_THE ITALIAN COMMEDIA DELL' ARTE OR IMPROMPTU COMEDY._
1. A brief sketch of the origins of written comedy during the
Italian Renaissance--Its dependence upon Latin models.--2. Further
description of the so-called _Commedia Erudita_.--3. Emergence of
dialectical literature in Italy during the period of the Catholic
reaction--Improvised comedy begins to supersede the written drama
of the Renaissance.--4. Farces at Naples and Florence--The Sienese
company of I Rozzi--The Paduan Beolco--The four principal
masks--Pantalone, Il Dottore, Arlecchino, Brighella.--5. Relation
of modern impromptu comedy to the old Latin comedy of mimes and
exodia--the Osci Ludi, Fescennini Verses, Satura, &c.--In what
sense the modern masks are descended from those antique
elements--Infusion of fixed characters adopted from the plays of
Plautus and Terence.--6. Lombard, Neapolitan, Florentine
ingredients in the _Commedia dell' Arte_--Lasca's carnival song of
the Zanni and Magnifichi about the year 1550.--7. A review of the
principal masks and their subordinate species, as these were
finally developed--Modifications introduced into the masks, or
fixed parts, of the _Commedia dell' Arte_, by men of genius who
supported them.--8. The plots and subjects of improvised
comedies--Buffoonery and indecency.--9. Description of the scenari
or plays in outline which were acted impromptu by the comic
companies--Method of concerting a comedy and distributing its
parts--The function of the Capo Comico.--10. Qualifications of a
good impromptu comedian--Stock repertories, commonplaces, speeches
to be introduced on set occasions, soliloquies, &c.--The Lazzi or
sallies of buffoonery and byeplay--Tendency to degeneration in this
improvisatory art of comedy.--11. European celebrity of the Italian
comedians--In Paris, Spain, Portugal, London--References to
Italian companies in England during the sixteenth century.--12. The
decadence of the _Commedia dell' Arte_--Moral and artistic germs of
dissolution--Goldoni's severe criticism--Garzoni's description of
strolling actors, and their association with quacks, mountebanks,
and clowns.
I.
The history of the Italian theatre is closely connected with the history
of the Classical Revival.[19] The literary drama--as distinguished from
performances by tumblers, mimes, and masquers, from sacred plays and
from plebeian farces--began with the representation of Latin tragedies
and comedies. At the close of the fifteenth century it was usual to
crown courtly festivals with scenic recitations of favourite pieces by
Terence and Plautus. Rome vied with Florence, Venice with Naples,
Ferrara with Urbino, in the magnificence of these spectacles. At a time
when humanistic erudition formed the main preoccupation of society, and
when to be illiterate was unfashionable, princes and great prelates
afforded their guests the refined amusement of seeing the _Menoechmi_
or _Amphitryon_, the _Eunuchus_ or _Miles Gloriosus_, on their private
stages. At the same time, obeying the decorative instinct of the
Renaissance, they set these jewels of classical antiquity in arabesques
of the richest and most fantastic workmanship. Allegorical masques,
dances with musical accompaniment and pantomimic interludes, were
interposed between each of the five acts, enhancing the simplicity of
the Roman plays and gratifying the vulgar by an appeal to their senses.
These hybrid spectacles, eminently characteristic of Italian taste in
the age which produced them, contained the germs of several dramatic
species, afterwards known as the _Commedia Erudita_, the pastoral play,
the ballet, and the opera. Meanwhile Italian literature, stimulated and
powerfully influenced by humanism, acquired independence; and the
comedies of Plautus and Terence were translated and performed in the
vernacular. During the last years of the fifteenth century these
translations began to take the place of the originals upon the temporary
stages of princely patrons. As yet there were no public theatres.
Such, briefly sketched, was the origin of Italian comedy; and the
specific character of the _Commedia Erudita_, or written comedy of the
sixteenth century, may be ascribed to the peculiar conditions out of
which it grew. The genius of men like Ariosto, Machiavelli, and Aretino
never wholly freed the form they handled from subservience to Latin
models. It remained, in spite of their close imitation of contemporary
life and their audacious realism, a sub-species of that dramatic art
which the Romans adapted to their uses from the new comedy of the Attic
stage.
II.
The first attempts at national Italian comedy were the _Calandra_ of
Bibbiena and Ariosto's _Cassaria_. The former appeared at Urbino between
1503 and 1508; the latter, in its earlier prose form, at Ferrara in
1508. During the next fifty years a large number of comedies were
produced by a great variety of authors. Men of letters like Machiavelli,
Cecchi, Dolce, and Il Lasca, men of fashion like Lorenzino de'Medici,
philosophers like Bruno, free lances of the pen like Aretino and Doni,
artisans like Gelli, devoted themselves to this species of composition.
The type remained fixed, although some notable exceptions, especially in
the case of Aretino's plays, arrest attention. Taking the intrigue of
Latin comedy for their ground material, these playwrights adapted it to
conditions of Italian society. The avaricious father, the cunning
courtesan, the parasite, the slave merchant, the swaggering soldier, the
young spendthrift in love with a virgin of unknown parentage, the astute
serving-man, the faithless wife, the pedant, the cynical priest or
friar, the vicious old man in his dotage, the reckless adventurer, the
pirate, the country-girl exposed to the corruptions of the town; such
are the stock characters of this dramatic hybrid. Everywhere we find the
plots of Terence or of Plautus interwoven with a Novella in the style
of Boccaccio. As in Latin comedy, the knot is frequently loosed by
unexpected discoveries of lost relatives; and the magnificent realism
with which contemporary manners are depicted, clashes too often with the
stiff and antiquated _ossatura_, or dramatic mechanism, to which the
authors felt themselves obliged by fashion to adhere. From hints in
prologues and prefaces we are able to discern that playwrights chafed
against these traditional limitations of the _Commedia Erudita_.
Aretino, as I have just observed, broke the fetters of convention, and
presented scenes of pure Italian life; but his plays were too hastily
composed or ill-constructed to start a new style. The originality of
Machiavelli in his _Mandragora_ was not of the sort to encourage a
departure from the beaten track. Like many other masterpieces of Italian
art, the _Mandragora_ stands forth by itself, a sole inimitable monument
of genius; peculiar and personal; accomplished by one single act of
vigorous expression. Before a really national species of written comedy
emerged into distinctness from the _Commedia Erudita_, the literary
impulse of the Renaissance began to decline, and the Italians in the
middle of the sixteenth century entered upon that new phase of
intellectual evolution which is marked by the Tridentine Council and the
subsequent metamorphosis of Catholicism.
III.
One prominent feature of this transitional epoch was the reappearance of
popular forms of art and literature in Italy. The Italian provinces had
retained their local characteristics with undiminished vitality through
centuries of civic conflict and the dominance of humanistic culture. Now
that this culture was decaying, each district and each city contributed
some novelty of its own local vintage. Things which had been overgrown
and screened by scholarship put forth their native vigour. A rich jungle
of dialectical poetry sprouted from long-hidden roots. Men of birth and
breeding began to pique themselves upon the use of their provincial
language. A polite public, tired perhaps of too much polish, yielded to
the charm of realism. The habits of the peasantry and artisans were
transmitted to writing by educated pens. Scenic representations of a
simple character, which had formed the delight of villagers from time
immemorial, claimed the attention of learned coteries. Farces and
morris-dances became fashionable. The buffoons and mimes and masquers,
against whom the Church had fulminated in the Middle Ages, and whom the
scholars of the Revival looked down upon with condescending indulgence,
now lifted up their heads. Suddenly, by an imperceptible process of
development, which it is impossible to trace in all its stages, Italy
found herself in possession of what looked like a novel type of comedy.
