SOURCE: "Lyly," in The Elizabethan Prodigals, University of California Press, 1976, pp. 58-78.

In the following excerpt, Helgerson analyzes the character of Euphues, whom he deems "one of the most consistently unsympathetic figures in English literature."

In 1595, seventeen years after Euphues established his reputation, a decade after Elizabeth advised him to "aim all his courses at the Revels," John Lyly acknowledged defeat. "If your sacred Majesty think me unworthy," he wrote the Queen, "and that, after ten years tempest, [I] must at the Court suffer shipwreck of my times, my hopes, and my wits, vouchsafe in your never erring judgment some plank or rafter to waft me into a country, where, in my sad and settled devotion, I may in every corner of a thatched cottage write prayers instead of plays—prayers for your long and prosperous life—and a repentance that I have played the fool so long...