Introduction: Shakespeare Studies in Italy Since 1964

Michele Marrapodi

With a Postscript

Giorgio Melchiori

Part One: Theory and Practice

A Midsummer Night's Dream: An Example of Shakespeare's Specularity

Marcello Pagnini

Bonds of Love and Death in The Merchant of Venice

Alessandro Serpieri

The Interdiction of Eroticism in Shakespeare's Histories

Fernando Ferrara

Shakespeare's Discursive Strategies and Their Definitions of Subjectivity

Angela Locatelli

Part Two: Theme and Culture

In a Time of Unrest: A Role for the Theater in Measure for Measure

Vito Amoruso

Shakespeare's Uncultured Caesar on the Elizabethan Stage

Claudia Corti

Shakespeare's History Plays as a ``Scene'' of the Disappearance of Popular Discourse

Laura Di Michele

``Now I play a merchant's part'': The Space of the Merchant in Shakespeare's Early Comedies

Mariangela Tempera

Three Kings, Herod of Jewry, and a Child: Apocalypse and Infinity of the World in Antony and Cleopatra

Gilberto Sacerdoti

Part Three: Language and Ideology

A National Idiom and Other Languages: Notes on Elizabethan Ambivalence with Examples from Shakespeare

Vanna Gentili

``But thou didst understand me by my signs'': The Instability of Signs in King John

Roberta Mullini

``Let her witness it'': The Rhetoric of Desdemona

Michele Marrapodi

``Great mischiefs mask in expected pleasures'': The Rhetoric of Expectation and the Rhetoric of Surprise in English Baroque Theater

Franco Marenco

From Shakespeare to Dryden: Three Dramatic Incipits

Viola Papetti

Bibliography

Contributors

Index