ABSTRACT
Act 4 of Love's Labour's Lost, Shakespeare's comedy of frustrated courtship and "baroque poetics" dating from the mid-1590s, contains an intriguing exchange between the constable Dull, the dim curate Sir Nathaniel, and the schoolmaster Holofernes. Notwithstanding the unlikelihood of an allusion to Florio in Holofernes, Shakespeare's play nevertheless shows a clear indebtedness to Florio and the world of Italian language-learning and literature to which he and his writings gave access. These principles of allusion, half-allusion, and admixture dominate the fabric of Love's Labour's Lost, and dictate the nature of its engagements with Italian language and literary culture. The Italian trappings of the play become all the intriguing if a third element, the heterodox firebrand Giordano Bruno, is introduced to bring Shakespeare and Florio into yet greater proximity, or more accurately to triangulate the writings of Shakespeare, Florio, and Sir Philip Sidney. Whether Shakespeare's knowledge of Italian derived from direct, personal contact with Florio remains the subject of heated critical speculation.
