John Florio, The Man who was Shakespeare
Home   |   Florio - Shakespeare   |   About   |   Media   |   News   |   Photo Gallery   |   Links   |   Contact   |
“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
A WORLD OF WORDS
“THE INTERTRAFFIC OF THE MIND”

The original is unfaithful to the translation
Jorge Luis Borges

Do we really need to analyze and compare with a computer program the Florio/Shakespeare vocabulary? When a father and son share the same eyes, nose, mouth and voice is a DNA test really necessary? I don’t think so. But incredulous and dogmatic scholars and readers need hard facts, they need what the American western, arm loving culture calls “The smoking gun”. So I started looking closer at their WORDS, their common “world of words”.
* * *

Hundreds and hundreds of words and dozens and dozens of expressions, phrases, and ideas attributable to Shakespeare actually turn out to belong to Florio also—and do so earlier in his books before re-appearing in those of Shakespeare: material derived from First Fruites (1578), Second Frutes (1591), the dictionary A Worlde of Wordes (1598), and the English translation of Montaigne’s Essais, completed in 1600 but only published in 1603. The point was made in 1921 by Longworth Chambrun, in 1925 by G.C.Taylor, in 1931 by F.O. Matthiessen, by André Koszul in 1932 and Frances Yates in 1934. An embarrassing reality for Shakespeare scholars, forced to admit that the Bard went rummaging about amongst the linguistic inventions of an emigrant to gather all those words and then deploy them systematically in his plays! References to Florio vanished completely after the 1920s and 1930s, and biographies of the divine William now bury John Florio under mounds of silence.
* * *

Vivian Salmon’s essay (“Some functions of Shakespearian word-formation,” in Shakespeare’s Grammar, 1970, p.79) informs us of an element that makes Shakespeare different and original with respect to the local English context: he was the first of the Elizabethans to use the suffix -ment with a certain regularity in order to forge substantives out of concepts previously expressed only through verbs. Unlike Shakespeare, the other Elizabethans preferred the native English form -ing, and neglected the array of suffixes available in the Romance languages: –ment, -ure and –ance (-ence). Why, linguists ask, did Shakespeare vary from the norm? Salmon attempts an answer: “The actual choice of suffix depended on aspectival and no doubt phonetic considerations, although what the latter were has not yet been explained.” So there we have it: for aesthetic reasons, of course, and for undetermined phonetic reasons! When he was engaged in translation, Florio experimented, tried out solutions, took chances, and in the lists compiled by George Coffin Taylor, and in the introductions to Second Frutes, Montaigne’s Essais, and the dictionary A Worlde of Wordes (see the English edition of my book), the many words ending in -ment, -ure and -ance (-ence), like credence, disnature, eminence, enticement, magnificence, prescience, tenure, etc. are highlighted in boldface. A systematic review of the two complete works using computer analysis remains to be carried out, but the results available at this stage indicate an extensive use of such terms by Florio. What matters now is that, compared to his English contemporaries, Shakespeare behaves “oddly,” he makes strange, exotic choices, just like Florio, the foreigner. The sedentary country genius from Stratford (there is no sign that he did any traveling except for the London-Stratford commute) opts for foreign suffixes. Shakespeare, writes Salmon, “also tried annexment instead of the existing annexion . . . ,” another departure from the usage of his English contemporaries.
Shakespeare came from elsewhere, he had a different linguistic and cultural background, and this led him to employ suffixes of Romance origin.
* * *

Second Frutes contains a high dosage of the Shakespearian figures of style. In the front matter to Second Frutes alone there are more examples than one can count. In sum, what we have here is what Longworth Chambrun called “the same turn of phrase,” the same Shakespearian style, an idiosyncratic stylistic manner. This scholar, who garners such low esteem from members of university faculties, discovers notable points of similarity between the works of Shakespeare and Second Frutes. Let us begin with what she calls a “curious analogy” between a passage from All’s Well (1602-04) and a dialogue from Second Frutes (1591):

