'Na nuttata 'e guai ovvero Temporale a Mezzanotte (A night of troubles or Storm at midnight) is a play written by the guarattellaro Pasquale Ferrajolo, sometime about 1900. It is one of the rare examples of an original show performed by a Neapolitan glove-puppeteer in a context other than street theatre. Indeed, like other Neapolitan puppeteers working with hand-puppets, Pasquale Ferrajolo could play both classical plays for guarattelle (designed to be played in the street, with several scenes with very simple plots played one after the other) and more sophisticated comedies. These comedies drew inspiration from actors’ plays performed in theatres using local dialects.

As in other plays by the Ferrajolos, the two main characters are Pulcinella and Felice. Felice Sciosciammocca – a character who became famous thanks to actor and playwright Eduardo Scarpetta – is a representative of Neapolitan polite society. In the Ferrajolos’ plays, Felice is a friend of Pulcinella and a foil to him. He is a cultured man, who speaks the Neapolitan dialect with the accent of bourgeois and aristocrats.

On a rainy night, Pulcinella comes back home, prepares his bed and lies down in it. He has just fallen asleep when his friend Felice knocks on his door and asks for shelter from the storm. Felice has just seen Gilda, his fiancée, with a bersagliere (a soldier from a special corps of the Italian army) at the Teatro di San Carlo – the opera of Naples. Overcome with jealousy, he decides to go home but he cannot find his keys. After listening to his friend, Pulcinella offers him a chair to sleep in for the night. Felice cannot fall asleep and starts singing and screaming. Then he imagines that he is fighting the bersagliere and he throws all of Pulcinella’s furniture out of the window, including the bed. Gilda arrives at this moment. She explains that the bersagliere is her brother. She has come to tell Felice that he is going to inherit a large sum of money. Out of joy, Felice promises two millions liras to Pulcinella, who shouts: “per te sarò un principe, per lei sarò un signore, per questo colto pubblico umile servitore” (“for you, I will be a prince, for her I will be a lord, and for this cultured audience, an humbler servant”).