Shakespeare, Nation, and Race in Fascist Italy

Bassi, Shaul

doi:10.1057/978-1-137-49170-1_4

Shaul Bassi⁴

Part of the book series: Reproducing Shakespeare ((RESH))

461 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter investigates the impact of the cultural politics of Fascism on Shakespeare, particularly on the criticism and performance of his Venetian and Roman plays. The largely forgotten Carlo Formichi and Piero Rebora were prominent intellectuals in an academic milieu where only 1 % of university professors refused to sign an oath of allegiance to the Fascist Party. Their interpretations of Shakespeare were pervaded by a self-conscious, militant ‘presentism’, aimed at a celebration of his Italian characters and plots functional to the consolidation of ethnic and national pride. However, some characters and plots proved recalcitrant, requiring elaborate and ultimately unconvincing reading strategies. Italian interpretations of Shakespeare demonstrate a diffuse aversion to ethnic and religious difference, a common thread that can be found even in democratic, anti-Fascist thinkers such as Croce and Gramsci.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Chapter: USD 29.95; Price excludes VAT (USA)

eBook: USD 79.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Hardcover Book: USD 99.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

1.
Riccardo Bonavita, Spettri dell’altro. Letteratura e razzismo nell’Italia contemporanea (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2009).
2.
Vincenzo Errante, “Introduzione.” In William Shakespeare, Il Mercante di Venezia (Firenze: Sansoni, 1948), ix–x.
3.
Gino Bassi, “Nel terzo centenario della morte di Guglielmo Shakespeare,” Rassegna Nazionale, 16 April 1916, 11.
4.
Balz Engler, “Shakespeare in the trenches.” In Shakespeare and Race, edited by Catherine Alexander and Stanley Wells (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 107.
5.
Roberto Bassi. Skirmishes on Lake Ladoga, translated by Jeremy Scott (New York: CPL Editions, 2014).
6.
Emilio Gentile, Il fascismo in tre capitoli (Bari: Laterza, 2004).
7.
Alberto Burgio, Nel nome della Razza. Il razzismo nella storia d’Italia, 1870–1945 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999), 10.
8.
David Bidussa, Il mito del bravo italiano (Milano: Il Saggiatore, 1994).
9.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Fascist Modernities: Italy, 1922–1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 155.
10.
Emilio Ludwig, Colloqui con Mussolini (Milano: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1932), 73.
11.
Quoted in Ben-Ghiat, Fascist Modernities, 157.
12.
Mauro Raspanti, “Il mito ariano nella cultura italiana fra Otto e Novecento,” in Alberto Burgio, Nel nome della Razza. Il razzismo nella storia d’Italia, 1870–1945 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999), 84.
13.
Valentina Pisanty, La difesa della razza. Antologia 1938–1943 (Milano: Bompiani, 2006).
14.
Pisanty, La difesa della razza, 193.
15.
La difesa della razza, 59.
16.
La difesa della razza, 226.
17.
Giovanni Belardelli, Il Ventennio degli intellettuali. Cultura, politica, ideologia nell’Italia fascista (Bari: Laterza, 2005), 211.
18.
Andrea Giardina and André Vauchez, Il mito di Roma. Da Carlo Magno a Mussolini (Bari: Laterza, 2000), 219.
19.
Ludwig, Colloqui con Mussolini, 190.
20.
Giardina and Vauchez, Il mito di Roma, 247.
21.
Quoted in Jane Dunnet, “The Rhetoric of Romanità: Representations of Caesar in Fascist Theatre”, in Julius Caesar in Western Culture, edited by Maria Wyke (Oxford, Blackwell, 2006), 250–251.
22.
Giovacchino Forzano, Mussolini autore drammatico. Con facsimili di autografi inediti. Campo di maggio—Villafranca—Cesare (Firenze: Barbera, 1954).
23.
Dunnet, “The Rhetoric of Romanità”, 257.
24.
“The Rhetoric of Romanità”, 257–258.
25.
G.[?]O.G.[?]., “Sensazionale esperimento medianico a Venezia,” La Stampa della Sera, 8 April 1936.
26.
Luigi Bellotti, L’italianità di Shakespeare. Guglielmo Crollalanza grande genio italiano (Venezia: Opera D.N. Sezione Lettere, 1943).
27.
Alessandro Muccioli, Guglielmo Shakespeare nella vita e nelle opere (Firenze: Battistelli, 1922), 178.
28.
Mario Praz, Caleidoscopio Shakespeariano (Bari: Adriatica Editrice, 1969), 135.
29.
Richard Halpern, Shakespeare Among the Moderns (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997).
