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, became Queen. The new Queen came to the throne at the age of twenty-five. After the coronation, her parliament passed the necessary legislation to abolish the papal supremacy over the church, and gave Elizabeth all the powers over the church which her father had held, though with the more modest title of “Supreme Government” of the Church of England instead of “Supreme Head” Elizabeth died on 24 March, 1603 at the age of sixty-nine. Her forty-four-year reign had not only ensured the triumph of Protestantism in Britain and in Northern Europe, but had greatly increased the wealth, power and prestige of England. Her navy triumphed over the great Armada of the king of Spain; her sailors’ circum navigated the world, and established a colony on the North American continent which they named Virginia after their virgin queen. At home, the merchants were prosperous; the common people enjoyed a higher standard of living than in most other European countries, and her reign was also full of achievements in literature and other arts. After all, Elizabeth Ⅰwas one of the most successful despots to govern England in English history. ①(李超, 邓兴义:34-37) B. Special Social Background Reflecting in the Merchant of Venice The Merchant of Venice is one of the famous comedy plays written by Shakespeare in his early time. The theme of this play is to extol kindness, friendship and love. It is the mirror of the contradiction between business bourgeois and usurer at the beginning of capitalist society. It’s also expressed the author’s humanism ideas on money, law and religion in this society. There, we mention Humanism--the main distinguishing feature of that period, also the brightness characteristic which is shown from the important roles in this play. But, what is “humanism”? Humanism is the ideological weapon of bourgeois to fight feudalism at Renaissance, is also the core idea of the bourgeois’ advanced-literature in this time. Be directed against the world outlook of Medieval feudalism is the spearhead of struggle, especially the religion belief of Catholicism. Church refers to God as the centre of cosmos. At the heart of the Renaissance philosophy is the assertion of the greatness of man. And the elements of Humanism are to establish the central status of human, their dignity and value, to advocate the spirit of rationalism and science and to protest the supreme role of God admired in Middle Ages. Shakespeare was a man of the late Renaissance who gave the fullest expression to humanist ideas. The Merchant of Venice is one of the important works which finished in the First Flowering period of English Literature. In this play, heroes and heroines fight for their own ideas and mould their own life according to their own free will and bring us into happy and ideal world with singing, dancing, harmony with nature and freedom from the vices of the world. Ⅱ. Analyzing the Heroes in the Play In this play, Shakespeare portrays many roles. The proportion that male figures taking is much more notable than female’s. So, it's necessary to narrate and display their nature character and symbol. A. Antonio Although the play’s title refers to him, Antonio is a rather lackluster character. He emerges in ActⅠ, sceneⅠas a hopeless depressive, someone who cannot name the source of his melancholy and who, throughout the course of the play, devolves into a self-pitying lump, unable to muster the energy required to defend himself against execution. Antonio never names the