The secret of the commedia dellâarte
To study and analyze the dramaturgy of the commedia dellâarte, regarded by both scholars and practitioners âas one of the most significant phenomena in the history of European theatreâ (Vianello 2018: 1), is a rather difficult task because the term, as Ludovico Zorzi (1990) points out, improperly refers to a âconfused multitude of pure epiphenomenaâ (149)1 that, for convenience, have been grouped under this denomination. In addition, the commedia dellâarte, according to Ferdinando Taviani, is not a well-defined theatrical form, as certain forms of Asian theatre are:
Whether the composition of its style is reduced only to the masks and fixed characters âŠ, or analyzed as a multifarious interlacement of different strands âŠ, it is always an analysis that takes for granted the historical existence of a codified style of theatre, with its fixed attributes, and with the persistence of a tradition. It is not thus a surprise if, after having read the books, enthusiasts and scholars of foreign theatres come to Italy and ask where they can see commedia dellâarte performances, as they would ask, going to Japan, India, or China, where they could see some good Noh theatre, a good example of Beijing Opera or Kathakali.⊠The illusion that the theatrical genre âCommedia dellâArteâ existed in Italy⊠does not have historical and material roots, if not in the ways in which the commercial expertise of the Italian actors took advantage of the system of organization of the Parisian theatres, which was based on the specialization and the monopoly of genres.
(Taviani and Schino 1982: 308)
At the basis of the commedia dellâarte there isnât a form, but its fame. Of the commedia dellâarte, in fact, only its skeleton has been preservedâthe scenarios published by Flaminio Scala and the ones of the different manuscript traditions. These scenarios, according to Ferdinando Taviani, cannot be considered as a specific form but only as a different level of dramaturgy and a different level of preservation.2
It would be useful to begin by first taking into consideration the denomination itself and also, although briefly, those firm points concerning the history of this theatrical âformâ by mentioning some of the most recent acquisitions that have been the result of the careful archival work conducted in prevalence by Italian scholars, to whom we owe, starting with the 1970s, the rectification of some of the myths that had developed around the commedia dellâarte. Benedetto Croce (1933) had already pointed out how the denomination of the commedia dellâarte was to be intended in the sense of âprofession and craft,â since this was the meaning of the word âarteâ in old Italian:
These were not theatrical representations performed by occasional actors, students, academicians, jolly fellows, members of confraternities, or similar people; instead, this was industrialized theatre, characterized by the formation of companies regulated by contracts and statutes, by masters and apprentices, by the knowledge of a craft that was handed down from father to son, and from mother to daughter, and by the exercise of that industry traveling from one city to another.
(503)
The expression commedia dellâarte, in fact, cannot be found before the eighteenth century, and the phenomenon that began around the middle of the sixteenth century was called different names by different cultural environments: commedia allâimprovviso, commedia degli Zanni, commedia delle maschere, commedia mercenaria, comĂ©die italienne. âTo be in artâ simply meant to exercise the acting profession, to be part of a guildâcorporazioneâaccording to the medieval acceptation of the term.
âThe growth and developmentâ of this theatre, Benedetto Croce insists, âtook place in the middle of a literary and spiritual decadenceâ (505), so that âthe com-media dellâarte was nothing more than this: clownish theatreâ (506), rather than âpoetry or art in a strict aesthetic senseâ (510). This view, although not completely incorrect, was nonetheless partial in its delimitation of the term âarteâ to only its professional aspect and thus ended up obscuring the aesthetic side of the phenomenon, allowing for the subsequent proliferation of myths around the commedia dellâarte. Even today, if we look at tertiary sourcesâespecially in the English languageâthe commedia dellâarte is still primarily characterized as a street theatre of popular origins that could rely on the absence of a play-script and that was based on the mimetic and gestural skills of an actor who, unable to read and write, was improvising farces for the entertainment of an unsophisticated audience.3
As Laura Falavolti (1988) argues, âthere is a dominant tendency nowadays to consider its actorsâ professionalism as the main characteristic of the commedia dellâarte and also, turning this line of reasoning on its head, to consider the dellâarte actors as the first real theatre professionalsâ (12). As we shall see, the comiciâs professionalism should not go at the expense of a wider acceptation of the term âart.â In the first of the two prologues to the comedy Il finto maritoâa fully written comedy that was based on an original scenario by the same authorâFlaminio Scala defines his idea of dramatic composition and, at the same time, offers us an idea of the commedia dellâarte. It is worth mentioning a passage from this prologue:
Comedian. I think that the true art of making comedies resides in those who perform them well because, if experience is the teacher of all things, it can teach to those who already possess the spirit for forming and best representing the theatrical subjects, and for writing them down; unless the person in question was born in Voltolino, or any other place where people write I when they should write me. But what does this art, by grace, consist in?
