ABSTRACT
Place is the keen issue at the beginning of Florio's dedication, for he launches into his work worrying over the order in which he has placed the dedicatees in the heading; he attempts to negotiate the matter lightly and learnedly by punning on the word "muse" and invoking classical precedents, a strategy to be expected of a humanist:
This dedication (Right Honorable and that worthily) may haply make your Honors muse; well fare that dedication, that may excite your muse. I am no auctorised Herauld to marshall your precedence. Priuate dutie might perhaps giue one the prioritie, where publike respect should prefer another. To choose Tullie or Ausonius Consuls, is to prefer them before all but one; but to choose either the former of the twaine, is to prefer him before all. It is said of Atreus in a fact most disorderly, that may be saide of any in so ordering his best dutie, It makes no matter whether, yet he resolues of neither. (WW A3r)
6 David 0. Frantz
back upon his dedicatees: "I onely say your Honors best knowe your places" (WW A3r).
