Rafik DARRAGI est titulaire du doctorat d'état ès-lettres anglaises (Sorbonne-Paris IV)

Il est décoré de l'Ordre l'Education de la République Tunisienne.

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Violence is a multiform phenomenon, a source of perplexity very difficult to limit and to understand.

Though the present work is concerned particularly with violence in its most common form of physical violence, it argues that violence in Shakespeare's plays is supported not so much by what is in them but by what is left out yet which might be expected by a typical English theatregoer.

All the plays dealt with offer an instable, heterogenous universe with different ethical standards, yet they show the same ambiguity of the character-drawing, and the same constant reaction to a preoccupying state of affairs.

Through a particular, colourful technique which largely accounts for the present interest and modern relevance of Shakespeare, a technique which imposes the presence of the body and, instructively associates it with the explosion of drives, feelings and thoughts, these plays appear not as an effusion of blood and hate but rather as an artistic creation, a brilliant discourse on violence. " ( Introduction)


" Because it is largely made up of our own questions, History repeats itself, and it is relatively easy to find parallels and similarities between events. Shawky could not ignore it. Pent up as it were, in his Egyptian world, surrounded by various dark forces, caught up between minority rivalries and constantly confronted to an oppressive, insidious colonialism, Ahmed Shawky could not remain unmoved and passive. As a playwright, he was aware that " one of the functions of drama is to make overt what is covert in society. " (E.Bond). Not that one can expect an open attack from a man who had lived off the generosity of the reigning Khedive ; but impregnated to the core as he was, with Western civilisation, he was well placed to investigate it and to denounce its excesses.

Though Shawky's conceptualization of containment and oppression is far from Shakespeare's, the writer of all ages, though Masr'a Cleopatra can be termed as 'engagé' in the sense we understand the writing of certain modern literary figures, such as Jean-Paul Sartre or Bertold Brecht, yet both playwrights intended to please their audience in reflecting their feelings and beliefs, with their heroins heralding the same message of love and freedom, standing as similar examples of human greatness in defeat." (p.175)