Since the beginnings of its greatness, Florence was a town of merchants and of craftsmen where the arts, literature, and religious devotion were highly cultivated and where the vernacular tongue, probably after the French and Provençal model, was used as a literary language much earlier than in the rest of Italy, not only in lyrical poetry but also in all other branches of literature. The example of Dante alone is sufficient to show that the interest in philosophy and theology was very much alive in early Florence. Yet the university which was founded during the fourteenth century never occupied a predominant place in the intellectual life of the city, and hence the learned disciplines characteristic of the medieval universities were less strongly represented in Florence than in the old university centers.

In his letter to Harvey from Leicester House on October 5, 1579, Spenser said he hoped to be employed by a ‘Lorde’, evidently the Earl of Leicester, and intended to devote his time ‘to his Honours service’; and he further reported that ‘gentle M. Sidney, I thanke his good Worship’, had asked for news of Harvey. In a second letter ten days later he said he would follow Harvey's advice to publish various of his writings but was in doubt about their dedication. One work, evidently the Shepheardes Calender, seemed to him ‘too base for his excellent Lordship’. He noted that Gosson had been scorned for dedicating his Schoole of Abuse to Master Sidney, from which he concluded: ‘Suche follie is it, not to regarde aforehand the inclination and qualitie of him, to whome wee dedicate oure Bookes.

A most intriguing problem in the history of the French theatre of the sixteenth century concerns Jodelle's lost comedy La Rencontre. In the eighteenth-century Histoire du théâtre français by Claude and François Parfaict, Jodelle's one extant comedy is listed as Eugène, ou La Rencontre. This double title, accepted also by the Chevalier de Mouhy and some later literary historians, does not square with a very explicit paragraph in Estienne Pasquier's Recherches de la France VII, vi:

Il [Jodelle] fit deux Tragedies… et deux comedies, la Rencontre et l'Eugene. La Rencontre ainsi appellée, parce qu'au gros de la meslange, tous les personnages s'estoient trouvez pesle-mesle casuellement dedans une maison; fuzeau qui fut fort bien par luy demeslé par la closture du jeu. Ceste Comedie, et la Cleopatre furent representées devant le Roy Henry à Paris en l'Hostel de Reims, avec un grand applaudissement de toute la compagnie: Et depuis encores au College de Boncourt, où toutes les fenestres estoient tapissées d'une infinité de personnages d'honneur, et la Cour si pleine d'escoliers que les portes du College en regorgeoeint. Je le dis comme celuy qui y estois present, avec le grand Tornebus en une mesme chambre.