PART II Staging Roman Comedy in Stuart London Introduction: Stages of Translation in Early Modern England

In 1638 the most influential courtier poets all contributed commendatory verses to the second edition of a translation of Malvezzi’s Romulus and Tarquin. After the contributions of Thomas Carew, Sir John Suckling and William Davenant, Aurelian Townshend offered his tribute to the translator, Henry Cary:

Verball Translators sticke to the bare Text, Sometime so close, the Reader is perplex’t, Finding the words to finde the wit that sprung From the first writer in his native tongue. The spirit of an Author being fled, His naked lines looke like a body dead.1