Second Fruits is John Florio’s second work. Entitled Second Frutes to be gathered of twelve trees, of diverse but delightful tastes to the tongues of Italian and English (1591), it appeared thirteen years after the publication of the First Fruits, and is a product of perhaps the most interesting period of his life.
Second Fruits: a new literary fashion
Florio’s Second Fruits paralleled the most fertile period of Elizabethan literature. As usual, Florio is found connected with interesting and brilliant circles, and the Second Fruits is a work up to the minute in meeting the demands of the new literary fashion of the 1590’s. The dedication of the Second Fruits is to “Master Nicholas Saunder of Ewel” to whom Florio seems to be indebted for the benevolence and bounty shown him while at Oxford and later in London. Florio claims that his monument, Second Fruits, will render immortal “your worthiness”:
“Far indeede I neither may in equitie forget, nor in reason conceale, the rare curtesies you vouchfast me at Oxford, the friendly offers and great liberalitie sinee (above my hope and my desert) continued at London, where with you have fast bound me to beare a dutifull & grateful observance towards you while I live, & to honour that mind, from which as from a spring, al your friendships & goodnes hath flowed: And therefore to give you some paune and certaine assurance of a thankfull minde, and my professed devotion, I have consecrated these my slender endeauours, wholy to your delight which shall stand for an image and monument of your worthinesse to posteritie.”
His statement in the Dedication that First Fruits and Second Fruits are the “daughters and offsprings of my care and studie” is significant. He proceeds with the metaphor asserting that his elder (First Fruites) because she was ambitious “I married for preferment and for honour” but this younger (Second Fruits) is “better, riper, and pleasanter than the first”. And since it’s “fayrer, better nurtured, and comelier than her sister,” he hopes that it will be better received and appreciated than was First Fruites:
“…I thought to have cloystred up some solitarynes, which shee perceiving, with haste putting on her best ornaments and (following the guise of her countrie women presuming very much upon the love and favour of her parentes) hath voluntaryly made her choyce (plainly telling me that she will not leade apes in hell) and matched with such a one as she best liketh, and hopeth will both dearely love her, & make her such a ioynter as shal be to the comfort of her parents, and ioy of her match, and therefore have I given her my consent, because shee hath iumped so well with modesty, and not aspired so high that shee might be upbraided either with her birth or basenes when she could not mend it.”
He then concludes discussing about the proverbial speech, and how much “graceth a wise meaning, and how probably it atgueth a good conceipt”:
“….and also, how naturally the Italians please themselves with such materyall, short, and wittty speeches (which when they themselves are out of Italy and amongst strangers, who they think hath learnt a little Italian out of Castilian’s courtier, or Guazzo his dialogues, they will endevour to gorget or neglect and speake bookish, and not as they will doe amongst themselves because they know their proverbs never came over the Alpes) no sell than with the conepited apothegmes, or Imprefes, which never fall within the reach of a barren or vulgar head.”
