Elusiveness of revenge and impossibility of tragedy: Shakespeare’s Hamelt and Pirandello’s Enrico IV

The objective dimension of the relationship between Shakespeare and Pirandello, if one means to restrict it to explicit quotations and allusions, is very limited and would seem to make the link somewhat tenuous between the two dramatists so far apart in time; however, an indirect link—so far not spelled out—does exist, and I intend to reaffirm it here in all its strength. It is a question of a link that is to be found mainly in two plays: Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Pirandello’s Enrico IV (1921), which present on stage basic thematic analogies already articulated and argued in various words by the Italian writer, especially in the novel Il fu Mattia Pascal (1904) and the essay L’umorismo (1908). This is an element that shows the homogeneity, the continuity of the author’s thinking as well as the appearance of the same themes in the different literary forms Pirandello uses. I would like to emphasize in particular, with regard to this, the contiguity between the works of the imagination and these essays, of theory or practice.The objective dimension of the relationship between Shakespeare and Pirandello, if one means to restrict it to explicit quotations and allusions, is very limited and would seem to make the link somewhat tenuous between the two dramatists so far apart in time; however, an indirect link—so far not spelled out—does exist, and I intend to reaffirm it here in all its strength. It is a question of a link that is to be found mainly in two plays: Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Pirandello’s Enrico IV (1921), which present on stage basic thematic analogies already articulated and argued in various words by the Italian writer, especially in the novel Il fu Mattia Pascal (1904) and the essay L’umorismo (1908). This is an element that shows the homogeneity, the continuity of the author’s thinking as well as the appearance of the same themes in the different literary forms Pirandello uses. I would like to emphasize in particular, with regard to this, the contiguity between the works of the imagination and these essays, of theory or practice