, under his tuition and in anticipation of continental travel,
developed his knowledge of Italian and French. In his dedication of the
_Worlde of Wordes_ to Southampton in 1598, Florio writes:

"In truth I acknowledge an entire debt, not only of my best
knowledge, but of all, yea of more than I know or can, to your
bounteous Lordship, most noble, most virtuous, and most Honourable
Earl of Southampton, in whose pay and patronage I have lived some
years, to whom I owe and vow the years I have to live."

Further on in this dedication he refers to Southampton's study of
Italian under his tuition as follows:

"I might make doubt least I or mine be not now of any further use to
your self-sufficiencie, being at home so instructed in Italian as
teaching or learning could supply that there seemed no need of
travell, and now by travell so accomplished as what wants to
perfection?"

_All's Well that Ends Well_, in its earlier form of _Loves Labour's
Won_, reflects the spirit and incidents of the Queen's progress to
Tichfield House in September 1591; the widowed Countess of Rousillon
personifies the widowed Countess of Southampton; the wise and courtly
Lafeu the courtly Sir Thomas Heneage, who within three years married the
Countess of Southampton. I have suggested that Bertram represented
Southampton, and that his coolness towards Helena, and his proposed
departure for the French Court, reflects Southampton's disinclination to
the marriage with Elizabeth Vere, and the fact of his departure shortly
afterwards for France. In Florio, who was at that time attached to the
Earl of Southampton's establishment, and presumably was present upon the
occasion of the progress to Tichfield, we have the prototype of
Parolles, though much of the present characterisation of that person,
while referring to the same original, undoubtedly pertains to a period
of later time revision, which on good evidence I date in, or about, the
autumn of 1598, at which period Shakespeare's earlier antipathy had
grown by knowledge and experience into positive aversion.

In 1591 Southampton was still a ward in Chancery, and the management of
his personal affairs and expenditures under the supervision of Lord
Burghley, to whose granddaughter he was affianced. It is evident then
that when Florio was retained in the capacity of tutor, or bear-leader,
and with the intention of having him accompany the young Earl upon his
continental tra