ABSTRACT
John Lyly was intimately associated with the secular humanistic Latin learning which emerged in the fifteenth century and flourished in the sixteenth. In 1578 he published his Euphues or the Anatomy of Wit, which was an immediate success and was followed in 1580 by Euphues and his England by 1630 the two separate works had gone through twenty-six editions. In Euphues, was an artistic style affiliated with the spoken language. Lyly's characteristic style became temporarily so fashionable that the royal court is reported to have sought to speak in Euphuisms. The narrative is heavily sententious and didactic, recounting the emotional adventures of a young Athenian, Euphues, his infatuation with and then rejection of faithless Lucilla. Already by 1598, William Shakespeare, Henry IV, II is satirising Euphuistic style in the speeches of Falstaff imitating King Henry, and time of Lyly's death in 1606 his Euphuistic style was beginning to be considered ludicrous in more advanced quarters.
