Elizabethan poets are English poets who wrote during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, from 1558 to 1603. The label is usually applied to writers such as Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Sir Walter Raleigh, whose work helped shape the sonnet, lyric, and drama of the period.
The term describes a literary period rather than a strict school, so the poets grouped under it may differ from one reference to another.
Example
Sidney shapes the sonnet with courtly grace,
Spenser builds dreamlike stanzas line by line;
Shakespeare gives speech a fuller human face-
These voices belong to Elizabethan poetry.