Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Venice
Shakespeare set
Othello
in Venice, and
The Merchant of Venice
mentions the Rialto
Market area several times. He even talked about gondolas and 'the tranect', which
could refer to the
traghetto
ferry, which transported people from Venice to the main-
land. If he did visit, Shakespeare would have spent his time wandering the streets,
eavesdropping on people's conversations and observing the goings-on in shops and at
the market. A walk to the Rialto is certainly evocative of that time. The Palazzo Du-
cale, with its magnificent Gothic facades and huge council hall, is probably what
Shakespeare had in mind as the setting for the final courtroom scene in
The Mer-
chant of Venice
, while the two bronze figures on top of the Torre dell'Orologio clock
tower in Piazza San Marco are known as 'i Mori', or 'the Moors', which is a key ref-
erence in
Othello.
