>> Shakespeare wrote a lot about Italy, and almost certainly spent time there. He almost certainly didn't, according to the Shakespeare scholars I know (one of whom I am married to). This supposed intimacy with Italy is used by those people who believe that a bankrupt glover's son who went to grammar school would be incapable of writing the plays, and that someone from a posher background (often one similar to the people making this accusation) was the playwright.
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