Second Fruits: Epistle Dedicatorie
The dedicatory epistle is a “remarkably comprehensive sketch of current publication in the various fields of journalism, poetry, and the drama.” 1 and opens with a passage which must be quoted:
Sir in this stirring time, and pregnant prime of invention when everie ‘bramble is fruiteful, when everie mol-hill hath cast of the winters mourning garment, and when everie man is busilie woorking to feede his owne fancie; some by delivering to te presse the occurences & accidents of the world, newes from the marte, or from the mint, and newes are the credite of a travailer, and first question of an Englishman. Some, like Alchimists distilling quintessences of wit, that melt golde to nothing, & yet would make golde of nothing; that make men in the moone and catch moon shine in the water. Some putting on pyed coats lyke calendars, and hammering upon dialls, taking the elevation of Paneridge church (their quotidian walkes) pronosticate of faire, of foule or of smelling weather, Men weatherwise, that wil by aches foretell of change and alteration of wether. Some more active gallants made of a finer molde, by devising how to win their Mistrises favours, and how to blaze and blanche their passions with aeglogues, songs, and sonnets, in pitiful verse or miserable prose, and most, far a fashion; is not Love then a wagg, that makes men so wanton? yet love is a pretie thing to give unto my Ladie. Other some with new caracterisings bepasting all the posts in London to the proofe, and fouling of paper, in twelve howres thinke to effect Calabrian wonders; is not the number of twelve wonderfull? Some wìrh Amadysing & Martinising a multìtude of our libertine yonkers with triviall, frivolous, and vaine vaine droleries, set manie mindes a gadding; could a foole with a feather make men better sport? l could not chuse but apply myself in some sort to the season, and either proove a weede in my encrease without profit, or a wholesome pothearbe in profit without pleasure. lf I proove more than I promise, I will impute it to the gracious Soile where my endeavours are planted, whose soveraine vertue divided with such worthless seedes, hath transformed my unregarded slips to medeinable simples. […]
Second Fruits: Robert Greene & Thomas Nashe
There is first a hint at Greene’s Mourning Garment (1590). Then he defends the passion for “news”. He had indeed been involved in publishing news pamphlets, of which ‘A letter lately written from Rome’ was published in 1585 when he was at the French Embassy. Next there is an allusion to one of Lyly’s recent plays, Endimion, The Man in the Moone; to Thomas Nashe, who in 1591 published A Wonderfull, strange and miraculous, Astrological Prognostication for the year of our Lord God; to John Doleta who in 1586 prophesied Straunge Newes out of Calabria that the following year would bring forth weird and horrible events. There is also an allusion to Greene’s Groats-worth of Witte, bought with a million of Repentance (1592), specifically when Greene mentions a play called The Twelve Labours of Hercules.
John Florio also mentions the Martin Marprelate controversy, a pamphlet war in which the self-styled ‘Marprelate’ attacked the bishops of the Church of England as “petty popes” and in which Thomas Nashe had taken part, replying in at least one pamphlet of his own ‘An Almond for a Parrot’:
“Some with Amadysing and Martinising a multitude of our libertine yonkers with trivial, frivolous and vain vain drolleries, set many minds a gadding; could a fool with a feather make men better sport?”.
By coining the phrase ‘Amadysing and Martinising’ Florio draws together both Thomas Nashe and the group of University wits to attack the affected style of these pamphlets.
“An English Italianate is a Devil Incarnate”
The Epistle to the reader of the Second Fruits shows that Florio had recently been meeting with adverse criticism because of his Italian sympathies:
“As for me, for it is I, and I am an Englishman in Italiane; I know they haue a knife at command to cut my throate, Un Inglese Italianato é un Diavolo Incarnato. An English Italianate is a Devil Incarnate. ”
Defining himself an Englishman in Italiane, John Florio writes a two-fold defence of Italian culture in England and of the practise of translation. He also writes a commendation of Queen Elizabeth’s knowledge of Italian, and a succinct of Florio’s belief in treating proverbs as a mean to facilitate colloquial and idiomatic speech. “To the Reader” offers an impassioned response to the celebrated Italian proverb that describes the apparently pernicious effect that the country has on many of its English visitors. The proverb “Un Inglese Italianato é un diavolo incarnato” is introduced into England in Roger Ascham’s The Scholemaster (1570), where young English gentlemen are given a stern warning about the dangers of exposing themselves to the Siren songes of Italie. 2Ascham gave a major example of this anti- cosmopolitan campaign, due to its description of the traveller to Italy as:
“A meruelous monster, which, for filthines of liuyng, for dulnes to learning him selfe, for wilinesse in dealing with others, for malice in hurting without cause, should carie at once in one bodie, the belie of a Swyne, the head of an Asse, the brayne of a Foxe, the wombe of a wolfe.” 3
John Florio responds directly to Thomas Nashe who was one of Florio’s contemporaries who criticised the young English Nobles who travelled in Italy and returned not only well versed in the language and culture, but apparently also in the vices and loose morals they had encountered by the way:
“Mislike you the language? Why the best speak it best, and her Majesty none better.”
