“Narrating and Unravelling Italian Crises through Shakespeare (2000–2016)”

Contemporary Italian theatre has witnessed a wide range of Shakespearean productions, whose significance with respect to the theme of crisis has been twofold. On the one hand, Shakespeare has been employed in Italy to face the radical reduction in economic support suffered by theatre professionals, who have then relied on the marketability of the Bard’s ‘brand’ for funding and to draw audiences to the theatre. On the other hand, Shakespeare’s plays have proved functional to unravelling cultural, social and political problems in Italy. Accordingly, this chapter investigates the function of Shakespeare both as a marketing strategy and as an intellectual tool to tackle the different crises which have traversed Italy since the beginning of the new millennium.