Portrait of Nuns: Manuscript of an unpublished comedy performed in the convent.

[Manuscript] / [Convent theater]. Le religiose alla moda ossia Il ritratto delle monache Comedia di Monsignor Landolfi Vescovo di Pozzuoli prima Confessor di Monache. S.l. [Italy]: s.n., s.a. [1768 of shortly thereafter]. 8vo [15.7 x 10.4 cm] 238 pp., [4] pp. indice. Bound in contemporary vellum, losses to vellum on lower part of spine, rubbing, staining and edge wear to covers. The occasional internal stain, neatly written in one hand and legible throughout. 
 
 
Manuscript of this (mostly) unpublished 18th -century Italian convent comedy in three acts, written by a certain Gioacchino Dandolfo (here, “Landolfo”), a cleric in Pozzuoli, near Naples.
 
Le religiose alla moda ossia Il ritratto delle monache (“Fashionable nuns, or Portrait of nuns”) was intended to be performed by nuns. It presents the antics of Suor Maria Celeste “an imaginary invalid,” Suor Maria Zenobia, the “scrupulous aunt” of Donna Mariella, “an impertinent schoolgirl” at the convent; they are joined by a female servant, a confessor, a doctor, etc.
 
The scholar Ettore Stizzo located eight copies of the play in Italian libraries, and noted that in 1957 monsignor Vincenzo Cafaro wrote that he was in the possession of his own copy, which seems to be the volume offered here (“in forma di libriccino in 32.mo[?] con copertina di cartone rivestito di pergamena, di 238 pagine, oltre l’indice che è di altre tre”) (Stizzo, 541-42; Carafo, pp. 114-16). A further copy was noted by mentioned in 1898 by Benedetto Croce, who remarked that he picked it up years earlier from a bookstall.
 
“The comedy Le religiose alla moda was certainly written to be performed in a convent…We do not know for which monastery Dandolfo wrote it, nor where it was performed. The various copies in which the text has survived—Stizzo counted as many as ten—lead us to believe that it must have been performed several times, even during the 18th century” (E. N. Chavarria, p. 122; my translation).
 
No edition of full transcription of the play has yet been published, although Benedetto Croce reproduced a few scenes in his articles (see below). 
 
 
*Ettore Stizzo, “Un commediografo napoletano del ‘700: Gioacchino Dandolfo,” Critica Letteraria, vol. XXIX, fasc. III, n. 112 (2001), pp. 535-50, esp. 541-42; Vincenzo Cafaro, S. Procolo, Eutichete e Acuzio cittadini e martiri puteolani nella storia e nella tradizione, pp. 114-16; Cécile Berger, Voyages des textes de théâtre Italie-France-Italie (XVIe-XXe siècles); Giuseppina Scognamiglio, La scrittura che accende la scena studi e testi teatrali da Bracco a Troisi, p. 118; E. Novi Chavarria, “Il teatro delle e per le monache (Napoli, secolo XVIII),” Italica Wratislaviensia, vol. 10, no. 2 (2019), pp. 119-33; B. Croce, “Vita dei monasteri napoletani: Da una commedia inedita del sec. XVIII,” Napoli Nobilissima, vol. VII (1898), pp. 163-7 & 197-9; B. Croce, Aneddoti e profili settecenteschi, pp. 211-32; B. Croce, Aneddoti di varia letteratura, 4 vol., vol. III, рр. 69-86.