City, Baricco

People believe that the difficulties of a prodigy originate in the pressure placed on him by those around him, in the terrible expectations they have of him.

That's nonsense. The real problem is within, and others have nothing to do with it. The real problem is talent. Talent is like a cell gone mad, it grows uncontrollably and under no compulsion. It's as if someone had built a bowling alley in your house. It ruins you completely, yet it's also beautiful, and maybe in time you learn to bowl, brilliantly, and you become the greatest bowler in the world, but your house, how in the world can you put it right, how can you save it, how do you manage to hold on to something so that eventually, at the right moment, you can say This is my house, get out, you pigs, it's my house. You can't do it.

Talent is destructive, it's objectively destructive, and what happens around it doesn't count. It works from the inside, and destroys. You have to be very strong, to save something. And that is a boy. Can you imagine a bowling alley in the middle of a boy's house? Just the noise it makes, every blessed day, a constant uproar, and the certainty that silence, true silence-you can forget about it. Houses without silence. What sort of houses are they? Who can restore that boy's house to him?

Appunti per capire Eyes Wide shut

Attenzione: questi sono solo appunti riguardanti un interessante esame del professor Mazzarella che intende valutare il film Eyes Wide Shut di Kubrick in relazione alla novella da cui è tratto, Traumnovelle di Schnitzler.
Spero di aver colmato le mancanze di questi appunti attraverso i link extratestuali

Doppio sogno (Giuseppe Fanese)
Traumnovelle, scritta tra il 1921 e il 1925, era già una bozza nel 1907.
In una lettera, Freud scrisse a Schnitzler “ Credo lei sia un ricercatore della psicologia del profondo.”Secondo Schnitzler c’è una sfera psichica importante trascurata dagli psicoanalisti: il medioconscio o semiconscio.

Con la definizione “inspired by” Kubrick non ha dato al suo film una collocazione precisa. Sicuramente, si discosta nel tempo e nel luogo dalla novella. La pellicola non ha nulla del film in costume.

Il personaggio femminile della Traumnovelle ha maggior spessore esistenziale e sapienzale; quello maschile brilla per grettezza morale e una certa ottusità. Il protagonista di Doppio Sogno scopre che dietro alla civiltà borghese c’è l’abisso: “tutto quell’ordine, quell’armonia, quella sicurezza della sua esistenza non erano che apparenza e menzogna”. L’unione dei contrari nella novella si profila innanzi tutto nel binomio di eros e thanatos (esemplare è il sogno di Albertine).
La carrozza che porta Nachtigall alla villa in cui si svolge l’orgia sembra una carrozza funebre.
La rispettabilità del medico, una figura considerata nell’Ottocento ancora “redentore dell’umanità” è messa in dubbio nelle opere di Schnitzler. Questo emerge anche in Eyes Wide Shut.
La Traumnovelle è una vicenda paradigmatica. E’ il suo carattere esemplare e astratto a essere colto da Kubrick.
Scienza medica, riconoscimento sociale, conoscenza e famiglia sono le istituzioni ricamate nella storia di Fridolin (e Bill). Il desiderio di essere qualcosa, qualcosa che garantisca la sua identità, le chiama in campo, ma allo stesso desiderio d’identità e riconoscimento trova il modo di bruciarle e dissolverle.
Altra differenza sta che la vicenda non si svolge più a Carnevale ma a Natale. La famiglia di Bill, Alice e Elena sembra una variante della Sacra Famiglia. Nell’America del 1999 il natale non è più una festa religiosa ma un’orgia di consumismo (Parole di Tim Kreider).



Mentre vaga per New York di notte, Bill è ossessionato dalle potenti fantasie erotiche di sua moglie che fa l’amore con l’ufficiale di marina. Le immagini sono visualizzate nettamente, non sono nebulose e sfumate.
Il tempo narrativo della novella è veloce; allo stesso modo il regista dà alla vicenda un carattere poliziesco. Ciò che in Schnitzler è la forza della parola, che sa stimolare la fantasia del lettore, in Kubrick diviene capacità di rapire lo spettatore in un’odissea visuale.
La prostituta ai cui servizi rinuncia Fridolin è malata di sifilide nella Traumnovelle, mentre si scopre infetta dall’Hiv nel film.
A partire dalla situazione della festa in maschera, Fridolin inizia la sua discesa nell’inferno dei senza volto, discesa che lo porterà a strapparsi le carni di dosso. Insieme alla carne di “marito”, “medico” e “maschio” fino a ridursi a una maschera, vuoto simulacro di sé stesso adagiato sul letto matrimoniale (Luigi Cimmino)
Nell’orgia ogni maschera è diversa dall’altra. I colori dominanti sono il blu legato alla coscienza e il rosso, legato all’inconscio, al pericolo, all’istinto. Dualismo tra apollineo e dionisiaco.
La festa che ha vissuto Bill si mescola con le immagini interiori di Alice, al punto che le identità sembrano in certo modo dissolversi.
Victor Ziegler è un personaggio totalmente aggiunto da Kubrick. La bellezza della scena finale di Eyes Wide Shut, la “spiegazione” di Ziegler a Bill, <<>>, dall’affabile al sinistro (Larry Gross).
L’impiegato dell’hotel, che dà notizie a Bill in merito alla sparizione dell’amico Nick, ridacchia e ammicca. E’ un ulteriore personaggio alla ricerca di incontri sessuali.
Mentre nella novella entrambi raccontano le proprie fantasie sessuali e di tradimento, nel film solo Alice parla dell’ufficiale di marina, con l’intento di affermare la sua emancipazione in campo sessuale.
Opera di Straniamento: la scelta di Tom Cruise da parte del regista è singolare, perché sceglie un divo del cinema per rappresentare un uomo senza qualità, molto debole psicologicamente.
Il film è preciso, caratterizzato da perfetta teatralità.
Baudry rilegge il mito platonico della caverna mettendolo in relazione alla teoria freudiana dei sogni: immobili, tutti assumono per reale ciò che dovrebbero riconoscere come inganno e irrealtà.

Eyes Wide Shut: film, musica, struttura (Luigi Ceccarelli)
Musica extradiegetica: musica che deve coinvolgere, commentare le scene senza farsi notare.
Kubrick era cosciente che la musica classica avesse una sua vita autonoma, una storia e un significato intrinseco. Ogni brano scelto doveva essere spogliato di questo bagaglio culturale ( né è l’esempio la colonna sonora di “Arancia Meccanica”)
La struttura del film è lineare, gli eventi si susseguono senza salti nel tempo. L’unico rimando al passato è un racconto, un’evocazione verbale.
Nel film ci sono molti esempi di Musica diegetica, come lo stereo nella prima scena, la musica nei locali e la musica suonata dal vivo, come quella suonata da Nick, l’amico di Bill, durante il misterioso festivo orgiastico.

Struttura della novella
La novella è divisa in 7 parti che scandiscono le alterne e tormentate fasi della crisi di una coppia; la coppia riassume le crisi dell’individuo di fronte alla enigmatica e instabile realtà dell’esistenza.
In Traumnovelle la crisi dei protagonisti si struttura secondo un diagramma di turbamenti paralleli.
La conclusione porta alla coscienza che non c’è una verità univoca; la verità esiste solo nel tentativo della reciproca comprensione.
La maschera è simbolo della perdita d’identità che connota la crisi di Alberatine e Fridolin. Nel finale i protagonisti escono dal medioconscio e raggiungono il conscio.


La tematica del destino è accennata all’inizio e alla fine del racconto.
Il sogno di Albertine (la crocifissione di Fridolin) è catartico: si è scaricata dall’odio verso il marito mentre al marito è data la possibilità di riflettere che solo “un gioco del destino” gli ha permesso di non tradire.
Nella debolezza di Fridolin e nel suo discorso iniziale con la moglie c’è il pregiudizio borghese che concede agli uomini il diritto a una morale e relega la donna in una degradante posizione subalterna

Gomorrah, Roberto Saviano

Alcune recensioni e commenti a un libro che è stato tradotto in più di 25 lingue: Gomorra di Roberto Saviano.

