SPECIAL INTRODUCTION 



THE Elizabethan age may be regarded as the continuation 

 and development in England of that new spirit which 

 first manifested itself in Italy about the middle of the 

 fifteenth century, and which is commonly known as the 

 Renaissance. This new spirit involved a complete transforma- 

 tion of the ideals of the Middle Ages, and an entire reversal of 

 the valuations which had ruled the world for a thousand years. 

 The Renaissance gloried in the present life, instead of despis- 

 ing it and looking towards another ; it put knowledge in the 

 place of faith, the rational enjoyment of life and the full de- 

 velopment of the powers of the individual in the place of 

 asceticism, and action and achievement in the room of the 

 old ideals of resignation and prayer. But it was in the Eng- 

 land of Elizabeth the England in which Bacon was born and 

 bred that we first find in modern times the complete re- 

 awakening of the national consciousness, the full sense of 

 political freedom and unity. This reawakened patriotism finds 

 triumphant expressions in almost all the literature of the time, 

 and in particular is heard as an exultant and ever-recurring 

 note through the whole series of Shakespearean plays which 

 deal with English history : .* 



" This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, 

 This muse, this teeming womb of royal Kings 

 Feared by their breed and famous through their birth." 



There is still another aspect of the English Renaissance an- 

 other stage in the assertion of the free spirit with which the 

 name of Bacon is most intimately connected. For it was dur- 

 ing this period that man came proudly and joyfully to recognize 

 that nature is his own proper heritage, that he has the power 

 and the right in virtue of his intelligence to subdue it to himself, 

 and make its forces minister to his wants. This spirit dom- 



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