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Prunstcr, Nicole, ed. and trans. Romeo arul Juliet before Shakespeare: Four Early Stories of Star-Crossed Love. Toronto: Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Stuthes, 2000. Pp. 127.
This collection provides modern translations of four major renditions of the Romeo aruJ Juliet story: Masuccio Salernitano's novella of Mariotto and Ganoxia of Siena (earliest surviving edition: 1483); Luigi da Porto's Tale of Two Noble Lovers, written in 1524 and published c.1531; Matteo Bandello's The Unfortunate Death of Two Most Wretched Lovers (1554); and Pierre Boaistuau's French version (1559) of Bandello's story, Of Two Lovers. Shakespeare scholars virtually all agree that the playwright's principal source was Arthur Brooke's Tragjcall Historye of Romeus mid Juliet (1562), based on Boaistuau; possibly, Shakespeare also read the translation of Boaistuau hi William Painter's Palace of Pleasure (1567). Prunster selected for translation those texts which "constitute the main stream ... of the story's evolution toward the tragedy's definitive literary realisation" (Preface).
Prunster's introduction provides biographical hiformation and relatively brief but...