The Complete Works of William Shakespeare - Israel Gollancz William Shakespeare [3579]
It will be noticed that Florio's reflections upon Shakespeare's breeding, morals, and manners, while couched in coarser terms, are of the same nature as Chapman's. Ben Jonson,—as shall later be shown,—in Every Man out of his Humour, casts similar slurs at Shakespeare's provincial origin. It is likely that the friend whose sonnet had been criticised and who was called a "rymer" by "H.S." was none other than George Chapman. The fifth book of Shakespeare's Sonnets to the Earl of Southampton was written against Chapman's advances upon his patron's favour. In the tenth Sonnet in this book, which is numbered as the 38th in Thorpe's arrangement, Shakespeare refers to Chapman as a rhymer in the lines:
"Be thou the tenth Muse ten times more in worth
Than those old nine which rhymers invocate."
The few records concerning Florio, from which we may derive any idea of his personal appearance and manner, suggest a very singular individuality. There was evidently something peculiar about his face; he was undoubtedly witty and worldly-wise, a braggart, a sycophant, and somewhat of a buffoon. He was imbued with an exaggerated idea of his own importance, and possessed of most unblushing assurance. In 1591 he signed his address "To the Reader," prefixed to his Second Fruites, "Resolute John Florio," a prefix which he persisted thereafter in using in similar addresses in other publications. In 1600 Sir William Cornwallis (who at that time had seen Florio's translation of Montaigne's Essays in MS.) writes of him: "Montaigne now speaks good English. It is done by a fellow less beholding to nature for his fortune than wit, yet lesser for his face than fortune. The truth is, he looks more like a good fellow than a wise man, and yet he is wise beyond either his fortune or education."
Between the year 1598 (when Florio dedicated his World of Wordes to the Earl of Southampton) and 1603, when Southampton was released from the Tower upon the accession of James I., we have no record of Florio's connection with that nobleman. It was undoubtedly due to Southampton's influence in the new Court that Florio became reader to Queen Anna and Gentleman of the Privy Chamber to James I. His native vanity and arrogance blossomed into full bloom in this connection, in which he seems to have been tolerated as a sort of superior Court jester. The extravagant and grandiloquent diction of his early dedications read like commonplace prose when compared with the inflated verbosity of his later dedications to Queen Anna. In 1613 he issued a new edition of Montaigne's Essays which he dedicated to the Queen. A comparison of the flattering sycophancy of this dedication with the quick transition of his tone in his curt and insolent address "To the Reader" in the same book will give some idea of the man's shallow bumptiousness.
"To the Most Royal and Renowned Majestie of the Highborn Princess Anna of Denmark
By the grace of God, Queen of England, Scotland, France and Ireland. Imperial and Incomparable Majestic. Seeing with me all of me is in your royal possession, and whatever pieces of mine have hitherto under the starres passed the public view, come now of right to be under the predomination of a power that both contains all their perfections and hath influences of a more sublime nature. I could not but also take in this part (whereof time had worn out the edition) which the world had long since had of mine and lay it at your sacred feet as a memorial of my devoted duty, and to show that where I am I must be all I am and cannot stand dispersed in my observance being wholly (and therein happy)—Your Sacred Majesties most humble and Loyal servant,
John Florio.
To the Reader
Enough, if not too much, hath been said of this translation, if the faults found even by my own selfe in the first impression be now by the printer corrected, as he was directed, the work is much amended; if not, know, that through this mine attendance on her Majestic I could not intend it: and blame not Neptune for thy second shipwrecke. Let me conclude with this worthy mans daughter