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A type of comedy developed in Italy in the 16th and 17th centuries and characterized by improvisation from a standard plot outline and the use of stock characters, often in traditional masks and costumes.
[Italian : commedia, comedy + dell'arte, of the guild, professional (from arte, art, craft, guild).]
For more information on commedia dell'arte, visit Britannica.com.
Italian improvised comic theatre popular from the 16th to 18th centuries, whose stock characters, such as Harlequin and Columbine, are familiar to audiences all over Europe. The form, which from the start incorporated many dance-like elements such as acrobatics and pantomime, has provided the inspiration for many ballets, from Petipa's Les Millions de Harlequin (1900), to Fokine's Carnaval (1910), Massine's Pulcinella (1920), and Tetley's Pierrot lunaire (1962).
Italian popular theatre, first brought to France in the 16th c. It was originally a theatre of improvisation, relying on the reappearance of stock types, or masks, such as the servants Arlecchino [see Arlequin], Scaramuccia [see Scaramouche], Scapino, and Pedrolino (Pierrot), the old man Pantalone, and a pair of young lovers, whose desires form the basis of the plot. Acrobatics and physical business (lazzi) played a large part in this theatre, as did verbal wit and innuendo. The commedia was the origin of the Comédie-Italienne in France, and exerted a great influence on Molière. A full treatment of the subject will be found in the Oxford Companion to the Theatre.
[Peter France]
Characters of the Commedia Dell'Arte
The characters or “masks,” in spite of changes over the years, retained much of their original flavor. Most important were the zanni, or servant types; Arlecchino, or Harlequin, was the most famous. He was an acrobat and a wit, childlike and amorous. He wore a catlike mask and motley colored clothes and carried a bat or wooden sword, the ancestor of the slapstick. His crony, Brighella, was more roguish and sophisticated, a cowardly villain who would do anything for money. Figaro and Molière's Scapin are descendants of this type. Pedrolino was a white-faced, moon-struck dreamer; the French Pierrot is his descendant. Pagliaccio, the forerunner of today's clown, was closely akin to Pedrolino.
Pulcinella, as seen in the English Punch and Judy shows, was a dwarfish humpback with a crooked nose, the cruel bachelor who chased pretty girls. Pantalone or Pantaloon was a caricature of the Venetian merchant, rich and retired, mean and miserly, with a young wife or an adventurous daughter. Il Dottore (the doctor), his only friend, was a caricature of learning—pompous and fraudulent; he survives in the works of Molière. Il Capitano (the captain) was a caricature of the professional soldier—bold, swaggering, and cowardly. He was replaced by the more agile Scarramuccia or Scaramouche, who, dressed in black and carrying a pointed sword, was the Robin Hood of his day.
The handsome Inamorato (the lover) went by many names. He wore no mask and had to be eloquent in order to speak the love declamations. The Inamorata was his female counterpart; Isabella Andreini was the most famous. Her servant, usually called Columbine, was the beloved of Harlequin. Witty, bright, and given to intrigue, she developed into such characters as Harlequine and Pierrette. La Ruffiana was an old woman, either the mother or a village gossip, who thwarted the lovers. Cantarina and Ballerina often took part in the comedy, but for the most part their job was to sing, dance, or play music. None of the women wore masks.
Influence
The impact of commedia dell'arte on European drama can be seen in French pantomime and the English harlequinade. The ensemble companies generally performed in Italy, although a company called the comédie-italienne was established in Paris in 1661. The commedia dell'arte survived the early 18th cent. only by means of its vast influence on written dramatic forms.
Bibliography
See K. M. Lea, The Italian Popular Comedy (2 vol., 1934, repr. 1962); W. Smith, Commedia Dell'arte (rev. ed. 1964); P. L. Duchartre, The Italian Comedy (tr. 1928, repr. 1965); A. Nicoll, The World of Harlequin: A Critical Study of the Commedia dell'Arte (1987).
Commedia dell'arte is a term applied to both the early Italian commercial theater in general and to a format institutionalized by sixteenth-century professional actors' improvisations on a three-act scenario. The scenarios were constructed from a repertoire of plot types and movable parts (theatergrams) drawn primarily from novellas and scripted "erudite" comedies, set in contemporary city squares and representing love stories complicated by mistakes, deceits, parental opposition, and family separations.
In addition to singing and dancing, the players could counterfeit regional dialects and double in several roles while specializing in one of them. A standard troupe would include two pairs of lovers speaking Tuscan; several masked characters, including the old Venetian merchant Pantalone, the Bolognese Doctor Gratiano, at least two zanies, such as Bergamask Arlecchino, Fritellino, or later Neapolitan Pulcinella, Scaramuccia, and their like; boastful captains with bellicose names, such as Rodomonte, Spavento, or Matamoros; and a couple of maidservants. Innkeepers, Germans, gypsies, Turks, magicians, peddlers, and other occasional roles were added according to plot.
