Othello it and reworked hints in creating the character of Othello. While supplying the source of the plot, the book offered nothing of the sense of place of Venice or Cyprus. For knowledge of this, Shakespeare may have used Gasparo Contarini's "The Commonwealth and Government of Venice", in Lewes Lewkenor's 1599 translation. The earliest mention of the play is found in a 1604 Revels Office account, which records that on "Hallamas Day, being the first of Nouembar ... the Kings Maiesties plaiers" performed "A Play in the Banketinghouse at Whit Hall Called The Moor of Venis." The work is attributed to
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