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The Text of the Gerusalemme Liberata in the Versions of Carew and Fairfax

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

R. E. Neil Dodge
R. E. Neil Dodge*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin
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Extract

When Christopher Hunt took it upon himself, in 1593, to publish the first five “songs” of Godfrey of Bulloigne or the Recoverie of Hierusalem . . . . translated into English by R.C. Esquire (that is, of course, Richard Carew), he reprinted on facing pages the first five cantos of the Italian original. “Thereby,” says Hunt in his prefatory address, “the learned reader shall see to how strict a course the translator hath tyed himselfe in the whole worke, usurping as little liberty as any whatsoever, that ever wrote with any commendation.”

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 44 , Issue 3 , September 1929 , pp. 681 - 695
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1929

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References

Note 1 in page 682 Anglia, XI, XII (1890).

Note 2 in page 684 From Solerti: M 2-3 = Malespina, 1581, 1582; I 1-2 = Ingegneri, both 1581; B 1-2-3 = Bonnà, 1581, 1581, 1585; V = Viotto, 1581; C = Cappelli, 1582; R = Romei, 1582; O = Osanna, 1584; G = Genova, 1590. For texts not analyzed by Solerti:—S1-2-3-4-5 = Salicato, 1584, 1585, 1588, 1589, 1590; L = Lione, 1581; P = Palermo, 1582; F = Ferrara, 1582. I omit Solerti's M 1, the Malespina first edition, because it is incomplete. I omit Salicato, 1593, because it is obviously too late; I have, however, checked its readings enough to make sure that it was not the text used by Carew. We have here, then, twenty editions, all published in time to be available to Carew's undertaking. There are no others (at least, none have survived in the bibliographies), except the three listed by Solerti (I, 153, 154, 157) as identical with B 1, R, and M 3.

Note 3 in page 688 In addition to the twenty already cited one must take account of Salicato, 1593, and of the various Ciotti editions that precede 1600, namely, 1594, 1595 (bis), 1597, 1598, and 1599. For Ciotti I have data on the issues of 1597, 1598, and 1599; but the other three I cannot trace beyond the pages of Guidi. A copy of one of the 1595 issues, which Guidi reports to be in the Biblioteca dell' Archiginnasio at Bologna, has apparently disappeared, for the Curator, Signor Sorbelli, informs me that it is no longer there. If these issues of 1594 and 1595 are no nearer to the Fairfax canon than those of 1597-98-99, they are not worth pursuing. There seems to be no fair reason to suppose that any of them prints the crucial stanza (VII, 100) revived from the primitive MSS by O and V and ignored by all others.

Note 4 in page 690 In this particular passage Fairfax omits the name altogether; but he gives it in III, 10 (6), where it is omitted by Tasso.

Note 5 in page 690 When I call a reading “unique” I mean that it is unique in Solerti's record and that it is not among my notes from other editions.

Note 6 in page 693 I have not thought it worth while to encumber these pages with a list of the scores of passages that link Fairfax with Osanna. The correspondence is too obvious to require exhaustive proof.