For the works in Dee's library see:
John Dee's Library Catalogue, edited by Julian Roberts and Andrew G Watson, The London Bibliographical Society, 1990
and the online article:
http://www.ampltd.co.uk/collections_az/RenMan-1-4/description.aspx
Henri III appointed Bruno professor extraordinaire at the University of Paris in 1581 and in 1582 Bruno dedicated De Umbris Idearum to Henri III and left for England armed with a royal letter of recommendation from 1583-5 where he lived as a gentleman attached to the French Embassy.
" Bruno in England 1583-5, publishes Spaccio della bestia trionfante,
dedicated to Sidney, on hermeticism, praising Henri III (“Blessed are the
peacemakers,” i.e. like Henri (who perhaps sent Bruno to promote middle ground between Protestantism and Spanish Catholicism--acc. to F. Yates)."
"Pierre de la Primaudaye's The French Academy (1577), now trans. by Thomas
Bowes, many editions; took form of discussion among four noblement of Anjou, centering on Greek ideal of self-knowledge; source for Love's Labour's Lost."
http://www.bc.edu/publications/relarts/meta-elements/pdf/shakes1.pdf.
"The history of La Primaudaye's book is very complicated... Suite de l'Acadimie Francoise, en laquelle il est traicte de l'homme, Paris, 1580. (Other editions, Paris, 1580, 1588; Lyons, 1591; Geneva, 1598; Paris, 1610. Contains a very curious address to La Primaudaye by Guillaume Postel which is not reprinted in the collected editions.)"
-Frances Yates: The French Academies of the Sixteenth Century, 1947
In 1579 Richard Field began six years apprenticeship with the Huguenot printer, Thomas Vautrollier. In 1587 he married Vautrollier's widow, Jacqueline.
April 18th, 1592 Field entered Venus and Adonis on the Stationers' Register & consequently printed. In 1594 Field printed the first edition of The Rape of Lucrece. Love's Martyr, or Rosalin's Complaint… by Robert Chester; published in 1601, has appended Shakespeare's poem, The Phoenix and the Turtle.
Thomas Vautrollier printed On the Shadow of Reason and Judgement by Bruno's disciple, Alexander Dicson in 1585, dedicated to the Earl of Leicester and inspired by Bruno's De umbris idearum.
see in general:
http://www.levity.com/alchemy/h_shake.html
"...two especial uses, I have often exercised this art for the better help of my own memory, and the same as yet has never failed me. Although I have heard some of Master Dickson, his schollers, that have prooved such cunning Cardplayers hereby, that they could tell the course of all the Cards and what every gamester had in his hand. So ready we are to turn an honest and commendable invention into craft and cousenage."
-Hugh Platt: The Jewell House of Art and Nature 1594
"As a kinsman and friend of John Dee...Platt recognized that Dickson (like Dee) had to be cautious in his teaching in order to avoid accusations of magical practice lamented that such charges were used to prevent advances in natural sciences, for Cardano, Baptista Porta, and "the rest of that magical crew" are used as bogeymen to instill "terror unto all new professors of rare and profitable inventions."
"That Platt was possibly initiated into a masonic guild is further suggested by his description of the secret method of communication by finger signs and positions of parts of the body that were considered a special masonic practice. Platt complained that his early publication of inventions and experiments met a hostile reception in England- a point that was probably communicated by Dickson to the Scottish court. Eventually, it would be the Stuart king, James VI and I, who knighted Platt for his contributions to natural science and the public welfare (in 1605)."
-Marsha Schuchard: Restoring the Temple of Vision, 2002
"That [Richard] Field and Dr Matthew Gwinne were friends is highly probable. Gwinne was the associate of John Florio, Giordano Bruno and Robert Fludd."
-ibid
Gwinne (Gwynne) & Shakespeare:
http://www.philological.bham.ac.uk/sibyls/intro.html
http://www.philological.bham.ac.uk/Nero/intronotes.html
Gwynne, Florio, Dee
BRUNO IN ENGLAND (1583-85)
http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/bruno02.htm
-John