Florio also recalls the great and the good from history who made the learning of languages a virtue:
“Mithridates was reported to have learned three and twenty several languages, and Ennius to have three hearts because three tongues, but it should seem thou hast not one sound heart, but such a one as is cankered with envy; nor any tongue, but a forked tongue, thou hissest so like a snake.”
He also mentions Nashe’s tale about the fox and the goat at the well when he reminds his readers of all the good literature to make its way in England through translators of the past when he says:
“Had they not known Italian, how had they translated it? Had they not translated it, where were now they reading? Rather drink at the well-head than sip at puddled streams”.
Resolute Iohannes Florius
One particularly telling remark in all this is the very direct “Now, who the devil taught thee so much Italian?” which suggests Nashe may, at one time, have been among Florio’s pupils at St. John’s. Another St. John’s contemporary who certainly was among Florio’s pupils was Gabriel Harvey who, together with his brother, waged a similar literary battle with Thomas Nashe. The epistle to the reader ends on an extremely combative tone:
To use them [proverbs] is a grace, to understand them a good, but to gather them a paine to me, though gaine to thee. I, but for all that I must not scape without some new flout: now would I were by thee to give thee another, and surely I would give thee bread for cake. Farewell if thou meane well; els fare as ill, as thou wishest me to fare.
The last of April, 1591. Resolute I.F.
Phaeton to his friend Florio
The Epistle Dedicatorie shows that Florio knew that his Second Fruits was a provocative work, and here for the first time he signs himself with the adjective that stuck to him through life and after death: Resolute John Florio. Unlike his earlier manual, Florio’s Second Fruits is prefaced by a single commendatory sonnet: Phaeton to his friend Florio. What is of great significance concerning this sonnet is that it is one of the earliest Elizabethan sonnets to be printed:
Sweet friend, whose name agrees with thy increase
How fit a rival art thou of the spring!
For when each branch hath left his flourishing,
And green-locked summer’s shady pleasures cease,
She makes the winter’s storms repose in peace
And spends her franchise on each living thing:
The daisies spout, the little birds do sing,
Herbs, gums, and plants do vaunt of their release.
So when that all our English wits lay dead
(Except the laurel that is evergreen)
Thou with thy fruits our barrenness o’erspread
And set thy flowery pleasance to be seen.
Such fruits, such flowerets of morality
Were ne’er before brought out of Italy. Phaeton to his friend Florio
Moreover, it is published in the Second Fruits, an Italian language book which contains a heterogeneous stock of raw materials for contemporary sonneteers. It is possible that Florio is again meeting a demand here as he did in his earlier work in the case of the Euphuists.
Second Fruits: Themes
Florio had a genius for catching the very spirit of the particular time in which he was writing – its current literary interests, fashion, and gossip. 4 Then too, the Second Fruits was intentionally directed towards the more literary, more intellectual segment of those interested in learning foreign languages. Florio always moved among the more courtly circles, and one would naturally expect his books to reflect this atmosphere. In this context, it is important to note that John Florio did not intentionally set out to be a language-teacher. Inevitable similarities apart, he differs very considerably from Hollyband, Saravia, Stepney and scores of other protestant refugees who kept school in London in the 16th and 17th century. His language lesson books were not for school children or beginners in the language as were those of Hollyband, and he opportunely supplies just the kind of material which would appeal to the writers of sonnets: arguments about women, beauty and love.
