Robert Tofte, an Elizabethan poet, translator, and annotator, has attracted the attention of readers of both English and continental Renaissance literature, although he is by no means a well-known figure and his work remains neglected. His contribution is small but valuable: his two collections of poetry have many affinities with contemporary sonnet sequences; he is responsible for the earliest allusion to William Shakespeare's Love's Labor's Lost (1594-1595); and his translations and annotations provide insights into the practice and process of Renaissance translation and the life and interests of an Elizabethan gentleman. Furthermore, as translator and annotator, Tofte experimented with a curious form of autobiography.

The few certain details of Tofte's life form a disappointingly incomplete picture. His father, William Tofte, thought to have been from Guildford, Surrey, became a fishmonger in the parish of St. Magnus Martyr, Bridge Ward, London, where he married Mary Cowper, daughter of John...