id North the
sincerest compliment by borrowing, particularly in _Antony and
Cleopatra_, and _Coriolanus_, not only the general story, but whole
speeches with only those changes necessary for making blank verse out
of prose. The last speeches of Antony and Cleopatra are indeed nearly
as impressive in North's narrative form as in Shakespeare's play.

In addition to the tragedies already named, _Julius Caesar_ and almost
certainly the suggestion of _Timon of Athens_, though not the play as a
whole, were taken from Plutarch's _Lives_. Other Elizabethans were not
slow to avail themselves of this unequaled treasure-house of story.

+Italian and Other Fiction+.--Except for Geoffrey Chaucer (1338-1400),
whose _Troilus and Criseyde_ Shakespeare dramatized, and John Gower
(died 1408), whose _Confessio Amantis_ is one of the books out of which
the plot of _Pericles_ may have come, there was little good English
fiction read in the Elizabethan period. Educated people read, instead,
Italian _novelle_, or short tales, which were usually gathered into
some collection of a hundred or so. Many of these were translated into
English before Shakespeare's time; and a number of similar collections
had been made by English authors, who had translated good stories
whenever they found them.

One of these was _Gli Heccatommithi_, 1565 (The Hundred Tales), by
Giovanni Giraldi, surnamed Cinthio, which was later translated into
French and was the source of _Measure for Measure_ and _Othello_.
Another collection was that of Matteo Bandello, whose {110} _Tales_,
1554-1573, translated into French by Belleforest, furnished the sources
of _Much Ado About Nothing_, and perhaps _Twelfth Night_. The greatest
of these collections was the _Decameron_, c. 1353, by Giovanni
Boccaccio, one of whose stories, translated by William Painter in his
_Palace of Pleasure_, 1564, furnished the source of _All's Well That
Ends Well_. Another story of the _Decameron_ was probably the source
of the romantic part of the plot of _Cymbeline_. The _Merry Wives of
Windsor_ had a plot like the story in Straparola's _Tredici Piacevole
Notte_ (1550), _Thirteen Pleasant Evenings_; and _The Merchant of
Venice_ borrows its chief plot from Giovanni Florentine's _Il Pecorone_.

Two of Shakespeare's plays are based on English novels written somewhat
after the Italian manner--_As You Like It_ on Thomas Lodge's
novel-poem, _Rosalynde_, and _The Winter's Tale_ from Robert Greene's