Here a third
social factor needs to be considered. Though most of Elizabeth's five million
subjects were country‑dwellers, their prosperity depended on foreign trade;
and all the main events of the reign were connected with the rise of merchant
capital - the long duel with Spain, ranging from Ireland to the Indies; the
raids on Spanish treasure; the sudden expansion of English trade to touch
all four of the known continents. Shakespeare's interest in the sea reflects
the outlook of an increasingly mercantile society. Moreover, Shakespeare's
lifetime has been described as the period of most rapid advance in mining
and manufacture that England was to know until the late eighteenth century.
"The realm aboundeth in riches, as may be seen by the general excess of the
people in purchasing, in buildings, in meat, drink, and feastings, and most
notably in apparel." This statement of 1579 implies new industries and technical
knowledge, a rising standard of living for many, a thriving atmosphere in
which the newly built theatres could prosper.
This rise of
capitalism affected society in two contrasting ways. It strengthened the
monarchy, especially against Catholicism; and by such means as the Puritan
sermon, the printing‑press, the commercial playhouse, it helped knit together
a new national consciousness. The culture that reached maturity towards 1580
with Spenser and Sidney,
the immediate forerunners of the great dramatists, amalgamated the varied
elements of the nation's life more closely than the culture of any other
generation since Chaucer.
On the other
hand, capitalism, in a century of steeply rising prices, brought about radical
changes in the composition of society. Spending habits of "excess" upset
the customary standards founded on old routines of farming the soil. And
a new spirit of competition loosened the whole social hierarchy. After 1600
the popular elements in literature were submerged by those aristocratic and
bourgeois ideals that the Elizabethans summed up together as "civility".
And at the same time the rule of the Stuarts brought a division within the governing classes
that ultimately led to the Civil War. In social life, in thought, and in literature
the period about 1600 marks a turning‑point in English history.