Elizabethan Poetry

King Elizabeth ascended the throne in 1558.No noteworthy writing appeared during the first ten years of her reign which was a period of 'nation-building'.The great Elizabethan Age is usually dated from 1579.

                                                                        The Elizabethan Age was an extraordinarily fertile period in the history of English music and song.Music and song were an integral part of the way of life of every segment of society-the courtiers,the upper class, the ordinery towns folk  and countrymen. In this period, there appeared outstanding composers like "William Byrd,Orlando Gibbons,Jhon Dowland,Thomas Weelkes and Thomas Morley.It  was a habbit and also a fashion among the educated to write poems.Those poems could be sung.The bulk express stock themes, situations and attitudes in stock language, and the best among them are simple and tuneful,yet do not matter as poetry. Still, writers such as Spencer,Sidney,Daniel,Drayton and Campion manage to retain something individual even as they write within convention.