SHAKESPEARE'S ROME
PLUTARCH.
The Lives of the noble Grecians and Romanes, compared together by that grave learned Philosopher and Historiographer, Plutarke of Chæronea: translated out of Greeke into French by James Amiot … and out of French into English, by Thomas North.
Imprinted at London by Richard Field for Bonham Norton, 1595.
Folio, pp. [14], 865, 862–889, 900–1173, [29], wanting the initial blank; woodcut device to title-page, each life headed by a woodcut medallion portrait within a decorative border; title-page dusty, blank margins of 5C4 and 5H4 restored, some mild damp-stains at the front and to a few leaves of the table at the end, a few other spots and stains, but a very good copy in eighteenth-century reversed calf, sometime rebacked, the joints now cracked, modern endpapers; bookplate of the politician Ernest Pollock (1861–1936), Master of the Rolls, with his arms as Baron Hanworth.
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The Lives of the noble Grecians and Romanes, compared together by that grave learned Philosopher and Historiographer, Plutarke of Chæronea: translated out of Greeke into French by James Amiot … and out of French into English, by Thomas North.
Second edition of North’s celebrated translation of Plutarch, first published in 1579, which has long been recognized as a major source for Shakespeare, providing not only the historical framework for Titus Andronicus, Julius Caesar, Anthony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus, but ‘long passages of … magnificent prose’ that Shakespeare put ‘into blank verse with little change’ (F.E. Halliday).
In fact the spirit of Plutarch suffuses the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Europe, through the monumental translations of Jacques Amyot into French and Thomas North into English. To Amyot’s text North added the Lives of Hannibal and Scipio Africanus, translated from the French of Charles de la Sluce, and Simon Goulart’s comparison of Hannibal and Scipio. Further expansions were published in in 1603 and 1657.
Four editions of North’s Plutarch were published within Shakespeare’s lifetime, though the edition of 1612 (and probably that of 1603) was too late to have been his source. ‘It is of considerable interest to Shakespearean scholars that the identity of the particular edition used by him should be established … The case presented by F.A. Leo for the second edition, 1595, is … convincing. In fact, one might consider his case as proved … However, it is entirely probable that Shakespeare used more than one edition’ (Pforzheimer 801).
Of this edition there are two variants, printed for Bonham Norton, as here, or for Thomas Wight, who had had a share in the first edition in 1579.
STC 10067.
