Palace of Pleasure : Elizabethan Versions of Italian and French Novels From Boccaccio, Bandello, Cinthio, Straparola, Queen Margaret of Navarre, and Others

Volume III of a three-volume set

William Painter's Palace of Pleasure is justly considered one of the most important and influential books in all English literature. It gave the world the first English translation of some of the best tales from the Decameron, the Heptameron, Bandello, Cinthio, Straparola and classical sources. It was partly due to this and similar collections that so many Elizabethan dramas used Italian settings, and because of the flood of Italian novelle introduced into England by Painter and his school the whole course of English drama was altered, departing radically from classical tradition.

Together with North's Plutarch and Holinshed's Chronicles, Painter's Palace was the main source of Shakespeare's plots: Romeo and Juliet, All's Well That Ends Well, and Timan of Athens are all in its debt. It was ransacked by almost all of the great masters of Elizabethan drama, contributing the plots of Webster's Duchess of Malfi and Appius and Virginia, and of works by Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, Marston, Shirley, and many others. Indeed, as the Cambridge History of English Literature sums it up, "it would be difficult to find a plot that has not had its origin, or its counterpart, in Painter's treasure-house."

In addition to the stories, biographical and bibliographical material is included from Haslewood's 1813 edition as it is an annotated table of contents, which lists for each work the source (where Painter probably obtained the tale), the origin (earliest appearance in literature), and parallel and derivative works. Painter's Palace of Pleasure is exactly what its name implies - a potpourri that any general reader will surely enjoy. There is, of course, an added value in the work for English majors, students of Elizabethan drama, and other readers with a special interest in English literature.