"Myself, a prince by fortune of my birth, . . .

Have stooped my neck under your injuries

And sighed my English breath in foreign clouds"

—RICHARD II (3.1.16, 19–20)

Shakespeare's plays are well stocked with merchants of Venice, gentlemen of Verona, lords and ladies of France, and other foreign characters. But what did he—and his audiences—really know about such distant places and people?

In this episode of Shakespeare Unlimited, Rebecca Sheir poses that question about France and Italy—the two foreign lands that Shakespeare wrote about the most.

Her guests are Deanne Williams, author of "The French Fetish from Chaucer to Shakespeare" (2004) and associate professor of English at York University in Toronto, and Graham Holderness, author of "Shakespeare and Venice" (2013) and professor of English at the University of Hertfordshire.

From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published May 20, 2015. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved.

Produced for the Folger Shakespeare Library by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. Edited by Gail Kern Paster and Esther Ferington.

With help from Laura Green at The Sound Company and Jonathan Charry at public radio station WAMU.