Shakespeare's Italy Settings, sources and characters - Letteratura teatrale europea e americana - UniBa
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Cristina Consiglio
Letteratura teatrale europea e americana
2019 | 2020
Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro
Shakespeare’s Italy
Settings, sources and characters
Italy was Shakespeare’s primary land of the imagination.
It was the destination of many Elizabethan travellers and the
subject of many travel writings.
A third of the Bard’s plays were set wholly or partially in the
country, with location ranging from Sicily to Rome to Venice.
Cristina Consiglio - Shakespeare’s Italy. Settings, sources and charactersMilano
Venezia
Verona
Padova
Roma
MessinaThe Taming of the Shrew is settled in Padova
…for the great desire I had
To see fair Padua, nursery of arts,
I am arrived for fruitful Lombardy,
The pleasant garden of great Italy.
… and am to Padua come, as he that leaves
a shallow plash to plunge in the deep, and
with satiety seeks to quench his thirst.
(I.1.1-4,22-24)
Padova was home to the second oldest university in Italy (1222) and in the
fifteenth century became the centre in which ideas from all Europe were
combined into an organized and cumulative body of knowledge.
Cristina Consiglio - Shakespeare’s Italy. Settings, sources and charactersMilano
Venezia
Verona
Padova
Roma
MessinaThe Merchant of Venice and Othello are settled in Venezia
Shylock
Signior Antonio, many a time and oft
In the Rialto you have rated me
About my moneys and my usances:
Still have I borne it with a patient shrug,
For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe.
(I.3.104-107)
In the sixteenth century Venice was a place of wealth and pleasure. It stood at
the crossroads of the world, where all trade routes converged. It was a racial,
religious and ethnic melting pot with diverse cultures living close together on
a small group of little islands. Shakespeare was aware of the Rialto as a place
where news and gossip are exchanged; of the currency – ducats.
Cristina Consiglio - Shakespeare’s Italy. Settings, sources and charactersThe Merchant of Venice and Othello are settled in Venezia
Iago calls Desdemona
«a super-subtle Venetian» (I.3.355)
and then he tells to Othello
I know your country disposition well:
In Venice they do let God see the pranks
They dare not show their husbands.
(III.3.201-203)
For the English, Venice was a place of impressive but suspect
sophistication and of cosmopolitan immorality.
Cristina Consiglio - Shakespeare’s Italy. Settings, sources and charactersMilano
Venezia
Verona
Padova
Roma
MessinaRomeo and Juliet is settled in Verona
Chorus
Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents' strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,
And the continuance of their parents' rage,
Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.
(I.1.1-14)
Cristina Consiglio - Shakespeare’s Italy. Settings, sources and charactersRomeo and Juliet and the poetics of love
Italy had a special hold on poets. The very forms of Elizabethan verse and
the terminology of its patterns often came from Italy.
The sonnet was introduced to English in the 1550s in explicit imitation of
Italian models, and especially of the Italian poet Petrarch.
«Now is he for the numbers that Petrarch flow’d in» (II.4.38-39)
«Laura to his lady was a kitchen wench - marry, she had a better love to
berhyme her» (II.4.39-41)
Cristina Consiglio - Shakespeare’s Italy. Settings, sources and charactersMilano
Venezia
Verona
Padova
Roma
MessinaThe Roman Plays
Titus Andronicus - Julius Caesar - Antony and Cleopatra - Coriolanus
What they have in common is that they are all set in ancient Rome and
that their source is the Roman historian, Plutarch, translated by the
Renaissance English writer, North.
Another feature of the Roman plays is that it was customary in
Shakespeare’s time to use Roman costume on the stage to re-enforce
the impression that we are in Rome.
Cristina Consiglio - Shakespeare’s Italy. Settings, sources and charactersThe Roman Plays
Titus Andronicus - Julius Caesar - Antony and Cleopatra - Coriolanus
Shakespeare’s Romans certainly raise questions about:
• the consequences of political overthrow
• the motives of conspirators
• the effects of charismatic individual leadership
• the obligations of virtuous citizenship
• the roles of the people and the aristocracy in government
Julius Caesar and Coriolanus explore issues that would have resonated
strongly with Shakespeare’s contemporaries.
Cristina Consiglio - Shakespeare’s Italy. Settings, sources and charactersThe Roman Plays
Titus Andronicus - Julius Caesar - Antony and Cleopatra - Coriolanus
«Let Rome in Tiber melt»
(Antony and Cleopatra, I.1.34)
The Roman plays, however, are more historically rooted, and Romanness,
with its associated politics, values, and character, play an important role in
these plays.
Shakespeare depicts the Romans as self-conscious, theatrical, and
historically aware characters. Many refer to themselves in the third
person. Rhetoric plays an important role in many of these plays. The
characters are aware that they are players in events that will shape the
course of history, and they often ceremonialize this awareness.
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