The Billingbear Italian Chivalric-Romance Library: Pulci, Ariosto, Boiardo, Tasso, and Fornari

Topic: The Billingbear Italian Chivalric-Romance Library

Source-Control Position

The 1780 Billingbear catalogue and the modern Audley End inventory together preserve something more substantial than a single copy of Luigi Pulci's Morgante Maggiore. They document a multi-author Italian romance collection extending from interpretation of Ariosto through Pulci, Brusantino, Renaldini, Tasso, Ariosto itself, and a later Boiardo entry. The surviving or recorded books are:

This cluster documents the later Billingbear library, not automatically Henry Neville's personal acquisition of every volume. The object records do not yet supply purchase dates, early ownership inscriptions, or a continuous provenance before the 1780 catalogue. The correct next step is therefore physical and archival collation, not an assumption that Henry bought all seven works.

Even with that qualification, three facts deserve emphasis:

1. five related romance texts and both volumes of a major Ariosto commentary survive as objects or securely identified inventory records;
2. the 1551 Pulci, 1553 Brusantino, and 1554 Renaldini volumes have consecutive Audley End object numbers and are all now described as half-calf bindings;
3. Fornari's two-volume commentary shows that the library contained sustained Renaissance interpretation of romance, not only narrative entertainment.

The adjacency and uniform binding may be the result of later rebinding and museum organization. It is a lead for provenance research, not proof of an original purchase group.

1. The Local Catalogue and Object Evidence

1.1 Pulci, Brusantino, and Renaldini

The Billingbear catalogue reads:

Morgante Maggiore di Luigi

Pulci _______________________ Ven. 1551.

Immediately elsewhere in the same Italian-book sequence it records:

Angelica Inamorata di Vicentio

Brusantino _____________________ Ven. 1553.

and:

{ Innamoramento di Ruggeretto

{ Figliuolo di Ruggero Re' di

{ Bulgaria &c, &c, &c, del Panfilo

{ di Renaldini _________________ Ven. 1554

The combined spreadsheet supplies the surviving-object identities and modern physical descriptions:

• 81035066: Pulci, Venice 1551, quarto, half calf;
• 81035067: Brusantino, Venice 1553, octavo, half calf;
• 81035068: Renaldini, Venice 1554, quarto, half calf.

The Pulci object was reported by English Heritage at Audley End, Case M, Shelf 6. Because the modern numbers are consecutive, the bindings are uniform in description, and the books are related in subject, they should be photographed as a group. The photography request should include boards, spines, edges, pastedowns, free endpapers, title pages, final leaves, old shelf labels, inscriptions, stains, and sewing structures.

1.2 Tasso, Ariosto, and Boiardo

The catalogue also records:

Il Rinaldo di Torquato Tasso _____ Venet. 1562.

and:

Orlando Furioso del' Ariosto _________ Venet. 1580.

The modern spreadsheet identifies these as 81035054, a half-calf quarto, and 81035172, another half-calf quarto. The exact 1580 Ariosto edition is independently represented online by the public scan catalogued as Venice, heirs of Vincenzo Valgrisi, 1580.

The Tasso object has now received a separate full research packet. It documents the 1562 princeps title page, Tasso's preface on ancient and modern poetics, the Venetian printing privilege, Clarice's multiplied portraits, Florindo's female disguise, and Spenser's printed 1590 statement that Tasso represented Ethice, or vertues of a priuate man in Rinaldo. All Shakespeare comparisons in that packet are supported by exact Folger quotations: billingbear tasso rinaldo 1562 spenser images disguise.

The 1780 catalogue adds:

Orlando Innamorato del Boiardo _______ Ven. 1602

but the combined sheet gives it no surviving object number. This distinction matters. The 1602 Boiardo is documented as a Billingbear catalogue entry; it is not yet controlled as a surviving Audley End object.

The likely edition has now been identified as Domenico Imberti's Venice 1602 printing. The Bodleian exhibition catalogue shows that this was not simply Boiardo's original text: it joined Boiardo to Nicolò degli Agostini's continuation, used Lodovico Domenichi's rewriting, and incorporated Michel Bonelli's further alterations, including borrowings from Berni. Robert Tofte translated the opening of the Domenichi branch into English in 1598 and in the same year printed the earliest surviving performance response to Love's Labour's Lost. The full reconstruction, with the exact Folger play quotation, is in robert tofte boiardo 1598 loves labours lost billingbear 1602.

