Arden of Faversham relates the murder of Thomas Arden - the mayor of Faversham - orchestrated by his wife and her lover.

Rod and string marionette

Not specified

Great Britain

Canterbury

Printed excerpts

Murder

Rewriting

Unfaithfulness

Tragic

English

Husband

Gentleman

Mayor

Wife

Tailor

Lover (man)

Traitor

Murderer

Punch

Innkeeper

Arden of Faversham

Arlecchino (Amleto; Hamlet) meets with Facanapa (Orazio; Horatio) and Marcello (Marcelus) on the ramparts to meet his father’s ghost. The thought of it terrifies him, and when the ghost (Lo Spettro in the text) appears, he first refuses to follow him. The ghost reveals that he was killed by his own brother Claudio (Claudius), Arlecchino’s uncle, and asks his son to avenge him while sparing his mother Gertrude, who married Claudio after his death. Arlecchino asks Facanapa and Marcello to swear that they will keep this a secret. Claudio, Gertrude, Brighella (Polonius) and his daughter Ofelia (Ophelia) are talking about Arlecchino’s strange behaviour. Brighella asks Ofelia to speak with him, but Arlecchino is delirious and advises her to join a convent. Arlecchino makes Brighella believe that he is mad, but the latter hides to spy on Arlechinno’s conversation with his mother Gertrude. Arlecchino kills Brighella in his hiding place and reproaches his mother for having married Claudio; but the ghost appears and commands Arlecchino to show Gertrude respect. Laerte (Laertes), Brighella’s son, swears to avenge his father. Gertrude tells Claudio that Arlecchino knows the secret behind his father’s death. Claudio asks Laerte to challenge Arlecchino to a duel, and says that he will put poison on the tip of his sword. Desperate after being rejected by Arlecchino, Ofelia has killed herself. In the cemetery where she is to be buried, the gravedigger (becchino) shows Arlecchino the skull of the jester Yorick. Laerte challenges Arlecchino to avenge both his sister Ofelia and their father Brighella. Arlecchino asks that they swap swords. Wounded, Laerte dies. Gertrude also dies, poisoned by the wine meant for Arlecchino. The latter chases Claudio and kills him; then he falls, telling Facanapa that he too should die. But he gets up, reveals that he was only pretending to be hurt and leaves with Facanapa: the two of them are going to eat polenta. Seeing all these corpses, they lament that they cannot eat them.

Italy

Trieste

Printed

Revenge

Impossible love

Family

Shakespeare

Dramatic

Comical

Fantastic

Amleto, ovvero Arlecchino principe di Danimarca. Trieste: Chiopris, 1898.

Italian

ovvero Arlecchino principe di Danimarca

King

Arlecchino

Hamlet

Brighella

Facanapa

Spectre

Ophelia

Gravedigger

Apparition of a ghost

Monologue

Off-stage voice

Spying scene

Murder on stage

Duel scene

Death on stage

Fake death

Dialect

Amleto

Hamlet, or Arlequin, Prince of Denmark

Testafina and the aged Mrs Carlotta wish to enlist as volunteers in the hunt for the hyena, a beast that devours the young women of the village of San Giorgio. Giorgio Orsolano, the village delicatessen owner, immediately reveals himself to be the hyena: in his first appearance, like a good shopkeeper, he thinks about how many victims he needs during the San Giorgio fair to meet the demand for fresh sausages. After introducing himself, Giorgio Orsolano takes action and, at the end of the first act, drops the young Bianca and Colombina into the trapdoor connected to his workshop. The latter is engaged to Gianduja, who, together with Testafina, is the protagonist of the hunt for the hyena. It is Gianduja who, after buying sausages from Orsolano, finds a piece of a woman's finger (which he recognises from the nail polish) in his plate and realises who could be hiding behind the hyena. While Testafina calls everyone together, Gianduja breaks into Orsolano's shop, who was about to kill Colombina, and knocks him out with his stick. The mayor and the guards then take care of bringing the delicatessen owner-hyena to justice, to everyone's satisfaction.

Glove-puppet

Niemen Gualberto

Hyena

Criminal

Butcher

Blood

Cannibalism

Legend

Tradition

Italy (north)

Cold cuts

Grotesque

Storia di una vecchia leggenda.

