Queen Elizabeth I "The Golden Age"

The Elizabethan era was a time associated with the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and it was considered the height of the English Renaissance, a golden age.

These were the times of the flowering of English poetry, music, literature, and theater. William Shakespeare, and many others composed plays that broke free of England's past style of plays.

"Tess" Creation by Kathy Patterson

The Victorian Era and the early twentieth century idealized the Elizabethan era. "The long reign of Elizabeth I was England's Golden Age...'Merry England,' in love with life, expressed itself in music and literature.

Museu De Cluny Medieval exhibit

Elizabeth's determination not to "look into the hearts" of her subjects, to moderate the religious persecutions of previous Tudor reigns—the persecution of Catholics under Henry VIII, and of Protestants under Mary Queen of Scots—appears to have had a moderating effect on English society in general. While Elizabethan England has been characterized by skeptics as a "brutal dictatorship," it was, as brutal dictatorships go, one of the more benign.