Are you interested in learning about classical philosophy, the Elizabethan period in English literature, and art? This quiz will be a great way to spend some time. In Renaissance English literature’s fine tradition of its rigorous and brilliant accomplishments, the Elizabethan and early Stewart periods have been said to represent the most brilliant century.
Elizabethan Age
Elizabeth I began in late 1558 and ended with her death in 1603; she was succeeded by the Stuart King, James VI of Scotland, who also took the title of James I of England. English literature in the reign of James I, from 1603 to 1625, is appropriately called Jacobean. These years have produced many genius authors, some of whom have never been surpassed, endowing dozens of less enviable talents with writing fluency, imagination, and vigor.
Play the Renaissance quiz with answers and questions
These Renaissance in English Literature (1550–1660) trivia questions and answers will test your knowledge. We’ll ask you some fun questions that will send you on a journey down memory lane! So whether you “beat it” or end up “Levin” in prayer – we hope you enjoy it!
During this period, the population of England doubled. Prices skyrocketed, rents followed, old social loyalties dissolved, and new industrial, agricultural, and commercial veins appeared for the first time. As a result, real wages reached an all-time low in the 1620s, and social relations shifted in favor of the merchant and the less noble man at the expense of the aristocrat and laborer, as evidenced by 1890s satire and current comedy.
Behind the vogue of Elizabethan pastoral poetry lay the fact of the prosperity of the surrounding sheep farmers, who sought to increase pastures at the expense of the peasants. At first, the position of the Crown was always precarious, and when Charles I lost the trust of his most significant subjects in the 1640s, his power collapsed. Meanwhile, the poor fell out of favor with the rich more and more.
The pamphlets of Thomas Harman (1566) and Robert Greene (1591–1992), as well as Shakespeare’s King Lear (1605–06), offer glimpses into the horrific world of homelessness and crime, the Elizabethans’ most significant intractable social problem.
The intellectual and religious revolution
The disguised social agitation was hardly accompanied by an intellectual revolution, as the medieval synthesis collapsed before new science, a new religion, and new humanism. On the contrary, while modern mechanical techniques were pressed into service by Stewart to create the tile-mask landscape wonders, the discoveries of astronomers and explorers were disconcertingly reshaping the universe:
- And men freely confess that this world is done
- When it comes to the planets and the sky
- They are looking for a lot of
- (John Donne, First Anniversary, 1611)
Most people were directly affected by the religious revolutions of the 16th century. A person who had come of age upon the assumption of Elizabeth in 1558, after her death in 1603, had obtained an unusually disappointing look at the duty which private conscience owed to the needs of the state. The Tudor hierarchy was an instrument of social and political control.
The race for cultural development
The third complicating factor was the race to keep pace with continental developments in the arts and also in philosophy. The Tudors needed to create a class of educated diplomats, statesmen, and officials and to respect their court by making it a fountain of cultural and political patronage. The New Learning, widely disseminated by men such as John Collette and Sir Thomas Eliot through the Erasmian educational programs, suggested the use of formal education in Latin.
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