This chapter contributes to the ongoing question of Shakespeare’s debts to Spenser, arguing that Spenser’s Phedon episode in Faerie Queene 2.4 is a more important source for Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing than previously recognized. By setting Shakespeare’s comedy alongside a tragic event in Spenser’s poem (in which the suspicion of adultery leads to murder rather than an apparently happy ending, as it does in Shakespeare), I show how Shakespeare and Spenser deviate from other versions of the tale, notably Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, in their emphasis on courteous theatricality over heroic action. Both texts, I establish, reveal the costs of maintaining the appearance of masculine honor in a culture obsessed with impersonation, especially the danger that substance will be replaced with verbal self-presentation. The movement from action to words contained in Spenser’s narrative leaves significant traces in Shakespeare’s play as it too registers the loss of authenticity that afflicts its characters.

This chapter shows how Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier spurs reflection about the relationships between reading, performance, and character formation, arguing that the dialogue’s interwoven vocabulary of print and performance informs readers’ experiences of considering critically the relationship between literary and social performances. The Courtier encourages its readers not only to observe the debate, but to observe themselves, becoming both actor and spectator through their speculative readings of the text. I consider both Castiglione’s original text and the editions printed in England in order to demonstrate that the material form of the book as well as its thematic discussions encouraged readers to immerse themselves in the dialogue as they tested out the possibilities of different mental positions. Involving readers in its explorations while also offering them agency to direct their own experiences of it, Castiglione’s dialogue in its various editions facilitates both pleasurable instruction and metacritical reflection and critique. Readers’ practice in courtesy as they experience the text involves juggling multiple perspectives, as reflected in both the content and the format of the book; this practice also provides an ideal training for the overlapping tasks of reading Spenser and reading and watching Shakespeare.

This chapter situates classical education in late antique Gaul in its historical context, positioning the work within the current scholarly debates, and building on recent scholarship on late antique Gaul. Arranged thematically, Chapter 2 considers key developments in the political and military relationships between the western Roman empire, Gallo-Romans and barbarian groups, the prospects and prosperity of Gallo-Roman aristocrats, the increasing dominance of the Church and bishops in daily life, and the vitality and continuity of Gallo-Roman cities. It considers the conditions necessary for classical education to thrive and function and discusses how the structures that fostered education were affected by the political, military, religious, and cultural transformations of fifth-century Gaul.

Chapter 1 opens with a discussion of the foundational importance of classical education in Roman society and politics, and how it served as a basis for both office-holding and elite Roman identity and self-fashioning. The chapter also provides a prosopographical sketch of the teachers and students that are visible in the historical record from the fourth to early sixth centuries in Gaul, showing that identifiable teachers and students begin to fade from the sources from the later-fifth and early-sixth centuries. It discusses the marked shift in the visibility of these individuals, the changing nature of our sources for education throughout the period, the limitations of our sources, and what we can learn from those limitations. The chapter argues that, while classical education largely disappears from the historical record by the early sixth century, this by no means indicates that classical education ceased to exist entirely. Rather, it shows that classical education was no longer a ‘public’ institution as it had been under the Roman empire, and that it did not occupy that specific place within politics, society, and culture that allowed it to be visible and take a prominent place in the technical and literary texts of the period.

This chapter argues that Augustine adopts a second-person perspective, which “is characterized by dialogical speech, shared awareness of shared focus with the second person, and an orientation to love that other person.” This perspective shapes his understanding of the moral life; it gives pride of place to second-person relations, whether in the virtuous love of God and neighbor or in the disordered friendship without which Augustine tells us he would not have stolen the pears. Examining three virtues – humility, mercy, and charity – the chapter shows how each of them can be understood only in terms of proper relatedness to some other person. Since these virtues are prominent in the Confessions but altogether absent from the Nicomachean Ethics, a close look at them reveals the considerable differences between an Augustinian and an Aristotelian approach to the virtues. It also sheds light on how to read Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas’ considerable inheritance from Augustine goes largely ignored by scholars focusing on Aquinas’s Aristotelianism. Attention to Augustine is accordingly crucial for a more balanced understanding of Aquinas; it also holds promise for future work in virtue ethics.