Abstract
John Florio’s Second Frutes of 1591 reviews English theatre arts via a dialogue about after-dinner entertainment in London. A speaker with English tastes proposes: ‘And after dinner we will go see a play’. Thereupon a devotee of Italian decorum disdainfully ripostes: ‘The plays that they play in England are not right comedies’, to which a somewhat Gallic sophisticate adds: ‘Yet they do nothing else but play every day’ — encouraging his peer to further reiterate: ‘Yea, but they are neither right comedies nor right tragedies’. The bewildered Englishman inquires: ‘How would you name them then?’ The Italian responds: ‘Representations of histories, without any decorum’. After the evasive courtesy of the English response: ‘Go to, let us determine something to avoid idleness’, the Frenchman brusquely rejects all English artistic endeavours: ‘Let us go play at tennis’.1
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Further Reading
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© 1991 J. R. Mulryne and Margaret Shewring
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Richmond, H.M. (1991). Shakespeare’s Verismo and the Italian Popular Tradition. In: Mulryne, J.R., Shewring, M. (eds) Theatre of the English and Italian Renaissance. Warwick Studies in the European Humanities. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21736-6_9
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