Shakespeare's Travels

William Shakespeare of Stratford is not known ever to have traveled outside England. No records exist of his travelling abroad; no friend ever mentioned travelling with him; no foreigner ever noticed him.
Traditionalists argue that Shakespeare could have got all his knowledge of France and Italy from foreigners living in London, and from reading. (David Kathman has a typical article .) Other traditionalists have argued that he must have been to Europe, since his knowledge of geographical detail is actually quite good. (See Ernesto M. Grillo, Shakespeare and Italy.)
Shakespeare's knowledge of France, Italy, and even modern-day Yugoslavia maps extremely well with Oxford's travels. For example, Shakespeare mentions:
  • Sailmaking in Bergamo, an inland city; long considered a gaffe, but this is correct
  • Ttraveling from Verona to Milan, both inland cities, by boat; another "proof" that Shakespeare did not know Italy in detail, but this is also correct
  • The nasal dialect of Padua
  • Specific Italian phrases, such as "sound as a fish" and "by the ear"
  • Numerous features of Venetian geography, such as the location of the Jewish ghetto, the ferry between the city and the mainland, and the distance between Padua and Belmont
  • Features of Italian politics (e.g., Padua is under the protection of Venice, but Mantua is not) and of Italian law (e.g., the form of marriage between Katharine and Petruchio, which is Italian and not English)
  • The seacoast of Bohemia, which did have a seacoast from 1575 to 1609
  • The detailed geographic features of Ragusa (modern-day Dubrovnik), which is the "imaginary" city of Twelfth Night (SBAN 85-87). Ragusa was the watering-stop for Venetian galleys; Oxford was reported to have injured his knee on a Venetian galley in the summer of 1575
  • Giulio Romano's sculpture, which Shakespeare compares to Hermione's memorial statue; Romano's memorial statue to Castiglione's wife existed in Mantua. Oxford is known to have been in Padua, a day's journey away; he might well have visited the grave of the author of The Courtier (SBAN 97)
  • A mural (also by Romano) in the main guest room of the Gonzagas' palace in Mantua (SBAN 97-98), similar to a mural described in The Rape of Lucrece
  • The history of Castiglione's cousin Gonzaga, who murdered the duke of Urbino by pouring poison in his ear; the story appears in The Mousetrap, the play-within-a-play in Hamlet
  • A painting of the history of Venus and Adonis, in Titian's studio in Venice (SBAN 96), which shares elements with Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis
  • Perfumed gloves (Claudio gives "sweet gloves" to Hero; Oxford gave them to Queen Elizabeth)
  • References to the Jubilee of 1575, which occurred during Edward de Vere's visit to Tuscany; disguising herself as a Jubilee pilgrim, Helena's destination in Italy is "St. Jacques le Grand," Tuscan shrines to St. James the Great in Pistoia and Prato, used as overflow shrines during the Jubilee. (SBAN 100-101)
  • "Friar Patrick's Cell," in Two Gentlemen of Verona, a real location in Milan where Friar Patrick O'Hely stayed in 1576 (SBAN 106)
  • The Chateau of Roussillon, referred to in All's Well, and the story of Helene de Tournon (d. 1577; see SBAN, 108-109)
A number of these references have been taken to show that Shakespeare had only limited knowledge of France and Italy. This conclusion does not appear to be correct, and some of the references appear to date from the mid- to late-1570s.