FullReads

And Dekker in his Play, If it be not good, the Diuel is in it (which is certainly true, for it is full of Devils), makes Shackle-soule, in the character of Friar Rush, tempt his Brethren with “choice of dishes,”

To which
proface
; with blythe lookes sit yee.

Nor hath it escaped the quibbling manner of the Water-poet, in the title of a Poem prefixed to his Praise of Hempseed : “A Preamble, Preatrot, Preagallop, Preapace, or Preface; and Proface, my Masters, if your Stomacks serve.”

But the Editors are not contented without coining Italian. ” Rivo, says the Drunkard,” is an Expression of the madcap Prince of Wales; which Sir Thomas Hanmer corrects to Ribi, Drink away, or again, as it should rather be translated. Dr. Warburton accedes to this; and Mr. Johnson hath admitted it into his Text; but with an observation, that Rivo might possibly be the cant of English Taverns. And so indeed it was: it occurs frequently in Marston. Take a quotation from his Comedy of What you will, 1607:

Musicke, Tobacco, Sacke, and Sleepe,
The Tide of Sorrow backward keep:
If thou art sad at others fate,
Rivo drink deep, give care the mate.

In Love’s Labour Lost, Boyet calls Don Armado,

—-A Spaniard that keeps here in Court,
A Phantasme, a Monarcho.—-

Here too Sir Thomas is willing to palm Italian upon us. We should read, it seems, Mammuccio, a Mammet, or Puppet: Ital. Mammuccia. But the allusion is to a fantastical Character of the time.–“Popular applause,” says Meres, “dooth nourish some, neither do they gape after any other thing, but vaine praise and glorie,–as in our age Peter Shakerlye of Paules, and MONARCHO that liued about the Court.” p. 178.

I fancy you will be satisfied with one more instance.

” Baccare, You are marvellous forward,” quoth Gremio to Petruchio in the Taming of the Shrew.

“But not so forward,” says Mr. Theobald, “as our Editors are indolent. This is a stupid corruption of the press, that none of them have dived into. We must read Baccalare, as Mr. Warburton acutely observed to me, by which the Italians mean, Thou ignorant, presumptuous Man.”–“Properly indeed,” adds Mr. Heath, “a graduated Scholar, but ironically and sarcastically a pretender to Scholarship.”

This is admitted by the Editors and Criticks of every Denomination. Yet the word is neither wrong, nor Italian: it was an old proverbial one, used frequently by John Heywood; who hath made, what he pleases to call, Epigrams upon it.

Take two of them, such as they are,

Backare, quoth Mortimer to his Sow:
Went that Sow backe at that biddyng trowe you?

Backare, quoth Mortimer to his sow: se
Mortimers sow speakth as good latin as he.

Howel takes this from Heywood, in his Old Sawes and Adages : and Philpot introduces it into the Proverbs collected by Camden.

We have but few observations concerning Shakespeare’s knowledge of the Spanish tongue. Dr. Grey indeed is willing to suppose that the plot of Romeo and Juliet may be borrowed from a COMEDY of Lopes de Vega. But the Spaniard, who was certainly acquainted with Bandello, hath not only changed the Catastrophe, but the names of the Characters. Neither Romeo nor Juliet, neither Montague nor Capulet, appears in this performance: and how came they to the knowledge of Shakespeare?–Nothing is more certain than that he chiefly followed the Translation by Painter from the French of Boisteau, and hence arise the Deviations from Bandello’s original Italian. It seems, however, from a passage in Ames’s Typographical Antiquities, that Painter was not the only Translator of this popular Story: and it is possible, therefore, that Shakespeare might have other assistance.