There is a key difference between Renaissance reading culture and ours. You are very probably reading this in your head as a solitary occupation, but that would be relatively unusual in the sixteenth century; texts in the Renaissance were often intended to be listened to.15 This is why epic verse stories were so popular – tedious to read silently, they are much more fun to say and hear (if you’ve ever had to study Shakespeare’s plays while reading silently, for example, stumbling over the verses and meanings, you will know this all too well).
