The question of Shakespeare in Italy has arisen twice in the last few days. Firstly, it was asked why so many of the plays are set in Italy and then said that he had spent some time there, the one ostensibly being used as evidence for the other.
Italy was where the Renaissance began, and flourished. It was a while before Britain followed. Thus, in the same way that we admired America in the C20th as somewhere more glamorous and somewhere that many imagined they'd rather be, so Italy was 400 years ago. Shakespeare is not the only dramatist of the period to set plays there; many others did, too, but that does not lead us to assume that Venice, Verona or anywhere else on the peninsula was chock full of English writers all finding inspiration to bring back fashionable stories to put on the London stage. They could find such tales in books.
Arthur C. Clarke, amongst others, wrote books about space travel, as was the fashion in his day, but if future generations extrapolate from that evidence that he went there, they will be in error, having used a flawed method of arriving at a conclusion from their premise.
No, Shakespeare didn't go to Bohemia before writing The Winter's Tale, Denmark before Hamlet or Vienna before Measure for Measure. Yes, there are the 'lost years', immediately before 1592 but if Robert Greene saw fit to attack him as an 'upstart crow', he didn't do it the day Shakespeare arrived in London. Even Shakespeare needed some time to have made a name for himself to generate such anomosity.
And it is a tribute to the determination of some of those who will go to any lengths to dispute the authorship that they can make themselves believe that Marlowe wasn't murdered in 1593 but it was another body that was found while Kit was secreted off to Italy to write the plays. Why would he have written two versions of each early play, like Edward II and Richard II.
No. As much as we can be sure of anything- and it would be preferable to accept some copper-bottomed racing certainties rather than entertain wilder and flimsier fantasies- Shakespeare never left England. If there are people on the loose, allowed to deliver lectures that say he went to Italy they must be made to give their reasons.
Because some of the plays are set in Italy.
Is that it?
Yes.
Can I have my money back, then.
David Green
- David Green (Books) is the imprint under which I publish booklets of my own poems, or did. The 'Collected Poems' are now available as a pdf. The website is now what it has become. It keeps me out of more trouble than it gets me into. I hope you find at least some of it worthwhile.