30.
Ortwin De Graef, Dirk De Geest, and Eveline Vanfraussen, “Fascist politics and literary criticism,” in The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism. Vol. 9: Twentieth-Century Historical, Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives, edited by Christa Knellwolf and Christopher Norris (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 76.
31.
Benedetto Croce, Shakespeare (Bari: Laterza, 1925), 25.
32.
Croce, Shakespeare, 163.
33.
Shakespeare, 167–168.
34.
Giorgio Boatti, Preferirei di no. Le storie dei dodici professori che si opposero a Mussolini (Torino: Einaudi, 2001).
35.
Carlo Formichi, Guglielmo Shakespeare (Roma: Formiggini, 1928), 9–10.
36.
Formichi, Guglielmo Shakespeare, 14.
37.
Guglielmo Shakespeare, 44.
38.
Guglielmo Shakespeare, 45–46.
39.
Piero Rebora, Civiltà italiana e civiltà inglese. Studi e ricerche (Firenze: Le Monnier, 1936), xi.
40.
Rebora, Civiltà italiana, 7–8.
41.
Civiltà italiana, 8.
42.
Civiltà italiana, 27.
43.
Rebora, Civiltà italiana, 31.
44.
Civiltà italiana, 42.
45.
John Gross, Shylock: Four Hundred Years in the Life of a Legend (London: Chatto and Windus, 1992), 293–298.
46.
L.[?]D.[?] “Un’interpretazione razzista dell’Otello,” La difesa della razza 3, no. 24, 20 October 1940.
47.
“Giulio Cesare di Shakespeare alla Basilica di Massenzio,” Gazzetta del Popolo, 2 August 1935.
48.
Dunnet, “The Rhetoric of Romanità”, 252.
49.
Osvaldo Gibertini, “Giulio Cesare alla Basilica di Massenzio,” La Tribuna, 3 August 1935.
50.
Gary Taylor, Reinventing Shakespeare. A Cultural History from the Restoration to the Present (London: Vintage, 1991), 271.
51.
John L. Styan, Max Reinhardt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), xx.
52.
Siegfried Jacobsohn, cit. in Styan, Max Reinhardt, 62.
53.
Cit. in Anna Busi, Otello in Italia (1777–1972) (Bari: Adriatica, 1973), 262–263.
54.
Erika Fischer-Lichte, “Theatre as Festive Play: Max Reinhardt’s Production of The Merchant of Venice,” in Venetian Views, Venetian Blinds. English Fantasies of Venice, edited by Manfred Pfister and Barbara Schaff (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999), 172.
55.
Ilaria Pavan, Il podestà ebreo. La storia di Renzo Ravenna tra fascismo e leggi razziali (Bari: Laterza, 2006). For Verona and the Shakespearean connection, see Chap. 8.
56.
Luca Giuliani, Venezia nel cinema italiano. Allegorie storiche a cavallo degli anni Quaranta (Udine: Campanotto, 2003).
57.
Lucien Dubech, “Le Marchand de Venise à Venise,” Newspaper clipping, Biblioteca Casa Goldoni, Venezia, 1936.
58.
Robin Headlam Wells, “Historicism and “Presentism” in Early Modern Studies,” The Cambridge Quarterly, 29, no. 1 (2000), 37–60.
59.
Reprinted in Praz, Caleidoscopio Shakespeariano.
60.
Giorgio Tomaso Cimino, Il Mercante di Venezia. Melodramma in 4 atti da Shakespeare (Milano: Ricordi, 1878).
61.
Croce, Shakespeare, 169.
62.
Benedetto Croce, My Philosophy: And Other Essays on the Moral and Political Problems of Our Time, translated by E. F. Carritt (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1949), 37–50.
63.
Piero Rebora, Shakespeare. La vita, l’opera, il messaggio (Milano: Arnoldo Mondadori, 1947), 11.
64.
Forzano, Mussolini autore drammatico, xl.
65.
Mussolini autore drammatico, xlii.
66.
On the Italian as “willing executioners” of the Jews and on the self-exculpatory narrative that has characterized the transition from Fascism to the postwar era, see Simon Levis Sullam, I carnefici italiani. Scene dal genocidio degli ebrei (Milano: Feltrinelli, 2015).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Ca’Foscari University of Venice, Venice, Italy
Shaul Bassi

Authors

Shaul Bassi
View author publications
You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Copyright information

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Bassi, S. (2016). Shakespeare, Nation, and Race in Fascist Italy. In: Shakespeare’s Italy and Italy’s Shakespeare. Reproducing Shakespeare. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-49170-1_4

Download citation

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-49170-1_4
Published: 30 April 2016
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-50285-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-49170-1
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics