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The Second Constable
Maria Feletti is the political journalist and Communist Party activist who comes to interview the Superintendent in Act 2 of the play. Professional, impassioned, and well-informed, she dismantles the police’s official narrative about the anarchist’s death and shows the audience that neo-fascist militants were likely responsible for the bombing. In this way, she serves as a foil for the Maniac and the play itself, which do the same through satire. However, the Maniac also criticizes Feletti for her faith that publishing the truth can change society. In his view, media scandal only gives those in power a chance to reform their corrupt system before the people can overthrow it. At the end of the play, he forces Feletti to choose between letting the policemen die in the bomb blast or freeing them—in which case they instead restrain her, leaving her to die. Feletti’s dilemma represents the audience’s choice between fighting to change society or merely waiting for institutions to change on their own. Fo also uses Feletti to criticize elitist intellectuals’ approach to political change and the Communist Party’s willingness to cooperate with capitalists and politicians.
Feletti Quotes in Accidental Death of an Anarchist
The Accidental Death of an Anarchist quotes below are all either spoken by Feletti or refer to Feletti. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Act 2, Scene 1
Quotes
The MANIAC is outrageously costumed. He wears false moustache, glasses, wild wig, wooden leg, false hand, eye patch, carries a crutch.
MANIAC: Delighted!
He proffers his false hand.
MANIAC: Pardon my stiff hand. It’s wooden. Memento of the Algerian campaign. Nasty business. We don’t talk about it.
They stare at his wooden leg. He gives it a slap.
MANIAC: Vietnam. Green Berets. All past history. Do sit down.
Slowly they all sit.
MANIAC: (To Audience) No cigarettes please. All dry wood here. Right, young woman, don’t mind me. I’ll just park my old timbers over here and you get stuck in. What’s the subject?
FELETTI: Window straddling.
MANIAC: (He sits awkwardly) Splendid.
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FELETTI: So! Notwithstanding knowing that to handle, let, alone make, bombs of this kind probably requires military skill, you completely ignored all other avenues of investigation and concentrated your entire effort on the most pathetic and disorganised group of anarchists in Italy.
SUPERINTENDENT: Pathetic they may look, but their disorganisation is only a cunning façade.
FELETTI: And what do we find behind this cunning façade. Superintendent? I’ll tell you. A group of ten, one of whom was a spy employed by this office, two detectives from the crime squad, and a fourth member turns out to be a notorious fascist well known to everyone except this feeble bunch of anarchists. How many more government employees have you got scattered amongst the far left?
MANIAC: You are a journalist Miss Feletti, so you want to use your pen to lance the public boil, but what will you achieve? A huge scandal, a heap of big nobs compromised head of the police force shunted off into retirement.
FELETTI: Not a bad day’s work.
MANIAC: It’s just another chance for the pristine beauticians of the Communist Party to point out another wart on the body politic and pose themselves as the party of honesty But the STATE, Miss Feletti, the State remains, still presenting corruption as the exception to the rule, when the system the State was designed to protect is corruption itself. Corruption is the rule.
MANIAC: (Getting carried away. To audience) How many more Russian spies are downing port at Buckingham Palace? Why did the Anthony Blunt cover-up happen? Why? Because class runs thicker than nationhood or ideology. But who gives a TINKER’S about that—what the scandal-mongering press cares about Blunt is whether he is knocking off Guy Burgess.
SUPERINTENDENT: (Name of actor who is playing the part) This isn’t Dario Fo.
MANIAC: I know, but I love bit of political gossip. What about the bastard politicians and businessmen mixed-up in busting Rhodesian oil sanctions? We all know who they are. Are there any arrests? Not fucking likely. Meanwhile innocent black kids can’t walk the streets for fear of getting picked up on SUS charges.
PISSANI: This is unheard of distortion of the author’s meaning!
MANIAC: He’ll get his royalties. Who’s moaning?
PISSANI: Get back to the script!
SUPERINTENDENT: This is an insult to Dario Fo!
