William Shakespeare as a sign that his acting career was nearing its end. The First Folio of 1623, however, lists Shakespeare as one of "the Principal Actors in all these Plays", some of which were first staged after "Volpone", although we cannot know for certain which roles he played. In 1610, John Davies of Hereford wrote that "good Will" played "kingly" roles. In 1709, Rowe passed down a tradition that Shakespeare played the ghost of Hamlet's father. Later traditions maintain that he also played Adam in "As You Like It", and the Chorus in "Henry V", though scholars doubt the sources of
Crollalanza theory of Shakespeare authorship proposed by "a most eccentric breed of anti-Stratfordians." Carla Dente of Pisa University calls it an example of "fantastic biographical reconstructions", and remarks that it depends too much on the assumption that Shakespeare's heavy use of Italian settings in his plays must mean that he was Italian. The Crollalanza theory seems to have been first set out in Santi Paladino's 1929 pamphlet "Shakespeare sarebbe il pseudonimo di un poeta italiano" ("Shakespeare would be the pen name of an Italian poet"). In the early versions Crollalanza was said to be from a Calvinist family in Valchiavenna or nearby Valtellina in Northern