ABSTRACT

Barnardine is not a citizen, or at least he is only for as long as he recognizes the State's legitimacy. He stops being a citizen, to some extent and – so to speak – not once and for all when he deems that the State is making exorbitant requests, such as when it demands his very life. So, concerning Barnardine at least, it seems difficult to say that the Bohemian killer is an allusion, a reflection, the result of the irruption of time into the play; it is equally as complicated to assert that he represents Shakespeare's claim to artistic autonomy. Barnardine's barbaric nature has nothing to do with a lack of good manners, but with his being a borderer, on the edge of the civitas. Barnardine does not want to die, and he will not die, because his refusal immediately produces some juridical and political consequences regardless of his awareness of them.