The Times of London -- 8, 11 April 2000
(London, 8 April 2000)
WORLD NEWSFEATURES
Shakespeare?
He's one of us, say Italians
From RICHARD OWEN in ROME
THE mystery of how and why William Shakespeare knew so much about Italy and gave so many of his plays an Italian setting has been "solved" by a retired Sicilian academic: it was because he was not English at all, but Italian.
Biographies of the Bard admit that there are gaps in his life, but they all attest without question that he was born at Stratford-upon-Avon in April 1564, the son of John Shakespeare and Mary Arden, and was buried there in April 1616. However, Professor Martino Iuvara, 71, a retired teacher of literature, claims that he was Sicilian, born in Messina as Michelangelo Florio Crollalanza, and fled to London because of the Holy Inquisition, changing his name to its English equivalent.
Crollalanza or Crollalancia literally translates as Shakespeare. In an interview with the magazine Oggi yesterday, Professor Iuvara said that the key to the mystery was 1564, the year John Calvin died in Geneva.
It was the year that Michelangelo was born in Messina of a doctor, Giovanni Florio, and a noblewoman named Guglielma Crollalanza, both of whom had Calvinist sympathies. The Inquisition was on the trail of Dr Florio because of his heretical ideas, and the family fled to Treviso, near Venice, buying Casa Otello, built by a retired Venetian mercenary called Otello (Othello) who, to local legend, killed his wife out of misplaced jealousy.
Michelangelo studied in Venice, Padua, and Mantua, and travelled in Denmark, Greece, Spain, and Austria. He was befriended by the philosopher Giordano Bruno, who was to be burnt at the stake for heresy in 1600.
Bruno, Professor Iuvara says, had strong links with William Herbert, the Earl of Pembroke, and the Earl of Southampton. In 1588, aged 24, Michelangelo went to England under their patronage.
His mother, Signora Crollalanza, had an English cousin at Stratford, who took the boy in. The Stratford branch had already translated their name as Shakespeare, and had a son called William, who died prematurely. Michelangelo, the professor says, simply took over the name for himself, becoming William Shakespeare.
Fifteen of the Bard's 37 plays have an Italian background.
(London, 11 April 2000)
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Il Bardo
From Dr J. L. Wilson
Sir,
Five of Shakespeare's plays (Titus Andronicus, Julius Caesar, Antony & Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Cymbeline) are set wholly or partly in Ancient Rome and three (Comedy of Errors, Much Ado, Winter's Tale) wholly or partly in Sicily. Five (Romeo & Juliet, Merchant of Venice, Othello, Taming of the Shrew, Two Gentlemen) may accurately be described as being set in Italy (report, "Shakespeare? He's one of us, say Italians", April 8).
The late, great Samuel Schoenbaum pointed out in William Shakespeare: a documentary life (OUP, 1975) that these plays show no more detailed knowledge of Italy than Shakespeare might have gleaned from eating in his local Italian restaurant (Paolo Marco Luchese's in Hart Street, in St Olave's parish), or from conversing with the many Italians resident in London. Shakespeare may have eaten spaghetti alla vongole, but there is no proof he ever swam in a gondola.
Yours faithfully,
J. L. WILSON,
Wholeway, Harlton,
Cambridge CB3 7ET.
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