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This brief outline is intended to provide context for the trajectory of Shakespeare's achievement as a poetic dramatist. Much more, of course, was going on in these literary movements than this simple list suggests. Missing, for example, are the many contributions by other men and women of letters, philosophers, clergy, scientists explorers, and the like. Always keep in mind the recurrent visitations of the Plague, which—in a form of natural collusion with the authorities—interrmittently closed down the theaters for extended periods. |
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| Literary Periods | |||
| English Renaissance, or often now, the "early modern" period: Roughly from 1585 (Caxton's edition of Malory) to 1603 (death of Elizabeth I). | |||
| "Elizabethan": Adj. referring to literature produced during the reign of Elizabeth I | |||
| "Jacobean": Adj. referring to literature produced during the reign of James I | |||
| Timeline | |||
| 1485 | Malory's Morte Darthur published by Caxton | ||
| 1485–1500 | Everyman (morality play) | ||
| 1511 | Erasmus, The Praise of Folly (English translation) | ||
| 1532 | Machiavelli, The Prince | ||
| 1545 | Laws passed making itinerant actors subject to arrest as vagabonds. | ||
| 1557 | Tottel's Miscellany published: A watershed event for the history of English literature, the book prints work of the best poets of the day—Wyatt, Surrey, Howard, and others—as they develop their skills in learning Italian and Continental forms such as the sonnet, villanelle, sestina, and others. | ||
| 1558-1603 | Reign of Elizabeth I, last of the Tudor kings. | ||
| 1561 | Norton and Sackville's play Gorboduc—the first blank-verse tragic/history play in English—performed at the Inns of Court. | ||
| 1564 | Shakespeare born at Stratford-Upon-Avon, probably on 23 April. | ||
| 1567 | Sir Arthur Golding's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses published; the book would prove to be the source most often used by Shakespeare in crafting the plays. | ||
| 1576 | Entrepreneur James Burbage builds The Theatre, London's first permanent structure for presenting plays. | ||
| 1587 | Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine I and II: England's first staged blank verse plays. What Shakespeare learned from Marlowe is incalculable. | ||
| 1588 | "Armada Year": Queen Elizabeth's counselors establish her mystique and image. | ||
| 1588-92 | Shakespeare resides in London as actor and playwright. | ||
| 1592-98 | Shakespeare pens chronicle histories and comedies. | ||
| 1599 | The Burbages erect The Globe on the Bankside for the Lord Chamberlain's Men (after the death of Elizabeth they become the King's Men). As Peter Thomson explains, "For the first time in England, and perhaps anywhere in the world, a theatre was to be designed by actors, run by actors and built on land leased and paid for by actors" (Shakespeare's Theatre). | ||
| 1601-09 | Period of Shakespeare's great tragedies and romantic comedies. | ||
| 1603-25 | Reign of James I, England's first Stuart king. | ||
| 1607 | Captain John Smith and 105 cavaliers land on Virginia coast, start the first permanent English settlement in the New World at Jamestown. | ||
| 1608 | Shakespeare's company assumes the lease of the second Blackfriars, converted from an old monastery within the City walls; originally intended for use during the winter months, later expanded; first Blackfriars was a private theater for the Children of the Queen's Chapel troupe. | ||
| 1610 | Shakespeare retires to Stratford, writes Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, The Tempest. | ||
| 1616 | Shakespeare's great rival Ben Jonson publishes his Works in folio, the first collection of dramatic works by a poet in English. | ||
| 1623 | Heminges and Condell publish the First Folio (F) of Shakespeare's dramatic works; the text is our only source for 18 of the 37 canonical plays; missing from F: Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, the Sonnets, Pericles. | ||