Academic literature on the topic 'Teatro inglese'

L'articolo prende in esame la rappresentazione culturale, sociale e linguistica degli italiani emigrati in Australia nella scrittura per il teatro di Nino Randazzo, drammaturgo di origine eoliana, emigrato a Melbourne nel 1952, considerato uno degli autori più importanti e prolifici nel contesto della cosiddetta “letteratura dell'emigrazione”, e più in particolare della letteratura italo-australiana in lingua italiana. Di particolare interesse è il tema dei pregiudizi culturali e sociali degli anglo-australiani nei confronti delle persone di origine italiana, etichettati come ignoranti, impossibili da acculturare e disciplinare, in gran parte legati alle organizzazioni criminali, che parlano per lo più una varietà mista di italiano e inglese. Così, in particolare, nella commedia Il Sindaco d'Australia (1981), in cui l'immagine stereotipata (ma esilarante) dell'emigrante del sud Italia, impulsiva e ambiziosa, caratterizzata a livello linguistico dall'uso di termini italo-australiani; e nella commedia Victoria Market (1982), concepita da Randazzo come protesta contro la tendenza degli anglo-australiani a costruire stereotipi nei confronti degli italo-australiani, in questo caso quello del'italiano mafioso. Il teatro di Randazzo, tuttavia, riesce a distinguersi dalle opere della maggior parte dei drammaturghi italo-australiani di prima generazione per il suo tentativo di demistificare in modo divertente tali pregiudizi e luoghi comuni. È nella scelta di un tono popolare della commedia, ottenuta anche attraverso la sapiente mescolanza di forme italiane più tradizionali con termini italo-australiani tipici degli anni in cui sono ambientati gli eventi narrati, che risiedono gli aspetti specifici di questo autore.

Among the many traditions of cross-dressing in performing practices, English Renaissance theatre plays a central symbolic role, especially considering the Shakespearean canon; however, only through the disruptive reading of gender and queer studies Shakespeare’s theatre has been studied as a transvestite theatre in which all female parts were played by boy actors. This article intends to show how this transvestite body opens a diachronic perspective on those theatrical practices of the second half of the twentieth century that rediscover the Elizabethan stage as a locus of artifice. Renaissance and twentieth-century theatre thus share the transvestite male body, not following a linear dynamic of model and imitation, but in a much more complex interweaving of echoes and returns. Through an analysis of two works by the playwright Caryl Churchill, Cloud Nine (1979) and A Mouthful of Birds (1986), the essay explores the transvestite male body as a place of dialogue between the Shakespearean and the contemporary scene, which share effeminacy -here understood as the staging of femininity on a male body- as a detonator for a wider crisis of binary categories.

El presente artículo tiene por finalidad analizar los principales elementos intertextuales en Cargamento de sueños, pieza teatral breve compuesta por Alfonso Sastre (Madrid, 1926-), estrenada en 1948 y publicada un año después. El interés primordial y novedoso de la propuesta radica en el estudio de los vínculos literarios con autores de lengua inglesa, aspecto escasamente analizado hasta la fecha en esta obra de Sastre, que también se examina a la luz de una reciente producción de la misma en el Teatro Español de Madrid (2016).PALABRAS CLAVE: Alfonso Sastre, “Arte Nuevo”, teatro de vanguardia, intertextualidad con autores de habla inglesa, versión de José Luis Garci en el Teatro Español de Madrid.

Formado em Teatro no Departamento de Arte Dramática da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Daniel Fraga de Castro realizou seus estudos de pós-graduação em Letras na Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul. Em 2016 dirigiu a encenação da peça Como gostais no Teatro da PUCRS e no Teatro do Centro Histórico-Cultural da Santa Casa de Misericórdia de Porto Alegre. Em janeiro de 2017 concluiu, com louvor, a tese de doutorado Skenepoiesis: direção teatral como interação poética. Prepara uma nova temporada de Como gostais na Santa Casa de 13 a 16 de abril. Nesta entrevista, ele conversa com o Prof. Pedro Theobald, docente de Literatura Inglesa e Teoria da Literatura no Curso de Letras da PUCRS.

O presente artigo é uma transcrição do seminário apresentado por dois pesquisadores ingleses no primeiro Festival NTL - Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium, intitulado de "The Laboratory Spirit" (O Espírito do Laboratório). O festival, ocorrido entre os dias 30 de Janeiro e 3 de Fevereiro de 2019 no Odin Teatret em Holstebro, Dinamarca, reuniu jovens artistas e pesquisadores de várias partes do mundo, em busca de uma possível resposta em relação ao laboratório teatral : "O que é esse espírito do laboratório que reúne grupos do mundo inteiro?", "Qual a sua importância nos dias atuais?". Ao longo do festival, os participantes foram questionados à partir de 8 oficinas com diversos artistas e vários tipos de treinamento físico; ao se colocarem em posição de público em 23 apresentações teatrais; e no último dia do festival, à partir do simpósio transcrito nesse presente documento. O seminário começa com uma pequena fala de Julia Varley, introduzindo os dois pesquisadores ao universo do Odin. Então, os dois narram suas trajetórias e mesclam as teorias do terceiro teatro com o que foi visto e vivido nos cinco dias do festival.

Este artículo toma como referencia las traducciones inglesas del Quijote publicadas entre 1612 y 1774 a fin de analizar la recepción que la novela cervantina tuvo durante ese periodo en Gran Bretaña. Los prólogos de los traductores ejercieron un gran influjo entre los lectores británicos en las dos centurias en que Cervantes influyó profundamente en el teatro y la novela ingleses. Así, la traducción de Shelton (1612) presentó el Quijote como una sátira, percepción que se mantuvo a lo largo del siglo XVII; la de Motteaux (1700), como una parodia, y la de Smollett (1755), como el modelo de los valores caballerescos.

Un fenómeno curioso y digno de estudio puede observarse entre mediados del siglo XVIII y la primera mitad del XIX: la prevalencia de la trama matrimonial en la novela británica. La obra de Jane Austen salta de inmediato a la imaginación cuando se piensa en el matrimonio como fin diegético y motor narrativo en este periodo histórico. Sin embargo, si bien es con esta autora que la trama de cortejo llega a una cúspide en la que el uso serio e irónico convergen, los inicios de su cimentación como fórmula narrativa favorita pueden rastrearse a la segunda mitad del siglo XVIII. En este artículo se propone una hipótesis para esta observación: que, tras la aprobación del Acta de Licencia Teatral de 1737, el relativo estancamiento de la comedia teatral (en la que imperaba la trama matrimonial desde el periodo de la Restauración) fue decisivo para el florecimiento de la novela. Cuando el teatro, que solía ser tanto la profesión literaria más redituable, como el medio de entretenimiento masivo más socorrido, cedió terreno a la narrativa en prosa, la trama por excelencia de la comedia teatral se convirtió en el modelo narrativo de elección para los novelistas.

