Edipo re e Hamlet: una discesa ai padri

My contribution aims to highlight some relationships between Sophocles and Shakespeare looking at the Freudian thesis and starting from the main hypothesis regarding the circulation of the ancient Greek tragedy in the sixteenth-century Europe. The analysis involves a wide relationship between tragic symbols, modes, and characters: Oedipus, for example, may be seen not only behind the rich palimpsest of Hamlet, as has been widely shown, but also throughout King Lear’s complex plot and symbology. At the same time, Electra and Antigone could be considered as important patterns for understanding the notion of conflict in Hamlet. Accordingly, I would like to show that Shakespeare turns to Greek tragic models, and especially to Sophocles, in a sort of - to say with Goethe - "descent to the fathers", in order to investigate and represent power in its abysmal relationships, both familiar and individual.