Professor of English

C.B. Cinzio Girald
Hecatommithi
Venice, 1580

This book of one hundred stories by an Italian scholar is a favorite because of other stories—about a French king, Henry III, who may have read it in the evening with his mistress; and an English playwright, Shakespeare. It’s from the great period of Venetian printing, sumptuously bound in soft parchment the color of cream. One of the stories inside is the source of Shakespeare’s Othello, another of Measure for Measure. But when and how did Shakespeare learn Italian? Could it have been from his mistress, Emilia Bassano, herself a poet and the “dark lady” of the sonnets?

8.75 L x 6.5 W x 2.25 Th (in)
IC5.G4415.565hd. Gift of James Melville Hunnewell, 1944