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In her recent book Parlare per non farsi sentire. L’a parte nei drammi di Shakespeare (Speaking not to be Heard: The Aside in Shakespeare’s Plays) Mullini re-examines taken-for-granted definitions of ‘aside’ and ‘aside to’, questions the idea of audience as explicit addressee of these dramatic conventions, probes the claim that Shakespeare used them mainly to characterise evil figures, and offers a detailed reading and pragma-linguistic analysis of selected asides through a quantitative analysis applied to the Shakespearean dramatic corpus by means of the Ant-Conc software, especially focusing on ‘asides to’. Mullini challenges previous studies on Shakespeare’s use of the aside, showing its relevance with regard to the characterisation of any character in crucial moments of the plot and, in the case of ‘asides to’, its importance to underline also the power distance between specific dramatis personae., Skenè. Journal of Theatre and Drama Studies, Vol 5 No 2 (2019)

Through an investigation grounded on the theoretical and methodological guidelines provided by women's studies and reader response theories, this contribution aims to consider the ways in which Shakespeare's female characters are used and reshaped in the lyrics of rock songs written in English by male singer-songwriters, between the 1960s and the 1990s. Given the amplitude of the topic and the ungraspable nature of such fields as popular culture and pop-Shakespeare, the author does not (and cannot) aim to be exhaustive, but rather addresses the issue by selecting four characters, Juliet, Ophelia, Cordelia, and Lady Macbeth, whose musical alter egos will be analysed by the close reading of a selection of songs written and sung by rock singer-songwriters chosen for their representativeness and their popularity. The analysis will try and answer the following questions: which aspects of the dramatic characters are highlighted or, on the contrary, omitted in the songs? What is the function of this musical use of Shakespeare's work? Through their musical identity, do these female characters reinforce or undermine the socio-cultural and psychological oppression of women characteristic of a patriarchal culture? What can the role of these musical offshoots play in the study of Shakespeare's reception?, Altre Modernità, 2017: NUMERO SPECIALE: Will forever young! Shakespeare & Contemporary Culture