In this monumental study, May isolates the elite social environment of the court by defining the words court and courtier as they were understood by Tudor aristocrats. He examines the types of poems that these poets wrote, the occasions for which they wrote, and the nature of the poems themselves. Because many works by these poets have not been collected in scholarly editions, May includes critical texts for most of the previously unedited works. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.