La tesi indaga l'interazione tra genere drammatico e poetico nei primi anni di attività del poeta inglese W.H. Auden, e procede esaminando i drammi maggiori scritti durante gli anni trenta. Si sofferma su un'opera in particolare, The Ascent of F6, confrontanto la dimensione testuale con quella spettacolare, analizzando il copione originale dello spettacolo usato per la prima del 26 febbraio 1937 e la ricezione della critica. La dissertazione approfondisce il legame tra i due generi letterari soprattutto considerando la coerenza concettuale e di immagini che contraddistingue il pensiero audeniano, e mette in evidenza l'evoluzione della scrittura drammatica seguita in senso cronologico, dalla stesura della prima opera Paid on Both Sides nel 1928, al primo successo con la compagnia londinese del Group Theatre, The Dog Beneath the Skin nel 1935, fino all'ultimo successo nel 1937 scritto in collaborazione con Christopher Isherwood, The Ascent of F6, che segnò il progressivo abbandono del genere drammatico da parte dell'autore. La tesi dà un'amplia prospettiva d'esame considerando non solo la dimensione testuale e indagando il rapporto del testo con il genere tragico, ma evidenziando anche i molteplici rimandi intertestuali e considerando l'efficacia del testo in termini drammatici, ricostruendo lo spettacolo attraverso l'analisi di materiale inedito.
The present study investigates the interplay between poetry and drama in the early works of W.H. Auden, and proceeds in analysing the major plays composed during the 1930s. It focuses on a drama in particular, The Ascent of F6, comparing the textual aspect with the performance outcome, examining the original script used for the premiére on February 26, 1937 and also the response of the critic. The dissertation deepens the connection between poetry and drama considering the conceptual coherence and the unity of images that mark the thought of Auden in the early 30s. Auden's most important dramas are examined following a chronological perspective, from the first draft of Paid on Both Sides, in 1928, to the first success staged by the Group Theatre of London, The Dog Beneath the Skin, 1935, and eventually the last achievement in 1937 written with Christopher Isherwood, The Ascent of F6, which marked the progressive abandonment of the dramatic genre by Auden. The thesis gives an extensive outlook which considers not just the textual aspects of the play, investigating thus the connections with the classic tragedy, but also underlines the various intertextual references and the efficacy of the text in its performing aspects.

This thesis explores the function of the theatre in Derek Walcott's literary achievements. Focusing on the semiotic theories that characterize the study of drama as a literary text and as a staged text, the initial approach aims at creating a relationship between semiotics and postcolonial theories. In particular Pavis's concept of intercultural semiotics and Peter Brook's innovative visions about the regenerative function of the space of the theatre represent a useful theoretical basis to consider the specificity of postcolonial theatre as an innovative space, where new cultural meanings emerge. Derek Walcott's dramatic production is studied according to this approach, in order to be defined as a new hybrid, syncretic and multicultural space. After considering the development of drama from a postcolonial and Caribbean perspective, this study begins with an insight into Walcott's views on theatre, taking into consideration his linguistic depth, linked to the European tradition, but also his strong concern with the Caribbean public's cultural needs. The double tension characterizing Walcott's cultural identity as well as his art represents an essential element to analyse his dramatic texts. With an ambivalent approach, which takes into consideration language and performance, this thesis offers an insight into Walcott's plays to detect their postcolonial and multicultural elements. The analysis of the different texts are divided into two chapters (third and fourth). The third chapters - mainly focused on postcolonial themes - explores issues such as language, identity and space, whereas the fourth chapter centers on multiculturalism in text and performance. Dealing with interracial interactions, issues like re-writing classical texts and the manipulation of personal and collective memory as a way to re- establish new historical perspectives, the last part of the thesis aims at demonstrating the idea that Walcott has created a new space in the theatre made by the harmonic fusion of different and opposed cultural elements, which are visible in the literary as well as in the staged text. The textual perspective of Walcott's drama fits into Pavis's definition of intercultural semiotics, as the faithful representation of a multicultural creole society: that of the West Indies.

This thesis explores the function of the theatre in Derek Walcott's literary achievements. Focusing on the semiotic theories that characterize the study of drama as a literary text and as a staged text, the initial approach aims at creating a relationship between semiotics and postcolonial theories. In particular Pavis's concept of intercultural semiotics and Peter Brook's innovative visions about the regenerative function of the space of the theatre represent a useful theoretical basis to consider the specificity of postcolonial theatre as an innovative space, where new cultural meanings emerge. Derek Walcott's dramatic production is studied according to this approach, in order to be defined as a new hybrid, syncretic and multicultural space. After considering the development of drama from a postcolonial and Caribbean perspective, this study begins with an insight into Walcott's views on theatre, taking into consideration his linguistic depth, linked to the European tradition, but also his strong concern with the Caribbean public's cultural needs. The double tension characterizing Walcott's cultural identity as well as his art represents an essential element to analyse his dramatic texts. With an ambivalent approach, which takes into consideration language and performance, this thesis offers an insight into Walcott's plays to detect their postcolonial and multicultural elements. The analysis of the different texts are divided into two chapters (third and fourth). The third chapters - mainly focused on postcolonial themes - explores issues such as language, identity and space, whereas the fourth chapter centers on multiculturalism in text and performance. Dealing with interracial interactions, issues like re-writing classical texts and the manipulation of personal and collective memory as a way to re- establish new historical perspectives, the last part of the thesis aims at demonstrating the idea that Walcott has created a new space in the theatre made by the harmonic fusion of different and opposed cultural elements, which are visible in the literary as well as in the staged text. The textual perspective of Walcott's drama fits into Pavis's definition of intercultural semiotics, as the faithful representation of a multicultural creole society: that of the West Indies.

At the end of the nineteenth century many Western artists were fascinated and influenced by Oriental and, in particular, by Japanese art. That tendency, called Japonisme, began with the Universal Exposition of London in 1851, where Chinese and Japanese art was introduced with great success. Japonisme spread easily across West, charming it. It extended soon to literature, poetry and theatre. American and European artists found in Oriental art, culture and tradition a suitable means for the renewal of their artistic expression. Why Western art was not suitable to outline its expressions anymore? Why artists felt the need to find their renewal of the forms in Japan’s traditions? This is what my research is about. Through the literary, poetic and theatrical productions of Ernest Fenollosa, Ezra Pound and William Butler Yeats, I intend to draw a critical path paying attention to the cultural, theoretical and textual reasons. They devoted their artistic life to the search for a renewal of the contemporary poetic form by means of the discovery of Oriental and mainly Japanese culture

Il teatro cinese ha una storia lunga e complessa. Tra i drammaturghi illustri che hanno contribuito alla sua evoluzione, Gao Xingjian spicca tra tutti. Pur essendo un autore di romanzi molto famoso, Gao Xingjian è anche un drammaturgo molto controverso, ammirato e amato dalla maggioranza, ma rinnegato dal suo paese d'origine. Il presente elaborato intende proporre al pubblico italiano una proposta di traduzione dei primi sei capitoli della sua opera Alla ricerca del teatro moderno in cui vengono descritte le caratteristiche del teatro moderno cinese secondo il punto di vista dell’autore. Inoltre verrà fornita una breve presentazione dell’autore, delle sue opere teatrali e saggi correlati. Infine verrà presentato un commento traduttologico nel quale il traduttore descriverà il testo che ha tradotto e darà delle spiegazioni in merito alla macrostrategia traduttiva adottata e alle modalità con cui ha proceduto al superamento dei problemi traduttologici incontrati.

