The English Renaissance was a cultural and artistic movement in England dating
from the early 16th century to the early 17th century. It is associated with the pan-
European Renaissance that many cultural historians believe originated in northern
Italy in the fourteenth century. This era in English cultural history is sometimes
referred to as "the age of Shakespeare" or "the Elizabethan era."
Poets such as Edmund Spenser and John Milton produced works that demonstrated
an increased interest in understanding English Christian beliefs, such as the
allegorical representation of the Tudor Dynasty in The Faerie Queen and the retelling
of mankind’s fall from paradise in Paradise Lost; playwrights, such as Christopher
Marlowe and William Shakespeare, composed theatrical representations of the
English take on life, death, and history. Nearing the end of the Tudor Dynasty,
philosophers like Sir Thomas More and Sir Francis Bacon published their own ideas
about humanity and the aspects of a perfect society, pushing the limits of
metacognition at that time. England came closer to reaching modern science with the
Baconian Method, a forerunner of the Scientific Method.
The steadfast English mind clung to the old order of things, and relinquished with
reluctance the last relics of a style that had been for centuries a part of its life. If it
must have the egg and dart, it would keep the Tudor flower too. Thus all the
Renaissance that came into England, after the bloody Wars of the Roses made it
possible to think of art and luxury, paid toll to the Gothic on the way, and the result
was a singular miscellany, for its Gothic had now forgotten, and its Renaissance had
never known why it had existed. It is rather the talent with which the medley of
material was handled, the broad masses, yet curious elaboration, and the scale of
magnificence, that give the style its charm rather than anything in its original and
bastard composition.
Something of this same charm is to be found in most of the literature of the era, in
accordance with that subtle relationship existing between the literature and the art of
any period. It is in the lawless mixture of Gothic and Grecian characterizing the
Elizabethan that Shakespeare peoples his A Midsummer Night's Dream with Gothic fairies reveling in the Athenian forest, and poet Edmund Spenser fills his pages with
a pageantry of medieval monsters and classic masks. Shakespeare is a peculiar
product of the Renaissance. The machinery of The Tempest and the setting of The
Merchant of Venice are direct results of its spirit.
from the early 16th century to the early 17th century. It is associated with the pan-
European Renaissance that many cultural historians believe originated in northern
Italy in the fourteenth century. This era in English cultural history is sometimes
referred to as "the age of Shakespeare" or "the Elizabethan era."
Poets such as Edmund Spenser and John Milton produced works that demonstrated
an increased interest in understanding English Christian beliefs, such as the
allegorical representation of the Tudor Dynasty in The Faerie Queen and the retelling
of mankind’s fall from paradise in Paradise Lost; playwrights, such as Christopher
Marlowe and William Shakespeare, composed theatrical representations of the
English take on life, death, and history. Nearing the end of the Tudor Dynasty,
philosophers like Sir Thomas More and Sir Francis Bacon published their own ideas
about humanity and the aspects of a perfect society, pushing the limits of
metacognition at that time. England came closer to reaching modern science with the
Baconian Method, a forerunner of the Scientific Method.
The steadfast English mind clung to the old order of things, and relinquished with
reluctance the last relics of a style that had been for centuries a part of its life. If it
must have the egg and dart, it would keep the Tudor flower too. Thus all the
Renaissance that came into England, after the bloody Wars of the Roses made it
possible to think of art and luxury, paid toll to the Gothic on the way, and the result
was a singular miscellany, for its Gothic had now forgotten, and its Renaissance had
never known why it had existed. It is rather the talent with which the medley of
material was handled, the broad masses, yet curious elaboration, and the scale of
magnificence, that give the style its charm rather than anything in its original and
bastard composition.
Something of this same charm is to be found in most of the literature of the era, in
accordance with that subtle relationship existing between the literature and the art of
any period. It is in the lawless mixture of Gothic and Grecian characterizing the
Elizabethan that Shakespeare peoples his A Midsummer Night's Dream with Gothic fairies reveling in the Athenian forest, and poet Edmund Spenser fills his pages with
a pageantry of medieval monsters and classic masks. Shakespeare is a peculiar
product of the Renaissance. The machinery of The Tempest and the setting of The
Merchant of Venice are direct results of its spirit.
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