"The Tempest, ovvero una conversazione sul teatro"

The Tempest is a highly theatrical play in which Shakespeare discusses theatre, its possibilities and its mechanisms. The focus on theatricality emerges in the opening scene in which an unexpected terrible storm shocks and bewilders the spectators; the rest of the play develops along a continuous presentation of fictions and revelations, with comments on those same theatrical fictions. The metatheatrical discourse, widely present throughout the Shakespearean work, here is the quick of the entire play, and underlines the major function of the theatre as a life mirror.