The Palace of Pleasure | Page 2

however divided his two tomes, for greater
convenience, into three volumes of as nearly as possible equal size.
This arrangement has enabled us to give the title pages of both editions
of the two tomes, those of the first edition in facsimile, those of the
second (at the beginning of vols. ii. and iii.) with as near an approach to
the original as modern founts of type will permit.
I have also reprinted Haslewood's "Preliminary Matter," which give the
Dryasdust details about the biography of Painter and the bibliography
of his book in a manner not too Dryasdust. With regard to the literary

apparatus of the book, I have perhaps been able to add something to
Haslewood's work. From the Record Office and British Museum I have
given a number of documents about Painter, and have recovered the
only extant letter of our author. I have also gone more thoroughly into
the literary history of each of the stories in the "Palace of Pleasure"
than Haslewood thought it necessary to do. I have found Oesterley's
edition of Kirchhof and Landau's Quellen des Dekameron useful for
this purpose. I have to thank Dr. F. J. Furnivall for lending me his
copies of Bandello and Belleforest.
I trust it will be found that the present issue is worthy of a work which,
with North's "Plutarch" and Holinshed's "Chronicle," was the main
source of Shakespeare's Plays. It had also, as early as 1580, been
ransacked to furnish plots for the stage, and was used by almost all the
great masters of the Elizabethan drama. Quite apart from this source of
interest, the "Palace of Pleasure" contains the first English translations
from the Decameron, the Heptameron, from Bandello, Cinthio and
Straparola, and thus forms a link between Italy and England. Indeed as
the Italian novelle form part of that continuous stream of literary
tradition and influence which is common to all the great nations of
Europe, Painter's book may be termed a link connecting England with
European literature. Such a book as this is surely one of the landmarks
of English literature.

INTRODUCTION.
A young man, trained in the strictest sect of the Pharisees, is awakened
one morning, and told that he has come into the absolute possession of
a very great fortune in lands and wealth. The time may come when he
may know himself and his powers more thoroughly, but never again, as
on that morn, will he feel such an exultant sense of mastery over the
world and his fortunes. That image[1] seems to me to explain better
than any other that remarkable outburst of literary activity which makes
the Elizabethan Period unique in English literature, and only paralleled
in the world's literature by the century after Marathon, when Athens
first knew herself. With Elizabeth England came of age, and at the

same time entered into possession of immense spiritual treasures,
which were as novel as they were extensive. A New World promised
adventures to the adventurous, untold wealth to the enterprising. The
Orient had become newly known. The Old World of literature had been
born anew. The Bible spoke for the first time in a tongue understanded
of the people. Man faced his God and his fate without any intervention
of Pope or priest. Even the very earth beneath his feet began to move.
Instead of a universe with dimensions known and circumscribed with
Dantesque minuteness, the mystic glow of the unknown had settled
down on the whole face of Nature, who offered her secrets to the first
comer. No wonder the Elizabethans were filled with an exulting sense
of man's capabilities, when they had all these realms of thought and
action suddenly and at once thrown open before them. There is a
confidence in the future and all it had to bring which can never recur,
for while man may come into even greater treasures of wealth or
thought than the Elizabethans dreamed of, they can never be as new to
us as they were to them. The sublime confidence of Bacon in the future
of science, of which he knew so little, and that little wrongly, is thus
eminently and characteristically Elizabethan.[2]
[Footnote 1: It was suggested to me, if I remember right, by my friend
Mr. R. G. Moulton.]
[Footnote 2: There was something Elizabethan in the tone of men of
science in England during the "seventies," when Darwinism was to
solve all the problems. The Marlowe of the movement, the late
Professor Clifford, found no Shakespeare.]
The department of Elizabethan literature in which this exuberant energy
found its most characteristic expression was the Drama, and that for a
very simple though strange reason. To be truly great a literature must
be addressed to the nation as a whole. The subtle influence of audience
on author is shown