From Second Frutes

    C. What is become of your neighbour, I meane that olde doating man growne twice a childe.
    T. As old as you see him, hee hath of late wedded a yong wench of fifteene yeares old.
    C. Then he and she wil make up the whole Bible together, I meane the new and olde testament.
    T. To an old cat , a young mouse.
    C. Old flesh makes good broth.
    T. What is become of his sonne, that i see him not.
    C. He was put in prison for having beaten an enemie of his, with his dagger, and for giving him the bastonada.
    T. Be wrong or right, prison is a spight.
    C. A man had neede looke to himselfe in this world.
    T. What is become of his faire daughter, whom he maried to what you call him, that was sometimes our neighbour.
    C. she spins crooked spindles for her husband, and sends* him into Cornewall without ship or boate.
    T. What dooth she make him weare the staggs creft then?
    C. You have gest right, and have hit the naile on the head.
    T. His bloud is of great force and vertue then.
    C. What vertue can his bloud have, tell me in good faith?
    T. It is good to breake dyamonds withall.
    C. Why, mans bloud cannot breake diamonds.
    T. Yea, but the bloud of a he goate will.
    C. Moreover, he may chalenge to have parte in heaven by it.
    T. What matter is it for him then to bee a goate, or a flambuck, a kid or a chamoise, a stagg or a bull, an unicorne or an elephant, so he may be safe. But how many that be? I pray you tell me.
    C. I will tel you, doo not you knowe that whosever is made a cuckold by his wife, either he knowes it, or knowes it not.
    T. That I knowe, but what will you inferr upon it?
    C. If he knowe it, hee must needs be patient, and therefore a martir, if hee knowe it not, hee is an innocent, and you knowe that martires and innocents shall be saved, which if you grant, it followeth that all cuckolds shall obtaine Paradise.
    T. Mee thinks then that women are not greatlie to bee blamed, if they seeke their husbands eternal saluation, but are rather to be commended, as causes of a noble and worthie effect.

And now let us turn to Shakespeare who, apart from the correspondence of basic plot (the old man and the pert woman) and vocabulary, thinks and writes in the same way as Florio:

    Count. Tell me thy reason why thou wilt marry.
    Clo. My poor body, madam, requires it. I am driven on by the flesh; and he must needs go that the devil drives.
    Count. Is this all your worship’s reason?
    Clo. Faith, madam, I have other holy reasons, such as they are.
    Count. May the world know them?
    Clo. I have been, madam, a wicked creature, as you and all flesh and blood are; and, indeed, I do marry that I may repent.
    Count. Thy marriage, sooner than thy wickedness.
    Clo. I am out o’friends, madam, and I hope to have friends for my wife’s sake.
    Count. Such friends are thine enemies, knave.
    Clo. Y’are shallow, madam—in great friends; for the knaves come to do that for me which I am aweary of. He that ears my land spares my team, and gives me leave to in the crop. If I be his cuckold, he’s my drudge. He that comforts my wife is the cherisher of my flesh and blood; he that cherishes my flesh and blood loves my flesh and blood; he that loves my flesh and blood is my friend; ergo, he that kisses my wife is my friend. [All’s Well That Ends Well, 1.3.]

But the curious coincidences don’t stop there. Lago’s diatribe against women in Othello appears to be modelled on this Florian dialogue:

    Women are the purgatory of men’s purses;
    The paradise of men’s bodies; the hell of men’s souls
    Women are in churches saints; abroad angels; at home devils;
    At windows serens; at doors pyes; and in gardens goats.
    [Second Frutes.]

