1.

the manuscripts of medieval English plays were usually ephemeral performance Because
scripts rather than reading matter, very few examples have survived from what once must
have been a very large dramatic literature. What little survives from before the 15th
century includes some bilingual fragments, indicating that the same play might have been
given in English or Anglo-Norman, according to the composition of the audience. From
the late 14th century onward, two main dramatic genres are discernible, the mystery, or
Corpus Christi, cycles and the morality plays. The mystery plays were long cyclic dramas
of the Creation.

2. A Shakespearean comedy:

1) Has a happy ending.

2) A tone and style that is light-hearted.
3) Often deals with the struggle young lovers need to overcome.
4) Often has multiple plots.
5) Often involves a subversion of class such as a clever servant, an ignorant king.
6) Usually involves a family.

A Shakespearean history:

1) Is based on actual English kings from the 12th to the 16th century.
2) Kings and leaders from the distant past, such as Julius Caesar or Macbeth, are not included
in this category.

A Shakespearean tragedy:

1) Involves a hero or protagonistwho falls from grace, usually because of a flaw in their
character.
2) An anti-hero

3. The Elizabethan era was the epoch in English history of Queen Elizabeth I's reign (1558–1603).
Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history .This "golden age"[2] represented
the apogee of the English Renaissance and saw the flowering of poetry, music and literature. The
era is most famous for theatre, as William Shakespeare and many others composed plays that
broke free of England's past style of theatre. It was an age of exploration and expansion abroad,
while back at home, the Protestant Reformation became more acceptable to the people, most
certainly after the Spanish Armada was repulsed. It was also the end of the period when England
was a separate realm before its royal union with Scotland.
4. The Puritans were a group of Protestants in England during the 16th and 17th century who
founded their reforming movement due to their dissatisfaction with the 1558 settlement under
Queen Elizabeth I which reformed the Church of England following the reign of her half-sister,
the Catholic Mary I. At first, Puritans were devoted to religious matters only. But many senior
Puritans became politically active and were prime movers in the challenge to the monarch,
Charles I, by Parliament that led to the English Civil War (1642 to 1649), and some of them came
to power, notably Oliver Cromwell, the Huntingdon MP and general in the Parliamentarian army
who became the Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland after the king's execution.Their
literature consisted of prose or poetry. Because of their Puritan values, they disapproved of
plays and dramas, and under Cromwell many of London's theatres, including those founded by
William Shakespeare, which had been so popular in the Elizabethan era, were ordered to be
closed.
5. Because prose age The increasing number of publications (magazines & newspapers) The
increasing number of scientific books & discourses Novel became the effective medium
Literature for increasing the moral of society. Prose got its climactic development Problem
novels Charles Dickens: Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield, A
Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations William Makepeace Thackeray (from rich family,
educated, Cambridge graduate): Henry Esmond, Vanity Fair, Pendennis, The Newcomes, The
Virginians Marry Ann Evans (George Eliot)