The first documented actors' troupe-for-hire was formed in Padua in 1545; by 1560 companies included women, and in the early 1570s several were touring abroad. Among the constantly merging prominent troupes were the Gelosi, the Desiosi, the Fedeli, the Confidenti, and the Uniti, at different times featuring leading performers of the day, the Andreini and Martinelli families, Diana Ponti, Vittoria Piissimi, and Flaminio Scala.
The professional troupes and their improvising style influenced the development of Italian drama and established a symbiosis with literary drama: the actors also memorized and performed five-act erudite comedies, tragedies, and pastoral plays, from which they borrowed for scenarios on which to improvise. Sometimes they even wrote in this format, while many literary dramatists enlivened their own works by drawing upon the commedia dell'arte's stock types, theatricality, movement, stage business, and gags, both verbal and visual.
The most successful players gained high patronage in Italian and related European academic and court circles, often traveling to France, Spain, and England in the late sixteenth century. For nearly two hundred years thereafter the commedia dell'arte in various permutations was a vital theatrical force throughout Europe. Its presence in France from the 1570s on constituted a significant chapter in French theater history. Visits to the royal court in Paris were followed by the establishment of the Comédie-Italienne and, after its suppression in 1697, by a revival in 1716 by Luigi Riccoboni. The Italian companies influenced Molière (1622–1673) and eventually Marivaux (1688–1763), nurtured French versions of stock roles like Mezzetin, Scaramouche, or Scapin and Gallic additions, from Turlupin and Captain Fracasse to Pierrot and Pierrette, as well as leaving a memory in Watteau's painting.
Long sojourns in Madrid not only influenced Lope de Vega (1562–1635), but also made the commedia dell'arte a primary transmitter of Spanish drama to Italy through adaptations and translations of Calderón and other Golden Age dramatists. The connection with England has been harder to document, but scrutiny of Shakespeare's theatrical practice and associations reveals his savvy awareness of Italian theater technology in general and of the professional players in particular.
In the mid-seventeenth century, the first two creative generations of the commedia dell'arte—represented by Francesco, Isabella, and G. B. Andreini, P. M. Cecchini, and Niccolo Barbieri—were replaced by a less versatile, bureaucratized profession. The troupes, which employed an increasingly fixed repertoire of masks and farcical plots, became dependent on the market economy of theater-owners and impresarios. The popularity of the commedia dell'arte continued to grow, however, and its characters and style prospered everywhere, with especial brilliance in Naples and Venice, and were imitated by cultivated amateurs in private the-atricals.
In the course of the eighteenth century, the commedia dell'arte was widely perceived to have hardened into cliches and, despite the imaginative continuation of Carlo Gozzi, it declined as Carlo Goldoni's reforms moved the Italian theater toward realism.
By the nineteenth century the commedia dell'arte had become a vestigial element in opera and a subject for romanticizing scholarship.
Bibliography
Clubb, Louise George. Italian Drama in Shakespeare's Time. New Haven, 1989.
Heck, Thomas F. Commedia dell'Arte: A Guide to the Primary and Secondary Literature. New York, 1988.
Henke, Robert. Performance and Literature in the Commedia dell'Arte. Cambridge, U.K., 2002.
Lea, Kathleen M. Italian Popular Comedy: A Study in the Commedia dell'Arte 1560–1620, with Special Reference to the English Stage. Oxford, 1934.
Molinari, Cesare, ed. La commedia dell'arte. Rome, 1999.
—LOUISE GEORGE CLUBB
An Italian term meaning "the comedy of guilds" or "the comedy of professional actors". This form of dramatic comedy was popular in Italy during the sixteenth century. Actors were assigned stock roles (such as Pulcinella, the stupid servant, or Pantalone, the old merchant) and given a basic plot to follow, but all dialogue was improvised. The roles were rigidly typed and the plots were formulaic, usually revolving around young lovers who thwarted their elders and attained wealth and happiness. A rigid convention of the commedia dell'arte is the periodic intrusion of Harlequin, who interrupts the play with low buffoonery. Peppino de Filippo's Metamorphoses of a Wandering Minstrel gave modern audiences an idea of what commedia dell'arte may have been like. Various scenarios for commedia dell'arte were compiled in Petraccone's La commedia dell'arte, storia, technica, scenari, published in 1927.
Commedia dell'arte (Italian: "play of professional artists") was a popular form of improvisational theatre that began in Italy in the 15th century and maintained its popularity through to the 18th century, although it is still performed today.[1] All of their performances were outside with few props, unscripted, and were free to watch, funded by donations. A troupe consisted of 10 people: 7 men and 3 women. Outside Italy, it was also known as "Italian Comedy".