Gomorrah, A Personal Journey into the Violent International Empire of Naples' Organized Crime System
A groundbreaking major bestseller in Italy, Gomorrah is Roberto Saviano’s gripping (avvincente) nonfiction account of the decline of Naples under the rule of the Camorra, an organized crime network with a large international reach and stakes (interessi) in construction, high fashion, illicit drugs, and toxic-waste disposal (eliminazione di rifiuti tossici).

Known by insiders as “the System,” the Camorra affects cities and villages along the Neapolitan coast, and is the deciding factor in why Campania, for instance, has the highest murder rate in all of Europe and why cancer levels there have skyrocketed (sono saliti alle stelle, sono aumentati a dismisura) in recent years.

Saviano tells of huge cargoes of Chinese goods that are shipped to Naples and then quickly distributed unchecked (senza essere controllati) across Europe. He investigates the Camorra’s control of thousands of Chinese factories contracted to manufacture fashion goods, legally and illegally, for distribution around the world, and relates the chilling details of how the abusive handling of toxic waste is causing devastating pollution not only for Naples but also China and Somalia. In pursuit of his subject, Saviano worked as an assistant at a Chinese textile manufacturer, a waiter at a Camorra wedding, and on a construction site.

A native of the region, he recalls seeing his first murder at the age of fourteen, and how his own father, a doctor, suffered a brutal beating for trying to aid an eighteen-year-old victim who had been left for dead in the street.

Gomorrah is a bold (audace) and important work of investigative writing that holds global significance, one heroic young man's impassioned story of a place under the rule of a murderous organization.
More Information: As of January 2008, Gomorrah has sold 750,000 copies in Italy alone - earning 28-year-old Roberto Saviano death threats and a round-the-clock police escort.

The great value of Gomorrah is to highlight two points: the power and wealth that southern Italy's Mafias have accumulated in recent years, and the fact that their globalisation makes them an issue of concern for us all.

His description of the effects of gang war on ordinary people (“Women stop wearing high heels—too hard to run in them”) is masterly. His final chapter, set in the apocalyptic wilderness of the Camorra's smouldering waste dumps, is inspired—and prescient, as the garbage crisis in Naples unfolds.

From: Book Browse

Salman Rushdie: Gomorrah author in greater danger than I was under fatwah (From robertosaviano.com)

An undiscovered Caravaggio painting may have been found in Rome

The painting depicts (rappresenta,descrive) the martyrdom of St Lawrence and belongs to the Jesuits in Rome.
It will now be examined in detail by art historians to find out if it really is the work of the famous Baroque painter.
Italy celebrated the life of the great master over the weekend on the 400th anniversary of Caravaggio's death.
A gallery housing (che ospitano) his work and several churches stayed open overnight to mark the anniversary.
An image of the work was published on the front page of the Vatican's L'Osservatore Romano on Saturday.
It shows a semi-naked man, with one arm outstretched as he leans over leaping (guizzanti) flames beneath him.

But while the Vatican newspaper article points out that the painting is typical of Caravaggio's style - such as the perspective from which the subject is seen - it conceded that no known document mentions St Lawrence in relation to Caravaggio.
A leading Caravaggio scholar, Maurizio Marini, expressed scepticism about the painting's authenticity.
"In certain moments, such as Caravaggio's anniversaries, it's no surprise that a lot of paintings come out that are supposedly Caravaggio's work," Marini told the AP news agency.
Caravaggio was born in either 1571 or 1573, according to varying scholars, and spent the last few years of his life fleeing (sfuggendo a) justice in southern Italy.
Caravaggio was famed for his wild lifestyle - he was often involved in street violence, culminating in him stabbing and killing a man before going on the run in 1606.
He fled to Naples and died four years later in the town of Porto Ecole.
His works include Bacchus, The Supper at Emmaus and Sacrifice of Isaac.
A group of Italian researchers recently revealed they had found human remains found in a church in Tuscany almost certainly belong to Caravaggio.

From BBC News

Antony’s Ring: remediating Ancient Rhetoric on the Elizabethan Stage

From Identity, Otherness, and Empire in Shakespeare’s Rome, by Maria Del Sapio Garbero

The year the Globe was inaugurated, 1599, when anxiety for Queen Elizabeth’s impending death and uncertainty about her succession were spreading through the population of London, W. Shakespeare looked to ancient history for inspiration, choosing to put on stage an exemplary crissi from the past: the end of the Roman republic.
The contradictory relationship between Elizabethan culture and ancient Rome is epitomized (riassunto) in Shakespeare’s controversial way of presenting Caesar’s character: his heroic status, in fact, comes to be deeply questioned in the play that bears (porta) his name.
Caesar male virtus having already been turned into feminine weakness. But if the manly, glorious republican past is “shamed” by a debased feminized present who will be able to restore it, reviving its greatness and prestige? The question affects people both on and off stage: it is the core (nocciolo, essenza) of the narrative drive and it is the implicit query (domanda, riserva) of the Elizabeth audience.
Shakespeare not only finds a parallel to the historical situation of England, a kingdom whose boundaries (confini) were fast expanding throughout the globe, but brings to the fore the search for both new models of political leaders and new forms of public persuasion in an enlarging communication circuit.
The crucial conflict between Brutus and Antony is therefore seen as the enactment of a complex relationship of incorporation and distancing played between an older, authoritativeness, appealing both to the ear and the eye (theatre).
The fact (Caesar’s murder) can be questioned but it cannot be objectively and finally interpreted.
Antony dramatically performs his grief for Caesar’s death, arguing that he is no orator. Thus negating his masterful command of rhetoric, he erases the medium he is using.
Brutus and Antony speaks from the “pulpit” in the “market-place”. (Antony asks the consprators’ permission to produce Caesar’s body to the market-place, as becomes a friend, speak in the order of his funeral”). We can infer (dedurre) that in the performance at the Globe, the pulpit may have been set in the gallery, that multi-purpose space above the stage used sometimes by musicians, sometimes by spectators and often by the actors.
Brutus speech is like a syllogism.
Antony turns each man in the market-place into an eyewitness (testimone oculare) for his cause. Antony makes his audience believe him for what they saw with their own eyes. “tis certain he was not ambitious” is an undeniable sign that truth can no longer be granted

Pagliaro's project, Shakespeare's nel teatro Globe di Roma

Rome’s Wooden “O”, from Maria Del Sapio Garbero Identity, Otherness and Empire in Shakespeare’s Rome

In the post-war years, Shakespeare and his opus became a fixed part of modern Italian culture.
There is a reciprocal long-standing tradition that also links Shakespeare to Italian culture. It started in the eighteenth century when the first complete translation of the Bard’s works began to appear.
Pagliaro’s project: by flanking (accostando) Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra with Titus Andronicus, Pagliaro’ s project gave Titus Andronicus comparable stature as a Roman play, no as a revenge play.
The project took on the structure of a tryptich, each segment constituting its own evening-long event, each bringing centre-stage a particular theme reflected in its title: 1 The lacerated Cloak (J.Caesar), 2 The Egyptian puppet (Antony and Cleopatra), 3 The performance of Madness (T.Andronicus)
1) It resolves around concepts of Roman identity that are defined here in terms of “Liberty” and “Freedom”. The discourses of the conspirators among themselves and exchanged with Mark Antony and then those of Brutus and Mark Antony delivered in the Forum all address the question, “What does it mean to be a Roman?”
2) It shifts (trasferisce) the historical, political and geographic landscape of the question of Roman identity, as it gives prominence to the substance of Empire. Expansionism, challenge self-identity in the face of cultural otherness. Can a Roman maintain his identity abroad?
The Egyptian queen must in the end defend herself from the conqueror who wants to violate her cultural, political and gender identity.
3) Titus Andronicus’s others are a far cry from Antony and Cleopatra’s civilized Egyptians. Here Romanness is suffering a severe identity crisis, much more severe that the one registered in Caesar’s Rome.
Who is responsible for the utter falling apart of dialogue, of cross-cultural exchange?

1) Caesar’s assassination was mimed on a dimly lit stage (palcoscenico appena illuminato). The dominant signifier of the event was the music which rose in an anguishing crescendo.
2) Antony and his wound were figured onstage metonymically by his bloodied sword being taken by his friend.
3) The Titus episode opens with the verbal determining of the ritual murder of Tamora’s son. And these wounds (ferite) continue to haunt (tormentare) the stage in the blood red drapes that completed some of the costumes in each of the episodes.

