The Shakespeare Guide to Italy: Retracing the Bard's Unknown Travels

"One of the great satisfactions of life is to embark upon a long leisurely journey--especially an absorbing intellectual adventure filled with mystery and promise."So begins "The Shakespeare Guide to Italy"...a new and decidedly adventurous book by the late Richard Paul Roe.Thirty years ago, the consensus among what may be termed 'Professional Shakespeare Academics' (let's call them PSAs) regarding the bard's knowledge of Italy was: "...he knew little of Italian geography and customs...making glaring errors..." and "...the Italy he wrote about was mostly invented inside his head...with little regard for historical fact."'Learned English Professors' (LEPs), the local foot soldiers for the infinitely more glamorous PSAs, followed suit, clucking softly to themselves and parroting the notion that Shakespeare's "glaring errors" on Italy were a by-product of his London based research and writing.The passing years have not always been kind, however, to these views. Several members of the traditionally-minded academic community have already broken ranks over the past two decades as, one by one, the "glaring errors" purportedly made by Shakespeare have been shown to have NOT been errors at all, but rather, to be evidence of detailed knowledge of Italian geography and travel practices as they existed in the late 16th century.The most obvious example of this detailed knowledge is evidenced by archeological discoveries in Northern Italy which have revealed the extensive system inland waterways that existed in the region during Shakespeare's era and beyond. These include the canals which made possible a journey by boat between Verona and the inland city of Milan...just as Shakespeare himself described in The Two Gentleman of Verona...the journey ridiculed by the PSAs and the LEPs.Now comes this book by Mr. Roe which seeks to validate not only the MAJOR points of Italian geography and the travel customs of the era as described by Shakespeare, but in addition, to analyze all of Shakespeare's "Italian Plays" in great detail...with an eye toward proving that Shakespeare made virtually no errors in points large OR small regarding Italy.This project was especially ambitious, as the late Mr. Roe was not a PSA, or even a lowly LEP. Mr. Roe was a practicing attorney with undergraduate degrees in the fields of History and English Literature. In other words, in the eyes of the PSAs and the LEPs, he was a `rank amateur'...lower in the academic food chain than even the most junior grad student.So what did Mr. Roe, this 'rank amateur', actually unearth ? In my opinion, he has revealed that the great author knew his Italy quite well. One might even go so far as to say: "As Schliemann `discovered' Troy, so has Richard Paul Roe 'discovered' Shakespeare's Italy...not with pick and shovel mind you, but rather with his probing intellect".Mr. Roe, like Schliemann, has shown that the 'self-proclaimed experts' have been wrong...wrong as to their 'facts'...wrong as to their basic assumptions...wrong about the need to even CONSIDER the possibility that Shakespeare had gained his knowledge of Italy first-hand...wrong about nearly EVERYTHING as concerns Shakespeare and Italy.Mr. Roe has, to put it bluntly, made 'the professionals' look quite bad. For this sin alone, I suspect he will likely endure a period of ridicule by the 'self-proclaimed experts'. I further suspect that later will come 'reluctant acceptance' and then, finally, some of those same 'experts' will probably start taking credit for Mr. Roe's discoveries. Such is often the case with regards to groundbreaking research of this ilk.I will refrain from revealing here the extraordinary finds presented in Mr. Roe's book, as I prefer that the skeptics of 'rank amateurs' such as Mr. Roe, to be required to actually READ his book before they write reviews on it.I will simply state that what Mr. Roe has planted, are the seeds from which decades of debate and further research will spring. Whether these sprouts will be tended by slightly humbled professionals, or by increasingly confident 'rank amateurs', only time will tell.Buy and read this book if you love Shakespeare's Italian Plays and want to learn more about how they came to be written. Buy and read this book if you prefer to seek knowledge with an open mind. Buy and read this book, if you want to see into the future of Shakespeare scholarship. Buy and read this book if you, like me, believe that one day, from seeds such as this, true erudition may grow.Note: This book was written by an author who questions the traditional authorship attribution for the Shakespeare canon, but the main text is not written as an argument of those views at all, rather, it merely examines the locales of the 'Italian Plays of William Shakespeare' one by one without further comment upon the authorship attribution of those plays. It is a very objective piece of scholarship.

