Commedia dell'arte

File:Karel Dujardin 1657 A Party of Charlatans in an Italian Landscape.jpg

Karel Dujardins set his closely-observed scene of a travelling troupe's makeshift stage against idealized ruins in the Roman Campagna: dated 1657 (Louvre Museum)

Commedia dell'arte (Italian: "play of professional artists" also interpreted as "comedy of humors"), also known as Extemporal Comedy, was a popular form of improvisational theater which began in Italy in the 16th century and maintained its popularity through to the 18th century, although it is still performed today. All of their performances were outside with few props, unscripted and were free to watch, funded by donations. In a troupe there were 10 people, 7 men and 3 women.

Outside Italy, it was also known as "Italian Comedy."

Style

Travelling teams of players would set up an outdoor stage and provide amusement in the form of juggling, acrobatics, and, more typically, humorous semi-improvised plays based on a repertoire of established characters and a rough storyline. Troupes would occasionally perform directly from the back of their traveling wagon, but this is more typical of Carro di Tespi, a kind of travelling theatre that can be traced back to antiquity.

The performances were improvised around a repertory of stock conventional situations: adultery, jealousy, old age, love, some of which can be traced in the Roman comedies of Plautus and Terence, which are themselves translations of lost Greek comedies of the fourth century BCE. These characters included the ancestors of the modern clown. The dialogue and action could easily be made topical and adjusted to satirize local scandals, current events, or regional tastes, mixed with ancient jokes and punchlines. Characters were identified by costume, masks, and even props, such as the slapstick. Lazzi and Conchetti are also used.

The classic, traditional plot is that the innamorati are in love and wish to be married, but one vecchio or more than one vecchi (plural of vecchio) are preventing this from happening, and so they must ask one or more zanni for help. Typically it ends happily with the inamorati marriage and forgiveness all around for any wrongdoings. There are countless variations on this story, as well as many that diverge completely from the structure, such as a well-known story about Arlecchino becoming mysteriously pregnant or the Punch and Judy scenario.

The characters

Characters were portrayed by actors wearing masks, although the innamorati (or lovers) did not wear masks. Like their English contemporaries (Shakespeare), the Italians dressed male actors en travesti -- in women's clothing and wigs. Unlike the boy players of English renaissance theatre this was for humorous purposes, rather than as a result of social constraints.

In some cases, the characters were also traditionally considered as respectively representing some Italian regions or main towns. Often they are still now symbolic of the related town.

Character list

Here follows a list of the major Italian characters, with other English or French names, or descendant characters in parentheses, and the towns/regions with which they became associated:

Antoine Watteau's commedia dell'arte player of Pierrot, ca 1718-19, traditionally identified as "Gilles" (Louvre)

• Arlecchino (Harlequin, Truffaldino), a servant, one of the zanni. He is a poor peasant who has left his native Bergamo to seek his fortune in the city of Venice. He is illiterate, a fact that often causes amusement when a message arrives and Arlecchino pretends to read it. He is an acrobat and a clown, and carries a baton which he sometimes uses to bash other characters for comedic relief, leading to the modern term slapstick. He has several "masters," but his primary (if covert) interest is for himself. The famous Harlequin costume with its lozenge pattern of red, green, and blue diamonds originated in a stylised representation of patchworked clothing that was illustrative of Arlecchino's poor status, as well as his resourcefulness. There are three types of Harlequin mask: the cat, the pig and the monkey (some say the bull too). The traditional Arlecchino mask is speckled with wart-like blemishes. The lozenge costume gave his name to a fashion motif, the mask to a shape for eyeglass frames: see Harlequin. Oddly enough, Arlecchino was originally created by the French, and later adapted by the Italians.
• Brighella (Figaro, Scapino, Mezzetino), a money-grabbing villain, one of the zanni characters, and often a partner of Arlecchino. He is a self-made man, who has become comfortably well-off despite humble beginnings. He is sometimes the proprietor of the local tavern. He is a ladies' man, and a typical Latin macho, with all the charm that involves, and all the drawbacks. He is associated with Bergamo.
• Columbina (Columbine, Harlequine, Pierrette), is maidservant to the Innamorata and lover of Arlecchino. She is usually involved in intrigue and is rather intelligent. She is associated with Venice.
• Il Capitano (the Captain) is a cheap he-man soldier, but a coward underneath. He is often one of the vecchio.
• Il Dottore (the Doctor, usually called Dottore Balanzone or Dottore Graziano), is a local aristocrat, who went all the way to Bologna to read for his degree. He is extremely rich, with "old" money and is one of the vecchio. He adores food and good wines, thus he is a little round (fat).
• Innamorata (the Lover) is the leading woman. She wore no mask (see innamorati).
• Innamorato (the Lover) is the leading man. He wore no mask (see innamorati).
• Pantalone (Pantaloon, Cassandro, Cassandrino, Facanappa) is a rich and miserly merchant who is frequently the father of one of the innamorati, and is one of the vecchio. He also employs Arlecchino and treats him cruelly. He is associated with Venice.
• Pedrolino (or Pierino, most commonly nowadays known as Pierrot, also Burrattino, Bertoldo), is a mild-mannered zanni. He tends to be so kindly that other characters blame him for things he never did, and he agrees that it was all his fault.
• Pulcinella is a hunchback who still chases women, and is one of the zanni. He was the model for Punch in the English puppet theatre Punch and Judy. He is associated with Naples.
• La Ruffiana (Old Woman) is usually a mother or gossipy townswoman who intrudes into the lives of the Lovers.
• Scaramuccia (see also Scaramouche) is a roguish adventurer and swordsman who replaced Il Capitano in later troupes. He is the servant to another character. He wears a black velvet mask and black trousers, shirt and hat.
• Zanni is a threadbare old servant from Bergamo.

