MTA 104 ("Understanding Theatre")

Instructor:  Walter Metz

Lecture:  Commedia dell’Arte

European culture emerged out of the Dark Ages during the period referred to as the Renaissance (the "rebirth"). A social organization which was stable enough to support the arts and sciences in the classical Greek and Roman sense is what was reborn during the Renaissance. The Renaissance is usually associated first with Italian city-states (Florence, Milan, etc.) that emerged out of the medieval town configurations that I discussed during the Medieval Theatre lecture. By the late 14th Century, these Italian city-states began to flourish as centers of scientific and artistic activity. The Renaissance would quickly spread northward and westward to many of the European countries (England and Holland in particular). The height of British theatre during the Renaissance is usually associated with William Shakespeare, which we shall discuss in a separate lecture.

The Italian Renaissance made two great contributions to the history of theatre: an advancement in the architectural design of theatre buildings and an improvisational comedy form known as "commedia dell’Arte" ("comedy of professional artists").

Contribution #1:  Theatrical Architecture

The theatre buildings that were designed and implemented during the 16th Century in Italy perfectly describe Renaissance culture. One of the things reborn during the Renaissance was an interest in classical Greek and Roman civilization. In 1545, Italian Renaissance architect Sebastiano Serlio published his book, Architettura, a study of theatrical architecture. The book perfectly combines the Renaissance’s interest in classical civilization (by drawing heavily from the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius) and Renaissance art and science principles, particularly Renaissance perspective. That is, the Italian Renaissance theatre featured colliseum-type seating (a la Vitruvius) but also a proscenium theatrical stage. The backdrops of the stage were painted so as to simulate a Renaissance perspective painting, complete with vanishing points and a stage which sloped downward. This architectural design quickly swept through Europe (into France and England particularly), and is the basis for our contemporary theatres.

Contribution #2:  Commedia dell'Arte

The Italian Renaissance’s principal contribution to the textual history of theatre was the form known as Commedia dell’Arte. Commedia dell’Arte is a theatrical form tied to actors who improvise dialogue for standard, cliche-filled scripts. The form was most often used for comic performances about servants battling with their masters. For this reason, the Commedia dell’Arte is also a perfect example of Renaissance culture. On the one hand, the source material for such a plot is the Greek and Roman New Comedy. That is, New Comedy also featured these comic battles between servants and masters. Compare the servant Pedrolino’s attack on his master Pantalone in the Commedia dell’Arte scenario, The Dentist, to the New Comedy in the Roman playwright Plautus’s The Braggard Soldier (in which the servants conspire to teach their egotistical master a lesson).

However, the Commedia dell’Arte is more than just a rehashing of classical theatre, it also represents an advancement. Like the Medieval pageant plays, the Commedia dell’Arte was performed by a roving troop of actors. Yet unlike the pageant plays, the Commedia scenarios were not religious, but often irreligious, bawdy, and wholly secular. And unlike the classical theatre, the dialogue in Commedia dell’Arte is largely improvised. This importance given the actor is an explicitly Renaissance phenomenon. The Renaissance is characterized by humanism, the burgeoning belief in the importance of the individual, which would come to fruition in such phenomena as the American and French Revolutions. The Commedia’s reliance on the improvisational, comic talents of the actor is quite far from the mask-wearing archetypes of the Greek theatre that we witnessed in such plays as Oedipus Rex.

How and why does improvisation highlight the individual? Compare the improvisational highlights in The Dentist (all of the characters convincing Pantalone that he has bad breath, for instance) with the improvisational moments in the British game-show, Whose Line Is It Anyway?

CLIP #1: Whose Line Is It Anyway?

Here, we can see the way in which the stock improvisational set-pieces encourage our identification with the virtuosic performances of each of the comics. We come to appreciate the talents of the individual actors, learning their strengths at particular performance pieces--singing, imitating voices, rhyming--which in the Commedia dell’Arte is called "lazzi" (set pieces of monkey business, or "stage business" as Brockett calls it).

The Dentist (c. 1611) is a useful example of Commedia dell’Arte, since the play introduces us to the various stock situations and characters of this theatrical form.

1. Stock Situations

The Commedia, like the New Comedy which came before it, generally involved the conflict between servants and masters. Pedrolino’s dental revenge against Pantalone is a perfect example of this. Yet this sort of comedy has a larger ideological significance: it relies on our identification with the comic situation as based on an imbalance of power. That is, the situation has a cathartic effect, as we celebrate through laughter the socially disempowered Pedrolino over the socially (but not necessarily intellectually or morally) superior Pantalone. Consider the legacy of this sort of comedy into the present day, for example in this dental moment from one of the Pink Panther movies.

CLIP #2: The Pink Panther Strikes Again: Clouseau pulls out Dreyfus’ tooth

Here we have a representative of the French establishment (Chief Inspector Dreyfus) assaulted by the bumbling, incompetent detective Clouseau. The fact that the boss is completely insane, and Clouseau is working for the benefit of humanity (protecting the world from Dreyfus’ ray gun), drives the violent tenor of the scene in the direction of comedy. This set-up is very similar to that in The Dentist (Arlecchino and Clouseau both only pretend to be dentists as part of a scheme, Arlecchino and Clouseau both inflict pain on the authoritarian figure because they randomly pull teeth, etc.).

2. Stock Characters

The Lovers:  These characters usually drove the plots of the commedia dell’arte, given its roots in New Comedy. That is, the plays generally focus on a set of lovers trying to get married, but because their love relationships are intertwined and complex, it takes the entire play to sort things out so that the right pair of lovers are bound together. This happens at the end, and thus the play ends comically and happily.

The Masters:  Usually an older generation than the lovers (although this too can become complicated, as in The Dentist, where the elder master Pantalone is in love with the younger Isabella). The masters are usually mean to, and therefore in conflict with, the servants, driving the conflict in the commedia dell’arte scenaria.

The Servants (zanni). The zanni are literally the most zany characters, driving the comedy through their preposterous actions and schemes. Some servants are shrewd and calculating, like Pedrolino, while some are dumb-witted, and thus very funny. The most famous sort of character from the commedia dell’arte is Harlequin. Harlequin was a liminal sort of servant character, neither excessively intelligent nor completely stupid. Harlequin wore outrageous costumes and stole the spotlight from other characters using his outrageous behavior. Arlecchino in The Dentist is a not-quite-fully-formed version of Harlequin. The figure of the Harlequin continued into the 20th Century. Consider how Thomas Mann uses the Harlequin as a no longer comic but now quite frightening character in Death in Venice.

CLIP #3: Death in Venice (Luchino Visconti, 1971): The harlequin

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This page was last updated on June 16, 2001

Questions or Comments?  Please phone me at (406) 994-6403 or send an e-mail to:  metz@montana.edu

Walter Metz, Department of Media and Theatre Arts, Montana State University--Bozeman