Leggi anche gli appunti su Titus Andronicus, edizione di Jonathan Bate, qui

Acting the Roman: Coriolanus

From Identity, Otherness, and Empire in Shakespeare’s Rome, by Maria Del Sapio Garbero

Rome was an Elizabethan obsession. The classical Rome was split (lacerato) into two Romes, republican and imperial Rome. English humanists avidly (avidamente) studied and translated the classical historians of Rome, Suetonius, Tacitus, Livius or Plutarch.
Elizabethan England in particular came to consider itself as a second Roman Empire and its capital London is the “new Rome”.
Moral philosophers recommended Roman republicanism and Stoicism as norms for civic discipline and responsibility, patriotic pride.
Coriolanus is the most Roman of Shalespeare’sRoman plays. Shakespare in this play preserve Roman manners and customs and allusions.
Coriolanus is the creature of his mother. It was she who had instilled in him from earliest childhood the masculinist Roman codes of civic honour. She taught him to exorcise all unmanly, effeminate motions and emotions.
There lurks a fatal double-bind in the Coriolanus complex: on the one hand, this kind of grooming or identity formation makes sure that Coriolanus remains “the perennial mama’s boy”, incapable of liberating himself from the umbilical cord and achieving an adult autonomy of character; on the other, it is precisely autonomy of character that is at the centre of the code of romanitas instilled by his mother (virtus, pietas, constantia, fortitudo).
In Ancient Rome, one cannot not perform. The world in which its characters move is primarily a political, a public world focused on public spaces, the market-place, the Capitol, the battle field or theatre of war, and their mode of speaking is primarily the rhetoric of public address. Patricians constantly act in front of, and to, and for, an audience.
His self is primarily a public self, a self enacted in public, constantly aware of the image it is projecting. One has to act the Roman.
Coriolanus, as a man, his masculine control over his desires and emotions. As a politician, hiding his personal interests under a fine, discreetly calibrated show of disinterested virtus and constant service to Rome.
Only at moments of crisis, when Coriolanus’ internalized scripts clash with each other, he demonstrates an awareness (consapevolezza) of acting and articulates this awareness in metatheatrical metaphors. At such moments he appears as a man playing a part.
“Like a dull actor”
Volumnia performs the role of Roman matron in language and gesture to perfection, narcissistically identifying with Rome’s tutelary goddess Juno.
Coriolanus needs constant briefing in his performance, by Menenius, by Cominius and above all by his mother. She tries to make him aware of how over-acting can spoil a performance “ You might have been enough the man you are with striving less to be so”
Coriolanus, finally, feels he is an actor without his script: “like a dull actor now I have forgot my part and Ial out even to a full disgrace”
Shakespeare took Coriolanus for a historical character, fascinated like them by the paradox of the patriot turned traitor for his very patriotism and by the concomitant Ciceronean paradox of summum ius being summa iuria or summa virtus summum vitium.

Leggi anche Shakespeare's Romulun and Remo, here

Shakespeare's Romulus and Remo

From Identity, Otherness, and Empire in Shakespeare’s Rome, by Maria Del Sapio Garbero

(Coriolanus, 4.4.12-22)
Coriolanus tells us that he is going to join with Aufidius to make war upon his city because sometimes friends become enemies and sometimes enemies become friends, both for entirely trivial reasons. Why does he insist on the triviality of these quarrels?
Although Shakespeare never mentions the legendary founders of Rome by name, their story becomes decisive in the late Roman plays.
There are no literary brothers in Antony and Cleopatra or Coriolanus, but male rivalry here repeatedly takes on the metaphorical coloration of fratricide.
Shakespeare probably knew the legend of the twins. We know he consulted Ovid’s Fasti for “ The rape of Lucrece” and Ovid talks about Romolus and Remo.
Early on in the Aeneid, Jove reassures Venus that “ Ilia, a royal princess, shall bear to Mars her twin offspring. The Romulus, proud in the tawny hide of the she-wolf, his nurse, shall take up the line and found the walls of Mars and call the people Romans after his own name”.
Antony and Cleopatra is full of allusions to the Aeneid.
Plutarch repeats several versions of the twins’story in his life of Romulus, including Livy’s speculation that perhaps the story of the she-wolf arose from the loose morals of the woman who eventually raised Romulus.
Plutarch’s story ends as Livy’s ends, with suspect auguries and deadly rivalry among the brothers: “Romulus having nowe buried his brother… beganne then to build and laye the foundation of his cittie”
It is by now a commonplace to note that Shakespeare’s Roman plays are centrally concerned with the construction of masculinity. But as the author argued elsewhere (altrove), masculinity in Shakespeare is always constructed against the presence of the female and therefore (perciò, quindi) is compromised by too-close proximity to the figure of the mother, who can infect her son with her own femaleness (femminilità). The Romulus and Remus legend may have constituted one fantasy-solution to the problem of maternal origin for the Romans themselves.
Perhaps the twins are more fortunate because they are thus freed (liberati) from maternal contamination. Violently separated from their mother, Rome’s founding figures are conveniently nursed by a “mother” who is far from femininity.
Coriolanus, Volumnia: Shakespeare combines two different maternal elements of the Romulus and Remus legend in her, she is both the original exiler of her son and his wolvish nurturer (allevatrice con tratti da lupo).
We can see the elements of that Romulan legacy (eredità) in earlier Roman plays: in Julius Caesar’s entirely justified worry about the lean and hungry Cassius and especially in Octavius Caesar’s long encomium of Antony’s Roman hunger as the defining virtue of his Roman soldiership. Rivalry (rivalità) between Octavius and Antony like the famous twins.
Shakespare revises at least two founding legends of Rome in his British romance.
Cymbeline divides into two distinct plots: the first plot, in which a very Italianate Iachimo makes a wager (scommessa) with Posthumus about the chastity of his wife Imogen, deliberately returns to the material of “The Rape of Lucrece”. Like Tarquin, Iachimo praises (elogia) her husband to his victim in order to gain (ottenere) her trust. Posthumus’s capacity to repel (respingere) this new Tarquin simultaneously foregrounds Britain’s Trojan ancestry and goes Rome one better as it revises the origin story of republican Rome. This is an accommodation of the play’s two conflicting imperatives: the imperative to portray Britain as inviolable and intact (like Imogen, at the end of the play. She calls herself Fidele) and the imperative to portray (rappresentare) the translation of Roman virtue and Roman Empire into Britain.
Guiderius and Aviragus are forcibly (con la forza) removed from their lineare and the civilized centre of power. They are fed in this wilderness by a man who is twice identified as their nurse. Separated both from female influence and from the savage nursery of the she-wolf, the boys retain their heroic masculinity, but they are free of the fratricidal imperative that governs brotherly relations in Rome.
The British Posthumus who defeats the Traquinized Iachimo enacts (rappresenta) the beginning of the translation imperii from Rome to Britain.

, Identity, Otherness, and Empire in Shakespeare’s Rome: introduction

Maria Del Sapio Garbero , Identity, Otherness (essenza dell’Altro), and Empire in Shakespeare’s Rome

