ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the question whether our globalized world requires a new conception of crisis from the angle of a few recent Italian reinterpretations of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, a particular example of political crisis endowed with historical agency. The figure of Caesar, his fate, and the Roman history have a special place in Italian memories. They are part of the Italian cultural heritage both ancient and modern, but Shakespeare’s version of that story is also part of that Italian store. The discussion focuses on three adaptations staged at times fraught with Shakespearean memories and global celebrations: 2012, when the Olympics in London were also the occasion of a Global Shakespeare Festival, and 2016, when Shakespeare’s fourth centenary was celebrated worldwide. This study explores ways in which an increasingly disturbing evasion of Shakespeare’s tragic sense of history was suggested through new responses to a plurality of contemporary stimuli. It asks how and whether a play such as Julius Caesar may still matter in Italy, and what effects the pressures of a new sense of global crisis may have on our conception of modern tragedy.
