Dana's Shakespeare Review

There is a lot of debate over whether or not William Shakespeare ever visited Italy, and much of these discussions are part of the larger debate over the authorship of Shakespeare's plays.  While it would be interesting to know for sure, I'm not terribly concerned with this question.  I deliberately titled this course "Shakespeare and Italy"—and I emphasize the "and"—because, while there's no solid evidence that the playwright was ever IN Italy, he certainly seems to have been preoccupied with it as a setting for his plays.  Seeing the real or imagined sites where the plays' action takes place hasn't changed the way I read the text, per se, but it has allowed me to imagine the space of the action off of the stage.  For example, walking from the loud and crowded Rialto to the silent Ghetto Nuovo, seeing the bridges connecting the small island and imagining how the residents were practically imprisoned in this space, and comparing the exterior of the buildings with those of the more tourist-oriented parts of the city highlights the very real  and physical division between the Christian characters in The Merchant of Venice and the Jewish characters. 

The site of Julius Caesar's cremation, like the Ghetto Nuovo, is not really a Shakespeare site, though the fact that you can always find fresh flowers placed on top of the mound of dirt is a testament to the continuing importance of this figure to modern visitors to the site.  During the course of researching Italy's relationship with Shakespeare, I discovered that Mussolini actually used Shakespeare's play as part of his political propaganda—making it required reading from schoolchildren.  In the center of the Villa Borghese is a replica (of a replica) of the Globe Theatre.  The inaugural performances were of three of Shakespeare's Roman plays, including Julius Caesar.

In Verona, the only real connection to Shakespeare's plays is the city, though a major tourist destination in this city is the Casa di Giulietta, presented as the home of Juliet—from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.  The site features Juliet's house, THE balcony, a statue of Juliet, and two souvenir shops dominated by Romeo-and-Juliet-themed gifts.  The walls of the entryway are covered in graffiti (condoned by the site managers), mostly declarations of love.  The back wall of the courtyard is covered in more graffiti and blobs of gum, on which lovers' initials are inscribed.  Finally, a gate within the courtyard is weighed down with small padlocks, also inscribed with lovers' names.  This site is constructed around the home of a fictional character and imbued with the promise of eternal love.  How the story of two teenagers who commit suicide continues to be held up as romantic and symbolic of "true love" continues to baffle me!