We have not mentioned Barnabe Googe, fellow member of the Elizabethan theater scene. He describes the prime features of the horse in his 1577 translation of Konrad Heresbach's Four Books of Husbandry. His description echoes the others of the time with the standard variations. He praises thick manes. He also has the common habit of citing the standard ancients on nature and husbandry: Pliny, Virgil, Columela, etc.
Thomas Bedingfeld, whose Cardanus Comforte Edward de Vere patronized and Shakespeare frequently quoted in his plays, translated Claudio Corte's Art of Riding (1584). The book is dedicated to training, however, rather than buying, breeding or chivalry. The curvet performed by Adonis's horse is a subject dwelt upon by Bedingfeld and a favorite maneuver among England's elite horsemen among whom Vere ranked high.
Each of these translations were published well before Venus and Adonis. While Joshua Sylvester first published his translation of Du Bartas well after Venus and Adonis first appeared, earlier partial editions were published perhaps as early as 1591 and manuscripts possibly circulated before that. The translation of the Second Weeke, however, — in which the horse references appear — was only entered in the Stationers Registers in 1598 creating substantial doubt that Shakespeare could have borrowed from it for his poem.
One more description of the horse merits attentions, here, for unique reasons. Luigi Pulci's poem Morgante was first published in its final form in 1482. It is a romance epic. Stanzas 106 and 107 of the Canto XV have been advanced as a possible model for Shakespeare's lines. We give them here with on-the-fly literal translation.
Canto XV
CVI
Egli avea tutte le fattezze pronte
Di buon cavai, come udirete appresso,
Perché nato non sia di Chiaramonte:
Piccola testa e in bocca molto fesso:
Un occhio vivo, una rosetta in fronte;
Larghe le nari; e'l labbro arriccia spesso;
Corto l'orecchio e lungo e forte il collo;
Leggier si, ch’alla man non dava un crollo.
[He
had all the features attractive
In a good horse, as you will
hear,
For
he was not born of Chiaramonte:
Small head and very cleft
mouth1:
A
lively eye, a rosette on the forehead;
Large
nostrils; and thickly curled lips;
Short ears and a long and
strong neck;
So light, he did not fight the hand.]
CVII
Ma una cosa nol faceva brutto,
Ch’ egli era largo tre palmi nel petto,
Corto di schiena e ben quartato tutto,
Grosse le gambe, e d’ ogni cosa netto,
Corte le giunte, e ’1 piè largo, alto, asciutto,
E molto lieto e grato nello aspetto ;
Serra la coda, ed anitrisce e raspa,
Sempre le zampe palleggiava e innaspa.2
[Nothing about him fell short:
He was three
spans wide at the chest,
Short-backed and well-quartered
throughout,
Thick in the legs, in every detail neat,
Short
jointed, and feet broad, high, and lean,
And very happy and
pleasing in appearance;
His tail curled, and whinny harsh,
His
hooves always restless and stamping.]
Both descriptions included large nostrils, broad chest, a lively vs. a scornful eye, etc. But the actual similarity is the fact that both descriptions are two stanzas short and contain but a few points selected from the standard description of the superior stallion.
What presumably has attracted scholars is the fact that most of the other texts we have mentioned were didactic poems that accordingly included much longer and more inclusive descriptions. Pulci's description reminds us of Shakespeare's because each was a talented poet who knew not to be thorough but selective — not to over-write.
Du Bartas, who was also writing something of an epic did not know this distinction. His was intended to be a didactic poem. Therefore, he allowed his description to interrupt the flow of his poem to an extent that can try a reader's patience.
But yet another irony, here (for we have mentioned that much is ironic in the scholarly analysis of Adonis's horse), Pulci's interest vis-a-vis horses merits our attention entirely for reasons other than relate to the poem Venus and Adonis. Pulci's Morgante is a link in the centuries long chain of Italian poems about the hero Orlando — the chain that arrived at Ariosto's Orlando Furioso a poem that greatly influenced the works of Shakespeare. Obscure little Luigi Pulci was also a major influence upon the great french raconteur François Rabelais who influenced Shakespeare to a much smaller degree.
Pulci's Morgante was a retelling of an earlier anonymous version of the tale.3 In turn, his version of the tale was sampled in the retelling by Matteo Maria Boiardo, Orlando Innamorato. Boiardo's retelling was incorporated into both Francesco Berni's (1518) and Lodovico Domenichi's (1545) retellings of the same name. A strong case has been presented for Shakespeare having taken from Berni's (and perhaps a bit from Boiardo's) version for use in his plays Othello and Love's Labours Lost. The last in this line, prior to Shakespeare, was Ariosto's most famous Orlando Furioso, from which Shakespeare took a great deal, most notably the trope of posting poems on trees, in As You Like It and the tragic falling out between Claudio and Hero in Much Adoe About Nothing.
So then, we can say with considerable confidence that Shakespeare had read the versions of the Orlando story by Boiardo, Berni and Ariosto. Traditional scholars who do not wish add polyglot to Shakespeare's long list of talents demand that he read Ariosto only in John Harington's 1591 English translation. While the claim does not hold up, no similar convenience is available to them regarding Boiardo or Berni. There was no translation available from those authors during the Stratford man's lifetime and they must fall back upon Ben Jonson or John Florio, etc., having provided him extended cribs of the texts.
We have been impressed elsewhere with Shakespeare's unusually exhaustive research into obscure works in the romance languages for his plays.4 It is quite possible that he did search out and read Pulci's Morgante. Of which there also was no translation.
1 I can only assume that this refers to a pronounced philtrum. A “cleft mouth” is often mentioned in medieval and Tudor times as a very positive trait.
2 Pulci, Luigi. Il Morgante; test e notes a cura di Giugliemo Volpi (1914) II.54.
3 See Riana, Pio. “La Materia del Morgante: in un Ignoto Poema Cavalleresco del Secolo XV.” Il Propugnatore. May-June 1869. 7-36.
4 See my Ulysses and Agamemnon (1584). The Early Plays of Edward de Vere, Book 1 (2018), in particular. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07JD7KM1T.
Also at Virtual Grub Street:
Invention in a Noted Weed: the Poetry of William Shakespeare. September 21, 2024. “The coward conquest of a wretches knife,...”
The Sonnets of Shakespeare: Sonnet 108. Edward de Vere to his son, Henry. “That may expresse my love, or thy deare merit?”
- Sonnet 130: Shakespeare's Reply to a 1580 Poem by Thomas Watson. September 7, 2024. “Interesting to see our Derek Hunter debating with Dennis McCarthy, at the North group,...”.
- Rocco Bonetti's Blackfriars Fencing School and Lord Hunsdon's Water Pipe. August 12, 2023. “... the tenement late in the tenure of John Lyllie gentleman & nowe in the tenure of the said Rocho Bonetti...”
Check out the Shakespeare Authorship Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
- Check out the V.G.S. Oxfordian Shakespeare Poetry Page for many poems by Shakespeare together with historical context.
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