To Secco's and Gonzaga's plays called 'Gl' Inganni', to which Manningham refers in his diary, Shakespeare's Twelfth Night seems to be in no way indebted. (cf. Klein, IV, 806.)

THE ITALIAN DRAMA GENERALLY.

Julius Leopold Klein, the author of the prodigious work 'Geschichte des Drama's', is persuaded that Shakespeare was largely influenced by the Italian drama. (See Th. Ebner's Index-volume to Klein's work, s. v. Shakespeare). However, his arguments fail to carry conviction with them for every reader. Dowden, in his Primer of Shakespeare, p. 65, referring to Armado and Holofernes in Love's Labour's Lost, says: "The braggart soldier and the pedant are characters well known "in Italian comedy1 and perhaps it was from that quarter that the "hint came to Shakspere." The braggart soldier was also a common figure in the English drama; and in Sidney's masque The Lady of May' we find the figure of a pedant. If we may believe Stephen Gosson, the continental novels and plays were largely drawn upon by Shakespeare's predecessors, and it is possible that the great poet may have experienced in this way some indirect influence of the Italian drama.

Perhaps I ought to mention some curious coincidences in names pointed out by Hunter and Dr. Garnett. Hunter connects Fabia and Malevolti of G Ingannati and its prologue with Fabian and Malvolio of Twelfth Night. Cesario, he thinks, is taken from Gonzaga's Gl Inganni, 1592, where we find the name Cesare, assumed by the lady in disguise; and Orsino from Il Viluppo.

3

Dr. Garnett, in his History of Italian Literature, 1898, p. 229 says:

The novel by Cinthio himself on which his play [Measure for Measure] is founded was dramatised by Whetstone; but that Shakespeare had seen Cinthio's dramatic version [Epitia] also may be inferred from a minute circumstance. Cinthio's play, not his novel or Whetstone's adaption of it, has a character named Angela, whose name disappears from Measure for Measure, but who bequeaths Angelo as that of her brother whom Cinthio calls Juristi, and Whetstone Andrugio.

But even Klein in his Geschichte des Drama's, V, 355, considers this coincidence of no weight.

1 Comp. what Montaigne says about the pedant of the Italian comedy (Ess. I. 24).

3 N. B. Benvolio is the name of a character in Marlowe's Dr. Faustus and in Romeo and Juliet.

ARIOSTO.

As to an incident in Much Ado taken from the Orlando Furioso, see above, s. v. Bandello. Joseph Hunter's supposition that Ariosto's description of a tempest at sea (Canto 41.) inspired the storm-scene and some incidents closely connected therewith in The Tempest has met with no acceptance.1 Ariosto's I Suppositi was known to Shakespeare in Gascoigne's translation (s. post).

PETRARCA.

Though we discover many Petrarcan conceits in Shakespeare's sonnets, we can scarcely claim for the latter a direct acquaintance with the Italian poet, who had been imitated ad nauseam by a whole army of English sonnetists. In one place ('Romeo', II, IV, 40) our poet openly avows his knowledge concerning Petrarca's sonnets, but it does not follow from the passage, that he had read them. Mercutio, speaking of Romeo, says:

Now is he for the numbers that Petrarch flowed in: Laura to his lady was but a kitchen-wench; marry, she had a better love to be-rhyme her.2

SPANISH LITERATURE.

We are fairly safe in asserting that our poet was unacquainted with the Spanish language. Of one author, however, we find traces in his works, of

JORGE DE MONTEMAYOR,

whose story of the shepherdess Felismena, in the pastoral romance La Diana, furnished the materials for the adventures of Julia and Proteus in The Two Gentlemen of Verona. The first complete translation of the Diana, by Bartholomew Yong, appeared in 1598, but 1 Dr. Schoembs wrote a Dissertation on the influence of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso on Elizab. Liter. 1898.

3

2 I may mention that Petrarca had been translated into French about the middle of the sixteenth century. The Triumphes of Petrarch were translated into English by Lord Morley, c. 1554, (reprinted by the Roxburghe Club. 1887).

With Giordano Bruno Shakespeare is in no wise connected. See Shakespeare Jahrbuch XXVI, 258 ff., and Robertson 'Montaigne and Shakspere', p. 82ff.

3 Certain portions of the Diana were also translated by others. "In 1596, "while sojourning in Italy and Germany, Wilson translated from the Spanish "Gorge (sic.) de Montemayor's 'Diana'." (Dict. of Nat. Biogr., s. v. Sir Thomas Wilson.) But this was not printed. One Edward Paston, Yong tells us, had 'for 'his owne pleasure 'that liked him best.'

aptly turned out of Spanish into English some leaves

it existed in manuscript as early as 1582 or 1583,1 and part of the romance had been dramatized in 1584 (see post).

