Door Knocker of of Canicatti (Sicily)
by Andrew Camilleri
The Book Fair at Turin this year was dedicated to two important and current questions: the mixture of culture and the potential for books on new tecnology. Fine, except to the already rich program, is added at least one round table that debates the advanced hypothesis from professor Martino Iuvara according to which William Shakespeare was not called "William Shakespeare" and he was not even born in England, rather at Palermo and his true name was Giovanni Florio.
Ah, these Florio! They won't ever stop surprising us. They possessed fleets, industries, they lived a sumptuous life, they left us the marsala and the Targa, but they did not let us know that the Bard belonged to their family! This Giovanni Florio, as author of a libelous publication that was judged heretical, abandoned Sicily and went to live in Venice in a palace that, dare say, had been built by one Otello who, in a blow of jealousy had strangled his wife (dare say, was named Desdemona).
Here Giovanni falls in love with the daughter of a Milanese noble (dare say, was called Juliet) who, facing the obstacles that interfered with their love, dare say, committed suicide. Then Giovanni escaped to England and, taking the last name of his mother (Crollalanza), translated it into English.
And here is the first difficulty. Until proof to the contrary, "scrollare" is not the same as "crollare" and therefore the last name should have been translated something similar to Collapsespeare or the equivalent.
We continue ahead. Other proofs: of 37 plays, 15 are located in Italy and, of these, 4 between Venice and Verona. Permit me to say that this is not a valid proof. As for an example, in the time of fascism many comedies were set in Hungary, where the infidels could be free, while in Italy the regime wanted us all to be absolutely faithful. A researcher would easily deduce that the authors were not Italian, but Hungarians who had translated their last name.
And then: a writer born in Sicily does not go without speaking and writing of his land. How many plays of Florio-Shakespeare occur in Canicatti (Sicily)? And how is it that among so many assassins there is no shade of a mafioso? How is it that, among so much ferocity, there is no hogtie?
There is a need of a round table. I confess it: to know that Shakespeare is one of my fellow contrymen would please me a great deal.
Article from which Camilleri has drawn:
Sicily (15-April-2000)
by Antonio Casa
Doctor Crollalanza and Mister Shakespeare
ISPICA- The news has made it around the world, arousing, especially in England, the same indignation that any of us would provoke if someone there said that Dante was a foreigner transplanted to Florence.
The daring thesis of a researcher of Ispica (Rg), Martino Iuvara, 71 years, a retired teacher, who has spent the last ten years alternating between his active publications (he edits a local paper) and the "discovery" of his life, is destined to put in question the biography of Britain's greatest poet.
According to Iuvara, mister William Shakespeare was in reality Michelangelo Florio Crollalanza, from Messina, who after many travels, arrived at Stratford-on-Avon, a suburb on the Avon River where history says the author of Romeo and Juliet was born. To explain his theory, Iuvara makes reference to detailed innovative reasoning. His first doubts were cultured right here in Italy, in his first twenty years, when he discovered a volume of proverbs, The Second Fruits, written in the XVI century by a Calvanist writer of Northern Italy, one Michelangelo Crollalanza. Many of the same phrases were used by William Shakespeare in Hamlet.
In recent years professor Besta of the University of Palermo, resurrected the perplexity that was also posed by some biographers of the geatest poet of English literature. Always the question: Was William Shakespeare really English? Or, as Iuvara proposes, was he originally from Messina, living for some time among the Veneto, Lombardy, and other European Countries, until emigrating reluctantly to Stratford-on-Avon, that suburb, according to history, native to the author of Romeo and Juliet. Sicilia.it has met professor Iuvara in his house, a stonesthrow from the Church of the SS. Annunciation, destination in these days of numerous travelers of faithful on occasion of the Easter festivities, who interpose these celebrations with those of the other excellent city Church, S. Maria Maggiore.
Here we are found in front of a lucid 71year old, an ex teacher, journalist, and publicist who is able to overturn (as we will see later) some of the episodes that history hands down.
Professor Iuvara, how has it come about that you affirm that Shakespeare was in reality doctor Crollalanza?
Apart from the evidence of the translation of the Shakespeare word, from Shake (Crolla) and Speare (Lancia), I am limited to turn to the studies that others, preceding, had opened. As such, I have spent part of the last ten years collecting documents that confirm my idea.
Because, you see, I ask the questions to which nobody has never known how to reply. Such as: did the child of a glover, as history wants to make us believe, possess the immense culture that Shakespeare shows in the classical subjects? How could he, an English poet, and especially in those times, describe places, landscapes and Italian people faithfully, something we find in 15 of the 37 works of the great William? And why was the library not placed at the disposal of the biographers? Really.
And you, how do you respond?
The documents exist that prove that Michelangelo Crollalanza was the child of Giovanni Florio and Guglielma Crollalanza, born at Messina in 1564. He studied Latin, Greek and French history besides taking the habit. But at the age f 15 years he was forced to run away with the family in Veneto, because of the Calvanist ideas of his father, condemned to the stake at Sant'Uffizio for having published his accusations of the Catholic Church.
Michelangelo lives in the palace of Othello, a Venetian noble who, blinded by jealousy, killed his first wife Desdemona. Having frequented the Dominican monk Giovanni Bruno, he becomes enamored in Milan of a contessa, Juliet, who was abducted by the Spanish governor, the same one who arranged the capture of the young Crollalanza because he was a committed anti-Calvinist. Juliet commits suicide and it was then that Michelangelo runs away to England, assuming the identity of a dead cousin prematurely: his name was William Shakespeare.
And how do we explan the language?
His first works were translated and he presented them in the wooden theater, "The Globe." Then when he marries an English wife, she translates his most famous verses. However, also according to the contemporary biographers, Shakespeare had an accent decidedly foreign. I have the impression therefore that nobody, in England, had the courage to stop the disposal of his library by leaving it to posterity. His true identity would jump out.
I understand the reaction of the English. It would be like someone there saying, out of the blue, that Dante in reality was, as an example, a Spaniard.
What do you hope to draw from this history?
I do it for passion. I enjoy examining ancient documents and rediscovering the official factual history when this type of difference is reality. The identity of Shakespeare is not the only scoop of my life.
Please go on.
The date of the armistice between that the allied troops and the Italians, in 1943, after the landing in Sicily, was not eight September, but five days earlier, the 3rd. It was officialized as the eighth to allow Badoglio to get better organized in order to save the those among our troops who were rescuable. I have the photos that testify to all of this. And Churchill had confirmed that Castellano, the Italian General, was the one who signed that piece of paper. Also the place indicated is wrong. It was not the bridge of Cassibile, but one kilometer further ahead, under a tree in the countryside of S. Teresa Longarini. A headstone existed also, carved by an American soldier, that was removed on purpose.
Ladies and Gentlemen., the new discussions have opened.
7 September 2004
The article is posted in Italian at: http://www.vigata.org/rassegna_stampa/2000/Archivio/Art18_Cam_mag2000_Sta.htm
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