Florian theory of Shakespeare authorship

Giovanni (John) Florio, 1553 London -1625 Fulham (London)

The Florian theory of Shakespeare authorship holds that the English poet John Florio (1552–1625) wrote the plays of William Shakespeare.

Early history

An early outline of this theory, which has never gained much traction outside Italy, was first proposed by a Sicilkian journalist Santi Paladino. According to Frank Wadsworth, the idea came to Paladino in 1925 while he brooded over a prediction a fortune-teller had confided to him that he was destined to startle the world with an ‘important revelation’. In 1927 he ventured to publish his notion, namely that Michelangelo Florio a Calvinist refugee in England and son of Giovanni Florio and Guglielma Crollalanza, had nativized his name, by making a calque on his mother’s name, thus calling himself Guglielmo Crolla-lanza ('William Shake-spear’).

Paladino subsequently expanded on his original article by issuing a small volume, Shakespeare sarebbe il pseudonimo di un poeta italiano? Michelangelo Florio, he argued, composed the works but kept them secret, until his son John Florio crossed paths with the young William Shakespeare. His son did the work of translating his father’s oeuvre, the English actor became a front for placing them with theatrical companies, and the father pocketed the profits. The son also appropriated some of his father’s writings in the process. in 1929, and establishing an Accademia Shakespeariana that, according to a correspondent for the London Times, engaged in polemics with both the national and foreign press over the issue.Though the article and book are read as thoroughly embedded in Italian, or perhaps even Sicilian nationalism and fascism, , where the Roman/Italian figures in Shakespeare’s works played a notable minor role in the cultural politics of fascism itself. In 1930, apparently concerned with the negative impact Paladino's polemics might have on Italy's relations with England, at a time when it was trying to secure English support, the fascist government cracked down on Paladino’s activities, banning the publication of his work and confiscating his materials.

Foreign reactions

The article had an immediate echo abroad, when it was picked up by Erik Reger in an review. ' Der Italiener Shakespeare ' (The Italian Shakespeare) published in the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung that same year.

An English allusion to the controversy was made in 1934, when Francis Yates published her pathfinding book on John Florio. There she briefly dimissed Santi Paladino's remarks as 'astonishing', noting that he confuses Michelangelo Florio, whom he assumes is Shakespeare, with his son John. Paladino also asserted, she adds, that Florio the elder had been in Spain, Austria, Athens, the French court and Denmark, without providing any evidence. There might, she allowed, be a grain of truth in some of these claims about his early travels. As to a possible Shakespeare-Florio connection, Yates recognized that Shakespeare had been an attentive reader of Florio and concluded that Shakespeare lived and worked in circles close to the targets of Florio's 'angry quill', that Florio sided with Jonson against Shakespeare in the great Stage Quarrel and that Shakespeare, not withstanding his deep debts to Florio's translation of Montaigne, may have satirized him partially in the otherwise typical commedia dell'arte figure of the schoolmaster Holofernes in his Love's Labour's Lost.

See also

• Crollalanza theory of Shakespeare authorship, the idea that John Florio's father was the author of Shakespeare's work

Sources

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• Paladino, Santi (1955). Un italiano autore delle opere shakespeariane. Milan: Gastaldi.
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• Villa, Carlo (1951). Parigi val ben una messa! William Shakespeare & il poeta valtellinese Michelag nelo Florio. Milan: Editrice Storica.
• Villa, Carlo (1961). Pa Fra Donne e Drammi. Bologna: Edizioni Centauro.
• Wadsworth, Frank (1958). The Poacher from Stratford: A Partial Account of the Controversy over the Authorship of Shakespeare's Plays. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-01311-7.
• Yates, Frances Amelia (1934). 'John Florio: The Life of an Italian in Shakespeare's England,. Cambridge University Press.