The Renaissance of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in England saw a great dramatic revival of the old Greek and Roman classics and a new interest in a native British drama. English playwrights seized the opportunity to combine the best of these two drama forms to create the Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, the best in English literature and possibly in the world (Schultz 88). Chief among these playwrights was William Shakespeare, the most respected playwright of all time. The theater of this period was quite popular. Though the actors were still all men, the masks had disappeared; and costumes, props, and sets had taken their place (McCredie 21). During the Renaissance, the theater began to come of age ("Renaissance" 4). Although drama had its ups and downs in the years that followed, it was at last firmly established as an acceptable and valuable form of literature.