Marginal Reactions: Responses to Translations of Machiavelli in Early Modern English Marginalia

Abstract

"The physicality of the book has transformed it from a simple repository of knowledge into a locus of discussion. Marginalia create a space; or, they enter a space to which they had been invited by the very layout of the text.... Over the last thirty years there has been a debate as to whether this use of the book
as a physical site of sharing acquired special importance in early modern Europe. This article is intended as a contribution to this debate. In the following pages, I shall analyze a number of manuscripts and early printed texts marking the dissemination of Machiavelli’s Principe in the British Isles. The manuscripts are the extant witnesses of the English translations that appeared before the first printed English edition in 1642; the printed texts are copies of the Principe in Italian, Latin, or French circulating in the British Isles in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century."