SOURCE: "Dario Fo's Trumpets and Raspberries and the Tradition of Commedia," in The Commedia Dell'Arte: From the Renaissance to Dario Fo, November, 1988, pp. 330-34.

[In the essay below, Emery analyzes Fo's Trumpets and Raspberries in relation to the use of masks, the nature of characters, the use of stock gags, and the representation of power as in the commedia tradition and carnival celebrations.]

My subject is the Dario Fo play, Clacson, trombette e pernacchi, in its English translation, Trumpets and Raspberries.

The play presents, in farcical vein, a variation on the theme of the kidnaping and killing of Aldo Moro. This time the victim of the kidnaping is the owner of FIAT, Gianni Agnelli.

In some senses we should trace the roots of the play to the classical tradition. Fo's earlier attempt to deal with the Moro kidnap had taken him to the model of Sophocles' Philoctetes; and...