A network of complex currents flowed across Jacobean England.
This was the England of Shakespeare, Jonson, and Bacon; the era of
the Gunpowder Plot and the worst outbreak of the plague. Jacobean
England was both more godly and less godly than it had ever been,
and the entire culture was drawn taut between these polarities.
This was the world that created the King James Bible. It
is the greatest work of English prose ever written, and it is no
coincidence that the translation was made at the moment
""Englishness,"" specifically the English language itself, had come
into its first passionate maturity. The English of Jacobean England
has a more encompassing idea of its own scope than any form of the
language before or since. It drips with potency and sensitivity.
The age, with all its conflicts, explains the book.