Il malcontent è un tipo epocale le cui dominanti caratteriali emergono in vario modo nella rappresentazione di alcune figure dello scontento di epoca elisabettiano-giacomiana. Nella prima parte di questo studio abbiamo rilevato che la parola “malcontent” su un piano discorsivo e culturale 1) individua un nucleo semantico che riguarda genericamente uno stato di scontentezza e si sovrappone in certa misura con altri termini (“discontent”); 2) viene attribuita ad alcune persone in particolare: si veda la questione religiosa e politica legata a figure storiche (quali, ad esempio, d’Alençon, i nobili cattolici delle Fiandre e Leicester) 3) viene utilizzata da Hall nella sua descrizione del malcontent che, sebbene non si identifichi con quelle appena menzionate, configura comunque un tipo culturale che verrà poi fissato da Earle. Su un piano drammaturgico, essendo storicamente determinata, questa figura non deriva da alcuna tradizione letteraria precedente. Quella del malcontent è infatti una categoria sfuggente, che nasce nel modo che abbiamo evidenziato e i cui tratti distintivi sembrano sfumare e quindi favorire una certa convergenza con varie figure tipologiche. Si tratta evidentemente di un personaggio storico e culturale, ma anche teatrale; quest’ultimo non coincide del tutto con quello storico (avvicinandosi anche al malinconico) e presenta alcune caratteristiche fisse (se non altro una generica scontentezza determinata dalla perdita di un ruolo e dal desiderio inappagato di un avanzamento di carriera) e altre variabili (politiche, religiose, umorali e così via), dominanti di volta in volta nelle rappresentazioni discorsive e letterario-teatrali che ne vengono date. I drammi presi in considerazione nel corso di questo studio, pur non presentando necessariamente allusioni topiche a personaggi storici esistenti, propongono dei personaggi, quasi mai definiti in modo esplicito malcontenti, che assumono caratteristiche rapportabili alla figura tipologica del discorso culturale (l’essere ambiziosi, colti ma caduti in disgrazia, il sentirsi immeritatamente esclusi dalla società, e così via). La ricorrenza pur non sempre omogenea di queste dominanti nella caratterizzazione di alcuni personaggi dimostra la non accessorietà e, anzi, l’importanza dei malcontents ai fini delle problematiche centrali dei testi. Considerare questi characters, in alcuni casi secondari solo per necessità d’intreccio, vuol dire anzitutto indagare la natura sociale e politica di alcune opere, nelle quali gli autori sembrano articolare e rappresentare specifici discorsi intorno al conflitto tra la costruzione identitaria – intesa in chiave socio-culturale – ascritta al soggetto e le prime, acerbe percezioni del sé da parte di alcuni malcontents. Nel terzo, quarto e quinto capitolo, abbiamo infatti indagato i modi attraverso i quali questa figura tipologica interviene nei drammi riflettendo sul ruolo sociale assunto e su una soggettualità sempre più emergente. Nella caratterizzazione dei figli cadetti, deformi o illegittimi – Porrex, Richard, Edmund e Spurio – la categoria del malcontent si insinua confondendosi nelle maglie di figure alla cui condizione dislocante nel nucleo familiare corrisponde per analogia un’esclusione dal sistema politico e sociale. Questo fa di loro dei malcontenti ‘naturali’, la cui etichetta sociale risulta determinante ai fini di una percezione dell’io che sembra uniformarsi totalmente alla costruzione dell’identità attribuita loro. Nel caso, invece, di personaggi che sono per antonomasia più complessi e irriducibili quindi a qualsiasi fissa stereotipizzazione – Hamlet, Iago, Vindice –, la categoria del malcontent è relegata primariamente alla dimensione metateatrale: il personaggio è consapevole del ruolo sociale che sta recitando e che, tuttavia, finisce con il modificare irrimediabilmente anche l’idea che ha di sé. L’assunzione della maschera funziona da catalizzatore del conflitto dicotomico tra identità personale e identità sociale, tra quello che una persona è, quello che crede di essere e l’idea di sé che vuole dare agli altri. Questi malcontents epitomano infatti le contraddizioni di chi da un lato manovra le identità attribuitegli dalla società, mentre dall’altro deve fare i conti con un processo di elaborazione del sé che affiora anche in relazione all’adozione del ruolo. Nell’ultimo capitolo, quello che riguarda le due tragedie websteriane, la categoria del malcontent si funzionalizza nei personaggi di Flamineo e Bosola superando i limiti del metateatro e risolvendo, almeno inizialmente, la dicotomia tra la percezione del sé e l’adozione di un’identità ascritta che, infine, Bosola sarà in grado di rifiutare. Questi due malcontenti sono, tuttavia, profondamente diversi tra loro: le fugaci osservazioni autoriflessive di Flamineo non sono mai davvero propulsive ai fini dell’azione drammatica e il personaggio indugia ineluttabilmente in una visione nichilistica del mondo e nel suo ruolo di malcontento in cui resta, infine, imbrigliato. In Bosola, invece, i tratti di questa figura tipologica emergono nella rappresentazione di un personaggio che, da malcontent, assume anche la maschera del tipo, in un gioco metateatrale assurdo in cui lo scollamento tra essere e apparire si risolve in una prima paradossale e irrealizzabile fusione, destinata tuttavia a fallire. L’assunzione della maschera modifica anche in questo caso la percezione dell’io da parte del personaggio, ma è questa una modifica che giunge a compimento consentendo a Bosola di liberarsi da un ruolo sociale che non gli appartiene più, fondendo così nel suo personaggio due figure già presenti nella fonte del dramma. Dopo Webster, la figura del malcontent non scompare dalle scene, ma non ha più quel dinamismo teatrale e quell’energia che ha, invece, caratterizzato i malcontenti di questo periodo. Il senso dell’io che sembra emergere in questi drammi proprio grazie all’impiego di questa categoria da parte dei drammaturghi – e che si pone come spartiacque tra la cultura ancora stereotipata, e in parte di stampo medievale, che percepisce l’identità come imitazione, e la filosofia individualistica di fine XVIII secolo – non riaffiora più nelle rappresentazioni teatrali del tipo. In Massinger, ad esempio, nella seconda scena del quarto atto di The Unnatural Combat (pubblicato nel 1639 e probabilmente scritto tra il 1624-1625), il “poore captain” Belgarde viene definito “malecontent”, ma è questo un personaggio comico piuttosto stereotipato, che soffre della “barbarous ingratitude” (III, 3, 87) da parte di una società che non riconosce più i meriti dei soldati e che, tuttavia, alla fine ricompensa il capitano dei servigi resi. Nel teatro della Restaurazione, Thomas D’Urfey è l’autore che impiega più volte il termine “malcontent”, addirittura proponendo una descrizione del tipo nella sua opera non drammatica The Malecontent: A Satyr (1684). Malcontent è un uomo ritiratosi dalla società perché, come dirà a Error, disgustato dagli affari del mondo. La figura del malcontent finisce qui per assolvere l’esclusiva funzione di denunciare i vizi dell’epoca; non c’è più alcuna investigazione, seppur breve, dell’io, né viene dato conto di una complessità psicologica del personaggio. Con la fine del regno di James I, la grande stagione dei malcontents sembra così giunta inevitabilmente al termine. Ma il fascino di questo personaggio resta indelebile nei secoli seguenti e fa da eco alla citazione di Demetrio riportata da Seneca nel suo De Providentia e poi tradotta in inglese da Thomas Lodge nel 1614: “There is nothing, saith he, more unhappy then that man that hath never been touched with adversity: for he hath not had the means to know himself”
The aim of this thesis is to build on critical recognition of the malcontent as a key figure in early modern drama. I focus mainly on the ways the dramatists use and manipulate the character-type in tragedies in order to structure specific discourses around a new, emergent awareness of a private self which develops during the last decade of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the next. Even though it is too early to treat these characters as examples of the individualism one associates with Hobbes or Milton’s Satan, the malcontents of this period epitomize the struggle of an age which is torn between the acceptance and the refusal of a socio-cultural determinism which considers identity as a form of imitation (see Characters). Critics are no longer content to view the malcontent merely as a plot-mechanism or a means of introducing sensational effects, and the character’s appeal, psychological, theatrical, and thematic, is now better understood. Progress on this front has brought problems, however. A greater sense of the character’s importance has triggered a readiness to label increasingly diverse figures as ‘malcontents’, so that it is possible to find political schemers, melancholics, satirical expositors, grudge-bearers and cynics all being treated as examples of the type. A category as inclusive as this threatens to become meaningless, and I therefore begin with the term itself, its development in critical discussion, and its origin and employment in late sixteenth-century English. The first attempt to define the character was by Elmer Edgar Stoll in 1906. Since Stoll described the malcontent as “a melancholy figure conceived in the Elizabethan ‘humorous’ manner, a professional fantastic meditator, a professional cynic and censor” , many critics have treated the malcontent accordingly, as a by-product of the fashion for melancholia in the period. Harrison (1929) , Spencer (1948) and Bridget Gellert Lyons (1971) retain this association, but add to it a political component. “Political” not in the sense of representing or alluding to real-life political figures, but of embodying the resentment and sense of alienation of those who feel themselves to be undervalued in or excluded from the social system. Lawrence Babb’s The Elizabethan Malady (1951) includes a socio-political dimension but offers as well a series of sub-categories which are an early sign of how critics will expand the definition in later decades: I shall characterize four species of malcontents as I find them represented in