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Tuesday, February 24, 2026

How Shakespeare and Ariosto Go Back to the 1570s.

One of the less well-known effects of the invention of the movable type printing press, by Johannes Gutenberg, in Strasbourg, Germany, circa 1440, is that it allowed the birth of renaissance theater, in Ferrara, Italy, to rapidly become known throughout Europe. For a brief time little Ferrara was the center of the literary world — both poetry and theater. But this was only recognized when the works of the various authors began to be published in the early 1500s, in Venice.

At the very end of the 15th century, and very beginning of the 16th, Ercole I de Este, Duke of Ferrara, managed to steer clear of most of the war between the Papal coalition and France. Peaceful and well-defended, the city's studiolo1 grew to become an intellectual nexus.

Ercole's son, Alfonso I, kept Ferrara free, through his fine military mind and diplomacy, and marriage to Lucretia Borgia, until the resolution of the war, in 1529. While he did, the studiolo continued to flourish. Under Ercole, it gave the renaissance the works of Matteo Maria Boiardo, Niccolò da Correggio and Ludovico Ariosto. In what momentum remained, under Alfonso, the world received further works of Ariosto and the works of his students Giovanni Battista Giraldi (pen name Cinthio) and Ercole Bentivoglio, and of the frequent visitor Fra Matteo Bandello.

Most of these names are known among English readers — inasmuch as they are known at all — as favorite authors and influences on the works of Shakespeare — especially Ariosto. The first great work of theater, we are reminded, by Edmund G. Gardner, occurred in the reign of Ercole:

We may take January 25, 1486, as the birthday of the modern Italian drama.2

But looked at more closely, this was the birthday of the modern theater in France and England though they did not quite know it yet. Had there been no printing press they would not likely have known about it until much latter.

The play that was shown that day was Ariosto's translation of the Menaechmi of Plautus. It was an enormous success.

By 1573, the London literati already were half a decade into their own renaissance. In that year, a highly personable poet, playwright and aspiring courtier, named George Gascoigne, published his translation of another of Ariosto's plays entitled, The Supposes3, together with the rest of his works to date. As was often the case in those days, he ingratiated himself with a number of other authors by offering to include selections from their work as well in an anthology at the end of his own. The whole was entitled An Hundreth Sundrie Flowres.

Foremost among the “toward young gentlemen,” declared the editors, was one who went under the moniker “Si fortunatus infoelix” a.k.a. “Master F.I.” (for a gentleman did not seek publicity), had also translated some lines of poetry from Ariosto. Those lines were the first eight stanzas of the 31st Canto of far-and-away Ariosto's most famous work, Orlando Furioso.

WHat state to man, so sweets and pleasaunt weave.

As to be tyed, in linkes of worthy love ?

What life so blist and happie might appeare,

As for to serve Cupid that God above ?

If that our mindes were not sometimes infect,

With dread, with feare, with care, with cold suspect:

With deepe dispaire, with furious frenesie,

Handmaides to her, whome we call jelosie.


For ev'ry other sop of sower chaunce,

Which lovers tast amid their sweete delight:

Encreaseth joye, and doth their love advaunce,

In pleasures place, to have more perfect plight.

The thirstie mouth thinkes water hath good taste,

The hungrie jawes, are pleas'd, with eche repaste:

Who hath not prov'd what dearth by warres doth growe,

Cannot of peace the pleasaunt plenties knowe.


And though with eye, we see not ev'ry joye,

Yet mate the minde, full well support the same,

[An] absent life long led in great annoye

{When presence comes) doth turne from griefe to game,

To serve without reward is thought great paine,

But if dispaire do not therewith remaine,

It may be borne for right rewardes at last,

Followe true service, though they come not fast.

Disdaines, repulses, finallie eche ill,

Eche smart, eche paine, of love eche bitter tast,

To thinke on them gan frame the lovers will,

To like eche joye, the more that comes at last:

But this infernall plague if once it tutch,

Or venome once the lovers mind with grutch,

All festes and joyes that afterwardes befall,

The lover comptes them light or nought at all.


