Alternatively, as Arthur Acheson suggested early in the twentieth century, perhaps Florio is represented by Armado, the often-mocked alien pedant, who nonetheless evokes tremendous sympathy at the play’s end as he tries to bring order out of chaos and death. To read either Holofernes or Armado as unequivocally satirized, however, is to oversimplify those characters, whether either or both or neither is a surrogate for Florio. Thus, it is famously difficult to register a Shakespearean response to the translator of Montaigne’s Essayes.7
Florio’s final years seem to have been ones of poverty and sadness. When Queen Anne died in 1619, so, too, did Florio’s source of livelihood. Although he continued to work on the revisions of his dictionary and of his Montaigne,8 and probably was the translator of the first English Boccaccio, published in 1620, Florio spent much time in his final years trying to chase down money that he believed was owed to him.
When Florio died of the plague in 1625, he was survived by his second wife, Rose Spicer, whom he had married in 1617, and his daughter Aurelia, almost certainly the sole surviving child from his marriage to Daniel’s sister. They are remembered in his will in poignant ways: “I give and bequeath unto my daughter Aurelia Molins the wedding ring wherewith I married her mother being aggrieved at my very heart, that by reason of my poverty, I am not able to leave her anything else.” All “goods, cattles, chattels, jewels, plate, debts Leases, money, or money-worth, household-stuff, utensils, English books, movables, or immovables” go to Rose, “most heartily grieving and ever-sorrowing, that I cannot give or leave her more, in requital of her tender love, loving care, painful diligence, and continual labour, to me, and of me, in all my fortunes, and many sicknesses.”
There is a sad irony about the end of Florio’s life. Whereas his literary legacy was one of fecundity and copiousness, his personal and economic bequest was one of paucity and poverty. Another divide can be seen to be a part of “Resolute John Florio,” too. There was the narrow, petty, vengeful man who seems to have agreed with Stephano, a character from one of his own Second Frutes dialogues, that one
Be circumspect how you offend scholars, for know,
A serpent’s tooth bites not so ill,
As doth a scholar’s angry quill.
And if you wrong him in his goods,
He will deprive thee of thy good name,
And longer bleeds a wound made with a quill,
Then any made with sword or lance.
But this Florio coexisted with a much more generous one who, like Bruno, could envision infinite worlds—in Florio’s case, worlds of words that like “the Universe, contains all things, digested in best equipaged order, embellished with innumerable ornaments by the universal creator.”
—PETER G. PLATT
1. In his Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry, Desmond O’Connor endorses the views of Yates and Bossy. Ingrid Rowland, in Giordano Bruno: Philosopher/Heretic (University of Chicago Press, 2009), has challenged these claims, as has the great Bruno scholar Hilary Gatti.
2. See Wyatt, in The Italian Encounter with Tudor England (Cambridge University Press, 2005), 230, who is drawing on the work of John Willinsky, An Empire of Words: The Reign of the OED (Princeton University Press, 1994). Dewitt Starnes, in his important “John Florio Reconsidered,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 6 (Winter 1965), sought to minimize the contribution of Florio by emphasizing the number of times Florio pilfered definitions from earlier dictionary-makers. However, responding to this essay, David Frantz’s “Florio’s Use of Contemporary Italian Literature in A Worlde of Wordes,” Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America 1 (1979), claimed that “What emerges is a fairly clear picture of Florio’s use of his sources; where Florio could draw on earlier dictionaries, he did so in precisely the manner suggested by Starnes. Where Florio could not draw on earlier dictionaries, as he could not extensively if he wanted to make contemporary Italian literature available, he went to the works themselves” (52–53).
3. Florio, “To the Reader,” in The Essayes...of... Montaigne (London, 1603). “Littletonians” alludes to Claudius Hollyband’s French Littleton, which was a book of grammar and dialogues published in 1566. Yates notes that there was a Stationers’ Register entry on October 20, 1595, by Edward Aggras, which “sounds as though it were a translation but it has not survived” (Yates, John Florio [Cambridge University Press, 1934], 214).
