A Description of Elizabethan Literature

Elizabethan Literature Literature produced during the reign of Elizabeth I of England (1558–1603). This period saw a remarkable growth of the arts in England, and the literature of the time is characterized by a new energy, originality, and confidence. It was the most splendid age in the history of English literature, during which such writers as Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, Roger Ascham, Richard Hooker, Christopher Marlowe, and William Shakespeare flourished.
Drama was the dominant form of the age, and the plays of William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe were popular with all levels of society. Other writers of the period include Edmund Spenser, and Philip Sidney. The Elizabethan age saw the flowering of poetry (the sonnet, the Spenserian stanza, dramatic blank verse), was a golden age of drama (especially for the plays of Shakespeare), and inspired a wide variety of splendid prose (from historical chronicles, versions of the Holy Scriptures, pamphlets, and literary criticism to the first English novels).
Poetry — and sonnets particularly — became a popular form of writing, with Shakespeare and Spenser's extraordinary works at the forefront of the genre. Both authors heavily influenced the way sonnets would be written in the years to come. Elizabethan drama often used poetical metre (rhythm) for its dialogue, especially the five-foot iambic pentameter (pairs of syllables: unstressed followed by stressed).
Spenser's writing also sparked the adoption of a literary term: the "Spenserian stanza," which describes a nine-line stanza based on Spenser's work, most notably the epic The Faerie Queene. As a young man and writer, Spenser looked up to another excellent poet, Sir Philip Sidney, whose diverse career in politics, diplomatic positions, writing, and the military made him a "Renaissance man" of the time. Sidney's Astrophil and Stella is a prime example of Elizabethan poetry due to its wit and imaginative creativity. One of the most excellent pieces of Elizabethan literary criticism is An Apology for Poetry, Sidney's eloquent response to a minor writer's attack on poetry.
In addition to poetry, plays had become a prevalent and oft-produced element of English literature. Marlowe, in addition to the widely-popular Shakespeare, was one of the most well-known playwrights of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe's The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, a tale of fatal bargains with the devil published around 1592, is his greatest work.
Another important literary figure of the period, Ben Jonson, was relatively unknown among the greater circle of English playwrights until he published Every Man in His Humour in 1598. A few years after its publication, Jonson was imprisoned for his satirical description of King James I's arrival in England. After he was released, he published Volpone in 1606, the work for which he is best known.

John Lyly was another Elizabethan dramatist and author who contributed to the wide variety of literature available to an increasingly literate public (possibly half the population had minimal literacy by 1600).
Although Marlowe and Jonson were reputable writers, Shakespeare —with his successful combination wit, blank verse, and classical writing — is generally considered to be the most successful of all Elizabethan writers.
This was the golden era of Elizabethan Classics. The Playwrights and Authors who lived during the Elizabethan era were truly groundbreaking. This was the Renaissance and the time of new ideas and new learning. Some of the greatest English literature of all time was written during this period.