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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
In 1894, while preparing my doctor's thesis at Yale University, on the subject, “The Elizabethan Drama, especially in its Relations to the Italians of the Renaissance,” I began to study the Italian sources of the English dramatic poetry of the age of Elizabeth. Many of the plays are dramatized versions of novelle, which, in translation, were so popular at that time. But I soon found that romantic fiction by no means exhausted the treasure-trove of Renaissance literature upon which the great dramatists drew so largely, both for their matter and their inspiration. Italian discovery, history, science, manners, music, all that Italy had so abundantly contributed to the general stock of intellectual wealth, was becoming more and more familiar to the eager, open, impressionable minds of Elizabethan Englishmen, and almost everything of importance that appeared in France and Spain was sooner or later pressed into the service of English genius. So I purposely set aside the main subject of my inquiry, the Italian sources of Elizabethan plays, until I had made a collection, as complete as possible, of all the translations from the Italian during the Elizabethan period, understanding by that, the entire cycle of the great drama, approximately from the accession of Edward VI. to the Restoration, from 1549 to 1660. With this paper, Part IV, I now complete the bibliography. Part I, comprising 70 numbers, on “Romances in Prose,” will be found in the Publications of the Modern Language Association, Vol. x, No. 2, June, 1895; Part II, 82 numbers on “Poetry, Plays, and Metrical Romances,” Ibid., Vol. xi, No. 4, December, 1896; and Part III, 111 titles on ‘Miscellaneous Translations,‘ Ibid., Vol. xiii, No. 1, January, 1898. The present paper, an account of 139 translations, is the second half of Part III, and as that dealt with religion and theology, science and the arts, grammars and dictionaries, and proverbs, so this instalment of Miscellanea treats of voyages and discovery, history and politics, manners and morals, and Italian and Latin publications in England. The whole bibliography, corrected to date, consists of 411 translations, representing a total of 219 English translators, and 223 Italian authors.