This improvised comedy, or _Commedia dell' Arte_, as we must henceforth
call it, was not really new.[20] On the contrary, the elements out of
which it sprang were among the oldest, most vital, most national
possessions of the race. Yet it was due to the peculiar conditions of
the last years of the Renaissance, to the reaction against exhausted
forms of artificial literature, and to the fresh interest in dialects,
that this hitherto neglected plaything of the proletariate assumed a
rare and bizarre shape of beauty. The Italians, still capable of
exquisite artistic creation, had just now lost their liking for the
_Commedia Erudita_. Public theatres were beginning to be built. These
naturally introduced a more popular tone into the drama. Spectacles were
adapted to the taste of a mixed audience. Improvised comedy succeeded to
the heritage of written comedy. This younger daughter of Thalia invested
the motley characters and masks of her invention with the cast-off
mantle of her elder sister. She entered the sphere of the fine arts by
continuing the tradition of Italian comedy upon an altered system, and
with novel elements of humour.
To talk of younger and elder with reference to these two types of comedy
involves some confusion of ideas. Nothing is more significant of Italy
than the antiquity and complexity of all the forms of art which
flourished there. The _Commedia Erudita_, as we have seen, was derived
from Latin, and through Latin from Athenian sources. The _Commedia dell'
Arte_ had an even longer pedigree than this. In a powerfully mimetic
race like the Italians, the rudiments out of which it was constructed
were, as we shall see, indigenous. Before Rome rose upon the Tiber, the
comedy of masks and improvisation had, in some shape or other, amused
the people. The fall of the Empire, the formation of the Christian
polity, the centuries of the Middle Ages, the culture of the
Renaissance, did not extirpate it. Though we know but little of its
history during that long period, there is every reason to believe that
the elements which gave it individuality survived all changes. To this
topic I shall have to return. For the present, it is enough to point out
that the blending of the vulgar improvised comedy of vintage festivals
and market-places with what remained of polite written comedy after the
middle of the sixteenth century, determined the _Commedia dell' Arte_,
considered as a specific and strongly marked type of dramatic art. In
this sense, and in this sense only, it may be denominated the younger
sister of the _Commedia Erudita_.
IV.
Farces formed a popular species of entertainment all through the years
of the Renaissance. At Naples they had the name of _Coviole_, at
Florence of _Farse_. The playwright Cecchi has left us several specimens
of the written _Farsa_, together with a general description of the type,
which proves it to have been not unlike the earliest of our own romantic
plays.[21] A company formed itself at Siena, called I Rozzi, for the
representation of rustic farces. Composed of artisans and mechanics,
this company acquired such celebrity that Leo X. invited them in 1517 to
the Vatican; and their influence must be reckoned in the evolution of
the new Italian drama. A Paduan actor and playwright also deserves
mention here. Angelo Beolco, born in 1502, made himself known upon the
stage as Il Ruzzante, or the Frolic. He wrote rustic comedies with
simple plots, distinguished by their realistic humour and their strong
incisive pathos; and created the ideal character of the peasant or Il
Villano. Beolco formed a school in the Venetian provinces, and died in
1542.[22]
Such are some of the traces we possess of a dramatic type in growth,
which, after the middle of the sixteenth century, obtained predominance
in Italy. It is not possible, however, for the critical historian to
explain the several steps whereby the _Commedia dell' Arte_ arrived at
maturity. Like Harlequin, bounding from the sides and capering before
the footlights, this new species makes a sudden apparition. We find it
in full energy, possessing the public theatres and claiming the
attention of all classes, at the close of the cinque cento. Described
briefly, this comedy trusted to the improvisatory talent of trained
actors and made use of masks. Companies were formed under the direction
of a _Capocomico_, who took his name from one of the masks. Their stock
in trade was a collection of plays in outline, _scenari_ or _plats_ (to
use an old English phrase),[23] which the troupe studied under the
direction of their leader. The development of the intrigue by dialogue
and action was left to the native wit of the several players, and the
performance varied according to the personal qualities of the members
who composed the company. The masks or fixed characters were derived
from all provinces of Italy, and represented types peculiar to each
district.[24] Venice contributed Pantalone; Bologna lent the Dottore;
Bergamo supplied the two Zanni--Arlecchino and Brighella; Naples gave
Pulcinella, Tartaglia, and the Captain. Tuscany made up the characters
of the comedy with the soubrette and lovers. These Tuscan personages
were unmasked and spoke Florentine Italian.[25] The masks reproduced
their native dialects.[26] Like Harlequin in his coat of many colours,
the _Commedia dell' Arte_ wore motley. Displacing the literary drama,
which reduced contemporary life in Italy to the conventional standard of
classical Rome or Athens, this new drama brought into salience local
oddities and notes of provincial eccentricity. The masks were permanent;
yet they admitted of genial handling, since these parts in the comedy
were rarely written, and every fresh sustainer of a mask had the
opportunity of impressing his own individuality upon the type he
represented.[27] In this way, as will soon appear, each mask multiplied
and made a hundred. Plasticity and adaptability were the essential
qualities of a dramatic species which relied on improvisation, and had
only the unwritten code of immemorial tradition.
V.
At this point it is necessary to inquire into the relation between the
modern Italian _Commedia dell' Arte_ and the old Italian comedy of mimes
and _exodia_. Much has been written, with meagre and dubious results,
about the origins of the Latin drama. One thing, however, appears
certain, after shaking the dust from ponderous tomes of erudition. The
Romans, like the modern Italians, had their _Commedia Erudita_ and
_Commedia dell' Arte_. Of the two species, in classical times as
afterwards, the _Commedia dell' Arte_ was indigenous and popular, the
_Commedia Erudita_ derived and literary. The latter, whether it affected
Greek manners, as in the so-called _Fabula palliata_, or Roman manners,
as in the so-called _Fabula togata_, remained in the hands of scholarly
authors and serious actors (_histriones_). The former had its natural
origin in popular habits, and only at a comparatively late period
submitted to regular artistic treatment. It was represented by masked
buffoons, _Sanniones_, _Planipedes_, _Stupidi_, and so forth. We hear of
_Osci ludi_ and _Fescennini versus_, the former pointing to Campania and
the vintage, the latter to Etruria and village sports.[28] The _Satura_,
which seems to have been an offshoot from the _Fescennina_, corresponded
pretty closely to what we now call farce, and eventually developed into
the _exodia_ or _hors d'oeuvre_ of the later Roman theatre.[29] Out of
these indigenous elements, but with special relation to the _Osci ludi_,
grew a literary form of comedy which obtained the name of _Atellana_. It
is supposed to have originated in the Oscan city of Atella, close to
Acerra, Pulcinella's birthplace. In all these native forms of drama,
dialects were spoken and masks were used; and this is a main point of
connection between them and the modern Italian _Commedia dell' Arte_.
Another feature in common is the rank realism and open obscenity which
marked the humours of both species.
Among the ancient Roman masks four types are known to us by
name--_Maccus_, a Protean fool or Harlequin; _Bucco_, a garrulous clown
or blockhead; _Pappus_, a miserly, amorous, befooled old man;
_Dossenus_, a moralising charlatan. We also hear of the _Stupidus_ and
_Morio, Manducus_, a notable glutton, and the _Sanniones_, so called
possibly from their grin.
Further familiarity with the modern _Commedia dell' Arte_ will make it
clear how tempting it is to conjecture a direct transmission of these
Roman masks from ancient to modern times. Maccus and Bucco bear a strong
resemblance to the two Zanni. The very word Zanni seems to suggest
Sanniones; although it is probably derived from the Bergamasque name for
a varlet--Jack; Zanni being a contraction of Giovanni. Pappus looks
uncommonly like Pantalone, and Dossenus like the Dottore. The _Stupidus_
has an air of our clown or Mezzettino or Il Villano. Manducus might be
any glutton with a huge pair of champing jaws. Yet nothing could be more
uncritical than to assume that the Italian masks of the sixteenth
century A.D. boasted an uninterrupted descent from the Roman masks of
the fifth century B.C. That assumption closes our eyes to a far more
interesting aspect of the phenomenon. The fact seems to be that ancient
and modern Italy possessed the same mimetic faculty and used it in the
same fashion. The peasants of modern Tuscany indulged in their
Fescennine jibes, stained themselves with wine-lees, and jumped through
bonfires, like their most remote ancestors.[30] The grape-gatherers of
modern Nola and Capua ridiculed their neighbours with obscene jests, and
pranked themselves in travesty, like the earliest Oscans or the first
colonists from Hellas.[31] Out of the same persistent habits emerged the
same kind of native drama; and just as the Atellanæ of ancient Rome
eventually brought the comedy of the proletariate upon the public stage
in cities, so at the close of the sixteenth century the _Commedia dell'
Arte_ worked up the rudiments of popular farce and satire into a new
form which delighted Europe for two hundred years.
