Previous  - next

Notwithstanding the freedom
with which in divers passages Boccaccio reflected on the morals of the
clergy, the Roman Curia spared the book, which the austere Savonarola
condemned to the flames. The tradition that the Decameron was among the
pile of "vanities" burned by Savonarola in the Piazza della Signoria on
the last day of the Carnival of 1497, little more than a year before he
was himself burned there, is so intrinsically probable--and accords so
well with the extreme paucity of early copies of the work--that it would
be the very perversity of scepticism to doubt it. It is by no means to
the credit of our country that, except to scholars, it long remained in
England, an almost entirely closed book. (2) Indeed the first nominally
complete English translation, a sadly mutilated and garbled rendering of
the French version by Antoine Le Macon, did not appear till 1620, and
though successive redactions brought it nearer to the original, it
remained at the best but a sorry faute de mieux. Such as it was,
however, our forefathers were perforce fain to be content with it.

The first Englishman to render the whole Decameron direct from the Italian
was Mr. John Payne; but his work, printed for the Villon Society in 1886,
was only for private circulation, and those least inclined to disparage
its merits may deem its style somewhat too archaic and stilted adequately
to render the vigour and vivacity of the original. Accordingly in the
present version an attempt has been made to hit the mean between archaism
and modernism, and to secure as much freedom and spirit as is compatible
with substantial accuracy.

(1) As to the palaces in which the scene is laid, Manni (Istoria del
Decamerone, Par. ii. cap. ii.) identifies the first with a villa near
Fiesole, which can be no other than the Villa Palmieri, and the second (ib.
cap. lxxvi.) with the Podere della Fonte, or so-called Villa del Boccaccio,
near Camerata. Baldelli's theory, adopted by Mrs. Janet Ann Ross (Florentine
Villas, 1901), that the Villa di Poggio Gherardi was the first, and the
Villa Palmieri the second, retreat is not to be reconciled with Boccaccio's
descriptions. The Villa Palmieri is not remote enough for the second and
more sequestered retreat, nor is it, as that is said to have been, situate
on a low hill amid a plain, but on the lower Fiesolean slope. The most
rational supposition would seem to be that Boccaccio, who had seen many a
luxurious villa, freely combined his experiences in the description of his
palaces and pleasaunces, and never expected to be taken au pied de la
lettre.

(2) Nevertheless Shakespeare derived indirectly the plot of All's Well that
Ends Well from the Ninth Novel of the Third Day, and an element in the plot
of Cymbeline from the Ninth Novel of the Second Day.


--
Beginneth here the book called Decameron, otherwise Prince Galeotto, wherein
are contained one hundred novels told in ten days by seven ladies and three
young men.
--

Previous  - next