Elizabethan Drama

The spirit of the Renaissance brought widespread interest in classics, notably Latin and Italian.
Influence on the drama was inevitable. Terence and Plautus were the models for comedy, while Seneca was tha main reference point for tragedy.
Seneca followed the model of Greek drama, and also provided of the play into five acts, but on the whole he was a dangerous example: his tragedies, rhetorical and sensational, were meant to be declaimed rather than performed, because there was very little action.
He introduced he human motive of revenge to substitute the religious idea that divine justice and fate would punish those who broke moral law.
His subjects were characterized by atrocity and monstrous crimes, and bsecutions, in perloody action was usually shown on the stage.
The apparearance of ghosts was also frequent.
Seneca appealed to the Elizabethans, who were used to violence and bloodshed. We must not forget that this golden period witnessed terrible cruelty in the religious persecutions, in the witch hunts, the pitiless repression of political plots.
The drama was the main achievement of the century, and a national was founded, thanks to the new first hunted by the authorities because they were considered vagrants.
They found a solution placing themselves under the protection of some powerful noblemen.