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Shakespeare and Ariosto: Much Ado About Nothing, King Lear, and Othello

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Andrew S. Cairncross
Andrew S. Cairncross*
Affiliation:
Richmond, Kentucky
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Extract

A general doubt survives as to Shakespeare's knowledge and use of Italian. In spite of some admissions, there is a tendency to follow Richard Farmer's argument that Shakespeare got such knowledge from English textbooks or translations. For example, it is suggested that the Hero-Claudio story in Much Ado About Nothing comes not from Ariosto's Orlando Furioso but from the English translation by Sir John Harington or from one of the many English versions of the story.

Shakespeare's knowledge and use of Italian, however, can be illustrated and established by reference to cantos IV-VI of Orlando Furioso. These cantos provided Shakespeare with material not only for the Hero-Claudio theme in Much Ado, but also for King Lear and Othello. It was typical of him to conflate several sources in one play. Thus he combined the Hero-Claudio (Genevra-Ariodante) theme with other sources, such as Bandello, Whetstone, or Spenser.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , Summer 1976 , pp. 178 - 182
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1976

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References

1 E.g., Sidney Lee, ‘Shakespeare and the Italian Renaissance,’ British Academy Lecture, 1915, p. 21; Muir, Kenneth, Shakespeare's Sources, 1 (1957), 52, 122–123 Google Scholar; Nosworthy, J. M., Cymbeline, New Arden edition (1954), p. xxiv.Google Scholar

2 Farmer, Richard, An Essay on the Learning of Shakespeare, 1767.Google Scholar

3 Bullough, Geoffrey, Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, 2 (1958), 61–81 Google Scholar; Prouty, Charles T., The Sources of Much Ado About Nothing (New Haven, 1950).Google Scholar

4 Bandello, Italian text in Collier-Hazlitt, , Shakespeare's Library, part 3 (1875), 1, 104–136 Google Scholar; Whetstone, George, The Rocke of Regard, 1576 Google Scholar; and Spenser, Edmund, The Faerie Queene, i-iii, 1590 Google Scholar

5 ‘If thou'rt noble, / I do forgive thee,’ King Lear, v.iii.165-166; ‘un uom si degno, come Rinaldo gli parea al sembiante,’ OF, v.85; ‘pur che sia noto di nobil familiglia,’ OF, iv.60.

6 Gloucester also intended to leap from a rock, as in the source, Arcadia, ed. A. Feuillerat, Cambridge (1912), 1.208, 210.

7 Muir, p. 146, referring to Pyle, Fitzroy, in Modern Language Review, 43 (1948), 453.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Cinthio in Shakespeare's Library, i.ii.295; OF, v.40, 41; ‘Make me to see't,’ Othello, m.iii.364.

9 OF, v.24; cf. v.38, ‘nudo abbracciato … con lei.’

10 Shakespeare: Truth and Tradition (1928), p. 183.