The present edition of Painter’s “Palace of Pleasure,” the storehouse of
Elizabethan plot, follows page for page and line for line the privately
printed and very limited edition made by Joseph Haslewood in 1813. One
of the 172 copies then printed by him has been used as “copy” for the
printer, but this has been revised in proof from the British Museum
examples of the second edition of 1575. The collation has for the most
part only served to confirm Haslewood’s reputation for careful editing.
Though the present edition can claim to come nearer the original in many
thousands of passages, it is chiefly in the mint and cummin of capitals
and italics that we have been able to improve on Haslewood: in all the
weightier matters of editing he shows only the minimum of fallibility.
We have 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.