Il rito di Amleto
abstract
In the tragedy, Hamlet is a crown prince deprived of the succession to his deceased father. The king was poisoned by his brother, who succeeded him on the throne and in the queen dowager’s conjugal bed. It was an ancient custom to mock scandalous remarriages with a skimmington, but in the courts where Shakespeare performed this folkloric humiliation of a sovereign, however usurping, was unthinkable. Loved and supported by the people, Hamlet, pretending to be crazy, then gets help from actors to stage a tragedy that reveals the betrayal. In the age of absolutism, the court theater assumed the functions performed in the past by a plebeian ritual.
Keywords: Skimmington • Regicide • Rite of mockery • Usurpation of the throne • Elizabethan theatre • Madness in Hamlet • Shakespeare • Honour • Uxoricide • Reporting a scandal