To modern audiences, the idea of establishing an "academy" at court might seem foreign. Nothing like the court system exists in modern life in many countries; the renaissance court was a legal and political hub, but also a social center where young gentlemen and gentlewomen lived lives of leisure supported by royalty. The king of Navarre's court is more like a boarding school or college than like a political or legal center. And the academy of Love's Labour's Lost represents a rather extreme version of what happened regularly in Renaissance courts: the education of young men (and to some extent women). Young courtiers were taught to read and write as well as to behave like gentlemen.