William Shakespeare lived from 1564 to 1616, during the Elizabethan Era, which was a period of English history during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, lasting from 1558 to 1603. The Elizabethan era is often depicted as the golden age in English history, and it was a brief period of internal peace between the Wars of the Roses in the previous century, the English Reformation, and the religious battles between Protestants and Catholics prior to Elizabeths reign, and then the later conflict of the English Civil War. Shakespeares life also overlapped with the Jacobean Era (1603-1625), during the reign of King James I.