What is Commedia dell' Arte. You may understandably ask. The simple answer is that it is a form of improvisational theatre that began in Italy in the 16th Century and spread out from there, The performers (they are not called actors!) have a scenario (in outline form) and a performing troupe would generally have about a week to improvise an entire performance from a stage direction that may well read something like “Pedrolino and Oratio enter and do something funny,” or, perhaps “Everyone comes on stage and resolves everything happily,” Since the entire performance in improvisation and comedy, people not familiar with actually performing in the Commedia dell' Arte generally thin it is quite easy to do, Nothing could be further from the truth. Actually this pair of features (improvisation and comedy) make it one of the most difficult forms of western theatre, The performers (not the playwright) write the dialogue. Which means that they must have the wit and imagination of a playwright. Since the action and dialogue are improvised, there are no cues and timing is much more important than in conventional theatre, Since the performance is also comedic, the timing requirements are unforgiving. In conventional theatre the actor can be semi-tragic and the audience will still feel it, or he can be semi-funny and they will still laugh, not true in the Commedia dell'arte.
The characters in the Commedia are stock, but they usually include the following:
- Pantalone:(who is a Merchant of Venice [not to be confused with Antonio in Shakespeare's play of that name), He is rich, greedy and miserly])
- Gratiano who is a pedant, usually a lawyer, PLEASE NOTE: since both Pantalone and Gratiano are old men, they are referred to as vecchi, which is Italian for “old male characters.”
- Pedrolino & Arlecchino: who are servants of the old men and are known, collectively, as Zanni
- In addition to these stock characters, most Commedia dell' Arte performances will have the amorosi (lovers)
- Il Capitano,(a Spanish soldier who is full of bluff and bluster but actually afraid of his own shadow.) along with a section of villains and others.
The Commedia dell' Arte, despite being an Italian art form, has had a notable influence on English.
Here are a few:
- The word “pants” comes from *guess where?) Pantalone (via pantaloons which are the type of dress that Pantalone wore on stage. Before the Comedia,they were called “Venetian breeches.)
- The word, “zany” comes from (you guessed it!) the two zanni,Doesn't this give you a pretty good idea of how they behave on stage?
- Harlequin is the French version of Arlecchino.
So much for the small influences – now let's go for the big ones! Let's just mention one from Scenarios of the Commedia dell'arte, a translation of Flaminio la Scala's collection of scenarios, published in 1611, taken from the “argument” (or introduction) of the play: “There lived in Florence two gentlemen called Pantalone and Gratiano. They were old men of noble families, and bore a long hatred for each other ... Oratio [Pantalone's son] had fallen in love with Isabella. Daughter of his enemy [Gratiano] ... [Isabella] too, with the help of a physician, a potion which would put her into a death-like sleep.... ”Now does that sound familiar? And we thought Willie-the-Shake swiped R&J from the Greeks (Pyramus and Thisbe) Except Shakespeare turned it into a tragedy, where this Commedia scenario was actually a set-up for a comedy. In point of fact, many of Shakespeare's plays (including Two Gentlemen of Verona} share so many points of similarity with many of the scenarios of the Commedia dell'arte that it seems pretty likely that ol' Will had seen them or at least was familiar with them! What was that Brendan Behan said? “Talent plagiarizes. Genius steals.”
