The second of Lyly's comedies written for the first Blackfriars theatre but ultimately designed for performance at court,

, acted before the Queen on Shrove Tuesday 1584, has much in common with its predecessor

, produced at court on New Year's Day of the same year. Like

the play turns upon the love of a high-born person for someone of significantly lower rank and concludes with the monarch's conquest of a socially inappropriate passion. The action evolves, once again, through a species of debate, with the antithetical patterning of the euphuistic mode harnessed to the exploration of a series of topics close to the interests of an aristocratic coterie (e.g. the conflict between love and chastity, and the relative advantages of public, private and academic…

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Citation: Scragg, Leah. "Sapho and Phao". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 17 July 2002 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=2311, accessed 26 November 2024.]

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