Many details derived from the _Commedia Erudita_ rendered the
resemblance between the modern improvised drama and the vernacular
comedy of ancient Rome superficially striking. The conventional
characters of Plautus and Terence, the _senex_, the _servus_, the
_meretrix_, the _mango_, the _ancilla_, the _miles gloriosus_, and the
_parasitus_ reappeared. In truth, this peculiar and highly complex
hybrid combined strains of manifold varieties. Upon the wild and native
briar, which in former times produced the _Osci ludi_, _Fescennini
versus_, and _Satura_, and which went on living its own natural life
beneath the drums and tramplings of so many conquests, was now grafted
the cultivated rose of the _Commedia Erudita_. This, in its turn,
contained elements of the _Fabula palliata and togata_. The result was a
species eminently characteristic of sixteenth-century Italy, and similar
to the Atellan farces of the Romans.
VI.
The _Commedia dell' Arte_ yields, upon analysis, three chief component
factors. The four leading masks, Arlecchino and Brighella, Pantalone and
Il Dottore, came respectively from Bergamo, Venice, and Bologna. These
were the contribution of Northern Italy. Pulcinella, Tartaglia,
Coviello, and the Captain came from Naples. They were subsidiary
characters of great importance, contributed by the South. The lovers,
_primo amoroso_ and _prima amorosa_, upon whose adventures the intrigue
turned, and the _Servetta_, came from Tuscany, or rather from the
tradition of written comedy, which adhered to the literary Italian
tongue. If priority in time is to be sought for any of these factors, we
must look to Lombardy. The four masks which were indispensable to this
dramatic species, and which survived all its vicissitudes, had an
undoubted Lombardo-Venetian origin. The Neapolitan masks were
superadded, and the Tuscan intrigue formed little more than a
conventional framework for the humours of the fixed characters. Scarcity
of documents makes it impossible to speak with absolute authority on any
of these points; yet we have good reason to credit the tradition which
connects the origin of the _Commedia dell' Arte_ with Northern Italy.
A carnival song, composed by Anton-Francesco Grazzini, called Il Lasca,
at Florence some time before the year 1559, throws light upon the
subject.[32] It is entitled "Canto di Zanni e Magnifichi." The Magnifico
corresponded to Pantalone; and I need not repeat that the Zanni were
best known as Arlecchino and Brighella. Lasca makes it clear in this
poem that the Lombard masks were strangers to Tuscany, and that they
performed comedies upon a public stage:[33]
"_Facendo il Bergamasco e il Veneziano,_
_N'andiamo in ogni parte,_
_E'l recitar commedie è la nostra arte._"
He also shows how the buffoon parts in these plays were interwoven with
the intrigue of the regular drama:
"E Zanni tutti siamo,
Recitatori eccellenti e perfetti;
Gli altri strioni eletti,
Amanti, Donne, Romiti e Soldati,
Alla stanza per guardia son restati."
Furthermore, he lets us know that acting was combined with dancing and
mountebank performances, and drops the information that women in
Florence were not allowed to attend the theatres where Zanni played:
"Commedie nuove abbiam composte in guisa
Che quando recitar le sentirete,
Morrete delle risa,
Tanto son belle, giocose, e facete;
E dopo ancor vedrete
Una danza ballar sopra la scena,
Di varj e nuovi giuochi tutta piena."
It is therefore obvious that, at the middle of the sixteenth century,
the _Commedia dell' Arte_ had already taken shape and earned popularity.
The companies who introduced it into Tuscany were recognised as hailing
from Bergamo and Venice. Before another fifty years had passed away,
this species absorbed the attention of Italy, adopted elements from
every district, and settled down into a definite form of comedy, which
lasted until the period of Goldoni's reform of the stage. It culminated
about the middle of the seventeenth century, and maintained a high
degree of excellence during the first half of the eighteenth. But when
Goldoni attacked it, and Gozzi rose in its defence, the type was already
on the wane. Depending, as any kind of improvised drama must necessarily
do, upon the personal talents of successive actors, the _Commedia dell'
Arte_ died of inanition when theatrical genius was diverted into other
channels.[34] Originality of humour then yielded to conventional
buffoonery. The masks became more and more stereotyped, more and more
insipid. Were it not for Gozzi's _Fiabe_, we should hardly be able to
form a conception of the part they actually played for two centuries in
Europe.
VII.
Let us watch the carnival procession of the masks defile before us. We
may imagine that they are crossing the stage of a theatre, while we sit
idle in our stalls. First comes Pantalone, the worthy Venetian merchant,
good-hearted, shrewd, and canny, yet preserving a certain child-like
simplicity, which long acquaintance with the world has not
contaminated. His full title is Pantalone de'Bisognosi. Sometimes he is
called Il Magnifico, sometimes Babilonio; and old tradition gives a
singular derivation for his name of Pantalone. Instead of having
anything to do with the Saint called Pantaleone, he ought really to be
known as Piantaleone, or Plant-the-lion. In fact, he is one of those
patriotic _cittadini_ who, partly out of zeal for S. Mark and partly
with a view to commerce, were reputed to hoist flags with the Venetian
lion waving to the breeze on every rock and barren headland of Levantine
waters.[35] Pantalone wears a black mantle, woollen cap, short trousers,
socks and slippers of bright red. A black domino conceals half of his
face. He is sometimes a bachelor, but more frequently a widower with one
daughter, who engrosses all his time and care. Easy-going indulgence for
the foibles of his neighbours, combined with homely mother-wit, is the
fundamental note of his character. But as time goes on, he degenerates,
dotes, yields to senile vices. At last he becomes the shuffling
slippered Pantaloon of our Christmas pantomimes.[36]
After Pantaloon walks the Doctor in his Bologna gown; a hideous black
mask covers his whole face, smudged with red patches, like skin-disease
or wine-stains, on the cheeks. He is Graziano, Baloardo Graziano, or
Prudentio, and has a kind of bastard brother called the Dottor Balanzon
Lombardo. Boasting his D.C.L. or M.D. or LL.D. degree from the august
University, Graziano makes a vast parade of learning. _Bononia docet_ is
always on his lips or in his thoughts; yet he cannot open his mouth
without letting fall some palpable absurdity. Law jargon, quibbles,
quiddities, preposterous syllogisms, fragments of distorted Latin,
misapplied quotations from the Pandects, mingle with metaphysics,
astrology, and physical chimæras about the spheres and elements and
humours, in his talk. He is a walking caricature of learning, and the
low stupid cunning of his nature contrasts with the vain pomp he makes
of erudition. To sustain this mask with spirit taxed the genius of a
comedian. He had to keep a voluminous repertory of pedantic lumber
always ready, to blunder with wit and pun in paradoxes, seasoning the
whole with broad Bolognese dialect and plebeian phrases.
Pantalone and the Doctor were only half-masks; that is to say, they held
something in common with the stationary characters of written comedy,
and took a decided part in the action of the play. As the _Commedia
dell' Arte_ coalesced with the _Commedia Erudita_, they approached more
and more nearly to the type of the _senes_ in Latin comedy. The present
generation has seen them both in Rossini's _Barbiere di Siviglia_.
Next come the two Zanni. These are thorough-going masks; twin-brothers
from the country-side of Bergamo, strongly contrasted in their
characters, yet holding certain points in common.[37] First comes
Arlecchino, the eldest and most typical of Italian masks, and the one
who has preserved its outlines to the present day. His party-coloured,
tight-fitting suit reproduces the rags and patches of a rustic servant.
