THE SECRET MEETING BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE & BRUNO *TRUTH OR FAKE?*

Hi everyone, welcome back to John Florio channel. I am Mary and I'm here to talk about John Florio. I have made many videos to show you the many connections between Shakespeare and Giovanni Bruno, how Shakespeare mentions Bruno in his works, borrowing and translating his talk, and his revolutionary ideas, ideas that back then were considered dangerous. In this regard, it is important to point out that both Florio and Shakespeare were truly two outsiders if we consider the hostile environment in which Bruno lived at the time in England, in which he was attacked by the Academy and even considered mad. Why mad? Because Bruno was so avant-garde and so ahead of his time that some of his theses have been accepted only recently. For example, he believed that if on our planet, the Earth, there are human beings, it is possible that in other planets, in other distant universes, there is also life. And he doesn't mention other human beings, he mentions intelligent forms, so different from us. So basically the concept that aliens exist. He was also one of the first to mention the existence of what today we call black holes. He was the first to suppose that the man could travel across the planets in the universe. Back then, these ideas were considered heretical because they weren't in the Catholic agenda. Now, the connection between Giordano Bruno and Shakespeare began right with the first biography of Bruno. The first modern biography of Bruno was published in Paris in 1846 by Christian Barthromes and it also contained the first public suggestion that Shakespeare might have been influenced by Bruno. Attention was dedicated particularly to the similarity between Hamlet's unorthodox meditations on death in the graveyard and Bruno's ideas of death as a passage through unfolding transformations of animated matter within an infinite universe. The Bruno-Shakespeare connection was picked up later by another Shakespearean scholar, William Koenig from Poland, who discovered important verbal similarities not just in Hamlet but also in Love's Love was Lost. This discussion returned in England with Francis Amelia Yeats and her study on John Florio in 1934. That led her to Bruno when she analysed their period together at the French embassy. Yeats has been heavily criticised by Bruno's scholars because she ended up her analysis of Bruno's personality by asserting that he was a sort of magician just like John Dee and this distorted idea of Bruno still endures today. But nowadays the Shakespeare-Bruno connection has become a lost cause. Anybody looking today sees the most recent editions of Shakespeare's plays, the volumes and volumes dedicated to his sources and even the most recent accounts of his staff is likely to conclude that there is no relationship whatever between Giordano Bruno and Shakespeare. Recent books published on Shakespeare's philosophy have much to say about Montaigne, translated by Florio in 63, but almost nothing about Bruno. It seems that in the English-speaking world a silence has fallen over the Bruno-Shakespeare relationship like a pole and some Shakespeare scholars even find it distasteful to mention Bruno in Shakespeare books. Let's make some examples. The new Arden edition of Love's Love was Lost mentions Bruno as one of a group of what he calls mysterious figures who have been associated with the play. A mysterious figure. He goes on to note Bruno's reputation as a sinister character linked to the world of espionage and treachery. This perception of Bruno is not based on his life and works but it is based on John Bossi's book entitled Giordano Bruno and the Embassy Affair. In this book John Bossi claimed that when Bruno was at the French Embassy in London he was a spy known as Giordano Bruno, a Catholic priest. I don't know which fake legend is most amusing, if that of Florio as the pedant of Farnese or that of Bruno as Catholic priest. So as you can see there are many problems concerning the Bruno-Shakespeare relationship but the question is why? Why silence has fallen over the relationship? Why Shakespeare scholars don't mention Bruno anymore? There are actually two answers to this question. The first answer is priority over thought. The moment you analyze Hamlet and how Shakespeare mentions theses like transmigration of the soul, ethereal universe, madness associated with modern ideas and men like Hamlet who is considered mad because he's ahead of his time because the corrupted and arrogant power around him don't understand his thought. The same concept of the modern man has a human being who questions himself in the world, in a universe, his aim in life. All these important topics which today are considered the true beautiful key to Shakespeare genius. These are considered ideas born in Shakespeare genius, in Shakespeare mind, not associated with any philosopher or author that he read. So to give to Bruno the thought of the mortality of the soul, of the satire against pedants and corrupted power means to give not to Shakespeare but to somebody else, not English, little known to the English people who they unwillingly remember the priority of a thought. Among the most daring, courageous and revolutionaries of his time. And this wouldn't benefit Shakespeare. But my answer is by mentioning Bruno you are not dishonoring Shakespeare's legacy. Instead you are explaining the source of some of his ideas that we find in his plays. You are making him more interesting, more fascinating. You are actually explaining the sources of his ideas. By removing Bruno from Hamlet you are leaving a void in the comprehension of the play and attributing these ideas to the random genius of Shakespeare, which doesn't make any sense. Second reason why they prefer not to mention Bruno is the fact that Bruno wrote his works in Italian, in Neapolitan dialect, in Venetian dialect. So if they are so brave to mention Bruno they also mention John Florio as the translator the intermediator who helped Shakespeare read and understand these works. But there is a secret story the Shakespeare scholars tell when they sometimes mention Bruno Shakespeare's books and it's the story of how they secretly met. Some Shakespeare scholars believe that in reality Shakespeare and Bruno met in the print shop of Richard Field and it's about the printer Richard Field who had come to London as apprentice of French printer Thomas Vautourlier. It happens that Thomas Vautourlier was the publisher of Bruno's works, also the same publisher that Shakespeare used for The Rape of Lucrece and Venus and Adonis and that he dedicated to the So they have suggested that Bruno edited and revised his works in the print shop of Field and there one day he met Shakespeare and Shakespeare began talking to Bruno and they suddenly became best friends. Every day they met at Richard Field print shop and they would talk about the infinite universe, about the transmigration of the soul, about the patterns and this is how Shakespeare acquired all this information about Giordano Bruno. It's fake. It's a fake story. Why is it fake? First, Bruno didn't speak a word of English. In his works Bruno wrote that the people he worked with in England, gentlemen, aristocrats, they knew both Italian and French so he didn't want to learn English. Also Giordano Bruno left England in 1586. In that year Shakespeare was still in Stratford. His twins were born so he was busy babysitting. So I'm sorry but Bruno and Shakespeare never met personally and this is the main reason why you probably never read Bruno associated with most of Shakespeare's books. But I'm not here to say what others have already said. I'm here to make a difference. Shakespeare wanted the true meaning of his place connected to Giordano Bruno to remain a secret until long after his own death. He wanted to hide the truth because as the same Bruno taught him, sometimes to pursue your own project, your dream, your aim, you must dissimulate. You must hide the truth. The fact that little still is known about Shakespeare, that he's still a mystery to many and today people still question the meaning of his place, this was actually his purpose, to leave things undone, unsaid. He accepted the lie knowing full well that one day the truth would come out. Stay resolute. Bye!