Echi ellenistici nella commedia inglese di fine Ottocento

[Autom. eng. transl.] The essay, through an excursus on the forms of the so-called light theater that successfully established itself in the English theater of the Victorian period, draws attention to the general ferment characteristic of every field of literature towards the end of the nineteenth century and which also involved the theater giving place to the so-called New Drama. Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw, both Irish, modern expatriate wits heirs of the compatriots Goldsmith and Sheridan, stand out on the English theater scene at the end of the century and determine its rebirth. These are two different approaches, partly complementary, capable of fulfilling the task of restoring the primary function of the theater as a reflection of the socio-political and cultural reality of the time, determining a particular form of ideal heritage with a certain decadent classicism, the Hellenistic one. The essay restricts the investigation to the figure of Wilde in that he better embodies the decadent hero of late-Victorian society and brings together the salient features of the Hellenistic artist. Wilde operates in the context of a London that became a provincial metropolis, just as, for the playwright Menander, it was Athens, whose cultural life was reduced to philosophy and comedy. Philosophy was that of the Epicurean who theorized political disengagement and the comedy, which was also no longer centered on the figures of politicians, concentrated on the universal, collective aspect of private man. The ingredients of Wilde's comedies, called society plays, are the classic ones of disguises, of agnitions and of misunderstandings; its types, such as the parasite and the rural zotico, are those already used by Epicarmo and in all Attic comedy. Finally, it will be noted how, from classical comedy, particular emphasis is given to the dialogic contrast, pervaded by a very witty and satirical comic note that indulges in the linguistic paradox through a wide use of the memorable pun.