Elizabeth I was Queen of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death in 1603. She was the last monarch of the House of Tudor.
Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford was an English peer and courtier of the Elizabethan era. Oxford was heir to the second oldest earldom in the kingdom, a court favourite for a time, a sought-after patron of the arts, and noted by his contemporaries as a lyric poet and court playwright, but his volatile temperament precluded him from attaining any courtly or governmental responsibility and contributed to the dissipation of his estate.
William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley was an English statesman, the chief adviser of Queen Elizabeth I for most of her reign, twice Secretary of State and Lord High Treasurer from 1572. In his description in the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, A.F. Pollard wrote, "From 1558 for forty years the biography of Cecil is almost indistinguishable from that of Elizabeth and from the history of England."
The masque was a form of festive courtly entertainment that flourished in 16th- and early 17th-century Europe, though it was developed earlier in Italy, in forms including the intermedio. A masque involved music, dancing, singing and acting, within an elaborate stage design, in which the architectural framing and costumes might be designed by a renowned architect, to present a deferential allegory flattering to the patron. Professional actors and musicians were hired for the speaking and singing parts. Masquers who did not speak or sing were often courtiers: the English queen Anne of Denmark frequently danced with her ladies in masques between 1603 and 1611, and Henry VIII and Charles I of England performed in the masques at their courts. In the tradition of masque, Louis XIV of France danced in ballets at Versailles with music by Jean-Baptiste Lully.
Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox, was the daughter of the Scottish queen dowager Margaret Tudor and her second husband Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus, and thus the granddaughter of Henry VII of England. She was the grandmother of James VI and I.
George Gascoigne was an English poet, soldier and unsuccessful courtier. He is considered the most important poet of the early Elizabethan era, following Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey and leading to the emergence of Philip Sidney. He was the first poet to deify Queen Elizabeth I, in effect establishing her cult as a virgin goddess married to her kingdom and subjects. His most noted works include A Discourse of the Adventures of Master FJ (1573), an account of courtly intrigue and one of the earliest English prose fictions; The Supposes,, an early translation of Ariosto and the first comedy written in English prose, which was used by Shakespeare as a source for The Taming of the Shrew; the frequently anthologised short poem "Gascoignes wodmanship" (1573) and "Certayne Notes of Instruction concerning the making of verse or ryme in English" (1575), the first essay on English versification.
Thomas Radclyffe, 3rd Earl of Sussex KG, was Lord Deputy of Ireland during the Tudor period of English history, and a leading courtier during the reign of Elizabeth I.
Sir Christopher Hatton KG was an English politician, Lord Chancellor of England and a favourite of Elizabeth I of England. He was one of the judges who found Mary, Queen of Scots guilty of treason.
Sir Thomas Hoby was an English diplomat and translator.
William Painter was an English author and translator. As a clerk of the Ordnance in the Tower of London, he was accused of fraud aimed at amassing a personal fortune at public expense.
William Webbe was an English critic and translator. He attended Trinity College, Cambridge, and was a tutor for distinguished families, including the two sons of Edward Sulyard of Flemyngs, Essex, and later the children of Henry Grey of Pirgo, also in Essex.
Lady Mary Wroth was an English noblewoman and a poet of the English Renaissance. A member of a distinguished literary family, Lady Wroth was among the first female English writers to have achieved an enduring reputation. Mary Wroth was niece to Mary Herbert née Sidney, and to Sir Philip Sidney, a famous Elizabethan poet-courtier.
Elizabethan architecture refers to buildings of a certain style constructed during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England and Ireland from 1558–1603. Historically, the era sits between the long era of the dominant architectural style of religious buildings by the Catholic Church, which ended abruptly at the Dissolution of the Monasteries from c.1536, and the advent of a court culture of pan-European artistic ambition under James I (1603–25). Stylistically, Elizabethan architecture is notably pluralistic. It came at the end of insular traditions in design and construction called the Perpendicular style in the church building, the fenestration, vaulting techniques, and open truss designs of which often affected the detail of larger domestic buildings. However, English design had become open to the influence of early printed architectural texts imported to England by members of the church as early as the 1480s. Into the 16th century, illustrated continental pattern-books introduced a wide range of architectural exemplars, fueled by the archaeology of classical Rome which inspired myriad printed designs of increasing elaboration and abstraction.
Sir Edmund Tilney or Tylney (1536–1610) was a courtier best known now as Master of the Revels to Queen Elizabeth and King James. He was responsible for the censorship of drama in England. He was also instrumental in the development of English drama of the Elizabethan period. Tilney made the office of Master of the Revels into an institution.
Thierry and Theodoret is a Jacobean era stage play, a tragedy in the canon of John Fletcher and his collaborators that was first published in 1621. It is one of the problematic plays of Fletcher's oeuvre; as with Love's Cure, there are significant uncertainties about the date and authorship of Thierry and Theodoret.
Sir Thomas Coningsby was an English soldier and Member of Parliament, notable for his diary of military action in France in 1591, and his feuds over local representation in Herefordshire.
The Swisser is a Caroline era stage play, a tragicomedy written by Arthur Wilson. It was performed by the King's Men in the Blackfriars Theatre in 1631, and is notable for the light in throws on the workings of the premier acting company of its time.
Robert Wilmot was a Church of England clergyman, known as a playwright.
The revels were a traditional period of merrymaking and entertainment held at the Inns of Court, the professional associations, training centres and residences of barristers in London, England. The revels were held annually from the early 15th to the early 18th centuries and were an extension of a general nationwide period of entertainment running from All Saints' Eve to Candlemas, though in some years they lasted as late as Lent. The inns elected a "prince" to lead the festivities and put on a sequence of elaborate entertainments and wild parties. The events included singing, dancing, feasting, the holding of mock trials and the performance of plays and masques. The revels played an important part in encouraging early English theatre and provided William Shakespeare with one of his most distinguished audiences in his early career. Several plays were written specifically for the revels and legal scenes in many plays from this era may have been written with this audience in mind. The revels declined in the 17th century and they last appear to have been held in 1733. The inns revived the revels in the mid 20th-century and they now comprise a seasonal offering of entertainment in the form of sketches, songs and jokes.
Evelyn Mary Simpson was an English literary critic and scholar, and the first woman to earn a D.Phil. from Oxford University. Though she was required to relinquish her appointment at St Hugh's College, Oxford upon marrying in 1921, Simpson continued her work as an independent scholar. She is best known for her scholarship on John Donne, including a magisterial edition of his sermons and editions of other prose works, but she wrote on other topics in English Renaissance literature as well.
