[During the Renaissance] There was [during the Renaissance] a continuous tradition of persona or mask for the author as performer rather than reporter or spectator, which made the sixteenth-century reader at home in many mediaeval roles. As an author, Erasmus could have imaged himself as a schoolmaster, or as an orator, or a court preacher. He could address all of these publics simultaneously since there were no specialist and stratified reading publics in our sense.