Dalla scena elisabettiana al teatro di figura: La tempesta di Shakespeare nella traduzione di Eduardo De Filippo

Abstract

In 1983, a year before his death, Eduardo De Filippo translates in seventeenth-century Neapolitan language The Tempest by William Shakespeare (for the Einaudi publishing house in the series Writers translated by writers), making it a unique masterpiece of its kind. The work is recorded, thanks to the intervention of Ferruccio Marotti, by University of Rome in audio format only. After the death of Eduardo, during the Venice Biennale of 1985, the famous company of puppeteers, the Colla brothers lends his “figures” to the voice of Eduardo creating a unique and fascinating version of the Shakespearean play in which the Neapolitan sounds strongly characterize the recording of the Neapolitan playwright. The essay aims to analyze the reasons and the steps that led to the transmigration of Shakespeare’s masterpiece from the English tradition to that of Naples, from the literary code to the vernacular. In particular, the survey aims to identify the suggestions arising from different expressive languages: from writing to theater, from impalpable voice to the materiality of the puppets, in the incessant research of the endless possibilities offered by the theatrical performance.