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
Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship Italian. However, some Shakespeare scholars say that Shakespeare gets many details of Italian life wrong, including the laws and urban geography of Venice. Kenneth Gross writes that "the play itself knows nothing about the Venetian ghetto; we get no sense of a legally separate region of Venice where Shylock must dwell." Scott McCrea describes the setting as "a nonrealistic Venice" and the laws invoked by Portia as part of the "imaginary world of the play", inconsistent with actual legal practice. Charles Ross points out that Shakespeare's Alien Statute bears little resemblance to any Italian law. For later plays such as