Pietro Aretino and John Wolfe

Blog series European studies

In 16th-century Italy Pietro Aretino published queer stories disguised as satire, later reprinted in London by John Wolfe. Alyssa Steiner from Printed Heritage Collections looks at the story of a mischievous truthteller and a rebel printer.

On 21 October 1584, an edition of Pietro Aretino’s Ragionamenti, a series of three dialogues between the sex worker Nanna and her friend Antonia discussing whether Nanna’s daughter should become a nun, wife, or sex worker, was published in the Italian city of Bengodi... Or was it? The thing is Bengodi doesn’t exist. The word denotes an imaginary land of plenty with the Italian literally translating to ‘enjoy yourself well’. In fact, the book was printed just southeast of St Paul’s Churchyard, where the printer John Wolfe had his printing workshop in the early 1580s. With this first Italian edition printed in England the story of two extraordinary men – Pietro Aretino and John Wolfe – collide.

Pietro Aretino (1492, Arezzo, Republic of Florence–1556, Venice) is shrouded in myth: dubbed ‘one of the wittiest knaves that ever God made’ by Elizabethan playwright Thomas Nashe, he is allegedly depicted in Michelangelo’s Last Judgement and is said to have died from laughter.

Aretino wrote poetry, prose (including letters), and plays, all of which pushed the boundaries of 16th-century morality by including explicitly queer stories under the guise of satire. The texts are sexually explicit, leading to controversy since their publication. In the play Il Marescalo , a stablemaster who is attracted to young men desperately tries to avoid marriage to a woman. In Ragionamenti, lesbian sex between the protagonist Nanna and a nun is recounted in explicit detail. In the excerpt shown below, Antonia, Nanna’s interlocutor, gives an impassioned speech in favour of abandoning sexual euphemisms and to instead call things for what they are: ‘Speak plainly and say ‘cu, ca, po, e fo’’ (abbreviations for the Italian for bottom, penis, vulva, and sexual intercourse). This highlights how Aretino’s texts are not only witty erotica but also an assertion of freedom of expression rooted in Humanist thought.

Three years after his death in 1556, Pietro Aretino’s books were put on the Index of Forbidden Books (Index Librorum Prohibitorum) published by the Catholic Church (‘Pietri Aretini opera omnia’, ‘all of Pietro Aretino’s works’). This made access to Aretino’s books in Italy much more difficult and subject to law enforcement. For instance, in 1579, Stefano Bindoni, a member of the eponymous printing family, was punished for being in possession of a manuscript copy of the Ragionamenti.

Almost 30 years after Aretino’s works were put on the Index, John Wolfe (1548?–1601, London) published the Ragionamenti in London. Wolfe had risen to prominence as the de facto leader of the 1582 Printer’s Rebellion motivated by his opposition to the system of printing privileges imposed by the Stationer’s Company.

By the mid-16th century, the Stationer’s Company, which had originally represented scribes and other professions contributing to manuscript production, had effectively become a printer and publisher’s guild. Introducing an early form of copyright, printers were able to register their right to publish a work in the Stationer’s Register to assert their ownership over a work. John Wolfe rebelled against this system; he printed editions other printers had secured the rights for. He was imprisoned twice and in May 1583, Wolfe’s residence was raided; authorities seized his printing materials. A few weeks later, Wolfe surrendered, nevertheless continuing to dabble in semi-legal publications.

In the context of these tightening rules around publications, printing foreign works may have offered Wolfe more freedom as they were subject to fewer restrictions that English works. He had worked in Florence during the 1570s so probably benefitted from Italian connections and an in-depth knowledge of the local book market. Between 1581 and 1591 he printed around 50 Italian texts, including nine works by Pietro Aretino. Kate de Rycker argues that while other European publishers were producing translations of Aretino’s work, which privileged the pornographic contents, Wolfe tailored his editions to a humanist audience, who appreciated Aretino’s ‘natural writing style’.

For instance, a Spanish edition of the Ragionamenti published only the final dialogue, the one about the sex worker, while another Dutch edition adds an engraving depicting a prostitute seducing a courtier with a net is emerging from between her legs. In contrast, the trio of dialogues published by Wolfe, highlights female agency: ‘any shame in choosing prostitution as a career is not so great considering that to choose to be a nun or a wife is still to be part of the sexual economy’ (de Rycker, p. 255).

As such, the image of Pietro Aretino that emerges in John Wolfe’s editions is one of a truthteller who exposes hypocrisy – characteristics he may well have identified with himself. Indeed, many of Wolfe’s title pages include a combination of the following epithets: ‘the truthful’, ‘the divine’, or, most notoriously, ‘the scourge of princes’. They are a useful reminder that the way we remember Pietro Aretino today was shaped by how one rebel printer in 1580s London chose to portray him to the world.

References and further reading

Kate De Rycker, ‘The Italian Job: John Wolfe, Giacomo Castelvetro and Printing Pietro Aretino’, in: Specialist Markets in the Early Modern Book World, ed. By Richard Kirwan and Sophie Mullins, pp. 241-257. (Leiden, 2015)  YD.2015.a.1456

Denis V. Reidy, ‘Early Italian Printing in London’, in Barry Taylor (ed.) Foreign Language Printing in London (Boston Spa, 2002), pp. 175-182. 2708.h.1059

Map of Early Modern London

Pietro Aretino, Bad Gays podcast (10.08.2019).