De Filippo, Eduardo

Related Category: Italian Literature: Biographies

(ādwär´dō dā fēlĭp´pō), 1900–1984, Neapolitan playwright and actor. In his scores of plays he combined pathos and farce. Napoli milionaria (1946) depicts postwar Naples, riddled with ruins and black-market corruption; Filumena Marturano (1946) concerns a loving prostitute who coaxes her lover into marriage. Both plays were made into successful motion pictures, the latter entitled Matrimonio all'italiana (Marriage Italian-Style, 1964). Among De Filippo's other well-known plays is Il figlio di Pulcinella (1957). Most of his plays are collected in Cantata dei giorni pari and Cantata dei giorni dispari (4 vol., 1951–59).

See R. W. Corrigan, Masterpieces of the Modern Italian Theater (1967).