Introduction

The transference of the Roman imperium to the western territories of Britain is sanctioned by the favour of the Roman gods in the last lines of Cymbeline, Shakespeare’s last Roman play; a favour expressed by the flight of birds. The transference is achieved through sweat and blood, resulting in a hard-won honourable peace with Rome, but it is licensed by vision and divination.
Transference as it is handled in Cymbeline works overtly as both an event and a signifying practice, a cultural field of contentious metaphorical signification.
We are presented here with “the problem of the ambivalence of cultural authorithy: the attempt to dominate in the name of a cultural supremacy which is itself produced only in the moment of differentiation”.
Shakespeare must have been aware that the mythmaking flight of birds was decisive in the story of the foundation of Rome, the fratricidal legend of Romulus and Remus.
Latin source: Ovid’s Fasti.
I would like to put forward that in conceiving his prophetic finale of for Cymbeline, Shakespeare may have had precisely Ovid’s Fasti in mind, where the augural vision of birds intervenes with a similar function to underline a sense of expectancy (aspettativa) and undecidability before decreeing Romulus’ control of the city.
Significantly, divination is eventually relocated to the court of Britain.
The ending of Cymbeline is framed by images of transference of cultural authority.
Indeed, shortly before the closure of the play, Philarmonus is called to interpret the meaning of Jupiter’s oracle which Postumus Leonatus, on his awakening from the torpor induced by his fierce patriotic pugnacity against the Roman legions at Milford Haven, has found on a tablet on his bosom.
Cymbeline allows us to foreground the combative-emulative intention in respect to “the Roman host” which we can see at work in the rest of Shakespeare’s Roman plays. Cymbeline also clearly evokes the related complex gamut (gamma) of ideological concerns which were at stake in the confrontation with Rome in Tudor and Jacobean England.
Rome is also seen as serving to prospect an altogether revolutionary concept of space, a post-Copernican infinite universe – as in Antony and Cleopatra – where it permeates the worldwide imperial geography of the play.
I think the year of production for Cymbeline may be particularly relevant in this context, for in the same year, 1611, Speed’s atlas of “Great Britaine” was issued. And what we find on Speed’s opening map of Britain and Ireland are the images of two coins: Cymbeline and the female figure of Britannia Imperatrix sitting on a globe. Cymbeline, the king who opposed but helps made peace with Augustus, that he enjoyed high currency in Jacobean times as the forefather of a proud and pacified “Great Britain”.
In the theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine , the frontispiece is designed as an Augustan triumphal arch, with two levels of columns and niches (nicchie) for statuary.
Theatre and cartography are linked. The world is like a stage.
Rome was appropriated as both a script for the triumphs of a nascent empire and a setting for problematically staging questions of ancestry (lignaggio), influence, identity and location.

Titus Andronicus, edizione di Jonathan Bate

Appunti sul dramma di “Titus Andronicus” di William Shakespeare, edizione di Jonathan Bate, the Arden Shakespeare

Titus Andronicus was hugely successful in its own time but it has been reviled by critics and revived infrequently.
Several eighteenth-century editors denied (negarono) that Shakespeare wrote the “Titus Andornicus”; there has been a persistent argument that he was merely touching up someone else’s play or that it was a patched-together collaborative effort; the discovery of an eighteenth-century chapbook narrating the story allowed much of the violence do be palmed off (affibbiato) on Shakespeare’s “source”.
Jonathan Bate believe that Titus is an important play and a living one, performed for the first time as a showpiece in January 1594.

Space and structure
The use of opposite doors dramatizes the brothers’opposition in terms of the stage space.
When Titus “enter” in the story, his first task is to give a proper burial to his sons who have died in combat, “They open the tomb” and the nether world is invoked for the first time. Once buried, the dead sons would be free to cross the Styx into the underworld. The city prided itself on not being barbaric: the world civilized comes from civilis, which means “of citizens, of the city” and Rome was the city.
Into Roman acts there is, as Tamora says, a “cruel, irreligious piety”.
Titus’sons enter with their swords bloody from the sacrifice of Alarbus, their dead brothers are laid to rest and then their sister comes on. Her entrance is perfectly timed to draw her into the spiral of retribution. It also serves to link the domestic political plot with the opposition between Titus and Tamora. The opposite doors come into play again when Saturninus and the Goths take off for the upper stage just as the Andronicus boys help Bassianus bear Lavinia away through the other door.
Hunting for sport is “civilized” society’s way of getting back in touch with the wild.
The forest is a place where desire can be acted out: Tamora comes to make love to Aaron, Chiron and Demetrius rape Lavinia.
The “mouth” of the pit (fossa) becomes crucial when we realize that Lavinia is not only being raped but also having her tongue cut out; throughout the play, the action turns on mouths that speak, mouths that abuse and are abused, mouths that devour (divorano).
The first reaction to the rape is a series of jokes: Chiron and Demetrius become a sick comedy team, offering feed line and punch line.
Titus’ first words to his mutilate daughter are “what accursed hand/hath made thee handless in thy father’s sight?”
Titus certainly gets the last laugh against his enemies. There is a kind of comic satisfaction in the gagging of Chiron and Demetrius and the slitting of their throats: it answers exactly to their gagging of lavinia and cutting of her tongue.

Titus and Coriolanus:
As Coriolanus, Titus’ son, the successful Roman warrior, is sent into exile, where he joins up with his former enemies and then marches with them against the city which has cast him out.
Titus Andronicus differs from Coriolanus in that there is no turning back outside the city gates.
Andronicus refused the crown at the beginning of the play an Andronicus takes it at the end.
The troubles of the Andronici began with the question of proper burial rites and the sacrifice of Alarbus; the play ends with the living burial of Aaron and the refusal of proper burial rites for Tamora.

The themes
The most urgent question facing England in 1590s was the succession to the unmarried and childless Elizabeth, and in particular the preservation of the Protestant nation against the possibility of another counter-Reformation.
The emperor Saturninus is very worried about the popular will slipping away from him. That suggests that Shakespeare’s earliest tragedy may be shot through with an unexpected vein of republicanism.
Revenge
The gods are frequently invoked but never reply.
The audience that shares the protagonist’s troubled inquiries as to whether they should take vengeance into their own hands or leave it to God is in a position to reflect upon the insufficiencies and inequalities of the law.
In Shakespeare, important people have their revenge: Hamlet is a prince, Titus is a champion.
The play vividly dramatizes Justice’s absence when Titus shoots arrows into the air to try to bring Astraea down.
Passionating grief
Titus resorts (fa ricorso a) to laughter, ritual or self-conscious performance when his ability to express emotion in language is stretched to breaking point.
Renaissance man is rhetorical man, whose repertoire of formal linguistic structures and accompanying physical gestures is a way of ordering the chaos of experience.
When language no longer works for Titus, he takes to literalizing metaphor: instead of crying to the elements and the gods, he writes his message down on arrows and shoots them in the air; instead of talking about “consuming sorrow”, he makes Tamora consume her own children.

Chapbook: (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) Chapbook is a generic term to cover a particular genre of pocket-sized booklet, popular from the sixteenth through to the later part of the nineteenth century. No exact definition can be applied.

Read the Synopsis of Titus Andronicus

Titus Andronicus ( Wikipedia )

