Editing Matteo Bandello

{{short description|Italian writer}}
{{More citations needed|date=July 2013}}
[[File:Matteo Bandello.jpg|thumb|right|Matteo Bandello]]
'''Matteo Bandello''' ({{circa}} 1480&ndash;1562) was an Italian writer, soldier, Dominican friar and bishop, best known for his [[novella]]s. His collection of 214 novellas made him the most popular short-story writer of his day.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Norwich|first=John Julius|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/11814265|title=Oxford illustrated encyclopedia|date=1985–1993|publisher=Oxford University Press|others=Judge, Harry George., Toyne, Anthony.|isbn=0-19-869129-7|location=Oxford [England]|pages=35|oclc=11814265}}</ref>

==Biography==

[[File:Castel Goffredo Palazzo Gonzaga-Acerbi.jpg|thumbnail|right|[[Castel Goffredo]], palace Gonzaga-Acerbi.]]
Matteo Bandello was born at [[Castelnuovo Scrivia]], near [[Tortona]] (current [[Piedmont]]), {{circa}} 1480. He received a good education, and entered the church, but does not seem to have been very interested in [[theology]]. For many years he lived at [[Mantua]] and [[Castel Goffredo]], and superintended the education of the celebrated [[Lucrezia Gonzaga]], in whose honour he composed a long poem. The decisive [[Battle of Pavia]], as a result of which [[Lombardy]] was taken by the emperor, compelled Bandello to flee; his house at [[Milan]] was burnt and his property confiscated. He took refuge with [[:it:Cesare Fregoso|Cesare Fregoso]], an Italian general in the French service, whom he accompanied into France.<ref name="EB"/>

He was later raised to the [[bishopric of Agen]], a town in which he resided for many years before his death in 1562. Bandello wrote a number of poems, but his fame rests entirely on his extensive collection of Novelle, or tales (1554, 1573), which have been extremely popular. They belong to the same genre as [[Giovanni Boccaccio|Boccaccio]]’s ''[[Decameron]]'' and [[Marguerite de Navarre]]’s ''[[Heptaméron]]''. The common origin of them all is to be found in the old French ''[[fabliaux]]''{{citation needed|date=July 2016}}, though some well-known tales are evidently Eastern, and others classical. Bandello’s novellas are thought the best of those written in imitation of the Decameron, though Italian critics find fault with them for negligence and inelegance of style.<ref name="EB"/>

The stories on which [[William Shakespeare]] based several of his plays (''[[Much Ado about Nothing]]'', ''[[Romeo and Juliet]]'' and ''[[Twelfth Night]]'' in particular)<ref name="SHEMEK"/> were supplied by Bandello, probably through [[Francois de Belleforest|Belleforest]] and [[Pierre Boaistuau]] whose stories were later translated into English by [[William Painter (author)|William Paynter]] and included in his ''The Palace of Pleasure''. Another of his stories includes "The countess of Cellant", a distortion of Challand, a northwest region of Italy.

==English translations of novellas==
The only nearly complete translation of Bandello's tales into English is "The novels of Matteo Bandello", translated by [[John Payne (poet)|John Payne]] in 6 volumes, 1890.<ref name="PAYNE"/> This edition is separated into 4 parts, containing 51, 43, 51, and 21 stories, respectively, for a total of 166, minus two (part 2, story 35 and part 4, story 6), omitted because of their being almost identical to those of [[Marguerite de Navarre]]'s ''[[Heptaméron]]'' (stories 30 and 17, respectively), though keeping Bandello's dedicatory preface.

There is a second book of Bandello in an English translation (1892) by [[Percy Edward Pinkerton]] and containing twelve tales.<ref name="PINKERTON"/> This translation uses more modern modes of expression than Payne's translation.

In 2023 Michael Curtotti published a translation of Bandello’s Romeo and Juliet story into modern English: ''Romeo and Juliet: A New English Translation''.<ref>[https://www.academia.edu/108999927/Matteo_Bandello_Romeo_and_Juliet_A_New_English_Translation_by_Michael_Curtotti ''Matteo Bandello – Romeo and Juliet – A New English Translation by Michael Curtotti''], Canberra, Aldila Press, 2023, 196 pp.</ref> There is critical apparatus on the similarities between Bandello’s and Shakespeare’s versions; and Bandello’s text is divided into paragraphs for ease of comparison with the translation on facing pages.

==Source material==
The vast majority of the stories derive from those Bandello heard from contemporaries, reported as real life events. Far more rarely, some stories are based on literary or historical sources, such as book 5 of Dante's Purgatory (part 1, story 11), the Lucretia and Tarquin episode in Livy's History of Rome (part 2, story 15), story #23 of the ''Heptaméron'' (part 2, story 17), and Francesco Petrarch's Triumph of Love from ''[[Triumphs]]'' (part 2, story 41). Some derive from English history, such as the chronicle of Mary Douglas, niece to King Henry VIII of England (part 3, story 44) and Henry VIII's six wives (part 3, story 45), some from Spanish history, such as Alfonso X (part 4, story 10). All of them were told to him by men, but a minority of dedicatory prefaces are offered to women. Bandello writes that the dedicatory prefaces to the nobility or to worthy persons are useful to him as a shield in case someone becomes offended by one of the stories and is tempted to attack him (part 2, story 32). He shows psychological insight into jealousy, in particular the description of two types of jealous men, the first from feelings of inadequacy and the second from feelings of the fickleness of women (part 3, story 47).

