"Nei decreti di Venezia". Legge tragica e giurisprudenza comica in Shakespeare

The title, a translation of «in the decrees of Venice», comes from Il Mercante di Venezia and indicates the terrain on which the two Shakespearean readings proposed here move, which concern that text and Othello. A comedy and a tragedy with a Venetian setting, both inspired by Italian short stories, for which the profound foundation of the two genres is revealed in their respective "happy endings" and tragic fulfillment. According to the perspective of these pages, it resides in the relationship between dramatic invention and the sphere of law and rights, or rather in the opposition of an inexorable "tragic law", in the sign of destiny, and a "comic jurisprudence", which opens a horizon of salvation. In particular, Portia's legal action in The Merchant of Venice, disguised as a jurisconsult to free Antonio from the torture foreseen by the contract with Shylock, which provides for the payment of a "pound of flesh" in the event of debt default, shows precise references to Roman law, testified by the first version of the story, in one of the tales of the medieval Gesta Romanorum, certainly known to Shakespeare, in which, moreover, the lender is not Jewish, in order to free the text from reading as heavy as substantially retrospectives.