John Florio had a close relationship with Thomas Thorpe.
Thomas Thorpe, in 1610, published a translation from Epictetus his Manuall and he dedicated this work to John Florio, reminding Thorpe that he had procured a patron for an earlier work of John Healey’s His apprentises essay, and hoping that he would do the same by this one. In the three existing dedications by Thomas Thorpe, other than that to W. H., the first is addressed to John Florio, the two others to the Earl of Pembroke, while the other, some years before, is addressed to the editor, Edward Blount. We thus have Thomas Thorpe’s evidence that John Florio procured him the Pembroke’s patronage. He also did the same for John Healey. Florio secured the patronage of William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke for Healey’s The Discovery of a New World. This work was an extremely free and humour version of the “Latin Mundus Alter ed Idem”, a satire of England.
Thomas Thorpe (c. 1569 – c. 1625) was an English publisher, most famous for publishing Shakespeare’s sonnets and several works by Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson. His publication of the sonnets has long been controversial. Nineteenth-century critics thought that he might have published the poems without Shakespeare’s consent; Sidney Lee called him “predatory and irresponsible.” Conversely, modern scholars Wells and Taylor assert their verdict that “Thorpe was a reputable publisher, and there is nothing intrinsically irregular about his publication.