On Wednesday, April 23, at 7 p.m., National Book Award winner and Harvard University professor Stephen Greenblatt will discuss Shakespeare’s Montaigne: The Florio Translation of the Essays, A Selection at Harvard Bookstore in Cambridge.
There is no doubt that Shakespeare read Montaigne—though how extensively remains a matter of debate—and that the translation he read was that of John Florio, a fascinating polymath, man-about-town, and dazzlingly inventive writer himself.
Shakespeare’s Montaigne: The Florio Translation of the Essays, A Selection, edited by Stephen Greenblatt and Peter Platt, features an adroitly modernized text, an essay in which Greenblatt discusses both the resemblances and real tensions between Montaigne’s and Shakespeare’s visions of the world, and Platt’s introduction to the life and times of the extraordinary Florio.
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