« An authorship argument that's not a conspiracy theory! | HomePage | Crackpot Theory Of the Week/Month/Year »
11/16/2007
Crackpot Theory Of the Week/Month/Year
I've mostly seen references to this on About.com and the like (my students' favorite "research tools"), but there was also an NPR interview a few years back:
Martino Iuvara, a retired professor from Sicily, argues that Shakespeare's plays were not written by William Shakespeare of Stratford, but rather by Michelangelo Crollalanza, a (what do you know?) Sicilian who wrote a play titled "Tanto Traffico por Niente" (which basically could be loosely translated as "Much Ado About Nothing") and whose life story bears some passing resemblance to Romeo and Juliet and Othello. And, of course, "Crollalanza" can be translated as "Shakes spear."
I thought I already settled this issue in my essay Down With Tradition: A New And Exciting Exploration of the Highly Relevant Question of Who Wrote Shakespeare’s Plays.
As for Shakespeare's apparent familiarity with Italian names and landscapes, I have to go with the Reduced Shakespeare Company's pizza delivery theory.
10:40 Permalink | Comments (1) | Email this | Tags: authorship, crollalanza, crackpot
Comments
PR, oh my! That makes so much sense, especially when you consider that all the acts in all his plays were numbered with Roman numerals. A coincidence? I hardly think so!
Posted by: squib | 11/16/2007
Post a comment