The English Renaissance  was a new cultural movement in which the human being is the centre of discussion.

During this age the classical cultures , which for centuries had been considered dead, were reborn.

This age begins with the house of Tudors, and more precisely in 1485 with the end of the war of the Roses.

The man who embodies the Renaissance culture is Henry VIII; he was a very well - read man, had great linguistic skills and was able to translate from Latin and Greek.

During Renaissance the court became  the centre of culture because the king supported the writers and the artists.

The most important values at the time were beauty, order, balance and natural harmony.

In literature the genre that better represented this age was poetry, especially the sonnet which originated in Italy.

It became popular under the reign of Elizabeth I; the Elizabethan sonnet was basically different from the Petrarchan sonnet: the first one was organized into three quatrains and a final rhyming couplet, while the second one was organized into two quatrains and two tercets.

The second genre that characterized this period, was drama.

The theatre was the centre of entertainment for all social classes.

At the time there were a lot of playwrights who wrote plays and then sold them to the theatre companies; the birth of the English drama is mainly due to the University Wits.

Music was also important because it fed the poems and it also helped to entertain the people at court.