The English Renaissance was a cultural and artistic movement in England that goes from the early 16th century to the early 17th century. It entered England one century later than Europe and it was a period of rebirth of the culture and new way of view was born. During the middle ages the soul was the most important thing because everyone was interested in salvation. In the Renaissance the human being was the most important code.

This new period was also characterized by the new discoveries, like the discovery of America in 1492, the discoveries of Copernicus and the modern world was accelerated by discoveries of science and exploration.

The Renaissance was linked to the Tudor dynasty were the most powerful monarch of this dynasty was Elisabeth I, she had to have masculine responsibilities and her role was very hard because in that period the role of women was very limited.

Further more she had to solve serious problems of the society.

The first problem was religion because English people were divided in Catholic and Protestant and before her Mary I killed lot of people as heretics, so she had to taken back peace and order and she made sure that the Church of England remained a Protestant Church and so England remained separate from Europe.

Elisabeth had also to face the serious economic problems caused by the increase of the population and price inflation, she was able to make the kingdom prosperous and there was an increase of exploration and birth of scientific learning and the flourishing of literary culture and the improvements made this the most important period in the history of England.

The theme of the renaissance, the re-birth , found his greatest expression in drama. I think that it found it in drama because of drama pay attention into feelings with the human body where was focused weaknesses, flaws and qualities of men.

The most important playwrighter was William Shakespeare who wrote of human heart and life without imposing his personal perspective.

He also wrote sonnets that are influenced by Petrarch's sonnets but they have a different structure because English has a different rhythm structure infact the rhythm is composed of stressed and unstressed sounds. The Elisabethan sonnets were composed of three quartine and a rhyming couplet. The quartine spoke about a problem and the rhyming couplet gave the solution.

I think Renaissance was an important period because people started to think in a different way, in a secular way without the influence of the Church that gave them a wrong view of the real world, and with the new discoveries people had more confidence and started to search new meanings of their life and started to make question which destroyed the old certainties.