Synopsis

The Emperor of Rome has died and his sons Saturninus and Bassianus are squabbling over (Bisticciando su) who will succeed him. The Tribune of the People, Marcus Andronicus, announces that the people's choice for new emperor is his brother, Titus Andronicus, a Roman general newly returned from ten years' campaigning against the empire's foes (Nemici), the Goths. Titus enters Rome to much fanfare, bearing (conducendo) with him Tamora, Queen of the Goths, her sons, and Aaron the Moor. Titus feels a religious duty to sacrifice Tamora’s eldest son, Alarbus, in order to avenge (vendicare) his sons, dead from the war, and allow them to rest in peace. Tamora begs for the life of Alarbus, but Titus refuses her pleas. Tamora secretly plans a horrible revenge for Titus and all of his remaining sons.
Titus Andronicus refuses the throne in favour of the late emperor's eldest son Saturninus, much to Saturninus' delight. The two agree that Saturninus will marry Titus' daughter Lavinia. However, Bassianus was previously betrothed (fidanzato) to the girl. Titus' surviving sons help them escape the marriage. In the fighting, Titus kills his son Mutius. Titus is angry with his sons because in his eyes they are disloyal (sleali) to Rome. The new emperor, Saturninus, marries Tamora instead.
During a hunting party the next day, Tamora's lover, Aaron the Moor, meets Tamora's sons Chiron and Demetrius. The two are arguing over which should take sexual advantage of the newlywed Lavinia. They are easily persuaded by Aaron to ambush ( tendere un’imboscata a) Bassianus and kill him in the presence of Tamora and Lavinia, in order to have their way with her. Lavinia begs Tamora to stop her sons, but Tamora refuses. Chiron and Demetrius throw Bassianus' body in a pit, as Aaron had directed them, then they take Lavinia away and rape her. To keep her from revealing what she has seen and endured, they cut out her tongue and her hands. This mutilation provides a source for black comedy throughout the play.
Aaron brings Titus' sons Martius and Quintus to the scene and frames them for the murder of Bassianus with a forged (falsificata) letter outlining their plan to kill him. Angry, the Emperor arrests them. Marcus then discovers Lavinia and takes her to her father. When she and Titus are reunited, he is overcome with grief. He and his remaining son Lucius have begged for the lives of Martius and Quintus, but the two are found guilty and are marched off to execution. Aaron enters, and falsely tells Titus, Lucius, and Marcus that the emperor will spare (risparmiare) the prisoners if one of the three sacrifices a hand. Each demands the right to do so, but it is Titus who has Aaron cut off his (Titus') hand and take it to the emperor. In return, a messenger brings Titus the heads of his sons and his own severed (tagliata) hand. Desperate for revenge, Titus orders Lucius to flee (abbandonare) Rome and raise an army among their former enemy, the Goths.
Later, Titus' grandson (Lucius' son), who has been helping Titus read to Lavinia, complains that she will not leave his book alone. In the book, she indicates to Titus and Marcus the story of Philomela, in which a similarly mute victim "wrote" the name of her wrongdoer (malfattori). Marcus gives her a stick to hold with her mouth and stumps (moncherini) and she writes the names of her attackers in the dirt. Titus vows revenge. Feigning madness, he ties written prayers for justice to arrows and commands his kinsmen to aim them at the sky. Marcus directs the arrows to land inside the palace of Saturninus, who is enraged by this. He confronts the Andronici and orders the execution of a Clown who had delivered a further supplication from Titus.
Tamora delivers a mixed-race child, and the nurse can tell it must have been fathered by Aaron. Aaron kills the nurse and flees with the baby to save it from the Emperor's inevitable wrath (collera). Later, Lucius, marching on Rome with an army, captures Aaron and threatens to hang the infant. To save the baby, Aaron reveals the entire plot to Lucius, relishing his retelling of every murder, rape, and dismemberment.
Tamora, convinced of Titus' madness, approaches him along with her two sons, dressed as the spirits of Revenge, Murder, and Rape. She tells Titus that she (as a supernatural spirit) will grant him revenge if he will convince Lucius to stop attacking Rome. Titus agrees, sending Marcus to invite Lucius to a feast. "Revenge" (Tamora) offers to invite the Emperor and Tamora, and is about to leave, but Titus insists that "Rape" and "Murder" (Chiron and Demetrius) stay with him. She agrees. When she is gone Titus' servants bind (legano) Chiron and Demetrius, and Titus cuts their throats, while Lavinia holds a basin in her stumps to catch their blood. He plans to cook them into a pie for their mother. This is the same revenge Procne took for the rape of her sister Philomela.
The next day, during the feast at his house, Titus asks Saturninus whether a father should kill his daughter if she has been raped.[1] When the Emperor agrees, Titus then kills Lavinia and tells Saturninus what Tamora's sons had done. When the Emperor asks for Chiron and Demetrius, Titus reveals that they were in the pie Tamora has just been enjoying, and then kills Tamora. Saturninus kills Titus just as Lucius arrives, and Lucius kills Saturninus to avenge his father's death.
Lucius tells his family's story to the people and is proclaimed Emperor. He orders that Saturninus be given a proper burial, that Tamora's body be thrown to the wild beasts, and that Aaron be buried chest-deep and left to die of thirst and starvation. Aaron, however, is unrepentant to the end, proclaiming:
"If one good Deed in all my life I did,I do repent it from my very Soule."

When...

Most scholars date the play to the early 1590s. In his Arden edition, Jonathan Bate proposes that the play was written in late 1593, pointing out that on 24 January 1594 it was apparently listed as a new play in Philip Henslowe's diary. Another school of opinion has doubted the play's newness in 1594, given that the induction of Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair (1614) seems to suggest that Titus Andronicus was then about 25 years old, which would date it to ca. 1589.[2] The Norton/Sackville play Gorboduc, originally a play from the 1560's, was published again in 1590. Its many similarities with Titus Andronicus favor an earlier date for the composition of Titus Andronicus because plays were not published unless there was some interest in them, and therefore there may have been a revival of Gorboduc just prior to 1590. Shakespeare may have acted in a performance of Gorboduc just prior to 1590 or read it in or just after 1590.
The play was published in three separate quarto editions prior to the First Folio of 1623, which are referred to as Q1, Q2, and Q3 by Shakespeare scholars. The play was entered into the Register of the Stationers Company on 6 February 1594, by the printer John Danter. Danter sold the rights to the booksellers Thomas Millington and Edward White; they issued the first quarto edition (Q1) later that year, with printing done by Danter. The title page is unusual in that it assigns the play to three different companies of actors—Pembroke's Men, Derby's Men, and Sussex's Men. White published Q2 in 1600 (printed by James Roberts), and Q3 in 1611 (printed by Edward Allde). The First Folio text (1623) was printed from Q3 with an additional scene, III, ii.
None of the three quarto editions name the author (as was normal in the publication of playtexts in the early 1590s). However, Francis Meres lists the play as one of Shakespeare's tragedies in a publication of 1598, and the editors of the First Folio included it among his works. Despite this, Shakespeare's full authorship has been doubted. In the introduction to his 1678 adaptation of the play (printed nine years later, in 1687), Edward Ravenscroft states: "I have been told by some anciently conversant with the Stage, that it was not Originally his, but brought by a private Author to be Acted, and he only gave some Master-touches to one or two Principal Parts or Characters".[4] There are problems with Ravenscroft's statement: the old men "conversant with the Stage" could not have been more than children whenTitus was written, and Ravenscroft may be biased, since he uses the story to justify his alterations of Shakespeare's play. However, the story has been used to bolster arguments that another author was partly responsible.
Although Titus Andronicus is one of Shakespeare's earliest plays, it is hard to say exactly how early it is. The anonymous play A Knack to Know a Knave, acted in 1592, alludes to Titus and the Goths, which clearly indicates Shakespeare's play, since other versions of the Titus story involve Moors, not Goths.
Philip Henslowe's diary records performances of a Titus and Vespasian in 1592–93, and some critics have identified this with Shakespeare's play.[9]
In January and February of 1594, Sussex's Men gave three performances of Titus Andronicus; two more performances followed in June of the same year, at the Newington Butts theatre, by either the Admiral's Men or the Lord Chamberlain's Men. A private performance occurred in 1596 at Sir John Harington's house in Rutland.
In the Restoration, the play was performed in 1678 at Drury Lane, in an adaptation by Edward Ravenscroft. The eighteenth-century actor James Quin considered Aaron, the villain in Titus, one of his favourite roles.
In 2005 the play was staged at Shakespeare's Globe in London.

A bad trip, Milan central station, Italy.

From the site BBC News

Trip of a lifetime... for all the wrong reasons

The scene at Milan central station, Italy
The trip of a life-time? Yes... but for all the wrong reasons.

When Peter Martin arrives back home in Bangor, he plans to drop to the ground, kiss the ould sod and order Ulster fries all around.
Fries so big enough that you don't know whether to tuck in or leap over them. Being stuck in Europe is hungry work.
The lecturer and his wife, Melanie, had been in Tel Aviv for a holiday with their friends, David and Caroline McCracken from Belfast.
Finding their way back home as flights were cancelled across Europe, had the ring of an Indiana Jones adventure.
"We managed to fly from Tel Aviv to Rome... it was the only airport we could get a flight to," he said.
The scene that met their eyes at the train station in Rome was straight out of an old black and white film.
"It was an evacuation scene from World War II. It was just chaos. Taxi drivers were charging the earth... 3,000 euro to go from Paris to Rome. That's where we met Alex from Southampton. He had spent five hours in a queue at the station just to get information."
He joined them for their train journey to Milan and on over the mountains to Paris. They braved the Italian conductor from hell armed with a whistle and not afraid to use it.
"There were a few problems going over the Alps," said Peter. "On the train, you could smell something burning. The train had gone on fire... it happened twice. We all had to get off. Then, we boarded a French train and it hit a deer."
If it wasn't quite a Bambi moment, there were still thousands of travellers close to tears.
"Well, you have to laugh," he said. "Some people were really annoyed, but what's the point?"
The travellers are getting used to a surreal world: "Thousands of people are just wandering around Europe with massive suitcases," said David.
"But you get a sense of the Dunkirk spirit as everybody tries to get home."
The Martins and their friends are hoping to arrive in Calais shortly. They are hoping to get a bus to take them home to the joys of hot water, clean sheets and a decent fry.

