The playwrights were sometimes trained at university.Shakespeare had no advanced degrees. Nor did they need them to perfect their art. Books were becoming increasingly accessible. The self-educated playwright could easily obtain a copy of Holinshed's history book, Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, North's translation of the Greek writer-philosopher Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, Florio's translation of the Frenchman Montaigne, and many French and Italian romances that were making their way into England, sometimes in English but also in French and Italian made more accessible by the realities of trade and the need to speak business languages.