SOURCE: An introduction to The Wide Arch: Roman Values in Shakespeare, St. Martin's Press, 1992, pp. 1-12.

In the following essay, Wells provides an overview of the role of Roman values in Renaissance culture generally, and concludes with a discussion of Shakespeare's handling of these values.

Gerrit Gerritszoon of Rotterdam, better known as Erasmus, made his first visit to England in the autumn of 1499. His arrival, coinciding as it almost did with the new century, could be taken to symbolise the dawning of English Humanism, and the same eye for symmetry might see, in the opening of Hamlet one hundred years later, the culmination of that prolific age. The teaching of Greek also crossed the Channel at the end of the 15th century, pioneered by such scholars as Grocyn, Linacre and Vitelli. In the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, students were now enabled to read Plato and Aristotle in...