SHAKESPEARE E CORYAT SUL CANAL GRANDE

In The Merchant of Venice (1596) Shakespeare makes the Rialto - the newly-built bridge and the Exchange palace nearby -.the resounding centre of news, commercial activities, and ethnic hostility: Venice is the place of mercantile ventures and global commerce, a multiethnic city of merchant-adventurers, exclusive and anxiety-ridden, to some extent a «mirror» of London. In his Crudities (I6II), Thomas Coryat presents Venice as the centre and the culmination of his long reportage, the «market-place of the world», stressing all its stunning aspects, achievements, beauties, monuments, as well as its cosmopolitan, multiethnic, multilingual, mercantile society. For him too, however, the Grand Canal remains a rather subdued presence, a «waterway», as the Thames was in London, less impressive than the other compelling sights, which could be visited and experienced from the inside: a beautiful facade, less imposing than other monuments and venues, perhaps still in the making for future tourists to come.