Around a third of Shakespeare’s plays take place in Italy. Most scholars assumed that his knowledge of Italy was from writings and contact with Italian merchants. Some authorship debates arise from the suspicion that Shakespeare never went to Italy so someone else must have written the plays about Italy. But now, The Times has an article which asks us, “Hath Shakespeare been a tourist in Venice?”
Now FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER (or so it would seem by the article) some scholars are speculating that Mr. William Shakespeare DID in fact take an excursion out of the country to the land of pasta.
I’m wondering why this issue seems so new. Is it so hard to believe that Shakespeare traveled? The articles says, “There is no concrete evidence that Shakespeare ever left England,” but then again there’s almost no concrete information on 99% of Shakespeare’s life… so who are we to say that he didn’t go places?
For a man that we know very little about I’m not a fan about giving answers about what he did or didn’t do in his lifetime. Maybe he went to Italy. Maybe he went to Cambodia. Probably not, but who knows?