Elizabethan and early Stuart literature. The primary malcontent type, which comprises the melancholy travelers and their imitators, is the melancholy man who resents the world’s neglect of his superior abilities. The other three are derivative malcontent types appearing principally in the drama: the melancholy villain, the melancholy cynic, and the melancholy scholar . Babb’s divisions are one of many arbitrary categorizations by these early critics who approach the malcontent as a product – in varying proportions – both of literature and of existing social conditions. The different criteria adopted in the definitions demonstrate that the dominants in the representation of the type are not stable or self-sufficient: the malcontent may be viewed as a foreign traveller, as politically disappointed, or as a ‘humour’ character, according to the critical approach one prefers. One common element, melancholy, recurs as a defining characteristic of the malcontent in these early accounts, though there is variation as to how extreme the symptoms need to be. This is why The Alienated Figure in Drama: from Shakespeare to Pinter (1991) by Christine Gomez is as a turning-point in the definition of the type. Describing the malcontent as the alienated man of the Jacobean age, she does not analyze the character as a product of melancholy, even though she concedes the possibility that “two intellectual attitudes prevalent in the Jacobean age may also be related to the emergence of the malcontent character. They are the intellectual tradition of melancholy and Machiavellian cynicism about human weakness” . Gomez regards the malcontent as an outsider, alienated from men as well as from society, from life as well as from himself. James Keller, in the only book-length study of the early modern dramatic malcontent, follows Gomez in his desire to remove the character “from the tangled and ever-burgeoning mass of qualities which have come to be associated with Elizabethan melancholia” . However, his Princes, Soldiers and Rogues: The Politic Malcontent of Renaissance Drama (1993) suffers from divided aims. In this study, the malcontent is treated as a kind of sub-species of the melancholic, so diminishing the importance of a figure who is conceived of as not simply melancholy, though he may suffer some of the symptoms: “It is perhaps true”, says Keller, “that many, most or even all malcontents are melancholy, but all melancholiacs are not necessarily malcontents” . Despite the contributions of Gomez and Keller, and the more recent essay by Burnett, which has the merit of discussing the type in terms of the cultural context which brought it into being , there are important aspects of the type which remain unexplored. Before analyzing the dramatists’ use of the type, my first aim is to try and gain a clearer idea of what the dramatists themselves might have understood by ‘malcontentment’, by the psychological condition or posture which they sought to dramatize in their malcontent characters. A necessary question is therefore, when and how did ‘malcontent’ enter the language? Although Italian malcontento and French malcontent had been current for some two hundred years, there is good evidence that the English word did not come into use before the last quarter of the sixteenth century, at the same time that the malcontent as a literary and pathological type appeared in prose, satiric poetry, and drama. Nor does the word seem to have arrived simply as the result of influence by one or other of these two languages. When, in his 1578 textbook on translating between Italian and English, John Florio wished to render ‘mal contenti’, he offered merely ‘not contented’ . Conversely, when George Pettie used ‘mal contents’ in his 1581 translation of the French translation of Stefano Guazzo’s La Conversazione Civile, the word was his own: the French version speaks of men gripped by ‘l’indignation’ and the Italian by ‘lo sdegno’ . Pettie’s is OED’s first example of ‘malcontent’. It notes a succession of derivative forms straight after this: malcontented in 1582, then malcontent as an adjective (1583), malcontent as a verb (1584), malcontentment (1587), malcontent meaning ‘state of discontentment’ (1591), and malcontentedness (1594). Such a rapid proliferation is evidence that the term was at this date both novel and appealing, and there is more. The 1587 revision of Holinshed’s Chronicles uses ‘malcontent’ (in various forms) more than 40 times, including one occasion when it turns ‘rebels’ into ‘malcontents’, whereas the original of 1577 does not use it at all; and William Rankins’s 1588 satire The English Ape suggests that those who are ‘never content...or their estate holdeth above their deserte’ be branded ‘Malecontents’, which is ‘the newe found name’ . Four early uses of malcontent have escaped notice. Three, in two works by different authors, antedate OED’s first example, and have the additional interest of indicating why the word arrived into English when it did, and where it came from. The fourth antedates OED’s first example of an adjectival use, and is probably the first occurrence of the word in a play, thus marking the beginning of its association with the drama ten years earlier than the OED listings suggest, and some 23 years before Marston gave that association special status with The Malcontent (1604). The three pre-OED instances, in probable chronological order, are these: 1. Thomas Churchyard, The Miserie of Flaunders (1579), A4r: The Pater Noster men, or Mal content, thei saie: Hath brought our people suche a plague as breeds their whole decaie. 2. John Stubbes, The Discoverie of a Gaping Gulf Whereinto England Is Like To Be Swallowed by Another French Mariage (1579), D4v: more faythfull ayders...then ever Monsieur could bring into the field when he joined himself with the Malcontents eyther in Fraunce or the lowe countries. 3. Stubbes, The Discoverie, E7r: why then doth he [Monsieur] not joyne and conferr with us all thys whyle, rather then under hand seeke to trump both them of the religion there and the malcontent? Churchyard’s poem was entered in the Stationers’ Register on 20 January 1579. Stubbes’s pamphlet is dated August 1579 on its title-page, its publication timed to coincide with the visit to London of the Duke of Alençon (‘Monsieur’, as he was known in England) to renew his offer of marriage to Queen Elizabeth. Her annoyance at its contents cost Stubbes his right hand, and almost his life . These uses of ‘malcontent’ are closely linked by date, and something else connects them: the revolt against Spanish rule then underway in the Low Countries. Churchyard’s “Pater Noster men, or Malcontent” were a group of Catholic Walloon soldiers, nominally part of the anti-Spanish alliance, who styled themselves ‘the Malcontents’, and who were also called ‘Paternoster soldiers’, ‘Paternoster men’, and ‘Paternoster jacks’. They had mutinied because of Protestant domination of the States-General and Protestant persecution of Flemish Catholics. Given its date, Churchyard’s poem was probably prompted by a notorious incident in October 1578 when the Malcontents turned on their Protestant allies and sacked the town of Menen . Stubbes’s pamphlet refers to another threat, to English eyes, posed by the Malcontents: their support for the Duke of Alençon, who was currently based in Flanders, and the possibility that it might lead to a Catholic Union of the southern provinces with France. Alençon himself had been the leader of a faction in Paris three years earlier who had called themselves ‘Les Malcontents’, which was perhaps what suggested the name to the Walloon soldiers . The evidence thus strongly suggests that it was these political and military events across the North Sea in the 1570s, and English anxieties about them, which caused the sudden arrival of ‘malcontent’ at the end of the decade. In the two decades or so from 1580 malcontents (both the character and the term) are more frequent in non-dramatic literature than in the theatre. Greene , Nashe , Harington and Lodge offer detailed portrayals of the type which are earlier than the only description of the Malcontent as a Character given by Joseph Hall in his Characters of Virtues and Vices (1608). In his “Characterism of the Male-Content” Hall describes a ruthless, calculating political schemer, who is far from being rendered immobile by melancholy: “Nothing but fear, keeps him from conspiracies; and no man is more cruel, when he is not manacled with danger” . The threatening and aggressive malcontent of Hall and the melancholy depressive of other depictions come together twenty years later, in John Earle’s portrait of “A Discontented Man” in Microcosmography (1628): [He is] one that is fallen out with the world, and will be revenged on himself. Fortune has denied him in something, and he now takes pet, and will be miserable in spite. The root of his disease is a self-humouring pride, and an accustomed tenderness, not to be crossed in his fancy; and the occasion commonly of one of these three, a hard father, a peevish wench, or his ambition thwarted. (…). He is the spark that kindles the common-wealth, and the bellows himself to blow it: and if he turn any thing, it is commonly one of these, either friar, traitor, or mad-man . Here Earle assumes a synonymity between the terms “malcontent” and “discontent”, commonly confused by some of the dramatists of the period . But when did the word begin to appear in drama? OED is again somewhat misleading. It offers no example from a play before 1591 (1 The Troublesome Reign of King John) whereas there is one which is ten years older. It occurs in Thomas Newton’s translation of Seneca’s Thebais (now usually entitled Phoenissae), when Jocasta begs her sons not to fight one another: She Motherlike seekes how to linke their hartes in one assent, With brynish teares she wettes the cheekes of him thats malcontent . The original, which Newton expands and perhaps misunderstands, is ‘rogat abnuentes, inrigat fletu genas’ (‘she beseeches them as they refuse, and floods her cheeks with weeping’). His ‘malcontent’ was therefore not encouraged by any related Latin form. A few years later the word finds its way into the repertoire of the