About the work
Isabella, Three Sailing Ships and a Con Man (original title "Isabella, tre caravelle e un cacciaballe") is a tragicomedy by Dario Fo, premiered on 6 September 1963 at the Teatro Odeon in Milan, directed by the author himself.
Plot
A condemned actor must perform for his life with his troupe on the execution ground of the Spanish Inquisition, telling the story of the seafarer Columbus, who tricks Queen Isabella of Castile into financing his voyages of discovery. When the New World proves far less profitable than hoped, reality catches up with the prisoner, and the play for his life ends with his execution.
Cultural significance
Fo portrays Columbus not as a heroic explorer but as a calculating con man who wins over the court and the queen through trickery – an unusually critical counter-narrative to the heroic myth of the discovery of America for the early 1960s.