WHEN DID SHAKESPEARE LIVE? IVShakespeare in Italy
“A fascinating look at a largely untouched aspect of Shakespeare’s identity and influences. Recommended for Shakespeare enthusiasts and scholars as well as travelers looking for a new perspective, this is also particularly intriguing as a companion to specific plays.” (Library Journal (starred review))
“An exceptionally entertaining, enlightening, and handsome companion for a thrillingly literate Italian sojourn.” (Booklist)
“Exciting, original, and convincing....This book is essential reading for all concerned with who really wrote the works of Shakespeare. A thrilling journey of discovery.” (Sir Derek Jacobi)
“This is a revolutionary and revelatory book, part thrilling detective story and part sober scholarly treatise.” (Michael York, Shakespearean actor of stage and screen and co-author of A Shakespearean Actor Prepares)
“This represents a hugely significant intervention in the study of Shakespeare and his dramatic works.” (Dr. William Leahy, Head of the School of Arts, Shakespeare Authorship Studies, Brunel University)
“Unless someone can prove him wrong, anyone who claims to have written the plays of Shakespeare needs to show some Italian travel documents.” (Mark Rylance, Founding Artistic Director, Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, London)
Richard Paul Roe spent more than twenty years traveling the length and breadth of Italy on a literary quest of unparalleled significance.
Using the text from Shakespeare’s ten “Italian Plays” as his only compass, Roe determined the exact locations of nearly every scene in Romeo and Juliet, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado about Nothing, The Tempest, and the remaining dramas set in Italy. His chronicle of travel, analysis, and discovery paints with unprecedented clarity a picture of what the author of the Shakespearean plays must have experienced before penning his plays.
Equal parts literary detective story and vivid travelogue—containing copious annotations and more than 150 maps, photographs, and paintings—The Shakespeare Guide to Italy is a unique, compelling, and deeply provocative journey that will forever change our understanding. . . and irrevocably alter our vision of who William Shakespeare really was."
http://www.shakespeare-today.de/index.203.0.1.html (review by some of the greatest Shakespearean actors)
"The so-called Italy plays of Shakespeare are the subject of Roe’s tremendous inquiry, and his more than two decades of painstaking investigation and research have resulted in the landmark book, The Shakespeare Guide to Italy, Retracing the Bard’s Unknown Travels.
Roe, not coincidentally an attorney as well as an author, does something never before achieved: he proves beyond a reasonable doubt that the playwright of Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing, and the eight (yes, ten plays in total, to be clarified below) other Shakespeare plays set in Italy actually went to Italy.
Roe upends the centuries-old truism that would have us believe that the author invented a fanciful version of Italy filled with myriad factual errors. In fact, Roe demonstrates, it is the scholars who have erred. Their sin, dating from the early 18th century “biographers” of Shakespeare to modern editors of the Arden, Riverside, Folger et al editions of the plays, is to never do what Roe does: go to the source, the land in question, Italy.
Now that Roe has proved the writer was there, he has, in essence, thrown the Stratford-centric theory of authorship on the dust heap of faulty theories, because there is absolutely no evidence that man who signed his name Shaksper, Shakspe, Shakspere and Shakespeare, and who hailed from Stratford, ever left the shores of his mother country."
https://deveresociety.co.uk/articles/review-2012March-cole-roe.pdf"If Shakespeare was never personally in Italy, then...
- How did he know there are sycamore trees on Verona’s west side?
- How did he receive the precise knowledge of Milan to know that, even though Mantua and Verona are due east, the fastest way to get to them was through Milan’s north and not east gate, which led to rice marches, unpaved roads and uncrossable tributaries?
- How did Shakespeare know that the inland city of Bergamo was famous for sail-making?
- How did he know that Guilio Romano, known in England as a painter, was also a sculptor?
- How did he know that the Venetian “Doge” was called a “Duke”?
- How did he know that in Florence there was a lodging house for pilgrims named “Saint Francis” beside the port on the way to the pilgrimage site of “San Giacomo Maggiore”?
- How did he know that in Padua there is a lodging house, merchant homes and the parish church of St Luke’s all by the port?
- How did he know that in Milan there was a place, not on any map in England, called “St. Gregory’s Well,”?
- How did he know that in Venice there is a dark, narrow street called the Sagittary, where the arrow makers lived?
- How did he know about the common ferry that brought visitors to Venice, and the precise distance between Belmont and Venice?
