Machiavelli in the British Isles: Two Early Modern Translations of The Prince (review)

Since the pioneering and much-plagiarized thesis of John Wesley Horrocks, Machiavelli in Tudor Political Opinion and Discussion (1908), early modern English translations of Machiavelli have only intermittently received scholarly attention — although there was a short burst of interest in the 1930s and 1940s with the work of Napoleone Orsini and Hardin Craig. Now, however, Alessandra Petrina's meticulous edition of two manuscript versions of The Prince — one Scottish, by the poet and diplomat William Fowler, and the other by an anonymous English writer — certainly gives them their due and, in some ways, rather more.

Fowler's translation, which lacks Chapters 5-10 and the conclusion of Chapter 26, survives in the chaotic Hawthornden MS 2064 in Edinburgh and poses a number of editorial problems. The hand is clear enough, but the text is full of crossings-out, second thoughts, alternative verbal suggestions, and superscriptions — all of which have been transcribed and clearly reproduced, with full annotations, in this volume. Petrina demonstrates that Fowler's Italian was very defective and that he relied heavily upon Gaspard d'Auvergne's French version of The Prince, which had first appeared in 1553. She also examines the possibility that he had access to Silvestro Teglio's Latin version — first published in 1560 — but the evidence for this is slight and inconclusive. By contrast, the author of the other translation (Oxford, Queen's College, MS 251) used not only an Italian text, as printed by John 'Machiavel' Wolfe in 1584, but also Teglio's edition; and, where the versions did not agree, he was able to make 'a well-informed decision, based on the general meaning of the passage'. The result is an altogether more expert and precise piece of work. Unfortunately, as so often in the history of ideas, there remains the problem of how to gauge the significance of such texts.

That these translators were attracted to Machiavelli's work is certainly note-worthy. Yet it is evident that Fowler's effort was less concerned with the problems posed by extreme political conditions than with what Petrina neatly describes as a 'linguistic search, part of the Scottish writer's progress towards the acquisition of a foreign language and its vocabulary of politics and history'; and it remains only as a rough draft that is unlikely to have been studied by anybody until H. W. Meikle edited it for the Scottish Text Society in 1936. Similarly, the far superior English version survives only in one 'rather self-effacing manuscript', and appears to have been unknown in its own day, and forgotten ever since.

The editorial work could scarcely have been better accomplished; and Petrina more over provides a substantial introduction surveying Machiavelli's early reception in England and Scotland, the surviving English manuscript translations of Il principe, and what is known of William Fowler's diplomatic and literary career. There is a careful discussion of the state of the relevant manuscripts in Edinburgh and Queen's College Oxford, followed by an illuminating critical reading of, and commentary on, the two translations. Whatever could be done has been done.

Yet, despite Petrina's valiant attempt to supply an intellectual context for these versions of Il principe, her task is an almost impossible one. Indeed, her scrupulously honest scholarship has the effect of exposing the fragmentary nature of the surviving sources, and how they do not support her uncharacteristically rash claim that 'there is ample evidence for the circulation of Machiavelli's books in England, and for an articulate readership that dates as far back as the 1530s'. Like other scholars trying to construct a coherent account of the reception of Machiavelli in the British Isles she is obliged to cement her narrative with words and phrases of dubiety: perhaps, probably, it is conceivable that, it is tempting to, it may have been, it may be conjectured that, it is possible that, it...