Before Shakespeare, during the Renaissance: John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester (d. 1470) and the uses of Padua

Abstract

This article introduces the deep background to the interest in Italy and specifically Padua displayed by Shakespeare and his contemporaries by attending to the contrasts between their knowledge and that of English characters from a century earlier. Our guide will be John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester (d. 1470). He was both well-travelled and much-hated in his homeland: he was accused of bringing home from his time abroad ‘the law Padowe’, that is, ‘the law of Padua’ – a penchant for summary justice and grisly execution. This article considers what Tiptoft's life and afterlife tells us about the changing place of Padua in the English imagination.