Venice in the 16th Century

Para1Located amidst a splattering of islands near the northern end of the Adriatic Sea, Venice was a wealthy empire and a world power in the early modern period. Through a long history of territorial turmoil, it remained a location of keen interest, influence, and strength during the period, famed for its power and also its beauty. The history and attractiveness of Venice in 16th century English life led to it becoming a prominent setting for early modern drama, including Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice and Othello.

Population & Location

Para2Venice’s location allowed extensive travel and trade with other surrounding areas, bridging Europe with the Near East. Additionally, its population was filled with travelers, merchants, and residents from around the Mediterranean, as well as people from the Italian peninsula.
Population Size: ~150,000–190,000 people
Community: Italians, Turks, Greeks, Jews, English, Spanish
Main trade commodities: luxury foods, ships and naval supplies, spices, timber

Government & Politics

Para3Venetian government in the 16th and 17th centuries was vastly different from neighboring cities and countries. It was a completely independent republic ruled by permanent councils and headed by the Doge, “an aristocratic leader elected from among these councils”. The councils met regularly to determine the shape and formation of the Venetian Empire. Even amidst various political and economic changes, the government of Venice remained peaceful, effective, and relatively stable.

Economy: Wealth & Trade

Para4Venice faced a great historic decline starting in the 15th century, one that continued into the 16th and 17th centuries. After much dispute with Turkey, as well as internal upheaval, Venice began to be targeted by several European nations, including France and Spain, whose empires were growing. This turmoil resulted in the gradual decline of Venetian economic power, political influence, and territory.
Para5However, Venice did begin to rise in popularity due to its cultural and other lifestyle attractions, particularly its trade in luxury goods, gambling, and prostitution. Additionally, it maintained its status as a region of wealth and a location of heavy trade up until the 17th century.
Para6Economic Losses:
Territory (connection to East, Mediterranean, Asia, and Africa)
Political influence
Economic reach and influence

Lifestyle & Cultural Interests

Para7Due to trade routes, Venice became a hub of cultural and social change starting in the 14th century. Surges of sophisticated visual art, food, dress, music, and other cultural elements became even more prominent during this time and offered a wide variety of cultural attractions that remain heavily present today. Additionally, the unique design of the city as a series of islands connected by canals made it a popular place for travelers and merchants in the late Middle Ages and beyond. Even in the early modern period, Venice suffered from some over-tourism.
Para8Renaissance cultural components present in Venice:
Roman influence on architectural design of buildings
Towns planned around inclusion of statues, sculptures, fountains, and bodies of water
Domed buildings
Para9Popular Early Modern Venetian Artists:
Titian
Tintoretto
Veronese
Jacopo Bassano

Key Print Sources

Chojnacka, Monica. Women, Men, and Residential Patterns in Early Modern Venice. Journal of Family History, vol. 25, no. 1, 2000, pp. 6–25.
De Vivo, Filippo. Information and Communication in Venice: Rethinking Early Modern Politics. Oxford University Press, 2009.
Holmes, George, and Michael Mallett. Politics and Society 1250–1600. Oxford History of Italy, Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 57.

Key Online Sources

Bayer, Andrea. Sixteenth Century in Venice and the Veneto, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1 Oct. 2006, https://www.metmuseum.org/essays/sixteenth-century-painting-in-venice-and-the-veneto.
Best, Michael. The settings: Venice and Belmont. Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions. University of Victoria. https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/plays/the%20merchant%20of%20venice/mersettings.html. Accessed 16 Oct. 2018.
Cessi, Roberto, et al. Venice. Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 18 Dec. 2017. https://www.britannica.com/place/Venice/History.
Rutter, Carole. Shakespeare’s Venice. Knowledge Center Archive. University of Warwick. December 2011. https://web.archive.org/web/20250422232952/https:/warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/knowledge-archive/arts/shakespearesvenice/.

Prosopography

Alyssa Hubbert

Alyssa Hubbert was a student at Utah Valley University.

Kate McPherson

Kate McPherson is Professor of English and Honors Program Director at Utah Valley University (Orem, UT, USA). In 2015, she began working to redevelop Shakespeare’s Life and Times, created by Michael Best, into the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Her other publications include commentary on Pericles and The Comedy of Errors for the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016); the co-edited volumes Stages of Engagement: Drama and Religion in Post-Reformation England with James Mardock (Duquesne University Press, 2014) and Shakespeare Expressed: Page, Stage, and Classroom in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, with Kathryn M. Moncrief and Sarah Enloe (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013). With Kathryn M. Moncrief, Kate has also two edited collections, Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England: Gender, Instruction, and Performance (Ashgate, 2011) and Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate 2008). She has also published numerous articles on early modern maternity in scholarly journals. Kate participated in the 2008 National Endowment for the Humanities Institute, Shakespeare’s Blackfriars: The Study, the Stage, the Classroom, at the American Shakespeare Center. She also served as Play Seminar Director, a public humanities position, for the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 2017 and 2018.

Leah Hamby

Leah Hamby is the primary encoder for the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Aside from encoding, she also works as an editor for the project and contributed several articles of her own. She has been working on the EMEE since February 2023. As of February 2026, she is soon to graduate with honours from Utah Valley University with a major in history and a minor in creative writing. Her other work with the LEMDO program includes remediating William Kemp’s Kemp’s Nine Day’s Wonder for the Digital Renaissance Editions.

Michael Best

Michael Best is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, BC. He founded the Internet Shakespeare Editions in 1996, and was Coordinating Editor until 2017, contributing two editions to the ISE: King John and King Lear (the latter also available in print from Broadview Press). In print, he has published editions of works of Elizabethan magic and huswifery, a collection of letters from the Australian goldfields, and Shakespeare on the Art of Love (2008). He contributed regular columns for the Shakespeare Newsletter on Electronic Shakespeares, and has written many articles and chapters for both print and online books and journals, principally on questions raised by the new medium in the editing and publication of texts. He has delivered papers and plenary lectures on electronic media and the Internet Shakespeare Editions at conferences in Canada, the USA, the UK, Spain, Australia, and Japan.

Orgography

LEMDO Team (LEMD1)

The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators, encoders, and remediating editors.

University of Victoria (UVIC1)

https://www.uvic.ca/

Metadata

Authority title Venice in the 16th Century
Type of text Critical
Publisher University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform
Series Early Modern England Encyclopedia
Source
By Alyssa Hubbert, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions
Editorial declaration This document uses Canadian English spelling
Edition Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0a
Sponsor(s)

Early Modern England Encyclopedia

Anthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.
Encoding description Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines
Document status published, peer-reviewed
Funder(s) Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Mitacs Globalink Research Internship
Utah Valley University
License/availability
Unless otherwise noted, intellectual copyright in EMEE Anthology pages is held by Kate McPherson on behalf of the contributors. Copyright on the TEI-XML markup is held by the University of Victoria on behalf of the LEMDO Team. The content and TEI-XML markup in this file are licensed under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. This file is freely downloadable without permission under the following conditions: (1) credit must be given to the authors, EMEE, and LEMDO in any subsequent use of the files and /or data; (2) this availability statement must remain in the file; (3) the content cannot be adapted or repurposed (except for quotations for the purposes of academic review and citation); and (4) commercial uses are not permitted without the knowledge and consent of the authors, EMEE, and LEMDO. Neither the content nor the code in this file is licensed for training large language models (LLMs), ingestion into an LLM, or any use in any artificial intelligence applications; such uses are considered to be commercial uses and are strictly prohibited.