Talk:Michelangelo Florio

Michelangelo Florio and the Shakespeare authorship question

Today, my edit on this page about the topic Michelangelo Florio and the Shakespeare authorship question was deleted. Since i don't want to put it and that it will be again deleted, i put it here, hoping that somebody will discuss about that, and maybe, decide to re-include it. The paragraph is not just one-way for the theory, but include many different hypothesis after the discovery of I secondi frutti and Troppu trafficu pi nenti (see below). Of course can be improved. The whole web is talking about that, so first or later this candidate has to be discussed. I would start if they wouldn't stop me... follows the paragraph:

During the 20s of the last century, in Sicily was discovered "I secondi frutti", a collection of proverbs. It was noticed that many of those proverbs were present in some Shakespeare's plays; the author of the book was Michelangelo (Michel Agnolo) Florio Crollalanza.

Further, in Messina was found another play, whose title is, in messinese dialect, "Troppu trafficu pi nenti" literally "Too much ado for nothing". Th is play is about 50 years older than 'Much ado for nothing'.

Since then, Santi Paladino and others started to investigate about the relationship between Shakespeare and Florio Crollalanza, trying to understand if they met each other, or maybe Shakespeare met at least somebody else of the family of Michelangelo, maybe his cousin John Florio, or even if they were the same person.

The coincidences starts from the names. Since his father was from Jewish origin, Michelangelo used also the surname of his mother, Guglielma Crollalanza. Now, the English (and masculine) for Guglielma is William, so the name could be a translation. According to another hypothesis, William has been chosen because it was the name of a dead cousin. But more interesting is the surname, Crollalanza, that could be the perfect translation of Shakespeare: crolla lanza means 'shakes speare' (in modern Italian: scrolla lancia). Michelangelo had to escape from Sicily, and later from Italy, because he was Calvinist, and on that period started a persecution for the adherents of this and other religions, considered heretical. So a pseudonym could protect him from an easier identification.

One of the supporters of the hypothesis that Shakespeare was Michelangelo Florio Crollalanza has been Professor Martino Iuvara, whose ideas became famous after an interview published on The Times on 2000.

Iuvara wrote to the Queen Elizabeth II and to Tony Blair asking access to some archives in England, but he did not have a permission for that. He declared in another interview:

[Michelangelo Crollalanza] Studied Latin, Greek and history [...]. But at the age of 15 he had to escape with his family to Veneto, because of his Calvinist ideas [...]. Michelangelo lived in the palace of Othello, a gentleman from Venice who killed his own wife Desdemona because of jealousy, some years before. [...] in Milan he felt in love with a countess, Giulietta, who was kidnapped by the Spanish Governor [...]. Giulietta committed suicide, then Michelangelo went to England [...] So I suspect that nobody, in England, had the courage to give access to his library [...]. This would reveal his real identity. I understand the reaction of English people. It would be like somebody would tell us, unexpectedly, that Dante was [...] Spanish.

— Professor Martino Iuvara. The complete interview, in Italian

Other hypothesis support that Shakespeare was a cousin of Michelangelo, John Florio, as does Lamberto Tassinari, professor of literature in the University of Montreal.

As the British historian Frances Yates hypothesizes, it is also possible that Shakespeare just met with some member of the Florio Crollalanza family (John Florio), and collaborated with him for his many plays set in Italy, so that he could describe precisely the places, culture and laws of this country, while the name is just a coincidence.

82.233.137.170 (talk) 21:26, 17 March 2011 (UTC)