The “picciotto” Shakespeare

According to the traditional historiography, Shakespeare was born in 1564, on April the 23rd, and after simple studies, he would have become the most important writer in England.

      But are we sure that Shakespeare is really Shakespeare?

Is it possible that a simple ostler had the knowledge to be able to write such complicated plays? Is it possible that a man who never came out of England could describe detailed environments and places which had never seen?

     Some critics have tried to answer these questions, including the university professors Costantini and Iuvara.

The conclusions they reached are amazing: Shakespeare actually could be Michelangelo Florio Crolla Lanza, perhaps from Messina, belonging to a wealthy Jewish family, which had a large library at its disposal. He would have escaped and would have gone to London, but on the way he had stopped in Verona. To support this thesis there is the presence in Messina of a comedy written in Sicilian dialect (“Mult scrusc’ pu Nient” which  corresponds completely to Shakespeare’s “Much Ado about Nothing”.

Florio was also the writer of some proverbs found in Hamlet. He was also the author of the first English- Italian dictionary.

      In conclusion, did the most important english writer speak Sicilian?

Sicilan or English, that’s the problem! 

Claudio Salerno, 3C