“It is surmised by the biographers that the young Shakespeare got his vast knowledge of the law and his familiar and accurate acquaintance with the manners and customs and shop-talk of lawyers through being for a time the clerk of a Stratford court; just as a bright lad like me, reared in a village on the banks of the Mississippi, might become perfect in knowledge of the Behring Strait whale-fishery and the shop-talk of the veteran exercisers of that adventure-bristling trade through catching catfish […] We set down the five known facts by themselves, on a piece of paper, and numbered it page 1″.
Mark Twain, Is Shakespeare dead?, 1909
Who was William Shakespeare?
William Shakespeare is considered the most important writer, poet and playwright in English literature. He is the author of immortal works such as Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth and many others1. But who was he really?
According to the most widespread opinion among contemporary historiographers, William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-on-Avon in 1564. During his youth, he settled in London, becoming owner and brilliant actor of a theatre company: the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. After 1594, in fact, some authors of the time mention his name in connection with this work. He returned to Stratford-on-Avon in 1613 and died there three years later. Only posthumously did he publish the First Folio, a collection of 36 Shakespearean works by fellow actors and playwrights (Comedies, Historical Dramas and Tragedies by Master William Shakespeare).
However incredible it may seem, this is all we know about William Shakespeare, except a controversial baptism and marriage certificate. This little information about the British author’s life has led over time to numerous speculation about who he really was. A first observation is that Shakespeare could only be a figurehead, as was quite common at the time, of another playwright or even of different authors.
William Shakespeare, or whoever hides behind this name, used some twenty-nine thousand different terms in his works. He demonstrated a very thorough knowledge of geography, law, history, languages, cultures, science… This is an incredible amount of information for one individual. Moreover, the few historiographical sources available tell us that William Shakespeare had humble origins. Also, no documents were ever found to prove that he attended an educational institution. How could he have had the culture to write all the plays attributed to him? A real mystery!
A controversial name
A curious observation, which has contributed to the flourishing of speculation about Shakespeare’s real identity, concerns the way in which the English poet’s name was written. Although the conventionally adopted “Shakespeare” appears in numerous quotations and texts, the baptism certificate contains the name “Shakspere“. However, publications citing the author as “Shaksper” or even “Shake-speare” are not rare. This latter form seems to suggest a pseudonym. The Oxford scholar Charlton Ogburn points out that about half of the works in the First Folio are signed by the author with a hyphen2. Shake-Speare, i.e. “shaking the spear”, could be a poetic reference to the literary goddess Athena.
Did William Shakespeare die in 1604?
In 1604, the rapid rhythm at which Shakespeare published his works suffered a mysterious interruption. Even the title page of the Sonnets, published in 1609, bears the English inscription “by our ever-living Poet“. In Elizabethan times this expression was an epitaph for deceased persons. Is it possible that the real William Shakespeare died in 1604 and that another man assumed his pseudonym until 1616, the official date of death?
Was William Shakespeare Sir Francis Bacon?
A fascinating hypothesis is that the English jurist and philosopher Francis Bacon was behind William Shakespeare’s pseudonym. The idea developed thanks to an alleged manuscript from 1781, published by James Corton Cowell in 1805 under the name Some reflections on the life of William Shakespeare, and attributed to the Reverend James Wilmot3. Today we know it was a forgery4 but the writing was considered reliable for decades. It attributed to Wilmot meticulous research into the origins in Stratford-on-Avon of the English playwright. The conclusions of the study stated that there was indeed a person with the name of William Shakespeare (or Shagsper) there, but that he was simply the miller’s son. Due to his humble origins, therefore, he could never have composed all the works attributed to him. The author was eventually identified as Sir Francis Bacon, an English philosopher and essayist of the court of Elizabeth I.
The hypothesis was taken up in 1857 by the American writer Delia Bacon in her volume The Phylosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded5. From this point on, it had wide spread the thesis that William Shakespeare was Francis Bacon and illustrious literary figures, such as Henry James and Mark Twain, adopted it.
The Earl of Oxford Edward de Vere
Among the conjectures about Shakespeare’s real identity, the so-called “Oxfordian” theory, according to which the real author of the works attributed to him was Count Edward de Vere (1550-1604), was very prominent. The first to develop the idea was John Thomas Looney6. Later, even eminent personalities of the time agreed with this Oxfordian attribution. Among them, unsuspectedly, was Sigmund Freud who, in his psychoanalytical studies on personality, revealed:
“I am almost convinced that the assumed name conceals the personality of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford. I no longer believe that William Shakespeare the actor from Stratford was the author of the works that have been ascribed to him”.
Edward de Vere, was a poet and great personality of the Elizabethan era.
Was Shakespeare Italian? Michelangelo and Giovanni Florio
Even more surprising are the hypotheses that William Shakespeare, the father of English literature… was Italian! The idea, which seems bizarre at first glance, takes its cue from the author’s incredible knowledge of Italian literature, geography and even legislation of the time. It appears so relevant as to arouse numerous suspicions about his identity. After all, of the thirty-seven works that the playwright Shakespeare wrote, fifteen take place in Italy.
Scholarly attention has focused on Giovanni Florio, a highly cultured English humanist and son of the Italian exile Michelangelo from the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. Michelangelo was a friar who suddenly converted to Protestantism and had to flee to England to escape the Inquisition. Since the early 20th century, therefore, numerous authors have tried to prove that Florio’s work inspired Shakespeare, at least for his comedies set in Italy. That the two authors knew each other is highly probable, that they were actually the same person is a hypothesis that is still under investigation. The first to seriously examine the issue was the journalist Santi Paladino in 19277. He noticed that a pamphlet attributed to Michelangelo Florio (I secondi frutti) contained many phrases referable to Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Was William Shakespeare from Messina?
In the early 2000s, a sensational hypothesis about William Shakespeare’s true identity began to circulate following publications by the scholar Martino Iuvara8. According to the author, the origins of the great playwright and poet may trace back to to the city of Messina. Shakespeare’s name was supposedly Michelagnolo Florio Crollalanza, and his parents were physician Giovanni Florio and Guglielma Crollalanza. The Sicilian Michelagnolo converted to Protestantism and had to move to England to escape the Inquisition. There, he presumably assumed his mother’s name to avoid identification. Note how the English translation of Guglielma Crollalanza is precisely William Shakespeare.
The supporters of the thesis claim that tangible evidence of the author’s Messina identity is the comedy Much Ado about Nothing, entirely set in the Sicilian city. The translation “Tantu trafficu pe’ nnenti” is, moreover, a typical dialect expression popular on the Strait of Messina. It is possible that it corresponded to the title of an original play, now lost. In any case, Shakespeare demonstrated that he knew the customs, geography and sayings of Messina very well. Perhaps too much so: the characterisation of some of the figures in Much Ado about Nothing is so precise as to arouse numerous suspicions. All we can do is to exclaim “Mìzzeca!”, as said by the commander of the guards, Carruba, in the Shakespeare’s play.
Samuele Corrente Naso
Notes
- The life of William Shakespeare on Enciclopedia Treccani. ↩︎
- C. Ogburn, The Mysterious William Shakespeare, Dodd, Mead & Company, New York, 1984. ↩︎
- A. Nicoll, The First Baconian, Times Literary Supplement, February 25, 1932. ↩︎
- B. James, W. D. Rubinstein, The Truth Will Out: Unmasking the Real Shakespeare, Pearson Education, 2005; J. Shapiro, Forgery on Forgery, TLS, March 26, 2010. ↩︎
- Bacon, D. Salter, and N. Hawthorne. The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded, with a Pref. By N. Hawthorne, 1857. ↩︎
- J. T. Looney, “Shakespeare” identified in Edward De Vere, the seventeenth earl of Oxford, C. Palmer, London, 1920. ↩︎
- S. Paladino, Shakespeare sarebbe lo pseudonimo di un poeta italiano?, Reggio Calabria, Borgia, 1929. ↩︎
- M. Iuvara, Shakespeare era italiano, Ispica, 2022. ↩︎
