‘Fair Padua, nursery of Arts’: Shakespeare and Padova
Università degli Studi di Padova, Archivio Antico
9-10 June, 2016

This conference proposes to investigate the relationship between William Shakespeare and ‘fair Padua, nursery of arts’, the city in which the playwright set his university comedy, The Taming of the Shrew. Padova was one of the foremost university centres in the Renaissance, and this, together with its closeness to Venice, made it a very attractive destination for travelling Englishmen. The city makes its appearance not only in Shakespeare’s comedy but also in the writings of Shakespeare’s contemporaries.

In more recent times, Padova has underlined its connection with William Shakespeare by becoming one of the few cities in Europe and the only city in the Mediterranean to own a copy of the First Folio (now in the Biblioteca Universitaria).

Following these suggestions, we welcome papers addressing (but not necessarily restricted to) the following topics:

• Englishmen abroad: Tudor students in Padova
• The Taming of the Shrew and its background
• Shakespeare’s Italianate comedy: a portrayal of the northern Italian city
• The Taming of the Shrew and its afterlife
• Shakespeare and early modern university life
• The First Folio, in Padova and elsewhere

Papers should be twenty minutes long. Please send a 500-word abstract and brief curriculum vitae by 15 February, 2016 to Alessandra Petrina: alessandra.petrina@unipd.it.