1.3 Fornari: two volumes of reading Ariosto

The combined spreadsheet identifies two further surviving objects:

• 81034844: Simone Fornari, La Spositione di M. Simon Fornari da Rheggio sopra l'Orlando Furioso, first volume, Florence, 1549;
• 81034845: the second volume, with its title page now missing.

The current descriptions call both calf-bound long-term loans. Folger's bibliographical record describes the work as two volumes printed in Florence by Lorenzo Torrentino in 1549-50. Fornari's own dedication explains that many readers admired Ariosto's dolcezza delle parole and vaghe inventioni dell'historia without going further with l'ali dell'intelletto. He therefore undertook:

d'esplicar per tutta l'opra que luoghi, che impedir parea che douessono il lettor men dotto & giudicioso.

The sentence crosses the recto-verso opening preserved in the Google Books page images. It states an interpretive program: to explain throughout the work those places that seemed likely to obstruct the less learned but judicious reader.

Rosario Contarino's Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani article describes the commentary's range: a life of Ariosto based partly on conversations with the poet's family; an Apologia brieve defending the poem's language, title, structure, and imitation of Boiardo; textual questions; historical allusions; and grammatical, historical, geographical, astronomical, moral, and allegorical exposition. The two Billingbear volumes therefore represent a large apparatus for learned romance reading.

2. Exact Edition Control for the 1551 Morgante Maggiore

The catalogue's older USTC link pointed toward a nearby 1550 edition. Google Books volume JVI4th8DNAAC supplies direct page-image control for the exact year recorded at Billingbear. Its title page reads:

MORGANTE MAGGIORE DI M. LVIGI PVLCI FIORENTINO, nouamente stampato, & con ogni diligentia corretto. A CVI E AGGIVNTA VNA bellissima tauola con la dichiaratione di tutti i vocaboli oscuri, che nell'opera si contengono. CON PRIVILEGIO. PER COMIN DE TRINO DI MONFERRATO, L'ANNO M.D.LI.

The colophon confirms:

IN VINEGIA PER COMIN DA TRINO DE MONFERRATO. M D LI.

The printer's address to readers explains how the added table works. It uses three numbers to direct readers to page, column, and stanza; when a word is obscure, the table supplies a clearer equivalent. The edition thus came with its own apparatus for difficult language. That feature sits productively beside the Billingbear Fornari volumes: this romance shelf preserved both a lexically assisted Pulci and a full interpretive commentary on Ariosto.

3. What Pulci's Poem Contributes to the Cluster

3.1 Orlando, Morgante, and the conversion episode

Carlo Pellegrini's 1912 study reconstructs the poem's opening sequence: conflict at Charlemagne's court drives Orlando away; an abbey is afflicted by three giants; Orlando kills two; and Morgante, after a dream, converts and becomes Orlando's companion. The 1551 image witness should remain the authority for direct quotation, while Pellegrini supplies narrative and historical guidance.

The poem repeatedly pulls heroic material toward bodily comedy, appetite, improvisation, and grotesque disproportion. Morgante fights with the clapper of an abbey bell. Margutte, a half-giant rogue, supplies an extended anti-creed and catalogue of appetites. On the page where Morgante first meets him, Margutte answers a question about his faith:

Io non credo più al nero, ch'al azzurro;

Ma nel cappone, o lesso, o vuogli arrosto,

E credo alcuna volta anche nel burro,

Ne la cervogia, e quando io n'ho nel mosto.

He continues:

E credo ne la torta, e nel tortello,

L'uno è la madre, e l'altro è suo figliuolo,

E credo nel fegatello ...

The transcription is controlled against Google Books page RA2-PA95-IA1 of the 1551 edition. The passage is not merely a general description of gluttony; it is a comic reformation of confession and creed into food, drink, and appetite.

3.2 Margutte's death by laughter

In canto 19 Morgante removes the sleeping Margutte's boots. A monkey takes them, puts them on, and takes them off. The 1551 page reads:

Ride Morgante, sentendo si cruccia

Margutte, pur al fin gli ha ritrouati,

E vede che gli ha presi una bertuccia

E prima se gli ha messi, e poi cauati,

Non domandar se le risa gli smuccia,

Tanto che gli occhi son tutti gonfiati,

E par che gli schizzassin fuor di testa,

E staua pure a veder questa festa.

The next stanza ends:

Allhor le risa Margutte raddoppia,

E finalmente per la pena scoppia.

These lines are controlled against Google Books page RA2-PA107-IA1. Pina Palma's article, “Why Did the Monkey Kill the Giant?,” offers a sustained interpretation of this death in relation to Petrarch, Aristotle's ridiculous, Pulci's conflict with Ficino, and the poet's altered position at the Medici court. Her interpretation should be recorded as a scholarly argument, not silently substituted for the poem.

