LIT
Shakespeare’s Italy: A Literary Journey

Shakespeare set more than a dozen of his plays in Italy, the first English playwright ever to give central importance in his drama to the Mediterranean nation. Capitalizing on the Elizabethan fascination with the land of Machiavelli and the Papacy, on the one hand, and of Petrarch’s love poetry and Renaissance humanistic learning, on the other, Shakespeare’s Italy is as imaginary and mythical as it is real. Its diverse cities and countryside allowed the Bard a freedom of expression, a thrill of cultural exchange, and a perspective on national difference—enriched by European exoticism—that gave rise to some of the greatest masterpieces of English literature.

This course explores the many Italian settings of Shakespeare’s plays across a variety of genres, from the “fair Verona” and Mantua of his early tragedy Romeo and Juliet to the darker forces of Venice in Othello and The Merchant of Venice, and from the university town of Padua in the comedy, Taming of the Shrew, to the carnival atmosphere of Sicily’s Messina in Much Ado about Nothing. Throughout his career Shakespeare returned again and again to Italian settings. Our aim is to study the Italian sources, theatrical forms, and settings that inspired Shakespeare in order to understand the ways in which his plays combine England and Italy, refashioning and reconfiguring the familiar—London spaces and types, stock characters and plots—and relocating them in foreign contexts.