ON THE STORY OF THIS PLAY.
For the plot of Cymbeline, Shakspeare has been almost exclusively indebted to Boccaccio's novel of Bernabo Lomellin, Day 2, novel 9, as Mr. Malone has proved beyond the possibility of doubt. Unless we suppose, what is not probable, that Shakspeare was acquainted with the Italian language, or that he had heard the above novel read by some person in English, a difficulty arises in accounting for the manner in which he got access to it. The earliest English translation of the whole of the Decameron was first printed in 1620, by Isaac Jaggard, in folio, and in two parts, the first of which was republished under the title of The modell of wit, mirth, eloquence, and conversation, framed in ten days of an hundred curious pieces, by seven honourable ladies, and three noble gentlemen, preserved to posterity by the renowned John Boccacio, the first refiner of Italian prose, and now translated into English, 1625, in folio. See more on this subject in a preceding note, p. [102]. Had Shakspeare been intimately acquainted with Boccaccio's Decameron, one should have expected that he would have made considerable use of that work; but this is the only play in which the most material part of the plot has been extracted from it. There are indeed one or two instances in which a very slight use has been made of it, but then evidently through the medium of an English translation. Is it not possible that our author might have known French enough to have occasionally read the Decameron in that language?