Page:Much Ado About Nothing (1917) Yale.djvu/137

Much Ado About Nothing differences of detail. The names, except Don Pedro and Leonato, are quite unlike. The deception of the lover in Bandello is achieved simply by showing him a man entering a window of Leonato's house; there is no parallel to the disguising of Margaret to simulate her mistress. Again, in Bandello, the denunciation of the heroine is performed less dramatically and also less heartlessly than in Shakespeare, by means of a messenger sent by the deceived lover to her father's house; and the villain himself exposes his plot from subsequent scruples of conscience. Thus Bandello's representatives of both Claudio and Don John are shown in a less odious light than their Shakespearean counterparts. Bandello appears to regard them both as rather excellent young men; Shakespeare, with distinctly different ideals of conduct, is at pains to emphasize his disapproval.

It would hardly be doubted that Shakespeare had read Bandello, if we were certain that he could read Italian. Probably he could, since Italian was the most commonly studied of all the modern tongues in his age and was perhaps more generally understood by educated men than any foreign language is in England to-day. No English translation of Bandello's tale is known to have existed in Shakespeare's lifetime, but a free French version, by François de Belle-Forest, was published in 1582. This may possibly have furnished the poet with the story, but the likelihood that it did so is lessened by the fact that Shakespeare shows no acquaintance with any of Belle-Forest's rather numerous deviations from his original. Another possibility is that Shakespeare knew Bandello's story at second hand, as it had been worked up into some earlier English play. Evidence for