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

This paper is intended to provide an introduction to the deep background to the interest in Italy and specifically Padua displayed by Shakespeare and his contemporaries by drawing our attention to the contrasts between their knowledge and that of English characters from a century earlier. In this discussion, one character who deserved a place in Shakespeare’s histories but, in truth, is never named there, will be our guide: 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 paper considers what Tiptoft’s life and afterlife tells us about the changing place of Padua in the English imagination.