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Pink: General information about Elizabeth I
Yellow: Extra information/fun facts about Elizabeth I
Green: Extra material
Blue: Elizabethian literature (Shakespeare & Marlowe)

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Elizabeth I (1533-1603) Queen of England

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Elizabeth I, bynames the Virgin Queen and Good Queen Bess, (September 7, 1533 - March 24, 1603), queen of England (1558 - 1603) during a period, often called the Elizabethan Age, when England asserted itself vigorously as a major European power in politics, commerce, and the arts.

She was born at Greenwich Palace, the daughter of the Tudor king Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn.

Predecessors: Mary I
Successor: James I

Look at the video

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Henry VIII died and put his only son Edward (age 9) on the throne.

Edward I died from tuberculosis but didn’t want his half sisters to succeed him so he appointed Lady Jane Grey.

After nine days, she was overthrown by the more popular Mary I.

Mary I had a lot of health issues and has had two false pregnancies. The last one caused her to die. The phantom pregnancies are thought to have been ovarian dropsy.

She was succeeded by her half sister Elizabeth I.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Edward-VI
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mary-I

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Elizabeth's unmarried status inspired a cult of virginity related to that of the Virgin Mary. She was called The Virgin Queen. She was depicted as a virgin or a goddess (and not as a normal woman) in portraits and literature.
This claim of virginity was not universally accepted. Catholics accused her of engaging in so called "filthy lust" and this defiling the nation along with her body. The central question when it comes to that question of her virginity, is whether she  consummated her love affair with Robert Dudley. Aside from Dudley she had many close friends who were men, including Walter Raleigh, Francis Drake, and Robert Devereux, as well as many prominent suitors, including many of Europe's nobility including kings and their heirs.
More information: https://www.thehistoryville.com/elizabeth-i-virgin-queen/

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Elizabeth I didn't marry. This was very unusual for royalty at the time as marriage and childbirth were seen as the best ways to ensure the monarchy.
Contributing factors of Elizabeth not marrying:

As a teenager, she was traumatised by sexually harmful behaviour by her stepfather.

She changed English’ religion from Catholicism to Protestantism. If she married catholic royalty, the marriage would threaten her religious agenda. All the while, marrying a protestant from the aristocracy would favour one family over the others. When growing up Elizabeth saw the wreckage this created.

If she married then she would lose power to her husband. By not marrying she was both queen and king.

Marriage negotiations constituted a key element in Elizabeth's foreign policy: entertaining marriage negotiations with members of Europe’s royal families, established subtle diplomatic relationships with foreign countries.

She observed that out of the three marriages of her rival for the throne, Mary Queen of Scots, two stirred political conflict. This might have made her approach a possible marriage very cautiously indeed.

In parliament Elizabeth insisted that she was married to her kingdom and subjects, under divine protection. In 1599, she spoke the famous words "all my husbands, my good people".

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZfHKBzIvXY
More info: https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/elizabeth-i-marriage-succession#:~:text=Early%20on%20in%20her%20reign,for%20one%20reason%20or%20another.

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Elizabeth was one of the best educated women of her generation.

A lot of attention was paid to her education. She shared the tutors of her half-brother Edward. Many of these tutors were the brightest minds from Cambridge University.

Elizabeth spoke 6 languages by the age of 11: English, French, Dutch, Italian, Spanish and Welsh. She learned to write in Greek, Latin, French & English. At the end of her life was also believed to speak Cornish, Scottish and Irish.

From her teenage years and throughout her life she translated works in Latin and Greek by numerous classical authors, including Cicero, Plutarch, Tacitus.. A translation of Tacitus - one of only four surviving English translations from the early modern era - was confirmed as Elizabeth's own in 2019, after a detailed analysis of the handwriting and paper was undertaken.

Picture: The cover of Elizabeth’s translation of The Mirror of the Sinful Soul, given to Katherine Parr.
More information:

https://www.elizabethan-era.org.uk/education-queen-elizabeth-i.htm

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/who-is-the-most-educated-english-queen/2011/04/28/AF78i49E_blog.html

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Video et taceo was a motto of Queen Elizabeth 1. It stands for 'I see but I remain silent'. It conjures the quality of hidden power that can reside in the silence of the sovereign. It is said that she was cautious and foreward looking.

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Sets the scene of how the UK was before and at the start of Elizabeth's reign

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyGBwrtIamw

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She was also a avid supporter of the arts which sparked a surge of activity in the theater. During her reign, some playwrights were able to make a comfortable living by receiving royal patronage. There was a great deal of theatrical activity at Court, and many public theaters were also built on the outskirts of London.