4. A Documented English Reception Route by 1600

EarlyPrint searching found a direct pre-1616 English reference that substantially improves this topic. TCP A01512, The Hospitall of Incurable Fooles (London, 1600), states on printed page 61:

A like example to this, is that of Margutte in Luigi Pulci, who laughed while he gaped againe, seeing a monkeie to put on his bootes.

This is controlled by the EEBO image witness at TCP facsimile 3057:38, locally rendered as PDF page 75. The marginal note on the same line reads Luigi Pulci. The book therefore transmitted Pulci's name, Margutte's name, and the monkey-and-boots death episode in English print by 1600.

The title page calls the work:

The Hospitall of incurable Fooles: erected in English, as neer the first Italian modell and platforme, as the vnskilfull hand of an ignorant architect could deuise.

It was printed by Edmund Bollifant for Edward Blount in 1600 (STC 11634, ESTC S102909). The translator has been variously connected in cataloguing with Blount and Thomas Nashe; this packet does not resolve that attribution.

4.1 The English sentence was translated from Garzoni

The Pulci reference was not added independently by the English translator. Tommaso Garzoni's Italian L'hospidale de' pazzi incurabili contains it. A 1594 Google Books witness reads:

Simile essempio è quello di Margutte appresso a Luigi Pulci, ilquale scoppiò per la risa, vedendo una bertuccia, che si metteva i suoi stivali.

The same passage is present in the 1586 edition, the year the work first appeared. The London book is therefore evidence of English transmission of an Italian commonplace or exemplum drawn expressly from Pulci. It is not evidence that the London translator independently rediscovered Morgante.

The reception route can now be stated precisely:

Pulci, Morgante (1551 Billingbear edition witness)
        ↓ episode named and summarized
Garzoni, L'hospidale de' pazzi incurabili (1586; checked in 1594 page image)
        ↓ translated into English
The Hospitall of Incurable Fooles (London, 1600), p. 61

The 1600 imprint is also relevant to the separate Edward Blount topic because Blount later shared the First Folio imprint. It does not by itself connect Pulci, Neville, and the Folio; it documents a specific Italian-literary item in Blount's publication list.

4.2 Ariosto was available in English by 1591

The Folger catalogue records Sir John Harington's Orlando Furioso in English Heroical Verse, printed in London by Richard Field in 1591. EarlyPrint TCP A21106 preserves the 1607 edition. The English availability of Ariosto therefore supplies a route independent of access to an Italian household library.

No equivalent complete pre-1616 English Morgante translation has yet been located in the EarlyPrint/ESTC searches made for this packet. The 1600 Garzoni sentence shows awareness and transmission without requiring a complete English Pulci.

5. Shakespeare Research Avenues, Controlled by the Folger Corpus

This section records questions generated by the romance cluster. It does not claim that any play copied Pulci or that the Billingbear copies were consulted during composition. Each description of a play is tied to the Folger text rather than memory.

5.1 As You Like It: the name Orlando and an explicitly uneducated younger brother

The most immediate naming question is As You Like It. The Folger text opens with Orlando describing his elder brother's failure to educate him:

ORLANDO

As I remember, Adam, it was upon this

fashion bequeathed me by will but poor a thousand

crowns, and, as thou sayst, charged my brother on

his blessing to breed me well. And there begins my

sadness. My brother Jaques he keeps at school, and

report speaks goldenly of his profit. For my part, he

keeps me rustically at home, or, to speak more

properly, stays me here at home unkept—for call you

that keeping for a gentleman of my birth that differs

not from the stalling of an ox?

—As You Like It 1.1.1-10, Folger

He later identifies himself and the paternal claim in direct terms:

ORLANDO

I am no villain. I am the youngest son of Sir

Rowland de Boys. He was my father, and he is

thrice a villain that says such a father begot villains.

—As You Like It 1.1.56-58, Folger

and specifies what has been withheld:

ORLANDO

My father charged you in his will to give me good

education. You have trained me like a peasant,

obscuring and hiding from me all gentlemanlike

qualities.

—As You Like It 1.1.66-69, Folger

The name Orlando belongs broadly to the Carolingian-romance tradition and is already present in Thomas Lodge's Rosalynde, the direct narrative source that must be checked before making any narrower Pulci argument. The productive research question is not “Does Orlando prove Pulci?” It is whether the play's combination of romance naming, education, inheritance, fraternal rivalry, wrestling, and forest exile shows demonstrable verbal or structural contact with any particular Italian romance witness after Lodge has been fully controlled.

