AGE OF ELIZABETH

The Age Of Elizabeth

The period between the later part of the sixteenth and the earlier part of seventeenth centuries is called the "Age of Elizabeth" which produced many excellent prose works, although it is essentially an age of poetry.

During this age, the emergence of the first national poet (since Chaucer's death in 1400) of Edmund Spenser, along with Christopher Marlow, Philip Sydney, William Shakespeare, Ben Johnson, and Francis Bacon is noticed. Spencer produced "Shepherd's Calendar", "The Faerie Queen"; Marlowe's poem "Hero and Leander", and his translation of Homer's "Iliad" and "Odyssey" are remarkable. And besides his poems, Philip Sydney wrote his romance prose "Arcadia", and The Defense of Poisie, a critical essay.

William Shakespeare's appearance as a great force in the literary arena of English Literature secured him the foremost place in the world's literature, he is over the ages a universal poet and dramatist. His famous works are "Henry VI", "Richard III", "The Comedy of Errors", "Titus Andronicus", "The Taming of the Shrew", "Love's Labour's Lost", "Romeo and Juliet", "A Midsummer Night's Dream", "The Two Gentlemen of Verona", "King John", "Richard II", "The Merchant of Venice", "Henry IV", "Henry IV (Part Two)", "Much Ado about Nothing", "Henry V", "Julius Caesar", "The Merry Wives of Windsor", "As You Like It", "Hamlet", "Twelfth Night", "Trollus and Cressida', "All's Well that Ends Well", "Measure for Measure", "Othello", "Macbeth", "King Lear", "Antony and Cleopatra", "Timon of Athens", "Pericles", "Cymbeline", "The Winter's Tale", "The Tempest", and "Henry VIII".

Ben Johnson's powerful dramas, like "Every Man in His Humor", "Cyntia's Revels", "The Poetster", "The Alchemist", "The Volpone", "The Silent Woman" etc. and Bacon's "The Advancement of Learning", "Novum Organum", "The Instauratio" and his famous "Essays" accelerated immensely the steps of growth of the English literature of the age.