S. Dubrovic - Abstract

This essay reports on the history of the six drawings Francesco Carnevali made for the 1939 edition of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night Or What You Will, published by The Limited Editions Club of New York, under the direction of George Macy. It offers the most significant excerpts of the correspondence between Carnevali and Macy, which greatly help in tracking the different stages of the work done by the Italian artist. The essay eventually analyzes the different sensitivity Carnevali and Macy had in looking at both the Shakespearean play and its illustrations, by pointing out the discrepancies between the Italian texts written by Carnevali (in order to present his work overseas) and the English translations for the American reader, which accompanied the edition itself.