Masuccio Salernitano born Tommaso Guardati, was an Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 poet.

Born in Salerno

Salerno

Salerno is a city and comune in Campania and is the capital of the province of the same name. It is located on the Gulf of Salerno on the Tyrrhenian Sea....

 or Sorrento

Sorrento, Italy

Sorrento is a small town in Campania, southern Italy, with some 16,500 inhabitants. It is a popular tourist destination which can be reached easily from Naples and Pompeii, as it lies at the south-eastern end of the Circumvesuviana rail line...

, he is best known today for Il Novellino, a collection of 50 "novelle" or short stories, each prefaced by a letter of dedication to a famous person and with an epilogue containing the "moral" of the story.

The stories have a strongly anti-clerical bent, which caused Il Novellino to be included in the first Index of Prohibited Books

Index Librorum Prohibitorum

The Index Librorum Prohibitorum was a list of publications prohibited by the Catholic Church. A first version was promulgated by Pope Paul IV in 1559, and a revised and somewhat relaxed form was authorized at the Council of Trent...

in 1557.

The 33rd of these stories is the story of Mariotto and Giannozza, which was apparently adapted by Luigi da Porto

Luigi Da Porto

Luigi Da Porto was an Italian writer and storiographer, better known as the author of the novel with the story of Romeo and Juliet, later reprised by William Shakespeare for his famous drama....

 (1485–1529) first as Giulietta e Romeo and later as Historia novellamente ritrovata di due nobili amanti ("Newly retrieved story of two noble lovers"). These three stories, plus another later version by Matteo Bandello

Matteo Bandello

-Biography:Matteo Bandello was born at Castelnuovo Scrivia, near Tortona , c. 1480 or 1485. He received a good education, and entered the church, but does not seem to have been very interested in theology. For many years he lived at Mantua, and superintended the education of the celebrated Lucrezia...

 and the English translation by Arthur Brooke in the poem Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet (1562) appear to be the sources for Shakespeare's

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

 famous play Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written early in the career of playwright William Shakespeare about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately unite their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular archetypal stories of young, teenage lovers.Romeo and Juliet belongs to a...

.