The Merchant of Venice (1969 film) and doubled for Venice; and filming was completed in Rome, where Welles was editing "Don Quixote". The film itself was a shortened version of the play, Welles even eliminated the character of Portia from the film after his mistress Oja Kodar declined the role, due to her then-limited knowledge of English. Francesco Lavagnino, who had written the musical scores of Welles's previous two Shakespeare films, "Othello" (1952) and "Chimes at Midnight" (1966), provided a full musical score for this film. Welles completed the film in the summer of 1969, and gave a preview screening to Oja Kodar and her mother
Crollalanza theory of Shakespeare authorship part of Palladino's theories from the 1920s, but Shaul Bassi of the University of Venice suggests that the first clear identification of Crollalanza as Shakespeare's original name came from the once-famous medium Luigi Bellotti who in 1936 told a reporter that Shakespeare had communicated with him "psychographically" and revealed that his real name was Crollalanza, from Valtellina. In 1943 Bellotti published a pamphlet repeating these claims: "L'Italianità di Shakespeare: Guglielmo Crollalanza grande genio italiano". In 2002 Martino Iuvara published "Shakespeare era Italiano: Saggio" ("Shakespeare was an Italian: an Essay"). In this work, Iuvara, a retired Sicilian journalist and teacher of