Shakespeare and Italy 12 - Merchant Venice Cinthio Saggitary

7A. Chapter 7 in Roe’s book is on the Italian references in Othello. The author based this play primarily on the story by the Italian scholar called “Cinthio”. It was published in Italian 1565 and no English translation appeared before 1753. A French translation became available, at least in France, in 1583. The Riverside Shakespeare stated that “Such verbal evidence as can be found tends to show that he looked at Cinthio’s Italian”. So, right off the bat, the authorship of Othello favors someone known to be able to read Italian (as is most likely) or at least French. It also favors someone who was in a position to even get hold of the story to begin with. Someone who travelled through Italy, as some candidates are known to have done, or someone who collected literature from the continent, would have a bid advantage here. Roe adds that “nothing specific about Venice is contained in the Cinthio story”.

7B. The first scene has Iago and Roderigo setting their plot against Othello in motion. In the street before the house of Desdemona’s father, we see Iago yell “Zounds, sir, you’re robbed, for shame put on your gown!” Roe explains that this wasn’t a dressing gown or bathrobe, but to “Brabantio’s Senatorial gown, the specific garb that all Senators in Venice were required to wear in public.” This particular knowledge of Venetian custom seems unlikely to have been casually learned about in an English pub or overheard in a conversation from its, primarily, well-born travelers. This practice, Roe mentions, was also “entirely foreign to England and the rest of Europe.”

They need to go to “the Sagittary” to find Othello. Various editors have made a variety of guesses as to what the “Sagitary” was, and where it would be found. Many thought it was an inn, even though Brabantio says “At every house I’ll call”.   It turns out though that the answer has been known for some time. It was explained in the 1932 book Shakespeare’s Venice by V.M. Jeffery. The Sagittary is the Englished version of the Italian “frecciaria” or Frezzeria, where the makers of arrows had their shops. It was so called in a diary of 1518 and a sign of that name can be found on that same Venetian street today. Roe also found a canal that could be taken close to there as well as a landing place for a short walk to the street. Again, even a genius cannot be expected to just make something like this up and then others find later that such actually location existed in the story’s city, in the first place, and then also find its location to be perfectly suited to action described.

7C. Also in the first scene when Desdemona’s father is yelled for by Iago, Brabantio says “How got she out?”. Roe adds some additional explanation for this line. Daughters, especially of noble households in Venice, had a customary practice of being locked in at night. Their resulting isolation and boredom was even a subject of art, as Roe reproduces. Also, in scene 2, the Author has Brabantio say “The wealthy, curled darlings of our nation.” So the author even found it worth alluding to the way young men of Venice would have a lock of curled hair fall on their foreheads. 

Similarly, the Venetian women liked to style their hair as very blonde, perhaps even bleached. Twice in The Merchant of Venice is Portia’s hair described as “sunny locks hang on her temples like a golden fleece” and as “those crisped snaky golden locks”. 

Finally, on this topic of appearance, Roe points out Brabantio’s complaint about daughters that need to watched over so closely that he might even need “to hang clogs on them”. Not only does this suggest something like fetters, but specifically in Venice, due also to the often flooded and muddy streets, the young women were known to wear unusually high-soled (more than 6 inches) ostentatious wooden shoes that could barely be walked in.

These Venetian peculiarities are brought into the dialogue so casually that they are easy to overlook, yet they also seem to have been brought in specifically because they are so peculiar, to outsiders, of local customs.

Shakespeare and Italy 11 - Belmont Foscari Montferrat

Roe Chapter 6 continued:

6B. Next is whether or not there is an actual location on the mainland that could correspond with Portia’s Belmont. There’s an argument that if Shakespeare really knew Italy and the Italian language well then he surely would have put his Belmont on a hill or mountain top, since that’s what the name implies. But his main source for the play also used ‘Belmonte’ and that wasn’t on any hill, but was described as ‘a beautiful port’.

And it turns out there seems to be a near perfect estate along the canal from which a carriage or boat could be taken from the Veneto to Venice. What Roe and Dr. Magri find as this very fitting real location for Shakespeare’s Belmont is what we know as the “Villa Foscari” which sits along the Brenta Canal . Roe mentions it as “a most magnificent villa”. It is also known as the “Villa Malcontenta”. It was constructed around 1560 and is now part of the University of Venice and can be found easily on Google maps along with many photos of it. It is not the only Grand Villa along the canal but it is at least close to the expected distance from Venice and considered a unique architectural masterpiece, and was owned by one of the most illustrious aristocratic families of Venice, and so also it would have been a place to be visited by important travelers from England and elsewhere.

