Stoics
Clever me. This was the link in my geriatric dating post. Stoics are the essence of hott. And much more, including Shakespeare. Who might could have read Seneca in his English translation just before King Lear.
If you want to know what people were thinking you must find out what people are reading. Years ago, Professor Ruth Kelso took the trouble to find out just that and succeeded in amassing two monumental bibliographies pertaining to The Doctrine of the English Gentleman in the Sixteenth Century (1929, reprinted 1964) and The Doctrine for the Lady (1956), in which she lists some 1500 early modern vernacular titles, published in Europe, bearing on proper conduct. "There is plenty of evidence," she says, "that [the moral commonplaces found in these books] were not mere academic interest, for the letters, speeches, and fiction of the time are full of the same ideas and rules for conduct." According to Professor Kelso, these commonplaces came from only four ancient authors: Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Seneca (Lady, 322).
http://www.stoics.com/why_stoics.html
If you want to know what people were thinking you must find out what people are reading. Years ago, Professor Ruth Kelso took the trouble to find out just that and succeeded in amassing two monumental bibliographies pertaining to The Doctrine of the English Gentleman in the Sixteenth Century (1929, reprinted 1964) and The Doctrine for the Lady (1956), in which she lists some 1500 early modern vernacular titles, published in Europe, bearing on proper conduct. "There is plenty of evidence," she says, "that [the moral commonplaces found in these books] were not mere academic interest, for the letters, speeches, and fiction of the time are full of the same ideas and rules for conduct." According to Professor Kelso, these commonplaces came from only four ancient authors: Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Seneca (Lady, 322).
http://www.stoics.com/why_stoics.html