The document discusses the impact the story of the Seige of Troy had on both uneducated and educated Elizabethan audiences and authors such as Chaucer, Heywood, and Shakespeare alike.

The materials include a document discussing Elizabethan Credulity and how individual attitudes towards strange features of the world might affect the response of readers towards literature that makes references to those wonders.

The materials include an essay on the Conversazione, which is a scholarly social gathering used to decide on new forms of art and literature during the Elizabethan era. The document describes what the event consisted of and Shakespeare's participation in it.

Several documents and essays discussing the literature and dramatic choices of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice as well as the differences found between different versions of the play compared to the first folio. There is also a document that tells the legend of The Divine Surety and The Jewish Moneylender.