Tracing the development of narrative verse in London's literary circles during the 1590s, this volume puts Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece into conversation with poems by a wide variety of contemporary writers, including Thomas Lodge, Francis Beaumont, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Heywood, Thomas Campion and Edmund Spenser. Chapters investigate the complexities of this literary conversation and contribute for the current, vigorous reassessment of humanism's intended consequences by drawing attention to the highly diverse forms of early modern classicism as well as the complex connection between Latin pedagogy and vernacular poetic invention.

Key themes and topics include:
-Epyllia, masculinity and sexuality
-Classicism and commerce
-Genre and mimesis
-Rhetoric and aesthetics