Furthermore, the aim of the work did not stop with polite speech; it was also designed to teach fine writing and a definite literary style. Instead of prayers, long tirades on morality, and doctrinal dissertations found in the Firste Fruites and other Elizabethan language lesson manuals, the dramatic dialogues of the Second Fruits are concerned primarily with the occupations of courtly life and the interests of the more gentle circles. Opposed to the first manual, now in Second Fruits the dramatic dialogues have different characters with names prefixed in the title for each chapter. Understandably, the dialogues of Florio have captured the attention of scholars, who often comment on the theatrical nature of these exchanges. In his book-length study of early modern Anglo-Italian relations, Michael Wyatt recognizes a “theatrical structure” in Florio’s bilingual dialogues. 5 In this context, it is important to make a difference between Florio and other teachers of languages. Florio, in fact, did not write an elementary book for school children; he aimed rather at the interests of the “gentlemen” and nobility. Professor Spampanato has defined this attitude nicely:
“Because it treats of arms and horses, of amusement, of courtesy and love, of banquests, of games and travels, the Second Fruits can in most respects belong to the courtier literature which still flourished in Italy toward the end of the Renaissance.” 6
Second Fruits: Dialogues
Second Fruits emphasizes Italian popular phrases and proverbs in the context of dialogues relating to everyday actions. There are discussions of fencing, tennis, literary criticism, and translation. Topical allusions mentions St. Paul’s, Paul’s Wharf, London Bridge, the London Exchange, and the city streets and parks. Mentions is made of the Queen, Bruno, Sidney, Spencer, the Earl of Southampton, and others. Chapter 6 contains “many familiar and ceremonious complements” for the particular use of the traveller abroad with allusions of the fashion of the Italian travel, the malcontent traveller, and the new class of Italianate-Englishman. Chapter 12, with its 40 pages of dramatic dialogues, is a kind of compendium of arguments on love and women, both for and against between Pandolpho, Silvestro, Nicodemus and Dormiglione. The reference to Philip Sidney, the petrarchism and Bruno’s anti-petrarichisms are evident. Furthermore, the many classical and mythological allusions, similies, metaphors, proverbs, and conventional euphuism of this chapter make the book a kind of thesaurus for love poets and contemporary sonneteers.
The anti-feminist literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance is also reflected in Pandolpho’s words:
P. Women are the purgatory of men’s purses;
The paradise of men’s bodies; the hell of men’s souls.
Women are in churches saints; abroad angels; at home devils;
At window sirens; at doors pyes; and in gardens goats.
In contrast, there is a discussion of feminine beauty in Chapter Eight when James describes the “partes that a woman ought to have to be accounted most faire” :
I. In choyse of faire, are thirtie things required
for which (they saie) faire Hellen was admired,
Three white, three black, three red, three short, three tall,
Three thick, three thin, three streight, three wide, three small,
White teeth, white hands, and neck as yvoire white,
Black eyes, black browes, black heares that hide deligth:
Red lippes, red cheekes, and tops of nipples red,
Long leggs, long fingers, long locks of her head,
Short feete, short eares, and teeth in measure short,
Broad front, broade brest, broad bhipps in seemely sort,
Streight leggs, streight nose and streight her pleasures place,
Full thighes, full buttocks, full her bellies space,
Thin lipps, thin eylids, and heare thin and fine,
Smale mouth, smale waste, smale pupils of her eyne,
Of these who wants, so much of fairest wants,
And who hath all, her beutie perfect vauntes.
Second Fruits: Giordano Bruno
econd Fruits contain many memories of the Nolan philosopher, Giordano Bruno, and the experiences Florio shared with him at the French Embassy. In the first dialogue he writes a dialogue between Nolano, Torquato and Ruspa. The names which Florio gives the speakers in this dialogue deliberately recall Bruno and La Cena de le ceneri. Torquato and Nundinio are not only mentioned by name but characterised by little touches which make them unmistakably the Torquato and Nundinio of the Cena. But that’s not enough, there are other references to Bruno: the last dialogue takes up forty page, and for Miss Yates “to contemporaries it must have seemed the smartest and most amusing part of it.” While in the first pages Torquato was getting up, in the last one he’s admiring the “fairme moone and starre-shine night” with references on love and women, and astronomical speculations. In the 6th chapter he mentions Bruno’s proverbs from Il Candelaio “For to a broken alter no man will light his candle, nor in a lockles cheast, no man will shake his bag.” Many of Bruno’s thoughts are shaped in Second Fruits, in which the Nolan is portrayed by Florio lounging on a window-seat, leafing through a book and poking fun at his friend John for taking too much time over getting dressed in the morning. In this exchange between Nolano (as he calls Bruno) and Torquato, the former eager to force his late-sleeping friend out of bed:
N: Voi mi fate sentire una delle doglie da morire col tanto aspettarvi. (You make me feel one of the deadly griefs, staying so long for you.)
