THE alace of Isleasiure ELIZABETHAN VERSIONS OE ITALIAN AND FRENCH NOVELS FROM BOCCACCIO, BANDELLO, CINTHIO, STRAPASOLA, QUEEN MARGARET OF NAVARRE, AND OTHERS DONE INTO ENGLISH BY WILLIAM PAINTER NOW AGAIN EDITED FOR THE FOURTH TIME BY JOSEPH JACOBS VOL. I. LONDON: PUBLISHED BY DAVID NUTT IN THE STRAND MDCCCXC ^ TABLE OF CONTENTS. VOLUME I. FAGB PREFACE ix INTRODUCTION xi PRELIMINARY MATTER (FROM HASLEWOOD) . XXXvii APPENDIX OF DOCUMENTS RELATING TO PAINTER . liii ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS OF THE WHOLE WORK . Ixiii INDEX OF NOVELS xcii TOME I. TITLE (facsimile OF FIRST EDITION) I DEDICATION TO EARL OF WARWICK 3 LIST OF AUTHORS 9 TO THE READER lo NOVEL I. HORATII AND CURIATII IS II. RAPE OF LUCRECE 22 III. MUCIUS SCjEVOLA 26 IV. CORIOLANUS 29 V. APPIUS AND VIRGINIA . 35 VI. CANDAULES AND GYGES 46 VII. CROESUS AND SOLON . 49 VIII. RHACON AND CARTOMES S3 IX. ARTAXERXES AND SINETAS S4 X. CHARITON AND MENALIPPUS S6 XI. CYRUS AND PANTHEA . S8 XII. ABDOLOMINUS KING OF SCYTHIA 69 XIII. ALEXANDER AND THE SCYTHIAN AMBASSADORS 71 XIV. METELLUS ON MARRIAGE 74 XV. LAIS AND DEMOSTHENES 77 XVI. FABRICIUS AND PYRRHUS . 78 . via TABLE OF CONTENTS. NOVEL XVII. CAMILLUS AND SCHOOLMASTER 80 XVIII. PAPYRIUS PR^TEXTATUS 83 XIX. PLUTARCH'S ANGER 85 XX. ^SOP'S FABLE OF THE LARK 86 XXI. HANNIBAL AND ANTIOCHUS 88 XXII. ANDRODUS {Androcles) 89 XXIII. FAVORINUS . 91 XXIV. SERTORIUS . 95 XXV. SIBYLLINE LEAVES 98 XXVI. MASTER AND SCHOLAR 99 XXVII. SELEUCUS AND ANTIOCHUS 102 XXVIII. TIMON OF ATHENS 112 XXIX. MARRIAGE OF WIDOW AND WIDOWER 114 XXX. THE THREE RINGS 116 XXXI. BORSIERI AND GRIMALDI 119 XXXII. ALBERTO OF BOLOGNA. 122 XXXIII. RINALDO OF ESTE "25 XXXIV. KING OF ENGLAND'S DAUGHTER 130 XXXV. RANDOLPHO RUFFOLO . 138 XXXVI. ANDRUCCIO 143 XXXVII. EARL OF ANGIERS 156 XXXVIII. GILETTA OF NARBONNE 171 - XXXIX. TANCRED AND GISMONDA 180 XL. MAHOMET AND IRENE. 190 XLI. LADY FALSELY ACCUSED 198 XLII. DIDACO AND VIOLENTA 218 XLIII. LADY OF TURIN . 240 XLIV. ALERAN AND ADELASIA 249 XLV. DUCHESS OF SAVOY 285 XLVI. COUNTESS OF SALISBURY 334 ADVERTISEMENT TO READER 364 PREFACE. THE present edition of Painter's "Palace of Pleasure/' the storehouse of Elizabethan plot, follows page for page and line for line the privately printed and very limited edition made by Joseph Haslewood in 1813. One of the 172 copies then printed by him has been used as " copy " for the printer, but this has been revised in proof from the British Museum examples of the second edition of 1575. The collation has for the most part only served to confirm Haslewood's reputation for careful editing. Though the present edition can claim to come nearer the original in many thousands of passages, it is chiefly in the mint and cummin of capitals and italics that we have been able to improve on Hasle- wood : in all the weightier matters of editing he shows only the minimum of fallibility. We have however divided his two tomes, for greater convenience, into three volumes of as nearly as possible equal size. This arrangement has enabled us to give the title pages of both editions of the two tomes, those of the first edition in facsimile, those of the second (at the beginning of vols. ii. and iii.) with as near an approach to the original as modern founts of type will permit. I have also reprinted Haslewood's "Preliminary Matter," which give the Dryasdust details about the biography of Painter and the bibliography of his book in a manner not too Dryasdust. With regard to the literary apparatus of the book, I have X PREFACE. perhaps been able to add something to Haslewood's work. From the Record Office and British Museum I have given a number of documents about Painter, and have recovered the only extant letter of our author. I have also gone more thoroughly into the literary history of each of the stories in the " Palace of Pleasure" than Haslewood thought it necessary to do. I have found Oesterley's edition of Kirchhof and Landau's Quellen des Dekameron useful for this purpose. I have to thank Dr. F. J. Furnivall for lending me his copies of Bandello and Belleforest. I trust it will be found that the present issue is worthy of a work which, with North's " Plutarch" and Holinshed's " Chro- nicle," was the main source of Shakespeare's Plays. It had also, as early as 1580, been ransacked to furnish plots for the stage, and was used by almost all the great masters of the Elizabethan drama. Quite apart from this source of interest, the " Palace of Pleasure" contains the first English translations from the Deca- meron, the Heptameron, from Bandello, Cinthio and Straparola, and thus forms a link between Italy and England. Indeed as