irst of the great Elizabethan sonnet cycles, which relied heavily on the conventions established by Petrarch. Sidney's collection ahs 108 sonnets and eleven songs. Sir Thomas Hoby was an English diplomat and translator of Baldasare Castiglione's II libro del cortegiano; his translation was entitled "The Courtyer of Count Baldesser Castilio. He was educated at Cambridge and Strasbourg, Hoby traveled extensively on the European continent. The influence of Hoby's translation in England was enormous, not only on the social pattern of life at court but also on such writers as Shakespeare and Sir Philip Sidney. Thomas Wyatt was born at Allington Castle, near Maidstone, in Kent, in 1503, son of Henry and Anne. During an imprisonment Wyatt witnessed the execution of Anne Boleyn on May 19, 1536 from the Bell Tower, and wrote V. Innocentia Veritas Fides circumdederunt me inimici mei. He was released later that year, and in November of the year his father Henry died. Some of his other notable works include The Court of Venus and Certain Psalms. Edmund Spenser was born in 1552 to a family of small means. He attended the Merchant Taylor's School and Cambridge where he received his Bachelor's degree and his Master's degree. His notable works include The Shepheardes Calendar, The Faerie Queene, The Daphnaida, and the Complaints.
             The rebirth of classical studies contributed to the development of all forms of art during the Renaissance. Literature was probably the first to show signs of classical influence. The Italian poet Petrarach delighted in studying the works of Cicero and Virgil, two great writers of the Roman age, and he modeled some his own writings on their works.
             "In this period England's population doubled; prices rocketed, rents followed, old social loyalty dissolved, and new industrial, agricultural, and commercial veins were first tapped. The barely disguised social ferm...