a. and sb. Also 9 Elizabethian. [f. Elizabeth + -AN.]
A. adj. Belonging to the period of Queen Elizabeth.
1817. Coleridge, Biog. Lit., II. xxii. 166. Samuel Daniel, one of the golden writers of our golden Elizabethian age.
1840. Carlyle, Heroes (1858), 261. This glorious Elizabethan Era.
1887. J. W. Hales, 3 Elizab. Comedies, in Macm. Mag., May, 61/2. He is … never to flog him [the pupil] when he cannot say his lesson—a peculiar hardship to an Elizabethan teacher.
2. Of dress, furniture, architecture: In the style in vogue during the period of Queen Elizabeth. Also of language, literary form, etc.
1840. Hood, Up the Rhine, 307. A large Elizabethan ruff.
1869. Daily News, 15 March, 2/2. In the drama ‘Lady Grace,’ the contrast between modern manners and Elizabethan language is rather incongruous.
1874. Parker, Goth. Archit., I. ii. 20. The Elizabethan style … is a mixture of the old English and the ruder Italian of the Renaissance.
B. sb. A person (esp. a poet or dramatist) of the period of Queen Elizabeth. Chiefly pl.
1881. Athenæum, 12 Nov., 623/3. The murders and adulteries that … had pleased the Elizabethans.
1882. Grosart, Spenser’s Wks., III. Introd. 62. Our Elizabethans, Lodge and Greene especially.
1884. Athenæum, 22 March, 386/2. The savage sublimity of the Elizabethans.
