From another thread...
Rudolf II was for a brief time window known primarily as King of Hungary and Bohemia. Rudolf ruled from his ancient seat in Bohemia. His possessions under that title stretched to the Adriatic Coast, a long finger of which was adjacent to the Venetian Republic.
Here's the thing: Edward de Vere was in Venice at that same historical moment and is very likely to have sailed down the Adriatic (he writes about a Venetian galley he rode in; the galley was generally for sea passages.)
That brief window when Rudolf was known for his Bohemian title was 1575-'76. He was crowned King of Bohemia in '75, and in '76 his father died, and Rudolf then became Holy Roman Emperor -- obviously a title with a little more prestige. So after Rudolf's 1576 coronation, he wouldn't be known first and foremost as "Bohemia."
De Vere was in Venice, however, from 1575-'76. For a visitor to Venice during that brief moment when Rudolf was King of Hungary and Bohemia (1575) but not yet Holy Roman Emperor (1576), that seacoast adjacent to the Republic of Venice was indeed ruled over by "Bohemia." (It still was after 1576, but there's just the complicating factor that the king of Bohemia was also Holy Roman Emperor.)
It's these kind of phenomenal and uncanny coincidences that keep cropping up in the Oxfordian case...
--Mark Anderson, Shakespeare By Another Name
And this...
William Farina puts it this way in “De Vere as Shakespeare”on page 88:
The play [*The Winter's Tale]* is also notorious for containing the best-known of Shakespeare’s alleged geographical bloopers, occurring in Act III scene iii, where the action is assigned to the “sea-coast of Bohemia.” As everyone knows, Bohemia and the modern-day Czech Republic are a long way from the Adriatic coast. Commentators beginning with Ben Jonson have jumped all over this one to prove how clever they are and what a bumpkin Shakespeare was. The point deserves scrutiny because Shakespeare’s geography lessons, contrary to popular myth, are usually right on target.
*The Winter’s Tale* is set in Sicily and Bohemia. During Shakespeare’s time, the best route between the two places was across the Adriatic Sea. Ownership of the eastern Adriatic sea coast has been hotly disputed over the ages by many nations, including the Venetians, the Hapsburgs, the Ottoman Turks, and the Kingdom of Bohemia. This area centers around the Istrian Peninsula, south of the Julian Alps. To the northwest is the Italian seaport of Trieste, and to the southeast is the Croatian seaport of Rijeka. During the late 16th century, this territory was being aggressively disputed by the Venetians and the Hapsburgs, because whoever controlled it had a piece of the eastern trade routes.
As early as the 9th century, before Bohemia had been Christianized by Saints Cyril and Methodius, the Kingdom of Bohemia (based in Prague) was a military and commercial power to be reckoned with, especially after the death of Charlemagne when the Holy Roman Empire was in a state of chaos. This power culminated in the late 13th century when Bohemia under King Ottakar II, extended its control all the way from the Baltic to the Adriatic. So at one point Bohemia had not one but two sea coasts. After Qttakar was killed in battle, this power waned and Bohemia was absorbed back into the Holy Roman Empire, yet even then retained its separate identity. This information can be found, not in some obscure publication, but rather in the Encyclopedia Britannica, which includes a detailed map. Even after Bohemia was re-incorporated into the Holy Roman Empire, it was still a World power. In 1355 the Bohemian-born Charles IV became Holy Roman Emperor, and made Prague his capital. Toward the end of the 14th century, Prague became the third largest city in Europe, behind only Rome and Constantinople. Historical atlases for this period show how Prague at this point still had direct, legal access to Adriatic ports.
By Shakespeare's time, the Hapsburgs controlled the Kingdom of Bohemia and dominated the eastern sector of the Holy Roman Empire, eventually extending their control as far east as Transylvania. This expansion process had begun in 1526, when the king of Bohemia and Hungary and his army were annihilated by the Ottoman Turks at the Battle of Mohacs. The result of this disaster was that everyone in southeastern Europe handed the baton to the Hapsburgs and begged for protection. That marked the real beginning of the Hapsburgs as a world power. When the Hapsburgs were not busy defeating the Turks, they were fighting the Venetians for control of Trieste, eventually winning that contest as well. Even then, Bohemia retained access rights to the Adriatic, but as a satellite of the Hapsburgs. At this same time, the map of Europe was shifting pretty much along religious lines, Protestant versus Catholic. Even though Bohemia was technically a Hapsburg satellite and part of the Holy Roman Empire, greater Bohemia, extending to the Adriatic Sea, was often viewed as a separate identity with its own religious classification—basically Catholic but showing signs of wavering. Seven years after Simon Forman witnessed a performance of *The Winter’s Tale* at the Globe, Prague became the flash point of the Thirty Years’ War. By now perhaps the point has been beaten to death, but Shakespeare’s alleged blooper is in reality a reflection of our own modern ignorance of history and geography.
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