'The Shakespeare Guide to Italy' is the most enjoyable book about the plays I have read and the most beautiful. It is a big book that opens up in the reader's hands and finds again, by word and photograph, the sixteenth century La Italia that is fixed in the amber of the Bard's descriptions. Richard P. Roe retraced 'Shakespeare's journey, which modern scholarship says, even hopes, never really happened. The prevailing view is that all was imagination. Roe proved it was true.He first came upon eternal Italy as a very young man on Army-Air-Force assignment to attack the Axis's oil refineries in Romania during World War II. The mortality rate was 80-90%. He survived. I wondered if the journey back to Italy was a metaphor in him of transcending time, to stand once more among lasting things.He saw the same places, buildings, rivers, voyage routes, and neighborhoods meticulously described by the author of the Shakespeare canon. They were still there. He made a study of the scattered geographical notes, off-hand descriptions, ships' names, abandoned wells, little churches, impresa, embedded in the Italian plays, which to most of us are an unlikely testament. Using old maps and paintings he re-constructed the topography of a dozen cities. This book is as much an aesthetic as a literary study, charmingly combined.The journey embodied an unverbalized faith that 'Shakespeare' did not fake fanciful lands and places-- he honored his travels on the earth as he did his songs and suffering, to express their truth.Roe's lasting contribution to scholarship will be that he proved 'Shakespeare' did not commit geographical or cultural error in the Mediterranean plays. Instead, he was uncannily accurate. The prodigious implication of this, which Roe never stated, not being a big talker, is that our entire conception of who 'Shakespeare' was must now change. The man from Stratford never left England. We agree on that. The author went to Italy and knew it well.Sycamore trees stand west of the city walls in Verona, mentioned in Romeo and Juliet. The grove of trees barely in sight beyond the Porta Palio has been reduced to copses, it is true, but they are there. You can see them through the arch. Midsummer Night's Dream had a neighborhood called 'Little Athens'. It still exists in Sabbioneta, not Greece. Shall we sail from Verona to Milan, as in Two Gentlemen of Verona? Laughable?--today maybe it is--but by traveling overland to Ostiglia, they did it routinely, via the river Adda and canals. What about visiting the Bohemian coastline, near Trieste? Impossible now, but then Bohemia had thirty miles of access to the Gulf of Venice. Ben Jonson said 'Shakespeare' got it wrong. Jonson was wrong. He never left Western Europe. The author did.One finds the book full of long-buried gems, not only referenced in the works of Shakespeare and the medieval past, but also sustained in native knowledge, freely shared by the people Roe met as he searched back and forth in time. Contextual knowledge literally returns to life.Roe's search was buoyed by a certain relentless laconic pride. This man was a warrior. He didn't give up. The breadth of his spirit is expressed perhaps by a brief passage about how he searched for and found 'Shakespeare':"This is the playwright who is said to be ignorant of Italy. But truth is revealed in trifles, not in the great words that sweep. Truth hides in the words that are overlooked--the dull words, odd words, the words that are dismissed as cluttering, inconsequential, irrelevant. These are the words, not the soaring ones, that tell what a person knows. But one must listen."There are many ghosts in Italy,'Shakespeare's and Roe's among them.Most highly recommended.

Few traditionally "Stratfordian" Shakespeare authorities will claim that their man Shakspere (sic) ever visited, or had the opportunity to visit, Italy. Instead they are happy to admit that he got lots of details wrong, although he persisted in setting plays in that country for some reason. So, the importance of Roe's book (and it is not without its faults and weaknesses) is that it shows convincingly that the author in fact got many obscure and often trivial details exactly correct. Which complicates things for that band of stalwart supporters who are already struggling to find any evidence that the Stratford man could write at all, read or speak foreign languages, or had any significant involvement with the theatre apart from being a shareholder in playhouses.Again and again in the book Roe raises suspicions that familiarity with character and place names, language, dress and customs, cultural, legal and business practices, geographical settings and source materials referred to in Shakespeare's Italian plays can be explained with a degree of credibility that is hard to deny in toto, even if we don't have to agree with every conclusion.So his research on the canal system across Italy, the tradition of sail making in Bergamo (many miles from the coast), the Sagittary in Venice, mercantile practices and trade overseas, thetreatment of Jews, etc etc etc all point to the author being able to throw casual and authentic detail into his work. Critics like David Dunford miss the point i think - Roe isn't being an apologist for Earl of Oxford in this book but he is asking the question of Stratfordians - explain where the writer's knowledge comes from - although he must have known that this is just further evidence that Oxford was far better qualified to write the plays given his knowledge and love of things Italian and his personal experiences of travelling through Italy. There is no definitive dating of the writing of the plays, or certain chronology and some evidence that the plays were edited and revised over time. The fact that there is no conclusive evidence of any of the plays being written after 1604 may puncture Mr Dunford's theories on the development of theatre but he will find no evidence that the Stratford man wrote anything before or after that date. It is an appealing and exasperating mystery and Roe's book adds spice to the debate and another nail in Shakspere's coffin.There are weaknesses in the book - many of his conclusions are not as sure as he says, often there are alternative possibilities. Also his guided tours of the Italian locations can be hard to follow on paper, even referring to the maps provided and this could probably have been better laid out. The chapters might also benefit with a summary of key points at the end. However those points accumulate steadily through the book to make the conclusion that the author of the plays was very familiar with the country, its people, culture and customs pretty inescapable.