London theatres, occurring first in Lyly’s Sappho and Phao (1584). Around this date the spelling ‘malecontent’ becomes frequent, permitting punning allusions to questions of gender and what might be taken to characterise “male” behaviour. One other notable feature of the progress of ‘malcontent’ through the drama is that its use goes into decline at the end of the century, just before the character-type to which modern criticism most commonly applies the term achieves its most powerful embodiment. A simple comparison of frequencies indicates the change: between 1581 and 1603 the word occurs 50 times in 31 plays; between 1604 and 1625 it occurs 33 times in 22, despite the larger corpus of extant texts . The distribution in the Jacobean sample is also very uneven: older dramatists cease using the word, and many younger ones never use it at all. Shakespeare is a striking case. He uses ‘malcontent’ in very early work (Venus and Adonis, 3 Henry VI, Edward III, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love’s Labour’s Lost), but after that only in The Merry Wives of Windsor (c. 1598); he never uses it in tragedy. Among his younger contemporaries, it is never used by Jonson, Chettle, Ford or Shirley, and in all the plays of Dekker and Middleton it appears only once, in a comedy, 1 The Honest Whore, which they wrote together. In consequence, ‘the Jacobean tragic malcontent’ of critical depiction is hardly ever called a malcontent in Jacobean tragedy. The first and only time the term is used as a character name in the whole of the period is in the anti-catholic pageant Descensus Astraea by George Peele (29 October 1591), where two malcontents menace Astraea’s reign: 1. Malecontent: What meaneth this, I strive and cannot strike, She is preserved by miracle, belike: If so then, wherefore threaten we in vaine, That Queene, whose cause the gracious heavens maintain. 2. Malecontent: No marvell then, although we faint and quaile, For mightie is the truth and will prevaile. (Descensus Astraea) Peele’s malcontents demonstrate how undeveloped the expressive potential of the type is at this date. They are flat and aimless figures, motivated by nothing more than a vague scepticism about Astraea’s right to rule, and incapable of providing the kind of focus for questions concerning the individual’s relation to the state, the limits of state power, and personal versus political identity which the malcontent persona permits in John Marston’s The Malcontent (1604). In this tragicomedy Malevole, Altofronto’s alter-ego, is a particular kind of malcontent, different from any noticed so far: he is described, for example, as not ambitious or determined to gain power for himself . Consistently satirical in his language and attitude, Malevole is content to act the fool, and to be taken to be one. His malcontent credentials are limited to the fact that he casts himself as an outsider, and thinks badly of the world. The result is that the audience begins to identify Altofronto, the deposed duke, as the real malcontent of the play’s title, who adopts his fake malcontent persona in order to regain the power and status he has lost. Taking Altofronto, the protagonist, as the play’s real malcontent makes it easier to understand why Marston created Malevole. It enabled him at once to preserve the Guarinian tragicomic model, which forbids any on-stage deaths, and to complicate it, since the play ends with the elimination (and thus metaphorically the killing) of Malevole, whose cynical persona is absorbed alarmingly into Altofronto’s in the play’s closing moments, when ‘Malevole’ remains on stage wearing Altofronto’s clothes. Typically in some form of disgrace, the malcontent in the drama is, or sometimes poses as, an unhappy and neglected man whose distinctive qualities can include a disruptive and sarcastic verbal idiom, thwarted ambition, poverty, and academic failure. Even applying the definition fairly strictly, one is faced with a large number of malcontents in Elizabethan and Jacobean plays, and with characters with sufficient ‘malcontent’ qualities to be admitted to the group. To make the discussion more manageable I have made a distinction between malcontents whose malcontentedness is a settled and permanent mental condition, and those for whom malcontentedness is (at least initially) a pose or an assumed role which they intend to exploit. A large number of the first group are younger brothers or bastards. This is not surprising, given the economic and social penalties that younger brothers and, even more acutely, illegitimate male offspring laboured under throughout the period, and the feelings of inferiority and exclusion which these stigmas generated. Bastards and younger brothers were viewed as ‘natural’ malcontents, and if they exhibited bitterness or hostility in response to such labelling, that only confirmed the rightness of the label. The important thing is that there is a clear connection here between the drama and prevailing social reality. The ‘stage malcontent’ is a product only partly of theatrical tradition: he could and often did express the sense of alienation and rejection experienced in specific forms by members of the audiences who watched these plays. Already in the decades before ‘malcontent’ itself enters the language, the drama begins to introduce characters whose resentment to such social pigeon-holing anticipates the behaviour and mental complexion of the malcontent proper. Gorboduc is an example. This play, performed at the Inner Temple during the Christmas festivities of 1561/1562, features a mother, Videna, who loves her elder son, Ferrex, as much as she hates her younger, Porrex. Already marginalized, the younger brother is driven by this further rejection to couple vindictiveness with ambition: “not content”, he “aspires to more...above his native right” (III, 1, 53-4). Gorboduc’s themes of the maternal misrecognition and the warping effects of being a younger son and brother reappear in Richard III (c. 1592), where the protagonist carries in addition the visual sign of his own unnaturalness in the form of physical deformity. He is, he says, therefore “determined to be a villain” (I, 1, 30), the pun on “determined” (resolved, but also ordained, destined) expressing the malcontent’s simultaneous acceptance of his socially prescribed identity as moral outcast and his desire to embrace it because it is willed, chosen and created by himself . The same determinism operates in the case of bastards, whose legal illegitimacy was thought of as at once reflecting and causing the moral illegitimacy that their behaviour and personalities were programmed to exhibit. In addition, the lustfulness and stealth that attended their conception was sure to reappear: bastards could be expected to be both lustful and deceitful. Edmund in King Lear (1605-1606) and Spurio in The Revenger’s Tragedy (1606) embody all these traits. The connection between Edmund’s character and his conception are suggested at the beginning of Lear, where Edmund is forced to listen to his father’s boastful account of it, and to hear himself described as a “whoreson”. In the following scene Edmund reveals his resentment towards his father and the society of which he is a part, but also not a part. He copes with it by resorting to a form of fatalism: “I should have been that I am had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing” (I, 2, 131-133). His bastard identity existed from the moment of his conception and is inalienable; he cannot conceive of himself – of his self – apart from it. Only when his father is dead does any alteration become possible, and even then the good he attempts to do is “in spite of mine own nature” (V, 3, 242). Spurio, Middleton’s discontented bastard, is even more in thrall to a false (both dishonest and counterfeit) identity. His vindictiveness is presented as entirely produced by his illegitimacy and his conviction that it makes him not fully human, an “uncertain man” (I, 2, 133). The personal and to some degree defensible grounds for vengefulness accorded to Edmund, in the form of Gloucester’s moral complacency and unfeeling remarks, are absent here: we are given no sense of the nature of Spurio’s relationship with his father the Duke. The treatment is flatter, and bleaker. Spurio comes close to being an ambulating symbol of his own counterfeit identity (“adultery is my nature”, I, 2, 177). Middleton withholds any sense of emotional complexity in his character, so that the old Duke’s death does not trigger any promptings of repentance – and one could say that the play itself endorses Spurio’s own conviction that he is a surplus quantity: he serves no particular dramatic function, apart from being briefly useful to Vindice’s revengeful plans . At the same time – and this is true of malcontents in many other plays – his cheerful cynicism and verbal wit are a source of considerable theatrical energy, so while he is in terms of the plot virtually redundant, he contributes significantly to the play’s black humour and its satiric vision. If the illegitimate sons and the younger brothers are in various degrees natural and involuntary malcontents, because their condition guarantees exclusion from all forms of social and political life, many other characters consciously assume a malcontent persona in order to pursue some secret agenda of their own. A complex example of this is Hamlet. Hamlet confesses to “my weakness and my melancholy” (II, 2, 597), perhaps viewing these traits as a settled part of his temperament rather than as having arisen only recently because of his father’s death and mother’s remarriage. At the same time, he consciously simulates other standard components of the malcontent personality, “putting on” an “antic disposition” (I, 5, 180), and telling Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that the reason for his “discontent” (this is the Bad Quarto’s term, the Good reads “distemper”) is that he lacks advancement. Calculation is at work here, rather than genuine self-description: the meaning of “advancement” he intends for his false friends is “ambition”, but the private meaning he intends for himself is that he is discontented because his plans to revenge his father’s