Almost all Elizabethan criticism of any seriousness and weight was written in Latin. Yet no one would imagine this, to look at the literary histories.’ A Latin treatise in defense of poetry and acting by Alberico Gentili, which it is my purpose here to edit and translate, has altogether escaped the notice of historians of criticism and students of Elizabethan literature, even though it was published at Oxford by the University Printer, in the greatest days of Queen Elizabedi's reign.The main outlines of the life of Alberico Gentili are well enough known. He was born in Italy at San Ginesio in 1552, and studied at the University of Perugia, whence he graduated as a doctor of civil law in 1572. A Protestant, suspected of heresy, he was compelled to flee the Inquisition, along with his father Matteo, and younger brother Scipione.

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The Coppergate helmet, found in central York in 1982 and of Anglo-Saxon date, bears a Latin inscription. A new reading of the inscription is offered, and a different view consequently taken of its significance.

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