2019 Year 7 English - The Elizabethan World: Home

Some Elizabethan entertainments, such as theatre and football, are still popular today. Others, such as animal-baiting, now seem shocking. Liza Picard takes a look at common 16th-century pastimes.

Exploration and trade, crime and punishment, clothing and social structure: explore key aspects of Elizabethan life, culture and society.

Even though there was an unmarried woman on the throne in Elizabethan England, the roles of women in society were very limited. The Elizabethans had very clear expectations of men and women, and in general men were expected to be the breadwinners and women to be housewives and mothers.

Elizabethan explorers undertook lengthy expeditions to discover new worlds. Liza Picard considers some of the consequences of these expeditions: overseas colonies, imported goods and the slave trade.

Balancing the body and consulting the heavens: Medicine in Shakespeare’s time.
Includes a podcast on Elizabethan Medicine.

From the open air Globe to the candlelit Blackfriars; from countryside to city; and from noblemen to strangers, discover the world that shaped Shakespeare’s work and that influenced his legacy.

Liza Picard describes how, between the Queen at the top and the beggars at the bottom, there was jockeying for position in the different levels of Elizabethan society.