“Anche l’Ungheria ebbe sulla scena il suo quarto d’ora di gloria”

Abstract

In the interwar years Hungarian prose and comedy enjoyed international fame.  Ferenc Molnár was the leading playwright among internationally renowned Hungarian authors. My contribution tries to shed light on the reception of Ferenc Molnár in Italy by
one of the greatest theater critics of the time, Silvio d’Amico. Molnár, whose novel The Paul Street Boys is still widely read in Italy, has been almost completely missing from the Italian stages in recent decades. Despite the negative opinion of Franco Quadri in 1996, partially quoted in the title of this article, it must be emphasized that in recent decades Molnár has been acknowledged by
some theatergoers and international scholars as one of the most outstanding playwrights of the twentieth century. The article highlights the appreciation of Molnár’s dramaturgy: its great originality and its overcoming the limitations of the bourgeois comedy thanks to his exceptional sense of humor, the unexpected situations, and the brilliant dialogues that provide a glimpse into a particular cultural atmosphere of a modern society. Although Silvio d’Amico finds Molnár to be a really good playwright, he fails to understand his true stature.