On his head is a little round cap, with a tuft made out of a hare's or
rabbit's scut. He is always on the move, light-headed, gluttonous, gay,
pliable, credulous, ingenuously naïve and silly. The glittering
ubiquitous Harlequin of our pantomimes transforms him into a mute
ballet-dancer; but when the type was created, Arlecchino spoke and
amused the audience as much by his absurdities and uncouth jokes as by
his perpetual mobility.
Time would fail to tell of the infinite modifications which this type
assumed under the hands of successive able actors. Truffaldino, the
delight of Venice, Zaccagnino, Trivellino, Mestolino, Bagattino,
Guazzetto, Stoppino, Burattino, and the idiotic Mezzettino, were all
descended from this parent stock.
Side by side with Arlecchino goes his more astute and knavish brother
Brighella. He is also Bergamasque of the purest breed. But he holds
something from the Davus and Geta of Latin comedy. He is the roguish,
clever, cowardly, pimping servant of the young spendthrift, who helps
his master to deceive his father and seduce his neighbour's wife or
daughter. Brighella wears a loose white shirt trimmed with green, and
wide white trousers. On his head is a conical hat, plumed with red
feathers, which yields place in course of time to the white cap of our
clowns. His mask is brown, cut off above the upper lip, over which a
pair of short moustachios bristle. Like Arlecchino, Brighella gave birth
to a great variety of assimilated types. Unscrupulous Pedrolino,
Beltramo, Bagolino, Frontino, Sganarello, Mascarillo, Figaro, Finocchio,
Fantino, Gradellino, Traccagnino are his more or less legitimate
offspring. He enters French comedy under the names of Scapin,
Sganarelle, and Frontin. He creates a character of opera with Figaro.
Unlike Arlecchino, who becomes at last a silent ballet-dancer, Brighella
grows more vocal and distinct as time advances, until, in the plays of
Molière and Beaumarchais, he is hardly distinguishable from a _servus_
of Latin comedy modernised. Indeed, just as Pantalone and Il Dottore
approximate to the _senes_, so Arlecchino and Brighella shade off into
the _servi_; and all their countless progeny are variations on the theme
of stupid or roguish varlets.
The four main masks, with their attendant groups of subordinates, have
passed before us; but a multitude whom no man can number and no words
can describe press on from behind. Perhaps the first place should be
given to the _Servetta_. Her names are legion. Colombina, the sweetheart
of Arlecchino and Pulcinella, Rosetta, Florentine Pasquella, Argentina,
Diamantina, Venetian Smeraldina, Saporita, Carmosina; under all her
titles, and with every shade of character ascribed to her by the free
handling of successive actresses, she remains the sprightly, witty,
shifty pendant to the Zanni.[38] Not a true mask, however; for the
Servetta wears her own face and form, only assuming the costume and
dialect of the region she prefers to hail from. Like her lover
Arlecchino, Colombina underwent a long series of transformations before
she became the fairy-like being who flits behind the footlights of our
theatres on winter evenings. And, like Brighella, written comedy blended
her with the fixed characters of drama under the name of the soubrette.
Susanna in the _Nozze di Figaro_ is a familiar example of Colombina in
her latest dramatic development.
[Illustration: COLOMBINA (1683)
_Illustrating the Italian Commedia dell' Arte, or Impromptu Comedy_]
The _Servette_ in their many-coloured _Contadina_ dresses have
passed by. Close upon their heels press forward a chattering grimacing
group from Naples. Pulcinella leads the way, for he must still keep
Colombina in sight. In him, far more than in Arlecchino, the genius of a
nation lives incarnate; and this he partly owes to a poor artisan of
Naples, Francesco Cerlone, who fixed the type with inimitable humour in
the last century.[39] Pulcinella has had whole volumes written on his
pedigree. Some authors find him depicted on the walls of Pompeii; others
trace him in statuettes and masks of antiquity. The one point which
seems to be certain is, that he made his appearance on the public stage
toward the end of the sixteenth century, wearing the white shirt and
breeches of a rustic from Acerra. His black mask, long nose, humpback,
protruding stomach, dagger and truncheon, were later additions. Whatever
connection there may be between Pulcinella and the masks of classical
antiquity--and I have already attempted to show how I think that
connection ought to be conceived[40]--he was, at his début, regarded as
the type of a Campanian villager, established at Naples in the quality
of servant. Pulcinella is thus the Southern analogue of Bergamasque
Brighella and Arlecchino. Gradually he absorbed the humours of the
Neapolitan proletariate, and became the burlesque mirror of their
manners and ways of thinking. Time's whirligig has made him the hero of
our puppet-shows, and he enjoys cosmopolitan celebrity under the name of
Punch.
Coviello goes along with him, a Calabrian mask, which was sustained with
applause by Salvator Rosa at Rome. He belongs to the buffoon class, and
is distinguished by his mandoline and ballad-singing. After him walks
Tartaglia, afflicted with an incurable stammer, which renders his
magisterial airs and graces ludicrous. Tartaglia has something in him of
the Doctor; but this part lent itself to great varieties of treatment.
We shall see what play Gozzi made with it.
But now our ears are deafened with a clash of arms, rumbling of drums,
pistol-shots, and shouted execrations. A fantastic extravagant troop of
soldiers march upon the stage. At their head goes the swaggering
Capitano. He is a Spaniard, armed to the teeth, loaded with outlandish
weapons, twirling huge moustachios, frowning, swearing, boasting,
quarrelling, thieving, wenching, and shrinking into corners when he
meets a man of courage. Sometimes he affects the melancholy grandeur of
Don Quixote. Sometimes he leans to the garrulity of Bobadil. Sometimes
he assumes the serious ferocity of a brigand chief or the haughty
punctiliousness of a hidalgo. Still he remains at bottom the caricature
of professional soldiers, as they plagued and infested Italy under the
Spanish domination. His language soars into the wildest hyperboles and
euphuisms. He cannot speak without new-coined oaths and frothy metaphors
and vaunts that shake heaven, earth, and sea. But the slightest trial of
his valour breaks the bubble, and he cringes like a whipped hound.
The Capitano talked a mixture of Neapolitan and Spanish. His part, which
required to be sustained at a high pitch of burlesque upon a single note
of bragging insolence, was not unfrequently written, and none of these
fixed characters assumed more stereotyped outlines. The _Miles
Gloriosus_ of Latin comedy reappeared in him, and helped to mould the
modern type. The ramifications of this character were innumerable. A
celebrated actor, Francesco Andreini (born at Pistoja in 1548), helped
to create its form. He called himself "Capitan Spavento da Valle
Inferna." Then followed Ariararche, Diacatolicon, Leucopigo and
Melampigo (white and black buttocks), Coccodrillo, Matamoros,
Scaramuccia (created by Tiberio Fiorelli of Naples), Fracassa,
Rinoceronte, Giangiurgolo, Bombardon, Meo Squaquara, Spezzaferro,
Terremoto. The list might be prolonged until the page was filled. Every
variety of the burlesque son of Mars, from a delicate Adonis to a
fire-eater, obtained impersonation from one or other able sustainer of
the part. And a host of minor bastard braggarts, like the Trasteverine
Meo Patacco, perpetuated the fun long after the great Capitano had
quitted the public stage. Some of these types survive in literature.
Scaramouche is known to us, and Gautier has immortalised Fracasse.
In the rabble which follows this noisy band of warriors we discern
several buffoons of the long-robed tribe--Neapolitan Pancrazio,
Biscegliese, and Cucuzzietto, Sienese Cassandro and Roman
Cassandrino--who have more or less affinity with the Dottore. Il Pedante
walks apart, and attracts attention by his Maccaronic Latin and
eccentric morals. He has the poems of Fidenzio Glottogrysio in his
hands, which he presses on the attention of a smooth-chinned pupil.[41]
Don Fastidio distinguishes himself from the vulgar herd by his enormous
nose, and lantern jaws, and long lean figure, and preposterous citations
from the law reports of Naples. Cavicchio tells silly tales and sings
his Norcian songs. Il Desávedo burlesques the "dude" of Parma, and
Narcisino plays the "masher" of Bologna to the life. Burattino comes
upon the stage in a score of disguises, now gardener, now shopkeeper,
now valet, always the fool and knave combined, impostor and imposed
on.[42] The Notajo, with huge spectacles upon his nose and swan's quill
stuck behind his spreading ears, murmuring a nasal drawl, and tripping
himself up at every step in his long skirts, leads up the rear.