In Shakespeare Jahrbuch, vol. XXXIV, Dr. Tobler jun. has pointed out correspondences between the Diana and Midsummer Night's Dream. The resemblances are perhaps still greater between this play and Alvise Pasqualigo's Gl' Intricati (1581) in which incidents of the Diana are dramatized. See Dr. Vollhardt's Programme, 'Die Beziehungen des Sommernachtstraumes zum italienischen Schäferdrama'. Leipzig. 1899.2

1 Ward, Engl. Dram. Lit., vol. II, p. 80. Cp. also Dict. of Nat. Biogr., s. v. Young.

2 Other programmes and dissertations on Midsummer Night's Dream I need not mention. John Lyly's connexions with the Italian pastoral drama are discussed by Mr. Bond in his edition of Lyly, vol. II, pp. 473 ff.

In Dowden's edition of Cymbeline which has just appeared (Arden Shakespeare) an episode in Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata Bk. vir (translated by Fairfax in 1600) is suggested as a possible source of Imogen's adventures at Belarius's cave. (I mention this here for want of space above.)

APPENDIX TO CHAPTER 2.

THREE CHIMERICAL SOURCES.

I DIEGO HURTADO DE MENDOZA.

Mendoza's Lazarillo de Tormes, the first picaresque romance of modern literature, which seems to have enjoyed considerable popularity, insipid though it now appears to us, is by some commentators (Eschenburg was the first to make the suggestion) supposed to be alluded to in Much Ado about Nothing, II, i, 205-6:

Ho! now you strike like the blind man: 'twas the boy that stole your meat, and you'll beat the post.

The incident supposed to be alluded to is this. Mendoza relates that Lazarillo, when a boy, became a blind man's guide, whose sausage he once stole, for which he was severely punished. In revenge, the boy caused the blind man to knock his head violently against a stone pillar while jumping across a supposed gutter.

The romance, it is true, would have been easily accessible to Shakespeare. Having first appeared in Antwerp in 1553, it was frequently reprinted. Several translations into English were published. The Stationers' Registers record the license of an English version as early as 156 (Arber, I, 378). The earliest extant translation is dated 1576. Other editions were printed in 1586 and 1596. (Compare Hazlitt's Bibliography, and Lowndes).

There is therefore no external reason against the above supposition. But let us not forget the chief question. Does the passage referred to contain an allusion at all? Dr. Martin Luther's principle, that the first meaning of a bible passage should be considered as decisive is a very healthy one, which Shakespearean scholars have sometimes need of laying to heart. Let us apply this principle. From the context it is clear that Benedick desires Claudio to understand, that he has not deserved his ill

1 The book is easily accessible in the German translation, published by Reclam, Leipzig, No. 1389. Price 2d.

will. 'Claudio', he means, 'you vent your displeasure on the wrong object. 'You behave like the blind man who, instead of beating the guilty boy, 'who stole his meat (given to him as an alms), strikes wide of the mark, 'and hits the post (which would be the object nearest to him sitting 'before the door of a house as a beggar)'.

If this interpretation be allowed to be correct, there is no room for our friend Lazarillo. Mr. Furness, while disposed to reject Eschenburg's supposition, thinks, nevertheless, that the expression "the blind man" refers to some definite anecdote. I do not think it does so, necessarily; though this is possible. (On this question concerning Lazarillo, compare Shakespeare Jahrbuch, VI, 353; Furness, XII, 77; Brandl, Schlegel-Tiek Translation, VIII, 236.)

II. ANOTHER MARE'S NEST.

Espejo de Principe y Cavalleros is a Spanish Romance by Diego Ortuñez de Calahorra, translated into English in Shakespeare's days under the title of The Mirror of Princely Deeds and Knighthood. Steevens suggested that Falstaff's words: "Phoebus, he, that wandering knight so "fair" (1. Henry IV., Act 1, 11, 16) contain an allusion to this work or some ballad founded thereon. But, though so distinguished scholars as Dyce, Aldis Wright, etc. concur with Steevens, I cannot but demur to this view, which seems to me extremely hazardous. Why should not the Sun be likened to a knight-errant, an idea which would seem natural and simple enough, especially for those days, when the Sun was reckoned a planet or wandering star? (The above mentioned work, by the way, seems to have been confounded with Villalumbrales's Cavallero del Sol.-See Brunet.) Douce, in his Illustrations of Shakespeare, I, 415, advanced an equally untenable supposition.

III ANTONIO DE ESLAVA.

Edmund Dorer, in 'Das Magazin für die Litteratur des In- und Auslandes', 31. Jan., 1885, draws attention to a narrative which has greater affinity with the plot of The Tempest than any tale yet discovered. It is contained in a Spanish collection of stories entitled 'Las noches de invierno por Antonio de Eslava, 1609'. The narrative, which may, like others of the collection, be based on an older tale, is briefly this:

Dardanus, King of Bulgaria, a virtuous magician, is dethroned by Niciphorus, Emperor of Greece, and has to flee with his only daughter, Seraphina. They go on board a little ship. In mid ocean Dardanus, having parted the waters, rears by art of magic a beautiful submarine palace, where he resides with his daughter till the time she