John Florio

John Florio.

John Florio (* 1553 in London , † 1625 in Fulham in London), Italian Giovanni Florio , was an English translator (from Montaigne ) and scholar of the Elizabethan period. He was a language teacher at the court of James I and possibly close friends with William Shakespeare .

Live and act

His father Michelangelo Florio was an Italian born in Tuscany who, as a student of the reformer Giovanni Mollio, switched to the Protestant (Calvinist) faith, first in Naples, then in England during the reign of Edward VI. Sought refuge. In 1550 he was pastor of the Italian Protestant community in London and employed by William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley . He lost both posts after being charged with immorality, which Lord Burghley did not hold against him later. He wrote a book on the Italian language that he dedicated to Henry Herbert . He may have been a teacher in the family of William Herbert, 1st Earl of Pembroke , the father of the 2nd Earl of Pembroke (who in turn was married to Mary Sidney , sister of the poet and courtier Sir Philip Sidney ). He was also the Italian teacher of Lady Jane Gray (whose execution later touched Michelangelo Florio so much after his retreat to Switzerland that he wrote a book about the “Protestant martyr”) and Princess Elisabeth, who later became Queen Elisabeth . John Florio's mother was almost certainly English, and Florio himself always felt like an Englishman.

The Florio family left (according to Anthony Wood ) England after Queen Mary assumed the throne . In Strasbourg , Michelangelo Florio met members of the aristocratic Protestant family de Salis from Bregaglia in Italian-speaking Switzerland, who offered him the post of pastor and teacher in Soglio (north of Lake Como ). John Florio grew up there, learned to speak fluent Italian from his father (and probably fluent English from his mother) as well as French and German. At the age of 7 he attended school and later a university in Germany. At the time of Queen Elizabeth (early 1570s) he returned to England, possibly with his mother.

The comprehensively humanistically educated John Florio, who found the English language awkward and barbaric, saw it as his mission to enrich the English by enriching their language with Italian proverbs and imparting aristocratic manners of the continent and began to work as an Italian teacher. He also worked for the Elizabethan spy chief Sir Francis Walsingham as an agent. B. worked as a teacher in the house of the French ambassador. As a friend of Giordano Bruno , he passed on to English intellectuals such as Sir Philip Sidney his teachings about life on extraterrestrial planets. For some time, Florio was at Oxford University , where he was tutor the son of the Bishop of Durham (Richard Barnes) at Magdalen College in 1576 and became a member of the college as tutor of French and Italian in 1581. In 1578 he published a guide to learning Italian (and its culture), the title about how to enrich his speech with proverbs and funny phrases ("First Fruits .."), followed by a volume in 1591, "Second Fruits, to be gathered of twelve trees .. ”followed, announced with 6000 Italian phrases attached. Dialogues and excerpts from Italian writers were partly printed in parallel in Italian and English.

Florio was very fashionable as a teacher and had various patrons. According to his own words, he lived for a few years with Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton and William Herbert and was friends with the Earl of Pembroke, whom he considered in his will (with the clear intention that he would look after his second wife, Rose ).

In 1598 he published his Italian-English dictionary "A world of words". After James I ascended the throne in 1603, he became a teacher of Italian and French for his heir to the throne, Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales. He became "Gentleman of the privy chamber" and "Clerk of Closet" of Queen Anna, whom he also taught. Accordingly, he named a considerably expanded edition of his dictionary "Queen Anna's New World of Words" after the Queen.

His main work is the translation of the essays by Montaigne ("Essayes on Morall, Politike, and Millitarie Discourses of Lo. Michaell de Montaigne"), published in 1603 in three books. The second edition in 1611 was also dedicated to the queen. A copy of the 1st edition of the essays in the British Library contains a Shakespeare signature that was long believed to be genuine but is now considered an 18th century forgery. Another example bears the name of Ben Jonson . Occasionally (Bishop William Warburton ) it has been suggested that Florio is the archetype of Holofernes in Shakespeare's Lost Laboratory, a pedantic, pompous speech-giving schoolmaster. Because of Florio's close connection to Shakespeare's patron Southampton, it is more likely that Shakespeare himself was friends with Florio and that he had his knowledge of Italian and French literature from him. Florio was also friends with Ben Jonson, who sent him a copy of his "Volpone" with the dedication "to his loving father and worthy friend Master John Florio".

Florio married a sister of the poet Samuel Daniel , who worked in the house of Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, who maintained a literary circle ("Wilton Circle"). Wood characterizes Florio in his “Athenae Oxonienses” as well versed in his profession, zealous in his religion and deeply connected to his chosen homeland England.

He died in poverty in Fulham near London in the autumn of 1625 because the royal pension was not paid. His Shoe Lane house was sold to pay off his heavy debts, but his daughter made a good match in the marriage. Many of the descendants were royal doctors.

literature

• Frances A. Yates : John Florio. The Life of an Italian in Shakespeare's England. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge u. a. 1934.
• Anne Cuneo : Un Monde de Mots. John Florio, traducteur, lexicographe, pédagogue, homme de lettres. Campiche, Orbe 2011, ISBN 978-2-88241-297-3 .
• Stephen Greenblatt , Peter G. Platt (Eds.): Shakespeare's Montaigne. The Florio Translation of the "Essays". A Selection. New York Review Books, New York 2014, ISBN 978-1-59017-722-8

References and comments

1. ↑ Ludwig Rabus: Historien der Martyrer , Volume 2, 1572 , Chapter 36, page 763
2. ↑ possibly he was of Jewish origin. According to an article by Martino Juvara in Corriere della Sera of April 14, 2000 Archive link ( Memento of the original from April 14, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Michelangelo's father was a doctor Giovanni Florio from Sicily, who fled to Venice because of his religion (and because he wrote a heretical pamphlet). His son Michelangelo studied in Padua and then went to England. The mother was a born Crollalanza, which corresponds to Shakespeare in Italian (scrolla lanza). 
3. ↑ Whether John Florio was ever in Italy is unknown
4. ↑ There is even a (scientifically irrelevant) William Shakespeare authorship theory that sees Florio as the author of Shakespeare's works (Lamberto Tassinari: John Florio. The man who was Shakespeare , Transl. From the Italian by William McCuaig, Giano Books, Montreal 2009); in addition, Florio's father was also regarded as the author of Shakespeare's works.

Web links

• Literature by and about John Florio in the catalog of the German National Library
• Facsimile images of the Florios Italian / English Dictionary, 1611
• Florios Montaigne translation
• www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de