4. Trying to show off her knowledge of the latest intellectual fashion, Lady Politick Would-be refers to “Montaignie,” in Volpone (1607) as someone whom authors steal from.
5. See Moth in Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost, 5.1.34–35. Much labor has been spent—and some would say lost—in speculation about whether the title of Shakespeare’s play comes from another part of Firste Fruites: “We need not speak so much of love, all books are full of love, with so many authors, that it were labour lost to speak of Love” (sig. 71r). Further evidence that the word “labour” might be connected with Florio comes in the twelve prefatory poems to Firste Fruites, where a form of “labour” appears seven times. (Variations of “toyle” appear three times, and “trauaile” appears once.)
6. Florio, Worlde of Wordes, “To the Reader,” (sig. a5v).
7. In his Courtier’s Library, John Donne without question sends up Florio—especially his tendency to have copious prefatory matter and dedications in his works: “The Ocean of Court.... Collected and reduced into a corpus and dedicated to their individual writers by John Florio, an Anglo-Italian: the chapter headings of those included in Book I. are contained in the first seventy pages; the diplomas of Kings with their titles and the attestations of licensers in the next one hundred and seven pages; poems in praise of the author in Books I–XCVII, which follow.” See The Courtier’s Library, or Catalogus Librorum Aulicorum incomparabilium et non vendibilium, edited by Evelyn Mary Simpson (London: Nonesuch Press, 1930).
8. The third edition of the dictionary appeared in 1659, the fourth in 1688. The third edition of the Essayes was published in 1632.
Acknowledgments
THE EDITORS would like to acknowledge the following people for their help and inspiration: Rebecca Cook, Peter Connor, Brian Cummings, Nancy Fee, Saul Frampton, Will Hamlin, Anselm Haverkamp, Karla Nielsen, Bill Sharpe, Alan Stewart, Ramie Targoff, Phillip Usher, and William Worthen.
The illustration of a page from John Florio’s translation of “Of the Cannibals” that appears on page viii was provided by the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University, shelfmark B842M76 J3.
Note on the Text
THE BASE text for the present volume is the 1603 edition of Florio’s translation of The Essayes or Morall, Politike and Millitarie Discourses of Lo[rd]: Michaell de Montaigne (Printed at London: By Val. Sims for Edward Blount dwelling in Paules churchyard, 1603; STC 18041). This is the version of the essays known to Shakespeare and his contemporaries in England. To facilitate the comprehension and pleasure of modern readers, we have lightly modernized spelling, punctuation, and paragraphing. But we have done our best to preserve the beautiful—and at times deeply quirky—nature of Florio’s translation and have supplemented the text, when necessary, with glosses that explicate difficult words and concepts.
SHAKESPEARE’S MONTAIGNE
To My Dear Friend 1 M. John Florio,
concerning his translation of Montaigne
Books, the amass of humors, [2] swollen with ease,
The grief of peace, the malady of rest,
So stuff the world, fallen into this disease,
As it receives more than it can digest.
And do so overcharge, as they confound
The appetite of skill with idle store.
There being no end of words, nor any bound
Set to conceit, [3] the Ocean without shore.
As if man labor’d with himself to be
As infinite in words as in intents,
And draw his manifold incertainty
In ev’ry figure,
passion represents;
That these innumerable visages,
And strange shapes of opinions and discourse
Shadowed in leaves, [4] may be the witnesses
Rather of our defects, than of our force.
And this proud frame of our presumption,
This Babel of our skill, this Tower of wit,
Seems only checked with the confusion
Of our mistakings that dissolveth it.
And well may make us of our knowledge doubt,
Seeing what uncertainties we build upon,
To be as weak within book or without;
Or else that truth hath other shapes than one.