The text describes the journey as being a round trip of 20 miles, or 10 miles from Belmont to the Venice landing pier of il Molo by the Ducal Palace. Roe calculated that it is about 5 miles from the tranect at Fusina to il Molo. So it would be about another 5 miles from Fusina to Belmont.  The exact distance isn’t important since we’re talking about a meandering canal and likely a somewhat meandering road next to it and as well the Ferry trip wasn’t in an exact straight line. Also, it would be a silly distraction for the author to try and give precise distances for each leg of the journey. A round number of miles would suffice, just as Montaigne in his journal mentioned a 20 mile segment of his journey from Padua before arriving at Fusina on his way to Venice.

However, this has been made a point of dispute against Roe’s evidence and against Shakespeare’s intimate knowledge of Italy. So let’s look at this argument more closely. Roe’s calculation seems to have been that the true round trip distance is ‘exactly’ 20 miles, which would match the round trip distance Portia mentioned from her Belmont to the Ducal Palace. But Roe also said “If my calculation is accurate” so he was open to a differently calculated distance if it had backing.

The argument against the idea that the author had Villa Foscari in mind for Belmont is that it appears to be only 7 miles from it to the Ducal Palace, and the round trip would then only have been 14 miles—far shorter than the story’s distance. My own calculations for Villa Foscari’s distance to Fusina, using Google maps, is 4.6 miles if we used a modern road. So a 16^th century meandering road following the canal would bring the distance closer to 5 miles. I then estimated the distance to the Ducal Palace from there to be about 4 miles. And maybe 400 years ago a more indirect ferry route was needed, and so again the second leg of the journey could have been closer to 5 miles. In any case, even if the total one-way distance was 8.6 or 9 miles then a rounded number of 20 would suffice and have a nice simplicity to it as well as being a number Portia liked. So the approximate total distance adds to the likelihood that the author could have had Villa Foscari in mind, especially if other evidence added even more support.

Further reasons for this villa as inspiring Portia’s Belmont from Magri’s book. 1) Portia mentions that she and Nerissa will be staying where “there is a monast’ry two miles off”. There was in fact, two miles from Villa Foscari, a “Cadelle Monahe” or “The Nuns’ House" and also nearby a famous Benedictine Abbey and Monastery of St. Ilario.  

2) Magri describes how the windows of the Villa Foscari could only show light from inside (just as described in the play) if someone returned to it by the road as Portia and Nerissa did from Venice, and not by the canal.  

3) In Act 1, Portia recalls “a Venetian (a scholar and soldier) that came hither in the company of the Marquis of Montferrat”. This allusion to this Marquis, irrelevant to the plot, is a peculiar and extraneous detail. And why a Marquis and why of Montferrat? Well, it turns out that in July 1574, Henry of Valois (the future Henry III), and newly-elected King of Poland was returning to Paris from Poland, and had stopped and lodged at Villa Foscari. There the King, and various ambassadors and lords were invited to dinner. And among the many dignified guests was the “Marquis of Montferrat”. The author’s knowledge of this very peculiar fact, as it is not rational to argue it was a random guess, and along with the other fitting facts, together support a verdict favoring the author’s uncommon knowledge of this area of Italy and its history. The facts could have been learned outside of personal travel but not easily without extensive detailed research or lengthy conversations with those with the intimate knowledge. And there is no evidence that the Stratford William had such access. It can only be imagined that he had. 

