Shakespeare and Painter’s Palace of Pleasure.

William Painter’s Palace of Pleasure (Vol. 1, 1566) is a work of historical importance.  It is arguably the most influential work of the Elizabethan Era before even the works of Shakespeare and Spenser.  Everyone at Court seems to have read it — especially the ladies (who may not have foreign languages). That said, it is possibly even less read, now, than the Faerie Queen.

 

Strange as it may seem, Painter’s collection of translations from the novelle of Italy and France is all but unknown to contemporary Shakespeare Authorship scholars. “Strange,” I say, because there is no richer source for clues to who was Shakespeare.  The fact  jumps out at any reader of the great works of Tudor literary and Shakespeare scholarship.

The strongest clue is how scholars of the Stratford Shakespeare heavily depend upon the man being an inveterate reader of Painter and imitators such as Pettie and Whetstone.  In a history in which the Stratford man takes so many of the plots of his plays (and one poem) from the Italians Bandello, Boccaccio and Cinthio, the fact that no record survives that there were translations into English — the only language in which he could possibly be fluent — except in Painter and imitators, would amount to a narrow escape.  Voila!  He read them in Painter!

How did the Stratford man take the plot of All's Well that Ends Well from Boccaccio if he knew no Italian?  Voila!  He read it in the tale of “Giletta of Narbonne”[1] from Painter’s translation.  Where did he get the details of Romeo and Juliet which appear in Boisteau’s version but not in Arthur Brooke’s English translation?  He read them in Painter’s translation of the tale.

Not all of the tales, however, were originally French or Italian.  Where did Shakespeare get the plot of The Rape of Lucrece if he wasn’t fluent in Latin, if he hadn’t read Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita[2] and Ovid’s Fastii?[3]  Simple enough.  He read it from Painter’s translation from Livy.[4]  The apparent references to Ovid were coincidences.

By way of more evidence, many other playwrights from the time also took their plots from Painter — provided themselves English cribs in the same fashion.  To be a playwright was to pillage Painter.  Everybody opportunist did it and all playwrights were opportunists.

We have, then, the full bookshelf of the English translations that purportedly gave Shakespeare the foreign plots to so many of his plays.  Classical history: North’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives.  British history: the Chronicles of Holinshed and Hall.  Ovid’s Metamorphoses: Arthur Golding’s translation.  French and Italian tales: Painter, Pettie and Whetstone.  In unique instances, Arthur Brooke and George Gascoigne.  Of all of these, William Painter was by far the most read — is by far the least read among contemporary scholars.

This is where things begin to get interesting, though.  Looked at just a smidgen closer, there are numerous inconsistencies in the bookshelf.  Painter, in particular, was not at heart a literary stylist.  He told the tale quickly and with stylistic and psychological matter mostly stripped away.  Quite the opposite in Shakespeare’s Rape of Lucrece.

But not only did Shakespeare add his own touches, he kept the most attractive touches from other editions that he had read — all of them in the original language or “English translations no record of which survive”.  In fact, while it seems clear that he read Painter he seems only to have taken a touch from the Palace here and there.  So then, it was his habit to scan the English translations of the highly popular French and Italian novelle many of which he had already read in their original languages.

Painter’s role in some debates was that he hadn’t translated a given plot. How did Shakespeare get the plot of Hamlet if he wasn’t fluent enough in to read Belleforest’s Histoires Tragiques?  Simple!  He got it from… um…  There must have been an English translation available no record of which has yet been discovered!  How an English text for the two sonnets that are translations from fifth century Greek epigrams by Marianus Scholasticus?[5]  Um… Surely he was provided English cribs by Ben Jonson!

There are far more touches in The Rape of Lucrece that appear only in Livy.  A couple also appear in Ovid’s version and a couple in a translation by Boccaccio in turn translated by Chaucer.  Pretty much every bit of the tale that could be taken from Painter Shakespeare seems actually to have taken from Livy, as well.  It is the rare detail that comes from the anthologist alone.

Not only that but a goodly number of references to Ovid’s Metamorphoses are not to be found in Shakespeare’s beloved translation by Golding.  Some can only be found in the Latin original.

Well, um… Of recent days, um… we learn that the Free School at Stratford — which we have no record at all that he attended — provided the equivalent of today’s baccalaureate degree in Latin (to geniuses, anyway).  Um… He had access to the volumes in question from the long hours he spent in the library of the Earl of Southampton — of which we have no record at all.  These are “widely acknowledged facts” that have sprung up in the wake of the Authorship Question.  Undisputed by all genuine experts.

---

[1] Painter, William.  The Palace of Pleasure. I.XXXVIII.

[2] Livy (Titus Livius). Ab Urbe Condita, LVII.

[3] Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). Fastii, II.740ff

[4] Painter. I.II.

[5] See my “Shakespeare’s Greek”  Virtual Grub Street, May 8, 2014.  https://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/2014/05/shake-speares-greek.html. 

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• What About Edward de Vere’s Twelfth Night of 1600/01? January 28, 2020. “Leslie Hotson, who brought the Orsino-Orsino coincidence to the attention of the Nevillians seems to have made one particular mistake that is all to our point.”
• Hedingham Castle 1485-1562 with Virtual Tour Link.  January 29, 2019. “Mr. Sheffeld told me that afore the old Erle of Oxford tyme, that cam yn with King Henry the vii., the Castelle of Hengham was yn much ruine,…”
• Why Shakespeare Appears on Title Pages from 1598.  November 20, 2018.  ‘These he finds unconvincing.  The author’s name having appeared in a number of title pages after 1598, he continues, “it would seem foolish for publishers not to attach the Shakespeare brand to his previously unattributed plays—unless they had other reasons not to do so.”’ 
• The Battle Over Shakespeare's Early and Late Plays. September 24, 2018. “The answers to the post-Oxford dilemma, of course, are three.”
• Shakespeare on Gravity. August 26, 2018. “So carelessly does Shakespeare throw out such an extraordinary divination. His achievement in thus, as it were, rivalling Newton may seem in a certain sense even more extraordinary than Goethe's botanical and osteological discoveries;…”
• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.