On pages 40 and 41, our tour guide makes one of those unlikely assertions that give his prose punch. He claims that only in England did the spirit of modernism meld with the spirit of the renaissance. His illustrations are three of the best-known works of literature from the period immediately before the one we will be touring.

Gardiner starts with Orlando Furioso, and the idea that Italians of Elizabeth's time probably connected with it only as a tale of long lost time. Then Don Quixote, in which he claims the Spanish could find ample support for rejecting the medieval ethos. And finally Spenser's Faery Queene, which provides a perfect synthesis of medieval and Elizabethan sensibilities.

I don't know that there is any value in all this, and I doubt Gardiner did. But it's interesting to think about. And if you haven't read one or more of these pieces of the common experience, maybe this will be an opportunity for you to at least dip into them.