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 BC. 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. Previously rehearsed Lazzi and Concetti are other tools used by a commedia troupe.
The classic, traditional plot is that the innamorati are in love and wish to be married, but one vecchio (elder) or several elders, vecchi, are preventing this from happening, and so they must ask one or more zanni (eccentric servant) for help. Typically it ends happily with the marriage of the innamorati 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.
Travelling equipaggio 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 traveling theatre that can be traced back to antiquity.
The characters of commedia dell'arte evolved and multiplied over time, through the unique influences of different countries. The characters are split into categories: the zanni are the lower-class characters, the vecchi make up the upper-class, and the innamorati are the lovers. Here are a few examples of the characters:
Arlecchino- also known as Harlequin, is a clown. Typically acrobatic and mischievous, he is one of the zanni. He is a servant, and is recognizable by the colorful diamond-shaped patches that traditionally were part of his costume. The part is sometimes substituted with Truffeldino, his son.
Brighella- a rogue, usually of few morals, and always untrustworthy. He is portrayed as fierce, aggressive, and selfish.
Capitano- swash-buckling and bold, but not necessarily heroic. Capitano generally wears the military dress of the period he is acting, everything foppish and overdone. Capitano is usually played as a braggart, a ladies-man, and a cavalier.
Columbina- developed out of Arlecchino, and is his female counter-part. Usually portrayed as clever, crafty, and untamed. She is also a servant and a member of the zanni, and quite often she compels the action. She sometimes is played wearing colored patches in Arlecchino's style.
Dottore- the doctor. Seen as the intellectual man, but generally that impression is false. He is older, wealthy, and a member of the vecchi. Often played as pedantic, miserly, and hopelessly unsuccesful with women.
The Innamorati- are the lovers. The innamorato and innamorata had many different names over time (Isabella was a particularly popular name for the innamorata). They are young, virtuous, and helplessly in love with one another. They wear the most fashionable dress of the period they are acting, and never play in mask. Often seen singing, dancing, or reciting poetry.
Pantalone- a member of the vecchi. Usually quite wealthy, but very greedy. He is the archetypical "old miser." He is concerned with nothing so much as money, and will do anything in order to obtain it. His costume includes red pants, and often a long beard.
Pedrolino- also known as Pierrot, is the loyal servant. He is hard-working, trustworthy, honest, and in every way devoted to his master. He is also charming and likable, and is portrayed wearing a floppy white outfit with a neck ruff.
Pulcinella- is sometimes called "Punch". He is the freak- pitiable, helpless, and oftentimes disfigured. He usually has a hump, a strong limp, or some other obvious physical deformity. In some portrayals he cannot speak, and expresses himself in squeaks or other strange sounds. His personality can be foolish or tricky and shrewd.
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.
The archetypes represented by the five main Commedia characters are so universal to storytelling that they can be compared to a wide range of contemporary characterizations. For example, some of the characters in the contemporary American television series The Simpsons might be considered comparable to Commedia characters: C. Montgomery Burns is comparable to the old and wealthy Pantalone; the bungling policeman Chief Wiggum is comparable to Il Capitano; Principal Skinner could be compared to Il Dottore, the creator of schemes and inventions; and Homer Simpson and Bart Simpson can be compared to Zanni and Arlecchino, respectivly.[2] In fact the characters of commedia dell'arte are so universal as to be plausibly applied to just about any comedy, contemporary or otherwise, with a large enough cast of characters.
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 Taming of the Shrew, in which Bianca and Lucentio acting as innamorati "beguile the old pantaloon," and Katherina and Petruchio enact a Punch and Judy plot; 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 traveling 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 many 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 brought the new forms of mime to Paris in the 1830s. He standardized the French image of Pierrot.
Stravinsky wrote music for a ballet entitled Pulcinella, regarded as the first of his neo-classical period. His ballet Petrushka is indebted to the Pedrolino figure. (Both ballets were produced by Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes.)
Pierrot Lunaire, the famous and ground-breaking song-cycle by Arnold Schoenberg, draws extensively from commedia dell'arte, or at least, the poems do, originally by Albert Giraud.
Ruggiero Leoncavallo's opera Pagliacci draws heavily on commedia dell'arte characters and situations.
Richard Strauss used several of the characters in his opera Ariadne auf Naxos.
Sergei Prokofiev wrote The Love of Three Oranges with commedia stock characters. The commedia technique had a strong influence on its staging.
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 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 Molière's relationship to the style.
Dario Fo has taken much inspiration from Commedia, by incorporating it with political issues, thus producing Political theatre.
Strong elements of Commedia can also be seen in classic film and television icons such as the Marx Brothers, The Three Stooges and Charlie Chaplin.
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 in 1947 with the play Arlecchino: Servant of Two Masters.
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