Shakespeare A to Z | Florio, John: ca. 1553–1625 Translator
John Florio was a well-known Elizabethan translator and a teacher of the Italian language. Scholars believe that Shakespeare’s use of Italian words and phrases was directly influenced by Florio’s writings, and that Florio may have been the model for Holofernes in Love’s Labor’s Lost.
Florio’s parents were Italian Protestants who left Italy to escape religious persecution. They settled in England, where John was born. After graduating from Oxford University, he wrote two Italian grammar books and a large Italian-English dictionary. The Italian sentences that appear in...
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