ABSTRACT
Petrarch's name, like Seneca's, appears once in Shakespeare. Mercutio glosses Romeo: “now is he for the numbers that Petrach [sic] flowed in: Laura to his Lady, was a kitchin wench, marrie she had a better love to berime her” (Romeo and Juliet 2.3/1096–98). We can deduce a conviction that Petrarchan love brings with it a lot to be made fun of, though also a sense that Petrarch's standing as a poet is not directly under attack. The concession, however, hardly suggests real familiarity. In the records of Shakespearean Quellenforschung, there has been to my knowledge one serious suggestion (Rollins 1: 276) of a direct borrowing from Petrarch: that the opening of sonnet 110 deliberately mimics a famous effect in the opening poem of his Canzoniere: Alas ‘tis true, I have gone here and there, And made my selfe a motley to the view Ma ben veggio or sì come al popol tutto favola fui gran tempo, onde sovente di me medesmo meco mi vergogno
[But now I see well how for a long time I was the talk of the crowd, for which often I am ashamed of myself within myself.] 1
“Motley to the view” is credible as a theater man's equivalent to “al popol tutto / favola” (and for reasons I will be discussing later, “'tis true” would be an especially appropriate translation for “ben veggio”); within such a similarity of statement the comparable alliteration of “m”s looks almost like evidence. But the trail stops here, and without other examples there is no reason to take the parallel as anything other than uncanny coincidence. We cannot be sure Shakespeare did not read Petrarch, but he might as well not have.