A fictional knight appearing in three of Shakespeare's plays: King Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, and The Merry Wives of Windsor. Sir John Falstaff is the friend of Prince Hal, the future King Henry V, and is characterized by his vanity and fatness. Falstaff spends much of his time drinking with petty criminals, and he largely lives off of stolen money. Although the character does not appear in the play, Falstaff's death at the Battle of Agincourt is mentioned in King Henry V.

Translated Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata as Godfrey of Bulloigne; or, the Recoverie of Jerusalem (1600).

A late fifteenth-century London sheriff who redacted a number of sources on events in British history into The Concordance of Chronicles. Also known as Robert Fabian.

Italian writer, author of Delle lettere familiari d'alcuni Bolognesi del nostro secolo (1744).

Catholic priest whose travels in Greece, Sicily, and Malta resulted in the publication of A Tour through Italy (1813). His brief travels in France resulted in Letter from Paris (1814).

In Greek myth, wife of Orpheus, who was killed by a snake. To rescue her, Orpheus descended into the underworld, but his efforts were foiled when he violated the conditions imposed on his success by looking back to reassure himself that his wife was still with him.

One of the three most important early Athenian tragic dramatists. Among the nineteen of his plays that have survived, the best known include The Bacchae (405), Iphigenia at Aulis (405), Orestes (408), Iphigenia at Tauris (414?), The Trojan Women (415), Electra (417), Andromache (426?), and Medea (431).

In Greek mythology, one of the Three Charites or Graces.

Dutch humanist, Catholic priest, and editor of the New Testament, Erasmus is considered one of the greatest scholars of the northern Renaissance.

A stoic philosopher who lived from ca. AD 50-125. He was born a slave in Phrygian, Hierapolis in the household of the freedman Epaphroditus in Rome; he later manumitted and started a school of philosophy in Nicopolis.