Foreigner. It consists in preserving the precepts and in imitating as much as possible.
Comedian. Who then can better know the precepts of the acting art than the comedians themselves, who exercise it daily by practicing it and by learning from using it? And who can better possess the true art of imitation than them, who not only imitate the effects and properties of actions, but also, by introducing different idioms, must imitate in the best possible way, not only with their own idiom, but also with all the others? Because if a Florentine would try to speak Venetian, and the Venetian the idiom of Bergamo, we would reward them by throwing vegetables.4
It is a declaration of a new poetic and at the same time an ideology for defending a novel way of doing theatre: not only the pure and simple defense of a technique that could allow the manufacture of a product suitable for the tastes of a variegated audience but also the claim to a âknow-howâ that was at the very basis of a new idea of art and thus a new culture. Numerous scholars have in fact pointed out that Scalaâs insistence on the value of experience rather than tradition finds a parallel in the experimental method that Galileo Galilei will develop between 1624 and 1630 and then describe a couple of years later in 1632 in his Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systemsâa parallel that makes the com-media dellâarte part of those major upheavals that characterized the sixteenth century.5
As Francesco Cotticelli reminds us,
We cannot rule out the possibility that the commedia dellâarte became, at times, just that: the pleasure of mise-en-scĂšne for its own sake, lazzi (comic routines) and acrobatics performed without regard to context, novelty without the slightest pretense of lasting, hardened traditions incapable of renewal. It was successful, however, despite being an anomalous and hazardous enterprise, and flourished in the juncture between the absence of the text and its open-ended presence (as proposed by F. Taviani), where the author merged with the actor.
(2001a: vol. 1, 12)
Let us see, then, what were the origins of this âanomalous and hazardous enterprise.â
The birth of the commedia dellâarte
On 25 February 1545, some âcomradesââSer Maphio, Vincentio da Venezia, Francesco da la lira, Hieronimo da S. Luca, Zuoandomenego detto Rizo, Zuane da Treviso, Tofano de Bastian, and Francesco Moschiniâwent to a notary from Padua to constitute âa brotherhoodâ that should last for a whole year âwithout any hatred, rancor and dissolution.â6 Scholars have endowed this document with a symbolic value, since it is considered to be the oldest document to witness the birth of the first theatre troupe of professional actors. Among the things that these comrades âtogether concluded and deliberated,â there was the election of a âleader in the reciting of his comedies from place to place,â said Ser Maphio, who would âtake controlâ of âhow to recite the comediesâ and who would create a âlittle boxâ with three keys, where to keep âthe potential profits.â Who were these eight men? What kinds of comedies did they perform? How were they staged? What was the difference with the kind of theatre that had preceded them? Cesare Molinari (1999), despite the lack of precise documents in this regard, answers these questions convincingly: the capocomico, Maffeo dei Re, was probably a man of a certain culture and economic ease who, at one point, driven by his passion for the theatre, joined other craftsmen to be able to perform âhis comedies.â What the document means by âhis comediesâ we cannot know. However, we know that by the middle of the sixteenth century, Italian dramatic literature could already count on a rich repertoire: apart from the texts by Plautus and Terence, the company could also draw on the texts of the so-called commedia erudita (learned comedy)âthat is, those texts that had been written and represented at court since the early years of the sixteenth century (Ariosto, Machiavelli, Ruzante, Bibiena, and Aretino, to name but a few). Molinari also assumes the presence of original texts written by the same Maffeo dei Re. Furthermore, the scholar continues, these texts were no longer memorized and recited ad verbum but staged in a new way:
The actors read or listen to the director while reading the play, they memorize the main points and then they go ad lib, chasing the fragments of their memory. Then they will find more comfortable to simply summarize the comedy in a canovaccio, in a scenario, as more precisely it was said to indicate that the plot of the play was not merely summarized, but described scene by scene, event by event. This would also explain why so many canovacci collected by the amateur Basilio Locatelli, as well as the others most likely owned by professional companies such as the seventeenth century Raccolta di scenari piĂč scelti di histrioni (known now as scenari Correr), are nothing more than well-known ancient and modern comedies reduced to a scenario.
(viii)
As most scholars nowadays agree, the commedia dellâarte will fully come into existence only a couple of decades later, in 1564âanother symbolic dateâwith the arrival of the actresses. In fact, until this point, the female roles were acted by men or boys, as it had also been the case in the Roman theatre and court theatre in the early sixteenth century. With the arrival of women, while âthe structure of the âregularâ comedyâ remained the same, it was nonetheless âviolatedâ because âso much room was reserved to the monologues of these characters whose main characteristic was their âeloquence.ââ7 In 1564 a contra...