Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, 1620 - Book 2, p.112r.
A ribald tale in a Shakespeare sourcebook
Shakespeare’s wide range of reading gave him a knowledge of many Italian writers and their work that he might potentially use in his plays, or poems. ...
Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, 1620 -Book 2, title page
A Shakespeare source translated into English.
The two volumes of the Decameron in the English translation by John Florio came from the workshop of the same printer, Isaac Jaggard, who was responsible ...
Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, 1620 - title page, book 2
A Shakespeare source with a fine binding.
This volume's fine binding given to it by a nineteenth-century owner, is in green Morocco goatskin, with fine gold-tooling, including decoration along the ...
Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, 1620 [and] 1625- binding, spine detail
A Shakespeare source with a fine binding.
The finely detailed gold tooling on Boccaccio's Decameron, in the Shakespeare Centre Library, is the work of a skilled member of the nineteenth-century London ...
Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, 1620, [&] 1625 - binding view
A Shakespeare source with a fine binding.
The elegant binding of this volume dates from the late nineteenth-century and replaced whatever original leather was given to the volume in 1625 when it was ...
Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, 1625 - Book 1, p.107v
A source for Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well.
It is possible that Shakespeare may have been able to read, or knew the Decameron in its original Italian. His patron the Earl of Southampton employed ...
Giovanni Boccaccio, The modell of wit [Decameron], Book 1, 1625 Novel 9, 3rd Day (T5 recto), detail
Ornamental illustration in a Shakespeare sourcebook.
Elizabethan book illustrations are frequently simple woodcuts, although other volumes, such as Jaggard’s Boccaccio use fine engravings. This ...
Giovanni Boccaccio, The Modell of witt [Decameron Book 1], 1625 - title page, p.A2r.
Italian stories provide source material
Giovanni Boccaccio is known chiefly for Decameron, which was written in 1353. This is a collection of a hundred tales told by ten people who have taken refuge ...
Henri Estienne, A mervaylous discourse upon... Katherine de Medici…, 1575 - title page
Shakespeare may have owned this book.
Shakespeare purchased New Place, the largest house in the town of Stratford in 1597. On his death the property and most of its contents were inherited by his ...
Henri Estienne, A mervaylous discourse upon... Katherine de Medici, 1575 - inside frontboard
Thomas Phillipps' ownership of a book Shakespeare may have owned.
The great nineteenth century collector of manuscripts and books, Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872), marked his books MHC for his ‘Middle ...
Hungarian Quatercentenary Plaquette
This small bronze plaque, with only one decorated side, was designed in Hungary for the four-hundredth anniversary in 1964 of Shakespeare's birth. The image is derived from Martin Droeshout's engraving ...
James Saunders's collections on the Quiney family. Letter book - binding
Volume containing copies, made c. 1810-25 by Captain James Saunders of Stratford-upon-Avon, of miscellaneous documents concerning the Quiney family. They include copies of two letters containing mention ...
Jodocus Hondius, America, 1619 Map of the Americas - whole map, hand-coloured.
The Americas in the reign of James I, Shakespeare’s patron.
Courtiers of James I were familiar with travelers returning from the new found lands of North and South America, including Sir Walter ...
Jodocus Hondius, America, 1619, Map of the Americas - detail, a galleon and a flying fish, off the coast of Brazil.
Many of Shakespeare's contemporaries sailed to America.
English ships were famed for their ease of manoeuvrability and sea-worthiness, on which sailors and explorers depended as they travelled to America ...
Jodocus Hondius, America, 1619, Map of the Americas - detail including British Isles
Shakespeare’s England, on the edge of a world to be explored.
Maps of the known world were becoming more widely available to Shakespeare's contemporaries. Maps often use Latin, then an international ...
Jodocus Hondius, America, 1619, Map of the Americas - detail of northern part of South America
Guiana, in South America was explored by men known to Shakespeare.
The Spanish ‘conquistadors’ who explored and sought to colonise the Amazon valley followed tales of a golden wealth beyond ...
Jodocus Hondius, America, 1619, Map of the Americas - detail, creature off the coast of California. [Probably a diving whale's tail]
The ocean : a place of danger for Shakespeare’s contemporaries.
Ships returning to England after travel around the world with Francis Drake, or across the Atlantic with Walter Raleigh, brought ...
Jodocus Hondius, America, 1619, Map of the Americas - detail, exotic bird and fish.
Stories of strange birds and beasts were brought back to Shakespeare’s London.
In Shakespeare's The Tempest Trinculo, finding 'the monstrous' Caliban on the beach speculates on how an Englishman ...