Among the poems edited by Professor Kenneth Muir from the Blage manuscript of early Tudor poetry there appears the following octave (XXXIX):

Thou slepest ffast; and I with woffull hart
Stand here alone, syghing, and cannot ffleye.
Thou slepyst ffast, when crewell love his darte
On me dothe cast, Alas! so paynefullye.
Thou slepyst fast, and I all ffull of smart
To the my fo in vayn do call and crye.
And yet methinkes, thou that slepyst ffast,
Thou dremyst styll whiche way my lyf to wast.

This poem had previously appeared as anonymous in Norman Ault's Elizabethan Lyrics, and Professor Muir does not definitely ascribe it to Wyatt, in spite of the evidence of the verse form. Wyatt was the only early Tudor poet who thoroughly explored the possibilities of the Italian ottava.

The first meeting on stage of the three rebels, Glendower, Hotspur, and Mortimer, occupies a central position in I Henry IV, at the beginning of Act III. In historical fact, these men's deputies met at the house of the Archdeacon of Bangor to plan the tripartite division of the realm. Shakespeare, however, brings the men themselves together and substitutes Hotspur for his father Northumberland, who was actually the man designed to receive a third part of the kingdom. By modifying these historical materials, Shakespeare creates in this pivotal scene a situation that reveals dramatically the central flaw in each of the conspirators. Hotspur's impetuosity, Glendower's superstition, and Mortimer's hesitant middle way all contributed to the eventual collapse of the conspiracy with Hotspur's death at Shrewsbury.

The year 1549 is a familiar one to all those interested in sixteenth-century French poetry because it marks the date of publication of the Deffence et illustration de la langue francoyse which stands as a sort of manifesto of the nascent Pléiade. In this document of Italian inspiration Du Bellay repudiated most of the indigenous poetic forms in favor of the classical ode and eclogue and the Petrarchan sonnet. In the second part of the work he exhorted his young poet thus: ‘Chante moy ces odes incongnues encor’ de la Muse Francoyse, d'un luc, bien accordé au son de la lyre Grecque et Romaine’ (II, iv).