What if you woke up one day to find that you were famous? Lord Byron wrote that he woke up one day to find that he was famous. Centuries before, Will Shakespeare woke up to the dawning of his Shakespearean fame. An Englishman in Italian deals with the art of striving for success, the kind of success that leads to worldwide fame, and the perpetual longing for artistic immortality. But against the ambition of making it in the arts, the power of love and the force of death array themselves against the striving artists. The push and the pull of desire and pleasure in love and art battle against their enemies: time, failure, envy, spite, malice, and what Shakespeare calls the serpent's tongue. Armed with talent, how will the man from Stratford-upon-Avon endure life's natural shocks in order to prevail against time? Will Shakespeare endeavours through his passion, poetry and plays to triumph in the London scene and become a gentleman. John Florio tells the tale of Shakespeare's dark romance with a certain Dark Lady and his enduring love affair with the Beauty of Words. The Bard wakes up one day to find he is famous. 2014 was the 450th Anniversary of the Bard's birth.

Author Biography

Anthony Labriola's work has appeared in The Canadian Form, PRISMinternational, Lo Straniero, Vallum, Stone Voices, Still Point Arts Quarterly, Passion: Poetry, ZiN Daily (Bells & Pomegranates), and Strange Fictions. His tribute to Dylan Thomas, a poem entitled "Missing Dylan," appears in The Colours of Saying: A Celebration. His poetry collections include The Rigged Universe (Shanti Arts Publishing, 2013), Sun Dogs (Battered Suitcase Press, 2014), Invisible Mending, and The Blessing of the Bikes (Anaphora Literary Press). Among his published prose works are Devouring the Artist, The Pros & Cons of Dragon-Slaying, Poor Love & Other Stories, The Lonely Barber (Anaphora Literary Press, 2014). He lives in Toronto with his family.