Evidenziati in grassetto, nel testo, ci sono tutte le espressioni che descrivono questo viaggio... infernale!

Deer: cervo

Sod: suolo, zolla erbosa

To tuck in: ingozzarsi

To brave: affrontare

To wander: girovagare

Fry: frittura

Voting System in Uk

Voting System from web site Bbc news

Who can vote?

To be able to vote in a UK Parliamentary election, you must be:
- Aged 18 or over,
- A citizen of the UK, a Commonwealth country or the Republic of Ireland,
- Resident in a constituency and on the electoral register, and Not in a category barred from voting (see below).
- In addition, British citizens who have lived abroad for up to 20 years may vote, and voters in Northern Ireland must have lived in the constituency for the previous three months.

There are certain categories of people not allowed to vote:
- Members of the House of Lords. The ejection of most hereditary peers from the Lords in 1999 means that they will be able to vote - and stand - for the first time in a general election.
-Those in prison.
- People convicted of electoral malpractice are barred for five years.
- Echoing the rather arcane language of the legislation, "idiots" may not vote and "lunatics" only during their lucid periods. Those compulsorily detained in psychiatric hospitals, for example, cannot vote.

Who can be a candidate?

There is no single document or law which defines who can stand for election as Member of Parliament.
Essentially, however, candidates must be over the age of 21 and be citizens of the UK, the Republic of Ireland or the Commonwealth.
The lack of clarity extends even to the qualifying age - it is not set down whether candidates have to be 21 by the date the election is called, or close of nominations, or polling day itself.
Those banned from becoming MPs include:
- Members of the House of Lords,
- Undischarged bankrupts,
- Seriously mentally ill people,
- Prisoners serving sentences of more than one year,
- Those guilty of electoral malpractice in the last 5-10 years,
- Traitors - ie those guilty of treason and not pardoned,
- Certain people holding offices of profit under the Crown (including holders of judicial office, civil servants, members of the armed forces, or the police forces, members of the legislature of any country or territory outside the Commonwealth, Government-nominated directors of commercial companies).
- Clergy of the Church of England, the Church of Scotland, the Church of Ireland and the Roman Catholic Church.

The clergy ban will be in force unless the Removal of Clergy Disqualification Bill receives the royal assent before parliament is prorogued. The bill removes the ban on all past and current clergy standing, unless they are also members of the House of Lords.

Easter, improve your English

Un modo facile e divertente per imparare nuovi vocaboli è seguire delle istruzioni in Inglese, cioè fare qualcosa che ci diverte leggendo come fare (how to) da alcuni siti inglesi.

Ecco allora delle idee per la Pasqua, ormai alle porte.

Iniziamo con delle barzellette (Jokes):

Is it true that bunnies have good eyesight? Well you never see a bunny wearing glasses, do you?

What did the grey rabbit say to the blue rabbit? Cheer up! (C'è un gioco di parole tra BLUE colore e BLUE malinconico)

Continuiamo con dei lavoretti pasquali (da fare anche con i bambini):

- a easter basket made with small potato chip can (like Pringles)

- origami bunny (What's an origami?Origami is the art of paper folding. (The most strict definition precludes cutting the paper. Read HERE )

- handmade easter cards

Infine, ecco una buonissima ricetta per realizzare uova di cioccolata!

Ingredients:
1 tsp vanilla

1/4 cup butter or margarine

1/2 cup milkmixed colored candies

1 cup walnuts chopped

chocolate pudding

1 lb powdered sugar

20 marshmellows

5 squares unsweetened chocolate, melted and cooled

How to make chocolate easter eggs:
-you will need melted butter. so take a 3 qt. saucepan and melt butter into it.
- when the butter is melted stir in pudding mix and blend until it gets smooth.
- you should gradually stir in milk.
- you need to cook this mixture over medium heat and keep stirring constantly.
- a little later the mixture will get very thick and start boiling.
- when it is sufficiently thick it will leave the sides of the pan and then remove the saucepan from heat.
- then you should add to it powdered sugar and vanilla. mix well until smooth and stir in walnuts.
- you should allow the mixture cool so that it is stiff enough to hold its desired shape.
so the moment the mixture is stiff enough shape it into 12 eggs, using about 2 t. for each.
- now place them on the waxed paper-lined baking sheet and refrigerate for 30 min.
- after 30 min. you need to dip each egg in cooled chocolate and place them on a cooling rack over waxed paper.
- finally it is time to arrange marshmallow flowers over the eggs. but make sure that you do it before the chocolate sets.

marshmallow flowers
- firstly cut mini marshmallows in thirds crosswise.
- then dip cut side of each piece into colored sugar.
- in order to resemble flowers you need to arrange 5 pieces, sugared side up, on each egg.
- store in the fridge.

Verbs:

to melt: sciogliere, fondere

to stir: mescolare

to blend: mischiare

to cook: cucinare, cuocere

to start: iniziare

to boil: bollire

to remove: rimuovere

to add: aggiungere

to mix:mischiare, mescolare

to allow:permettere

to shape: dare forrma

to refrigerate: refrigerare

to dip: immergere

to arrange:sistemare, predisporre

to set: sistemare

to cut: tagliare

to store: sistemare/mettere via

Approfondimenti:

- Easter Wikipedia

- Religious easter: what is the Significance

- Faberge Eggs, History Channel

Amanda Knox murder cas "has no holes"

Con questo post inauguriamo una nuova sezione di questo blog: cosa scrivono all'estero di noi? Ogni settimana, le notizie italiane con gli occhi degli inglesi e degli americani. Per avere una visione a 360°

Amanda Knox murder case 'has no holes'

Knox, an American from Seattle, was jailed for 26 years.
Judges in Italy have published their reasons for convicting Amanda Knox and her ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito for the murder of Meredith Kercher.

The judges said the murder happened without planning or grudge.
They said there were no holes or inconsistency in the evidence and that the evidence suggested there was a sexual motive in the case.

The pair were found guilty in December of killing Ms Kercher, from Coulsdon, Surrey, in Perugia in 2007.
Both Knox and Sollecito are appealing against their convictions; Knox on the grounds that the forensic evidence against her was flawed.

In the 427-page opinion document, Italian judges Giancarlo Massei and Beatrice Cristini say all their decisions were based on the forensic evidence presented.
Miss Kercher had been studying Italian on an exchange programme.
They say, for example, that one footprint found in Miss Kercher's bathroom belonged to Sollecito, whilst another in a bedroom came from Knox.

And they explain, at length, why the footprint in the bedroom is a woman's.

BBC Rome correspondent Duncan Kennedy said this suggested they had dismissed some of the more lurid claims of the prosecution, especially concerning Knox, over things like her cart-wheeling and giggling in the police station in the days after the murder.

In their explanation, the judges also say that Knox and Sollecito had staged a fake break-in to make it look as though Miss Kercher was killed by an intruder.


In part of the report, the judges suggest a sexual motive lay behind the killing.
They say that Knox and Sollecito went to Meredith Kercher's house with a third man, Rudy Guede, a small-time drug dealer, who was convicted of murder at a separate trial.

The report says that, under the influence of drugs, Knox and Sollecito "actively participated" in helping Guede subdue Miss Kercher so that Guede could "give vent to his lustful impulses" in what they called his "evil act".

The motive, the judges say, was "erotic sexual violence", where Knox and Sollecito had probably found holding Miss Kercher down was "exciting".

But, in their interpretation of events, the judges say this was a murder "without planning, without any animosity or grudge against the victim".

They say the death was the result of what they call, "purely random circumstances" that Knox and Sollecito had not gone specifically to kill Miss Kercher.

This view is reinforced by another extract from the judges' report.

It says the fact that Miss Kercher's body had been covered by her attackers showed, "a sort of regret for what they had done".
Knox was jailed for 26 years and Sollecito for 25 years in December last year.

Guede, 22, was sentenced to 30 years for his part in the murder in 2008.

The judges also noted that early on in the investigation, Knox had "freely accused" another man, Patrick Lumumba, knowing he was innocent.

Miss Kercher, 21, a Leeds University student, had been sharing a house with Knox, who was also a student, on a year abroad in the Umbrian hilltop town.

