During the sixteenth century collections of translations of novelle by Boccaccio, Bandello and others were very popular in England and had a great influence on native English works ranging from the plays of Shakespeare and Spenser's Faerie Queene to the first English novels. These Elizabethan translations have hitherto been unavailable to modern readers, except in fragmentary form in some editions of Shakespeares plays. This edition provides a collection of novelle by a variety of authors and translators, offering an amusing and unusual short story anthology, and a context in which to read Shakespeare and his contemporaries.