Drama and Literature

During the Renaissance playwrights expanded popular theatrical forms—such as religious plays, comedies, satires, romances, revenge dramas, history plays, and court masques—to create new genres that depicted human conflicts and predicaments. Aided by the printing press, authors wrote a steady stream of plays that portrayed important social issues of the day and attracted audiences in record numbers. The center of this phenomenon was Elizabethan England, where many great playwrights produced masterpieces that continue to be performed today. One of the most popular English playwrights was William Shakespeare, and one of his best-known works is the comedy The Merchant of Venice. In this play Shakespeare appealed to sixteenth-century prejudices against Jews with his portrayal of the character Shylock, a Jewish money lender.

Renaissance writers produced many literary works that are now considered classics. One of the earliest was Heptaméron by the French author Margaret of Navarre, duchess of Angoulême. With this collection of tales Margaret popularized the novella, a form that was introduced in the Middle Ages (c. 400–1450), and produced a complex narrative featuring women. The most famous work of fiction from the Renaissance period—and one of the masterpieces of world literature—is Don Quixote by the Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes. This comic epic about the errant, or traveling, knight Don Quixote of la Mancha was largely responsible for creating what is known as the modern novel. The Renaissance was also a time of experimentation in literature. The French author Michel Eyquem de Montaigne created a new literary genre, the essay, in which he used self-portrayal as a mirror of humanity in general. Among Montaigne's best-known essays is "Of Cannibals," in which he contemplated the recently discovered society of cannibals in Brazil in the New World. A unique contribution to English literature of the late Renaissance was The Description of a New World Called the Blazing World by Margaret Cavendish, first duchess of Newcastle. The story of a young lady who becomes the warrior queen of a fantasy world, this work is regarded as one of the first science fiction novels.