A scholarly French translation of Plutarch's _Lives_ was published in 1559 by Jacques Amyot, Bishop of Bellozane. Twenty years after (1579) Thomas North, later Sir Thomas, published his magnificent English version.[2] The vigor and spirit which he flung into his work can only be compared to that of William Tyndale in his translation of the New Testament. Here was very different material for drama from the {109} dry bones of history offered by Holinshed. Shakespeare paid North the sincerest compliment by borrowing, particularly in _Antony and Cleopatra_, and _Coriolanus_, not only the general story, but whole speeches with only those changes necessary for making blank verse out of prose. The last speeches of Antony and Cleopatra are indeed nearly as impressive in North's narrative form as in Shakespeare's play. In addition to the tragedies already named, _Julius Caesar_ and almost certainly the suggestion of _Timon of Athens_, though not the play as a whole, were taken from Plutarch's _Lives_. Other Elizabethans were not slow to avail themselves of this unequaled treasure-house of story. +Italian and Other Fiction+.--Except for Geoffrey Chaucer (1338-1400), whose _Troilus and Criseyde_ Shakespeare dramatized, and John Gower (died 1408), whose _Confessio Amantis_ is one of the books out of which the plot of _Pericles_ may have come, there was little good English fiction read in the Elizabethan period. Educated people read, instead, Italian _novelle_, or short tales, which were usually gathered into some collection of a hundred or so. Many of these were translated into English before Shakespeare's time; and a number of similar collections had been made by English authors, who had translated good stories whenever they found them. One of these was _Gli Heccatommithi_, 1565 (The Hundred Tales), by Giovanni Giraldi, surnamed Cinthio, which was later translated into French and was the source of _Measure for Measure_ and _Othello_. Another collection was that of Matteo Bandello, whose {110} _Tales_, 1554-1573, translated into French by Belleforest, furnished the sources of _Much Ado About Nothing_, and perhaps _Twelfth Night_. The greatest of these collections was the _Decameron_, c. 1353, by Giovanni Boccaccio, one of whose stories, translated by William Painter in his _Palace of Pleasure_, 1564, furnished the source of _All's Well That Ends Well_. Another story of the _Decameron_ was probably the source of the romantic part of the plot of _Cymbeline_. The _Merry Wives of Windsor_ had a plot like the story in Straparola's _Tredici Piacevole Notte_ (1550), _Thirteen Pleasant Evenings_; and _The Merchant of Venice_ borrows its chief plot from Giovanni Florentine's _Il Pecorone_.