Page:Matteo Bandello - twelve stories (IA cu31924102029083).pdf/24

 stinted praise is the account of Cornelio and of his tragi-comic adventures in Milan. As a faithful study of contemporary life, we are bound to value it, apart from its absolute naturalness and humour, which bring it to the level of the best. At its side may be set the story of the hapless Veronese lovers, which the bright genius of Shakespeare was afterwards to make immortal.

Shakespeare probably found it in the garbled French version of Bandello's tales, published in 1559 by and his collaborator, , which had then a great vogue, and went through several successive editions. If these worthies may be said to have popularised Bandello, as translators they certainly proved themselves traitors, altering the stories, substituting climaxes and situations of their own invention, while showing a most sublime disregard for the author's text. In fact, their book was not a translation, but a somewhat pretentious paraphrase. From this, however, Shakespeare took the theme of his noble tragedy, missing, in common with his French guides, the supreme pathos of the lovers' death scene as given by Da Porto and by Bandello. Bandello makes Romeo drink the poison before he rouses Giulietta from her trance, and in