Seventeenth-Century Poetry: I. The Olympians

When the Renaissance ended in England is even harder to say than it is to say what it was, but the death of Spenser in 1599 is a convenient date. The removal of the last and greatest of the humanist poets happened at a time when for political and social reasons the Elizabethan spirit, which was synthetic and unifying, had given place to the spirit of the seventeenth century, which was analytical and disruptive. The strength of the insurgent movement is indicated by the popularity in the later 1590’s of satire and epigram, evidenced by the work of Hall, Harington, Marston, Bastard, the two Davies’, and many others; 1 and still more by the repressive efforts of the authorities, who in 1599 issued a categorical anathema against such writing. 2 The End of the Renaissance