Translations Facing Inwards: James VI/I’s Basilikon Doron

First published in 1599, and thereafter subjected to very careful revision on the part of its author, and destined to become the protagonist of a most adventurous editorial history, the Basilikon Doron has always presented a serious puzzle to editors and textual critics. James VI of Scotland, a king with no little experience of writing, attempted with this treatise the impossible task of exerting total control on his published work, and this, coupled with the extraordinary political circumstances surrounding the appearance of this text, triggered its fascinating textual history. This results in a text with many variants and translations, and the first is the work of its author, who transposes the original, heavily Scottish text into a wholly Anglicized version, ready for a publication that would be associated with the new King of England. The text immediately became the subject of discussion in Europe, and unauthorised new editions and translations began to appear, much to James’s annoyance. The present chapter analyses two translations that are deeply embedded in James’s own preoccupation with the circulation of his political work: one is the King’s own transposition of the text from Middle Scots to English; the other is the Italian translation undertaken by John Florio, and surviving in manuscript. Obsessively faithful to the 1603 printed version, Florio’s translation does not look outward, at a possible Italian readership of the treatise; it rather attempts to reflect further glory on James’s text, closely imitating all its characteristics and explicitly proposing itself as a homage to a king that subsumes in himself all political thought: the centre towards which all advice writing converges, and from which it will spring again in different idioms.