SOURCE: "John Lyly," in The Greek Romances in Elizabethan Prose Fiction, The Columbia University Press, 1912, pp. 248-56.

In the following excerpt, Wolff traces Lyly's source for Euphues to Giovanni Boccaccio's Tito and Gisippo, and then continues his exploration of Lyly's derivations.

John Lyly1

The connection between Lyly and Greek Romance rests partly upon proof, and partly upon probable conjecture. There is proof that the plot of "Euphues" is derived from Boccaccio's tale of "Tito and Gisippo" (Decam., X. 8). There is probable conjecture, by such authorities as Wilhelm Grimm, Erwin Rohde, and Gaston Paris, that Boccaccio's tale is indebted to a Greek original. This indebtedness may be secondary, by way of the Old French poem "Athis et Prophilias," which is known to be one of the sources of "Tito and Gisippo" and which is believed to be derived from a late Greek Romance now lost; or it may be...