Crollalanza theory of Shakespeare authorship

rdf:langString Crollalanza theory of Shakespeare authorship

rdf:langString The Crollalanza theory of Shakespeare's identity posits that Shakespeare was an Italian called Michelangelo Florio a.k.a. "Crollalanza", whose mother's family name is variously given as Crollalanza or Scrollalanza ("shake-speare"). He is said to have emigrated to England where he became (or at least was responsible for the works attributed to) William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon. First proposed in the 1920s by Santi Paladino, who claimed Michelangelo Florio was involved in creating Shakespeare's works, the Crollalanza hypothesis has gone through several permutations and developments. In most recent versions, the character's birthplace has moved from the North to the South of Italy. Paladini suggested that Michelangelo Florio was the real author of Shakespeare's works. But historical documents written by Michelangelo Florio himself disproved those claims.Independent filmmaker Alicia Maksimova released in 2016 a documentary film Was Shakespeare English?, covering this topic, which lacks scholarly support. This story has become known in Italy, but is much less well known elsewhere. Its central notion is that the name "Shakespeare" is an anglicised translation of an Italian immigrant's surname. But no historical documents proved those claims: in fact Michelangelo Florio lived in England only from 1 November 1550, when he arrived in the City of London, until 1554, when Mary Tudor ascended to the throne and she re-established Catholicism in England and Ireland. Consequently, on 4 March 1554, Michelangelo and his family fled to continental Europe. The theory has been dismissed by Sonia Massai, reader in Shakespeare studies at King's College London, as being proposed by "a most eccentric breed of anti-Stratfordians." Carla Dente of Pisa University calls it an example of "fantastic biographical reconstructions", and remarks that it depends too much on the assumption that Shakespeare's heavy use of Italian settings in his plays must mean that he was Italian.