ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book argues that a true interpretation of John Shirley has been hampered by too great a degree of speculation about the nature of his activities, and too little investigation of the context of his work. It explains what is known about Shirley's life up until the end of the 1420s; it advances the knowledge of Shirley's early career by more than a decade, and traces his movements by shadowing those of his lord, Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick. Shirley's importance to the world of literary criticism lies chiefly in his role as a scribe of late fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century vernacular poetry, particularly the shorter poems of Chaucer and Lydgate. The influence of Shirley's work can be traced in later manuscripts through direct references to his name, or through the anonymous but distinctive evidence of his peculiar orthography and verbose headings.
