ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines the various types of friendship associations and networks that emerged in early modern Europe across social and/or national boundaries. It argues modern concerns about the limits and dangers of false amicitia are also at the heart of the twelfth novella of Marguerite de Navarre's Heptaméron. The book reviews one of the play's main concerns is King Lear's rebuff of 'plain' speech, a truthfulness contrary to the flattery he craved yet essential, according to ancient and Renaissance discourses of friendship alike, for vera amicitia to exist. It examines a more radical condemnation of tyranny and espousal of friendship as the only source from which a rational political order could ensue: John Milton's discourse of friendship as expounded in both his 1649 The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates and his 1660 The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth.
