Quattro comedie... cioè il Marescalco, la Cortegiana, la Talanta, l'Hipocrito, etc.

Woodcut medallion portrait of Aretino on each title-page, typographic ornament, some italic type.

4 works in one vol. 8vo (145 x 85mm). [8], 285, [3]ff. (continuous pagination and signatures). 18th-century French red morocco, gilt fillets on cover, spine gilt in compartments, gilt tooled turn-ins, gilt edges.

[London, John Wolfe],

A handsome copy of this famous Elizabethan piracy by John Wolfe, a London printer who learned his trade in Italy; in the 1570s he spent time in Florence and likely worked, for a time, at the prestigious Giunta Press. He employed exiled and expatriate Italians as editors and produced a number of such editions by Italian writers. All the plays here are reprints and were well known; indeed it has been suggested that the Pedant in Il Marescalco may directly or indirectly lie behind the character of Holofernes.

Provenance: Bookplate of Charles Meek (1885-1965), anthropologist and colonial administrator.

STC 19911; Woodfield, Surreptitious Printing in England, no. 143.  Pforzheimer 800. CNCE 2486. OCLC: (North America: UC Irvine, Illinois, UPenn, Harry Ransom, Thomas Fisher, Morgan, Huntington).

Stock Code: 227366