The most striking stories include two whores seeking to win their husbands back (part 1, story 17), two brother thieves in cahoots to rob the treasures of the king of Egypt (part 1, story 23), a disdained lover voluntarily choosing to live inside a cave (part 1, story 25), a woman killing herself only out of fear that her good fortune will turn bad (part 1, story 48), [[Filippo Lippi]], released from slavery in Africa because of his talent as a celebrated painter (part 1, story 50), a woman disdaining a man and then killing herself when he no longer pursues her (part 2, story 16), an abbot making music from a chorus of pigs (part 2, story 23), an adulterous lover buried alive and then saved (part 3, story 1), a merchant's murder of another (part 4, story 1), a case of double adultery whereby each husband cuckolds the other (part 4, story 11), and two women yelling at each other after being falsely told they are hard of hearing (part 4, story 21).

==Plays by Shakespeare==
Four Bandello stories were adapted by Shakespeare, including ''[[Cymbeline]]'' (part 1, story 19), the Claudio subplot of ''[[Much Ado about Nothing]]'' (part 1, story 22),<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Bennett|first=Mackie Langham|title=Shakespeare's "much Ado" and ITS Possible Italian Sources|date=July 8, 1937|journal=Studies in English|issue=17|pages=53|jstor=20779485|issn=2158-7957}}</ref> ''[[Romeo and Juliet]]'' (part 2, story 6), and ''[[Twelfth Night]]'' (part 2, story 28), plus one from the [[Shakespeare Apocrypha]], ''[[Edward III (play)|Edward III]]'' (part 2, story 29).

==Plays by others==
Bandello stories have also been adapted by other dramatists, including [[John Webster]], ''[[The Duchess of Malfi]]'' (part 1, story 24), [[Philip Massinger]], ''[[The Picture (Massinger play)|The Picture]]'' (part 1, story 19), the same source as that of Cymbeline, [[John Marston (poet)|John Marston]] and [[Jean Mairet]], ''[[Sophonisba]]'' (part 1, story 35), [[John Fletcher (playwright)|John Fletcher]], ''[[The Maid's Tragedy|The Maid in the Inn]]'' (part 2, story 11), the anonymous 17th century French author of ''[https://www.jstor.org/stable/27699127 The Cruel Moor]'' (1618) (part 3, story 17), [[Giuseppe Giacosa]], ''La Signora di Challant'', ''[[:it:La signora di Challant|The Lady of Challand]]'' (part 1, story 4) and more than 15 plays by Spanish [[Lope de Vega]], among which ''Castelvines y Monteses'' (published in 1647 and written between 1604 and 1618) follows the same famous story of Romeo and Juliet (part 2, story 9).

==Notes==
{{reflist|refs=
<ref name="EB">[[#EB|''Encyclopædia Britannica'' (1911)]].</ref>
<ref name="SHEMEK">[[#SHEMEK|Shemek, p. 162]].</ref>
<ref name="PAYNE">[[#PAYNE|''The Novels of Matteo Bandello, Bishop of Agen: Now first done into English prose and verse by John Payne'']]</ref>
<ref name="PINKERTON">[[#PINKERTON|''Matteo Bandello: Twelve Stories'']]</ref>
}}

==References==
{{refbegin}}
*{{cite book|first=Matteo|last=Bandello|editor1-first= John|editor1-last=Payne |editor1-link=John Payne (poet)
|title=The Novels of Matteo Bandello, Bishop of Agen: Now first done into English prose and verse by John Payne. ''6 vols''|place=London|publisher=Villon Society|year=1890|ol=7046324M|url=https://archive.org/details/novelsmatteoban01bandgoog|ref=PAYNE}}
*{{cite book|first=Matteo|last=Bandello|editor1-first= Percy|editor1-last=Pinkerton |editor1-link=Percy Pinkerton 
|title=Matteo Bandello: Twelve Stories|place=London|publisher=John C Nimmo|year=1895|url=https://archive.org/details/cu31924102029083|ref=PINKERTON}}
*{{Cite EB1911|wstitle=Bandello, Matteo|ref=EB}}
*{{cite book|last=Shemek|first=Deanna|title=Ladies Errant: Wayward Women and Social Order in Early Modern Italy|place=Durham and London|publisher=Duke University Press|year=1998|isbn=0-8223-2167-X|ref=SHEMEK}}
{{refend}}

==Further reading==
*{{cite book|title=Bandello and the "Heptameron": Study in Comparative Literature|first=K. H.|last= Hartley|publisher= Melbourne University Press|year=1960|isbn=0-424-05460-4}}
* {{cite book|last= Ferguson|first=Gary|title=Queer (re)readings in the French Renaissance: Homosexuality, Gender, Culture|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KY7SDpSFTSYC&pg=PA82|year=2008|publisher=Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.|location=Aldershot, Hampshire, UK|isbn=978-0-7546-6377-5|pages=82–88}}

==External links==
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20060709190538/http://www.matteobandello.it/ Centro Studi Matteo Bandello e la Cultura Rinascimentale] (in Italian)
*[http://www.intratext.com/Catalogo/Autori/Aut753.htm Matteo Bandello's works]: text, concordances and frequency lists

{{Twelfth Night}}
{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bandello, Matteo}}
[[Category:1480s births]]
[[Category:1562 deaths]]
[[Category:16th-century Italian Roman Catholic bishops]]
[[Category:16th-century Italian novelists]]
[[Category:16th-century Italian male writers]]
[[Category:Bishops of Agen]]
[[Category:People associated with Shakespeare]]
[[Category:People from Castelnuovo Scrivia]]
[[Category:Italian male novelists]]
[[Category:Italian male dramatists and playwrights]]