Rope-dancers, ballerini, Pasquarielli, Pierrots, conclude the show,
dancing and pirouetting after their more vocal comrades.
It is impossible, in a sketch like this, to do justice to the manifold
and motley crowd of the Italian masks. Even Callot, whose burin has
bequeathed to us so many salient portraits of the types he saw in
action, leaves the imagination cold. As I have remarked above, the
_Commedia dell' Arte_ combined fixity of outline in the masks with
illimitable plasticity in the details communicated by the genius and
personality of their sustainers. The mask, the traditional character,
was something which a comedian assumed; but he dealt with it as he found
it suited to his physical and mental qualities. Each distinguished actor
re-created the part he represented. The improvised extempore rule of the
game allowed him boundless license. Therefore, while the masks
persisted, they varied with the men who wore them. Arlecchino became
Truffaldino in the hands of Antonio Sacchi. The Capitano appeared as
Scaramuccia in the person of Tiberio Fiorelli. Parts crossed and
intercrossed. Pulcinella borrowed something from Arlecchino; Brighella
patched himself with rags from Coviello's wardrobe. The dialect and
local humours of South Italy were engrafted on types conventionalised
in Lombard provinces. Tuscany took them up, and added her own biting
wit. As in a kaleidoscope, the constituent fragments of the changeful
whole assumed shapes and forms of infinite variety by clever shifting of
each particle. Each company established for the performance of this
comedy gave a fresh nuance to the combinations which the show permitted.
In each district it adopted a new local colour. The mask was recognised;
the man who wore it was expected to remodel it upon himself. Folk came
to the theatres, less to see the masks, than to see how an Andreini or a
D'Arbes or a Costantini or a Riccoboni would sustain them. We who have
lost the men, and lost well-nigh the memory of their performance, cannot
hope to reconstruct the comedy in its entirety. Histrionic art always
and everywhere suffers from the ephemeral conditions under which it has
to be externalised. But this disadvantage is crushing in the case of an
art which was left to the spontaneous creativeness of its great
representatives.
VIII.
Intrigue of a simple kind formed the staple of these improvised
comedies. Anything like refined studies of character or the development
of calculated motives was rendered impossible by the conditions under
which they were presented to the public. An artist pleased or displeased
by the exhibition of his personality in masquerade, and his creation of
a shade of difference for some known type. The plot, whether borrowed
from the written drama, from Latin plays, or from the gossip of the
market-place, was always of an amorous complexion. Fathers, lovers,
guardians, varlets, priests, and panders played their parts in it. The
action proceeded by means of disguises, sleeping-potions, changelings,
pirates, sudden recognitions of lost relatives, phantoms, demoniacal
possessions, burlesque exorcisms, shipwrecks, sacks of cities, bandits,
kidnapped children. It is singular in what a narrow circle the machinery
revolves. Unlike our own Romantic drama, the _Commedia dell' Arte_ made
but few excursions into the regions of history, fable, mythology, and
fancy. Its scene was an Italian piazza; and though we hear of thrilling
adventures by land and sea, in forest and on fell, these are only used
to loose a knot or to elucidate the transformation of some personage. We
ought not to marvel at the limitations of this drama. They are explained
by that close connection, on which I have already insisted, between the
_Commedia dell' Arte_ and the _Commedia Erudita_. The new comedy
supplied little but its masks; and these masks, as we have seen, were
types of bourgeois and rustic characters, capable of infinite
modification within prescribed boundaries. The end in view was not the
delectation of the audience by a scenic drama, but the caricature and
travesty of life as it appeared to every one. That caricature, executed
with inexhaustible finesse and piquant sallies of fresh personality,
accommodated itself to the antiquated framework of plots as old as
Plautus.
If the _Commedia dell' Arte_ lacked fancy and invention in its
ground-themes, this defect was compensated by audacious realism and
Gargantuan humour. The indecency of these plays cannot be described. Men
and women appeared naked on the stage. Unmentionable vices were boldly
paraded. Buffoonery of the vilest description enhanced the finest
strokes of burlesque sarcasm. Actors who created types which made the
spirit of a nation live in effigy, condescended to tricks unworthy of a
Yahoo. We have to accept the species, not as a branch of the legitimate
drama, but as a carnival masquerade, in which humanity ran riot, jeering
at its own indignities and foibles.
IX.
The stock in trade of an acting company consisted of some scores of
plots in outline. Gozzi, writing in the eighteenth century, calculates
that there may have been from three hundred to four hundred dramatic
situations.[43] We possess a certain number of these scenari, as they
were technically called Flaminio Scala published a collection of fifty
in his _Teatro delle Favole Rappresentative_ (Venetia, 1611). The titles
of about one hundred others survive from the archives of Basilio
Locatelli and Domenico Biancolelli, incorporated in eighteenth-century
histories of the Italian stage. The records of the theatres where
Italians played at Paris supply titles of another set, and a few have
been disinterred from miscellaneous sources. Quite recently a complete
collection of well-formed _scenari_ was given to the press by Signor
Adolfo Bartoli from a Magliabecchian MS. of the last century.[44] It
contains twenty-two pieces.
Comparative study of these _scenari_ shows that the whole comedy was
planned out, divided into acts and scenes, the parts of the several
personages described in prose, their entrances and exits indicated, and
what they had to do laid down in detail. The execution was left to the
actors; and it is difficult to form a correct conception of the acted
play from the dry bones of its _ossatura._ "Only one thing afflicts me,"
said our Marston in the preface to his _Malcontent_: "to think that
scenes invented merely to be spoken, should be inforcively published to
be read." And again, in his preface to the _Fawne_, "Comedies are writ
to be spoken, not read; remember the life of these things consists in
action." If that was true of pieces composed in dialogue by an English
playwright of the Elizabethan age, how far more true is it of the
skeletons of comedies, which avowedly owed their force and spirit to
extemporaneous talent! Reading them, we feel that we are viewing the
machine of stakes and irons which a sculptor sets up before he begins to
mould the figure of an athlete or a goddess in plastic clay.[45]
The _scenario_, like the _plat_ described for us by Malone and Collier,
was hung up behind the stage. Every actor referred to it while the play
went forward, refreshing his memory with what he had to represent, and
attending to his entrances. But before the curtain lifted a previous
process had been gone through. This was called _Concertare il soggetto_.
The company met in their green-room. What followed may be told in the
words of a seventeenth-century writer on the technique of the _Commedia
dell' Arte_.[46] "The Choregus, who rules and guides the troupe by his
ability and experience, has to plan the subject, to show how the action
shall be conducted, the dialogues concluded, and new sallies of wit or
humour introduced. It is not merely his business to read the plot aloud,
but also to set forth the personages with their names and qualities, to
explain the drama, describe localities, and suggest extemporaneous
additions. For instance, he shall begin by saying: 'The comedy we have
to represent is so-and-so; the personages such-and-such; the houses are
on this side and on that.' Then he will unfold the argument. He will
impress upon his comrades the necessity of bearing well in mind the
place where they are supposed to be, the names of people and the
business they are engaged in, so that they shall not confound Rome with
Naples, or say that they have come from Spain when they are bound from
Germany. A father must not forget his son's name, nor a lover his
lady's. It is also most important that the houses in which the action
has to take place should be accurately known. To knock at the wrong
door, or to take refuge in the home of your enemy, would spoil all.
