Research Paper On Shakespeare's Time

1. THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE – SHAKESPEARE’S TIME Regarded as the cultural bridge between the Middle Ages and modern history, the Renaissance was a period in European history, from the 14th to the 17th century. The English Renaissance (1485-1625) was a cultural and artistic movement in England, the dominant art forms being literature and music. The Elizabethan literature (1558-1603), the time when most of Shakespeare’s works are created, included poets as Edmund Spenser, whose epic verse The Faerie Queene had a strong influence on English literature, but was eventually overshadowed by the lyrics of William Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s work rise to importance when Elizabeth I was in her third part of her reigning. The main forms of English literature were the poem and the drama. In the area of drama, no one matched William Shakespeare in terms of variety, excellent use of language, and profoundness. Shakespeare is highly regarded for his subject matter ranging from classical Greco-Roman stories to

Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton’s Gorboduc, published in 1561 is one of the first plays and first verse dramas in English to use blank verse. Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy followed it in 1592, which established the revenge play genre. In addition, his contemporaries considered Christopher Marlowe, with his greatest work Doctor Faustus, one of the chief playwrights. Recognizing as a great playwright as he used to be, Shakespeare was extremely influenced by Marlowe’s work. The English theater scene was the most crowded in Europe and performed for the wide public in the theaters, besides performing for the nobility and court in private performances. Among the others hosts in the theaters, there were the greatest playwrights like William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Christopher