The history of Shakespeare's reception in 18th century Italy is a very scanty and fragmentary one. The aim of the present study is to attempt to join the scattered fragments of this mosaic together in a historic perspective stretching through the whole century and to try and interpret the resulting picture in the light of contemporary theories of comparative literature. Most of the emphasis will be placed on the role of the very few Italian worshippers of Shakespeare (Conti, Rolli, Baretti, Valentini, Verri) who were able to have a first-hand knowledge of his works. They can be seen as isolated receivers of a literary communication which was at the same time quite in advance in respect of average popular taste, and strongly antithetic to received Italian ideas of the period, dominated as they were by the dictatorship of French classicism. This means that not only the single receivers, with their different personalities, sensibilities and outlooks will be examined, but that also the objective conditions in which they found themselves, as well as the possibilities of reception afforded by the society in which they lived (particularly with regard to the transgression of the Aristotelian dramatic rules) will be considered. As a result, the link between literature and society in the specific situation of 18th century Italy will be made clearer and the relationship between these isolated receivers and their literary object (i.e. Shakespeare's works) will be better explained by enlarging the scope of the study from the history of Shakespeare's reception to a wider perspective of aesthetics of reception. A symbolic example of the general ignorance about Shakespeare in 18th century Italy is Ambleto. a "dramma per musica" written in 1705 by Apostolo Zeno, based on the same source as Hamlet. The author, one of the most committed intellectuals of the age, did not know anything about Hamlet and manipulated the same material Shakespeare had used in the way which would be most likely to be successful.