Three Plays

Eduardo De Filippo is one of Italy's most important playwrights of the twentieth century. He was also an accomplished actor, theatre company manager and adaptor. Among his many theatrical achievements is his translation of William Shakespeare's The Tempest into the Neapolitan vernacular. His relationship with Italian audiences was so familiar that Italians refer to him simply by his first name, Eduardo. He wrote his plays in Neapolitan vernacular and Italian. The three plays presented in this volume, Napoli milionaria!, Grand Magic and Saturday, Sunday, Monday are all, to a certain extent, meta-theatrical works, in which characters often play roles in addition to their own. The three plays also share, as do most plays written by Eduardo, an investigation of the relationship between what is presumed to be real and what is fictitious.