The Plebs of Masaniello

Many texts, written from the nineteenth century’s last years to pastthe twentieth century’s mid-point, were marked deeply by theMasaniello essays of Capasso. La Piazza del Mercato di Napoli e lacasa di Masaniello (1868) and La Famiglia diMasaniello (1875) were expanded and republished in Lacasa e la famiglia di Masaniello, ricordi della storia e della vitanapoletana. Writers from Salvatore Di Giacomo to FerdinandoRusso, Aniello Costagliola, E.A. Mario, and Eduardo De Filippo, all laterwidely recognized as the century’s “Neapolitanauthors,” evidence having read his pages and made them their own.That is what first emerges from this new wave in the fortunes ofMasaniello’s myth, our subject here. The tale presents, we shall soonsee, traits profoundly different or sometimes antithetical to what arosewith the Risorgimento. Masaniello becomes less national, and more“Neapolitan,” assuming ever more the traits singled out, bythose who inquire into Neapolitans, as peculiar to them.

All began, or rather re-began, thanks, above all, to the interest in theCapopopolo that Capasso communicated to his disciples,who often voiced touching words of praise, and gratitude for their generousteacher. See what Salvatore di Giacomo, Ferdinando Russo, and MichelangeloSchipa wrote after the scholar’s death in 1900, now republished inMasaniello. La sua vita, la sua rivoluzione (Naples,1993). Capasso was spurred by real curiosity: where exactly did Masaniellolive? Who was he? Who, physically and morally, were these plebeians whoclambered onto history’s stage?