Shakespeare’s Italy

“Ink and paper”

“…In Italy, various intellectuals approached the Shakespearean repertoire during the eighteenth century (see Nulli 1918: 3-63;Ferrando 1930: 157-168;Praz 1944Praz , 1956Praz , 1969Crinò 1950;Lombardo 1964: 2-13). For instance, Domenico Valentini 8 5 Pope's pioneering edition was poorly judged by Samuel Johnson (1765: 103), who disclosed his malcontent in the Preface of his edition by asserting that "the compleat explanation of an author not systematick and consequential, but desultory and vagrant, abounding in casual and light hints, is not to be expected from any single scholiast".…”

The Taming of the Shrew, or, on not knowing Italian (and Latin, and Spanish, and French)

“…It is here that Lucentio, a well-off young man who has just arrived in Padua, signals clearly to the audience that we are no longer (possibly) in a Warwickshire inn: In 1954, Mario Praz wondered, 'Does Shakespeare try to make his Italians speak like Italians? ', and ascribed the expression 'Lombardy, the pleasant garden of great Italy' to John Florio, 'the apostle of Italian culture in England', 25 who had the slightly different Italian version 'La Lombardia è il giardino del mondo' in his Second fruites (1591). What is sure is that 1.1-2 of The Taming of the Shrew contains examples of the Italian language, sprinkled throughout the English lines, indicated in italics in the Folio, like the foreign words of the Induction.…”