The Renaissance arrived in Europe like a happy sigh. In England, playwrights found a premier home in the court of Elizabeth I. Voices like Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, George Peele and William Shakespeare came to be known as Elizabethan, and they sang to the world in revolutionary blank verse, proclaiming a new national identity for England, conqueror of the Spanish Armada.

And so the happy sigh became a joyous shout. Voice after voice was added to the din, until the playwrights of the Renaissance had broken every restraining wall left by the dark time that had preceded it. Think of it from your own - the actor's perspective: forced for centuries to portray only saints and other Biblical personages, suddenly you can play the King of England..or the Queen! Men and women in love; men and women scheming to get what they want; treachery; incest; heroics..the actor's palate is suddenly without limit, and a new craft is born..