The British Institute of Florence Proceedings of the ‘Shakespeare and His Contemporaries’ Graduate Conference 2009, 2010, 2011 Edited by Mark Roberts Volume I, Winter 2012 The British Institute of Florence Proceedings of the ‘Shakespeare and His Contemporaries’ Graduate Conference 2009, 2010, 2011 Edited by Mark Roberts Published by The British Institute of Florence Firenze, 2012 The British Institute of Florence Proceedings of the ‘Shakespeare and His Contemporaries’ Graduate Conference 2009, 2010, 2011 Edited by Mark Roberts Copyright © The British Institute of Florence 2012 The British Institute of Florence Palazzo Lanfredini, Lungarno Guicciardini 9, 50125 Firenze, Italia ISBN 978-88-907244-0-4 www.britishinstitute.it Tel +39 055 26778270 Registered charity no. 290647 Dedicated to Artemisia (b. 2012) Contents Foreword vii Preface ix 2009 The ‘demusicalisation’ of St Augustine’s tempus in Shakespeare’s tragedies 1 SIMONE ROVIDA Bardolatry in Restoration adaptations of Shakespeare 11 ENRICO SCARAVELLI 2010 Chaos in Arcadia: the politics of tragicomedy in Stuart pastoral theatre 19 SHEILA FRODELLA ‘The tragedy of a Jew’, the passion of a Merchant: shifting genres in a changing world 25 CHIARA LOMBARDI Shylock è un Gentleman! The Merchant of Venice, Henry Irving e l’Inghilterra Vittoriana 33 FRANCESCA MONTANINO 2011 ‘I wish this solemn mockery were o’er’: William Ireland’s ‘Shakespeare Forgeries’ 47 FRANCESCO CALANCA Giulietta come aporia: William Shakespeare e l’idea di Amore nel Platonismo del Rinascimento 55 CESARE CATÀ ‘Other’ translations of Shakespeare’s plays: the ‘ASL Shakespeare’ project 65 ELENA INTORCIA Lucanic words and Machiavellian deeds: dreams and plans of destruction in Ben Jonson’s Catiline 75 DOMENICO LOVASCIO An intercultural (re)writing of a Shakespearean text: Brecht’s Coriolan 87 MARIA ELISA MONTIRONI ‘The greatest feast and ioye that euer Eye sawe’: George Gascoigne’s The Princely Pleasures 97 and the Kenilworth Festivities (1575) ELEONORA OGGIANO Measure for Measure and the Bible of James I 107 CRISTINA PARAVANO The Tempest: riflessioni sul meraviglioso shakespeariano e rifrazioni nei Naturmärchen 117 di Ludwig Tieck SIMONETTA SAGLIOCCA vi Foreword The British Institute of Florence (founded in 1917) launched its ‘Shakespeare Graduate Conference’ in 2009, with a view to providing an annual platform for young Italian doctoral candidates, and those who had recently earned their doctorates, to present their own contributions to Shakespearean studies before an audience consisting of their peers and professors as well as members of the public. The first ‘Shakespeare Graduate Conference’, restricted to the universities of Tuscany, was held in the Palazzo Lanfredini in Florence on Friday 25 September 2009. The morning session was chaired by Professor Serpieri, and the afternoon one by Professor Fernando Cioni (Florence), both of whom gave papers. Papers were also given by Annalisa De Donatis (Siena), Simone Rovida (Florence), Laura Russo (Pisa), Enrico Scaravelli (Florence) and Valeria Pellis (Florence). The second conference, now extended in subject to ‘Shakespeare and his Contemporaries’ and in appeal to all the universities of Italy, took place on Tuesday 20 April 2010, during the British Institute’s annual Shakespeare Week. One session was chaired by Professor Paola Pugliatti (Florence), and one by Professor Keir Elam (Bologna). Papers were given by Professor Pugliatti and Professor Cioni, and by Francesca Montanino (Siena), Chiara Lombardi (Turin), Mauro Spicci (Milan), Roxanne Barbara Doerr (Verona), Enrico Scaravelli (Florence) and Sheila Frodella (Florence). The third conference, also entitled ‘Shakespeare and his Contemporaries’, was held on Tuesday 14 April 2011. Sessions were chaired by Professor Carla Dente (Pisa) and Professor Claudia Corti (Florence). There were papers by Professor Dente and Professor Corti, and by Cristina Paravano (Milan), Cesare Catà (Macerata), Francesco Calanca (Florence), Elena Intorcia (Naples), Domenico Lovascio (Genoa), Simonetta Sagliocca (Florence), Maria Elisa Montroni (Urbino) and Eleonora Oggiano (Verona). For the present online publication, papers presented at the first three conferences have been selected by ‘blind review’. The variety of subject, methodology and critical stance apparent in the texts we have chosen is, we believe, a good indication of the range and vitality of Shakespearean studies in Italy today. We hope that this new initiative of publishing the papers of the British Institute conference online will provide useful assistance to participants in their academic careers. We take this opportunity of thanking for their valuable advice and cooperation Professor Nicholas Brownlees, Professor Fernando Cioni, Professor Claudia Corti, Professor Carla