the Italian novelle form part of that continuous stream of literary tradition and influence which is common to all the great nations of Europe, Painter's book may be termed a link connecting England with European literature. Such a book as this is surely one of the landmarks of English literature. INTRODUCTION. YOUNG man, trained in the strictest sect of the Pharisees, A is awakened one morning, and told that he has come into the absolute possession of a very great fortune in lands and wealth. The time may come when he may know himself and his powers more thoroughly, but never again, as on that morn, will he feel such an exultant sense of mastery over the world and his fortunes. That image* seems to me to explain better than any other that remarkable outburst of literary activity which makes the Eliza- bethan Period unique in English literature, and only paralleled in the world's literature by the century after Marathon,when Athens first knew herself. With Elizabeth England came of age, and at the same time entered into possession of immense spiritual trea- sures, which were as novel as they were extensive. A New World promised adventures to the adventurous, untold wealth to the enterprising. The Orient had become newly known. The Old World of literature had been born anew. The Bible spoke for the first time in a tongue understanded of the people. Man faced his God and his fate without any intervention of Pope or priest. Even the very earth beneath his feet began to move. Instead of a universe with dimensions known and circumscribed with Dantesque minuteness, the mystic glow of the unknown had set- tled down on the whole face of Nature, who offered her secrets to the first comer. No wonder the Elizabethans were filled with an exulting sense of man's capabilities, when they had all these realms of thought and action suddenly and at once thrown open before them. There is a confidence in the future and all it had * It was suggested to me, if I remember right, by my friend Mr. R. G. Moulton. Xll INTRODUCTION. to bring which can never recur, for while man may come into even greater treasures of wealth or thought than the Elizabethans dreamed of, they can never be as new to us as they were to them. The sublime confidence of Bacon in the future of science, of which he knew so little, and that little wrongly, is thus eminently and characteristically Elizabethan.* The department of Elizabethan literature in which this exu- berant energy found its most characteristic expression was the Drama, and that for a very simple though strange reason. To be truly great a literature must be addressed to the nation as a whole. The subtle influence of audience on author is shown equally though conversely in works written only for sections of a nation. Now in the sixteenth century any literature that should address the English nation as a whole — not necessarily all Englishmen, but all classes of Englishmen—could not be in any literary form intended to be merely read. For the majority of Englishmen could not read. Hence they could only be approached by literature when read or recited to them in church or theatre. The latter form was already familiar to them in the Miracle Plays and Mysteries, which had been adopted by the Church as the best means of acquainting the populace with Sacred History. The audiences of the Miracle Plays were pre- pared for the representation of human action on the stage. Meanwhile, from translation and imitation, young scholars at the universities had become familiar with some of the master- pieces of Ancient Drama, and with the laws of dramatic form. But where were they to seek for matter to fill out these forms ? Where were they, in short, to get their plots? Plot, we know, is pattern as applied to human action. A storv, whether told or acted, must tend in some definite direction if it is to be a story at all. And the directions in which stories can go are singularly few. Somebody in the Athenceum—probably Mr. Theodore Watts, he has the habit of saying such things—has re- marked that during the past century only two novelties in plot, " There was something Elizabethan in the tone of men of science in England " during the seventies," when Darwinism was to solve all the problems. The Marlowe of the movement, the late Professor Clifford, found no Shakespeare. INTRODUCTION. XUl Undine and Monte Christ o, have been produced in European literature. Be that as it may, nothing strikes the student of comparative literature so much as the paucity of plots throughout literature and the universal tendency to borrow plots rather than attempt, the almost impossible task of inventing them.