Capitano Carletto dei cacciatori volontari della iena

Testafina

Gianduja

Colombina

Colombine

Guard

Blow-with-a-stick

Unveiling

Hidden corpse

Comical regional accent

La Iena di San Giorgio

King Victor Emmanuel II despairs to Garibaldi because the notorious criminal nicknamed ‘The Hyena of San Giorgio’ is stealing the limelight in the newspapers: more and more young girls are being kidnapped and then disappearing. When the Savoyard people (identified as ‘Cri de douleur’) beg him to free them from the Hyena, Victor Emmanuel takes his time and goes to San Giorgio because it seems that there is a butcher there, Barnaba Caccú, who makes the best sausages in all of Piedmont. Meanwhile, the nobleman Femorino wants to make sure that his fiancée, Angiolina, is a virgin, but when asked the question, Angiolina explodes in a fit of vulgarity and then reveals that she wants to marry a certain ‘Pensive Knight’ who secretly sends her love letters. Angiolina realises that her secret lover is the wanted criminal and, rejecting Femorino, agrees to marry him. Meanwhile, at Angiolina's house, her parents have invited Femorino to dinner: on the table is a sausage from the famous butcher of San Giorgio. Femorino finds a ring still attached to a piece of finger on his plate. No one suspects anything, however, and Femorino goes to the butcher's to return the ring. Meanwhile, in the butcher's hidden workshop, Caccù, with the help of his servant Crimea, has tied Angiolina to the table to turn her into sausage, but when he hears someone coming, he runs away. So when Femorino enters the workshop and finds Crimea with Angiolina tied up next to him, he immediately mistakes him for the Hyena. Meanwhile, in order to escape, Caccú has gone to the station disguised as a nun and expects the whole army to be sent after him. However, no one pays any attention to him. Outraged at not being recognised as the great criminal he is, Caccú confesses everything, even to King Victor Emmanuel II, but no one believes him. Left alone on stage, he shouts in vain, ‘It's me, I am the Hyena of San Giorgio.’

Gloved hand

Ceronetti Guido

Albano Laziale

Sausage

Piedmont

Guilty

Evil

Ironic

Tragedia per marionette

Vittorio Emmanuele II

Giuseppe Garibaldi

Prophet

Blind

Count

Doctor

Slave

Bourgeois

Franz Joseph I of Austria

Emperor

Maid

Vicar

Judge

Carabiniere

Stationmaster

Caricature

Trap

Disguise

Implausible

Hyperbolic action

Spectacular turn of events

The Hyena of Saint George

The Scorpioni Verdi and the Ragni Blu – two feuding families – make so much noise that the puppeteer herself wants to get rid of them. However, the Devil convinces her to grant him three days to make peace between the two families. But he cannot use his powers to do it. Instead, he will have to manage this by influencing someone else. The Devil meets Pulcinella and has him bring Areste Paganòs into the world. Areste then becomes the hero of the play. He elaborates a strategy to try and reconcile the feuding families: he will use the love between their children, Rosina Ragno and Rocco Scorpione. In this plot reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet, in which Rocco and Rosina drink a poisonous mixture that should put them to sleep but instead accidentally kills them, Areste manages to fulfill his mission. The Devil brings the two lovers back to life and the joy they share at being reunited helps their families understand that they should not have fought. They all celebrate the young couple’s wedding.

All audiences

Broggini Walter

Pau Donatella

Murru Antonio

Cagliari

Love

Rivalry

Enemy families

Enemy

Devil

Pathetic

Didactic

Pulcinella

Child

Mother

Father

Cardinal

Altar server

Cock, cockerel

Apparition of the Devil

Final intervention of the devil

Childbirth on stage

Accumulation of events

Love story

Areste Paganòs e la farina del diavolo

Areste Paganòs and the devil's flour

The puppeteer apologises to the audience because he is not ready to perform Macbeth: instead, he will perform an unpublished comedy by Goldoni, The Jealous Emigrant (which is, in fact, a fake written on purpose by Brunello). But one of his glove puppets, Arlequin, disagrees and organises a rebellion, convincing the other puppets to perform Macbeth. The tragedy begins, but Arlequin, who has dared to step out of his role, must die like Macbeth. The same applies to his antagonist King Duncan, who - as we discover at the end - is no other than the puppeteer himself.

Bare hand

Adults

Brunello Gigio

Molnár Gyula (aka Giulio Molnár)

Mogliano Veneto

Rebellion

Self-consciousness of puppets

Adaptation

Fake unpublished

Rodolfo

Lady Macbeth

Macbeth

Pantaloon

Macduff

Balanzone

Generico

Witch

Messenger

Guardian

Sicaire

Monkey

Theatre within the theatre

Double characters

Address to the public

Rehearsal (play within a play)

Apparition of the puppeteer

Surprise effect

Captatio benevolentiae

Tragic irony

Tragic conflict

Parody of formal language

Avista

Macbeth all'improvviso

Improvised Macbeth

Bouffefeu (Eatfire), the director of the theatre, announces that he is going to tell a rewritten version of Pinocchio’s adventures. Just as he is about to start carving a piece of wood, Père (Father) sees it morph into a puppet. He adopts it as his own child and, even though he is poor, gives it all he can. Instead of going to school, Pinocchio, accompanied by Grillon (Cricket), sells everything he owns to enter the funfair. Bouffefeu, the owner of the funfair theatre, takes pity on Pinocchio’s poverty and gives him five coins. They decide to head home and meet Chat (Cat) and Renard (Fox) on the way. Pinocchio shows them his money. Then, Chat and Renard dress up try to steal his money but Pinocchio and Grillon manage to escape and hide from them. On the advice of Fée Bleue (Blue Fairy), the allegory of Pinocchio’s mother, they hit the road. They encounter Chat and Renard again, who make Pinocchio believe that if he if he sows his money, a tree will grow out of it and will produce new coins. Pinocchio is gullible; he believes them and complies.
At another funfair, the Bonimenteur (Barker) changes him into a donkey, but he manages to escape. In the stomach of a sea monster, Pinocchio and Grillon find Père again. The three of them manage to get back onto dry land. Back to the Field of Miracles where Pinocchio buried his money, Pinocchio discovers trees laden with gold coins. He meets the Fée Bleue who lets him decide between becoming a real little boy or remaining a puppet. He chooses to remain a puppet so that he can always be a child in his father’s eyes.