Dente, Professor Paola Pugliatti and Professor Emeritus Alessandro Serpieri. We also thank the Italian Association of Shakespearean and Early Modern Studies (IASEMS), the University of Florence, and the Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze. In addition, I should like to thank my colleagues Lucia Cappelli, April Child, Rebecca De Masi, Alyson Price and Hermione Thompson, and especially Sofia Novello, who was the ideatrix of the entire project and has led it from the beginning, as well as the Director of the British Institute, Sara Milne. Mark Roberts, M.A. (Oxon.) British Institute of Florence, November 2012 vii viii Preface On the occasion of the first online publication of a selection of papers from the various editions of the ‘Shakespeare and his Contemporaries’ Graduate Conference it is only fair that a few words are spent on account of the Italian Association of Shakespearean and Early Modern Studies – IASEMS - on the fruitful collaboration with the Conference founding Institution, The British Institute of Florence. IASEMS is particularly keen on promoting the study of early modern literature and culture among university students, and among young scholars in particular, in a period when the recent restructuring of higher education seems more inclined to privilege the study of contemporary cultural phenomena at large. The availability of recent technologies, with its undoubtedly greater impact on our undergraduates, seems to endorse this trend. IASEMS, instead, intends to work for implementing and complementing any meaningful interpretation of contemporary literature and culture with the depth of insights offered by a good knowledge of the past. And much of what has been done so far by the association is connected with the ‘Shakespeare and His Contemporaries’ Graduate Conference, in Florence. The Conference, with its mixed audience of people of different ages and background, all of them sharing a keen interest in English literary culture at large, is a splendid framework (and venue) to help a young scholar to find the right key for an effective communication. I would like to highlight also the fact that each year the subject of the Conference aims to suggest a new perspective, a critical viewpoint or a methodology capable of giving a valuable indication as to the direction of contemporary Shakespeare and early modern studies. For this reason IASEMS and The British Institute collaborate in orienting Italian Shakespeare Studies. Professor Carla Dente University of Pisa, Founding member and former President of IASEMS November 2012 ix x ‘Shakespeare Graduate Conference’ 2009 xi The ‘demusicalisation’ of St Augustine’s tempus in Shakespeare’s tragedies Simone Rovida University of Florence Paper given on 25 September 2009 The aim of this paper is to analyse the process of ‘demusicalisation’ of the concept of time in Shakespeare’s tragedies as a perfect example of a wider cultural change that, during the Renaissance, put an end to an old, traditional way of representing and perceiving the philosophical meaning of time.1 Shakespeare and his contemporaries inherited a concept of time which dated back to the philosophical and theological inquiries of medieval scholars. Nonetheless the Renaissance universe is a post-Copernican universe where the old dogmas and medieval systems of values and certainties were disintegrating, giving way to the rise of modern relativistic thought, in which everything is mutable and nothing absolutely true or absolutely false any longer. And along with the old dogmas, even the traditional Christian way of conceptualizing time started to be considered more and more inadequate. In Shakespeare, the Renaissance deconstruction of the medieval semantic view of time is particularly evident. In his tragedies much more than the comedies (where the traditional Neo-Platonic doctrine is more apparent), the concept of time undergoes a radical theoretical change which breaks definitively from medieval Christian thought. Shakespeare in fact ‘demusicalises’ – and this is exactly what I want to point out – the axiomatic definition of time given by one of the most important medieval scholars, St Augustine. In particular, in Shakespeare the demusicalisation of time implies a deconstruction of the semantic domain and imagery of time given by St Augustine in his famous work entitled Confessions. Comparing some passages from Confessions with some from Shakespeare’s tragedies, I will show how Shakespeare categorically reverses the semantic ‘isotopy’, or the cluster, the imagery St Augustine used to describe time in his text. St. Augustine and the musical conception of time Augustine gave probably the most important definition of time in the history of Christian theology, an image bound to become a true topos