Matteo Bandello
Matteo Bandello was an Italian writer, soldier, Dominican friar and bishop, best known for his novellas. His collection of 214 novellas made him the most popular short-story writer of his day.
Biography
Matteo Bandello was born at Castelnuovo Scrivia, near Tortona, 1480. He received a good education, and entered the church, but does not seem to have been very interested in theology. For many years he lived at Mantua and Castel Goffredo, and superintended the education of the celebrated Lucrezia Gonzaga, in whose honour he composed a long poem. The decisive Battle of Pavia, as a result of which Lombardy was taken by the emperor, compelled Bandello to flee; his house at Milan was burnt and his property confiscated. He took refuge with Cesare Fregoso, an Italian general in the French service, whom he accompanied into France.He was later raised to the bishopric of Agen, a town in which he resided for many years before his death in 1562. Bandello wrote a number of poems, but his fame rests entirely on his extensive collection of Novelle, or tales, which have been extremely popular. They belong to the same genre as Boccaccio’s Decameron and Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron. The common origin of them all is to be found in the old French fabliaux, though some well-known tales are evidently Eastern, and others classical. Bandello’s novellas are thought the best of those written in imitation of the Decameron, though Italian critics find fault with them for negligence and inelegance of style.
The stories on which William Shakespeare based several of his plays were supplied by Bandello, probably through Belleforest and Pierre Boaistuau whose stories were later translated into English by William Paynter and included in his The Palace of Pleasure. Another of his stories includes "The countess of Cellant", a distortion of Challand, a northwest region of Italy.
English translations of novellas
The only nearly complete translation of Bandello's tales into English is "The novels of Matteo Bandello", translated by John Payne in 6 volumes, 1890. This edition is separated into 4 parts, containing 51, 43, 51, and 21 stories, respectively, for a total of 166, minus two, omitted because of their being almost identical to those of Marguerite de Navarre's Heptaméron, though keeping Bandello's dedicatory preface.There is a second book of Bandello in an English translation by Percy Edward Pinkerton and containing twelve tales. This translation uses more modern modes of expression than Payne's translation.
In 2023 Michael Curtotti published a translation of Bandello’s Romeo and Juliet story into modern English: Romeo and Juliet: A New English Translation. There is critical apparatus on the similarities between Bandello’s and Shakespeare’s versions; and Bandello’s text is divided into paragraphs for ease of comparison with the translation on facing pages.