Alessandro Serpieri: Shakespeare’s Drama in Poetry (SKENÊ: Theatre and Drama Studies, 2).

The late Alessandro Serpieri was a leading figure in Italian and international twentieth-century literary structuralism and semiology, especially as it deals with the English Renaissance. His translation of Shakespeare’s Sonnets into Italian (1991), complete with introduction and commentary, is a major contribution to the field of creative interpretation. The present collection of critical essays devoted to the Sonnets includes three seminal studies written over the years and first published in Italian: “Shakespeare’s Immortality Sonnets. An Agon against Time” (1975, 1998), “Sonnets 33 and 29. Conflict between Two Cultural Models” (1976, 1998) and “Shakespeare against Iago” (1994). In different ways they all focus on the inherent dramatic dimension of these poems, considered both individually and as a series. In the context of the revived debate on this topic the publication of Serpieri’s book in English is very timely and should be welcomed.