Shakespeare Rome conference underway

(Vatican Radio) An international conference marking the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death got underway on Wednesday at Rome’s Campidoglio, the seat of the city’s Mayor.

The event entitled Shakespeare 2016: The Memory of Rome, is focusing on the playwright’s Roman plays including Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, and Titus Andronicus.

Organised by the City of Rome and the capital’s three public universities, there are also film screenings, theatrical performances, concerts and exhibitions which are being held along with the conference.

One of the participants at the opening of this international gathering was Professor Stephen Greenblatt, of Harvard University, who gave a lecture under an imposing statue of Julius Caesar in the Campidoglio’s main chamber entitled, “The Noblest Roman of Them All’: Shakespeare’s Interiority and the Secret Life of the Stage.”

Speaking to Vatican Radio’s Lydia O’Kane before his talk, Professor Greenblatt explained that “Shakepeare is most famous in a way for us now for burrowing into the inner lives of characters, whether it’s Hamlet or Macbeth or Othello, he’s fascinated by what you can find that’s hidden away on the inside. I’m going to propose that Shakespeare learned how to do this paradoxically from Rome.”

Listen: 

Holding a mirror up to the human person the Harvard Professor said that Shakespeare gave a great gift also to actors which was, “to represent what is secretly going on inside you and that’s something Shakespeare learned, not from medieval literature, I think …but actually from the Romans…”

Bringing into the discussion the question faith the Professor said “I believe that Shakespeare came from a Catholic background. I believe that evidence for this as for everything else is ambitious about Shakespeare, but I believe that his parents were adherent to the old faith. It was extremely dangerous to be this in the late 16th century and I think Shakespeare was brought up with a family secret, that’s the other aspect in my interest in the “secret life of the stage”. It’s not that I think that Shakespeare was presenting a kind of brief, an apology for Catholism, but I think that Shakespeare grew up in a household that had a secret, the secret of its faith.”

 

Shakespeare 2016: The Memory of Rome runs until April 20th.