5.2 Falstaff and Margutte: appetite plus a comic anti-catechism

Margutte's food-creed suggests a comparison with Falstaff's transformation of heroic values into bodily and verbal comedy. The Folger 1 Henry IV first defines Falstaff through appetite and temporal substitution:

PRINCE

Thou art so fat-witted with drinking of old

sack, and unbuttoning thee after supper, and

sleeping upon benches after noon, that thou hast

forgotten to demand that truly which thou wouldst

truly know. What a devil hast thou to do with

the time of the day? Unless hours were cups of

sack, and minutes capons, and clocks the tongues

of bawds ...

—1 Henry IV 1.2.2-8, Folger

Before battle Falstaff then makes a catechism out of refusing honor:

FALSTAFF

What is honor? A word. What is in that word

"honor"? What is that "honor"? Air. A trim reckoning.

Who hath it? He that died o' Wednesday. Doth

he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. 'Tis insensible,

then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the

living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore,

I'll none of it. Honor is a mere scutcheon. And

so ends my catechism.

—1 Henry IV 5.1.135-142, Folger

The comparison is worth developing because both passages parody authoritative verbal forms—the creed and catechism—through appetite, self-preservation, and comic materialism. It is not yet a demonstrated source relationship. A serious next pass should compare Pulci, Rabelais, the English Vice tradition, jest books, and other mock-creeds and mock-catechisms in EarlyPrint before isolating any verbal transmission.

5.3 Gano and Iago: documenting an old comparison without converting it into proof

Richard Garnett's A History of Italian Literature (1898/1901 editions) records a history of suggestion:

“It has been contended that Shakespeare was acquainted with Pulci, and certainly Panizzi's portrait of the vindictive traitor Gano in the Morgante might almost serve for one of Iago, while Orlando's unsuspecting magnanimity resembles Othello's.”

Garnett does not identify who first made the contention in this paragraph. That citation trail remains to be reconstructed through Panizzi and earlier Pulci criticism.

The 1551 Morgante directly calls Gano a pursuing traitor:

Da questo traditore e fraudolente,

Io pur non truouo, ouunque i' mi dilegui,

Luogo, ch'l traditor non mi persegui.

The quotation is controlled against Google Books page RA1-PA11.

The Folger Othello gives Iago's self-description as concealed service and opposed inward intention:

IAGO

Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty,

But seeming so for my peculiar end.

For when my outward action doth demonstrate

The native act and figure of my heart

In complement extern, 'tis not long after

But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve

For daws to peck at. I am not what I am.

—Othello 1.1.65-71, Folger

The useful research task is to compare the operations of trust, counsel, fabricated information, delayed recognition, and political betrayal across the full texts. A shared category of treachery or a partially similar name does not establish borrowing. The surviving Billingbear Pulci nevertheless makes the older critical comparison newly relevant to Neville-source research because it supplies a concrete library witness whose acquisition history can be investigated.

6. New Research Program

1. Object collation. Treat the romance objects as a coordinated English Heritage request. Record every ownership mark and compare binding tools, leather, endpapers, sewing, and shelf labels.
2. Catalogue reconstruction. Map the 1780 image order, room/shelf headings, and adjacent titles to determine whether the romance works already formed a catalogue sequence before modern object numbering.
3. Fornari annotation audit. The second Fornari title page is missing. Inspect both volumes for marginalia and determine whether the loss removed ownership evidence.
4. Boiardo object search. Use the Imberti/Domenichi/Agostini identification to search USTC, Edit16, SBN, WorldCat, older Audley End lists, and miscatalogued composite romances for the missing object.
5. English reception. Expand the EarlyPrint search beyond author names to episodes, character names, and descriptive phrases in Garzoni, Harington, Italian grammars, commonplace books, and prose romances.
6. Blount's Italian list. Search books printed for Edward Blount for other named Italian poets, tales, and translations. Keep each publication fact separate from any authorship inference.
7. Mock-creed corpus. Build an EarlyPrint concordance for I believe in, food creeds, mock catechisms, what is honour, capons, sack, fegatelli, and related comic forms; then compare exact phrasing and sequence.
8. Gano/Iago historiography. Work backward from Garnett to Panizzi and forward through variorum notes and source studies. Record who asserted acquaintance, what text they used, and whether they proposed verbal borrowing or only character analogy.
9. *Lodge control for As You Like It.* Quote and align Lodge's Orlando/Rosader naming, education, inheritance, and forest episodes before testing any Italian-romance residue in the Folger play.
10. Correspondence and travel. Search Italian and English correspondence for purchases, gifts, loans, or discussion of Pulci, Ariosto, Tasso, Boiardo, Fornari, and Harington within the Neville-Killigrew-Savile-Sidney network.

