De Filippo translates Shakespeare’s The Tempest into Neapolitan of the 17th century. Analytical approach in morphological, lexicological and semantic perspective

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Abstract This article aims to highlight the potential of the Neapolitan language in literature and, in particular, in theatre, to focus our attention on its expressive power, its communicative capability, especially in the transmission of feelings and emotions, and to underline the similarities or differences in the translation from the English text. I have tried to examine how the transition from Shakespearian English to the Neapolitan language used by Eduardo (Neapolitan of the 17th century) took place through the analysis of a few details of certain elements, essaying the transformation that occurred through the centuries and the contaminations due to the various foreign dominations. I constantly compared the English text with the Neapolitan one because I had not found any similar works to compare my research. The result is that the verse’s rhythm and the words’ meaning are preserved, as well as the inner meaning of the single, expertly translated words. Sometimes, this result is reinforced by the words’ musicality and the sentence’s rhythm, which are enriched by idiomatic expressions that add power to the thought in the Neapolitan dialect.