John Florio, the man who was Shakespeare



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“As for me, for it is I, and I am an Englishman in Italiane”

John Florio, Second Frutes, To the Reader.

>> Fifteen Reasons
for John Florio,
The Man Who Invented Shakespeare

>> Quindici Ragioni
per John Florio,
L’uomo che ha
inventato Shakespeare

>> Florio As Seen By Scholars : 1921-2007

>> Author matters

>> In pursuit of meaning

>> A world of words

>> Florio’s words, Shakespeare’s words

>> Chapter 7: (excerpt)
The Translation of Montaigne’s Essais

>> Chapter 8: (excerpt)
Language, Style,
And Euphuism

>> Chapter 17: (excerpt)
The Spirit and The Land
of Italy

>> L’Italia e Florio

>> John Florio
and His Entourage

>> The Testament
of John Florio

>> Florio’s works

Florio - Shakespeare
THE AUTHOR MATTERS

Who cares who wrote Shakespeare?
Does the author matter?
Or is the play the thing?

This is the kind of rhetoric questions we often hear about Shakespeare. What matters here is the œuvre. The Authorship Question has been a waste of time and we must believe that “Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare”. This is a fideistic “logic” as expressed in the medieval formula Credo quia absurdum (I believe because it is absurd). This is also the conclusion of a prominent Shakespearian, James Shapiro who, in his lastest book Contested Will,contests the anti-Stratfordian non-believers. There is a misunderstanding here or rather an ambiguity very convenient for Shakespearians. They refuse to acknowledge that what is contested here is not Shakespeare, nor his works, but the biographical identity of the author. I agree, the Shakespeare Authorship Question is tiresome and annoying, its weakness results from the inconsistencies of the authors proposed within the last two centuries and not to the critique of the “man from Stratford”. All the candidates, from Francis Bacon to Mary Sidney, share a pure English ethnic stock and Shakespearian credentials which are solely linked to their social status and levels of education, nothing else. Anti-Stratfordians and Stratfordians are “hunting the bad Will”, their theorem is flawed!
As soon as you introduce the “Italian Anglified” John Florio, the Question starts making sense. Let’s see.

* * *

In Shakespeare’s case, an author’s life and persona are so dramatically distant from the oeuvre that perplexity and doubts about his real identity were raised during his lifetime. Doubting the identity of the “man from Stratford” is certainly reasonable, and questions on his identity do not represent, as too many people still seem to think, a “conspiracy theory” but what I would call a “logic theory”! The life of an author matters, it is natural, normal and logical! Biographical events are a crucial component to the full understanding of the context within which the oeuvre took form. It was time to dismiss the poststructuralist pretension which attempted to eliminate the author as the main responsible for the literary and artistic creation. It is obvious that multiple factors, that is structures, participate in the creation of a text, of a work of art. The author is the center of this field of forces and it is ridiculous to minimize his role in the creativity context. Of course the oeuvre is essential! Homer’s is the universally known example of an oeuvre without an author, but the Iliad and the Odyssey belong to mythological times not to the beginning of the capitalistic era. In abstract terms, if we had to choose between life and oeuvre, we would obviously take the oeuvre since without it there cannot usually be an author! But this is an abstract situation.

Shakespeare’s case is unique as no other writer presents the same profile. The life and oeuvre of all authors are deeply connected. Why shouldn’t this rule also apply to the author of Hamlet and Othello? Why is the biography of the greatest dramatist of all times unimportant? I believe that it is even more important to know Shakespeare’s life than the lives of other great writers. The biographies of Frantz Kafka, Marcel Proust or Roberto Bolano for example, are decisive in reading and interpreting their novels and Shakespeare is no less author than them, creating scores of new words and opening ill-mapped literary territories. Even for Dante (1265-1321) the facts of his life, his banishment from Florence and his subsequent voluntary exile, are fundamental to the understanding of his poetic and philosophical universe. Shakespeare’s work holds such a powerful symbolism and.universal values that one wishes to know more of his persona. It is natural and quite normal to want to know the origin of the father of the English language and, to some extent, of the British culture, the “inventor of the human”. Scholars or common readers who argue that his life –story does not matter, are driven to this conclusion by embarrassment and necessity. When the hero of a Nation-Empire possesses such a meager and pitiful biography, one must theorize its insignificance!

	John Florio The Man Who Was Shakespeare by Lamberto Tassinari Giano Books 388 pages $ 20.00
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