Elizabeth is the last Tudor monarch. She became queen at age 25 and reigned from 1558-1603. She was tall, plain, bright, and vain. As queen, she bought lots of clothing and jewelry to make herself look good and appear powerful to visiting ambassadors. She surrounded herself with young courtiers who kept their places at court by admiring the great beauty and wit of the queen (ahem!). She could be very unfeminine and was as at home with her pirates as she was with her ambassadors. She had gotten to watch Mary mess up her reign and had been put in the Tower of London (which served as a prison) several times. The School of Hard Knocks taught her a lot.
There were lots of questions and problems in her reign. First, what religion should she and her country be? She couldn't be Catholic cuz then she'd be illegitimate and lose her throne. But she liked the Catholic ceremonies and rituals. She found a middle ground: there was no mass, Jesus was the supreme head of the church, and as ruler, she was the supreme Governor, thereby allowing the Catholics to keep the Pope as head of the church and her as supreme Governor and not mess up anybody. She said that she didn't want to make "windows in men's souls," i.e. she allowed people to believe their own way and she wouldn't judge them. She wasn't really all that religious anyway. She decided that communion was miraculous, but she didn't know how. The clergy were allowed to marry. Thus, she formed the Anglican Church of England (becomes Episcopalian in the United States).
She had a money problem. Henry had spent lots of money on the navy and defense. The following reigns had debased the currency which produced inflation. There was no confidence in English money. Elizabeth called in all the old money, took out the base metal (lead, etc.), and minted new money. Trade increased.
To keep up here foreign policy, she needed to marry a strong country. But who???? If she married someone in particular, then the balance of power game would be over. She can't marry a Catholic cuz she'd lose the throne but she kept telling the ambassadors from Catholics that she was considering it and they'd tell their masters there was a possibility. She couldn't take a Protestant cuz none of them were strong enough, but they were kept on a string, too. She couldn't take an Englishman, cuz none were royal enough and then everybody else would be mad. So, to keep the presents from suitors coming, she kept stringing them all along.
Scotland was a friend of France. The Scots had become Presbyterians (Calvinists). France didn't like Presbyterians. Elizabeth gave foreign aid to the Presbyterians and also to the French Huguenots (Calvinists). She gave them just enough aid to keep them in business and annoying France but never enough to win. She also aided the Spanish Netherlands against Spain.
There were bad relations with Spain. Spain had found out about Mercantilism–state control of trade and commerce for the benefit of the state (finders, keepers!). You aren't allowed to buy anything from other countries, but you can sell them your stuff. Your colonies can only trade with the mother country in a closed system. Tariffs were invented to keep others from trading with your colonies behind your back. The idea is to keep everybody off of your real estate. Spain under-supplied their colonies and the colonies were anxious to buy goods from anybody, so England kept up a black-market type of trade which didn't help the relations with Spain.
There was a pretender to the throne running around. She was Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland. She was Henry VIII's grandniece (Henry VII's eldest daughter, Margaret, was sent to Scotland to marry James IV of Scotland. Margaret and James IV were the parents of James V of Scotland who was the father of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots–Mary Stuart was only 6 days old when her father was killed in 1542 during a war with England). She is very Catholic (raised in France) and is trying to rule Scotland, which is a Protestant country. She was beautiful but stupid. She got herself kicked out of Scotland cuz of plotting and just being a general nuisance. She ran to England. She had some Tudor blood in her and would be queen if Elizabeth was declared illegitimate. She made a nuisance of herself in England, constantly plotting to get Elizabeth killed so she could become queen. Elizabeth kept her in England under guard, but Mary kept signing her ok to assassination papers on Elizabeth, so Mary Stuart was finally beheaded for treason.
Elizabeth was getting old. Philip II of Spain (who had been married to Elizabeth's half-sister, Mary a.k.a. Bloody Mary)had wanted to marry Elizabeth cuz if they had a kid he'd have the strongest kingdom of all (Spain and England would be united). But Elizabeth kept putting him off and finally he decided he should just knock her off and take her kingdom. He sent over the Spanish Armada in 1588, which failed cuz of natural disasters and cuz the English navy (with smaller, faster ships) was so good. The Spanish Armada was supposedly the best in land, so this was a big event. It was the high point of Elizabeth's reign.
Parliament wanted to have more say in the government but they were waiting for Elizabeth to die off since she doesn't have a child to pass the throne on to, they know they're going to get somebody who won't have as much power as she does. The navy was big now, especially with the pirate fleet which was approved behind the scenes by Elizabeth. There was lots of big trade with the New World.
Literature wasn't too big in England until Elizabeth's reign. The biggie before her time was Chaucer with his Canterbury Tales. Nothing much was done during the War of the Roses up til Henry VIII. Christopher Marlowe was one of the Elizabethan biggies. Shakespeare was the super biggie. He was an actor to start with. Most of his big plays were written after Elizabeth's death, but he got started before her death. He wrote lots and sold them for money. He had good plays cuz he wrote good, real characters the audience could identify with. He understood people. His plays were full of sex and violence to please the common crud audience that came in off the street.