6C. Some further pieces of evidence of the Author’s deeper knowledge of Venetian customs and law comes from the description of Portia’s disguise for traveling to Venice. She mentions wearing a dagger. And Roe points out how it was strictly against the law in Venice for citizens to carry swords. And that in the 36 plays of the First Folio, 35 have someone with a sword. Only this one does not. And though in Othello Iago and Roderigo have swords, they are officers of the Venetian army and so are a permitted exception. The legal procedure described in the trial scene has also been found to be sound in many ways, though also naturally exaggerated for dramatic purposes. Magri notes that “Shylock knows that only ratification of the agreement will guarantee his rights”, and so that “though a verbal agreement would be legally valid, its execution is very difficult to prove in Court”. So “a deed drawn up in the presence of a notary was the only effective evidence” for the agreement. The type of bond used in the play (“single” instead of, though suggestive of, the “unilateral” bond of Italian Law) did not exist in England at the time and so further displays unusual Venetian knowledge. Further, as in the play, no witnesses needed to be examined by a judge, and “testimonial proof” was inadmissible. Magri also explains Shakespeare’s use of a 'Duke' for the Venice 'Doge' and why such a person could be seen to preside over such a court procedure. These are just some of the play’s legal aspects that reveal an understanding of the Venice legal system by the author.

Shakespeare and Italy 10 - Nature Animal life; Venice Tranect

One more aside, it came to me recently while thinking of the recent article in the Journal of Early Modern Studies by Ros Barber, Shakespeare and Warwickshire Dialect, demonstrating the lack of any good evidence for such a connection,

http://www.fupress.net/index.php/bsfm-jems/article/view/18084

… that a similar observation had been made by an early Shakespeare scholar in the Quarterly Review of  April, 1894 regarding the author’s seeming lack of knowledge of fauna around his hometown. The scholar wrote “Shakespeare was curiously unobservant of animated Nature. . . . He seems to have seen very little. . . . Stratford-on-Avon was, in his day, enmeshed in streams, yet he has not a single kingfisher. Not on all his streams or pools is there an otter, a water-rat, a fish rising, a dragon-fly, a moor-hen, or a heron. . . . To the living objects about him he seems to have been obstinately purblind and half-deaf. His boyhood was passed among the woods, and yet in all the woods in his plays there is neither woodpecker nor wood-pigeon; we never hear or see a squirrel in the trees, nor a night-jar hawking over the bracken.” It seems, that apart from aristocratic gardens and what might be found within London, his primary source for learning about Nature seems to have been books from large, private libraries.

Shakespeare and Italy cont.

6A. In chapter 6 Roe investigates evidence related to “Unto the Tranect, to the common ferry Which trades to Venice”. My Folger edition of the play changes “Tranect” to “traject” and explains it as meaning “traghetto”, which is Italian for “ferry”. But doesn’t this strike one as odd since it would then have Portia saying “. . . to the ferry, to the common ferry . . .”? Assuming the word instead meant a “ferry landing” that would help but still sound redundant. In contrast, Roe reasons that Shakespeare’s “Tranect” is referring to a distinct place where Portia and Nerissa would catch the common ferry to Venice. It turns out that there is such a distinct place and it’s called “Fusina” or “Lizza Fusina”. Roe found that a scholar named Violet M. Jeffery, back in 1932, explained that this “Lizza Fusina” had “the ingenious contrivance for transferring boats from the canal to lagoon.”  Other historical records confirm this device. This device is also mentioned by Michel de Montaigne which is now found in “Montaigne’s Travel Journal”. Montaigne mentions there is a hostelry there and that from there one embarks (the common ferry) for Venice. Other writers also describe it. So, Roe says, the Latin word “Tranect” would mean “join across” and this fits perfectly the use of the device at Lizza Fusina. 

Another interesting tidbit of evidence here is that Francis Bacon’s brother Anthony became friends with the writer Michel de Montaigne somewhere around 1590-92, lived with him for a time and they stayed lifelong friends. In fact, the last letter that Montaigne received was from Anthony Bacon. So Anthony may easily have either read Montaigne’s travel journal or have described to him personally by Montaigne his journey through parts of Italy, including the canal-Fusina-Ferry trip to Venice. And then retold it later to Francis. Of course, his friend Tobie Matthews could also have described it to him. And, also, other Elizabethan travelers to Venice would likely take this common route and remember it when they returned home. So it’s not impossible that the Stratford Shakspere could have heard of it also. It’s just that it’s much less likely from what we do know.   

Anyway, the ‘tranect’ was not needed long after this time and eventually was lost to history. So most modern scholars had no idea what ‘Tranect’ actually most likely meant. And so it’s good evidence that the author again had correct and somewhat intimate knowledge of unusual obscure places in Italy.