There is no doubt that Shakespeare read Montaigne — and the translation he read was that of John Florio, a fascinating polymath, man-about-town, and a dazzlingly inventive writer. In a new edition of this seminal work, editors and renowned scholars Stephen Greenblatt and Peter G. Platt discuss the resemblances and tensions between Montaigne’s and Shakespeare’s visions of the world, and the life and times of the extraordinary Florio. Altogether, this book provides a remarkable view of three great writers who ushered in the modern world.
Peter G. Platt is a professor and chair of English at Barnard College. He is the author of Shakespeare and the Culture of Paradox (2009) and Reason Diminished: Shakespeare and the Marvelous (1997), and the editor of Wonders, Marvels, and Monsters in Early Modern Culture (1999). He has written articles about Shakespeare, Renaissance poetics and rhetoric, and John Florio. He is currently writing a book about Shakespeare and Montaigne.
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