As a follow up to my previous comment on the "coast of Bohemia," this is
from a preview note, a few years back, pertaining to the Shakespeare
Italy book I linked:
>> As noted in the comment thread to the previous entry, I discovered
after posting about Richard Roe's forthcoming book The Shakespeare Guide
To Italy ... Then and Now that the commercial edition is still
forthcoming -- but not as in a few weeks or months from now. More like
later this year or sometime next year. (Hopefully on the sooner end of
that scale.)
Still, I don't want to whet appetites without also providing an
appetizer until the main course becomes available.
So I'm pleased to report my recent discovery that a one of the classic
studies on Shakespeare's Italy is now available for free download. It
was among a handful of excellent sources that I used to write the two
Italy chapters of "Shakespeare" By Another Name.
The 17-page work, "Shakespeare and the Waterways of North Italy,"
obliterates two of the most frequently-cited claims of the Bard's
"ignorance" about Italy -- and continental Europe.
Case in point, says the scold: Shakespeare set part of The Winter's
Tale on the seacoast of Bohemia. That'd be like trying to find some nice
oceanfront property in Nebraska.
In fact, says Bart Edward Sullivan, the study's author, Bohemia during
its most prosperous years had two seacoasts. (And as SBAN readers may
recall, the first patch of foreign coastline Edward de Vere encountered
on his 1575 trip down the Adriatic Sea out of Venice was land ruled by
the then-King of Bohemia.)
OK, then... another case in point: Shakespeare didn't even know which
Italian cities were on the Mediterranean and which were landlocked.
Multiple plays feature voyages by ship from inland towns.
Sullivan demolishes that objection, too. Every one of the references to
travel by boat via inland Italian towns (in The Tempest, Taming of the
Shrew, and Two Gentlemen of Verona) is in fact spot-on for 16th century
Italy, when travel across Northern Italy was often more convenient by
water than by land routes. The Po and Adige rivers as well as via a
network of canals and tributaries that look today like a Renaissance
Italian bus map provided the routes for the region's network of ferries
and boats.
Sullivan adds, however, that for Two Gentlemen of Verona (which
prominently features water travel between Verona and Milan), he couldn't
determine whether the entire journey between the two Italian cities
could be made by boat.
And that's one hurdle Richard Roe's book clears. He records some pretty
impressive gumshoe detective work to determine that an uninterrupted
river/canal trip between Verona and Milan was not only possible -- it
was also recorded in accurate detail in Two Gentlemen. The Bard's
critics are, again, the ones with egg on their face.
The dispiriting thing about Sullivan's work is that it was published in
1908. And Sullivan was a Stratfordian. His work is still widely ignored
to this day.
Evidently, a Shakespeare who knew Italy like the back of his hand is a
Shakespeare that academic Shakespeareans want nothing to do with. They
know that if the Bard can be kept safely holed up in London, leaving no
traces of a well-traveled Renaissance life, there's no threat to the
happy myth of a commercial writer who spent his career churning out
potboilers for the stage.
The fun begins soon, friends. Sullivan is just the starter dish.
>>> Jamie McKendrick <[log in to unmask]> 10/17/16 12:31 PM >>>
Hi Kent, - I know this is away off the interesting Dylan discussion,
but I’m curious what our duplicitous Will needed to know that was so
unavailable to write Romeo and Juliet, Othello, The Taming of the
Shrew, The 2 Gentlemen etc. There again, in that other play partly set
in Messina, he seems to show an surprising knowledge of the Bohemian
coastline. Surely only a well-travelled, aristocratic diplomat would
have known about that?
Just musing.
Jamie
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Dylan
Thank you, Judy.
See the link to the page of Author Question updates--some intriguing
recent "finds" there, not least the chap who writes the Herbert
brothers, and refers to Shakespeare in passing as a member of the
company--this a few years after the Folio announcing the immortal Soul
of the Age--the Folio that is dedicated to them--is published.
Italy seems to me the big question that needs answering (unless someone
can prove Will spent quality time there, learning details otherwise
impossible to account for), along with the utter lack of any notice at
the Stratford man's death, unexplainable unless it was known at the
time that Shake-speare had been another.
Kent
>>> Judy Prince <[log in to unmask]> 10/17/16 1:34 AM >>>
Thanks for the 'doubtaboutwill' source, Kent. I'd forgotten it, and
it's wonderful to read those germane bits again.
Judy
On 17 October 2016 at 00:43, Kent Johnson <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
Hi Robin,
I don't recall "withdrawing." Maybe I sent this link in as the
position that I find most "convincing" and left it at that? As I do
again.
Sir Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance, two very widely respected people
in the field of Shakespeare theater had a central hand in the writing
and endorsement of this document.
https://doubtaboutwill.org/declaration
Ken McLeod, by the way, makes brief appearance in a quirky essay I
had in the Chicago Review some years back re: British poetry.
Kent
>>> Robin Hamilton <[log in to unmask]> 10/16/16 6:28 PM
>>>
On 17 October 2016 at 00:03 Kent Johnson <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
Hi Robin, I have a hazy memory of something or other. But did you
settle the matter once and for all in favor of the Stratfordian
case? If so, please forgive my poor memory. You should tell us how,
once again, as I'm sure the increasingly nervous deniers of any
reasonable doubt around Shakespeare's identity will be happy to
receive your momentous proof.
Well, I don't know whether or not I won, Kent, but you did withdraw
from the argument. Only time I ever remember you doing that. This
is possibly why my memory of the incident is clearer than yours.
The matter certainly wasn't settled, at least to your satisfaction,
but that's what happened.
I can't remember which list it was on, and I can't be bothered to
google for it, otherwise I'd post a link. As it is, I'm not going to
fash myself repeating what I said.
Whatever, nice to have you here. I do check out Dispatches
occasionally, but I'm pushed for time, what with this and that, and it's
not really my scene any more.
Hey, you'd like Ken McLeod's work, that came up earlier. Glasgow
student politics in the seventies (after my time -- he's about ten years
younger than me) was sort of like where you are? used to be? at.
You'd probably get more of KMcL's jokes in some areas than me -- some
were deeply involuted, and I don't mean the Glasgow references. How
about [not signalled as such] a Troskyite version of the Dilly Song?
Children, come as I call you, I think it's called in America. My
jaw dropped when I read it. He chucks it in just in passing, then
moves on. Gallusl! Even the title has a 4I insider spin -- The Star
Fraction.
Robin.
>>> Robin Hamilton <[log in to unmask]> 10/16/16
5:54 PM >>>
On 16 October 2016 at 23:42 Kent Johnson
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
All this talk about Dylan the plagiarist or Dylan the selfish and
petty one...
Sounds like Dylan and Shakespeare have some habits and demeanors
in common.
Assuming "Shakespeare" really was the virtually undocumented
Stratford man who scrawled his name, in nearly all extant instances,
as Shakspere.
Hi, Kent!
"who scrawled his name, in nearly all extant instances, as
Shakspere." Hey, you didn't say that the last time round, as I
remember. I'm almost tempted. But no, I'll be good, and
gracefully withdraw. I mean, lots of people say that, what you've
just said, so it must be true. Musn't it?
Cheers,
Robin
