WHAT YOU'LL LEARN
The Elizabethan Golden Age
The reign of Elizabeth I is often called a "Golden Age" — a period of cultural flourishing, expanding trade, and global exploration. The theatre of Marlowe and Shakespeare, the voyages of Drake and Raleigh, the growth of London into a major European city — these are the images that define Elizabethan England in the popular imagination. But the "Golden Age" was real only for some: the same period saw rising poverty, land enclosure, and a vagrant population that the authorities found threatening. This page covers the cultural and economic achievements of the Elizabethan age — and their limits.
The growth of London and expanding trade
By the 1580s, London had a population of around 200,000 — the largest city in northern Europe. It was a centre of finance, trade, publishing, entertainment, and politics. The Port of London handled a growing volume of trade with Europe, the Levant (eastern Mediterranean), and increasingly with the Americas and beyond.
The Merchant Adventurers (trading in cloth with the Netherlands and Germany) and the newer Levant Company and East India Company (incorporated 1600, trading with Asia) were significant institutional innovations. Joint-stock companies — where merchants pooled capital and shared risks — were developed in Elizabethan England as a way to finance long-distance trade that was too expensive for any single merchant.
England's cloth exports — particularly woollen broadcloth — were the backbone of the economy. The expansion of trade brought significant wealth to the merchant classes, whose rising prosperity was visible in the new brick townhouses appearing in London and provincial towns.
Theatre and literature
The Elizabethan period produced the greatest flowering of English drama in history. The 1570s–1600s saw the construction of London's first permanent purpose-built theatres and the emergence of a generation of extraordinary playwrights.
The theatres: The first public theatre in London was built in Shoreditch in 1576 by James Burbage — simply called The Theatre. The Globe, built in 1599 on the south bank of the Thames by Shakespeare's company (the Lord Chamberlain's Men), became the most famous. Theatres held audiences of 2,000–3,000 from all social classes — penny-paying groundlings in the open yard, wealthier patrons in the covered galleries.
The playwrights: Christopher Marlowe (Doctor Faustus, Tamburlaine) established the template for Elizabethan tragedy. William Shakespeare — working from the 1590s until his retirement around 1613 — wrote 37 plays covering the full range of human experience. Others — Thomas Kyd, Ben Jonson, John Webster — added to a remarkable body of work.
Key institution
The Globe Theatre
The Globe was built in 1599 using timber from The Theatre, which had been dismantled and carried across the Thames. It was an open-air amphitheatre seating around 3,000 people, owned by a partnership including William Shakespeare. The original Globe burned down in 1613 when a cannon used as a sound effect during a performance of Henry VIII set the thatched roof alight. A second Globe was built on the same site in 1614. The reconstructed Globe — built near the original site and opened in 1997 — is one of London's most visited cultural attractions. The original Globe is the AQA historic environment site for the 2026 examination year.
Exploration and the wider world
Elizabethan England's most dramatic ventures were the voyages of exploration and privateering that brought England onto the world stage.
Francis Drake's circumnavigation (1577–1580): Drake became the second person (after Magellan's crew) to circumnavigate the globe, simultaneously raiding Spanish ports and treasure ships in the Pacific and returning home with enormous wealth. Elizabeth invested in the voyage and received a substantial return. She knighted Drake on his return.
Walter Raleigh and Virginia: Raleigh sponsored attempts to establish an English colony on the east coast of North America. The first settlement at Roanoke (1585) failed; the second (1587) disappeared completely — "the Lost Colony." These attempts established the idea of English colonialism, even if the practice would not succeed until Jamestown (1607, in James I's reign).
The slave trade: One of the most troubling aspects of Elizabethan expansion. John Hawkins made three voyages (1562, 1564, 1567) carrying enslaved Africans from West Africa to Spanish colonies in the Caribbean. Elizabeth invested in the second and third voyages. Hawkins is considered the founder of the English slave trade, which would grow enormously in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Legacy and complexity
The Golden Age and its shadows
The "Elizabethan Golden Age" is a retrospective construction as much as a contemporary reality. The label was applied enthusiastically by later generations comparing Elizabethan achievement with the turmoil of the seventeenth century. In reality, the period also saw: growing poverty and vagrancy (see the page on poverty and the poor); the beginning of the transatlantic slave trade; brutal suppression of Irish resistance (the Munster plantation); endemic religious persecution (of Catholics and, later, radical Protestants). The "Golden Age" was real for the literate, prosperous Protestant English who have written most of the history — and very different for many others.
Revision checklist
Before moving on, make sure you can answer:
- How large was London by the 1580s? Why was it growing?
- What were joint-stock companies? Why were they significant for trade?
- Name two Elizabethan playwrights and one work by each.
- What was the Globe Theatre? When was it built and by whom?
- What did Drake achieve on his circumnavigation of 1577–1580?
- What was the Roanoke colony? What happened to it?
- What was John Hawkins's role in the expansion of trade?
- To what extent was Elizabethan England a genuine "Golden Age"?
What's New snippet
Article slug: gcse-history-elizabethan-england-golden-age
Title: Shakespeare, Drake, and 200,000 Londoners — Elizabethan England at its height
By the 1590s, London was one of the largest cities in Europe, the Globe Theatre was staging plays that would define English literature, and English sailors had circumnavigated the globe. Elizabethan England's Golden Age was real — built on the wool trade, joint-stock companies, and a cultural confidence that came from surviving the Armada. This page covers the wealth, the theatre, and the exploration.