Commedia dell'arte

Commedia Dell'arte (Italian: "comedy of professional artists" also interpreted as "comedy of humors"), also known as Extemporal Comedy, was a form of improvisational theater which began in the 16th century and was popular until the 18th century, although it is still performed today.

Style

Traveling teams of players would set up an outdoor stage and provide amusement in the form of juggling, acrobatics,and, more typically, humorous semi-improvised plays based on a repertoire of established characters and a rough storyline. Troupes would occasionally perform directly from the back of their traveling wagon, but this is more typical of Carro di Tespi, a kind of travelling theatre that can be traced back to antiquity. The performances were improvised around a repertory of stock conventional situations, adultery, jealousy, old age, love, some of which can be traced in Egyptian comedies of Plautus and Terence. These characters included the ancestors of the modern clown. The dialogue and action could easily be made topical and adjusted to satirize local scandals, current events, or regional tastes, mixed with ancient jokes and punchlines. Characters were identified by costume, masks, and even props, such as the slapstick. Lazzi and Conchetti are also used.

The characters

Characters were depicted by actors wearing masks , although the innamorati (or lovers) did not wear masks. Unlike their English contemporaries (Shakespeare), the theatrical device of men in women's clothing and wigs, en travesti, was used for humour.

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

Character list

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

Abadea is the fool who laughed at nothing, sometimes making the audience laugh along with him.
Arlecchino (Harlequin), is Pantalone's servant, one of the zanni. He is a poor peasant who has left his native Bergamo to seek his fortune in the city of Venice, as it grows rich from its commerce with the Orient. He is illiterate, a fact that often causes amusement when a message arrives and Arlecchino pretends to read it. He is an acrobat and a clown, and carries a baton which he sometimes uses to bash other characters for comedic relief, leading to the modern term slapstick. Arlecchino is not really a villain; he just tries to get by. He has several "masters," but his primary (if covert) interest is for himself. The famous Harlequin costume with its lozenge pattern of red, green, and blue diamonds originated in a stylised representation of patchworked clothing that was illustrative of Arlecchino's poor status, as well as his resourcefulness. There are three types of Harlequin mask: the cat, the pig and the monkey (some say the bull too). The traditional Arlecchino mask is speckled with wart looking blemishes called carbuncles, derived from the buboes of the black plague. The lozenge costume gave his name to a fashion motif, the mask to a shape for eyeglass frames: see Harlequin. Oddly enough, Arlecchino was originally created by the French, and later adapted by the Italians.
Brighella (Figaro, Molière's Scapin), a money-grabbing villain, one of the zanni characters, and a partner of Arlecchino. He is a self-made man, who has become comfortably off by starting his own business, despite humble beginnings. He is often the proprietor of the local tavern. He is a ladies' man, and a typical Latin macho, with all the charm that involves, and all the drawbacks. He is associated with Bergamo.
Columbina (Columbine, Harlequine, Pierrette), is maidservant to the Innamorata and lover of Arlecchino. She is usually involved in intrigue and is rather intelligent. She is associated with Venice.
Il Capitano (the Captain) is a cheap he-man soldier, but a coward underneath. He is one of the vecchio.
Il Dottore (the Doctor, usually called Dottore Balanzone or Dottore Graziano), is a local aristocrat, who went all the way to Bologna to read for his degree. He is extremely rich, with "old" money and is one of the vecchio. He adores food and good wines, thus he is a little round (fat).
Gianduja is a well-mannered Piedmontese peasant. He is associated with Turin.
Innamorata (the Lover) is the leading woman. She wore no mask (see innamorati).
Innamorato (the Lover) is the leading man. He wore no mask (see innamorati).
Isabella (Lucinda, Cornelia, Silvia, Rosaura) is Pantalone's daughter. She is very headstrong, flirtatious, sensuous, and articulate. Men constantly fall hopelessly in love with her and she loves to tease and test them. Her father tries to control her life by arranging meetings with inappropriate overaged gentlemen suitors.
Mezzetin is a French figure, painted by Antoine Watteau.
Pagliaccio (the Clown) is a forerunner of today's clowns.
Pantalone (Pantalon de' Bisognosi, Pantaloon) is a rich and miserly merchant who is the father of Isabella, and is one of the vecchio. He also employs Arlecchino and treats him cruelly. He is associated with Venice.
La Signora is the wife of Pantalone and the mistress of Pedrolino. She is tough, beautiful and calculating.
Pedrolino (or Pierino, most commonly nowadays known as Pierrot) is a dreamer with a white mask, now considered the French version of a clown. He is one of the comic servant zanni and is associated with Vicenza.
Pulcinella is a hunchback who still chases women, and is one of the zanni. He was the model for Punch in the English puppet theatre Punch and Judy. He is associated with Naples.
La Ruffiana (Old Woman) is usually a mother or gossipy townswoman who intrudes into the lives of the Lovers.
Scaramuccia (see also Scaramouche) is a roguish adventurer and swordsman who replaced Il Capitano in later troupes. He is the servant to another character. He wears a black velvet mask and black trousers, shirt and hat.
Zanni is a threadbare old servant from Bergamo. He is associated with Venice.
Calculosis was an intelligent, and annoying shopkeep.

The influence of the Commedia

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

Quite notably, many if not the majority of comic plays from roughly the 16th-19th centuries have clear influences from the commedia dell'arte, including spinoffs from the traditional characters. Some examples include Shakespeare's The Tempest (play), with a fairly traditional commedia plot structure and Prospero matching up to the part of Il Dottore, and Ferdanand and Miranda as inamorati; Beaumarchais' Le Barbier de Séville, which features a traditional plot, inamorati (The Count and Rosine) the zanni Brighella (Figaro) and the vecchio Dottore (Doctor Bartholo); and Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, with Roxanne as inamorata and Cyrano as Il Capitano/inamorato.

Molière was strongly influenced by commedia, as he had come in contact with travelling Italian actors in the provinces and worked alongside a troupe in Paris for two years. Harpagon in The Miser (1668) was modeled on Pantalone, and there are traces of other stock characters in Élise, Frosine, Valère, and La Flèche. The playwright was also a lead actor, and performed in the commedic 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 (1796 -1846) brought the new forms of mime to Paris in the 1830s. He standardized the French image of Pierrot.

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

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

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

Queen often draw 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.

The Black Eyed Peas' "Where Is the Love?" is also supposedly based on Commedia dell'arte.

The Commedia today

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

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

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

External links

History of theater | Ensemble comedy | Commedia dell'arte