She had not yet reached the vigour of her youth, though she was full of life and energy.

She was about to become the England of free thought, commerce, and manufactures; to plough the ocean with her navies, and to plant her colonies over the earth.

Up to the accession of Elizabeth, she had done little, but now she was about to do much.
It was a period of sudden emancipation of thought, and of immense fertility and originality.

The poets and prose writers of the time united the freshness of youth with the vigour of manhood.

Among these were Spenser, Shakespeare, Sir Philip Sidney, the Fletchers, Marlowe, and Ben Jonson.