Bbc.co.uk

Vocabulary

to be jailed: essere imprigionato

judge: giudice/magistrato

evidence: prova

guilty: colpevole

forensic: forense, legale

regret: rimorso

investigation: indagine, ricerca

Antony and Cleopatra

Appunti sulla tragedia Antony and Cleopatra di Willliam Shakespeare, edizione di John Wilders, The Arden Shakespeare.

Shakespeare probably completed Antony and Cleopatra towards the end of 1606 or early in 1607.
The story had been told in detail by the first-century biographer Plutarch and his account translated into both French and English. Virgil had referred to it in the eight book of the Aeneid, Horace had written an ode on the courage and dignity of Cleopatra’s suicide and Chaucer had described her death in “The legend of good Women”.
Antony and Cleopatra shift rapidly from tenderness to fury and grief and the emotions of the one are largely determined by those of the other. We are willing to believe in their love because the violence of their frequent quarrels testifies to their total absorption on each other.

Antony and Cleopatra is a public as well as a private drama in which Antony and Octavius compete for mastery over the Roman Empire which, at the time, extended from Britain in the west to what is now Turkey in the east, and the battles in which this contest was fought out occupy much of the third and fourth acts. Caesar ultimately wins and Antony loses because of the kind of people they are and because of the irresistible power which Cleopatra exercises over Antony. This gives to the relationship between the lovers a sense of unusual weight and risk.

Is typical of their self- dramatization that when Antony distributes the countries of the eastern empire to Cleopatra and her children he does so in a public ceremony at which the two of them sit in “chairs of gold” on a silver platform and she is decked out in the habiliments of the goddess Isis.



The question of structure
In Antony and Cleopatra there are constant shifts of location.
Throughout the ply, Roman attitudes and principles, expressed mainly by Octavius Caesar, are placed in opposition to the Egyptian, represented chieftly by Cleopatra.
Rome and Egypt “represent crucial moral choices and they function as symbolic locales in a manner not unlike Henry James’s Europe and America” (Charney)
For the Romans the ideal is measured in masculine, political, pragmatic, military terms, the subservience of the individual to the common good of the state, of personal pleasure to public duty.
Alexandria is a predominantly female society for which the ideal is measured in terms of the intensity of emotion, the subservience of social responsibility to the demands of feeling.
Caesar regards his “great competitor” as a man who has betrayed his own ideals but Cleopatra sees him as a man who has become at one with herself.
Into the characters there are different feelings depending on the mood and circumstances in which characters find themselves.
Antony – Cleopatra: enchanting queen/triple-turned whore.
Cleopatra- Antony: horrible villain/ a proper man
Caesar-Antony: old ruffian/mate in empire, brother



Images of instability
Shakespeare seems to be creating his own vocabulary to establish the feeling of disintegration in the Roman world.
Caesar, foreseeing that his own and Antony’s temperaments are so incompatible that their friendship is unlike to last, longs for a “hoop” which will hold them “staunch” or watertight; Antony, ashamed of his lost reputation and his pitifully botched suicide, hopes that his fame as “the greatest prince o’th’world” will remain intact, and Enobarbus recognizes that a servant willing to remain loyal to a “fallen lord” will “(earn) a place i’th’story”.

Notable quotes in Romeo And Juliet

Qui di seguito riportiamo alcuni brani della tragedia di Shakespeare "Romeo and Juliet".
Leggi e associa le frasi con il personaggio che le pronuncia. Poi prendi il testo e controlla!

- Eyes, look your last! Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O you The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss A dateless bargain to engrossing death

- if you had the strength Of twenty men, it would dispatch you straight

- A glooming peace this morning with it brings; The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things; Some shall be pardon'd, and some punished: For never was a story of more woe Than this of Juliet and her Romeo

- Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical! Dove-feather'd raven! wolvish-ravening lamb! Despised substance of divinest show! Just opposite to what thou justly seem'st, A damned saint, an honorable villain! O nature, what hadst thou to do in hell, When thou didst bower the spirit of a fiend In mortal paradise of such sweet flesh? Was ever book containing such vile matter So fairly bound? O that deceit should dwell In such a gorgeous palace!

- Sometime she driveth o’er a soldier’s neck, And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats, Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades, Of healths five-fathom deep; and then anon Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes, And being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two And sleeps again.

- Upon hearing that Romeo has killed her cousin, Tybalt, Juliet both curses and blesses her husband, Romeo.

- In Mercutio's "Queen Mab" speech, how a person's life experiences come back in dreams.

- The apothecary warns Romeo of the strength of the poison.

- Just before he takes the poison, takes his farewell of Juliet with a kiss.

- Prince Escalus delivers the last speech of the play

Look this video: Romeo+Juliet Soundtrack. Enjoy it!

Imperativo

Studia l'Imperativo con Cantaimpara e Englis Gratis:
l'uso dell'imperativo in Inglese può essere appreso facilmente con questa canzone tratta dal Muiscal "Jesus Christ Superstar".
Un moderno Erode, decisamente fashion-victim, mette alla prova Gesù ordinandogli dei prodigi. Trova i verbi all'imperativo e segui il link!

Ecco il testo:

Jesus, I am overjoyed to meet you face to face.

You've been getting quite a name all around the place.

Healing cripples, raising from the dead.

And now I understand you're God, At least, that's what you've said.

So, you are the Christ, you're the great Jesus Christ.

Prove to me that you're divine; change my water into wine.

That's all you need do, then I'll know it's all true.

Come on, King of the Jews.

Jesus, you just won't believe the hit you've made around here.

You are all we talk about, the wonder of the year.

oh, what a pity if it's all a lie. Still, I'm sure that you can rock the cynics if you tried.

So, you are the Christ, you're the great Jesus Christ.

Prove to me that you're no fool; walk across my swimming pool.

If you do that for me, then I'll let you go free.

Come on, King of the Jews. I only ask what I'd ask any superstar.

What is it that you have got that puts you where you are.

I am waiting, yes I'm a captive fan.

I'm dying to be shown that you are not just any man.

So, if you are the Christ, yes the great Jesus Christ Feed my household with this bread.

You can do it on your head. Or has something gone wrong. Jesus, why do you take so long?

Oh come on, King of the Jews.

Hey! Aren't you scared of me Christ?

Mr. Wonderful Christ? You're a joke. You're not the Lord. You are nothing but a fraud.

Take him away. He's got nothing to say!

Get out you King of the, Get out King of the, Oh get out you King of the Jews!

Get out of here! Get out of here you, get out of my life.

E qui troverai il video di Erode

Los Angelese, California (Primo)

LOS ANGELES
-California-


Los Angeles il cuo nome originario era El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles sobre El Rio Porciuncula, è la capitale della California. E' la seconda città più grande degli Stati Uniti d'America ed assieme a New York e a Chicago rappresenta uno dei centri economici e finanziari più importanti. La città è suddivisa in 88 quartieri, i più famosi dei quali sono certamente Long Beach, Santa Monica, West Hollywood, Pasadena, Beverly Hills e Malibù. Quasi tutti i periodi dell'anno sono ideali per visitare Los Angeles poichè il clima qui è mite e piacevole. Le giornate estive sono calde e soleggiate mentre gli inverni vantano giornate di freddo pungenti ma anche giornate soleggiate.

Superficie: 1.215 Kmq
Popolazione: 10.100.000
Ora locale: GMT/UTC -8 (ora della costa pacifica)
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COSA VEDERE :

DISNEYLAND Aperto il 17 luglio del 1955 e situato a circa 50 chilometri dal downtown di Los Angeles è definito il luogo più felice della terra. Disneyland è un capolavoro di coreografia: perfino i bidoni dell'immondizia sono decorati a tema. Il parco è suddiviso in sette 'land': Adventureland, Frontierland, Fantasyland, Tomorrowland, New Orleans Square, Mickey's Toontown e Critter Country. Orari: 08.00 - 23.00 alta stagione (estate): 08.00 - 24.00


HOLLYWOOD è la zona più famosa di Los Angeles grazie ai numerosissimi studi cinematografici che vi si trovano. E' situato nella zona collinare di Los Angeles. Nei primi anni del 20° secolo, una troupe di New York scelse questo luogo per girare alcune scene per un film, e casualmente diede il via ad un rapido sviluppo che trasformò in pochi anni questo angolo di mondo in una delle più grandi industrie dello spettacolo cinematografico. Per lunghi anni, a Hollywood si sono girati i migliori film della storia del cinema.

