L’illusione teatrale: Shakespeare nella critica romantica

The essay analyses the notions of “natural” and “original” in relation to the reception of Shakespeare’s plays in the eighteenth and in the early nineteenth centuries. Romantic theatrical criticism considered the question of dramatic illusion in terms of staging vs reading, and of the actor’s emotions vs his detachment from the character he is representing. A seminal theory of acting thus emerges in the essays and reviews by William Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, and especially in the writings of Charles Lamb.