death are not advancing as fast as he would like. A key source of the complexity of this play is thus that Hamlet is a genuine malcontent while simultaneously pretending to be one, and the dividing line between the reality and the role is constantly open to question. Shakespeare’s next tragedy, Othello (1602), offers in Iago another character who plays the malcontent while also being one. In his manipulation of Roderigo, he explains his hatred of Othello as a response to the promotion of Cassio, and bitterly denounces a world where “Preferment goes by letter and affection / And not by old gradation, where each second / Stood heir to th’ first” (I, 1, 34-37). Iago’s soliloquies, however, tell a different story, laying bare a tormented psychopathology involving sexual obsession and compulsive jealousy: “I hate the Moor / And it is thought abroad that ’twixt my sheets / He’s done my office” (I, 3, 385-387). Iago consciously uses the stock characteristics of the malcontent – ambition, resentfulness, a conviction of having been inadequately rewarded – to reassure Roderigo, and perhaps to some extent, himself. As in Hamlet, the character adopts a mask to provoke reactions, but here the adoption of the role works in a different way. Hamlet’s “antic disposition” is projected at everyone but Horatio, whereas Iago plays the malcontent only to Roderigo; for everyone else he creates another role, that of “honest Iago”. In The Revenger’s Tragedy this double-layering of malcontent identities, fake on top of real, reaches a high point of complex elaboration. The gap – and the overlap - between inner, perceived and outward identities, between what people are, what they take themselves to be, and what they contrive to make others think they are, is a paramount concern of the play. Vindice, in order to pursue his revenge on the murderer Duke, disguises himself as Piato, one meaning of which is “plated”. This should be a temporary disguise (“I’ll put on that knave for once”, I, 1, 93) but the play reveals that Vindice is actually Piato, since the elements from which Vindice constructs Piato’s identity reduplicate his own, and plot details corroborate this dovetailing: both characters have been socially demoted, and Vindice prostitutes Gloriana just as Piato seeks to prostitute Vindice’s sister . Middleton complicates the use of the character-type as a catalyst for a discourse on identity by creating a triple division of Vindice’s self. Vindice not only assumes the role of Piato, but later in the play he “plays” Hippolito’s melancholy and embittered brother whom Hippolito introduces to Lussurioso as someone he can employ as a knavish hireling – his task being to kill Vindice’s other fake (and true) self, Piato. This produces an ingenious short-circuiting: Vindice plays the role of the Vindice which his social betters impose on him, that of “a man / In whom much melancholy dwells” (IV, 1, 55-56), “of black condition, suitable / To want and ill content” (IV, 1, 70-71), possessing “a parlous melancholy” (IV, 2, 105) and a “ill-moneyed” man (IV, 2, 107). The dizzying ambiguities generated by this chain of duplicate selves are noted, appropriately, by Vindice: “Oh I’m in doubt / Whether I’m myself or no!” (IV, 4, 24-25). The mask of the malcontent at once conceals and expresses his identity. In Hamlet, Othello and The Revenger’s Tragedy true and pretended malcontents fold into one another so that the supposedly fake role expresses a degree of truth about the identity the role is meant to camouflage. In Webster’s The White Devil (1612) and The Duchess of Malfi (1614) this layering technique is largely absent: Flamineo and Bosola perceive themselves and are recognized by others as malcontents in a more straightforward way, without any metatheatrical dimension being involved. Whereas Hamlet, Iago and Vindice benefit (if that is the term) from a certain fluidity in the way the self is understood in their plays, so that they can move in and out of alternative personalities, these two Websterean characters are trapped in an oppressively punitive world governed by a social, economic and religious determinism. Here the malcontent is more victim than agent, and the limiting impact of low birth and poverty are more strongly registered. The struggle against these conditions gives these two malcontents a theatrical dynamism and energy which complicates our response to them. It also implies that simple condemnation of these discontented men who reject or invert all moral norms and social values (as in Flamineo’s wish to have “plurality of fathers”) may not be sustainable. As regards their treatment of the malcontent character, The White Devil is the more pessimistic play. Flamineo knows that social and economic constraints have made him what he is, but this knowledge does not give him the power to reshape his life. His dying words (“I do not look / Who went before, nor who shall follow me; / No, at myself I will begin and end”, V, 6, 254-256) declare the impossibility of growth or change. In no sense can the malcontent identity be regarded as energising or liberating, yet, for himself, he envisages no alternative to it. In The Duchess of Malfi, however, Bosola does at the end succeed in discarding his socially imposed role of malcontent and affirming his own subjective will. At the beginning of the play, Bosola’s status as a malcontent is undisputed . It is taken to be his essential identity: “Be yourself: / Keep your old garb of melancholy” (I, 2, 201-202), and he becomes Ferdinand’s “creature” (I, 2, 211). But in Act IV the play begins to suggest the presence of a different self, one which accepts the existence and the relevance of moral choices and the guiding power of conscience. The result is a conflict of impulses, as Bosola begins to pity the Duchess but feels simultaneously tied to Ferdinand (and by extension to his own malcontent side), and then takes shelter in a sequence of disguises designed, absurdly, to distance him from her murder (he is first “like an old man”, then “a tomb-maker”, then “the common bellman” (IV, 2, 115, 147, 172). Ironically, it is through another role, that of revenger, that he pursues justice and access to a new, morally aware self, and this role, too, fails, since he kills not Ferdinand but Antonio, the only person that he wants to save. Yet in spite – or perhaps because – of this failure Webster is able to dramatise the successful rejection of coercive social patterning in the formulation of the self, so that Bosola’s final verdict on himself is not undercut by irony or pessimism: he is of “good nature, yet i’th’end / Neglected” (V, 5, 86-87). What prompted Webster to modify the characterization of the malcontent in The Duchess, and with it his dramatic function? The answer lies not with a belated attempt at moralism or Webster’s supposed inconsistency and inability to create a coherent dramatic structure. One is dealing here with a deliberate use of sources, a use not previously noticed. In Matteo Bandello’s twenty-third novella Il signor Antonio Bologna sposa la duchessa di Amalfi e tutti due sono ammazzati, published in his Novelle of 1554 and translated by William Painter in 1567 in The Palace of Pleasure, Daniel de Bozola is a Lombard captain who kills Antonio Bologna. However, before the author mentions this murderer, we are told of a Neapolitan gentleman who was first asked to kill the Duchess’ husband and, “having chaunged his minde, and differing from day to day to sorte the same to effect” , was substituted by the Aragonian brothers with a man “of larger [i.e. less scrupulous] Conscience than the other, inveigled with Covetousnesse, and hired for ready Money” , namely Bozola. Bosola’s hesitation and repentance in the play clearly derive from Bandello’s description of this Neapolitan gentleman whose “Conscience” makes him reluctant to kill Antonio. It occurred to Webster that he could fuse the two historical figures (the Gentleman and Daniel de Bozola) and this in turn induced him to intensify the restorative and life-enhancing impact of the Duchess on those around her, as it is her responses to Bosola’s malcontent side which prompts the awakening of his conscience. Webster reshapes the malcontent in this play, but his plays remain part of the progressive pessimism of Jacobean literature. The decisive shift from agents to victims and the increasingly negative and satirical tone affect the portrayal of the character in Jacobean tragedy, a shift boosted in Webster by his nihilism, his inclination to depict a world without meaning or direction, where there is no coherence visible in either the human mind or the sequence of events. The pessimism is hardly diminished if one regards Webster instead as a social and political commentator, preoccupied with the power of ‘great men’ and with the idea that identity is a product of power-relations and the individual’s economic circumstances. After The Duchess of Malfi, the malcontent figure becomes flatter and less of a vehicle for the exploration of identity and subjectivity (the only exception is De Flores in Middleton and Rowley’s The Changeling). In Massinger’s The Unnatural Combat (1624-1625), for example, Captain Belgarde is defined as a malcontent because of his social and economical position, but he is mainly a comic figure who, at the end of the play, is rewarded for his services. In the Restoration drama, Thomas D’Urfey frequently uses the word “malcontent”, and he offers a portrait of this figure in a non-dramatic work (The Malecontent: A Satyr, 1684). Here the author describes a hermit, “A forlorn uncomfortable wretch, / Grizzled with hair, by Sorrow and by Years, / His Sullen face bedew’d with Tears, / [who] Look’t like the Figure of Mortality, / Or Man in his first State of misery” . His function is simply to denounce the vices of the world. With the end of the reign of James I the malcontent had lost his expressive potential and imaginative appeal, an appeal summed up by Demetrius’ comment as reported by Seneca in his De Providentia, and translated by Thomas Lodge in 1614: “There is nothing, saith he, more unhappy then that man that hath never beene touched with adversitie: for he hath not had the meanes to know himselfe”

