ABSTRACT
No. 41. 7. The Famous and Renowned History of Primaleon of Greece The work was a translation, by Anthony Munday, of Histoire de Primaleón de Grèce, a French translation of the anonymous Spanish romance, Primaleon. The title pages of the first and second Books of the work published during the Elizabethan period advertise that they were translated from French (STC 20366 and 20366a). No. 42. 8. Cent histoires tragiques of Belleforest Scott refers to Warton’s remark, but admits that she has not seen any evidence of this. The title of Belleforest’s work was Histoires tragiques, extraictes des oeuvres italiennes de Bandel … and not Epitomé de cent histoires tragiques, which was written by Alexander van den Busche (Le Sylvain) and then translated by Anthony Munday, entitled The Orator (§235). The Stationers’ Register, C. 1596 does not contain Belleforest’s title. As Scott suspects, Warton seems to have confused Belleforest and Sylvain. No. 44. 9. The Queene of Navarres Tales This is a selection of tales from L’Heptameron of Margaret, Queen of Navarre, with an Italian tale, ‘Mahomet and Hyerene’ (No.17) from Bandello I, 10, but it was already included in Painter’s The Palace of Pleasure, Vol. I, 40. The comparison of the two texts shows that they are the same translations, and therefore this volume does not receive independent treatment. No. 48. 10. Diana of George of Montemayor As the title page reads, the work was translated from the Spanish original, but misattributed to the Italian by Scott. No. 49. 11. Diana de Montemayor As the title page reads, the work was also translated from the Spanish original, but misattributed to the Italian by Scott. No. 100. 12. Laura: The Toyes of a Traveller Scott argued that all of Tofte’s surviving works were ‘more or less directly translated from the Italian’ without evidence.8 C.A.O. Fox considered the poems as the poet’s own work despite a disclaimer by the printer in the preface.9 An ardent Italianist as Tofte certainly was, and although the poems were conceived while he was in Italy, these are not sufficient reasons for inclusion. No. 110. 13. The Second Booke of Songs or Ayres While the couplet in ‘To Master Hugh Holland’ (No. X) was taken from a poem in Sidney’s The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia, Book II (1590), the two poems are otherwise quite different. Even though Sidney got an idea from Pietro Bembo’s Sonetto LV in Rime, which was printed in quarto by Giovanni Antonio Nicolini da Sabbio and brothers in Venice in 1530, when he wrote his poem, it does not make Dowland’s work an Italian book.
