Over the centuries Shakespeare’s work has often provided cultures with narratives capable of explaining their own rises, furnishing them with what Kenneth Burke famously defined as ‘equipments for living’. The research investigates how, across time, Shakespeare has supplied Italian culture with some such narratives at particular moments of crisis. The aim is not to draw an exhaustive overview of the history of Shakespeare’s reception in Italy, but to identify particular moments in history when Shakespeare seems to have played a pivotal role in the life of individual writers, directors, thinkers, critics, etc., as well as socially, politically and culturally at large. The research spans a whole century, from 1916 to 2016.
