The Complete Works of William Shakespeare - Israel Gollancz William Shakespeare [3564]
Assuming for the present that Shakespeare has characterised, or caricatured, Florio as Parolles, Armado, and Falstaff, the first and second of these characters are represented in plays originally produced in, or about, 1592, but reflecting the spirit and incidents of the Cowdray and Tichfield progress of the autumn of 1591. While these plays were altered at a later period, or periods, of revision, it is apparent that both characters pertain in a large measure to the plays in their earlier forms. If Shakespeare used Florio as his model for these characters, we have added evidence that by the autumn of 1591 Florio had already entered the "pay and patronage" of Southampton, who about this period, under his tuition and in anticipation of continental travel, developed his knowledge of Italian and French. In his dedication of the Worlde of Wordes to Southampton in 1598, Florio writes:
"In truth I acknowledge an entire debt, not only of my best knowledge, but of all, yea of more than I know or can, to your bounteous Lordship, most noble, most virtuous, and most Honourable Earl of Southampton, in whose pay and patronage I have lived some years, to whom I owe and vow the years I have to live."
Further on in this dedication he refers to Southampton's study of Italian under his tuition as follows:
"I might make doubt least I or mine be not now of any further use to your self-sufficiencie, being at home so instructed in Italian as teaching or learning could supply that there seemed no need of travell, and now by travell so accomplished as what wants to perfection?"
All's Well that Ends Well, in its earlier form of Loves Labour's Won, reflects the spirit and incidents of the Queen's progress to Tichfield House in September 1591; the widowed Countess of Rousillon personifies the widowed Countess of Southampton; the wise and courtly Lafeu the courtly Sir Thomas Heneage, who within three years married the Countess of Southampton. I have suggested that Bertram represented Southampton, and that his coolness towards Helena, and his proposed departure for the French Court, reflects Southampton's disinclination to the marriage with Elizabeth Vere, and the fact of his departure shortly afterwards for France. In Florio, who was at that time attached to the Earl of Southampton's establishment, and presumably was present upon the occasion of the progress to Tichfield, we have the prototype of Parolles, though much of the present characterisation of that person, while referring to the same original, undoubtedly pertains to a period of later time revision, which on good evidence I date in, or about, the autumn of 1598, at which period Shakespeare's earlier antipathy had grown by knowledge and experience into positive aversion.
In 1591 Southampton was still a ward in Chancery, and the management of his personal affairs and expenditures under the supervision of Lord Burghley, to whose granddaughter he was affianced. It is evident then that when Florio was retained in the capacity of tutor, or bear-leader, and with the intention of having him accompany the young Earl upon his continental travels, his selection for the post would be made by Burghley—Southampton's guardian—who in former years had patronised and befriended Florio's father.
In Lafeu's early distrust of Parolles' pretensions, and his eventual recognition of his cowardice and instability, I believe we have a reflection of the attitude of Sir Thomas Heneage towards Florio, and a suggestion of his disapproval of Florio's intimacy with Southampton. This leads me to infer that though Lady Southampton and Heneage apparently acquiesced in, and approved of, Burghley's marital plans for Southampton, secretly they were