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- # One parallel between Bandello’s novel and Shakespeare’s Lucrece will suffice.
## Overview
This subsection, titled "One parallel between Bandello’s novel and Shakespeare’s Lucrece will suffice.", is an extracted text segment from a larger document. It was extracted on January 30, 2026, and spans lines 3309-3323 of its source file.
## Context
This subsection is part of a larger subsection titled [Affinity with Ovid.](arke:01KG6S5NXM2441JH7E4CSH2V03). It follows the subsection [In his expansive and discursive handling of the theme Bandello’s novel.](arke:01KG6S6M63C0C2E3SZ1G8YAG1T) and precedes [In the rhetorical digressions which distinguish Shakespeare’s poem he had every opportunity of pursuing his own bent, but even in these digressive passages there emerge bold traces of his reading, not merely in the classics, but in contemporary English poetry.](arke:01KG6S6M68JMVC6D1F7VHY5JCX). The content was extracted from the file [pdf-01KG6Q7Q25RHMFT3SJXPV18VFF.txt](arke:01KG6S2X2EBB305ENM00G16GWA), which is part of the [PDF Workflow Main Test 2026-01-30T00:26:53](arke:01KG6NWQ2H2K4PGG7H4ZHYCZ3Y) collection.
## Contents
The text discusses a parallel between Matteo Bandello's novel and William Shakespeare's poem *Lucrece*, specifically focusing on the character of Brutus. It highlights how both authors, drawing from Livy, emphasize Brutus's feigned madness or idiocy. The subsection quotes lines 1811–13 from Shakespeare's *Lucrece* and a passage from Bandello's novel (in Italian, with an English translation provided in a footnote in the subsequent subsection) to illustrate this shared portrayal of Brutus as a "fool" or "idiot" for strategic purposes. The author suggests that Shakespeare's depiction of Brutus's idiocy may have been influenced by Bandello's phraseology.
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- One parallel between Bandello’s novel and Shakespeare’s Lucrece will suffice.
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- 2026-01-30T06:24:43.553Z
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- One parallel between Bandello’s novel and Shakespeare’s *Lucrece* will suffice. Livy emphasizes more deliberately than Ovid the pretence of madness in Brutus, the avenger of Lucrece’s wrong. Bandello liberally developed Livy’s notice of Brutus’ mysterious behaviour on lines which Shakespeare seems to have followed. Brutus was, according to Shakespeare’s poem, ‘supposed a fool’ (1819):—
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16
LUCRECE
He with the Romans was esteemed so
As silly-jeering idiots are with kings,
For sportive words and uttering foolish things.
(ll. 1811–13.)
Bandello in his novel describes Brutus’s conduct thus:—
‘E fingendo esser pazzo, e cotali sciocchezze mille volte il dì facendo, come fanno i buffoni, divenne in modo in opinione di matto, che appo i figliuoli del Re, più per dar loro con le sue pazzie trastullo che per altro, era tenuto caro’.¹ Shakespeare’s attribution to Brutus of idiocy characteristic of a ‘fool’ in a king’s household seems coloured by Bandello’s phraseology.
- title
- One parallel between Bandello’s novel and Shakespeare’s Lucrece will suffice.