Some of the most important playwrights come from the Elizabethan era, including William Shakespeare, and Christopher Marlowe.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Elizabeth-I
https://www.britannica.com/art/Elizabethan-literature

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Elizabeth I (born September 7, 1533, Greenwich, near London, England-died March 24, 1603, Richmond, Surrey) queen of England (1558-1603) during a period, often called the Elizabethan Age, when England asserted itself vigorously as a major European power in politics, commerce, and the arts.

Although her small kingdom was threatened by grave internal divisions, Elizabeth's blend of shrewdness, courage, and majestic self-display inspired ardent expressions of loyalty and helped unify the nation against foreign enemies. The adulation bestowed upon her both in her lifetime and in the ensuing centuries was not altogether a spontaneous effusion. It was the result of a carefully crafted, brilliantly executed campaign in which the queen fashioned herself as the glittering symbol of the nation's destiny. This political symbolism, common to monarchies, had more substance than usual, for the queen was by no means a mere figurehead. While she did not wield the absolute power of which Renaissance rulers dreamed, she tenaciously upheld her authority to make critical decisions and to set the central policies of both state and church. The latter half of the 16th century in England is justly called the Elizabethan Age: rarely has the collective life of a whole era been given so distinctively personal a stamp.

Childhood

Elizabeth's early years were not auspicious. She was born at Greenwich Palace, the daughter of the Tudor king Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn. Henry had defied the pope and broken England from the authority of the Roman Catholic Church in order to dissolve his marriage with his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, who had borne him a daughter, Mary. Since the king ardently hoped that Anne Boleyn would give birth to a male heir, regarded as key to stable dynastic succession, the birth of a second daughter was a bitter disappointment that dangerously weakened the new queen's position. Before Elizabeth reached her third birthday, her father had her mother beheaded on charges of adultery and treason. Moreover, at Henry's instigation, an act of Parliament declared his marriage with Anne Boleyn invalid from the beginning, thus making their daughter Elizabeth illegitimate, as Roman Catholics had all along claimed her to be. (Apparently, the king was undeterred by the logical inconsistency of simultaneously invalidating the marriage and accusing his wife of adultery.) The emotional impact of these events on the little girl, who had been brought up from infancy in a separate household at Hatfield, is not known; presumably, no one thought it worth recording. What was noted was her precocious seriousness; at six years old, it was admiringly observed, she had as much gravity as if she had been 40.

When in 1537 Henry's third wife, Jane Seymour, gave birth to a son, Edward, Elizabeth receded still further into relative obscurity, but she was not neglected. Despite his capacity for monstrous cruelty, Henry VIII treated all his children with what contemporaries regarded as affection; Elizabeth was present at ceremonial occasions and was declared third in line to the throne. She spent much of the time with her half brother Edward and, from her 10th year onward, profited from the loving attention of her stepmother, Catherine Parr, the king's sixth and last wife. Under a series of distinguished tutors, of whom the best known is the Cambridge humanist Roger Ascham, Elizabeth received the rigorous education normally reserved for male heirs, consisting of a course of studies centring on classical languages, history, rhetoric, and moral philosophy. "Her mind has no womanly weakness," Ascham wrote with the unselfconscious sexism of the age, "her perseverance is equal to that of a man, and her memory long keeps what it quickly picks up." In addition to Greek and Latin, she became fluent in French and Italian, attainments of which she was proud and which were in later years to serve her well in the conduct of diplomacy. Thus steeped in the secular learning of the Renaissance, the quick-witted and intellectually serious princess also studied theology, imbibing the tenets of English Protestantism in its formative period. Her association with the Reformation is critically important, for it shaped the future course of the nation, but it does not appear to have been a personal passion: observers noted the young princess's fascination more with languages than with religious dogma.

Position under Edward VI and Mary

With her father's death in 1547 and the accession to the throne of her frail 10-year-old brother Edward, Elizabeth's life took a perilous turn. Her guardian, the dowager queen Catherine Parr, almost immediately married Thomas Seymour, the lord high admiral. Handsome, ambitious, and discontented, Seymour began to scheme against his powerful older brother, Edward Seymour, protector of the realm during Edward VI's minority. In January 1549, shortly after the death of Catherine Parr, Thomas Seymour was arrested for treason and accused of plotting to marry Elizabeth in order to rule the kingdom. Repeated interrogations of Elizabeth and her servants led to the charge that even when his wife was alive Seymour had on several occasions behaved in a flirtatious and overly familiar manner toward the young princess. Under humiliating close questioning and in some danger, Elizabeth was extraordinarily circumspect and poised. When she was told that Seymour had been beheaded, she betrayed no emotion.