- How did he know there was a statue on the Rialto called “El Gobbo”?
- How did Shakespeare know that in the floor of the Sienna cathedral was a circular mosaic that depicted the Seven Ages of Man… used by him in Jacques famous seven ages of man speech in As You Like It ?"
Roe's book one chapter at a time, highlights from Chapter 1.
1C. Saint Peter’s Church [Act III, Sc. 5]. Though no scene is set there it is mentioned in connection with Juliet. No other version of the story mentions it, so why would Shakespeare? And why this church name of all others. Roe reasoned it had to be the Capulet parish church. Even the modern local guides don’t seem aware of it as the author did, suggesting he had a ‘keen knowledge of the layout of Verona’. For instance, though unaware of the Capulet church, the modern locals realize that the early fight scene would have been fought at the end of Via Cappello, at Stradone San Fermo, when the Stradone was called ‘il Corso.’“ So if Shakespeare knew something that even the modern locals don’t know that would be an indication of his intimate knowledge of the town. Roe found four Saint Peter’s churches that had been there around Shakespeare’s time. He found one perfectly located. The San Pietro Incarnario is the local parish church on the direct path from the Capulet home to the cell of Friar Francis.
4G. Twice in the play is there a line saying “Pisa, renowned for grave citizens” (1,1 and 4,2). Yet in my edition of the play there is no note offering any explanation for the citizens being renowned for their being grave. Roe explains it, which the author obviously knew as well since he uses the pun several times. At the Campo Santo, were entombed in stately marble structures, often quite large, the elite or honored citizens of Pisa. It was a place of quite renown and still is a major tourist site today.
4H. Finally, the author also knew, unlike editors who find it hard to believe for a city far from the sea, that “Bergamo was the principal source of sails for the Mediterranean world”. Would this likely be another casual comment a traveler would make, if they would even be likely to know it, and that the Stratford William would just happen to hear? And even if possible, would it be as likely as that learned by a genuine English traveler through Northern Italy?
https://www.playshakespeare.com/forum/authorship-debate-and-apocrypha/6887-shakespeare-and-italy?limitstart=10Titian’s Painting of “Venus and Adonis”

"Professor Magri further researched Italian Renaissance Art in the Shakespeare works.
Let's start with Shakespeare's 'first heir' of his invention, Venus and Adonis.
Her main argument here is that this poem was NOT based on the literary work of Ovid or Virgil, nor even Titian's painting that is called Venus and Adonis. This one is called the Prado version.
Rather, she says, it was based on a version of this Titian painting that was present, at that time, only in Venice. The Prado version does have strong similarities to Shakespeare's poem. You may enjoy examining this painting as it and the poem are described. One problem for this version as the poem source is its location. Titian had created it for Philip II of Spain, son of Emperor Charles V. It was intended for the marriage of Philip to Queen Mary Tudor, Elizabeth's half-sister. The painting was brought to London in September of 1554 for the marriage. However, Philip left England in 1555 and took all his Titian paintings with him. It was not there for any chance for Stratford's Shakspere. This Prado V&A has remained in the Royal Collection of Madrid since 1556. And so there was hardly anyone in England then who could have seen it and enable it to be sourced when Shakespeare's poem was written.
Magri says that the V&A myth in Ovid's Metamorphoses "is totally different from Titian". In Ovid, but not in the painting and not in the Shakespeare's poem, Adonis responds favorably to Venus' love for him. Many other artists, following Ovid, represent Adonis as "a tender, sweet, even sensuous lover". But "Titian departed from the Ovidian source". She then gives details of how the poem and painting correspond.
Five versions of Titian's V&A are considered as possible matches to the poem, and only one fits it faithfully. This one is the Barberini version, now in Rome. The main parallels between this particular painting and Shakespeare's poem are:
• Venus invites Adonis to sit down by her [The painting seems to show him just after standing up to leave her].
• She keeps embracing him, and is sure she will win him.
• He is resolute to return to the boar hunt and tries to twist away from her.
• He looks at her "all askance".
• Venus shed tears. [the painting, after recent restoration, showed faded traces of paint on her cheeks that suggest tears].
In addition, Magri shows how Shakespeare alluded to an actual painting, rather than of a narrative, of the subject matter:
Fie, lifeless picture, cold and senseless stone
Well-painted idol, image dull and dead
Statue contenting but the eye alone
Similarly with Adonis' horse:
Look when a painter would surpass the life
In limning out a well-porportion'd steed,
His art with nature's workmanship at strife
Finally, ONLY in the Barberini painting does Adonis wear a 'bonnet'.
