It’s almost certain that Shakespeare never left the shores of England, but every year thousands of his contemporaries, wealthy young men, embarked on the ‘grand tour’ of European cities: it was an essential part of a gentleman’s education.
Although Shakespeare never visited any European cities, he set plays in many of them. He always had a reason for setting a particular action in a particular city. He knew a great deal about European cities as he was a prolific reader, keenly gleaning information about places – information that he subsequently used in his dramas. As a prominent cultural figure in London, he would also have met visitors from other European cities.
In the sixteenth century, Venice was at the heart of the grand tour. It was, in a sense, the capital of Europe. It was exciting and modern, a centre of art and music. It was a place of wealth and pleasure. It stood at the crossroads of the world, where all trade routes converged. It was a racial, religious, and ethnic melting pot with diverse cultures living close together on a small group of little islands.
Small as it was, Veince was the gateway to Europe, with its army protecting Europe from the ever-threatening Turks on the one hand, and trading with them and its allies on the other. A young English gentleman on his grand tour would no more think of missing the pleasures of Venice than he would of omitting Rome from his tour.
Shakespeare uses Venice as a setting for two of his plays. In both Othello and The Merchant of Venice, he’s exploring ethnic, racial, and religious conflict, and what better place to examine that than a small city where the pressures of those aspects of life are acute. Othello is a Black man in a traditional social environment. It’s most relevant to the 20th-century audiences in that he is valued for having a unique skill, needed by the establishment, but rejected on all other fronts, rather like the African American singers who were adored by everyone but banned from clubs, swimming pools, and white suburbs.
In The Merchant of Venice, Shylock is a Jew, despised because he is a Jew, by everyone. They associate with him in matters of business but will have nothing to do with him on any other level. In the cases of both Othello and Shylock, Shakespeare chose Venice, honing in on one of the many Moors and one of the many Jews, to reveal something important about the way human beings relate to each other. Venice was the perfect setting for doing that. In The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare is also exploring the commercial tensions that ran through issues of race and religion then, as they do today.
Shakespeare’s attention to detail in constructing the worlds in which his plays exist shows an outstanding acquired knowledge of the places he chooses to use as settings. He’s aware of the Rialto as a place where news and gossip are exchanged; of the currency – ducats; the practice of elopement conducted by gondoliers, and even the use of the name ‘Gobbo,’ taken from the famous hunchback who frequented the Rialto and confronted tourists. Once again, Shakespeare, with his great genius, gets it absolutely right.
Those of us who live in modern Europe are lucky enough to be able to jump into a plane, car, or train and be in Venice in a few short hours. It’s a great chance to see the city these plays were set in, and would be a rewarding trip for any Shakespeare fan. However, keep in mind you will see something very different from what the Venice and Elizabethan gentlemen experienced. Today, we see a rather shabby and decaying beauty – a city sinking into the sea. Everything about it rings of the past. Beautiful it may be, but it’s somewhat dead – more like a museum than a living city. It’s a truly wonderful place to visit, but almost exclusively for its architectural treasures and the sense of its past glory.
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Perhaps Shake-spear knew so much about Italy was that he was an educated Italian immigrant to England
who came from an Italian family with the name ” Scrollo-lance” which translates into Shake-Spear
What an interesting perspective account user.
It’s as if I never lived and write or talked to Shaky
“with its army protecting Europe from the ever-threatening Turks on the one hand”
What an uneducated horseshit.
The main protector of Europe, the primary continental shield of Europe against the Ottoman Empire for centuries was the Kingdom of Hungary, a major European power for centuries.
From the 14th century onward, Hungary fought near-continuous frontier wars. Hungary maintained standing border defenses (the “végvár” system) long before Western Europe grasped the scale of the threat. It absorbed catastrophic demographic, economic, and territorial losses on behalf of the rest of Christendom.
Finally, after losing Battle of Mohács in 1526, Hungary lost roughly one-third of its territory, Central Hungary came under Ottoman occupation for ~150 years.
Entire regions were depopulated, cities erased, noble families present since the 9th century foundation of the country, destroyed.
No Italian city-state experienced anything remotely comparable.
Venetia was simply self-servient, nothing more, and they were completely lacking any moral, they were purely transactional. They protected their naval trade routes, but they also signed treaties with the Ottomans, while Hungary bled, regularly attacked Hungary.
Venetia attacked, occupied or destroyed Fiume, a free royal city of the Hungarian Crown, repeatedly and Hungary had to beat out the Venetians scum every time, often rebuilding the city (eventually the Croatians simply stole this free royal city after WWI, along with Dalmatia.)
Andrew II kicked them out of Dalmatia in the 13th century, but Venetia forever remained a untrustworthy, scum entity.
So much so that Louis I in the 14th century got to the point that he surrounded Venetia and cut them off from land: he pushed forces into Veneto and Friuli, locked down and choked Venetia economically. Venetians were cut off from land by the Hungarian army, they had to submit and sit down and agree to the Treaty of Zadar where they renounced all claims to Dalmatian territories, gave up any claim to the entire Adriatic hinterland, pay tribute to the Hungarian king and so on. It was a complete humiliation; well-deserved by these slimebag.
While Venetia’s naval power was significant, their land army was negligible, especially when compared to a large, well-trained military power like Kingdom of Hungary, constantly engaged in wars.
Venetia, true to its shylock values, never defended anyone except their own interests.