Among the nations of Germanic descent the English alone succeeded, mainly through the influence of the Renaissance movement, in transforming the later growths of the medieval drama into the beginnings of a great and enduring national dramatic literature, second neither in volume nor in splendour to any other in the records of the world. And, although in England, as elsewhere, the preparatory process had been continuing for some generations, its consummation coincided with one of the greatest epochs of English national history, and indeed forms one of the chief glories of that epoch itself; so that, in thinking or speaking of the Elizabethan age and the Elizabethan drama, the one can scarcely be thought or spoken of without the other. Beginnings of the regular drama. It is of course conceivable that the regular drama, or drama proper, might in England have been called into life without the direct influence of classical examples. Already in the reign of Edward VI. the spirit of the Reformation had (with the aid of a newly awakened desire for the study of history, which was no doubt largely due to Italian examples) quickened the relatively inanimate species of the morality into the beginning of a new development.[155] But though the _Kyng Johan_ of Bale (much as this author abhorred the chronicles as written by ecclesiastics) came very near to the chronicle histories, there is no proof whatever that the work, long hidden away for very good reasons, actually served as a transition to the new species; and Bale's production was entirely unknown to the particular chronicle history which treated the same subject. Before the earliest example of this transitional species was produced, English tragedy had directly connected its beginnings with classical models. Imitation of classical examples.