[9] In 1571, at the age of 16, Lyly became a student at Magdalen College, Oxford,[10] where he is recorded as having received his bachelor's degree on 27 April 1573, and his master's two years later on 19 May, 1575.

[11] In his address "To my very good friends the gentlemen scholars of Oxford" at the end of the second edition of his Anatomy of Wit, he complains about a sentence of rustication apparently passed on him at some time during his university career, but nothing more is known about either its date or its cause.

[12]While at Oxford, Lyly wrote to William Cecil, Lord Burghley, on 16 May 1574, to seek his assistance in applying for the Queen's letters to admit him as fellow at Magdalen College.

In the Glasse for Europe, in the second part of Euphues (1580), Lyly described how grateful he felt towards him: This noble man I found so ready being but a straunger to do me good, that neyther I ought to forget him, neyther cease to pray for him, that as he hath the wisdom of Nestor, so he may have the age, that having the policies of Ulysses he may have his honor, worthy to lyve long, by whom so many lyve in quiet, and not unworthy to be advaunced by whose care so many have been preferred.At some point after university Lyly moved to London, finding lodgings at the fashionable residence of the Savoy Hospital on the Strand, where Gabriel Harvey described him as "a dapper & a deft companion" and "a pert-conceited youth.

It was licensed to Gabriel Cawood on 2nd December 1578 and printed that year with a dedication to William West, 1st Baron De La Warr, and a second expanded edition immediately followed in 1579.

[23] On 24 November Oxford transferred the rental rights of the manor of Bentfield Bury and a nearby wood, both in Stansted Mountfitchet, Essex, to Lyly worth £30 13s 4d a year.

Gallathea was likely performed at Greenwich Palace on "New Year's Day at Night" as part of the 1587/88 Christmas revels there, with Endymion following suit at Candlemas on 2nd February, 1588.

After the closure of Paul's Playhouse sometime 1590–91, the latter was subsequently revived for performance at the second Blackfriars Theatre in 1600–01, this time, as its title page states, by the Children of the Chapel.

In 1589, Lyly published a tract in the Martin Marprelate controversy, called Pappe with an hatchet, alias a figge for my Godsonne; Or Crack me this nut; Or a Countrie Cuffe, etc.

[27] Lyly sat as an MP in Queen Elizabeth's last four Parliaments, for Hindon in Wiltshire in 1589, for Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire twice, in 1593 and 1601, and for Appleby in Westmorland in 1597–98 when he also served on a parliamentary committee about wine casks.

[28] In 1594, Lyly was made an honorary member of Gray's Inn in order to attend the lawyers' Christmas Revels, during which, on 28 December, Shakespeare's company famously performed their Comedy of Errors.

Thus casting up the inventory of my friends, hopes, promises and tymes, the summa totalis amounteth to just nothingThe originals of the two petitions do not survive, but, whatever their success with Elizabeth, after Lyly's death the pair enjoyed the most extensive circulation in manuscript of any Elizabethan-Jacobean dramatist.

[35][36] Although the two volumes of Euphues were Lyly's most popular and influential works in the Elizabethan period, it is his plays which are now admired most, for their flexible use of dramatic prose and the elegant patterning of their construction.

In his introduction to the plays, 'To the Reader', Blount explained his motivation for publication: I have (for the love I beare to Posteritie) dig'd up the Grave of a Rare and Excellent Poet, whom Queene Elizabeth then heard, Graced, and Rewarded ... A sinne it were to suffer these Rare Monuments of wit, to lye covered in Dust, and a shame such conceipted Comedies, should be Acted by none but wormes.

Thou canst not repent the Reading of them over: when Old John Lilly, is merry with thee in thy Chamber, Thou shalt say, Few (or None) of our Poets now are such witty Companions : And thanke mee, that brings him to thy Acquaintance.Blount dedicated the collection to Richard, 1st Viscount Lumley of Waterford, writing: It can be no dishonor, to listen to this Poets Music, whose Tunes alighted in the Ears of a great and ever-famous Queene: his Invention was so curiously strung, that Elizaes Court held his notes in Admiration ... For this Poet sat at the Sunnes Table : Apollo gave him a wreath of his own Bayes, without snatching.

Were they Diamonds they are now yours.Francis Meres placed "eloquent and witty John Lyly" alongside Shakespeare in his list of "the best for comedy amongst us" when describing the playwrights of his day in his Palladis Tamia, or Wits Treasury, printed in 1598.

The standard modern book-length biography remains G. K. Hunter's John Lyly: The Humanist as Courtier (Routledge & Kegan Paul, & Harvard University Press, 1962).