Nel teatro shakespeariano è molto spesso presente un uso del tempo affatto moderno e connesso con le nuove tecnologie, se si considera come moderna la presenza massiccia nel canone di una temporalità realistica e cadenzata dal movimento delle lancette dell’orologio, vero oggetto rivoluzionario del nuovo modello temporale. Tra i tanti strumenti che Shakespeare impiega per la manipolazione dell’elemento temporale a livello di drammaturgia, uno è sembrato particolarmente innovativo e rilevante: la scadenza. Si è pensato che la presenza di questo elemento in circa un quarto della produzione shakespeariana potesse rappresentare, anche solo dal punto di vista quantitativo, un dato interessante e meritevole di esame approfondito. Si è infatti ritenuto che l’imposizione di un limite di tempo preciso e scandito dall'orologio all’interno del dramma testimoni non soltanto la sussistenza di un nuovo approccio alla temporalità, ma anche la familiarità del pubblico con un nuovo modo di pensare il tempo. Si è considerato inoltre che il legame tra la scadenza e una nuova concezione del tempo potesse risultare con maggiore evidenza mettendola a confronto con un altro elemento, rappresentativo invece di un pensiero più tradizionale: la profezia. Nella profezia si è infatti voluto vedere una sorta di antecedente della scadenza stessa, a causa di alcuni aspetti formali che le accomunano; allo stesso tempo, tuttavia, ci si è concentrati sull’aspetto che le differenzia, operante proprio sul piano temporale e tale da renderle emblematiche di due tradizioni culturali e teatrali vicine ma fondamentalmente differenti.
Shakespearian theatre often presents a use of time which is undeniably modern and connected to new technologies, if we consider as modern the presence, in the Canon, of a realistic kind of temporality, marked by the rhythm of the clock, the revolutionary object that characterizes the new temporal model. Among the techniques that Shakespeare uses to manipulate the temporal element on a dramaturgical level, one seemed to be particularly innovative and relevant: deadline. The presence of this element in about one fourth of Shakespearean production could represent, if only from a quantitative perspective, an interesting fact, worthy of in-depth analysis. The imposition of a precise time limit, marked by the clock, was thought to be a testimony both of a new approach to temporality, and of the audience's familiarity with a new way to conceive time. The connection between deadline and a new conception of time was thought to better emerge by comparing it to another element, more representative of a traditional way of thinking: prophecy. Prophecy was considered as a sort of precedent for deadline, because of some formal aspects that they have in common; at the same time, however, the work focused on their differences, that occur on the temporal level, so much so that they almost become symbols of two cultural and theatrical traditions that are close, but fundamentally different.

