THE ELIZABETHAN PERIOD OR THE RENAISSANCE MAIN EVENTS 1485-1509 : Reign of Henry VII 1509-1547 : Reign of Henry VIII 1534 : Act of Supremacy 1536-1539 : Monasteries closed 1539 : First Bible in English 1547-1553 : Reign of Edward VI 1553-1558 : Reign of Mary I 1558-1603 : Reign of Elizabeth I 1577-1580 : Sir Fancis Drake 1584 : The Book of Common Prayer 1588 : The Spanish Armada destroyed 1601 : The Poor Law THE LITERARY BACKGROUND Thomas More “Utopia” (1478-1535) Italian influence From Petrarchan sonnet to Elizabethan sonnet SHAKESPEARE Born in Stratford in 1564 (April 23rd) Become an actor, well-known as a dramatist In 1595 he joined The Lord Chamberlain’s Men Wrote 37 plays in a period of twenty years Period I: Plays of Experimentation Period II: Artistic Maturity Period III: The Great Tragedy Period IV: Last Plays 154 sonnets Died on April, 23rd 1616 POETRY Sir Phillip Sydney: “ Astrophel and Stella” Edmund Spenser: the Amoretti Thomas Sackville: the Mirror of Magistrates George Chapman: Iliad Michael Drayton: Polyolbon Ben Johnson: Hymn to Diana DRAMA Thomas Kyd: The Spanish Tragedy Ben Jonson: Volpone John Lyly: Alexander and Campaspe Christopher Marlowe “ The Last Moment of Dr. Faustus PROSE Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives Chapman’s translation of Homer Paterick’s Machiavelli The Authorized Version of the Bible Fancis Bacon’s Essays