The Elizabethan Era

The Elizabethan Era, 1558 to 1603, spans the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England and is widely remembered as a golden age of English literature, exploration and national self-confidence following decades of religious turmoil and political instability under her predecessors. The period produced an extraordinary flowering of English drama and poetry, centered on William Shakespeare, whose plays were performed at London theaters including the Globe, alongside contemporaries such as Christopher Marlowe and Edmund Spenser. Elizabeth's reign settled England's religious identity as a moderate Protestant state through the religious settlement of 1559, navigated sustained conflict with Catholic Spain that climaxed in the English navy's celebrated defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, and saw the first English attempts at overseas colonization, including Walter Raleigh's ill-fated Roanoke colony in North America. Elizabeth, who never married and was sometimes called the "Virgin Queen," died childless in 1603, ending the Tudor dynasty and passing the English crown to the Stuart James VI of Scotland, opening the following Jacobean era.