T: Quali son le doglie da morire? (What be those deadly griefes?)
N: Aspettar e non venire. Star in letto e non dormire. Ben servir e non gradire. Haver cavallo che non vuol’ire. E servitor che non vuol’ubidire. Esser’ in prigione e non poter fuggire. Et ammalato e non poter guarire. Smarrar la strada, quand un vuol gire. Star alla porta quand’o un non vuol aprire. Et haver un amico che ti vuol tradire: sono dieci doglie da morire. (To long for that which comes not. To lye a bed and sleepe not. To serve well and please not. To have a horse that goes not. To keepe a man obeyes not. To lye in iayle and hope not. To bee sick and recover not. To loose ones way and knowe not. To waite at doore and enter not. And to have a friend we trust not: are ten such spites as hell hath not.)
T: Queste son doglie ch’io ho patito & patisco sovvente volte. /They be the spites as I have felt, and oftentimes doo feele.)
N: La prima di esse io patisco adesso. (The first of them i feele now.)
T: Ma non la patirete molto, perché io ho bel’e fatto. (But you shall not feele it long, for I have done.)
Spampanato identifies the proverb utilized here as derived from Bruno’s Il Candelaio, where Signora Vittoria opens her monologue by saying: “Aspettare e non venire é cosa da morire.” Proverbial usage is one of the keys to the range of Florio’s lexical scope, and here we have an example of Bruno’s agency in supplying him with proverbs for his linguistic salesmanship. 7 Beside the use to which Florio puts proverbial wisdom here, he would follow Bruno’s lead in employing proverbs throughout his career to establish one of the most distinctive aspects of his advocacy of the Italian language.
Second Fruits: Vincentio Saviolo
John Florio became a close friend of Vincentio Saviolo, a famous fencing master from Padua who published in 1595, with the help of Florio, Vincentio Saviolo his practise. John Florio, in Second Fruits, described him as “More valiant than a sword it selfe.” and someone who “will hit any man, bee it with a thrust or stoccada, with an imbroccada or a charging blowe.” Florio’s inclusion of the borrowed terms alongside their English translations in the English portion of his dialogue suggests their gradual adoption into the English fencing vernacular. 8
“I have heard him reported to be a notable tall man, Hee will hit any man bee it with a thrust or stoccada, with an embrocada or a charging blowe, with a right or reverse blowe with the edge, with the back, or with the flat…a man who must doe everything by rule and measure, as walk by counterpoint, speak by the points of the moon and spit by doctrine.”
Second Fruits: Proverbs & Giardino di Ricreatione
Proverbs were a usual feature of most Elizabethan language lesson books, but in no manual did they play such an all-important part as in the Second Fruits. The proverbs of the book are, in fact, keyed with those published in a corollary work by Florio, the Giardino di Ricreatione: six thousands Italian proverbs, without their English equivalents. It is one of the most important of the earlier collections of this kind. The title itself is interesting: Giardino di ricreatione, nel quel crescono fronde, fiori e frutti, vaghe, leggiadri e soavi; sotto nome di auree sentenze, belli proverbii, et piacevoli riboboli, tutti Italiani, colti, scelti, e scritti, per Giovanni Florio, non solo utili ma dilettevoli per ogni spirito vago della Nobil lingua Italiana. Il numero d’essi é di 3400. The proverbs in the Italian side of the dialogues are starred to indicate that they are listed among the six thousand Italian proverbs collected in the Giardino. Florio attached a great value to popular sayings as a means for men in their conversations to express their matter:
“Proverbs are the pith, the properties, the proofes, the purities, the elegancies, as the commonest so the commendablest phrases of a language.”
