The Elizabethan period in English literature was marked by the influence of the Renaissance and humanism. Drama flourished, especially the works of William Shakespeare. Poetry also grew, with Edmund Spenser establishing the Spenserian stanza in works like The Faerie Queene. Prose developed various genres, including euphuistic works by John Lyly, pastoral romances like Philip Sidney's Arcadia, and early novels. Overall, it was a period of artistic flowering and secularization of literature.