The Tempest in Italian Dialects

This essay aims at analysing a number of translations and adaptations of Shakespeare’s The Tempest which make use of one or multiple Italian dialects. Examples include Eduardo De Filippo’s 1984 Neapolitan translation, Davide Iodice’s 1999 adaptation La Tempesta. Dormiti, gallina, dormiti, and Gianfranco Cabiddu’s 2016 film La stoffa dei sogni. This is an attempt at considering these translations and adaptations within a complex and still understudied category which I would like to call ‘dialect Shakespeare’. I will expose some of the sociocultural and ideological questions that are posed by this phenomenon which can consolidate, as well as complicate, one’s sense of belonging to regional and national communities and interrogate cultural hegemony and authority, with dialect sometimes working as a cultural reagent, and other times serving the agenda of various political and cultural movements. The Tempest is a play that focuses on the power of language to control and define ownership and identity, and it makes sense that it has been chosen by many authors and directors as a testing ground to explore the dynamics between dialect(s) and the standard, dominant language.