Afterwards, the planner of the subject must indicate occasions suited to
the sallies of the several characters. 'Here a piece of buffoonery is
right. A metaphor, or sarcasm, or hyperbole, or innuendo, would make a
good effect there.' In fact, he has to show each actor how to play his
part to best advantage in the circumstances of the piece. Then he must
look to preventing inconvenient entrances and exits, providing that the
stage be not left empty, and indicating proper ways of bringing scenes
to their conclusion. After the Choregus has read this lecture to the
troupe, they will meet and sketch the comedy in outline. Then they have
the opportunity of bringing their own talents forward, and combining new
effects. Yet, at such rehearsals, they must all be mindful to maintain
the outlines of the subject, not to exceed their rôles, nor yet to trust
their recollection of similar plays performed under different
conditions. The piece has each time to be produced afresh by the
concerted action of the players who will bring it on the boards."
The Choregus was usually the _Capocomico_ or the first actor and manager
of the company. He impressed his comrades with a certain unity of tone,
brought out the talents of promising comedians, enlarged one part,
curtailed another, and squared the piece to be performed with the
capacities he could control. "When a new play has to be given," says
another writer on this subject,[47] "the first actor calls the troupe
together in the morning. He reads them out the plot, and explains every
detail of the intrigue. In short, he acts the whole piece before them,
points out to each player what his special business requires, indicates
the customary sallies of wit and traits of humour, and shows how the
several parts and talents of the actors can be best combined into a
striking work of scenic art."
X.
More than natural cleverness and native humour went to the making of a
good comedian. To begin with, he had to be a man of sense, tact, and
obliging disposition. "When we speak of a good comedian in the Italian
style," says Gherardi,[48] "we mean a man of solid parts, who depends on
imagination more than memory in his performance, and composes everything
he says upon the spot; he is one who knows how to play up to his
companions on the stage, combining his words and gestures so well with
theirs that he responds at a touch to their hints, and who is so ready
with a repartee or movement that the audience believes the scene to have
been concerted beforehand." In truth, fertility of fancy, quickness of
intelligence, a brain well stocked with varied learning, facility of
utterance, command of language, and imperturbable presence of mind, were
required in a first-rate improvisatory actor. When he undertook to
sustain one of the masks, he had first of all to live himself into the
character. If, for instance, he chose the Dottore, nothing might escape
his lips upon the stage out of harmony with that character, nothing
which could remind the audience that anybody but a pedant from Bologna
was speaking. His every gesture had to contribute to the same effect.
The second nature of his part had so to supersede his own instincts,
that no sudden accidents, the maladroitness of a comrade, an unexpected
turn in the dialogue, or any of the inconveniences to which
unpremeditated acting was liable, should throw him off his guard.
It was further necessary that he should stock his mind with what the
actors called the _doti_ of a play, and with a repertory of what they
called _generici._[49] The _doti_ or dowry of a comedy consisted of
soliloquies, narratives, dissertations, and studied passages of
rhetoric, which were not left to improvisation. These existed in
manuscript, or were composed for the occasion. They had to be used at
decisive points of the action, and formed fixed pegs on which to hang
the dialogue. The _generici_ or common-places were sententious maxims,
descriptions, outpourings of emotion, humorous and fanciful diatribes,
declarations of passion, love-laments, ravings, reproaches, declamatory
outbursts, which could be employed _ad libitum_ whenever the situation
rendered them appropriate. Each mask had its own stock of common topics,
suited to the personage who used them. A consummate artist displayed his
ability by improving on these, introducing fresh points and features,
and adapting them to his own conception of the part. They had to become
incorporated with the ideal self he represented, and not to betray their
origin in study. The tradition of the drama and the daily practice of
rehearsing together made each member of a company know when such
premeditated pieces were to be expected. They did not therefore break
the general style of the performance. Habit enabled the actors to lead
up to them and pass away from them upon the stream of impromptu
dialogue.
Another highly important branch of the art was what were called the
_lazzi_. "We give the name of _lazzi_," says Riccoboni in his history of
the theatre, "to those sallies and bits of by-play with which Harlequin
and the other masks interrupt a scene in progress--it may be by
demonstrations of astonishment or fright, or by humorous extravagances
alien to the matter in hand--after which, however, the action has to be
renewed upon its previous lines." It was precisely in these _lazzi_ that
a comic actor displayed his personal originality to best advantage; but
it required great tact and sense of the dramatic situation to render
them natural, appropriate, and to keep them within bound and measure.
We have now seen what was expected of a first-rate artist, and
understand to what extent the _Commedia dell' Arte_ depended upon study
and premeditation. Long familiarity with their own repertory
undoubtedly reduced the improvisatory element to a minimum in the case
of troupes who were accustomed to play together for years. Yet they
strove to gain novelty by inventing fresh situations, giving unexpected
turns to dialogue, and varying their action on successive nights. The
best companies were those in whose hands a hackneyed comedy was always
plastic, and who kept their improvisatory powers in exercise.
The defect of the art was that it tended to become stereotyped. The
Zanni repeated their jokes. The Dottore used the same malapropisms over
and over again. The _primo amoroso_ served up the _crambe decies
repetita_ of his monologues. The _lazzi_ degenerated into unmeaning
horse-play and buffooneries, which had nothing to do with the action of
the piece. Nature was forgotten. Every actor over-played his part,
ranted, raged, turned caricature into burlesque, spoke in and out of
season, exaggerated his gestures, diction, gait, and declamation, until
a pack of madmen seemed to have run wild upon the stage. To control
these tendencies towards a false and artificial style of presentation,
which formed the inherent vice of improvisatory acting, was the duty of
an able Capocomico. It could only be done by forcing the members of the
troupe to study and reflect on what they had to represent, by compelling
them to subordinate their several parts to the general effect, and by
raising the tone of their intelligence. Thus there was the greatest
difference between a well-conducted company, intent on the perfection of
their art, and a wandering rabble, satisfied with appealing to the
lowest instincts of the proletariate. The value of these remarks will be
apparent after reading what Gozzi has to say about Antonio Sacchi's
company and the causes of its dissolution.
XI.
There is no doubt that during their flourishing period the companies of
the _Commedia dell' Arte_ afforded the rarest amusement, not only to the
vulgar, but also to refined and cultivated audiences throughout Europe.
They were especially appreciated at Paris. From the year 1572, when the
_Confidenti_ and _Gelosi_ made their first appearance, to the close of
the eighteenth century, Italian troupes at the Hôtel de Bourbon, the
Hôtel de Bourgogne, the Palais Royal, and the Opera Comique, formed the
delight of the French court and the Parisian public. Under various
names, _Uniti_, _Fedeli_, _Barbieri's_, _Bianchi's_, and Cardinal
Mazarin's men, actors who had learned their trade in Italy continued to
seek larger profits and a wider audience in that capital. "The way in
which Italian comedians compose, study, and represent their plays," says
a French critic in the year 1716,[50] "is quite beyond the powers of
language to describe. I might venture to call it inconceivable; with
such a wealth of new and agreeable sallies and of unpremeditated
dialogue do they adorn their scenes." Many anecdotes regarding these
Italian players in their French homes have been transmitted to us, with
detailed descriptions of their qualities. I will confine myself to two
extracts.[51] One is taken from Constantini's Life of Tiberio Fiorelli
(1608-1694), the famous Scaramouche. "He was one of the most perfect
mimes who have appeared in these last centuries. I call him mime
advisedly, because he played his part by action more than speaking.