• 
  Arlecchino, 1671
• 
  Brighella, 1570
• 
  Colombina, 1683
• 
  Dottore, 1653
• 
  Pagliaccio, 1600
• 
  Pantalone, 1550

The influence of commedia

The commedia dell'arte, with its stock situations, stock characters and improvised dialogue influenced many other forms of drama, including pantomime and Punch and Judy.

Quite notably, many if not the majority of comic plays from roughly the 15th-18th centuries have clear influences from the commedia dell'arte, including spinoffs from the traditional characters. Some examples include Shakespeare's The Tempest, with a fairly traditional commedia plot structure and Prospero matching up to the part of Il Dottore, and Ferdanand and Miranda as innamorati; Beaumarchais' Le Barbier de Séville, which features a traditional plot, innamorati (The Count and Rosine) the zanni Brighella (Figaro) and the vecchio Dottore (Doctor Bartholo); and Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, with Roxanne as innamorata and Cyrano as Il Capitano/innamorato.

Molière was strongly influenced by commedia, as he had come in contact with travelling Italian actors in the provinces and worked alongside a troupe in Paris for two years. Harpagon in The Miser (1668) was modeled on Pantalone, and there are traces of other stock characters in Élise, Frosine, Valère, and La Flèche. The playwright was also a lead actor, and performed in the comedic style, with a love for physical humor.

Aspects of commedia dell'arte also passed into the silent tradition of mime. The Bohemian actor Jean-Gaspard Deburau (1769 -1864) brought the new forms of mime to Paris in the 1830s. He standardized the French image of Pierrot.

Ruggiero Leoncavallo's opera Pagliacci draws heavily on commedia dell'arte characters and situations.

Richard Smith used several of the characters in his opera Ariadne auf Naxos.

The characters and tropes of the commedia have also been used in novels, notably Scaramouche, the 1921 historical novel by Rafael Sabatini, but also in more recent sword and sorcery and literary works, such as Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius stories and Midori Snyder's award-winning novel The Innamorati.

The rock band, Queen, often drew on the themes and imagery of commedia dell'arte, most notably in "Bohemian Rhapsody", the video for "It's a Hard Life" (the intro the song itself is based on the aria "Vesti la giubba" from Pagliacci!), and the cover of the album Innuendo.

Agatha Christie's Harley Quin is a mystical, detective-like character. The characters of the commedia feature prominently in "Harlequin's Lane", the final episode of Christie's series of short stories featuring Quin. A similarly-named character is part of the DC Comics Batman universe, but apart from her costume there is no direct reference to the forms of the commedia.

The current NBC drama Studio 60 contains references to a recurring comedy skit involving commedia dell'arte, and there was some confusion at one point as to Moliere's relationship to the style.

Dario Fo has taken much inspiration from Commedia, by incorporating it with political issues, thus producing Political theatre

Commedia today

Commedia dell'arte has experienced periods of dormancy and revival since its inception. Commedia had all but disappeared when it was revived by Giorgio Strehler at the Piccolo Teatro of Milan.

Current American commedia dell'arte troupes include The Dell'Arte School in Blue Lake, Tutti Frutti in San Francisco and i Sebastiani in New England.

In England, the Ophaboom Theatre Company specializes in work rooted in commedia dell'arte traditions, updated for modern audiences. The troupe has performed (in several language) throughout the British Isles and across Europe since 1991.

Further reading

• The Innamorati by Midori Snyder is a novel with the commedia as its central conceit. ISBN 0-312-86924-X
• One version of The Love Of Three Oranges is subtitled "A Play For The Theatre That Takes The Commedia Dell'arte Of Carlo Gozzi And Updates It For The New Millennium". The authors are Carlo Gozzi and Hillary DePiano. ISBN 1-4116-1032-6
• Flamino Scala's Il Teatro delle Favole Rappresentative, translated into English by Henry F. Salerno as Scenarios of the Commedia dell'Arte. ISBN 0-87910-133-4
• The Commedia dell'Arte by Kenneth Richards and Laura Richards is an overview of Commedia dell'arte. It provides many original documents in translation including scenarios, lazzi and descriptions of characters, players and companies by contemporaries. ISBN 0-631-19590-4

External links

• Judith Chaffee's Commedia dell'Arte website
• Website about Commedia dell'Arte
• Thumbnail history of Commedia dell'Arte
• The Ophaboom Theatre Company