"And with his bonnet (which) hides his angry brow"
"Bonnet nor veil henceforth no creature wear"
"And therefore would he put his bonnet on"
"The wind would blow it off""
"The author of Venus and Adonis by “William Shakespeare” (1593) describes a painting by Tiziano Vecellio, or Titian, in which Adonis wears a bonnet or cap.
This was the only Titian painting with that detail and, during Shakespeare’s time, it could have been seen only at Titian’s home in Venice.
I continue to be struck by the simplicity and clarity of this piece of factual evidence presented in an article by the brilliant scholar Dr. Noemi Magri.
In her essay, entitled The Influence of Italian Renaissance Art on Shakespeare’s Works; Titian’s Barberini Painting: the Pictorial Source of “Venus and Adonis,” Dr. Magri writes that Titian made many replicas of his work and that Shakespeare based his poem on the only autographed replica in which Adonis wears a bonnet or hat:
“Titian’s painting was his source of inspiration, the thing that stimulated him to write a poem about this subject though he also had a thorough knowledge of Ovid … Shakespeare describes the painting in detail: he portrays the painting in words and the description is too faithful to ascribe it to mere coincidence…
“It is evident that Shakespeare’s Adonis is wearing a hat, a bonnet. The mention of the bonnet is not coincidental. This is the detail here taken as evidence of the pictorial source.”
With one fair hand she heaveth up his hat – line 351
Bonnet nor veil henceforth no creature wear – line 1081
And therefore would he put his bonnet on – line 1087"
But now, both the Stratfordians and the anti-Stratfordians have a huge problem.
It was first observed by the great Swiss historian, Dr. Christoph Pfister.
https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=30499.msg998158#msg998158 (C. Pfister archive, who discovered that there was no human settlement prior to 1700 AD in Switzerland, and that all gothic/medieval buildings and all ancients documents pertaining to the period 500 AD - 1600 AD were actually created in the 18th Century AD)
https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=30499.msg1830487#msg1830487 (C. Pfister archive II)

Abbildung 11: Italienische oder pompejanische Renaissance:
Tizian: Liegende Kurtisane (unten) und liegende Mänade aus
Pompeji (oben)
Abbildung der Mänade aus: Pietro Giovanni Guzzo: Pompei, Ercolano, Stabiae, Oplontis;
Napoli 2003, 75
Figure 11: Italian Renaissance and Pompeian:
Titian: Horizontal courtesan (below) and from lying maenad
Pompeii (top)
Figure out the maenad: Pietro Giovanni Guzzo: Pompei, Ercolano, Stabia, Oplontis;
Napoli 2003, 75
The well-known painting by Titian copied perfectly at Pompeii...
As Titian did not have at his disposal a space-time machine to take him back to the year 79 AD, we can only infer that the authors of both paintings/frescoes were contemporaries, perhaps separated only by a few decades in time.
"The use of Renaissance artists of identical details, same colors decisions, motives, general composition plans, the presence in the Pompeian frescoes of the things that emerged in the 15 to 17 century, the presence in Pompeian paintings of genre painting, which is found only in the epoch of the Renaissance, and the presence of some Christian motifs on some frescoes and mosaics suggest that Pompeian frescoes and the works of artists of the Renaissance come from the same people who have lived in the epoch. "Vitas Narvidas," Pompeian Frescoes and the Renaissance: a comparison, "Electronic Almanac" Art & Fact 1 (5), 2007."
The most important work on the extraordinary similarities between the frescoes discovered at Pompeii and the Renaissance paintings/sculptures (Raphael, Tintoretto, Da Vinci, Botticelli, Goltzius):http://web.archive.org/web/20120202135352/http://artifact.org.ru/kalibrovka-teorii/vidas-narvidas-pompeyskie-freski-i-renessans-ochnaya-stavka.htmlEnglish translation:
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fweb.archive.org%2Fweb%2F20120202135352%2Fhttp%3A%2F%2Fartifact.org.ru%2Fkalibrovka-teorii%2Fvidas-narvidas-pompeyskie-freski-i-renessans-ochnaya-stavka.html&edit-text=https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=30499.msg1683424#msg1683424 (Pompeii-Herculaneum, 1725-1778, five consecutive messages)