The life and death of King John (Quarto)

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF KING JOHN
By
DE RENZI FRANCESCA
FORTI ELISABETTA
LENZI FABIANA

ANALYSIS
Unlike Shakespeare's earlier history plays, King John does not portray a providential movement of history, where everything happens for a reason on a predestined path to a moral conclusion. While the play focuses on some of the historical events of King John's reign, it also delivers less narrative drive than plays such as Henry V. Events in the plot disrupt the connection between intention and outcome throughout the play--the characters are thwarted by historical accident and adversity, making King John more a pragmatic representation of political events than a story shaped according to aesthetic ends.
The main conflict turns on John's efforts to retain the crown against claims that he is not the rightful heir to the throne. The opening scene of the play shows a struggle over inheritance between the Bastard and his younger brother, which leads to a surprising conclusion that being a bastard is not a barrier to inheritance. However, the Bastard then renounces his inheritance, choosing to be a landless knight.
Agreements come and go throughout the play. The English and French battle to stalemate while seeking the allegiance of Angers, then band together to destroy the town, before ending their quarrel and sparing the town by negotiating a marriage between heirs of France and England. But this resolution is transitory; the messenger from the pope, Pandolf, excommunicates John and insists King Philip of France, just joined to John's family in marriage, go to war against John.
Philip supports Arthur as the legal heir to the throne, so John thinks he can secure his hold on the throne by ordering Arthur killed. However, this assassination turns his lords against him and brings on an invasion by the French.
Yet Arthur's executioner has actually spared Arthur, so John tries to reverse the situation. But Arthur dies in an accident that is interpreted as murder, and John's lords join the French army. John tries to undo the coming battle by belatedly submitting to the pope, but this has no effect. John's lords return to him when they hear the French plan to kill them.
Climactic battles take place offstage or not at all, derailed by last-minute treaties or a succession of armies lost at sea and drowned in tides. John dies away from the battlefield, poisoned by a monk angered by his robbery of the monasteries, making an undramatic ending based on circumstances barely portrayed within the scope of the play. The king's son appears conveniently at John's deathbed, just in time to announce the arrival of a peace accord from France. The ending seems orthodox enough--a dead king is succeeded by his son and heir--but it feels quite shaky, given that prospects for peace seemed so tremulous before John's death and that John was never proved to be the rightful heir anyway.
The play dramatizes several topics that would have interested Shakespeare's contemporary audience: a struggle with the papacy, the danger of invasion, and the debate about legitimate rule. These same topics were hotly debated during Queen Elizabeth's reign.
Yet King John differs from Shakespeare's other histories. It portrays the thirteenth century rather than the fourteenth or fifteenth, and unlike other historical plays that were part of a series, this play stands alone. Other historical plays focused attention on the balance of power between the nobility and the king, and gave account of popular unrest; this play, by contrast, completely marginalizes the populace and does not attribute much strength to the nobles.
The real focus of the play thus becomes the question of legitimacy and fitness to rule, which turns on the relationship between John and Arthur. Arthur was the son of the previous king's eldest brother, making him the rightful heir, but John was chosen to rule by the previous sovereign. Yet in the case of the Bastard, John rules that a will cannot take precedence over the law; in that case, the father's will that his younger son receive the inheritance was overturned by the law, which stated inheritance must go to the eldest son, bastard or not. By ruling such, John unwittingly proves his own illegitimate hold on the throne, because it is based on will and not the legal right of succession.
Shakespeare proves that John is not the legitimate ruler, yet the question is complicated in the clear difference that develops between the idea of "legitimate" and "fit." Arthur is the legitimate ruler, but his portrayal as a weak child under his mother's thumb shows him to be unfit; that is, he would be a weak and ineffectual king. Because John is a stronger man, his claim on the throne begins to seem much more attractive.
This situation all gives rise to a kind of defense of illegitimacy. Toward that end, the Bastard develops as the most compelling character in the play. He enters less as a character than as a set of theatrical functions, embodying the mischievous vice figure of earlier English morality plays. He speaks to the audience and makes observations about events.
Yet by the second half of the play, he becomes unswervingly loyal to the king, denouncing deals made between John and Philip, and between John and Pandolf, and criticizing the royal desire for "commodity" and self-interest. The Bastard seems to believe that Arthur's death was an accident and returns to John to defend the crown and kingdom. At this point he becomes both the rhetorical and ethical centre of the play.
By supporting John, the heroic and honorable Bastard makes it look like John must be the right choice for king. But ordering the death of Arthur has tipped the balance between rightful rule and hereditary legitimacy in John's reign, and his unnecessary cruelty makes him seem unfit to rule. As the central argument is weakened, so is the hero of the play; the Bastard loses his armies in yet another watery grave, and he still wants to fight an irrelevant war with France after the others have already negotiated peace. He is not completely pushed aside--he makes the final speech of the play--but while he cheers on the unconquerable force of his nation, his resolution has less to do with victory than with the well-timed collapse of both opposing forces. And while he delights in England's power, he also notes that internal conflicts could yet doom the nation.

COMMENTARY

Hereditary legitimacy--the validity of the passage of land, title, or position to children from their deceased parents, according an elaborate code of social rules--is a main concern in King John and is brought up in this first act in the figures of both John and the Bastard.
John's lineage is undoubted; he is the third son of Henry II, who was the father of Richard the Lionhearted, the previous king. When Richard died childless, the throne legally should have passed to the eldest brother of the deceased king or the eldest brother's children. Arthur is the son of Richard's eldest remaining brother and legally should be king. John, on the other hand, stakes his claim on the throne through being the third son of Henry II. His mother--Henry II's wife, Eleanor--supports him, and his claim to the throne is based on his personal strength compared to Arthur's relative personal weakness. Yet Arthur has found a champion in Philip, the King of France to possess based on that lineage is in doubt. The Bastard, on the other hand, is legally entitled to inherit the lands of his foster father. His father's deathbed will cannot move the law, which says that the offspring of a wife's affair is the legitimate son of her husband. Surprisingly, being a bastard child is not a barrier to inheritance; the Bastard can become a landed squire in place of his brother, an actual blood child of the Falconbridge line.
Apparently being in the right position is vital to gaining possessions legally, even if one's lineage is in question. The Bastard is in the right spot to overturn his scandalous birth, but Arthur, whose lineage is in order, is not in the right place to claim the throne of England.
However, the Bastard turns down the inheritance, choosing to become a landless knight known as the bastard son of Richard the Lionhearted rather than a landholding gentry with the name of Falconbridge. His ambitions are larger than those of a mere landholder, and becoming a knight with the royal name Plantagenet pleases him more.
Unlike many of the characters in King John, the Bastard is not an actual historical figure, and in many ways he is less a coherent character than a set of theatrical functions. Shakespeare based him in part upon the vice figure, a mischievous allegorical character common in earlier English morality plays. The vice figure combined a commitment to evil with an intimacy with the audience and an alluring sense of fun. In asides and soliloquies, he denounces the failings of the royals while he gleefully announces his subscription to their self-interested schemes. However, later in the play the Bastard becomes one of the more responsible figures, proving himself an ethical center in a play largely without a rhetoric of positive values. The Bastard becomes the most vital and most interesting character in the play.
Lady Falconbridge arrives with the intention of defending her honor against the claims her son makes against her, first bringing up the play's concern with the uncertainty of biologically legitimate patriarchal succession. Hereditary descent from father to son requires wives to be sexually faithful to their husbands--but no father can ever be completely sure of their sons' paternity. The role of women, therefore, is necessary to hereditary lineage, but it is also a potential threat. This anxiety is later reflected in vicious exchanges between Constance and Eleanor when they accuse each other of infidelity. These mothers offer potential damage to their sons even after their lineages are assured, as we see through their micromanagement of the careers of John and Arthur, and the fact that both sons seem to weaken considerably after the deaths of their mothers.

leggi la terza parte di questo lavoro su Shakespeare.