Scaramouche was not satisfied with making what he represented
intelligible by speech; he translated everything into movements of his
face and body, adapting his gestures to his words and his words to his
gestures with incomparable art. Everything became vocal in this man, his
feet, his hands, his head; the slightest attitude he took had meaning
and significance." Gherardi adds that "he could keep an audience in fits
of laughter for a long quarter of an hour without uttering a word. A
great prince, who saw him act at Rome, uttered these words,
'_Scaramuccia does not talk, and yet he says everything_,' and at the
end of the performance presented him with his coach and six horses." Of
Tommaso Vicentini, called Il Tommasino, who made his début at Paris as
Harlequin in 1716, we read: "His suppleness, his natural gaiety, his
graceful airs of rustic simplicity, made him a first-rate Harlequin. But
nature had also made him an excellent actor in the more extended sense
of that phrase. True, naïve, original, pathetic, amid the laughter he
excited by his buffooneries, a single trait, a single reflection which
became a sentiment by his manner of expressing it, drew tears from the
audience, and surprised the author of the piece no less than the public,
and that too in spite of the mask, which seemed intended to inspire as
much fear as merriment. Often, when one had begun to laugh at his way of
simulating grief or pain, one finished by being melted with the
tenderness of the emotion which came from the bottom of his heart."
Italian companies delighted the court of Spain during the reign of
Philip II., and were welcomed in Portugal. We find them in Bavaria, at
Dresden, and in other parts of Germany. Nor were they entirely unknown
in England. Collier, in his "History of the English Drama," speaks of a
certain Drousiano, who played with his troupe in London during the
winter of 1577-78.[52] This was probably Drusiano Martelli. The
extempore plays of the Italians are mentioned by Whetstone, Kyd, Jonson,
and Brome; and it seems probable that the plat-comedies, ascribed to
the famous fools Tarleton and Wilson, were modelled on Italian _Commedie
a Soggetto_. Kyd, in the _Spanish Tragedy_, shows that the method of
studying an improvised play was well understood. Hieronymo, who wishes
to have a certain subject mounted in a hurry, says to his confidant--
"The Italian tragedians were so sharp of wit,
That in one hour's meditation
They would perform anything in action."
Lorenzo replies--
"I have seen the like
In Paris, among the French tragedians."
The full history of Italian companies in foreign lands still remains to
be written; but I have said enough in this place to prove their wide
popularity.
In its native country, the _Commedia dell' Arte_ was long regarded as
the special glory and the unique product of Italian dramatic genius.
Gozzi, though he wrote as its apologist, only expressed common opinion
when he said:[53] "I reckon improvised comedy among the particular
distinctions of our nation. I look upon it as quite a different species
from the written and premeditated drama; nor have I the shameless
audacity to stigmatise with the title of an ignorant rabble those noble
and cultivated persons whom I see with my own eyes following and
enjoying a play of this description. I esteem the able comedians who
sustain the masks, far higher than those improvisatory poets, who,
without uttering anything to the purpose, excite astonishment in crowds
of gaping listeners."
XII.
This essay would be incomplete if I failed to describe the decadence of
the _Commedia dell' Arte_, and the various inconveniences which attended
its performance by incompetent or wilfully scurrilous actors. Without
such a sequel to the history of its development, Goldoni's reform of the
theatre, and Gozzi's energetic attempts to sustain the old style by
works of a peculiar and hybrid character, will not be intelligible.
In its higher manifestations, this comedy, as we have seen, allied
itself to fine art by singularly delicate links of connection. More than
in other kinds of drama, where actors make themselves the mouthpieces of
poets whose creations they incarnate, the performers of improvised
comedy had to be complete and finished works of living art in their own
persons. So long as they were conscious of their mission, and earnestly
aspired to the highest points within the range and scope of their
achievement, they supplied a scenic travesty of actual life unequalled
for its freshness and its truth to nature--sparkling with salient
traits of character, seasoned with mirthful sarcasm, and pungent by its
satire of contemporary manners. But the roots of this unique and
singular species of the drama were grounded in a deep sub-soil of vulgar
instincts and dishonest proclivities. It clung to the tradition of
mountebanks and mimes, acrobats and jongleurs, circus-clowns and
rope-dancers. The rare flower of racy humour and refined parody, which
fascinated Paris in the age of Louis XIV., sprang from a stock
discredited and outcast through fifteen centuries of Christian teaching.
The Church in council and in synod had anathematised the ancestors of
Andreini and Fiorelli, Sacchi and Darbes. Burial with the sanctities of
religion was forbidden them, as it is forbidden to suicides. They were
reckoned among the enemies of social order and civil discipline. The
State, in its sumptuary laws, forbade their entrance into decent houses,
relegating them to dark corners of the city, where they lurked with
thieves and prostitutes. Saintly pastors of the flock, like Carlo
Borrommeo, carried on a crusade against these corruptors of public
morals.[54] Even in Venice, the city of their adoption--the sea-Sodom,
as Byron called it, of carnival licentiousness, the mart of pleasure for
all Europe, the modern Corinth--an Inquisitor of State scourged them
with these words of stinging reprobation:[55] "Bear in mind, you
actors, that you are folk beneath the ban of blessed God's almighty
hatred, and that the prince allows you only as pasture for the common
people, who take pleasure in your ribaldries." With such a record of
contempt and disesteem and outlawry, the _Commedia dell' Arte_ was
always sinking back into the slime from which it rose. Unhappily, the
same eyes which delighted in its glory during the years when genius shed
brilliant lustre on its noblest representatives, had only to look on
this side or on that, and a crowd of shameless merry-andrews, the scum
and dregs of the histrionic profession, made the evidences of its
inherent immorality only too apparent.
I have already touched upon the scurrilities and obscenities which were
common in improvised comedy. To enlarge upon the topic is not necessary.
Everybody can perceive that a drama relying in great part upon
buffoonery, restrained by no obligation to literary precedents,
dependent on the favour of mixed audiences, among whom women scarcely
showed their faces, and varying at each performance with the whims and
humours of masked actors, who were _ex hypothesi_ beyond the pale of
social decency, may have allowed itself licenses which were well-nigh
intolerable.
I have already described the tendencies toward exaggerative emphasis,
stilted declamation, ill-concerted action, impertinent extravaganza, and
wearisome repetition of exhausted motives, to which the species was
peculiarly liable. There is no need to expand those observations. They
justify the severe remarks of Goldoni in the preface to his theatrical
works, which, as these have a direct bearing upon the subject of my next
essay, I will summarise here:[56]--"The comic theatre of Italy for more
than a century past had so degenerated that it became a disgusting
object for general abhorrence. You saw nothing on public stages but
indecent harlequinades, dirty and scandalous intrigue, foul jests,
immodest loves. Plots were badly constructed, and worse carried out in
action, without order, without propriety of manners. If translations of
French or Spanish pieces were given, the improvisatory comedians
mutilated and deformed them beyond recognition. The same fate befell the
plays of Plautus and Terence, and of our elder Italian dramatists.
People of culture, nay, the common folk, cried out against these
miserable travesties. Every one was wearied with the insipidities and
conventionalities of an art upon the wane. You knew what Harlequin or
Pantaloon was going to say before he opened his lips."
Readers of Gozzi's Memoirs, to which these pages serve as a prolusion,
have means of judging, on the testimony of a very partial critic and
avowedly Quixotical defender of the old _Commedia dell' Arte_, to what
extent the system of the theatre in Italy was faulty. Students of
Casanova's Memoirs will remember the dark picture of the actress whom he
met at Ancona, with her epicene brood of children and of changelings
exposed to indiscriminate contamination.[57] The lighter pages of
Goldoni's Memoirs reveal a spectacle less revolting, but far from
edifying, of a comic troupe in its passage from one Italian capital to
another.[58] Leaving these accessible sources of information regarding
the social status of the dramatic profession in Italy untouched, I will
close this chapter with some extracts from a well-nigh forgotten
book--Garzoni's _Piazza Universale_. One of the most frequent charges
brought against the acting companies was that they dressed their women
up in men's clothes, and sent them about the public squares of cities to
attract the rabble. "No sooner have they made their entrance," says
Garzoni, "than the drum beats to let all the world know that the players
are arrived. The first lady of the troupe, decked out like a man, with a
sword in her right hand, goes round, inviting the folk to a comedy or
tragedy or pastoral in the precincts of the Pellegrino.[59] The
populace, inquisitive by nature and eager for any new thing, hurries to
take places. Paying their pennies down, they crowd into a hall, where a
temporary stage has been erected, the scenes scrawled with charcoal as
chance and want of sense will have it. An orchestra of tongs and bones,
like the braying of asses or the caterwauling of cats in February,
performs the overture. Then comes a prologue in the manner of a
quack-doctor's oration to his gulls. The piece opens; you behold a
Magnifico, who is not worth the quarter of a farthing; a Zanni, who
straddles like a goose; a Gratiano, who squirts his words out from a
clyster-pipe; a lover, who acts like a narcotic on the senses of his
neighbours; a Spanish captain, with nothing but a couple of musty oaths
in his whole repertory; a stupid and foul-mouthed bawd; a pedant, who
trips up in Tuscan phrases at each turn; a Burattino, whose whole humour
consists in taking off and putting on his greasy cap; a prima donna, who
goes yawning, drawling, twaddling through her mumbled part, with eyes
well open to the chance of selling her overblown charms in quite another
market than the theatre. The show is seasoned with loathsome
buffooneries and interludes which ought to send their performers to the
galleys." Enlarging on this theme, Garzoni proceeds as follows: "These
profane comedians pervert the noble use of their ancient art by
presenting nothing which is not openly disreputable and scandalous. The
filth which falls continually from their lips infects themselves and
their profession with the foulest infamy. They are less civil than
donkeys in their action, no better than pimps and ruffians in their
gestures, equal to public prostitutes in their immodesty of speech.
