Povertà e ricchezza in Shakespeare

Abstract

This paper examines the place that the conditions of poverty and affluence take up in the plots of some dramatic texts of the early XVIIth Century in England. When confusion occurs, and the poor become rich, or the rich become poor, a tragic failure has taken place in the order of things and of social relations, sanctioned once and for all by divine decree. The first factor of this violation of order is material covetousness, with gold as universal symbol.