Il progetto si sviluppa attraverso una successione di padiglioni, piccoli elementi , per lo più belvederi ,che portano il visitatore dall’ Ingresso del Giardino Inglese della Reggia di Caserta, fino al progetto conclusivo del teatro all’aperto. Il percorso segue un tracciato sinuoso che, instaura un dialogo con le preesistenze e che va ad armonizzarsi con la natura e con il percorso dell’acqua, elemento generatore del complesso.

Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e Expressão. Programa de Pós-graduação em Letras/Inglês e Literatura Correspondente.
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Rispetto agli altri studi sulla ricezione dell’opera drammatica di Shakespeare, questa tesi sulla fortuna del Julius Caesar nel teatro italiano dal 1949 al 2012 si spende innanzitutto per promuovere una rivalutazione, in senso positivo, dell’apporto degli adattamenti drammaturgici alla conoscenza del Bardo inglese in Italia. Avvalendosi di documentazione a stampa e archivistica coeva, nonché di interviste agli artisti del nostro teatro contemporaneo, lo studio ha verificato come nel realizzare le proprie messinscene del Julius Cesar i registi e gli attori che nel passato recente vi si sono cimentati abbiano perseguito tanto la ricostruzione filologica del dettato shakespeariano originale, quanto la propria ricerca stilistica personale, spesso e volentieri avvalendosi della collaborazione con eminenti esperti, al fine di presentare al pubblico allestimenti sempre esteticamente e filologicamente rigorosi, oltre che pertinenti e significativi. Pertanto, interrogandosi in generale sulle sfide e i compromessi insiti nella prassi ermeneutica, in definitiva questa ricerca sull’interpretazione del Julius Caesar nella scena italiana contemporanea tenta altresì di “demistificare” entrambe le mitologie shakespeariana e cesarea al fine di auspicare nuove pratiche di indagine drammaturgica e registica che permettano al nostro teatro di superare la crisi che attualmente attraversa. Ricostruendo i caratteri dei quindici allestimenti contemplati dal nostro studio, infatti, si è cercato di trarre dalla storia del nostro teatro e dei nostri studi shakespeariani degli utili spunti che possano infondere nuova linfa vitale alla dialettica tra la ricerca accademica e quella teatrale.
This dissertation on the reception of William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in Italian theatre from 1949 to 2012 calls for a positive consideration of theatrical adaptation practices, which only recently have been appropriately valued in Italian critical discourse on Shakespeare’s staging desiderata. Based on thorough archival research and interviews with contemporary theatre directors and actors, it also questions how much, and with what results, Italian theatre and academia have cooperated in the last seventy years so as to offer to the Italian audience "compromise stagings" of the Bard’s Roman tragedy that pursue both philology and innovation in theatrical work. While focusing on the history of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar hermeneutic practice, this research may also be read as an investigation into the myths surrounding both the historical figure of Julius Caesar and that of Shakespeare. This is achieved through an historical reconstruction of different critical approaches to textual analysis in the study of both subjects, which indirectly yet daringly tackles the question of why Italian theatre practitioners prefer Shakespeare’s plays to new dramaturgy in Italian. Through the study of a set of 15 Julius Caesar Italian productions, I thus aim to assess the “liveliness” of Italian theatre and present solution to its current “crisis” by learning from the past and suggesting new ways for active cooperation between theatre and academia.

This study traces, in broad brushstrokes, the history of the translation of Spanish Golden Age drama into English from the barren times of the 17th and 18th century to the comparative flood of versions done in the contemporary period. The move away from translations for the page towards renderings aimed at public performance is explored and translators’ varied approaches to the dramatic material outlined and explained. Different techniques employed by translators and adaptors, faced with the perceived difficulties of the Spanish play-texts, are analysed schematically in the second section.

This essay describes how variants in stage directions and speech prefixes of early modern plays (between 1585 and 1642), have been treated in modern editions from the 19th century to the present. The analysed variants derive both from different (usually printed) witnesses and from a single manuscript witness when the stage directions and speech prefixes are altered by a hand different from the main manuscript hand. Prior to this description, the essay offers an overview of the editorial treatment of stage directions in general in English plays of the period.