he rediscovery of Greek
and Roman literature, had extended its influence to England early in the
century, but only after the accession of Elizabeth did it bring full
harvest. The names that crowd the next fifty years represent fine native
endowments, boundless aspiration, and also novelty,--as Spenser in
poetry, Bacon in philosophy, Hooker in theology. In commerce as well as
in letters there was this same activity and innovation. It was a time of
commercial prosperity, of increase in comfort and luxury, of the growth
of a powerful commercial class, of large fortunes and large
benefactions. Whatever your status, your birth, trade, profession,
residence, religion, education, or property, in the year 1564 you had a
better chance to change these than any of your ancestors had; and there
was more chance than there had ever been that your son would improve his
inheritance. The individual man had long been boxed up in guild, church,
or the feudal system; now the covers were opened, and the new
opportunity bred daring, initiative, and ambition. The exploits of the
Elizabethan sea rovers still stir us with the thrill of adventure; but
adventure and vicissitude were hardly less the share of merchant,
priest, poet, or politician. The individual has had no such opportunity
for fame in England before or since. The nineteenth century, which saw
the industrial revolution, the triumphs of steam and electricity, and
the discoveries of natural science, is the only period that equalled the
Elizabethan in the rapidity of its changes in ideas and in the
conditions of living; and even that era of change offered relatively
fewer new impulses to individual greatness than the fifty years of
Shakespeare's life.

[Page Heading: Tudor England]

Shakespeare's England was an agricultural country of four or five
million inhabitants. It fed itself, except when poor harvests compelled
the importation of grain, and it supplemented agriculture by grazing,
fishing, and commerce, chiefly with the Netherlands, but growing in many
directions. The forests were becoming thin, but the houses were still of
timber; the roads were poor, the large towns mostly seaports. The
dialects spoken were various, but the speech of the midland counties had
become established in London, at the universities, and in printed books,
and was rapidly increasing its dominance. The monasteries and religious
orders were gone, but feudalism still held sway, and the people were
divided