7. Quoted Source Passages

The packet's principal direct quotations have all been checked against image or corpus witnesses:

• the 1551 Morgante title page and colophon;
• Margutte's food-creed at Google Books page RA2-PA95-IA1;
• the monkey, boots, and fatal-laughter stanzas at RA2-PA107-IA1;
• the traditore e fraudolente description of Gano at RA1-PA11;
• Fornari's statement of his explanatory purpose across pages PA3-PA4;
• Garzoni's Italian Pulci/Margutte sentence at 1594 page 32 verso;
• the English sentence at printed p. 61 of the 1600 Hospitall;
• the Folger play passages, with lineation retained and XML line anchors checked.

Search-result snippets and OCR were discovery aids. They are not the final quotation witnesses.

8. Notes on Access

• Google Books supplies full-view page images for the exact 1551 Pulci. Its direct PDF and EPUB endpoints returned CAPTCHA/HTML files; those files are retained only as a warning and must not be cited as book downloads.
• The LMU 1586 Garzoni PDF is public and structurally sound but has no useful embedded OCR. The clear 1594 Google page image controls the quoted Italian sentence.
• The Internet Archive 1600 Hospitall PDF was downloaded in full, checked with qpdf, and aligned to the local TCP XML. The image witness, not its noisy OCR, controls the quotation.
• The physical Audley End books have not yet been photographed for this pass. Catalogue and inventory descriptions must remain separate from claims about inscriptions, annotation, early bindings, or Henry Neville's personal reading.
• Folger TXT files control wording and line breaks; corresponding XML files control act, scene, and line anchors.

9. Citations and Local Witnesses

• Billingbear catalogue, Pulci and surrounding Italian books: Billingbear Book List Transcription:587; Ariosto at Billingbear Book List Transcription:315; Boiardo at Billingbear Book List Transcription:481.
• Combined Billingbear/Audley End object list: BOOKS BRO AEH COMBINED 190830 Sheet1:22.
• English Heritage email extract for Pulci 81035066: pre 1616 books Feb 2010 Audley End from 2023 thread:1039.
• Luigi Pulci, Morgante Maggiore (Venice: Comin da Trino, 1551), Google Books volume; local PA2.png, RA2-PA95-IA1.png, RA2-PA107-IA1.png, and RA1-PA11.png.
• Simone Fornari, La spositione sopra l'Orlando Furioso, vol. 1 (Florence: Lorenzo Torrentino, 1549), Google Books; local dedication pages PA3.png and PA4.png.
• Rosario Contarino, “Fornari, Simone,” Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 49 (1997), Treccani.
• Pina Palma, “Why Did the Monkey Kill the Giant? Another Look at Margutte's Death,” Quaderni d'italianistica 31.2 (2010): 35-50, DOI/article; local palma_why_did_monkey_kill_giant_2010.pdf.
• Tommaso Garzoni, L'hospidale de' pazzi incurabili (Venice: Somascho, 1586), LMU digital copy; local garzoni_hospidale_venice_somascho_1586.pdf. The quoted page is controlled in a 1594 Google Books witness: volume, local PA32-IA1.png.
• Tommaso Garzoni, The Hospitall of Incurable Fooles (London: Edmund Bollifant for Edward Blount, 1600), STC 11634, ESTC S102909, TCP A01512, Internet Archive witness; local bim_early-english-books-1475-1640_hospitall-of-incurable-f_garzoni-tommaso_1600.pdf, A01512, and hospitall_1600_pdf_page_075_print_p61_margutte.png.
• Sir John Harington, Orlando Furioso in English Heroical Verse (London: Richard Field, 1591), Folger catalogue; EarlyPrint second-edition control, TCP A21106 (1607).
• Richard Garnett, A History of Italian Literature (first published 1898), chapter 10, printed p. 129, Internet Archive scan; local garnett_history_italian_literature.pdf and garnett_history_italian_literature_pdf_page_145_print_p129_pulci_shakespeare.png.
• Folger play witnesses: as you like it TXT FolgerShakespeare, henry iv part 1 TXT FolgerShakespeare, and othello TXT FolgerShakespeare. Line anchors were checked against the corresponding Folger XML witnesses.