Italy
The claims made on the basis of De Vere’s visit to Italy in 1575 range far and wide. On the face of it, a year in Venice would seem like a good scene-setting experience for a theatre audience that enjoyed the mayhem that could explode among people who lived far away, about whom almost everything known was based on stereotypes and prejudices. This may have created audience demand for the Italian antihero but it did not create a corresponding demand for geographical accuracy or Webster could not have hacked off the first syllable of his Duchess’ home town before putting on the title page.
Trying to find unusual geographical explanations for similarly cavalier scene-setting in Shakespeare’s Italian plays makes two big assumptions, neither grounded in fact.
Anyone cared whether the Mediterranean had tides or not (it has about 1/15th of th tidal range of the Thames),whether threre were sycamores in Verona or whether you could sail to Milan.
Oxford was sharp enough to notice or care about detail enough to record themon his travels.
Neither seem likely when you study both.
| Title | Description |
|---|---|
| Letter 1 | Nathaniel Baxter, who accompanied Oxford to Venice, recalled the journey in his Sidneys Ourania (1606), which includes an acrostic poem dedicated to Oxford’s daughter Susan Vere. The poem alludes to Oxford’s time among Italian society and his rescue from disrepute, with Baxter’s term ‘Albanian dignity’ serving as his poetic circumlocution for British nobility. |
| Letter 2 | In March 1618 the eighteenth earl of Oxford was detained in Venice after being found in a gondola with a courtesan during carnival. The English ambassador intervened on his behalf, arguing that the earl had been unaware of the relevant laws, and sought the release of the woman and the earl’s servants who had been imprisoned. |
| Letter 3 | Depositions taken in 1585 record the domestic life of John de Vere, sixteenth earl of Oxford. Around 1546 he contracted a bigamous marriage with a woman named Joan Jockey while still married to Dorothy Nevill, who had separated from him on grounds of misconduct. Joan Jockey was subsequently disfigured in an attack carried out by the earl’s own servants and brothers-in-law. |
| Letter 4 | Sir Henry Wotton reported in 1617 that the seventeenth earl of Oxford, on arriving in Venice, built himself a house there rather than travelling further. Orazio Cogno’s Inquisition deposition corroborates this, recording that he joined Oxford’s household at his Venetian residence on 1 March 1576. |
| Letter 5 | A reconstruction of Oxford’s Italian itinerary from March 1575 to March 1576, drawn from letters to Burghley and reports from Venetian correspondents. Oxford used Venice as his base, making excursions to Genoa, Milan, Padua, Florence, and Siena before returning to England via Lyon and Paris. |
| Letter 6 | In 1577 Orazio Cogno, a Venetian choirboy, gave a deposition to the Inquisition describing his time in Oxford’s service. He had joined Oxford’s household in Venice in March 1576 at the age of fifteen or sixteen, travelling to England as a page. His account of leaving Oxford’s employ without permission closely corroborates later accusations of sexual abuse made against Oxford by Henry Howard and Charles Arundel. |
| Letter 7 | Andrea Perrucci’s Dell’Arte Rappresentativa (Naples, 1699) includes a literary fantasy in which Oxford appears as a tournament combatant at a fictional imperial court, armed with a great sword and bearing a falcon device with the motto Tendit in ardua virtus. Nelson notes the passage’s sexual implications, citing it as evidence of Oxford’s lingering reputation in Italian literary culture. |
| Letter 8 | Oxford’s association with the Venetian courtesan Virginia Padoana is recorded in a 1587 letter from Sir Stephen Powle, who noted that she honoured the English nation for Oxford’s sake. Venetian sumptuary law records from 1581 and 1595 confirm her status as a courtesan dwelling in the parish of Saint Jeremiah. |