The Elizabethan era is considered one of the most prolific in the history of English literature, producing such poets and dramatists as Sidney, Spenser, Donne, Marlowe, Jonson and Shakespeare.Īs an unmarried queen, Elizabeth had to establish her authority in a patriarchal society and refute the widespread conviction that women were unfit to rule. This shift in England’s political fortunes was accompanied by a remarkable flowering of vernacular literary expression and an unprecedented increase in knowledge of the world beyond England. Her 44-year reign, though not without ideological tensions and conflict, provided stability to the country, firmly established Protestantism as the state religion and consolidated England’s position as a political power in Europe. In 1558, Elizabeth I, daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, came to the throne following the death of her Catholic half-sister, Mary I. With each shift in allegiance came the threat of violence and persecution for those who were deemed disloyal and heretical by the ruling order. In the decades preceding Shakespeare’s birth, England underwent a prolonged period of religious and political tumult as the throne passed swiftly between Henry VIII’s three children-Edward, Mary and Elizabeth-swinging the country between Catholicism and Protestantism. This led to the eventual founding of the Church of England in 1536 with the king, and not the pope, at its head. 1575) (Wikimedia Commons)įollowing the Reformation that swept through Europe and as a product of Henry VIII’s desire to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, in 1527, England split from the Roman Catholic church. The "Darnley Portrait" of Elizabeth I of England (c.
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