![Two pages of a school notebook, the front cover is on the left, with a printed text; on the right is the first handwritten page of an outline.](https://admin.puppetplays.eu/static/images/works/_520xAUTO_crop_center-center_none/0002.jpg)
Manuscript
17 pages
Author(s)
I due ciabattini
I due ciabattini. Pulcinella milionario (the two cobblers, millionaire Pulcinella) was handwritten in a school notebook in the 1950s. It belonged to actor and puppeteer Francesco Ferrajolo (the spelling changes depending on members of the family) and is now kept by his son Adriano Ferraiolo. The play was written for actors, but Francesco also adapted it for glove puppets. According to Adriano Ferraiolo, this text inspired the play Una falsa estrazione, which he still stages nowadays. Yet, the characters and the two plots are quite different. In this play, the two main characters are Pulcinella and his sidekick Pasquariello, and only Pulcinella becomes rich thanks to an inheritance (while in Una falsa estrazione, the two characters, Pulcinella and Felice Sciosciammocca, win a large sum of money at the lottery).
A poor man becomes a millionaire
Pulcinella and his wife Rosella quarrel. Pulcinella cannot provide his wife with food, despite promising, before they married, that she would never be in need. They only survive thanks to the help of a rich uncle of the wife. Their son arrives in the middle of the quarrel, and he is also starving. He goes with his mother to the rich uncle, who is very sick. At this moment, Pasquariello – Pulcinella’s sidekick – arrives and recounts how he was evicted from his house by the landlord, slept in the street with dogs and, in the morning, was taken by a dogcatcher. Now, he hopes to eat with Pulcinella, but his friend has not eaten for several days. Don Giannattasio Brasciolone, the landlord, comes to ask for the seven months of unpaid rent. Pulcinella pretends to be dead and the landlord leaves. When Pulcinella’s wife comes back crying, the two friends believe that she is lamenting the death of her husband. In fact, Rosella is crying because her rich uncle has just died. Pulcinella receives an inheritance – the head of a Mercury containing a bag full of gold coins. In the end, Pulcinella is a millionaire and pays his rent for the entire year.