John Florio

His magnum opus is his admirable translation of "The Essayes on Morall, Politike, and Millitarie Discourses of Lo. Michaell de Montaigne," published in folio in 1603 in three books, each dedicated to two noble ladies. A second edition in 1613 was dedicated to the Queen. Special interest attaches to the first edition, because a copy in British Library bears the signature of Shakespeare, long accepted as genuine but now supposed to be in an 18th century hand. Another copy bears that of Ben Jonson. It was suggested by William Warburton that Florio is satirised by William Shakespeare in the character of Holofernes, the pompous pedant of Love's Labors Lost. However, as another of the Earl of Southampton's protégés, Florio may well have been the personal friends of the dramatist, who may have gained knowledge of French and Italian literature from him. Picture and data courtesy of the Yorck Project, under Creative Commons Attribution-Share- Alike License (Wikipedia)