La nave di Shakespeare

The sea as stage recurs in the Shakespearean theatre, and, at a time in which trade and navigations are of great importance for the development of the English power, ships are the most frequent means of journey in Shakespeare’s plays: from the first comedies (The Comedy of Errors e Twelfth Night), to the histories (Henry V), to the Roman plays (Antony and Cleopatra), to the tragedies (Hamlet, Othello), to the last plays (Pericles, The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest). In Pericles, in particular, the ship takes the protagonist through his journey of knowledge and atonement, and represents a metaphor of life and theatre, a real and symbolic stage of the Shakespearean world.