ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that Hilary Gatti's 2012 article has opened the way to several important research avenues, with wide-ranging implications for both early modern English literature and the interpretation of Giordano Bruno's work from the early 1580s, the years in which he moved from France to England. The 2012 essay is divided into several sections, including one on John Florio as a likely cultural mediator through whom knowledge of Bruno's work would have reached William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. The chapter considers the prima facie case for the existence of a genre of 'commemorative' plays, inaugurated by Bruno's Candelaio and successively taken up by English playwrights. An awareness of the presence in the Candelaio of powerful allusions to the French wars of religion must necessarily affect our reading of the play. It shows Bruno adopting a position that fits in with his own views on religion and society and has the further advantage of pleasing his Valois patrons.
