c. 1590) by Thomas Kyd is sometimes said to have been an influence upon Shakespeare's Hamlet (1601–02). As the Jacobean period commences, the content of the drama darkens appreciably, and the plays of dramatists such as John Webster are more overtly violent than those of the Elizabethan period, in which (although there are exceptions to this) violent action is often psychological and usually takes place offstage.

The attractions of the theatre should not obscure the quite different work being done by writers such as Edmund Spenser, who developed lengthy pastoral verse (treating rural life with nostalgia) in English (The Faerie Queene, 1590–96) and Sir Philip Sidney who incorporated pastoral verse and themes into his work of verse and prose fiction Acardia (1590) and who began a type of literary theory in his Apologie for Poetry (1595), in which he defined the role of the poet in society. John Lyly was another Elizabethan dramatist and author who contributed to the wide variety of literature available to an increasingly literate public (possibly half the population had minimal literacy by 1600).

During this period, the resources of English were increased by the free adoption of words from Latin. This was accompanied by a growing belief that English was capable of all the requirements of great literature. There was a balance between the university and courtly elements and the coarse gusto of popular culture. Music was closely related to literature, and competence in singing and musical composition was seen as a normal social skill. Successive editions of the Bible were produced during these years, written with dignity, vividness, and the deliberate intention of reaching a universal audience, culminating in the influential King James edition of 1611.