Elizabethan era

Elizabethan redirects here. For the Elizabethan architectural style, see Tudor Style architecture.

The Elizabethan Era is the period associated with the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603) and is often considered to be a golden age in English history. It was the height of the English Renaissance, and saw the flowering of English literature and poetry. This was also the time during which Elizabethan theatre flourished and William Shakespeare, among others, composed plays that broke away from England's past style of plays. It was an age of expansion and exploration abroad, while at home the Protestant Reformation became entrenched in the national mindset.

The Elizabethan Age is viewed so highly because of the contrasts with the periods before and after. It was a brief period of largely internal peace between the English Reformation and the battles between Protestants and Catholics and the battles between parliament and the monarchy that would engulf the seventeenth century. The Protestant/Catholic divide was settled, for a time, by the Elizabethan Religious Settlement and parliament was still not strong enough to challenge royal absolutism.

England was also well-off compared to the other nations of Europe. The Italian Renaissance had come to an end under the weight of foreign domination of the peninsula. France was embroiled in its own religious battles that would only be settled in 1598 with the Edict of Nantes. In part because of this, but also because the English had been expelled from their last outposts on the continent, the centuries long conflict between France and England was largely suspended for most of Elizabeth's reign.

The one great rival was Spain, with which England conflicted both in Europe and the Americas in skirmishes that exploded into the Anglo-Spanish War of 1585–1604. An attempt by Philip II of Spain to invade England with the Spanish Armada in 1588 was famously defeated, but the tide of war turned against England with a disastrously unsuccessful attack upon Spain, the Drake-Norris Expedition of 1589. Thereafter Spain provided some support for Irish Catholics in a draining guerilla war against England and Spanish naval and land forces inflicted a series of defeats upon English forces. This badly damaged both the English Exchequer and economy that had been so carefully restored under Elizabeth's prudent guidance. English colonization and trade would be frustrated until the signing of the Treaty of London the year following Elizabeth's death.

England during this period had a centralized, well-organized, and effective government, largely a result of the reforms of Henry VII and Henry VIII. Economically, the country began to benefit greatly from the new era of trans-Atlantic trade.

Modern historians and biographers in post-imperial Europe have tended to take a far more literal-minded and dispassionate view of the Tudor period. Elizabethan England was not particularly successful in a military sense during the period. The economic well-being of the country has also been called into question.

The Elizabethan era also saw England begin to play a leading role in the slave trade and saw a series of bloody English military campaigns in still Catholic Ireland—notably the Desmond Rebellions and the Nine Years' War.

Despite the heights achieved during the era, less than 40 years after the death of Elizabeth the country was to descend into the English Civil War.

Some advanced weapons used were the English longbow and the newly-invented musket.

Fashion and the domestic arts

See also 1550-1600 in fashion

File:Pelican hilliard large.jpg

Elizabeth I

Elizabethan court fashion was heavily influenced by Spanish and French styles. Notable garments of this period include the farthingale for women, military styles like the mandilion for men, and ruffs for both sexes.

The Elizabethan era also saw a great flowering of domestic embroidery for both clothing and furnishings. Predominant styles include canvas work generally done in tent stitch and blackwork in silk on linen. Toward the end of the period, the fashion for blackwork gradually gave way to polychrome work in silk that foreshadows the crewelwork in wool that would dominate Jacobean embroidery.

The food of this period includes lear (an oatmeal like dish with peas or beans), all types of animal meat, and numerous types of fruits and vegetables.

Elizabethan Festivals, Holidays, and Celebrations

During the Elizabethan era, people looked forward to holidays because opportunities for leisure were limited, with time away from hard work being restricted to periods after church on Sundays. For the most part, leisure and festivities took place on a public church holy day. Every month had its own holiday, some of which are listed below:

The first Monday after Twelfth Night (any time between 7th and 14th) of January was Plough Monday. It celebrated returning to work after the Christmas celebrations and the New Year.
February 2: Candlemas. Although often still very cold, Candlemas was celebrated as the first day of spring. All Christmas decorations were burned on this day, in candlelight and torchlight processions.
February 14: Valentine's Day. Sending gifts to one another was a Pagan tradition [citation needed], still carried on under a Christian guise.
Between March 3-9: Shrove Tuesday (known as Mardi Gras or Carnival on the Continent). On this day, apprentices were allowed to run amok in the city in mobs, wreaking havoc, because it supposedly cleansed the city of vices before Lent.
The day after Shrove Tuesday was Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent when all were to abstain from eating and drinking certain things.
March 24: Lady Day, or the feast of the Annunciation, the first of the Quarter Days on which rents and salaries were due and payable. The legal New Year when courts of law convened after a winter break, and it marked the supposed moment when the Angel Gabriel came to announce to the Virgin Mary that she would bear a child.
April 1: All Fool's Day, or April Fool's Day. This was a day for tricks, jests, jokes, and a general day of the jester.
May 1: May Day, celebrated as the first day of summer. This was one of the few Celtic festivals with no connection Christianity, and patterned on Beltane. It fetured crowning a May Queen, a Green Man and dancing around a maypole.
June 24: Midsummer, (Christianized as the feast of St John the Baptist) and another Quarter Day.
August 1: Lammastide, or Lammas Day. Trationally, the first day of Autumn, in which it was customary to bring a loaf of bread to the church.
September 29: Michaelmas, another Quarter Day. Michaelmas celebrated the beginning of autumn, and St. Michael the Archangel.
October 25: St. Crispin's Day. Bonfires, revels, and an elected 'King Crispin' were all featured in this celebration. Dramatized by Shakespeare's in Henry V.
October 28: The Lord Mayor's Show, which still takes place today in London.
October 31: HalloweenThe beginning celebration of the days of the dead.
November 1: All Saints' Day, followed by All Souls' Day.
November 17: The anniversary of Queen Elizabeth's accession to the throne, celebrated for dozens of years after her death.
December 24: The Twelve Days of Christmas started at sundown and lasted until Epiphany on January 6. Christmas was the last of the Quarter Days for the year.

Notable Elizabethans

Compare

Tudorbethan (Revival architecture)
Jacobethan (Revival architecture)

References

Fashion and the domestic arts:

Arnold, Janet: Queen Elizabeth's Wardrobe Unlock'd, W S Maney and Son Ltd, Leeds 1988. ISBN 0-901286-20-6

Ashelford, Jane. The Visual History of Costume: The Sixteenth Century. 1983 edition (ISBN 0-89676-076-6), 1994 reprint (ISBN 0-7134-6828-9).

Digby, George Wingfield. Elizabethan Embroidery. New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1964.

Fashion and the domestic arts

Elizabethan Festivals, Holidays, and Celebrations

Notable Elizabethans

See also

Compare

References

Further reading