Recitazione e conversione nel “Filottete” di Sofocle

This paper highlights some significant points in Sophocles’ Philoctetes: the stage directions which Odysseus gives to Neoptolemus and those which Neoptolemus gives to the Chorus. Neoptolemus’ role is truly peculiar. In a tragedy centered on deceit and ‘acting’, Neoptolemus acts, just as a stage actor, a fictious role in front of Philoctetes: he has to play himself, his truest self, for the political mission ordered by Odysseus. The mask, temporarily worn by Neoptolemus in this ‘play within the play’, brings him back to being himself again. This conversion (µeταγνῶναι, 1270) is not only metadramatic, but also, and especially, a psychological process of tragic truth.