I purpose in the following paper to proffer an explanation of such constructions as “My old bones aches “ (Tempest, III, 3), “All his successors (gone before him) hath done't” (Merry Wives, I, 1), “Ill deeds is doubled with an evil word” (Errors, III, 2), “As the events stamps them” (Much Ado, I, 2), “Their drenched natures lies as in a death” (Macbeth, I, 7),” Whereon his brains still beating puts him thus” (Hamlet, III, 1), “And great affections wrestling in thy bosom Doth make an earthquake of nobility” (King John, v, 2).

The first Italian grammar published in England, in 1550, written by William Thomas, clerk of the Council to King Edward VI. and one of the first Protestant victims of the succeeding reign, contains “a Dictionarie for the better understanding of Boccace, Petrarcha, and Dante.” The title indicates that the great Italian poets of the trecento were first studied by English readers, and Boccaccio and Petrarch are here named before Dante. Indeed, after a most careful search, I cannot find any Elizabethan translation of any work of Dante. The first English translation of Dante in the British Museum Catalogue is that of Henry Boyd, L'Inferno, in 1785, La Divina Commedia, in 1802.