But yet although we labor with this store
And with the press of writings seem opprest,
And have too many books, yet want we more,
Feeling great dearth and scarceness of the best;
Which cast in choicer shapes have been produc’d,
To give the best proportions to the mind
To our confusion, and have introduc’d
The likeliest images frailty can find.
And wherein most the skill-desiring soul
Takes her delight, the best of all delight,
And where her motions evenest come to roll
About this doubtful center of the right. [5]
Which to discover this great potentate,
This Prince Montaigne (if he be not more)
Hath more adventur’d of his own estate
Than ever man did of himself before.
And hath made such bold sallies out upon
Custom, the mighty tyrant of the earth,
In whose Seraglio of subjection
We all seem bred-up, from our tender birth;
As I admire his powers, and out of love,
Here at his gate do stand, and glad I stand
So near to him whom I do so much love,
T’applaud his happy settling in our land.
And safe transpassage by his [6] studious care,
Who both of him and us doth merit much,
Having as sumptuously, as he is rare,
Plac’d him in the best lodging of our speech.
And made him now as free, [7] as if born here,
And as well ours as theirs, who may be proud
That he is theirs, though he be everywhere
To have the franchise of his worth allow’d.
It being the portion of a happy pen,
Not to b’invassal’d [8] to one monarchy,
But dwells with all the better world of men
Whose spirits are all of one community.
Whom neither Ocean, Deserts, Rocks nor Sands
Can keep from th’intertraffic of the mind,
But that it vents her treasure in all lands,
And doth a most secure commercement [9] find.
Wrap Excellency up never so much,
In hieroglyphics, ciphers, characters,
And let her speak never so strange a speech,
Her Genius yet finds apt decipherers:
And never was she born to die obscure,
But guided by the stars of her own grace,
Makes her own fortune, and is ever sure
In man’s best hold, to hold the strongest place.
And let the critic say the worst he can,
He cannot say but that Montaigne yet,
Yields most rich pieces and extracts of man,
Though in a troubled frame confus’dly set. [10]
Which yet h’is [11] blest that he hath ever seen,
And therefore as a guest in gratefulness,
For the great good the house yields him within
Might spare to tax th’unapt conveyances. [12]
But this breath hurts not, for both work and frame, [13]
Whilst England English speaks, is of that store
And that choice stuff, as that without the same
The richest library can be but poor.
And they unblest who letters do profess
And have him not, whose own fate beats their want
With more sound blows than Alcibiades
Did his pedant that did Homer want. [14]
—SAM: DANIEL
1603
To the Courteous Reader
(selections)
SHALL I apologize translation? Why, but some hold (as for their freehold [1]) that such conversion is the subversion of universities. [2] God hold with them and withhold them from impeach or empaire. [3] It were an ill turn the turning of books should be the overturning of libraries. Yea, but my old fellow Nolano told me and taught publicly that from translation all science had its offspring.... [4]
Why, but scholars should have some privilege of preeminence. So have they: they only are worthy translators. Why, but the vulgar should not know all. No, they cannot for all this, nor even scholars for much more. I would both could and knew much more than either doth or can. Why, but all would not be known of all. No, nor can: much more we know not than we know; all know something, none know all. Would all know all? They must break ere they be so big. God only; men far from God.... [5]
What do the best [6] then but glean after others’ harvest? Borrow their colors, inherit their possessions? What do they but translate? Perhaps, usurp? At least, collect? If with acknowledgement, it is well; if by stealth, it is too bad. In this, our conscience is our accuser, posterity our judge; in that, our study is our advocate, and you Readers our jury....
