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Overview of the Elizabethan Era

The Elizabethan Era was a golden age in English history during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I from 1558-1603. It saw the flourishing of English literature and poetry from playwrights like William Shakespeare. England also experienced a period of expansion and exploration abroad while establishing Protestant rule at home. However, less than 40 years after Elizabeth's death, England descended into civil war, showing how brief this period of peace and prosperity truly was.

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Muhammad Abdur-Rehman
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213 views3 pages

Overview of the Elizabethan Era

The Elizabethan Era was a golden age in English history during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I from 1558-1603. It saw the flourishing of English literature and poetry from playwrights like William Shakespeare. England also experienced a period of expansion and exploration abroad while establishing Protestant rule at home. However, less than 40 years after Elizabeth's death, England descended into civil war, showing how brief this period of peace and prosperity truly was.

Uploaded by

Muhammad Abdur-Rehman
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

The Elizabethan Era

 The Elizabethan Age is the time period associated with the reign of
Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603) and is often considered to be a golden
age in English history. It was an age considered to be the height of the
English Renaissance, and saw the full flowering of English literature and
English poetry. In Elizabethan theater, William Shakespeare, among
others, composed and staged plays in a variety of settings that broke
away from England's past style of plays. It was an age of expansion and
exploration abroad, while at home the Protestant Reformation was
established and successfully defended against the Catholic powers of
the Continent.

 The Elizabethan Age is viewed so highly because of the contrasts with


the periods before and after. It was a brief period of largely internal
peace between the English Reformation, with battles between
Protestants and Catholics, and the battles between parliament and the
monarchy that would engulf the seventeenth century. The Protestant
Catholic divide was settled, for a time, by the Elizabethan Religious
Settlement and parliament was still not strong enough to challenge
royal absolutism.
 During this period England had a centralized, well organized, and
effective government, largely a result of the reforms of Henry VII and
Henry VIII. Economically the country began to benefit greatly from
the new era of Atlantic trade.

 The Elizabethan era also saw England begin to play a leading role in
the slave trade and saw a series of bloody English military
campaigns in still Catholic Ireland—notably the Desmond Rebellions
and the Nine Years' War.

 Despite the heights achieved during the era, less than 40 years after
the death of Elizabeth the country was to descend into the English
Civil War.
 The Elizabethan Age was characterized by a renewed spirit of
adventure and discover and a renewed attention to older sources
of knowledge. In literature, the Petrarchan sonnet was imported
and modified by Shakespeare (creating what is now called the
Shakespearean sonnet), and the genre of tragicomedy was born.

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