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The Elizabethan period in England ran from 1558-1603, when Queen Elizabeth I, the last Tudor monarch, was Queen. It's often called the Golden Age of English history, as so much was being achieved and England was becoming a rich and powerful country, with famous explorers like Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh expanding the empire. It was at the height of the Renaissance, when there was a lot of social and cultural change and entertainment and the arts were very important. It was when playhouses were first built specifically to perform plays in, such as The Globe in London, and was when William Shakespeare was writing and performing. There was a very structured society in Elizabethan England and Sumptuary Laws were passed to make sure that people behaved appropriately for their position in that society, including what they were allowed to own and wear. People thought that God had decided on these social rules and that the Queen was his representative on earth. The six ranks of society were:- the monarch; the nobility; the gentry; merchants; yeomanry; laborers. You could tell what rank a person belonged to just by looking at what they were wearing. It was a time when the rich got very rich, but the poor were very poor and often had to beg to survive. The first Poor Law was passed in 1563 to try to redistribute some of the wealth from the rich to the poor.
Sources:
The Usborne Encyclopedia of World History
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