In his influential 1597 treatise A plaine and easie introduction to practicall musicke Thomas Morley presents—through the medium of a Platonic dialogue among the characters Polymathes, Philomathes and Master—all the knowledge and skills necessary, in his opinion, to master the art of composition. One of the main themes of the work, which is explored in its third part, is an insistence that any aspiring musician should study Italian music in both its present but also historical styles, and as part of this the Master describes key vocal and instrumental forms. He begins his discussion of the latter with the ‘fantasie’, giving it the epithet found in the title of this review and defining it as ‘when a musician taketh a point at his pleasure, and wresteth and turneth it as he list, making either much or little of it according as shall seeme best in his own conceit’.