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Introduction • The English Renaissancewas a cultural and artisticmovement in Englanddating from the late 15th and early 16th centuries to the early 17th century. Itisassociated with the pan-EuropeanRenaissancethatisusuallyregardedasbeginning in Italy in the late 14th century. The beginning of the English Renaissanceisoftentaken, as a convenience, to be 1485, when the Battle of Bosworth Fieldended the Wars of the Roses and inaugurated the Tudor Dynasty. Renaissance style and ideas, however, were slow in penetratingEngland, and the Elizabethan era in the secondhalf of the 16th centuryisusuallyregardedas the height of the English Renaissance
Literature E. Spencer • Englandhad a strong tradition of literature in the English vernacular, whichgraduallyincreasedas English use of the printing pressbecame common by the mid 16th century. By the time of Elizabethanliterature a vigorousliterary culture in bothdrama and poetryincludedpoetssuchasEdmund Spenser, whose verse epicThe FaerieQueenehad a strong influence on English literaturebutwaseventuallyovershadowed by the lyrics of William Shakespeare, Thomas Wyatt and others. Typically, the works of theseplaywrights and poetscirculated in manuscriptform for some time beforetheywerepublished, and aboveall the plays of English Renaissancetheatrewere the outstandinglegacy of the period. T. Wyatt
The theatre The English theatre scene, whichperformedboth for the court and nobility in private performances, and a very wide public in the theatres, was the mostcrowded in Europe, with a host of otherplaywrightsaswellas the giantfigures of Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare and Ben Jonson.
Philosophers and intellectuals Philosophersand intellectualsincludedThomas More and Francis Baconhadgreatinfluence. All the 16th century Tudor monarchswerehighlyeducated, aswasmuch of the nobility, and Italianliteraturehad a considerablefollowing, providing the sources for many of Shakespeare'splays. English thoughtadvancedtowardsmodern science with the Baconian Method, a forerunner of the Scientific Method Francis Bacon
Music The Italian and English Renaissancesweresimilar in sharing a specificmusical aesthetic. In the late 16th centuryItalywas the musical center of Europe, and one of the principalformswhichemerged from thatsingularexplosion of musical creativitywas the madrigal. In 1588, Nicholas Yongepublished in England the Musica transalpina—a collection of ItalianmadrigalsthathadbeenAnglicized. Composerssuchas Thomas Morley, the onlycontemporarycomposer to set Shakespeare, and whose work survives, publishedcollections of theirownsonnets, roughly in the Italianmannerbutyet with a uniqueEnglishness.
Comparison of the English and ItalianRenaissances The English Renaissanceisdifferent from the ItalianRenaissance in several ways. The dominant art forms of the English Renaissancewereliterature and music. Visual arts in the English Renaissanceweremuchlesssignificantthan in the ItalianRenaissance. The English periodbegan far laterthan the Italian, whichisusuallyconsidered to begin with Dante, Petrarch and Giotto in the early 14th century, and wasmovingintoMannerism and the Baroque by the 1550s or earlier. In contrast, the English Renaissance can only be said to begin, shakily, in the 1520s, and continueduntilperhaps 1620.