The need for circumspection, self-control, and political acumen became even greater after the death of the Protestant Edward in 1553 and the accession of Elizabeth's older half sister Mary, a religious zealot set on returning England, by force if necessary, to the Roman Catholic faith. This attempt, along with her unpopular marriage to the ardently Catholic king Philip II of Spain, aroused bitter Protestant opposition. In a charged atmosphere of treasonous rebellion and inquisitorial repression, Elizabeth's life was in grave danger. For though, as her sister demanded, she conformed outwardly to official Catholic observance, she inevitably became the focus and the obvious beneficiary of plots to overthrow the government and restore Protestantism. Arrested and sent to the Tower of London after Sir Thomas Wyatt's rebellion in January 1554, Elizabeth narrowly escaped her mother's fate. Two months later, after extensive interrogation and spying had revealed no conclusive evidence of treason on her part, she was released from the Tower and placed in close custody for a year at Woodstock. The difficulty of her situation eased somewhat, though she was never far from suspicious scrutiny. Throughout the unhappy years of Mary's childless reign, with its burning of Protestants and its military disasters, Elizabeth had continually to protest her innocence, affirm her unwavering loyalty, and proclaim her pious abhorrence of heresy. It was a sustained lesson in survival through self-discipline and the tactful manipulation of appearances.

Many Protestants and Roman Catholics alike assumed that her self-presentation was deceptive, but Elizabeth managed to keep her inward convictions to herself, and in religion as in much else they have remained something of a mystery. There is with Elizabeth a continual gap between a dazzling surface and an interior that she kept carefully concealed. Observers were repeatedly tantalized with what they thought was a glimpse of the interior, only to find that they had been shown another facet of the surface. Everything in Elizabeth's early life taught her to pay careful attention to how she represented herself and how she was represented by others. She learned her lesson well.

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Elizabeth I | Biography, Facts, Mother, & Death

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Elizabeth I, the iconic Queen of England, navigated political challenges and established a golden age marked by cultural flourishing and maritime exploration.

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Elizabethan literature, body of works written during the reign of Elizabeth I of England (1558–1603), probably the most splendid age in the history of English literature, during which such writers as Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, Roger Ascham, Richard Hooker, Christopher Marlowe, and William Shakespeare flourished. The epithet Elizabethan is merely a chronological reference and does not describe any special characteristic of the writing.

https://www.britannica.com/art/Elizabethan-literature

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William Shakespeare was an English dramatist, poet, and actor considered by many to be the greatest dramatist of all time.

Shakespeare’s exact birth date remains unknown. He was baptized in Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon on April 26, 1564, his mother’s third child, but the first to survive infancy.
Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616, on what may have been his 52nd birthday.

Most famous works (during Elizabeth I's reign)

1 – Romeo and Juliet

2 – The Merchant of Venice

3 – Henry V

4 – Much Ado About Nothing

5 – Hamlet

6 – Three Kings Night

https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Shakespeare
https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/shakespedia/william-shakespeare/william-shakespeare-biography/
https://10famousworks.com/works-of-shakespeare/
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/william-shakespeare

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Not much is known for certain about Shakespeare.

- Only 12 words were found written in his own handwriting
- "Lost years" where there's nothing known about his whereabouts
- Only 2 portraits and one bust statue that show what he COULD have looked like, again no certainty
- ...

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/91160/do-we-actually-know-what-shakespeare-looked
Bill Bryson - Shakespeare

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http://shakespeare.mit.edu/

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The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

Welcome to the Web's first edition of the Complete Works of William Shakespeare. This site has offered Shakespeare's plays and poetry to the Internet community since 1993.

For other Shakespeare resources, visit the Mr. William Shakespeare and the Internet Web site.

The original electronic source for this server was the Complete Moby(tm) Shakespeare. The HTML versions of the plays provided here are placed in the public domain.

5/10/23: Current copy taken from https://github.com/TheMITTech/shakespeare/ and hosted by MIT IS&T in a static location.

Older news items

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The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

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The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Welcome to the Web's first edition of the Complete Works of William Shakespeare. This site has offered Shakespeare's plays and poetry to the Internet community since 1993. For other Shakespeare resources, visit the Mr. William Shakespeare and the Internet Web site.