This is that sore, this is that poisoned wound,

The which to heale, nor salve, nor ointmentes serve,

Nor charme of wordes, nor Image can be founde,

Nor observaunce of starres can it preserve,

Nor all the art of Magicke can prevaile,

Which Zoroacles found for our availe,

Oh cruell plague, above all sorrowes smart,

With desperate death thou sleast the lovers heart.


And me even now, thy gall hath so enfect,

As all the joyes which ever lover found,

And all good haps, that ever Troylus sect,

Atchieved yet above the luckles ground:

Can never sweeten once my mouth with mell,

Nor bring my thoughtes, againe in rest to dwell.

Of thy mad moodes, and of naught else I thinke,

In such like seas, faire Bradamant did sincke.4

Those who have read my Shakespeare in 15735 know that I have identified Si fortunatus infoelix as a young Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. In the Flowres we have from him a number of what are now called “Shakespearean sonnets,” on the model introduced, during the reign of Henry VIII, by Vere's uncle, Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey. In the translation, here, Vere finds a creative way to include Shakespeare's favorite joy-annoy rhyme-pair.

Some two years later, Vere chose to travel to Italy, long a desire of his. A year later, still, on January 1, 1576, records show that a play was shown at Queen Elizabeth's court recorded by a clerk of the Revels Office as The historie of Error.6 The similarity of this entry to the title of Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors has caused many scholars to suggest that the play might have been an earlier version of the Shakespeare play. It is set, not in Italy, from which Vere had yet to return, but in Greece. Because the Stratford man would only have been 12 years old at the time, it has often been asserted that he may have taken the 1576 play and rewritten it making it his own.

The play as we have it is based in part upon the Menaechmi of Plautus. Much of it is widely understood to have been written well before the 1590s — probably no later than the early 1580s. The many passages written in fourteeners and Poulter's Measure would have been outdated by that time. There are indications that many more passages, still, were in the earlier measures and later restructured as prose and iambic pentameter.

The printing press had not only informed English literati that the Renaissance theater had been born but it created a printed literature of their own. Each playwright could observe the most recent developments at the theaters and in print. This created a cycle in which each learned the new popular traits — many imported from European booksellers — and incorporated them in their own plays which then were the source for the next round.

The development of the theater went from fast to faster. Did Shakespeare take most of his plays from earlier authors and merely rewrite them as his own? Or did he write the original plays and revise them — update them — to keep them popular as tastes rapidly changed? In such plays as Comedy of Errors, Henry V, Hamlet7, Troilus and Cressida8, and others, I think the evidence weighs heavily toward the latter option. Those who begin their assessment with an absolute requirement that the Stratford man be the playwright, of course, think otherwise.


Edward de Vere's Ulysses & Agamemnon (1584)!


1  Pardi, Giuseppe. Lo Studio di Ferrara (1903). 22. Per tali fortunate condizioni Ferrara doveva sembrare una tra le città d' Italia più adatte per l'istituzione di uno Studio, che promettesse di riuscire fiorente.”

2  Gardner, Edmund G. The King of Court Poets: A Study of the Work, Life and Times of Lodovico Ariosto (1906).

3  In Italian, I Suppositi.

4  The Complete Works of George Gascoigne (Cunliffe ed.) 1907. 424-6.

5  Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Shakespeare in 1573: Apprenticeship and Scandal (2021) (https://www.amazon.com/Shakespeare-1573-Apprenticeship-Authorship-Progress-ebook/dp/B096GSQV14)

6  Steele, Mary Susan. Plays and Masques at Court During the Reigns of Elizabeth, James and Charles (no date). 61.

7  See my Back When Ophelia Jumped Off a Cliff: the Hamlet of 1589 (2022) for much more. (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09WC94FGW/)

8  See my Ulysses and Agamemnon (1584) (2018) for much more. (https://www.amazon.com/Ulysses-Agamemnon-Edward-William-Shakespeare-ebook/dp/B07JD7KM1T/)


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