‘“Written first in Italian by Bandell, and now in Englishe”: Shakespeare and Bandello’s Novelle, a Brief Chronology (1554-1604)

This essay will examine the arrival and reception of the novellas of Matteo Bandello in Early Modern England, spanning the Elizabethan to the early Jacobean periods, with a particular focus on the matter of Shakespeare’s dramatic engagement with tales from the Italian prose collection, whether in the original language and / or mediated through French and English translations and adaptations by writers such as Boiastuau, Belleforest, Brooke, Fenton and Painter, in several of his most popular plays, including Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado about Nothing, Twelfth Night and Othello. It will also briefly investigate the critical history exploring the exact nature of the relationship between Shakespeare and Bandello, from the earliest remarks by Gerard Langbaine in the 1690s, through the pioneering investigations of Charlotte Lennox in Shakespear Illustrated in the 1750s, up to the present day with the imminent completion of the Shakespeare’s Narrative Sources: Italian Novellas and Their European Dissemination archive.