英国文艺复兴有五个特点：1）英国文化的复兴并不是直接通过古典作品，而是通过受古典作品影响同时代的欧洲人实现的；2）英格兰作为一个与大陆隔离的国家，其社会历史进程很大程度上独立于欧洲其它国家；3）由于14世纪伟大的天才诗人乔叟（Chaucer）的出现，英国本国文学得以蓬勃发展，能够在吸收外国文学影响的同时，并未处于从属地位；4）英国文艺复兴文学首先是艺术的，其次才是哲学的和学术的；5）文艺复兴和英格兰的宗教改革在时间上有所交叉。
The English Renaissance was a cultural and artistic movement in England dating from the early 16th century to the early 17th century. It is associated with the pan-European Renaissance that many cultural historians believe originated in northern Italy in the fourteenth century. This era in English cultural history is sometimes referred to as "the age of Shakespeare" or "the Elizabethan era," taking the name of the English Renaissance's most famous author and most important monarch, respectively; however it is worth remembering that these names are rather misleading: Shakespeare was not an especially famous writer in his own time, and the English Renaissance covers a period both before and after Elizabeth's reign.
Poets such as Edmund Spencer and John Milton produced works that demonstrated an increased interest in understanding English Christian beliefs, such as the allegorical representation of the Tudor Dynasty in The Faerie Queen and the retelling of mankind’s fall from paradise in Paradise Lost; playwrights, such as Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare, composed theatrical representations of the English take on life, death, and history. Nearing the end of the Tudor Dynasty, philosophers like Sir Thomas More and Sir Francis Bacon published their own ideas about humanity and the aspects of a perfect society, pushing the limits of metacognition at that time. As England abolished its astrologers and alchemists, it came closer to reaching modern science with the Baconian Method, a forerunner of the Scientific Method.
The key literary figures in the English Renaissance are now generally considered to be the poet Edmund Spenser; the philosopher Francis Bacon; the poets and playwrights Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson; and the poet John Milton. Sir Thomas More is often considered one of the earliest writers of the English Renaissance. Thomas Tallis, Thomas Morley, and William Byrd were the most notable English musicians of the time, and are often seen as being a part of the same artistic movement that inspired the above authors. Elizabeth herself, a product of Renaissance humanism trained by Roger Ascham, wrote occasional poems like On Monsieur’s Departure at critical moments of her life.