    You ares pictures out of doors
    Bells in your parlours; wildcats in your kitchens
    Saints in your injuries; devils being offended;
    Players in your housewifery, and housewives in your beds.
    [Othello, 2.4. 109]

Whether they are talking about sport, gaming, falconry, or fencing, Florio and Shakespeare use the same phrases. In describing an Italian fencing master, notes Longworth Chambrun, Florio writes “lookes like Mars himselfe.” This is echoed in Hamlet, where the late king of Denmark had “the front of Jove himself, An eye like Mars.” And in Romeo and Juliet, Mercutio expresses his disdain for the dueling craze this way:

    A duelist a duelist! A gentleman of the very first house, of the first and second cause Ah the immortal passado, the punto-reverso [.....] The pox of such antick, lisping, affecting fantasticoes! these tuners of accents. “By Jesu a very good blade! a very tall man! a very good whore”
    [Romeo & Juliet, 2. 4. 24]

In Second Frutes Florio has this passage about his fencing master:

    I have heard him reported to be a notable tall man, Hee will hit any man bee it with a thrust or floccada, with an embrocada or a charging blowe, with a right or reverse blowe with the edge, with the back, or with the flat..... a man who must doe everything by rule and measure, as walk by counterpoint, speak by the points of the moon and spit by doctrine.
    [Second Frutes.]

In another anecdote, Longworth Chambrun tells how a certain Professor Briggs, the president of Harvard, gave a course on English poetry at the Sorbonne early in the twentieth century, and revealed to the students that the only spondaic stanza in English poetry is stanza 50 in Venus and Adonis. But as she points out, in Second Frutes (1591) there is found a spondaic sonnet with a rhythm very much like that of Venus and Adonis. Shakespeare is regaling us with the beauty of a horse, Florio with that of a woman:

Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis, 292:

    So did this horse excel a common one In shape, in courage colour pace and bone. Round hoofed, short jointed, fetlocks shag and long, Broad breast, full eye, small head, and nostril wide, High crest, short ears, straight leggs and passing strong Thin mane thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide Look what a horse should have he did not lack, Save a proud rider on so proud a back.

Florio, Second Frutes:

    In choyse of faire are thirty thinges required
    For which (they say) faire Hellen was admired
    Three white three blacke, three red, three short three tall
    Three thicke, three thin, three streighte three wide three smalle.
    White teeth, white hands, and neck as Yvorie white.
    Black eyes, black brows, black heares that hide delight:
    Red lippes, red cheekes, and top of nipples red,
    Long leggs, long fingres, long locks of her head.
    Short feete, short eares and teeth in measure short,
    Broade front, broade brest, broad hipps in seemly sort.
    Straight leggs streight nose, and streight her pleasure place
    Full thighs, full buttocks, full her bellies space.
    Thin lippes, thin eylids, and heare thin and fyne.
    Smale mouth, smale waist, smale pupils of her eyne.
    Of these who wants, so much of fairest wants.
    And who hath all, her beautie perfect vaunts.

Now if the correspondences between the writing and the life of Florio and those of Shakespeare were limited to this spondaic stanza, we might be inclined to throw up our hands and accept it as random happenstance. But that is not how things are, and these two almost contemporary texts, the first published in 1591, the second in 1593, add to an already impressive pile of coincidences.

Many of the Florian passages I shall refer to are echoed in Shakespeare with stunning closeness. Yates draws the conclusion that “[o]ne is again and again reminded that Florio was Shakespeare’s contemporary and that they had the taste for words in common.” In the opening lines of the dedication of Second Frutes to Saunder, Yates picks out a notable piece of prose that shows Florio-Shakespeare’s curiosity about all the facets of busy commercial and cultural life of London:

For comparison between Montaigne’s Essays language and style with Shakespeare’s see chapter Seven of my book.		  
John Florio
The Man Who Was Shakespeare
by Lamberto Tassinari
Giano Books
388 pages
$ 20.00

Following your payment with PayPal we will forward you the book.
Costs in $CA - Shipping included

Select a Destination




CANADA
QC, ON – 1 to 2 days
Rest of Canada – 2 to 7 days
USA
4 to 7days
EUROPE
By air mail – 4 to 10 days
By surface – 20 to 30 days
AUSTRALIA
By air mail – 4 to 10 days
       
Home   |   Florio - Shakespeare   |   About   |   Media   |   News  |   Photo Gallery  |   Links   |   Contact   |  design b.bousquet  | © L. Tassinari  |  Update: August 2010