Crollalanza theory of Shakespeare authorship Crollalanza theory of Shakespeare authorship The Crollalanza theory of Shakespeare's identity posits that Shakespeare was an Italian called Michelangelo Florio a.k.a. "Crollalanza", whose mother's family name is variously given as Crollalanza or Scrollalanza ("shake-speare"). He is said to have emigrated to England where he became (or at least was responsible for the works attributed to) William Shakespeare supposedly of Stratford-upon-Avon. First proposed in the 1920s, at which time it was associated confusingly with the idea that the Elizabethan linguistic scholar John Florio or his father (another Michelangelo Florio) was involved in creating Shakespeare's works, the Crollalanza hypothesis has gone through
The Plays of William Shakespeare his own edition of Shakespeare's plays that was "designed to transcend Johnson's in proceeding further towards a sound text", but it lacked the benefit of Johnson's critical notes. The two worked together to create a revised edition of Shakespeare's plays in ten volumes, published in 1773 with additional corrections in 1778. Steevens provided most of the textual work, with Johnson contributing an additional eighty notes. After Johnson was forced to back down from producing his edition of Shakespeare in 1746, his rival editor William Warburton praised Johnson's "Miscellaneous Observations" as "some critical notes on "Macbeth", given as a specimen of