Italianita'

Quite some time ago, when translating some early Italian poems into English I was taken by how much of the imagery derived from the same usages in the two languages. The words are different, (though often evocative of an English word) but the mind sets are twinned.

I checked and discover that Shakespeare translates ever so handily into Italian, although really early Italian poetry like Dante, doesn't change over from one language to the other with any grace at all.

So what was it about late 1500s and 1600s Italian and English writing that set them up so similarly? It's not a common classical heritage or it would be present in Buonarotti and D., and it isn't. Was there a massive export of Italian poetry form and style into English, as there was with music, that even survived translation?

I googled some likely headings and found I was wading into a very beautiful blue ocean of scholarship that shelved so swiftly into being quite out of my depth; when it comes to swimming in waters like that I'm still wearing water wings.

So if any Library user knows: why does English literature of that period (and presumably common language use to some degree) lean so heavily on earlier Italian models? Has the rinascimento struck again?