(Angelo Paratico) Few people are aware that Orlando Pescetti, a Veronese by adoption, was one of William Shakespeare’s sources when writing his play Julius Caesar.
Orlando Pescetti was born in Marradi (Florence) around 1556, but Verona’s registry records show that he moved there at a fairly young age after studying in Florence. In Verona, he worked as a teacher, gaining a certain reputation as a tutor to the children of the Veronese nobility. He first lived in the Ponte Pietra district, then moved to the Pigna district with his wife Antonia and their five children, where he resided until 1614. After being widowed in 1596, he remarried the widow Virginia Riccobello, with whom he had three more children. In the following decades, he led an ordinary life, devoting himself to teaching, his primary source of income, and to literary pursuits. He died in Verona around 1624.
Orlando Pescetti wrote several works, including a tragedy, Il Cesare, published in Verona in 1594 by the printer Gerolamo Discepolo, who had his presses near Ponte Pietra. The book, dedicated to Alfonso II d’Este, was a mediocre work and was probably never performed on stage; however, it is interesting because it is one of the probable sources for Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.
The first references to Pescetti in the Anglo-Saxon world appeared in letters published in the US newspaper The Nation on 2 and 9 June 1910. A certain Miss Lisa Cipriano, about whom nothing is known, wrote a letter drawing attention to certain similarities between Pescetti’s Cesare and Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. In response, the following week saw the publication of an article by Professor Harry Morgan Ayres of Columbia University, which was followed by an essay entitled “Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in the Light of Some Other Versions”, in which he highlighted certain parallels with Pescetti’s text.
To say that Pescetti’s play is comparable to Shakespeare’s in terms of beauty and power is an exaggeration, but we know that at least one copy of it must have reached London. At that time, everything that came from Italy was seen as superior to everything else, and perhaps it was noticed by the great English playwright, whoever was hiding behind that name – Florio, Oxford, Derby, Bacon, Marlowe, etc.
An American student, Alexander Boecker, published his thesis based on the similarities between Pescetti and Shakespeare: “A probable Italian source of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar”, New York 1913.
What makes this long-forgotten work by Pescetti of interest to the modern reader is the likelihood that it provided Shakespeare with ideas that he perhaps did not hesitate to use. For example, the scenes of Brutus and Portia in the Veronese text mark the first introduction of this material in any drama on the same subject. Pescetti portrays Brutus in his domestic relationships along the lines later adopted by Shakespeare, and adds touches not found in Plutarch, which was widely used but included in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Perhaps the best point of Pescetti’s text is that he was the first playwright to realize the dramatic value of a supernatural background. He presents the ghost of Pompey as the driving force behind his Brutus, and Shakespeare also introduced the ghost of Caesar to announce his fate.
Like Shakespeare’s Cassius, Pescetti’s Decimus Brutus raises doubts about Caesar’s participation in the Senate session, and the introduction of this element of suspense paves the way for the dictator’s final persuasion. In Shakespeare’s play, the episode serves the same function. More significant, however, is Pescetti’s use of the scene between Caesar and Lena, which in words and thought closely parallels the same scene in Julius Caesar.
Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar was published in the First Folio of 1623, but a performance of it is mentioned by Thomas Platter the Younger in his diary in September 1599, although no one can be certain that this reference was to Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. The play was not yet included in the list of Shakespeare’s works published by Francis Meres in 1598.
Based on these two points, as well as a series of contemporary allusions and the belief that the play is similar to Hamlet in vocabulary and to Henry V and As You Like It in metre, scholars have suggested 1599 as the probable date of composition, a full five years after Orlando Pescetti’s book.
