Abstract
EVER since John Manningham wrote his diary note on a performance of Twelfth Night that he attended in February 1602 (o.s. 1601), the main source for Shakespeare’s play has been ultimately traced back to the play Gli Ingannati , by the Sienese Accademia degli Intronati (performed in 1532; first published in 1537 and then reprinted several times down to the 1611 collected edition of the Commedie degli Accademici Intronati ). 1 We also know that Shakespeare took additional elements from various versions of this plot available at the time, either in Italian or in French translation. He must also have consulted the English version, entitled ‘Of Apolonius and Silla’, included in Barnabe Riche’s Farewell to Military Profession (1581). Riche’s collection of short stories additionally contains a tale (‘Of Two Brethren and Their Wives’) that seems to have furnished Shakespeare with elements of the Malvolio plot. The main source of the latter, however, has recently been identified as the punishment of a character called ‘Bonifacio’ in Giordano Bruno’s only play, Candelaio , printed in Paris in 1582. 2 Bruno spent the following two and a half years in London, where he stayed at the French Embassy and associated with John Florio. And indeed in John Florio one finds several mentions of Bruno’s works, including as source material for his revised Italian–English dictionary, Queen Anna’s New World of Words (1611). 3
Published Version
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