Beginning of Essay
The English dramatist and poet was the author of the most widely admired and influential body of literature by any individual in the history of Western civilization. His work includes 36 plays, 154 sonnets, and 2 narrative poems. Knowledge of Shakespeare is deriv ....

Middle of Essay
.... stages ending about 1580. A large number of comedies, tragedies, and examples of intermediate types were produced for London theaters between that year and 1642, when the London theaters were closed by order of the Puritan Parliament. Like so much nondramatic literature of the Renaissance, most of these plays were written in an elaborate verse style and under the influence of classical examples, but the popular taste, to which drama was especially susceptible, required a flamboyance and sensationalism largely alien to the spirit of Greek and Roman literature. Only the Roman tragedian Lucius Annaeus Seneca could provide a model for the earli ....