The English Reformation, Renaissance, and Elizabethan Era: A Journey Through History

The Reformation in England was started by King Henry VIII. He declared the break with Rome, carried out a wholesale suppression of the monasteries, confiscated the property of the Catholic Church, and proclaimed himself the head of the Church of England. The new religious dogma known as Protestantism had been gaining ground among the population.

The absolute monarchy in England reached its summit during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. The progress of bourgeois economy made England a powerful state and enabled her in 1588 to inflict a defeat on the Spanish Armada.

The Renaissance indicates a revival of Classical (Greek and Roman) arts and sciences after the dark ages of medieval obscurantism. It is commonly applied to the movement or period in western civilization, which marks the transition from the Middle Ages to the modern world.

The study and propagation of classical learning and art was carried on by the progressive thinkers of the Renaissance, who held their chief interest in humanism, his environment and doings, and his brave fight for the emancipation of man from the tyranny of the church and feudal dogmas. For the first time in history, the medieval minds saw the beauty of the human form and learned about the importance of human life and human value. Man began to live for his own sake more than for God and for the next world.

The English Renaissance was a cultural and artistic movement in England dating from the late 15th century to the early 17th century. It is associated with the pan-European Renaissance that is usually regarded as beginning in Italy in the late 14th century.

The Elizabethan era in the second half of the 16th century is usually regarded as the height of the English Renaissance.

The creator of The Tragic History of Doctor Faustus, Christopher Marlowe, was the only dramatist of the time who is ever compared with Shakespeare. Blank verse, unrhymed iambic pentameter, used in his plays, was the chief verse form used by Shakespeare.