“...a great crisis of identification and understanding of reality” : Strehler’s journey through Shakespeare Nigri, L 1075/sec.2.04nig Title “...a great crisis of identification and understanding of reality” : Strehler’s journey through Shakespeare Authors Nigri, L Type Book Section URL This version is available at: http://usir.salford.ac.uk/id/eprint/52708/ Published Date 2020 USIR is a digital collection of the research output of the University of Salford. Where copyright permits, full text material held in the repository is made freely available online and can be read, downloaded and copied for non-commercial private study or research purposes. Please check the manuscript for any further copyright restrictions. For more information, including our policy and submission procedure, please contact the Repository Team at:
[email protected]. 1 CHAPTER 4 “. a great crisis of identification and understanding of reality”: Strehler’s Journey Through Shakespeare Lucia Nigri Abstract Shakespeare’s plays proved crucial in Strehler’s career in many respects as they provided ‘narratives’ through which he could interpret the sequence of cultural, political, and social crises that he acknowledged, experienced personally, and more or less directly addressed in his own theatre. This chapter explores how, through specific Shakespearean plays, these crises – which were both individual and collective – raised in Strehler questions on the nature of history. It also explores Strehler’s interrogation of the meaning of man in a world dominated by monotonous and nonsensical power games from the perspective of a cyclic view of history. Strehler’s encounter with Shakespeare is examined through his own writings as well as reviews and other related material.