Florio endeavored particularly “to finde matter to declare those Italian wordes & phrases, that never yett saw Albions cliffes.” Yet, the proverbs used in the Second Fruits seem to have been especially selected as those which could be transported from the Italian to the English without strain or loss of meaning. Finally, the Second Fruits ought indeed to rank as a contribution to the topical journalism of the Elizabethan period: he devoted an entire chapter to a discussion of “newes”, “devices”, “tales”, written reports, printed “letters”, rumors, and scandal. The Second Fruits, therefore, can stand with the Nashe, Harvey, and Greene pamphlets as one of the earliest pieces of journalism.
Second Fruits: Lippotopo & L’Avaro
John Florio also wrote his own stories: inspired by Boccaccio’s Decameron, sixth day, tenth tale, he published Lippotopo; novelletta di Giovanni Florio nella quale narrasi uno singolare tratto di accidia and Novelletta d’un avaro, London: Appresso Thomaso Woodcock, 1591. Both novels were partially taken from Second Fruits, re-written and published as novels. Only 12 copies of Lippotopo and 8 copies of Novelletta d’un avaro survive in the world. In Novelletta d’un avaro he also wrote some amusing verses taken from Giardino di Ricreatione 9 and re-written in the 7th page of the novel. These two novels were re-published in Venice between 1845 and 1846 as L’accidioso and Lippotopo by Giuseppe Pasquali who added other pages from Florio’s Second Fruits with Italian and Latin proverbs, but without acknowledging Florio’s authorship.
Bibliography
- Florio, J. Giardino di Ricreatione, In Londra, Appresso Thomaso Woodcock, 1591.
- Gallagher, J. The Italian London of John North: Cultural Contact and Linguistic Encounter in Early Modern England, Renaissance Quarterly, 70 (1), 2017, pp. 88-131.
- Gatti, H. Giordano Bruno: Philosopher of the Renaissance, Ashgate Publishing, 2002.
- Lawrence, J. Who the Devil Taught Thee So Much Italian?: Italian Language Learning and Literary Imitation in Early Modern England, Manchester University Press, 2005.
- Roger A. The Scholemaster, London, John Day, 1570.
- Simonini, R. C. Italian Scholarship in Renaissance England, (Chapel Hill, 1952).
- Vincenzo Spampanato. John Florio, Un Amico del Bruno in Inghilterra, in La Critica, 21 (1923).
- Wyatt, M. The Italian Encounter with Tudor England: A Cultural Politics of Translation, Cambridge University Press, 2005.
- Yates, F.A. John Florio, The Life of an Italian in Shakespeare’s England, Cambridge University Press, 1932.
Notes
- Yates, F.A., John Florio, The Life of an Italian in Shakespeare’s England, Cambridge University Press, 1932, p. 128
- Lawrence, J., Who the Devil Taught Thee So Much Italian?: Italian Language Learning and Literary Imitation in Early Modern England, Manchester University Press, 2005, Introduction.
- Roger A., The Scholemaster, London, John Day, 1570, online source http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~rbear/ascham1.htm
- Simonini, R. C. Italian Scholarship, cit., pp. 62
- Wyatt, M., The Italian Encounter with Tudor England: A Cultural Politics of Translation, Cambridge University Press, 2005 p. 167
- Vincenzo Spampanato. John Florio, Un Amico del Bruno in Inghilterra ‘In La Critica, 21 (1923
- Gatti, H, Giordano Bruno: Philosopher of the Renaissance, Ashgate Publishing, 2002.
- Gallagher, J., The Italian London of John North: Cultural Contact and Linguistic Encounter in Early Modern England, Renaissance Quarterly, 70 (1), 2017, pp. 88-131
- Florio, J.,Giardino di Ricreatione, In Londra, Appresso Thomaso Woodcock, p. 48