This book is a masterpiece of diligent scholarship and following one's nose. Tracing the Bard's steps in Italy with direct reference to the text of Shakespeare, Roe follows the clues around Northern Italy and provides deep insight into the sources for the plays. It is very clear that whoever Shakespeare was, he had to have travelled to Italy: only a person with first hand visual experience could have made such accurate references to Italy as are in Shakespeare's plays. Roe dismantles accusations levelled at Shakespeare that he was unknowledgeable about Italy, pointing out, for example, the clear indications of an intricate canal network linking cities in Northern Italy. I would suspect strongly that the negative reviews of this stunning book relate not so much to the content, but to deep seated anger and discomfort vis-a-vis evidence suggesting that the author of the works of 'Shakespeare' was actually someone well travelled. Read the book for yourself and make up your own mind.

The author begins by going to Verona and asking a taxi driver if he can take him to a Sycamore Grove, just outside the western city wall. The taxi driver took him to some sycamore trees. So the author was pleased. Because he thought he’d found the sycamore grove referred to in ‘Romeo and Juliet’.After that, he did months of research, recruiting a forestry expert to assess the age of the trees, checking in local records to see if there was a record of the sycamores being planted, being especially careful to ensure that these weren’t comparatively recent plantings, designed to reverse-engineer Verona to resemble Shakespeare’s depiction, in order to encourage the profitable Bard-related tourist trade. Only after EXHAUSTIVE research did he…Just kidding. Of COURSE he didn’t do any of those things. He concluded that he had DEFINITELY FOUND the actual grove in question, and moved on to the next site on his ‘to prove’ list.To call this approach sloppy is an insult to sloppiness. If you think of sloppiness as being diarrhoea-level research, then this is sub-sloppiness approach that would be like a cocktail of diarrhoea mixed with ten parts rancid urine.It’s perhaps worth noting that on the map IN HIS OWN BOOK, Roe notes ‘Remnant Sycamores’ on the SOUTH side of the city as well. Search Google earth and you also find a wooded area that looks suspiciously like sycamores on the NORTH side of the City. So it looks like if Shakespeare took a wild stab at the location of some sycamores, it was more than odds on he’d get it right. To be honest, I don’t think he gave a flying flibble for that kind of authenticity. Otherwise, he might not have christened some Italian characters in the play with names like ‘Sampson’, and ‘Gregory’. And ‘Francis’.

It's certainly an interesting book, and there are some informative details, though whether they are significant to our appreciation of Shakespeare's plays, either on stage or in the study, is less obvious. One of the first things that made me question Roe's scholarship was his claim that "Romeo and Juliet" is generally thought to be one of Shakespeare's earliest plays - it isn't. It was also dubious scholarly procedure to keep the main thesis of the book hidden and only emerge gradually - that the plays were written by the Earl of Oxford. There is no space here to demolish this argument in detail - I gave a talk on the subject a couple of years ago to the Nottingham Shakespeare and Dante Societies - but given the date of Oxford's death it is impossible in terms of the development of English theatre for most of the plays to have been written during his lifetime, even if there was any evidence for his ability as a playwright (there isn't). Yes, there are a few interesting details here, but also much that is unproven, self-contradictory (such as the argument about the canals between Belmont and Venice) or simply inaccurate (the so-called sycamore trees Roe identifies as being where the love-sick Romeo walks are actually cedars). More important, the book - like most that try to prove Shakespeare couldn't be the author of the plays - shows no awareness of theatre. Perhaps Prospero's island is Vulcano, but in the play the whole point of the setting is that it is remote from other human life, almost in a parallel, magical alternative universe. Whatever the actual place Shakespeare had in mind when he created Prospero's island, it is utterly irrelevant to our appreciation of the play, as is most of the information Roe claims to give us.It's amazing that there should be so many positive reviews by people who are convinced by this farrago of nonsense; the one negative one gives a fuller explanation of just how inaccurate it is. If you want an intelligent, thought-provoking, scholarly exploration of the Italian elements in Shakespeare, try "Shakespeare and Italy: The City and the Stage" by Jack d'Amico.

This is an outstanding and totally unique work. It catalogues the real William Shakespeare's compendious knowledge of Italy and takes you to the exact sites that WS based so many of his plays on. Who was the real WS? Turn to a website called politicworm and read this book whilst cross-referencing it with the site - a mind-blowing experience!