BOCCACCIO, Giovanni.

.Two of the first editions of Giovanni Boccaccio s (1313-1375) Decameron, translated into English and printed by Isaac Jagaard (? 1627), printer of Shakespeare s First Folio. The Decameron was translated into English remarkably late, having previously been read by English readers in the original Italian or via the French translation. The anonymous translator states that the patronage of Sir Philip Herbert, Earl of Montgomery (1584-1650) supported the publication of the pioneering first English edition as well as the second edition of Volume 1. Herbert was a prominent courtier and nobleman, and formed one half of the incomparable pair of brethren to whom Shakespeare s First Folio was dedicated in 1623. The first edition and Vol 1 of the second edition of The modell of VVit, Mirth, Eloquence, and Consueration are present in this copy; a second edition of Vol 2 was not published.

.The 1620 edition follows the Italian source text in its composition (Armstrong, Guyda. Paratexts and Their Functions in Seventeenth-Century English Decamerons , 2007), but some elements are omitted: two tales are replaced for being unsavoury to contemporary English tastes, for example the last tale of the Third day is substituted for the story of the prudent princess Serictha. Both editions are deluxe products in folio format, generously illustrated with decorative title-pages, woodcuts, ornaments, and illuminated capital letters. (Guyda, 2007). The books were marketed as forms of .entertainment, with the change to a more informative title in the second edition arising from a desire to present the work as an important source of knowledge and indispensable work of Italian early modern literature. Interestingly, in the first edition Boccacio s name is absent. The presence of the Renowned Boccacio on the second edition demonstrates the success of the first edition, and consequential increased fame of the original author. .Pforzheimer 71 states that Shakespeare used Boccaccio s tales in several of his plays.

.The woodcut on the tp of the second edition is reused from the 1593 edition of Sidney s Arcadia. The same design was also used in a 1595 translation of Machiavelli s Florentine History, a 1633 edition of Sidney s collected works as well as a 1617 edition of Spenser s collection works. Because of this, the ornamental border contains a number of specific allusions to Sidney s Arcadia: the central characters of Musidorus, Pyrocles, Dorus, and Cleophila feature, as well as the author s family crest. The lower emblem depicts a boar retreating from a marjoram bush with the motto Spiro Non Tibi . The animal recoils from the nutritious and beneficial source of food, demonstrating his own poor judgement, and thus giving a lesson on the condemnation of ignorance.

.The armorial bookplate is of Thomas Hamilton, 7.th. Earl of Haddington (1721-1794). He studied at Oxford before travelling the continent. In Geneva he became part of what was known as Our Common Room in Geneva , a group established by William Windham (1717-1761) and Benjamin Stillingfleet (1702-1771) for Brits travelling in Switzerland where the members would dine together daily, discuss literature and the arts, perform plays and pantomimes as well as journeying into the Alps (Rowlinson, J.S., Our Common Room in Geneva and the Early Exploration of the Alps of Savoy, Royal Society, 1998).