Shakespeare's career falls within which literary period?

• A. Elizabethan era
• B. Romantic era
• C. Victorian era
• D. Modernist era

Answer: (A)

Shakespeare's career sits in the Elizabethan era, the period when English drama flourished under Queen Elizabeth I and the English Renaissance. He began writing and acting in the 1590s, with many of his most famous plays produced during that time as London theaters thrived under patronage in Elizabeth I’s reign. Some of his later work reaches into the Jacobean era after 1603, but the era most closely associated with his career and the bulk of his output is the Elizabethan era. The Romantic, Victorian, and Modernist eras come later in history, with very different cultural and literary priorities, so they don’t fit Shakespeare’s lifetime and the milieu in which his early career developed.