If the famous Ficinus [7] were so faulty, who may hope to scape scot-free? But for him and us all let me confess, as he here censureth, and let confession make half amends that every language hath its Genius and inseparable form, without Pythagoras his Metempsychosis it can not rightly be translated. The Tuscan altiloquence, [8] the Venus of the French, the sharp state of the Spanish, the strong significancy of the Dutch cannot from here be drawn to life. The sense may keep form; the sentence is disfigured; the fineness, fitness, featness [9] diminished—as much as art’s nature is short of nature’s art, a picture of a body, a shadow of a substance. Why then belike I have done Montaigne, as Terence by Menander, made of good French no good English? [10] If I have done no worse, and it be no worse taken, it is well. As he, if no poet, yet am I no thief, since I say of whom I had it, rather to imitate his and his authors’ negligence than any backbiter’s obscure diligence....
So he, most writing of himself, and the worst rather than the best, disclaimeth all memory, authorities, or borrowing of the ancient or modern, whereas in course of his discourse he seems acquainted not only with all, but no other but authors, and could out of question like Cyrus or Cæsar call any of his army by his name and condition. And I would for us all he had in this whole body done as much, as in most of that of other languages my peerless dear-dearest and never sufficiently commended friend hath done for mine and your ease and intelligence. [11] Why then again, as Terence, I have had help. Yea, and thank them for it and think you need not be displeased by them that may please you in a better matter. Why, but Essayes are but men’s school-themes pieced together—you might as well say, several texts. All is in the choice and handling. Yea, marry, but Montaigne, had he wit, it was but a French wit, ferdillant, legier, and extravagant.... [12]
And should or would any dog-toothed Critic or adder-tongued Satirist scoff or find fault that, in the course of his discourses or web of his Essayes or entitling of his chapters, he holdeth a disjointed, broken, and gadding style; and that many times they answer not his titles and have no coherence together, to such I will say little, for they deserve but little. But if they list, else let them choose, I send them to the ninth chapter of the third book, folio 596, where himself preventeth their carping, and foreseeing their criticism answereth them for me at full. [13]
Yet are there herein errors. If of matter, the author’s; if of omission, the printer’s. Him I would not amend but send him to you as I found him; this I could not attend. But where I now find faults, let me pray and
entreat you for your own sake to correct as you read, to amend as you list. But some errors are mine, and mine are by more than translation. Are they in grammar or orthography? As easy for you to right as me to be wrong. Or in construction, as misattributing him, her, or it to things alive or dead or neuter. You may soon know my meaning and eftsoones [14] use your mending. Or are they in some uncouth terms, as entrain, conscientious, endear, tarnish, comport, efface, facilitate, amusing, debauching, regret, effort, emotion, and such like? If you like them not, take others more commonly set to make such likely French words familiar with our English, which well may bear them. If any be capital in sense mistaking, [15] be I admonished, and they shall be recanted. Howsoever, the falseness of the French prints, the diversities of copies, editions, and volumes (some whereof have more or less than others), and I in London having followed some and in the country others; now those in folio, now those in octavo, yet in this last survey reconciled all. Therefore or blame not rashly or condemn not fondly the multitude of them set for your further ease in a table (at the end of the book) which, ere you begin to read, I entreat you to peruse. [16] This Printer’s wanting a diligent Corrector, my many employments, and the distance between me and my friends I should confer with may extenuate, if not excuse, even more errors.
In sum, if any think he could do better, let him try; then will he better think of what is done. Seven or eight of great wit and worth have assayed but found these Essayes no attempt for French apprentices or Littletonians. [17] If thus done it may please you as I wish it may, and I hope it shall, I with you shall be pleased; though not, yet still I am the same resolute.
—JOHN FLORIO
The Author to the Reader
READER, lo here a well-meaning book. It doth at the first entrance forewarn thee that in contriving the same I have proposed unto myself no other than a familiar and private end. I have no respect or consideration at all, either to thy service or to my glory: my forces are not capable of any such design. I have vowed the same to the particular commodity of my kinsfolk and friends, to the end that, losing me (which they are likely to do ere long), they may therein find some lineaments of my conditions and humours, and by that means reserve more whole, and more lively foster the knowledge and acquaintance they have had of me.
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