The Elizabethans

This account of the Elizabethan age evaluates the contributions of such figures as Francis Drake and William Shakespeare while exploring definitive events, from the declaration of religious liberty to the establishment of British imperialism. A time of exceptional creativity, wealth creation, and political expansion, the Elizabethan age was also more remarkable than any other for the Technicolor personalities of its leading participants. Apart from the complex character of the Virgin Queen herself, this work follows the stories of Francis Drake, a privateer who not only defeated the Spanish Armada but also circumnavigated the globe with a drunken, mutinous crew and without reliable navigational instruments; political intriguers like William Cecil and Francis Walsingham; and Renaissance literary geniuses from Sir Philip Sidney to Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare. Most crucially, this was the age when modern Britain was born and established independence from mainland Europe, both in its resistance to Spanish and French incursions and in its declaration of religious liberty from the Pope, and laid the foundations for the explosion of British imperial power and eventual American domination.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.