Thursday, March 3, 2011

Did Shakespear know about Dante?

 The article does have some good arguments to whether Shakespeare knew Dante, but each argument is weak and cannot be backed up by circumstantial evidence. One argument states that they both had the same line translated into "I drink, I eat, I array myself, I live" the problem with that is that Shakespeare had no knowledge of Italian, and according to the article, if he had any it wasn't much to read a whole work written by Dante. In my opinion, it seems like a coincidence, and if Shakespeare did indeed know something about Dante he had someone who knew Italian read Dante's works for him.

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