The Shakespeare Guide To Italy: Retracing The Bard's Unknown Travels, Richard Paul Roe, c. 2011.

The Shakespeare Guide to Italy: Retracing the Bard's Unknown Travels, Richard Paul Roe, c. 2011.

 I think the first "one" I will read will be Othello. Venice should be interesting. Also, of course is The Merchant of Venice. From chapter 5, The Merchant of Venice, page 115, "For centuries, the sweep of overseas possessions held by the Venetian Republic constituted an empire. And for a significant part of that time, that empire also included all the important cities an ports along the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea ..... the Venetians also counted the large and important island of Cyprus as one of their colonies ... between 1473 and its final surrender to the Turks in 1571 ...  important for both Othello and The Merchant of Venice." 

Shakespeare visited Venice "in the latter part of the sixteenth century."

The play opens with three men on stage: the merchant, Antonio, himself; Salerio, his lackey; and, Solanio, the merchant's friend.

Wow, the more one reads "Shakespeare," the more one marvels at how much he knew, and ho clever he was to include the "vernacular" and all that he knew in the speeches in his plays. 

It just never, never quits.

But this is the kicker. The author knows this is an inside joke. He knows the "real" Shakespeare is Sir Henry Neville (Brenda James) but doesn't need to say that. This book, as much as it may be anything else, is a book that directly supports what Brenda James discovered.