Knavery and lewdness inspire all their motions. In everything they stink
of impudicity and villainy. When occasions offer for veiling grossness
under a cloak of decorum, they do not take these, but pique themselves
on bringing beastliness to sight by barefaced bawdry and undisguised
indecency."
One of the degradations to which these comedians willingly submitted was
that of playing jackals to quack-doctors on the squares of the Italian
cities. Goldoni in his Memoirs[60] speaks of a certain Buonafede Vitali
who "maintained at his own cost a troupe of actors. It was their
business to collect the money thrown to them in pocket-handkerchiefs,
and to return the handkerchiefs filled with pots of ointment and boxes
of pills to the purchasers, after which they performed plays in three
acts with a certain kind of pomp under the light of wax candles." In
order to form a conception of the scenes which were enacted on an
Italian piazza crowded with charlatans, mountebanks and players, we must
have recourse again to Garzoni. It is almost impossible to understand
or to reproduce his language at the present day. Sarcastic sallies,
which were doubtless piquant in their time, but to which the key has now
been lost, abundance of ephemeral slang and racy innuendo, allusions to
forgotten people and obsolete customs, topical jests, the coarsest
Lombard patois seasoned with the salt of euphuistic rhetoric, all
combine to render his motley descriptions untranslatable. Garzoni and
writers of his class still lack the pains which Casaubon bestowed on
Athenæus, and perhaps their matter is not worthy of such vast
expenditure of industry. Yet the pith may be seized; and following our
garrulous cicerone, we stroll out on the piazza. "In one corner of it
you will see our swaggering Fortunato and his boon companion Fritata
spinning yarns, and keeping the whole populace agape into the night with
stories, songs, improvisations, dialogues; quarrelling, making-up, dying
of laughter, coming to blows again, bustling about their stage, settling
the dispute by fisticuffs and violent language, and lastly handing round
the cap to reap the harvest of the pennies they have earned. In another
corner, Burattino sets up his bray of brass. You would think that the
hangman had got hold of you, to hear him yell into your ears. He carries
a scavenger's bag and a common sailor's cap, and screams until the whole
world gathers around him. The people crowd, the groundlings jostle, men
of quality press forward to the platform. When the burlesque prologue
comes to a conclusion, Burattino's master puts in his appearance. It is
our old friend the Doctor, with his Bolognese jargon, long-winded
citations, insipid tomfooleries, and absurd pretensions to omniscience.
The droning of this arrant humbug drives as many of the audience away as
the zany's merry pranks and roguish whiskers and apish tricks have drawn
together. Meanwhile the curtains of the booth open, and the Tuscan comes
forth with his tumbling girl. He begins some silly story in the
Florentine tongue, during which the girl draws her circle and puts
herself in position, straddling with arms and legs abroad, flinging her
body backwards to pick up a piece of money with her mouth from two
crossed swords, and tickling the greasy varlets of the market-place by
the exhibition of her lascivious graces. Not far away, you may see the
Milanese quack, dressed like a noble gentleman, velvet cap on head and
white Guelf feathers waving to the wind. He is telling his man Gradello
some story of his hapless love. The groom cuts indecent jokes and gibes
in the background; then swaggers forward, twirls his moustachios, vows
to uphold his master's cause against all rivals, and bristles like an
enraged bloodhound; but, on a sudden, feigning to see foemen near, he
drops his arms, knocks his knees together, befouls his breeches on the
stage, and lets himself be soundly drubbed. When that interlude is
over, Gradello acts another part. He is a blind man squalling out a
ditty, and thrumming on a puppy in his lap instead of a theorbo. The
climax of all this buffoonery is a panegyric of some famous pills, which
lasts an hour or two, and leaves the charlatan wrangling over cents and
farthings with his swiftly dwindling audience. Toward evening the crowd
of quacks and blind musicians and acrobats thicken. Here is Zan della
Vigna with his performing monkey; there Catullo and his guitar; in
another corner the Mantuan merry-andrew, dressed up like a zany, Zottino
singing an ode to the pox, and the pretty Sicilian rope-dancer.
Tamburino spins eggs on a stick; the Neapolitan capers about with
brimming bowls of water on his pate; and Maestro Paolo da Arezzo makes
his solemn entry with a waving banner, on which you see St. Paul,
holding a huge falchion in one hand, while the rest of the field is
painted over with twining hissing serpents. The mountebank clears his
throat and relates his fabulous pedigree. St. Paul was his great
ancestor, and ever since that accident upon the island of Malta, all the
family have possessed miraculous powers over the snaky tribe. Hereupon
boxes are opened, and horrid vipers, water-snakes, and adders are drawn
forth to the terror of the bystanders. 'Do not be afraid,' continues
Maestro Paolo; 'I have delivered your fields and woods from these
plagues and their poison.' The trembling country-lads creep up and buy a
box of powders from the condescending hands of the impostor. After the
sight of all those asps and crocodiles, stuffed basilisks, tarantulas,
and Indian armadilloes, there is not one of them would venture out into
the country lanes without a prophylactic. Meanwhile, Settecervelli has
laid his mantle on the pavement, and is making his little bitch go
through her tricks, bark at the worst-dressed fellow in the circle, howl
at the name of the Grand Turk, dance for joy in honour of her master's
sweetheart, and carry round the cap for pennies in her mouth. The
Parmesan is not to be outdone by these performances; he has his
nanny-goat, whose antics are at least as sight-worthy as the puppy's.
The Turkish athlete climbs the campanile, lets his brawny chest be
hammered like an anvil, dislodges a stout pillar by the strength of his
huge arms and shoulders, and wins a bag of coppers heavy enough to pay
his expenses to the holy town of Mecca. The baptized Jew wails in a
lamentable tone of voice, _goi, goi, badanai, badanai_, till he has
attracted a crowd round him; then he tells the romance of his conversion
to the true faith, which leaves a strong impression on our mind that if
he has become a sincere Christian, which is more than doubtful, he has
certainly not lost the arts of an accomplished cheat. Soon the whole
piazza is swarming with folk of this sort; pills and powders, for all
the ills that flesh is heir to, are being hawked about; men are eating
fire, and swallowing tow, and pulling yards of twine from their
throats, and washing their faces in molten lead, and finding cards in
the pockets of their unsuspecting neighbours; every conceivable article,
which ingenuity can force on the attention of simpletons, is flirted in
one's face, and vaunted with a deafening din by hoarse and squeaking
salesmen."
Garzoni has carried us somewhat astray from the main subject of this
essay. Yet it is not amiss to have gained a full conception of the
medium out of which the _Commedia dell' Arte_ emerged, and into which it
always tended to relapse, as well as of the various low and ignoble
branches of industry with which the players were associated.