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"Shakespeare's most important predecessor in English drama"

Had several brushes with the law
Was a part of Elizabeth I's secret service
Writing career of only 6 years
Was killed (allegedly during a fight over the bill)

Unorthodox religious beliefs

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Christopher-Marlowe
https://web.archive.org/web/20111011230221/http://marlowetheatre.com/page/3170/Christopher-Marlowe

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Christopher Marlowe (baptized Feb. 26, 1564, Canterbury, Kent, Eng.-died May 30, 1593, Deptford, near London) was an Elizabethan poet and Shakespeare's most important predecessor in English drama, who is noted especially for his establishment of dramatic blank verse.

Early years

Marlowe was the second child and eldest son of John Marlowe, a Canterbury shoemaker. Nothing is known of his first schooling, but on Jan. 14, 1579, he entered the King's School, Canterbury, as a scholar. A year later he went to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Obtaining his bachelor of arts degree in 1584, he continued in residence at Cambridge-which may imply that he was intending to take Anglican orders. In 1587, however, the university hesitated about granting him the master's degree; its doubts (arising from his frequent absences from the university) were apparently set at rest when the Privy Council sent a letter declaring that he had been employed "on matters touching the benefit of his country"-apparently in Elizabeth I's secret service.

Last years and literary career.

After 1587 Marlowe was in London, writing for the theatres, occasionally getting into trouble with the authorities because of his violent and disreputable behaviour, and probably also engaging himself from time to time in government service. Marlowe won a dangerous reputation for "atheism," but this could, in Elizabeth I's time, indicate merely unorthodox religious opinions. In Robert Greene's deathbed tract, Greenes groats-worth of witte, Marlowe is referred to as a "famous gracer of Tragedians" and is reproved for having said, like Greene himself, "There is no god" and for having studied "pestilent Machiuilian pollicie." There is further evidence of his unorthodoxy, notably in the denunciation of him written by the spy Richard Baines and in the letter of Thomas Kyd to the lord keeper in 1593 after Marlowe's death. Kyd alleged that certain papers "denying the deity of Jesus Christ" that were found in his room belonged to Marlowe, who had shared the room two years before. Both Baines and Kyd suggested on Marlowe's part atheism in the stricter sense and a persistent delight in blasphemy. Whatever the case may be, on May 18, 1593, the Privy Council issued an order for Marlowe's arrest; two days later the poet was ordered to give daily attendance on their lordships "until he shall be licensed to the contrary." On May 30, however, Marlowe was killed by Ingram Frizer, in the dubious company of Nicholas Skeres and Robert Poley, at a lodging house in Deptford, where they had spent most of the day and where, it was alleged, a fight broke out between them over the bill.

In a playwriting career that spanned little more than six years, Marlowe's achievements were diverse and splendid. Perhaps before leaving Cambridge he had already written Tamburlaine the Great (in two parts, both performed by the end of 1587; published 1590). Almost certainly during his later Cambridge years, Marlowe had translated Ovid's Amores ( The Loves) and the first book of Lucan's Pharsalia from the Latin. About this time he also wrote the play Dido, Queen of Carthage (published in 1594 as the joint work of Marlowe and Thomas Nashe). With the production of Tamburlaine he received recognition and acclaim, and playwriting became his major concern in the few years that lay ahead. Both parts of Tamburlaine were published anonymously in 1590, and the publisher omitted certain passages that he found incongruous with the play's serious concern with history; even so, the extant Tamburlaine text can be regarded as substantially Marlowe's. No other of his plays or poems or translations was published during his life. His unfinished but splendid poem Hero and Leander -which is almost certainly the finest nondramatic Elizabethan poem apart from those produced by Edmund Spenser-appeared in 1598.

There is argument among scholars concerning the order in which the plays subsequent to Tamburlaine were written. It is not uncommonly held that Faustus quickly followed Tamburlaine and that then Marlowe turned to a more neutral, more "social" kind of writing in Edward II and The Massacre at Paris. His last play may have been The Jew of Malta, in which he signally broke new ground. It is known that Tamburlaine, Faustus, and The Jew of Malta were performed by the Admiral's Men, a company whose outstanding actor was Edward Alleyn, who most certainly played Tamburlaine, Faustus, and Barabas the Jew.

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Christopher Marlowe | English Playwright & Poet

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Christopher Marlowe was an Elizabethan poet and Shakespeare's most important predecessor in English drama, who is noted especially for his establishment of dramatic blank verse. Marlowe was the second child and eldest son of John Marlowe, a Canterbury shoemaker. Nothing is known of his first

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Shakespeare's Globe is a reconstruction of the Globe Theatre, an Elizabethan playhouse for which William Shakespeare wrote his plays, in the London Borough of Southwark, on the south bank of the River Thames.

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Theatre in Canterbury, where Christopher Marlowe was born and attended school