I’ve read this novel about Shakespeare’s lost years and true identity… Yes, another one. This time Shakespeare is Shakespeare, but his mother is an Italian illegitimate noblewoman, daughter and grand-daughter to real remarkable figures of the Italian Renaissance, so this is where young Will was between 1585 and 1592: in Italy, taking the grand tour, and gallivanting from court to university and back again. The novel is split between two timelines: John Shakespeare’s love story and consequent fatherhood of the prodigious child, and two present day Italian historians stumbling across… you guess it: forgotten papers proving the Bard’s Italian and blue-blooded lineage.

It is not a very good book, I’m afraid – but this is not the point today. The fact is that, towards the end, the two historians tell each other that, despite all the documents they found, the world is not ready to have the Truth about Shakespeare revealed… So they decide to do what so many anti-stratfordians have done since Wilbur G. Zeigler’s days: write a historical novel. Continue reading →