The first half of the seventeenth century marks an important stage in the development of European drama. Inevitably greater heights were attained in one country than in another. In England Shakespeare was only the greatest among an extraordinary galaxy of talented playwrights active in this period, and if the years between his withdrawal from the stage and the closing of the London theatres by Parliament in 1642 are generally regarded as a period of decline, it was none the less an age of intense dramatic activity which bore within it the seeds of future developments. In Spain another summit of dramatic achievement was reached in the plays of Lope de Vega and his contemporaries, and this great age of the Spanish theatre was prolonged into the second half of the century by the works of Calderón.

Although in our period Italy produced no outstanding playwrights, not only did it continue to influence the drama of other European countries through the Commedia dell'Arte; it created the new genre of the opera which was gradually to spread to other lands, and in the sphere of theatre architecture, machinery and scenery it showed the way to the whole of Europe. In France the opening decades of the century form a strange contrast with the extraordinary flowering of drama in the age of Corneille, Molière and Racine from about 1630 to 1680: it was only with the triumphant success of Le Cid (1637) that France began to rival England and Spain in the drama.