Tabori, di umore shakespeariano

Abstract

Shakespeare’s relevance in and for Tabori is well-known, and the Hungarian writer has paid many tributes to the Renaissance playwright, in his plays and in his critical work alike. It is of course possible to draw a very rough map of the plays more often revisited by Tabori, both on stage and in the scripted plays, starring The Merchant of Venice and Hamlet as the favourite intertexts. And yet, Tabori’s long-standing conversation with Shakespeare definitely involves many other plays, whether explicitly or in more subterranean ways. The essay charts some of these presences in Mein Kampf, Die Goldberg Variationen and Die Kannibalen, and attempts at making sense of the irreverent ways used by Tabori in his “rewriting”. The question is therefore: how the exploded and fragmentary Shakespearean corpus can be made to signify in Tabori’s aesthetics?