Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Is the 'Elizabethan Theater' so named in honor of Queen Elizabeth I?

Yes. Queen Elizabeth was on the throne of England from 1533-1603, and the plays written during her reign tend to be referred to as 'Elizabethan', meaning simply that they were written at that time. Christopher Marlowe, all of whose work was written during Elizabeth's reign, might be said to be an Elizabethan playwright.

Shakespeare is a more tricky example: he starts writing in (probably, at least) the early 1580s, but writes his final plays in 1612, after Elizabeth's death. James I is then on the throne, and so some of Shakespeare's plays are 'Elizabethan', and strictly, some others (including, for example, Macbeth) are 'Jacobean' (meaning that they are written during the reign of James).

The problem is that we have so little information about the precise dates of Shakespeare's plays that scholars endlessly argue about which plays fall into which category. So don't be worried if you hear 'Elizabethan' or 'Jacobean' used more generally of Shakespeare: both terms are, strictly speaking, partly right and partly wrong.

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