section_path: Spread/England
section_name: England
paragraph_text: England
  
  The Elizabethan era in the second half of the 16th century is usually regarded as the height of the English Renaissance. Many scholars see its beginnings in the early 16th century during the reign of Henry VIII.
  
  The English Renaissance is different from the Italian Renaissance in several ways. The dominant art forms of the English Renaissance were literature and music, which had a rich flowering. Visual arts in the English Renaissance were much less significant than in the Italian Renaissance. The English Renaissance period in art began far later than the Italian, which had moved into Mannerism by the 1530s.
  
  In literature the later part of the 16th century saw the flowering of Elizabethan literature, with poetry heavily influenced by Italian Renaissance literature but Elizabethan theatre a distinctive native style. Writers include William Shakespeare (1564–1616), Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593), Edmund Spenser (1552–1599), Sir Thomas More (1478–1535), and Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586). English Renaissance music competed with that in Europe with composers such as Thomas Tallis (1505–1585), John Taverner (1490–1545), and William Byrd (1540–1623). Elizabethan architecture produced the large prodigy houses of courtiers, and in the next century Inigo Jones (1573–1652), who introduced Palladian architecture to England.
  
  Elsewhere, Sir Francis Bacon (1561–1626) was the pioneer of modern scientific thought, and is commonly regarded as one of the founders of the Scientific Revolution.