MANIAC: Why not ask yourself Miss Feletti, what sort of democracy requires the services of dogs such as these? I’ll tell you. Bourgeois democracy which wears a thin skin of human rights to keep out the cold, but when things hot up, when the rotten plots of the ruling class fail to silence our demands, when they have put half the population on the dole queue and squeezed the other half dry with wage on cuts the to keep themselves in profit, when they have run out of promises and you reformists have failed to keep the masses in order for them; well then they shed their skins and dump you, as they did in Chile; and set their wildest dogs loose on us all.
MANIAC: Oh Dio! Whichever way it goes, you see, you’ve got to decide. Goodnight.
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Explanation and Analysis:
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Feletti Quotes in Accidental Death of an Anarchist
The Accidental Death of an Anarchist quotes below are all either spoken by Feletti or refer to Feletti. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Act 2, Scene 1
Quotes
The MANIAC is outrageously costumed. He wears false moustache, glasses, wild wig, wooden leg, false hand, eye patch, carries a crutch.
MANIAC: Delighted!
He proffers his false hand.
MANIAC: Pardon my stiff hand. It’s wooden. Memento of the Algerian campaign. Nasty business. We don’t talk about it.
They stare at his wooden leg. He gives it a slap.
MANIAC: Vietnam. Green Berets. All past history. Do sit down.
Slowly they all sit.
MANIAC: (To Audience) No cigarettes please. All dry wood here. Right, young woman, don’t mind me. I’ll just park my old timbers over here and you get stuck in. What’s the subject?
FELETTI: Window straddling.
MANIAC: (He sits awkwardly) Splendid.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
FELETTI: So! Notwithstanding knowing that to handle, let, alone make, bombs of this kind probably requires military skill, you completely ignored all other avenues of investigation and concentrated your entire effort on the most pathetic and disorganised group of anarchists in Italy.
SUPERINTENDENT: Pathetic they may look, but their disorganisation is only a cunning façade.
FELETTI: And what do we find behind this cunning façade. Superintendent? I’ll tell you. A group of ten, one of whom was a spy employed by this office, two detectives from the crime squad, and a fourth member turns out to be a notorious fascist well known to everyone except this feeble bunch of anarchists. How many more government employees have you got scattered amongst the far left?
MANIAC: You are a journalist Miss Feletti, so you want to use your pen to lance the public boil, but what will you achieve? A huge scandal, a heap of big nobs compromised head of the police force shunted off into retirement.
FELETTI: Not a bad day’s work.
MANIAC: It’s just another chance for the pristine beauticians of the Communist Party to point out another wart on the body politic and pose themselves as the party of honesty But the STATE, Miss Feletti, the State remains, still presenting corruption as the exception to the rule, when the system the State was designed to protect is corruption itself. Corruption is the rule.
MANIAC: (Getting carried away. To audience) How many more Russian spies are downing port at Buckingham Palace? Why did the Anthony Blunt cover-up happen? Why? Because class runs thicker than nationhood or ideology. But who gives a TINKER’S about that—what the scandal-mongering press cares about Blunt is whether he is knocking off Guy Burgess.
SUPERINTENDENT: (Name of actor who is playing the part) This isn’t Dario Fo.
MANIAC: I know, but I love bit of political gossip. What about the bastard politicians and businessmen mixed-up in busting Rhodesian oil sanctions? We all know who they are. Are there any arrests? Not fucking likely. Meanwhile innocent black kids can’t walk the streets for fear of getting picked up on SUS charges.
PISSANI: This is unheard of distortion of the author’s meaning!
MANIAC: He’ll get his royalties. Who’s moaning?
PISSANI: Get back to the script!
SUPERINTENDENT: This is an insult to Dario Fo!
MANIAC: Why not ask yourself Miss Feletti, what sort of democracy requires the services of dogs such as these? I’ll tell you. Bourgeois democracy which wears a thin skin of human rights to keep out the cold, but when things hot up, when the rotten plots of the ruling class fail to silence our demands, when they have put half the population on the dole queue and squeezed the other half dry with wage on cuts the to keep themselves in profit, when they have run out of promises and you reformists have failed to keep the masses in order for them; well then they shed their skins and dump you, as they did in Chile; and set their wildest dogs loose on us all.
MANIAC: Oh Dio! Whichever way it goes, you see, you’ve got to decide. Goodnight.
Related Characters:
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Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
