ENGLISH RENAISSANCE

PERIOD
or
ELIZABETH PERIOD
LITERATURE
What is English Renaissance Period?

• The word ‘renaissance’ comes from the French for ‘rebirth’, so it

was a fitting name for the artistic and cultural transformation of Europe
from the late 14th to the early 17th Century.

• The Renaissance started in Italy in the late 14th Century and spread
across Europe, marking the transition from the Middle Ages to
modernity.

• Exactly when the Renaissance began in England depends on who you

listen to, and there is no consensus among historians and scholars.
• Some put the beginning of the English Renaissance in 1485, with the
rise of the Tudor dynasty, while others put it around 1520, during 
Henry VIII’s reign. What is certain is that the second half of the 16th
century, during Elizabeth I’s reign was the height of the English
Renaissance.
 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

• William Shakespeare ( bapt. 26th April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an

English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest
writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist.

• He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply
"the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 38
plays,154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some
of uncertain authorship.

• His plays have been translated into every major living language and are
performed more often than those of any other playwright. He remains
arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works
continue to be studied and reinterpreted.
What are the Shakespearean Drama?

• •Scholars of Elizabethan drama believe that William Shakespeare wrote at least

38 plays between 1590 and 1612. These dramatic works encompass a wide
range of subjects and styles, from the playful "A Midsummer Night's Dream" to
the gloomy "Macbeth.“

• Shakespeare's plays can be roughly divided into three genres—comedies,

histories, and tragedies—though some works, such as "The Tempest" and "The
Winter's Tale," straddle the boundaries between these categories.

• Shakespeare's first play is generally believed to be "Henry VI Part I," a history

play about English politics in the years leading up to the Wars of the Roses. The
play was possibly a collaboration between Shakespeare and Christopher
Marlowe, another Elizabethan dramatist who is best known for his tragedy
"Doctor Faustus.
 • Shakespeare's last play is believed to be "The Two Noble Kinsmen," a
tragicomedy co-written with John Fletcher in 1613, three years before
Shakespeare's death.

• Altogether Shakespeare's works include 38 plays, 2 narrative poems, 154

sonnets, and a variety of other poems. No original manuscripts of Shakespeare's
plays are known to exist today. It is actually thanks to a group of actors from
Shakespeare's company that we have about half of the plays at all.

• They collected them for publication after Shakespeare died, preserving the plays.
These writings were brought together in what is known as the First Folio. It
contained 36 of his plays, but none of his poetry. 
• Shakespeare’s legacy is as rich and diverse as his work; his plays have
spawned countless adaptations across multiple genres and cultures. His
plays have had an enduring presence on stage and film. His writings have
been compiled in various iterations of The Complete Works of William
Shakespeare, which include all of his plays, sonnets, and other poems.
William Shakespeare continues to be one of the most important literary
figures of the English language.
Title of Shakespeare’s Drama

"Henry VI Part I" (1589–1590)

"Henry VI Part II" (1590–1591)
"Henry VI Part III" (1590–1591)
"Richard III" (1592–1593)
"The Comedy of Errors" (1592–1593)
"Titus Andronicus" (1593–1594)
"The Taming of the Shrew" (1593–1594)
"The Two Gentlemen of Verona" (1594–1595)
"Love’s Labour’s Lost" (1594–1595)
" Romeo and Juliet " (1594–1595)
"Richard II" (1595–1596)
"A Midsummer Night’s Dream”(1595–1596)
"King John" (1596–1597)
"The Merchant of Venice" (1596–1597)
"Henry IV Part I" (1597–1598)
"Henry IV Part II" (1597–1598)
"Much Ado About Nothing " (1598–1599)
"Henry V" (1598–1599)
"Julius Caesar" (1599–1600)
"As You Like It" (1599–1600)
"Twelfth Night" (1599–1600)
"Hamlet" (1600–1601)
"The Merry Wives of Windsor" (1600–1601)
"Troilus and Cressida" (1601–1602)
 SHAKESPEARIAN SONNET
(SONNET 116)
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
 Summary: Sonnet 116

• This sonnet define love, by telling both what it is and is not. In the first
quatrain, the speaker says that love—”the marriage of true minds”—is
perfect and unchanging; it does not “admit impediments,” and it does
not change when it find changes in the loved one.
• In the second quatrain, the speaker tells what love is through a
metaphor: a guiding star to lost ships (“wand’ring barks”) that is not
susceptible to storms (it “looks on tempests and is never shaken”).
• In the third quatrain, the speaker again describes what love is not: it is
not susceptible to time. Though beauty fades in time as rosy lips and
cheeks come within “his bending sickle’s compass,” love does not
change with hours and weeks: instead, it “bears it out ev’n to the edge
of doom.”
• In the couplet, the speaker attests to his certainty that love is as he
says: if his statements can be proved to be error, he declares, he
must never have written a word, and no man can ever have been in
love.
Song: to Celia [“Drink to me only with thine eyes”]
BY BEN JONSON
Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup,
And I’ll not look for wine.
The thirst that from the soul doth rise
Doth ask a drink divine;
But might I of Jove’s nectar sup,
I would not change for thine.

I sent thee late a rosy wreath,

Not so much honouring thee
As giving it a hope, that there
It could not withered be.
But thou thereon didst only breathe,
And sent’st it back to me;
Since when it grows, and smells, I swear,
Not of itself, but thee.
 Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet is a play written by Shakespeare. It is

a tragic love story where the two main characters,
Romeo and Juliet, are supposed to be sworn enemies
but fall in love. Due to their families' ongoing conflict,
they cannot be together, so they kill themselves because
they cannot cope with being separated from one
another. Romeo and Juliet is a Shakespearean tragedy.
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BSED 2 - ENGLISH