Before Shakespeare the Renaissance didn’t hugely affect England. It was like a copy of French Vogue in a Guildford hairdressers – just something people who wanted to be aware of things were aware of. It didn’t touch many. When Shakespeare wrote Hamlet and it played to packed theatres, something new had begun. Renaissance is underplaying it. It was a birth, not a rebirth – but novelty is more approachable when spun as restoration.
